“Christianity taught us to see the eye of the lord looking down upon us. Such forms of knowledge project an image of reality, at the expense of reality itself. They talk figures and icons and signs, but fail to perceive forces and flows. They bind us to other realities, and especially the reality of power as it subjugates us. Their function is to tame, and the result is the fabrication of docile and obedient subjects.”
After rereading this quote with an amount of attention I was thoroughly annoyed by usage of “they.” Of course “they” in reference to Christianity is ungrammatical, suggesting something has been altered or omitted. Turns out this quote is from “goodquotes.com” or some shit, attributed to Deleuze in Anti-Oedipus. ACTUALLY, while the quote is indeed found in Anti-Oedipus, it is in the INTRODUCTION WRITTEN BY MARK SEEM, THE TRANSLATOR OF ANTI-OEDIPUS. The true quote from the introduction to the English translation of Anti-Oedipus (available here on scribd) reads as follows:
The human and social sciences have accustomed us to see the figure of Man behind every social event, just as Christianity taught us to see the Eye of the Lord looking down upon us. Such forms of knowledge project an image of reality, at the expense of reality itself. They talk figures and icons and signs, but fail to perceive forces and flows. They blind us to
other realities, and especially the reality of power as it subjugates us. Their function is to tame, and the result is the fabrication of docile and
obedient subjects.
So not only do we have a fucked up quote, the true wording of which changes everything completely (the whole fucking subject), but it’s not even Deleuze himself.
Anyway, to get back to the matter at hand, since Professor Oak is indeed a professor, a man of science, the quote is all the more relevant. The human sciences have accustomed us to seeing man behind the taming of pokemon (man:social event::god:his “watchful eye”), talk of signs rather than perception of force. Thus reality as we see it through the eyes of Professor Oak has blinded us to the reality of power found within a world of pokemon in which the trainer is subjugated to her beasts.
(via dumbassfils)
