noology

  ---- by Claire Colebrook

  The concept of 'noology' can be set against phenomenology, or the grounding of thought in what appears to consciousness, and ideology, or the idea that there are systems or structures of ideas that are imposed upon thinking. Deleuze's early work The Logic of Sense, while critical of phenomenology, nevertheless drew upon Edmund Husserl's 'noeisis/ noema' distinction: the noeisis is the act or subjective aspect - remembering, imagining, desiring, perceiving - while the noema is the objective pole - the remembered, imagined, desired and perceived. Even in The Logic of Sense Deleuze criticised Husserl for restricting the noema to being an object of consciousness and argued that there were pure noematic predicates - colour itself, for example, which is still a relation - between light and eye - but a relation liberated from any specific observer. Noology would, then, be a study or science not of appearances (phenomenology) nor ideas (ideology) but noology. If there are pure noema - or 'thinkables' - we can also imagine approaching life, not as grounded in personal consciousness, but as a history of various images of thought, or what counts as thinking. Ideology, for example, is the image of a mind that can think only through an imposed or external structure; phenomenology is the image of a mind that forms its world and whose ideas and experiences are structured by a subject oriented towards truth.

  In general, noology can be opposed to ideology. Instead of arguing that we, as proper subjects, are subjected to ideas that are false and that might be demystified, Deleuze argues that it is the idea of a proper 'we' and assumption of the good self or 'mind' which precludes us from actualising our potential. Noology, as it is defined in A Thousand Plateaus, is not only the study of images of thought, but also claims a 'historicity' for images. The modern subject who is subjected to a system of signifiers is therefore produced and has its genesis in previous relations of subjection. In addition to its critical function, noology therefore assumes that if images of thought have been created they can always be recreated, with the ideal of liberation from some proper image of thought being the ultimate aim. In Difference and Repetition,Deleuzearguesthatwehavefailedtothinktrulypreciselybecause we assume or presuppose an 'image of thought'. Not only philosophy, but everyday notions of common sense and good sense fail to question just what it is to think. In this regard, the concept of mind (or, in Greek, nous) has been an unargued, implicit and restrictive postulate of our thinking. Noology does not only study what it might mean for human subjects to think; it also strives to imagine thought carried to its infinite power, beyond the human.

  Connective

   § thought