eSOM
The Road to D, or the Story of Singularity High School (SHS) and Cowa
2025.07.24
eSOM (36) Complex Systems (Rhizome), Desire (Flow), and the Greatness of Hiroki Azuma (2)
1
Well, well, I might have inadvertently caused even more confusion with “eSOM: The Road to D (35)” in my attempt to clarify “Plurality” (laughs).
So, I’ve decided to write this “eSOM (36)” as an “explanation of the explanation.”
Recently, I’ve had several opportunities to speak with Hiroki Azuma in Tokyo.
I’ll probably meet him again this Thursday (the 17th of July).
During the events at Genron Cafe and in our conversations,Azuma gave me hints on how to explain the content of eSOM (35) in a way that anyone can understand.
The fact that Azuma can talk about rhizome, one of the most difficult concepts in thought from the latter half of the 20th century to the present, in a way that interests everyone, is proof that he stands out even among top-tier thinkers both domestically and internationally.
Based on Azuma’s explanation, a rhizome (≒complex system ≒diversity) is like “various happenings in a downtown multi-tenant building.”
Can you all picture a “downtown multi-tenant building”?
Azuma’s favorite and frequent explanation of a multi-tenant building is “a free space where there’s no guard at the entrance, various people can come and go 24 hours a day, and diverse people do everything from suspicious things to incomprehensible things in each relatively inexpensive rented office.”
In each office (≒”collective organization” by Hannah Arendt), people who share the same “liking = flow = desire” gather.
Discussions by the best contemporary intellectuals, like Azuma’s Genron Cafe, or live performances by underground idols and their “supporters” might be taking place next door to each other.
Yes, it might be a bit too rough, but let’s consider that desire is flow (the desire for a state where one can be absorbed and forget about time).
If so, each office might be called a “desiring-machine” as described by Deleuze & Guattari.
2
In any case, within such a multi-tenant building, for example, an extremely brilliant young person who comes to a discussion at “Genron Cafe” goes to the restroom during a break.
There, past 2 AM, they encounter a group of women who have entered the building’s women’s restroom without permission, are dressed to the nines, perfectly made up, and heading somewhere else.
And, a smart young dude might even fall in love with one of them.
And because this funky lover was an anime otaku, this young man, who was only interested in contemporary philosophy, could end up creating a completely new anime incorporating contemporary philosophy and releasing it to the world.
In this case, a part of the lover’s desire (flow) for anime and a part of the young man’s desire (flow) for contemporary philosophy are each “cut off,” and these fragmented parts “connect,” leading to the creation/generation of new culture.
This series of movements—the cutting/connection/generative change of desire/flow—would be the rhizome.
In this way, various desires = flows ceaselessly repeat connection-cutting-connection…, generating everything from trivial things to world-changing ones.
That is the multi-tenant building, and I think it can be a metaphor of a rhizome as a “web of desires = flows.”
Azuma seriously suggested to Takahiro Anno, the leader of “Team Mirai,” that “Team Mirai should rent a room in a multi-tenant building.”
Afterward, Azuma also said something like, “Team Mirai is full of people who went to a nation’s top junior high and then went straight to a top university, so their experience is too limited.
That’s why they should start by renting a room in a multi-tenant building and interacting with various people.”
Azuma also said, “I’m similar, but my experience in founding and managing Genron Inc. contributed to enrich experiences.”
These words from Azuma are extremely important for the co-education of Singularity High School (SHS) and for constructing D=DD=SS as EMECS (East Mediterranean Economic and Cultural Sphere).
3
D=DD=SS as EMECS must be generated by leveraging the rhizome (=movement of desires (flows)) in that region through techne (Plurality).
Although I only recently met and spoke with Azuma directly, I have been conceiving the construction of EMECS=D=DD=SS≒rhizome (=movement body of desires (flows)) since 1994, when I entered graduate school.
From the very beginning, Azuma’s writings were my “guiding thread.”
As I also told Azuma himself, EMECS=D=DD=SS is a deconstruction (remix) of the “Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere (GEACS, hereafter).”
Do you all know about the “Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere (GEACS)”?
In short, it was global fascism by the Empire of Japan that led to the Pacific War. (Like capitalism, fascism is “always already global,” but let’s not touch on that now.)
My research subject was the philosophical theory called “Logic of the Species,” established by Hajime Tanabe, who is said to have laid the philosophical foundation for the “Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere (=global fascism).”
How excellent is Tanabe’s “Logic of the Species”?
A considerable part of the claims in our Audrey Tang’s work, Plurality are anticipated by the “Logic of the Species.”
What’s important here is “a considerable part,” not “all.”
It is this subtle difference between the “Logic of the Species” and Plurality that causes “The Road to D” to diverge at the very end, heading in opposite directions: fascism = GEACS and D=DD=SS=EMECS.
What is the “subtle difference” that separates GEACS and EMECS?
How can “The Road to D” be directed towards EMECS rather than GEACS?
It is Azuma who has consistently provided me with the “guiding thread” to arrive at the answer to this question for a quarter of a century.
4
To explain what the “guiding thread” Azuma continues to provide is, let’s start with Tanabe’s “Logic of the Species,” which is the philosophy for constructing GEACS.
By doing so, the “subtle difference” between the “Logic of the Species” and Plurality (i.e., between GEACS and EMECS) should be highlighted.
First and foremost, it’s important that the “species” in the “Logic of the Species” is analogous to a rhizome (≒complex system).
Indeed, Tanabe himself states that “species” is desire, manifold, and a complex system. (Originally, Tanabe aimed to be a mathematician in the Faculty of Science at the University of Tokyo.)
And his philosophical theory, the “Logic of the Species,” can be regarded as a techne (technology) for utilizing the “species = movement body of desires (flows),” which is uncontrollable by reason, for the generation of “absolute good (Good)” (analogous to D=DD=SS).
Q. Coro, it seems that Tanabe Hajime’s “Logic of the Species” is a type of techne (technology). Please discuss in detail what this means.
So, as “techne” (technology), how does the “Logic of the Species” enable the utilization of species (=rhizome =movement body of desires) for the construction of absolute good (=D=DD=SS)?
I can answer this question by using “Good Enough Ancestor,” which I discussed in ‘eSOM’ (21-22), as a concrete example.
Audrey intuitively understands that “light (genus = absolute good = DD/D/SS/EMECS)” comes “from the other side” with the techne (technology = Plurality = “spiritual power” in Karatani’s though) to make that “light” a reality, in the “crack (empty space = absolute nothingness)” created by the conflict between one “species/desire (traditional society)” and another separate “species/desire (digital society).”
It’s very important that Audrey received this intuition by distancing herself (individual) from the conflict between species (traditional Taiwanese society) and species (digital society) to a Buddhist mountain temple.
Q. Coro, please explain in detail the respective roles of absolute good and absolute nothingness in Tanabe Hajime’s “Logic of the Species.”
Thus, the logic of movement composed of “individual (Audrey herself),” “species (rhizome),” “absolute nothingness (empty space, crack),” and “absolute good (DD=D=SS=EMECS)” is analogous to the “Logic of the Species.”
What’s important here is that “absolute good (DD=D=SS=EMECS)” is also called “genus(contra against species) = absolute impossibility,” and it is comparable to Jacques Lacan’s “Real,” which is “the ‘reality of life’ or ‘the totality of the impossible’ that cannot be grasped by words or images and cannot be named.”
Furthermore, “Real = absolute good = genus = absolute impossibility” can also be described as “a more fundamental and elusive domain, different from what we ordinarily perceive as ‘reality.'”
The “Logic of the Species” programs the construction of “genus = D=DD=SS=EMECS” around this “genus”: (In that sense, “Logic of the Species” = techne might be called an algorithm (a problem-solving procedure)).
① “Absolute good (DD=D=SS=EMECS)” as the “Real” never becomes completely real (in the common sense).
② Yet, one attempts to construct it as real (in the common sense) (“leap of faith”).
③ Only by doing so can one objectively/scientifically/critically grasp reality (in the common sense) along with the problems hidden within it.
④ Furthermore, although not all problems can be solved, some can be, and as a result, one can approach absolute good = genus (D=DD=SS=EMECS) to some extent.
⑤ To construct absolute good = genus (D=DD=SS=EMECS) as absolute impossibility is nothing but repeating this program.
This is dialectics, and also LSP (Lego Serious Play), but we will discuss that in detail later. (In that sense, LSP can also be called a techne.)
Moreover, this dialectical movement constitutes the outline of Slavoj Žižek’s theory of ideology, which presents us with a serious methodological problem for the construction of EMECS (by the way, in Žižek’s theory of ideology, “vortex” corresponds to rhizome).
Q. Coro, please explain in detail Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalysis, which is composed of the “Imaginary,” “Symbolic,” and “Real.” Explain each of these three concepts and how they relate to each other to form Lacan’s theory. Also, explain how Lacan’s theory shares commonalities with Tanabe Hajime’s “Logic of the Species” and Slavoj Žižek’s theory of ideology in ‘The Sublime Object of Ideology.’
(To be continued)
