In a Thousand Plateaus, Delueze/Guattari⁴ discuss that European culture is characterized by a peculiar mechanism or reductionism even before the mechanism of the society itself. The perception, the division of one thing into another. The idea that there is such a thing as a ‘thing’, and if this thing even exists. In other words, this is substantive thinking. There is some substance of a thing that is separate from other things that really are real. Meaning, to look at things Apollonically, distinguishable, that really exist. It’s also possible to have a completely different view, that is, Dionysian. To see is like becoming, returning, that forms some kind of story. And here Deleuze / Guattari cite the image of a flow. Including the parameter of temporality. Including the very process of becoming this ‘thing’ and the involvement of this thing, in a network of transformations.

The big question is how much of this flow is accessible to our perception. The world seems to us platonic. It comes from a platonic idea of the universal truth.⁵ The material definements are holding people back to reach the inner truth and freedom that is already within them. Freedom in this case is not an abstract concept, but a concrete freedom from concern for sustenance. Here, it becomes almost synonymous with leisure. A free man does not seek victory for the sake of profit, he is driven by theoretical interest. The world lives according to the laws of the cosmos. And this primordial law is somehow structured and configured by means of some code. Thus, the techniques of avant-garde artists come from this thought. They were looking for methods to reconnect with this universal plan. One of which is Kazimir Malevich, who writes: “Any form of the created spiritual world must be built in accordance with a single general plan. There can be no special rights and freedoms for art, religion or civic life. The loss of these rights and freedoms is not a real loss, because a person is not initially free: he is part of the cosmos, and his thinking is controlled by subconscious ‘stimuli’”. ⁶

Thus, rationality is not only elitist but also authoritarian in nature. Anyone is capable of understanding the universal, but only conditionally that he has the capability to do so. If he does not have these capabilities, his life must be ordered according to those rational principles that he himself cannot discover. Instrumental rationality is inherent in modern society, according to Descartes with his cogito and logocentric view of the world. Hence, the ‘instrumental mind’ as Weber called the bureaucratic system.⁷ This leads to alienation. The logical consequence of political alienation is that individuals ignore the public sphere completely, and try to escape from those private interests that are constantly presented as the interests of most people.

Bureaucracy is organized in such a way that it does not perceive any schemes, except the division of people into two categories –the governing and the governed. In this case, the managers are vested with unquestioning authority, while the ordinary individual becomes an insignificant atom of a huge structure. No other schemes are accepted by bureaucrats. The bureaucratic structure itself is arranged in such a way that it is a closed system, which does not lend itself to change even under strong external pressure. As Mikhail Yampolskiy stated, “that which should ensure freedoms and any kind of emancipation, in particular from the bureaucratization, is only possible through the bureaucratization itself, because the state has no other mechanisms except of bureaucracy.” ⁸

The requirements of freedom are formalized in some specific terminologies, documents and so on, to which all must comply. Fighting for freedom in this sense is entrenching the bureaucracy even more. It breeds even more paperwork. That is the paradox. Because bureaucracy eventually becomes not just synonymous with freedom, but indistinguishable from it altogether. This alienation leads to a kind of blurring of goals and objectives in society and to the gradual atomization of its citizens.