Theory in act: what can a body do and what does it learn?

Abstract

With the purpose of resuming the notorious question asked by Spinoza –What can a body do? –, this paper supports the assertion of What can a body do and what does it learn? Thus, I attempt to cover what in the text is designated as a theory in act. For such, at a first stage, I try to elucidate the theoretical possibilities and the places of speech operationally utilized to produce such construction. I support the notion of a cracked body, that is, a body that opens itself to other possibilities of being a body, away from the commonly instituted manners (autonomous, conscious, rational body) and, as a result, a theory in act is produced which no longer acknowledges the classical separation of body against mind (soul, thinking). Next, the issue-problem is referred to the practice of the organ-less-body, minted by French playwright Antoni Artaud in radio broadcast conference in 1947 (Pour en finir avec le jugement de dieu) and resumed by Deleuze and Guattari in their wide philosophical production with the purpose of, consequently, propose the action of thinking as a flow that goes through the acts of reading and writing amidst life taken as tracks of creation and invention, while they not only represent but also produce realities.