이 논문은 존스홉킨스대학에서 발간하는 동료심사 저널 Theory and Event 16(3), 2013에 발표한 글이다. 간만에 학교 도서관을 거쳐 해당 페이지에 갔더니 이탤랙이 깨지는 등 상태에 문제가 있어 이곳에 원문에 최대한 가깝게 수록한다. project muse를 통해 접속하면 편집 상태가 좋다.
이 논문에 얽힌 사연이 몇 가지 있다. 다른 건 나중에 밝히기로 하자. 그래도 《차이와 반복》의 영어 번역자 폴 페이튼(Paul Patton)이 내 발표를 듣고 추천해서 출간하게 되었다는 점은 언급해도 좋으리라.
내가 2012년에 학술대회에서 처음 발표하고 2013년에 저널에 출판한 이 논문에는 요즘 유행하는 이른바 ‘비인간주의 존재론’이 꽤 상세히 개진되고 있다. 학자로서 바라건대, 부디 비교해 보았으면 한다. pdf 출력본은 여기로.
Deleuze, Marx and Non-human Sex: An Immanent Ontology Shared between Anti-Oedipus and Manuscripts from 18441
1. In this paper, I use the following editions and abbreviations. Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari (1972/3), Anti-Œdipe, Minuit (AO) with French/English (with ‘e’) pages. Karl Marx (1844), The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts from 1844 (M) with German-original page in MEGA II-2/MEW Bd. 40. Karl Marx (1845), Theses on Feuerbach (TF) with thesis number in MEW Bd. 3 but not from Engels’ correction. Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels (1845/6), The German Ideology (DI) with German-original page in MARX-ENGELS-JAHRBUCH 2003 in preparation for the publication of MEGA II-2/MEW Bd. 3. All translations are modified or are my own.
Until now, many have wrongly considered Deleuze’s concepts of the unconscious and desire as human, and have postulated humanity as a-historically given. I show (1) the ontological nature of the unconscious and desire in Deleuze; and (2) the affinity between the thought of young Marx and that of Deleuze. In the last instance, Marxian socialist man is a Deleuzian schizophrenic and Marxian process of natural production is a Deleuzian schizophrenia. The non-human ground of humanity, or the historical materialist foundation of humanity, is the starting point of the new ethico-political philosophy.
Introduction
While witnessing the upheaval and collapse that was May ’68, Deleuze comes to an important realization: any political philosophy ignorant of or contradictory to ontology (and in particular the ontological nature of the unconscious and desire) is destined to end in failure. Up to the present, almost all political philosophies have wrongly considered the unconscious and desire as human, and have furthermore postulated humanity as a-historically given. Deleuze will depart from this tradition, insofar as he understands humanity as an ensemble of natural and historical determinations that are in need of critique. As such, the following question should be posed and answered: What is ‘humanity’ in our epoch, in the capitalist regime? To address this question, Deleuze follows the strategy of Spinoza. In Anti-Oedipus, as in Spinoza’s Ethics, Deleuze outlines the ontological nature of the Universe, including nature and man, and then constructs an ethical and political philosophy consistent with this ontological order, via an analysis of the historical formations and types of society. Consequently, the non-human ground of humanity, or more exactly, the historical materialist foundation of humanity, could be said to be the starting point for the project of Capitalism and Schizophrenia.
Many scholars, including Eugene Holland, Ian Buchanan and Guillaume Silbertin-Blanc,2 misunderstand Deleuze’s concepts of the unconscious and desire as human. They cannot overcome the psychoanalytic image of thought of the human unconscious or psycho-logy. Consequently, they do not reach the ontological region of the unconscious, and fail to notice the evidence of its non-human character. In this paper, I will show: (1) the ontological nature of the unconscious and desire in Deleuze’s Anti-Oedipus (the meaning of non-human sex or production, the non-representational nature of the unconscious and desire, the unconscious as an orphan or auto-production of the unconscious), and (2) the affinity between the thought of young Marx and that of Deleuze (an immanent ontology shared between the 1844 Manuscripts and Anti-Oedipus).
2. Eugene W. Holland, Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus: Introduction to schizoanalysis (Routledge, 1999); Ian Buchanan, Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus: A Reader’s Guide (Continuum, 2008); Guillaume Silbertin-Blanc, Deleuze et l’Anti-Œdipe : La production du désir, (P.U.F., 2010).
1. Non-human Sex as a Non-anthropomorphic Representation of Sex
Let’s start from several phrases in Anti-Oedipus that contrast Marx with Freud:
Marx says something even more mysterious: that the true difference is not the difference between the two sexes, but the difference between the human sex and the ‘non-human’ sex. It is clearly not a question of animals, nor of animal sexuality. Something quite different is involved.
(AO 350/294e)
In The Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Marx argues that Hegel’s conception of difference is not real but formal, and that the real difference, or essential difference, is not ‘North and South’ nor ‘Man and Woman’ but ‘pole and non-pole’ and ‘human sex and non-human sex’. According to Marx, “True real extremes would be pole and non-pole, human sex and non-human sex.”3
3. K. Marx (1843), Kritik des Hegelschen Staatsrechts, MEW Bd. 1, 293.
In Discours, Figure,4 Jean-François Lyotard aptly comments on the “non-human sex” of Marx that it belongs to the order of positing (Stellung) whereas the “human sex” belongs to the order of representation and consciousness. In other words, the human sexes (male/female) are of conceptual and ‘analytic’ difference (in the Kantian sense), while the non-human sex is of essential, positing and ‘synthetic’ difference, which is the only real difference or opposition. Thus the latter plays a role of positing the former. As a result, the non-human sex refers to “what is not thought in the thinking” (139), and it is on the order of desire and the unconscious.
4. Jean-François Lyotard (1971), Discours, Figure, Klincksieck, 138-141.
In line with Lyotard, Deleuze interprets the “non-human” as “non-anthropomorphic,” on which Xenophanes of Colophon once commented (DK 211B15), and which here has the same meaning as non-anthropo-morpho-centric. As with the notion of animal painters, human beings imagine and represent everything like themselves, or in accordance with their own forms. But human beings are only the results of material universal processes. Deleuze criticizes Freud and psychoanalysis for the reason that they are prisoners of this anthropomorphic imagination and representation in thinking about sexuality and the unconscious. As he says with Guattari: “Desiring-machines are the non-human sex. (…) In a few sentences Marx, who is nonetheless so miserly and reticent where sexuality is concerned, exploded something that will hold Freud and all of psychoanalysis forever captive: the anthropomorphic representation of sex !” (AO 350/294e).
The anthropomorphic representation of sex always regards sex, sexuality and (re-)production as somewhat like human or animal sex. It is an image of thought which presupposes that sex or production proceeds from parents to a child, which is in effect expressed as “a parental production” (AO 21/15e). However, at the level of the unconscious, such an image is not true at all, because the unconscious is another name for the universe in Deleuze. On a side note, I also wish to point out that this line of thinking on sex and production derives especially from young Marx as well.
Marx, and in particular the young Marx, also thinks of sex and production as non-human or non-anthropomorphic.5 In the discussion of atheism in the 3rd Manuscripts, Marx says the following concerning the question of the ‘creation’ of man and nature: “The fact that nature and man exist by themselves is incomprehensible to the popular consciousness, because it contradicts everything tangible in practical life” (M 273/545). Marx then, without explanation, directly goes on to say, “generatio aequivoca is the only practical refutation of the theory of creation.” What is meant by generatio aequivoca (spontaneous generation) and why is it the only practical refutation of the theory of creation?6 I will answer this question in the next section. The problem here is the creation of the universe which includes both nature and man. For Marx, nature and man are not two distinct terms, because “man is immediately natural being” (M 296/578). Though Marx doesn’t put it this way, what matters here is the Creation of Nature or of the Universe as a whole material Being. Marx later confirms (in the Preface) that he deals with “not only anthropological determinations in the proper sense, but truly essential (natural) ontological affirmations” (M 318/562).
5. The years 1844/5 remind us of the famous thesis of Louis Althusser and his collaborators, called the “epistemological break”, which insists on the radical difference or break between the young Marx in Manuscripts from 1844, which should represent the ideological stage, and the mature Marx after Theses on Feuerbach and The German Ideology which only is the science. But Deleuze disregards the “break” thesis and follows the interpretation of Gérard Granel (1969), “L’ontologie marxiste de 1844 et la question de la ‘coupure’”, in l’Endurance de la pensée, Plon, to whom he refers only once (AO 10, footnote 4) but by whom he is deeply influenced. In Granel’s article, a continuity is revealed through the comparison of the texts from 1844 and 1845/6. According to him, “the critique of atheism, and its positive expression: the essential unity of man and nature, not only would not be re-negated in the first text of so-called ‘break’ (The German Ideology), but rather would constitute the starting point and the terrain itself of the text”(271-2). In effect, after a long consideration of this problem, he concludes that “this ontology which is achieved in the Manuscripts remains something acquired in The German Ideology” (296). At least three phrases in The German Ideology clearly testify to the assertion (294-5).
6. Moreover, the expression generatio aequivoca reappears in The German Ideology, where Marx says: “Of course, in all this the priority of external nature remains sustained, and all this has no application to the original (ursprüglichen) men engendered by generatio aequivoca; but this distinction has meaning only insofar as man is considered to be distinct from nature”(DI 10/44). Insofar as generatio aequivoca is given as a common basis of an argument in the two texts, the continuity between the two is further sustained, but the meaning of the phrase remains unclear.
Confronting the problem of the Creation of the universe, Marx presents to us our common ways of thinking, i.e. our anthropomorphic representation of sex or production. According to him, we are so accustomed to thinking of sex or production on the parental model (“You have been begotten by your father and your mother”), so we ask “Who begot my father? Who his grandfather? etc.” But such questions only keep sight of the movement which leads to “the endless progression” or infinite regression. In reality, such questions call for God as the Creator of the universe, the First Cause or the Immobile Mover. Instead of questioning in such a way, Marx proposes: “You must also hold on to the circular movement sensibly perceptible in that progress by which man repeats himself in procreation, man thus always remaining the subject” (M 273/545). But how can we break off from the linear movement which necessarily implies infinite regression, so as to leap to the circular movement at a stroke? And why does man always remain the subject? To the first question, Marx responds: the question “who begot the first man, and nature as a whole?” is itself “a product of abstraction,” for such a question is wrongly posed, and “you postulate man and nature as non-existent, and yet you want me to prove them to you as existing” (M 274/545). And yet already, you, the questioner, are and exist, and you as a part of nature are and exist ! Therefore postulating oneself and nature as non-existent is only an abstraction or nonsense. That being the case, we must hold on to the circular movement, because the fact that man begets man is sensibly perceptible as well. As Granel suggests (278-9), the circular movement which constitutes “the human genus (Gattung)”7 is perfectly compatible with the linear movement of “human individuals.” In effect, this is one of the meanings of “man as generic being”; hence “his birth through himself” (M 274/546). However, in that movement, why does man remain the subject?
2. Toward an Immanent Ontology: Subverting Subject-Object Dichotomy or Representational Perspective
Now I will examine Marx’s texts concerning the problem of subject in more depth. In modern Western philosophy, one encounters many difficulties in thinking of the thing or object per se. But since the 19th century, German philosophers such as Marx and Nietzsche begin to elaborate on the term “Gegenstand” in contrast with “Objekt,” both of which are generally translated into “object” in English, in order to overcome the representational understanding of the object. This is because representation always presupposes a distinction between object (remaining always the same outside of man) and subject (trying to reach and know it). But the real problem is grasping the very relation between them. The problem is thus shifted from epistemology to ontology.
Here we can gain some useful insights from Marx toward understanding the non-representational nature of being. For instance, Marx clearly distinguishes Gegenstand from Objekt in his 1st Theses. “The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism (…) is that the thing (Gegenstand), the reality (Wirklichkeit), sensible world (Sinnlichkeit) is grasped only in the form of the object (Objekt) or of contemplation, but not as sensibly human activity, practice (Praxis), not subjectively” (TF 1). Here Marx sharply contrasts Gegenstand with Objekt. Objekt always presupposes the object-subject relation, i.e. “the form of object,” and is a term always and necessarily coupled with the knowing or contemplating subject. In contrast Gegenstand is itself the reality and sensible world from the viewpoint of the thing itself, and also the sensibly human activity or practice from the viewpoint of the acting subject, who itself is also a thing. One of the main points of this assertion is that Gegenstand should be grasped or conceived not only in the form of Objekt (as a representation in the process of knowing), but also and more importantly, as a sensibly human activity, practice, etc.
But here “human” is not a pre-existing individual but “an ensemble of social relations in its reality” (TF 6). So the sensibly human activity or practice cannot be reduced to the mere conscious activity of the individual, but must be grasped as an ensemble or assemblage under socio-historically determined conditions. In this respect, “subject” (in the expression “subjectively”) must also be understood not as a knowing subject but as a practicing and acting subject. And we must not understand the term “practice” in the humanist sense involving consciousness, intention, or free will, for practice is also an ontological term, or, more exactly, a generic activity.
In effect, Marx has rejected the conception of a pure subject as we ordinarily think of it. According to Marx, man is an objective being: “A non-objective being is a non-being (Unwesen)” (M 296/578). Here “objective” means object-positing through sense organs or sensibility. Man as an objective being, “he only creates or posits objects, because he is posited by objects, because at bottom he is nature. In the act of positing, therefore, this objective being does not fall from his ‘pure activity’ into a creating of the object, but his objective product only confirms his objective activity, his activity as the activity of an objective, natural being” (M 295/577). So a subject never creates an object from his pure activity, i.e. from his conscious, free will alone. Rather, it is only afterwards that an objective product confirms the objective activity of a subject.8
8. In addition, Marx apparently affirms the priority of production to consciousness in The German Ideology. 1) “Consciousness is a social product” (DI 16/30-1, my emphasis); 2) “The consciousness (Das Bewußtsein) can never be anything else than the conscious being (das bewußte Sein) and the being of men is their real life-process” (DI 115/26, my emphasis); 3) “Consciousness does not determine life, but life determines consciousness” (DI 116/27). From these examples, one can see how much Marx emphasizes production in comparison with consciousness. The same perspective already appears in A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Introduction (1844), where the relation of the social conditions to the consciousness, e.g. to religion, is described: “But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man, state, society. This state, this society produces the religion, an inverted consciousness of the world (verkehrtes Weltbewußtsein), because they are an inverted world (verkehrte Welt)” (MEW Bd. 1, 378).
In another vein, the expression generatio aequivoca is not unfamiliar to us, since philosophers endeavoring to construct an immanent ontology always reach a similar concept. A typical case is Spinoza, who says: “By cause of itself (causa sui) I understand that whose essence involves existence, or that whose nature cannot be conceived except as existing.”9 That something is a cause of itself seems like a paradox, or rather a contradiction, for we ordinarily think that if something exists, it is an effect of precedent cause. Thus the definition of causa sui can only be understood as an affirmation that something exists per se without any precedent cause and is not produced by any other thing. If something exists and must exist in its essence or in its nature, (and this existence is real in what is here and now as Marx says,) it should be understood as causa sui. If so, only one thing comes under this title. It is Nature, the Universe as a whole, Being as a whole. Only this is not produced by another. In the beginning, the universe is and exists. Therefore the definition of causa sui is the first principle of an immanent ontology. As far as the universe is concerned, there is no distinction between subject and object; so the identity of the two is self-evident. So natura is simultaneously natura naturans and natura naturata in Spinoza. This is why Deleuze also says: “Producing, a product, an identity of product and of producing” (AO 13/7e). It is not an anthropomorphic representation of sex or production. Rather, it is a presentation or a somewhat scientific description of the universe, not a representation which must always reintroduce the subject-object dichotomy.
9. Benedict de Spinoza (1677), Ethics, from Latin and English translation by E. M. Curley, Part I Definition 1.
Only by following this line of interpretation can the other enigmatic expressions of Marx be clearly understood as well. (1) “The fact that nature and man exist by themselves (Das Durchsichselbstsein der Nature und d[es] Menschen)” (which literally means “the being-through-themselves”) and (2) “his birth through himself” (sein Geburt durch sich selbst) (which is similar to generatio aequivoca) in the 3rd Manuscripts. What is meant by these expressions? What does “self” refer to here? In the final analysis, I would claim, “self” is Nature itself. Only when interpreted as such will all of Marx’s texts be coherently fully comprehensible.
The first meaning of non-human sex or production is that we should think of it universally in the sense of the universe. It is the process of universal production, of universal becoming. In Anti-Oedipus, the term “universal” is understood in the sense of the universe, the whole world. For example, universal history is world-history or the history of the universe, and universal production (or to produce universally) is the production of the world or universe as a whole. So Deleuze says: “The schizophrenia is the universe of productive and reproductive desiring-machines, the universal primary production as ‘essential reality of man and nature’” (AO 11/5e, my emphasis). On the modern usage of the term “universal,” Granel also testifies that it means “the totality of objectivity” (309). This is one of the reasons why Marx says: “Man produces universally” (M 241/517).
3. Auto-production of the Unconscious or the Unconscious as an Orphan
Now let us consider some Deleuzian concepts closely related with the unconscious as non-human production of the universe. Above all, we must look at some enigmatic phrases from Deleuze, which can only be understood in the context of immanent ontology. Here is a schizophrenic’s claim: “Yes, I have been my father and I have been my son. ‘I, Antonin Artaud, am my son, my father, my mother, and myself’” (AO 21/15e). But is it only a madman’s delirium, because I cannot be my father and my son and me at the same time? This claim of Artaud’s is in reality a voice of the universe present in the person as a schizophrenic. According to Deleuze, a schizophrenic is no more a patient in a hospital but a man in its natural state, a generic being; schizophrenia is not a mental disease but a process of production of the universe. A schizophrenic is in “a time before the man-nature dichotomy (…) has been laid down. He does not live nature as nature, but as a process of production. There is no such thing as either man or nature now, only a process that produces the one within the other and couples the machines together. Producing-machines, desiring-machines everywhere, schizophrenic machines, all of generic life” (AO 8/9e).
For Deleuze, the unconscious is an orphan and acts as an auto-production. “Within the order of production (…) everything is (…) with (…) uses of syntheses that feed the auto-production of the unconscious — the unconscious-as-orphan” (AO 120/100e).10 In this phrase one can notice at least three points: (1) the unconscious is an orphan, and therefore has no parents; (2) it produces itself as an auto-production, so it is in a circular movement; and most importantly, (3) it is within the order of production, or within the ontological order of the universe, not within the psychological order. These three points are comprehensible in virtue of our preceding considerations. Then, what is meant by desire? The term “desire” first appears in the following: “Production as process (…) forms a cycle which is related to desire qua immanent principle” (AO 10-11/5). Thus desire should be understood as an immanent principle of the cycle of production of the unconscious.
10. There are many similar passages in Anti-Oedipus. I enumerate only some of them here for the purpose of further study: “it is always the unconscious that produces itself in a cyclical orphan movement, a cycle of destiny where it always remains a subject” (345/290e); “all the transitions that (…) constitute the cycle whereby the unconscious, remaining a subject, produces and reproduces itself” (345/290-1e); “the unconscious is an orphan” (57/49e); “an auto-production of the unconscious” (64/54e); “the unconscious that remains an orphan” (93/78e); “those regions of the orphan unconscious — indeed ‘beyond all law’ — where the problem of Oedipus can no longer even be raised” (97/81-2e); “the splendid affirmation of the orphan- and producer-unconscious” (356/299e), etc.
Now one can understand the question of God. On this issue, Deleuze and Marx’s arguments proceed in a similar manner. Concluding the argument on atheism, Marx says:
Since the essential reality of man and nature has become practically and sensibly evident, (…) so the question about an alien being, about a being beyond nature and man – a question which implies the admission of the unreality of nature and of man – has become practically impossible. Atheism, as the denial of this unreality, has no longer any meaning, for atheism is a negation of God, and postulates the existence of man through this negation; but socialism as socialism no longer needs such a mediation. It proceeds from the theoretically and practically sensible consciousness of man and of nature as the essence.
(M 274-5/546)
Here, the socialist man is like a Deleuzian schizophrenic, who does not need any mediation by God as an unreality. We can consult Deleuze’s text with a similar approach, which surprisingly repeats Marx’s argument. “He [a schizophrenic] no longer needs the mediation of myth, he no longer needs to go by way of this mediation — the negation of the existence of God — since he has attained those regions of an auto-production of the unconscious where the unconscious is no less atheist than orphan — immediately atheist, immediately orphan” (AO 68/58e).
In the following splendid summary, there is nothing psychological and humanist, but only an immanent ontology of the unconscious and desire:
When we relate desire to Oedipus, we are condemned to ignore the productive nature of desire, (…) we relate it to independent existences — the father, the mother, the begetters. (…) The question of the father is like that of God. (…) A circular movement by which the unconscious, always remaining subject, produces and reproduces itself. The unconscious does not follow the paths of a generation progressing (or regressing) from one body to another: your father, your father’s father, and so on. The organized body is the object of reproduction by generation; it is not its subject. The sole subject of reproduction is the unconscious itself, which holds to the circular form of production. Sexuality is not a means in the service of generation; rather, the generation of bodies is in the service of sexuality as an auto-production of the unconscious. (…) The unconscious has always been an orphan — that is, it has engendered itself in the identity of nature and man, of the world and man. The question of the father, the question of God, is what has become impossible, a matter of indifference.
(AO 128/107-8e)
Here we see also the circular point of view that we find in Marx. Why is the cycle maintained in Marx and Deleuze? Why not the regression to the first cause?
The point of view of the cycle alone is categorical and absolute, because it attains production as the subject of reproduction, which is to say it attains the process of auto-production of the unconscious. (…) It is certainly not sexuality that is in the service of generation, but progressive or regressive generation that is in the service of sexuality as a cyclical movement by which the unconscious, always remaining ‘subject’, reproduces itself.”
(AO 327-8/277-8e)
That is, without a circular point of view, transcendence must be introduced; therefore only the circular movement, the auto-production, is categorical and absolute. To put it another way: “There is only one kind of production, the production of the real. And doubtless we can express this identity in two different ways, even though these two ways together constitute the auto-production of the unconscious as a cycle” (AO 40/32-3). To affirm that there is only one kind of production is also to prevent the intervention of transcendence. If we double the reality, if we abandon the univocity of being, then the transcendent world beyond this world must be settled and immanence be got rid of.
The unconscious is an orphan, and produces itself within the identity of nature and man. The auto-production of the unconscious suddenly became evident (…) when the socialist thinker [i.e. Marx] discovered the unity of man and nature within the process of production, and when the cycle discovers its independence from an indefinite parental regression. To quote Artaud once again: ‘I got no / papa-mummy’.
(AO 57/49e)
4. Unfinished Conclusion
As we can see, Deleuze’s unconscious is mainly a Universe as a whole world, and desire is its immanent principle. We can understand some concepts such as “micro” or “molecular” and notorious “n sexes” along these lines.
Everywhere a microscopic trans-sexuality. (…) Making love is not just becoming as one, or even two, but becoming as a hundred thousand. Desiring-machines or the non-human sex: not one or even two sexes, but n sexes. Schizoanalysis is the variable analysis of the n sexes in a subject, beyond the anthropomorphic representation. (…) The schizoanalytic slogan of the desiring-revolution will be first of all: to each its own sexes.
(AO 352/295-6e)
For Deleuze, “micro” or “molecular” has nothing to do with size, but rather a perspective by which the unconscious and desire are grasped, according to the non-human sex or production. And the concept of “n sexes” is also related to the same perspective. They emphasize the non-anthropomorphic process of production, and provide the criteria with which one evaluates the “machinic indices” (AO 378/316eff.) in the given phenomena. The task of schizoanalysis is surely to examine whether one’s way of thinking of sex or production is humanist or not. It also testifies how far one reaches the materialist humanity and the schizophrenic as socialist.
Finally, let us consider some political implications of Deleuzian immanent ontology concerning the unconscious and desire. When one tries to engage in ethical or political activities, one must follow the ontological (natural, universal) order, for if not, one cannot practice appropriately. In effect, Man as a part of nature, or as an ensemble of social relations, cannot go against or beyond the natural order. That is why I suggest above the possibility of re-thinking concepts such as “practice” and “revolution.” Though we cannot propose any revolutionary programs, we can at least gain some guidelines for our activities. Such guidelines will include appropriate conceptions of sex, sexuality, desire, and production, and the immanent ontological understanding of non-human sex, auto-production of the unconscious and the unconscious as an orphan. The next task we must undertake is to elucidate the relation of ontology and society, and that of society and the human psyche.
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