AO: BwO Desiring Machines A desiring- machine is: - not a thing but a process, an act of producing. - has no subject and no object. The subject does not exist before desiring-machines but only after, as an effect or residue of production. - cannot be conceived as a desire to do or have an object or even achieve a state. Rather, they are completely invested in the process, the production. - can thus never be "satisfied" or come to a completion. ** In this sense, desiring-machines are again very like Nietzsche's notion of will to power. The will to power is not the will to have power (such as the will to be president of the United States) nor even really the will to be powerful. If it were then the will to power could be satisfied, it could come to an end. He is made president and thus his will to power goes away. The will to power does not have an object in that way. It is a driving force. Desiring- machines similarly are focused a movement or a production, not on a goal or an object. The only object of desiring-machines is production itself. "The satisfaction the handyman [bricoleur] experiences when he plugs something into an electric socket or diverts a stream of water can scarcely be explained in terms of "playing mommy and daddy." or by the pleasure of violating a taboo [transgression]. The rule of continually producing production, of grafting producing onto the product, is a characteristic of desiring-machines or of primary production: the production of production" (p. 7). So desire is always about production, or even the production of production. This is also why desire here has nothing to do with lack as it does in Freudian and Lacanian terminology. Since desiring machines are focused only on their own production, there is no object of desire and hence no object lacking. "Lack is created, planned, and organized in and through social production" (p. 28). Lack is not cause but a result. Let's go back to the BwO.