Deleuze: A Critical Reader

ill�li .

BLACKWELL CRITICAL READERS Blackwell's en't ical Readers series presents a collection of linked per­ spectives on continental philosophers. social and cultural theorists. Edited and introduced by acknowledged experts and written by repre­ sentatives of different schools and positions, the series embodies debate, dissent and a committed heterodoxy. From Foucault to Der­ rida. from Heidegger to Nietzsche, Blackwell en"tical Readers address figures whose work requires elucidation by a variety of perspectives. Volumes in the series include both primary and secondary biblio­ graphies. David Wood: Dem"da: A Critical Reader Hubert Dreyfus and Harrison Hall: Heidegger: A Critical Reader Gregory Elliot: Althusser: A en"tical Reader Douglas Kellner: Baudrillard: A en"tical Reader Peter Sedgwick: Nietzsche: A Critical Reader Lewis R. Gordon. T. Oenean Sharpley·Whiting and Renee T. White: Fanon: A Critical Reader Paul Patton: Dekuze: A Cn'cical Reader Fred Botting and Scott Wilson: Bataille: A Cn·tical Reader

•

Deleuze:

A Critical Reader Edited by Paul Patton

I] BLACKWELL

Copyright C Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1996 First published 1996 Reprinted 1997 Blackwell Publishers Ltd 108 Cowley Road Oxford OX4 UF, UK Blackwell Publishers Inc 350 Main Street Malden, Massachusetts 02148, USA All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored

in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Exccpt in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form orbinding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library a/Congress Ca/aloging in Publication Dala Deleuze: a critical reader/edited by Paul Pallon p.

cm. - (Blackwell critical readers)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 1-55786-564-7 (hardcover. alk. paper) ISBN 1-55786-565-5 (pbk: alk. paper) I. Deleuze, Giles. I. Series. 1996 96-5380

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Typeset in lOon 12pt Plantin by Pure Tech India Ltd., Pondicherry, India Printed and bound in Great Britain by Harlnolls Lid, Bodmin, Cornwall This book is printed on acid-free paper

In

Memory of Gilles Deleuze 1925-1995

Contents

Contributors Acknowh=dgements

Paul Patton: Introduction 2

Jean-Clee Martin: The Eye of the Outside

3

Daniel W. Smith: Deleuze's Theory of Sensation: Overcoming the Kantian Duality

4 Jean-Michel Salanskis: Idea and Destination 5

Constantin V. Boundas: Deleuze-Bergson: an Ontology of the Virtual

viii xi 1

18 29 57 81

6

Jean-Luc Nancy: The Deleuzian Fold of Thought

107

7

Catherine Malabou: Who's Afraid of Hegelian Wolves?

114

8

PierTt Macherey. The Encounter with Spinoza

139

9

Moira Gatens: Through a Spinozist Lens: Ethology, Difference, Power

10 "

12

13 14

Franfois Zourabichvili: Six Notes on the Percept

162

(On the Relation between the Critical and the Clinical)

188

Brian Manum": The Autonomy of Affect

217

Eugene W. HoUand: Schizoanalysis and Baudelaire: Some Illustrations of Dec oding at Work

240

Ronald Bogue: Gilles Deleuze: The Aesthetics of Force

257

Timothy S. Murphy: Bibliography of the Works of Gilles Deleuze

Index

-

270 299

Contributors

Ronald Bogue is Professor of Comparative Literature at the Univer­

sity of Georgia. His publications include De/euze and Guatto"' and Mimesis in Contemporary Theory: An Interdisciplinary Approach, Volume Two: Mimesis. Semiosis and Power (ed.); The Play of the Self (co-editor, with Mihai Spariosu), and Violence and Mediation in Contemporary Culture (co-editor, with Marcel Comis-Pope). He has also written on eighteenth-century aesthetics, posnnodern fiction, cinema, and death metal music. Constantin V. Boundas is Associate Professor of Philosophy at

Trent University, Canada. He edited Deleuze's The Logic of Sense and translated Empincum and Subjectivity. He has also edited The De/euze

Reader and (with Dorothea Olkowski) Gilles De/euze and the Theater 0/ Philosophy. He is presently translating Van'atio1/S: La philosophie lk G iDes De/euze by Jean-Clet Martin. Moira Gatens teaches Philosophy at the University of Sydney. She

has published Feminism and Philosophy: Perspectives on Difference and Equality. Imaginary Bodies: Ethics. Power. Corporeality and numerous articles on philosophy, feminism and social theory. Eugene W. Holland teaches French and Comparative Studies at the

Ohio State University. He has published widely on Deleuze and Guattari, critical theory, and modern French literature and culture. His books include Baulklaire and Sch izoa"alysis and a fonhcoming book on schizoanalysis. Pierre Macherey is Professor and Director of the Depanment of

Philosophy at the University of Lille III. His works translated into

English include A Theory of Literary Production and The Object of Lireratllre. He is also the author of Hegel ou Spinoza; Cornu-La philo­

sophie er Ies sciences, Avec Spinoza, and L 'Ethique V. Catherine Malabou is Maitre de Conferences at the University of

Paris X-Nanterre. She has published numerous articles on the work of Hegel and Derrida, including 'La plastique speculative', in Philosophie,

no. 19 and an annotated translation of the 1830 Preface to Hegel's

Science of Logic in Philosophie, no. 26. She is responsible for the 'Derrida' special issue of the Revue Phi/osophique, June 1990. Her

doctoral thesis, entitled 'L'avenir de Hegel. Plasticiu!, temporalite, dialectique' and supervised by Derrida, will be published shortly. Jean-Clet Martin studied with Deleuze at the University of Paris­ VIII. He is the author of Van'alions: La philosophie

de Gilles Deleuze and

Ossuaires: Anatomie du Moyen Age.

Brian Massumi holds a research position at the English Department

of the University of Queensland. He is the author of User's Guide to

Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Deviations from Deleuze and Guattari and First and Last Emperors: The Body of the Despot and the Absolute Scate (with Kenneth Dean). He has also edited The Politics of Everyday Fear and has translated numerous works from the French, including De­ leuze and Guattari's A Thousand Plateaw. Timothy S. Murphy is lecturer in American literature and literary

theory at UCLA, where he completed his doctorate in 1994 with a dissertation on Gilles Deleuze and William S. Burroughs. He has published essays on Deleuze, Burroughs, Toni Negri and Michel Toumier, and is presently completing a book on Deleuze's work in the context of scientific, political and aesthetic practice. Jean-Luc Nancy is Professor and Director of the Department of

Philosophy at the University of the Human Sciences at Strasbourg. Among his works translated into English are The Literary Absolute: The

Theory of Literature in Gennan Romanticism (with Philippe Lacoue­ L.abanbe); The Inoperative Community; The Title of the Letter: A Reading of Lacan (with Philippe Lacoue-Labanbe); The Binh to Presence; and The Experience ofFreedom.

Paul

Patton

teaches Philosophy

at the University of Sydney.

He translated Deleuze's DIfference and Repetition and has published

x

Contributors

several articles on Deleuze and other French philosophers. He also edited Nietzsche. Feminism and Political Theory. Jean-Michel Salanskis is Professor of Logic and Epistemology at the University of Ulle In. His pUblications in the philosophy of math·

ematie! include Uhermeneun'que /ormeiJe, and (edited with H. Sina­ ceur) fA

LtJbyn'mhe du Conn'nu.

His published articles include 'Die

Wissenschaft denkt nieht', Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale, 1991 and 'Systematisation el depossession, en mode analytique au con­ tinental', Revue de Meto.physique et de Morale, 1995. Daniel W. Smith is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. He has translated Deleuze's Francis B(lC(}n: 17u Logic of Sensation and Essays Critical and ChnicaJ (with Michael A. Greeo), as well as Pierre Klossowski's Nietzsche and flu Vicious Circ:Je.

Fran�ois Zourabichvill teaches philosophy in a Paris Lycee and at the College lnternationale de Philosophie. He is the author of Deleuze:

Une phiJosophie de /'ivenement.

Acknowledgements

The editor and publishers gratefully acknowledge the following for permission to reproduce copyright material: Ronald Bogue, 'Gilles Deleuze: The Aesthetics of Force', reprinted from the Journal of the Bn'risk Society for Phenomenology, vol. 24, no. 1, January 1993, pp. 56-65, by permission af the publisher. Brian Massumi, 'The Autonomy of Affect', reprinted from Cultural

Cr itique, no. 31, Fall 1995, pp. 83-109, by permission aCthe publisher. The publishers apologize for any errors or omissions in the above list

and would be gratefu1 to be notified of any corrections that should be

incorporated in the next edition or reprint of this book.

1

Introduction Paul Patton

Gilles Deleuze is best known for his collaborative work written with Felix Guanari. Anti-Oedipus. Kafka, A Thousand Plateaus and Whac is Philosophy? are extraordinary texts in their own right. but they are also singular components of one of this century's truly audacious experi­ ments in thought. They constitute successive moments within a single thought-event, variations upon a unique intuition and exemplars of a novel concept of philosophy. In an interview which accompanied the publication of A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze described this book as 'philosophy, nothing but philosophy, in the traditional sense of the word'. 1 However, as he and Guanari explain in What is Philosophy? the underlying conception of philosophy is far from traditional. In their view, the job of philosophers is to create new concepts, but philosop­ hical concepts do not provide a truth which is independent of the plane of immanence upon which they are constructed. Rather, such concepts are the expression of thought, in a sense which owes much to Nietzsche, Heidegger and Blanchot. Deleuze accepts Nietzsche's view that thought is a matter of creation, and that far from defining thought in relation to truth, truth must be regarded 'as solely the creation of thought' Despite the modernism of this position, Deleuze remains an anom­ alous figure within the contemporary philosophical landscape. He was never tempted by the idea of the death of philosophy or the overcom­ ing of metaphysics. Jean-Luc Nancy points to the lack of sympathy with Hegel and Heidegger as indicative of the deep fold which separ­ ates Deleuze's orientation from his own. Unlike many of his contem­ Poraries, Deleuze remained committed to the classical idea of philosophy as a system. The novelty of Deleuzian thought does not lie in its refusal of any systematic character but in the nature of the system .1

2

Paul Parton

envisaged. In a 1980 interview, he claimed that 'systems have in fact

lost absolutely none of their power.All the groundwork for a theory of

so-called open systems is in place in current science and logic' ...l A

Thousand Plateaus provides an example of such an open system. It does

not advocate an intellectual anarchism in which the only rule would be the avoidance of any rule. It deploys variable. local rules in order to construct a bewildering array of concepts such as assemblage, deterri­ torialization, order-word, faciality, ritomello, nomadism and different kinds of becoming. The successive plateaus each develop a particular assemblage of concepts in relation to a given subject matter. The conceptual architecture of this book obeys a logic of multiplicities in which the same concepts recur, but always in different relations to

other concepts such that their nature in tum is transfonned. In his

comprehensive discussion of Deleuze's relation to Bergson, Constan­ tin Boundas comments on this concept of intensive multiplicity.

In an interview published shonly after his death, Deleuze com­

mented that A Thousand Plateaus was the best book he had written, alone or with Guattari.4 It remains a book whose time has not yet come, its conceptual riches largely unexploited. Several of the essays included in this collection point to the transfonnative power of its concepts. Moira Gatens explores the Deleuze-Spinoza concept of

bodies and suggests the usefulness of this ethology for feminist theory and politics. She also suggests the interest of the pragmatics of lan­ guage outlined in A Thousand Plateaus with regard to the role of language in sexual violence. The essay by Brian Massumi argues that a Deleuzian concept of affect may prove fruitful. in the field of media and cultural studies. Eugene �ol1and demonstrates the literary critical potential of the schizoanalY§i s developed in Ami-Oedipus, by applying

,� In the process, he indicates some of the

it to the work of Baudel i

conceptual transfonnatjOns wrought upon schizoanalysis in A Thou­

sand Plateaus. Perhaps even less understood than the concepts and structure of A Thousand Plateaus are the profound connections between this ex­ perimental work and Deleuze's earlier studies in the history of philo­

sophy. A primary focus of several of the essays in this collection is Deleuze's complex relations to some of the figures with whom and

against whom his own philosophical system was constructed: in par­ ticular Spinoza, Kant, Hegel and Bergson. In order to illustrate some features of Deleuze's use of the history of philosophy, I comment

below on aspects of his relations to Kant. Throughout Deleuze's historical work, a remarkable consistency emerges not only with re­ gard to the method, but also with regard to the underlying conception

buroduClion

3

of philosophy. Pierre Macherey points out that Deleuze had already argu ed in Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza that 'a philosophy's power is measured by the concepts it creates, or whose meaning it aiters, concepts that impose a new set of divisions on things and actions'.' He goes on to argue that the concept of expressionism expounded in this book is as much Deleuze's own invention as it is Spinoza' s. On the one hand, Macherey suggests, a concept of expres­

sion did enable Spinoza to conceptualize the power and actuality of a

positive infinity. On the other, the concept of expression expounded by Deleuze involves components 'foreign' to Spinoza's thought, such as the distinction between numerical and real distinction drawn from Duns Scotus. This concept of expression allows Deleuze to compare and contrast Spinoza and Leibniz as

twin poles of a generalized

anti-Canesian reaction. We encounter here the dual and paradoxical relation which characterizes

all of Deleuze's accounts of other philo­

sophers, and which involves both faithful rendering and deliberate

forcing of the original text. Reflecting upon this manner of perverting the institutional norms of the history of philosophy, Deleuze suggested that it involved a doubling of the original text in a manner which subjects it to maximal modification: repetition and differentiation.' As Frant;ois Zourabichvili suggests, this may be regarded as a form of free indirect discourse, a re-statement which transforms the sense of what has already been said. The point of doing so is not just to deconstruct the thought of other philosophers, but to create new concepts. Deleuze was a pioneer of the deconstructive technique of reading philosophical texts against themselves. His demonstration that the means to overturn Platonism are provided by Plato himself was first published in 1967.7 However, he always combined such critical read­ ing with conceptual construction and systematisation. He employed this technique to produce among other things an anti-Platonist Plato, a systematic Nietzsche, and Kantian foundations for a transcendental empiricism. His reconstruction of a Nietzschean metaphysics of will to POwer in

Nielzsche and Philosophy in 1962

is widely credited with

haying inaugurated the contemporary French philosophical enthusi­ asm for Nietzsche.

In the pivotal third chapter of Difference and RefH­

tiriml, he argues both that Kant reproduces aspects of a dogmatic

image of thought which takes recognition as its model, and that he

Points the way to a non-representational and nomadic conception of thought. Nomad thought rejects above all the ideal of philosophy as a closed system. For this reason, throughout his work Deleuze remains res olutely opposed to one systematic thinker: 'What I most dete9ted Was

Hegelianism

and

dialectics.'!

However,

as

both Catherine

4

Paul Parron

Malabou and Jean-Michel Salanskis point out, this antipathy does not exclude a certain proximity to Hegelian themes. Malabou's essay challenges Deleuze's reductive treatment of Hegel and succeeds in introducing what Derrida calls '3 few wolves of the type "indecida­ biliry'"

into the relation between Deleuze and his philosophical

nemesis.9 We had never stopped asking this question pretJious/y, and

w.!

already had the

answer, which has not changed: philosophy is the an 0/jonning, infJenting and fabricating concepu.

10

In W'hat is Philosophy? 'concept' is a technical tenn which serves to distinguish philosophy from science and art. Science aims at the representation of states of affairs by means of mathematical or pro­ positional functions, while art does not aim at representation but at the capture and expression of particular perceptions and affections or 'blocks of sensation'. In contrast to scientific functions and theories,

philosophical concepts like works ofart do not refer to objects or states of affairs outside themselves. They are autopoetic entities, defined not

\

by their referential relations to things or states of affairs but by the relations between their elements as well as thlir relations to other concepts. As Deleuze and Guattari assert,

�concept 'has no refer­

ence: it is self-referential. it posits itself an its object at the same time as it is created'. II On their view, the obj

t of a philosophical concept

is always an event. I comment further below on this internal relation between concepts and events. Concepts as they define them are complex singularities. multi­ plicities whose self-identity is established by means of a certain 'com­ munication' between their components. For example, the three components of the Cartesian Cogito - the doubting I, the thinking 1 and the existent I - are like so many intensive ordinates arranged in 'zones of neighbourhood or indiscemibility that produce passages from one to the other and constitute their inseparability' .12 The claim that among its ideas the self has an idea of infinity provides a link to the idea of an infinite being and thus to the concept of God. Along this path. the subject certain of its own existence is transfonned into one assured of the veracity of all its clear and distinct ideas. Concepts thus enjoy a range of virtual relations with other concepts which constitute their 'becoming'. Deleuze and Guanan devote a section ofA Thou$(Hld

Plateaus to the analysis of 'becomings'. Here, the tenn refers to the particular paths along which a concept might be transfonned into something else. These derive from the manner in which components

Inlroduction

5

of a given concept enter into zones of indiscernibility with other conceptS. In addition, concepts may have a history as components of other concepts and in relation to other problems. For example, in Expressio",'sm i" Philosophy: Spinoza, Deleuze finds two distinct sour­ ces of the concept of expression, one in the ontological and theological traditions of thought relating to creation and the emanation of God, and another in the logical tradition of thought relating to what is expressed in propositions.1l Several of the essays in this collection point to the internal connec­ tions between Deleuze's philosophy and his writings on literature, painting and the cinema, among them those by Zourabichvili, Jean­ Clet Martin, and Ronald Bogue. As Nancy points out, Deleuze's interest in the cinema is more than just an application or addendum of his philosophy but central to it: 'the word "concept" means this for Deleuze - making cinematic' (p. 110). In tenns of the definition given

l sophy? a philosophical concept has more in common in W'hat is Phio with a film or a piece of music than it does with a demonstrative statement. A film does not exist apart from its components (its shots, sequences, assemblages of sound and image), and like a concept it changes nature if one of the components is altered. A film also creates its own universe: it has a plane of consistency, characters and a style of composition which are like so many intensive features of the film as a whole. Deleuzian concepts are also intensive mUltiplicities which do not represent anything. Deleuze and Guattari could as well be describ­ ing a film or a piece of music when they say that a concept is the intensive and variable unity of all its components, or that it is like 'the point of coincidence, condensation or accumulation of its own com­ ponents'.14 It follows from this account that philosophy does not produce knowledge in the manner of science, any more than it produces sensation or affects in the manner of an. Philosophy is not a referential discourse in the same manner as the sciences. Deleuze and Guattan also draw the conclusion that the criticism of one philosophical con­ cept from the standpoint of another is a futile exercise. There is no point in arguing whether Descartes was right or wrong. Cartesian concepts can only be assessed as a function of their problems and the manner of their construction: 'a concept always has the truth that falls

to it

as a function of the conditions of its creation'. I S This does not

mean that criticism has no place in philosophy: it simply rules out a certain kind of dogmatic criticism. Nevertheless, the question arises, just what purpose is served by the creation of such concepts. At the beginning of What is Philosophy?, Deleuze and GU8t1ari propose an

6

Paul Patton

unequivocal definition of philosophy as 'knowledge through pure con­ cepts'. Later, they insist that 'philosophy does not consist in knowing and is not inspired by truth'. 16 If philosophy does not consist in knowing and does not provide objective truth then what does it do? The answer to this question exposes another significant continuity throughout Deleuze's earlier work: he has always maintained a rigor­ ous distinction between knowledge, understood as the recognition of truths or the solution of problems, and thinking understood as the creation of concepts or the determination of problems. For Deleuze, philosophy is one Conn of thinking alongside others. The fact that it creates concepts gives it no preeminence in relation to science or art, but it does imply a distinction between thinking and

knowing. The creation of concepts takes place only by means of the determination of problems, and only on the basis of a plane or set of

pre-philosophical presuppositions which Deleuze and Guanari call the plane of immanence or the 'image of thought: the image thought gives itself of what it means to think'.17 Distinct images of thought may be defined by reference to the presuppositions which define the nature of

)

thought. These do not refer to its empirical character but to the nature

of thought in principle. Thus. in the case of Descanes. the presuppo-

:"-;;

sitions which structure what he understands by thinking and which

t

underpin the Cogito are those of a classical or 'dogmatic' im

r

thought. Among these presuppositions we find the concep ' n of thought as a natural human capacity, possessed of a good will and an upright nature. Thought is supposed to have a natural affinity with the

truth, such that it is error and not right thinking which needs [0 be

explained. Of panicular imponance for Deleuze's critique of the dog-. matic image is his claim that it takes its model from acts of recogni­ tion: good morning Theaetetus, this is a piece of wax, etc. The model of recognition,

he argues.

dominates the history of philosophy:'

TheaetelUs, Descanes' Meditations or Critique of Pure Reason. this model remains sovereign and

'whether one considers Plato's Kant's

defines the orientation of the philosophical analysis of what it means to think'.18 In effect, this image involves a model of thinking which tends to collapse the distinction between thinking and knowing. A recurrent concern throughout Deleuze's work, from Proust and Signs to What is Philosophy? via Nietzsche and Philosophy and Dif f erence and Repetiti01J, is the critique of this classical image and the attempt to constitute a new image of thought. Chapter Three of Difference and Repetition, provides the most developed analysis along with the outline of an alternative image of thought as creative and 'problematic'. In his retrospective comments on this book, Deleuze singles out this chapter

Introduction

7

as the most important with respect to his subsequent practice of philosophy, describing it as 'the most necessary and the most con­ crete', and as the one which 'serves to introduce subsequent books up to and including the research undertaken with Guanari where we invoked a vegetal model of thought: the rhizome in opposition to the tree'. 19 ... the qllestion 0/ when and to what extent philosophers art "disciples" 0/ another phio l sopher and, on the contrary. when they an canying out

a

critique 0/ another philtnopher by changing the plane and drawing up another

image infJOlves aU the more complex and relaliw asseSJments because the

concepts that come to occupy a plant can never Iu simply tkductd.�o

For Deleuze, the classical image of thought is a profound betrayal of what it means to think. His fundamental objection is that it sustains a complacent conception of thought which is incapable of criticizing established values. Kant is his prime example of a thinker who pro­ posed an all-encompassing critique but who in the end proved inca­ pable of questioning the value of knowledge, faith or morality. In

Nie tzsche and Philosophy, he had already contrasted Kantian critique with Nietzsche's untimely thought: 'There has never been a more conciliatory or respectful total critique.'11 Yet in Difference and Repeti­ tion, Deleuze develops his alternative account of the transcendental conditions of thought with reference to Kant's theory of the faculties.

Indeed, Deleuze's own problematic image of thought draws heavily upon Kant's conception of reason. The articles by Salanskis and Daniel Smith show the extent to which Deleuze proceeds along Kantian lines in sketching a genetic account of thought and experience. Without suggesting that Kant is Deleuzc's only significant interlocutor, it may nevertheless be useful to outline some of the detail of Deleuze's

engagement with Kant in Difference and Repetition, both to illustrate

his manner of reading Kant against himself and to situate the distinc­ tion between thought and knowledge which informs his conception of philosophy.

Recognition is defined by the harmonious exercise of the different faculties in relation to the different representations (sensible, intellec­ tual, memorial, etc.) of a single object. The model of recognition therefore implies a further presupposition, namely that of an under­

�Ying agreement among the faculties themselves. Typically, this accord IS

grounde d in the unity of the thinking subject: 'For Kant as for Descartes, it is the identity of the Self in the "I think" which grounds

the harmony of all the faculties and their agreement on the form of a

8

Paul Patton

supposed Same object. on In the C,;liq� of Judgment, Kant explicitly identifies this presumption of accord among the faculties in tenns of the existence of a 'common sense': he argues that the existence of an aesthetic common sense is required in order to account for the com­ municability and the presumption of universality which characterize judgments of beauty. Deleuze suggests that the idea of such a common sense, defined as an a priori accord under the governance of one faculty, is implicit throughout the preceding Critiques. Kant 'multi­ plies common senses', creating as many as there are 'interests of reason'.HIo the Critique 0/ Pure Reason, it is the imagination, under­ standing and reason which collaborate under the authority of the understanding to form B.n epistemological common sense, while in the Critique 0/ Practical Reason it is reason which legislates, The values of knowledge, morality and beauty are thus presupposed by the terms of Kantian critique, Claims to knowledge, moral judgment or aesthetic value may be called into question, but not knowledge, morality or aesthetic value themselves, In his 1963 book Kant's Cn'tical Philosophy, and in his anicle pub­ lished in the same year, 'L'ldee de genese dans I'esthetique de Kanr',� Deleuze presents the presumption of accord among the faculties as problem which Kant goes some way towards solving in the Critique 0/ Judgment, He argues that Kant's account of the sublime retraces e emergence of an accord between the faculties of imagination and reason, and suggests that this may serve as a model for genetic ac­ counts of other such accords,By contrast, in Difference and RePtritjon, Deleuze proposes an account of the transcendental operation of the faculties which rejects the harmonious accord implied by the recogni:­ tion model. Here he offers a different interpretation of Kant's sublime as pointing towards a conception of the faculties freed from subjection to any common sense, where what is engendered is thought itself.15 Dcleuze objects that recognition offers a timid conception of thought which draws its exemplars from among the most banal acts of everyday thinking: 'this is a table, this is an apple , , , good morning Theaetetus , ,,who can believe that the destiny of thought is at stake in these acts , , , ?,U When he points out that Kant's First Edition of the Critique 0/ Pure Reason derives a model of the transcendental conditions of judg­ ment by simply tracing this from a psychological theory of the oper­ ation of the faculties in cases of recognition, his objection is less to the procedure than to the panicular operations which provide Kant with his paradigm, For Dcleuze, it is not the reassuring familiarity of encounters with the known which should provide a paradigm of think­ ing, but the hesitant gestures which accompany our encounters with

Introduction

9

the unknown: for example, those of the subject of contradictory per­ ceptions which, as Plato says, 'provoke thought to reconsideration', or those of the novice athlete attempting to coordinate his or her bodily movement with a greater force.l1lt is from such acts of apprenticeship, Oeleuze argues, that we must derive the transcendental conditions of thought. Deleuze'S objection to the recognition model is therefore normative.

He does not deny that recognition occurs and that the faculties may be employed therein. Rather, he wants to retain the name of thinking for f rent activity, namely that which takes place when the mind is a dife provoked by an encounter with the unknown or the unfamiliar. Ap­ prenticeship or learning is opposed to recognition at every point: it is not the application of a method, but rather an involuntary activity.

Following Nietzsche, Deleuze proposes to understand thought as a human capacity which has developed, not of its own accord or as a result of its own goodwill but as the effect of a necessity or culture imposed from without: 'something in the world forces us to think'. U

Notwithstanding this originary violence, thought is essentially creative

and critical: it embodies the potential to controvert all received ideas

along with established values. That is why, in

Whal is Philosophy?,

thinking is described as a form of absolute deterritorialization.. Philo­ sophy understood as the creation of concepts goes beyond the mere recognition of existing opinions, states of affairs and forms of life. It has the potential to remain untimely in Nietzsche's sense of that term: 'acting counter to our time, and therefore acting on our time and, let us hope, for the benefit of a time to come'.:Ii Deleuze's alternative image of thought in Difference and Repetitio'l relies upon a neo-Kantian theory of sensibility. In his lucid exposition of this theory, Smith describes the special kinds of sensation which Deleuze calls signs and which provoke the mind to further action,

arousing a memory, an image or the awareness of a problem. In terms

of this theory, each of the faculties encounters its own transcendental object in the sense that this is something peculiar to the faculty in

question and not, as supposed by the model of recognition, something accessible to other faculties. These transcendent objects are not out­ side or beyond the experiential world but immanent to the domain of a given faculty. They are the essence of that which is asped by each faculty: the being of the sensible, the rememberable, the imaginable or

gr

the thinkable. In each case, Deleuze defines these transcendental objects as differential: they are states of 'free or untamed difference' .

lOus, objects of pure sensibility or signs are defined in terms of differences in intensity; objects of pure memory are defined in terms

10

Paul Patton

of temporal difference; objects of pure or transcendental imagination are phantasms or simulacra; finally, objects of pure thought are Ideas or problems, where these are understood as structures defined by the reciprocal relations between their differential elements. For Deleuze, it is problems or Ideas which are the specific objects of thought: they are that which can only be thought, yet remain in them­ selves empirically unthinkable. Problems are accessible to thought only by way of their panicuiar conceptually determined forms.

In opposition

to the traditional view which defines problems in terms of the poss­ ibility of finding solutions, and which sees truth as essentially proposi­ tional and prior to problems, Deleuze argues that problems must be regarded as the source of all truths: 'problems are the differential elements in thought, the genetic elements in the true'.30 He invokes Kant's conception of Transcendental Ideas in suggesting that problems must be understood not simply as questions to which thought provides answers but as the underlying and unanswerable questions which gov­ ern the production of knowledge in a given domain. Kant, he reminds us, refers to Ideas as 'problems to which there is no solution'.11 How­ ever, Deleuzian Ideas are structures as well as problems. Deleuze also invokes mathematical notions and contemporary structuralism in de­ scribing Ideas as multiplicities defined by the internal relations between differential elements.

In this regard, Salanskis points to the

importance

of Albert Lautmann's conception of problems as immanent and tran­ scendent within a given mathematical field. Kant's distinction between reason and understanding may be re­ garded as a prototype of the distinction between thought and know­ ledge in modern philosophy. For Kant, the understanding provides knowledge of objects while reason concerns itself with the conditions of any given conditioned. Since knowledge is itself conditioned by syntheses of the imagination and understanding, it follows that reason can think through these pre-objective syntheses. In general, it migllt be argued that Deleuze redistributes Kant's faculties of understanding and reason on either side of the opposition between the dogmatic image and his own generative or productive conception of thought. On the one hand, in his account of the logical common sense presupposed by the operation of the faculties in the

Cn·lique of Pure Reason,

he

suggests that reason is subordinate to the understanding and thus to the model of recognition. On the other hand, he draws upon Kant'S conception of reason in formulating his own problematic conception of thought. However, it is open to argument whether Deleuze is simply highlighting an ambivalence that already exists in Kant. or whether he simply underestimates the role of reason in suggesting that the idea of

Introduction

11

an epistemological common sense implies the subordination of the facultY of reason to the facultY of under.ltanding. For every passage in \�'hich Kant suggests that the function of reason is dependent upon that of the under.ltanding, there is another in which he insists that rcason is indispensable for obtaining systematic theoretical know­ ledge. In the absence of the regulative principles and maxims of reason, Kant says, the understanding would provide no more than a 'mere contingent aggregate' of propositions. The law of reason which requires us to seek unity in nature is a necessary law without which there would be no reason and 'without reason no coherent employ­ ment of the understanding, and in the absence of this no sufficient criterion of empirical truth'.l2 Recent Kant scholarship has tended to play down the differences between the faculties, suggesting that these are best understood simply as distinct capacities of the mind. There is also widespread support for a minimalist interpretation of the results of Kant's argument in the Analytic, which suggests that what is established is litde more than the most general conditions necessary for knowledge of objects. Thus, the Second Analogy establishes that events have antecedent causes, but not any particular causal laws. What the under.ltanding alone produces corresponds to the simplistic statement by statement con­ ception of knowledge which Deleuze associates with the dogmatic image of thought. 'l However, if we take into account the role of the principles and maxims of reason in generating systematic knowledge, then Kant's conception of thought begins to accord less with the dogmatic image and more with Deleuze's own conception of thought as the systematic production of concepts. It remains nonetheless that, for Kant, the field of knowledge is bounded by the Transcendental Ideas which stake out the forms of completeness in the order of conditions. For Deleuze's transcendental empiricism, the field of such Ideas is unbounded. As Boundas and Smith point out, the concept of Ideas developed here is a complex singularity of Deleuze's own invention, drawing upon aspects of Leib­ niz, Maimon and Bergson as well as Kant. Thought is the exploration of Ideas or problems which may be thrown up by history, social life or the development of particular sciences. There is no a priori limit to the Ideas or problems which thought may seek to determine: as a resuit, Deleuze's transcendental realm is answerable to a 'superior empiri­ Cism' . The transcendental empiricism outlined in Difference and Repe­ tilion implies a conception of thought as open-ended and bounded only by the hiswrically variable set of problems with which it engages at any given time.

12

Paul PatWn The concept is obfJious/y knowkdge - but knowledge of jlStl/, and what it knows is Ute pure event, which mlW /lot be confused with the starl 0/ affairs in which it is embodied. The uuk of philosophy when it creatu conuplS, entities, is always to extract an lVlnt from things and beings .34 .

.

In What is Philosophy? philosophy is no longer described as the (em­ pirical transcendental) search for Ideas but as the creation of concepts, where concepts provide knowledge of events. Although the event is only a minor concern in Dijferenu and Repenrion, where Ideas and problems are the primary ontological terms, there are nevertheless significant continuities between Deleuze's transcendental empiricism and the conception of philosophy as the creation of concepts. Like the constantly renewed attempt to create new images of thought, the concern with an ontology of events recurs throughout Deleuze's work. In a 1988 interview, he said: 'I've tried in all my books to discover the nature of events; it's a philosophical concept, the only one capable of ousting the verb "to be" and attributes.'l5 In effect, by its repeated attempts to fonnulate an ontology of open multiplicities whose mode of individuation is that of events rather than essences, Deleuu's work renews and recreates a metaphysical tradition that extends from the Stoics through Leibniz to Bergson and Whitehead. In The Fold, he argues that Leibniz was the inventor of one of the most imponant concepts of the event, and devotes a chapter to the comparison of Leibniz's and Whitehead's means of thinking beyond the logic of attribution. 3� In Difference and Repelition, after having defined problems as the differential, virtual structures which are the transcendental conditions of thought, Deleuze suggests that 'problems are of the order of events'.17 In other words, JUSt as probh:ms are not reducible to particular solutions in which they become incarnated, so events may be supposed to subsist independently of their actualizations in bodies and states of affairs. It is as though actual events were doubled by a series of ideal or virtual events whose distinctive points 'anticipate and engender' the distinctive points of the first series. The interconnec­ tions among problems, Ideas and events in Deleuze's account of the transcendental conditions of thought emerge funher when we con­ sider that the objects of transcendental Ideas might equally be de­ scribed as problems or events: the Idea of society refers to the event-of social organization, the Idea of language to the event of linguistic communication, and so on. Deleuze's concept of events is not that of a restricted set of singular occurrences, such as points or rupture or irreversible change. All events have an inner complexity and structure "

Introduction

13

includes decisive points as well as periods in which nothing cites Peguy with regard to this dimension of events: curs. Deieuze points of the event just as there are critical points of critical are ere

which

�

_perature: .' -

points of fusion, freezing and boiling points. points of

� crystaII"tzatlon . . . coagulalion and The Logic of S,mse might equally have been entitled 'The Logic of the

Event'. In the course of outlining a Meinongian conception of sense as that which is expressed in propositions. Deleuze argues for the identity of sense and what he calls 'pure events': incorporeal entities which subsist over and above their spatio-temporal manifestations. and

which are expressed in language. He relies upon the Stoic concept of the 'sayable'

(Jekta)

in order to distinguish the sense or event ex­

pressed in a proposition from the mixtures of bodies to which these are attributed. The Stoics. he argues. were the first to create a philosoph­ ical concept of the event. discovering this along with sense or the expressed of the proposition: 'an incorporeal, complex and irreducible entity. at the surface of things, a pure event which inheres or subsists in the proposition',n Deleuze and Guattari re-utilize this Stoic concept of events in

A Thousand Plateaus,

when they characterize language as

the set of order-words current in a given milieu at a given time. By the order-word or command function of language, they mean the relation between statements and the events or incoporeal transformations effec­ tuated by the utterance of those statements. Following the Stoics, Deleuze and Guattari argue that all events are incorporeal transforma­ tions: not just institutional events such as becoming a university grad­ uate or a convicted felon, but also physical events such as being cut or becoming red. The state of being cut or being red is an attribute of bodies, whereas the event of becoming cut or becoming red is a change of state which does not inhere in the bodies but is attributed to them. Events are incorporeal transformations which 3re expressed in state­ ments and attributed to bodies.'" Their use of this Stoic conception of the event allows them to redescribe the relationship between language and the world in terms of effectivity rather than representation. Insofar as

language expresses such incorporeal transformations, it does not

Simply represent the world but acts upon it or intervenes in it in cenain Ways. In all language use, Deleuze and Guattari argue, there is an effectivity which is of the order of deterritorialization.

In W'hat is Philosophy? philosophy is described as a form of thought r�ther than knowledge, and thought is described as a vector of deter­ ltOri lization. Philosophy as the creation of concepts is assigned a � �toplan' task, namely to express and thereby bring into consciousness

�

"gm.r,Icant or important events: 'Every concept shapes and reshapes

14

Paul PaltQn

the event in its own way. The greatness of a philosophy is measured by the nature of the events to which its concepts summon us or that it enables us to release in concepts. '41 The account of concepts here combines aspects of both the earlier account of problems as events and the assimilation of event and sense. On the one hand, both concepts and events are defined as virtualities that have become consistent� entities 'formed on a plane of immanence that sections the chaos'. On the other hand, concepts are described as identical with events under­ stood as the 'pure sense' that runs through their components.42 In these terms, any philosophical concept will express an event: Hobbes', concept of the Social Contract expresses the event of incorporation of a legal and political system. This is a pure event which cannot be reduced to its historical actualizations; it is rather the sense or imman­ ent cause of those actual events.

It follows that, while philosophy involves the determination 0

events and their attribution to bodies and states of affairs, the value 0

such thought lies outside itself. In this respect, philosophy is no different to art or science and certainly not superior to either. As we have already noted, the adequacy or inadequacy with which it per forms this task is not assessable in terms of truth and falsity. Phil sophy can offer guidelines for well-formed as opposed to flim

concepts, but it cannot offer criteria for judging the importance 0

events, nor rules for the attribution of events to states of affairs. Ideally. the events which a great philosophy discovers are those which deterritorialize the present and point towards a different future. How ever, it is not for philosophy itself to decide which concepts expres

events of this kind. For this reason, Deleuze describes the act 0 thought as a dice-throw. Thinking is a form of experimentation. wher

the aim is to determine concepts of the events which determine ou fate. The only criteria by which such concepts may be assessed are those of 'the new, remarkable and interesting that replace the appear ance of truth and are more demanding than it is'Y A final continuity in Deleuze's work and a funher sense in which he remains a philosopher in the classical sense emerges in his discussions

of the ethics of the event. When Deleuze asks in The Logic of Sense.

'why is every event a kind of plague, war wound or death?'," the force

of his question is ethical rather than empirical. The point is not that there are more unfortunate than fortunate events, nor is it a mattct of delimiting a special class of occurrences worthy of the name 'event'. Rather, be seeks to raise the question of our stance towards the eventS which befall us. Throughout all Deleuze's work there is an ethics of the event that owes as much to Spinoza and Nietzsche as it does to the

15

Introduction sto·cs.

It is a question of willing the event in such a manner or to such the quality of the will itself is transfonned and becomes a xtent that it is by means of the concept that this transmu­ Moreover) . a rmation quality of the will is achieved. Ultimately, the purpose the t don in creation of concepts is ethical rather than epistemologi­ d the , rve by extracts events from bodies and states of affairs and in ophy "I . Philos us to affinn the sense of what happens. 'There is a enables doing so alwa has that event been nsepar ble from philos p y dignity of the Deleuze and 'Ph ilosophy's sole aim IS Guartan proclaim: f ati,' as amor th worthy of e event . .5 to become

; � :

�

�

�

��

.

NOTES

Sevenl people have offered invaluable assistance in the preparation of this Critical Reader. I would especially like to thank jean-Clet Manin, David Wills, Kevin Mulligan, Moira Gatens and Daniel Smith for their advice, and Peter Cook for his work as editorial assistant.

2 3

4 5

6 7

'8 ans apres: Entretien 1980', L'Art 49: Deleuze (revised edition) 1980, p. 99. What is Philosophy', trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell, New York: Columbia Univenity Press, 1994, p. 54. Negotiation! 1972-1990, trans. Martin joughin, New York: Columbia University Press, 1995, pp. 3 1-2. In a recent letter-preface to Variations: La philosophit de Gilles Dtleuu, by Jean-Clet Manin, Paris: Payot, 1993, p. 7, Deleuze offers the following characterization of his idea of system: 'For me, the system must not only be in perpetual heterogeneity, it must be a heterogenesis. This, it seems to me, has never before been at­ tempted.' SeC" also Philippe Mengue, Gilles Delewze ou k systeme du multiple, Paris: Editions Kime, 1994, pp. 1 1-13, 47. Interview with Didier Eribon, Le Nouvel ObsenJattur, No. 1619, du 16 au 22 novembre 1995, pp. 50-I. E;r;pressionism in PhloJOphy: i Spinoza, uans. Manin joughin, New York: Zone Books, 1990, p. 321. cr. Thl Logic 01Sen!e, trans. Mark l...cster with Charles Stivale, ed. Constantin V. Boundas, New York: Columbia Univer­ sity Press, 1990, p. 6: 'The genius of a philosophy must first be measured by the new distribution which it imposes on beings and concepts. ' Difjerlnu and IUPllition, trans. Paul Patton, London: Athlone Press, 1994, p. xxi. 'Renverser Ie PlalOnisme' n i RnJtu tk Mttaphysiqul II tk Morale, 7 1 : 4 OCI. ee. 1966, pp. 426-38. Reprinted in revised fonn as an appendix to LogiqUl du sens (1969). The latter version appears in English as an appendix to Thl Logic 0/Smu, 'PlaIO and the simulacrum'.

Paul Pattbn

16 8

Negotiations, p. 6.

9

Jacques Derrida, Limited Inc., nans. Samuel Weber, Evanston, II.: western Un iversity Press, 1988, p. 75.

10 II

Negotiations, p. 2.

12

Ibid., p. 25.

13

Expressionism it! Philosophy:

14

What s j Philosophy?, p. 22.

What s i Philosophy?, p. 20.

15

Ibid., p. 27.

16

Ibid., pp. 7, 82.

17

Ibid., p. 37.

18

Spino

zo.,

p . 323.

Difference a,ul Repetition, p. 134. In What is Philosophy?, Deleuze

Guattari suggest that both contemporary analytic and

lrr,ann

NOTES Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Sekcted ,.uays and interviews Michel Foucault, edited with an introduction by Donald F. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1977, p. 46. 2 Herman Melville, Moby Dck, i London: Penguin, 1994, ch. 134, p. 520. 3 Ibid., ch. 36, p. 165. Manin cites this passage in the French

�::: : : ::;�':

given by Kenneth White. in a fine essay on whiteness entitled ' j du monde blanc' in Figurl du dthon, Grasset. 1978, p. 146: ',

LA . balein, blanche. Otez kJ &aiJ/es de 00$ yeux pour la voir, hommts, ayez chmhtz ['tau blanche; si vow t>OjIlZ PIe suait-ce qu'U", buDt, cn ,zl' '

.

Melville's expression, 'skin your eyes', White puts the French <xp"".'o. 'remove: the scales from your eyes' [ed.).

4 5

Moby Dick, ch. 1 1 8, pp. 470-1. From the prdace to the French paperback edition of Moby

Dick, 16-7. This preface is extracted the essay by Jean Giono, Pour Sa/uer Melville, Gallimard, 1941. Gallimard Folio,

6

1980,

vol. I, pp.

The implications of this hypothesis are analysed in detail in my

alions: fa phiJo50phie de Gilles Deleuze, Paris:

Payot,

1993: I, I, 2 and II,

An English translation by Constantin V. Boundas will be published Humanities Press.

7 8 9 10 II

Languagt, Counter-Mtmory, Practice, p. 32. Ibid., pp. 33-4. Moby Dd, ch. 133, p. 5 1 1 . Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, p. 196. Cinema 2: The Time·/mage, trans. Hugh Tomlinson London: Athlone, J 989, pp. 179-80.

,

and Robert

3

Deleuze 's Theory of Sensation: Overcoming the Kantian Duality Daniel W Smith

Aesthetics since Kant has been haunted by a seemingly irretractable dualism. On the one hand. aesthetics designates the theory of sensib­ ility as the form of possible experience; on the other hand, it desig­ nates the theory of art as a rdlection on real experience. The first is the objective element of sensation. which is conditioned by the a priori Conns of space and time (the 'Transcend ental Aesthetic ' aCthe en"rique

of Pure Reason);

the second is the subjective element of sensation,

which is expressed in the feeling of pleasure and pain (the 'Critiqu e of Aesthetic Judgment' in the Critique

of Judgment),

Gilles Deleuze ar­

gues that these two aspects of the theory of sensation (aesthetics) can � reunited only at the price of a radic al recasting of the transcenden­

tal project as form!Jlated by Kant, pushing it in the direction of what Schelling once called a 'superior empiricism': it is only when the conditions of experience in general become the genetic conditions of

real experience that they can be reunited with the structures of works

of an. In this case, the principles of sensation would at the same time Constitute the principles of composition of the work of art, and conver­ sely it would be the structure of the work of an that reveals these

conditions. I In what follows, I would like to examine the means by

�'hich Deleuze anempts to overcome this duality in aesthetics. follow­

mg this single thread through the network of his thought, even if in tracin g this line we sacrifice a cenain amount of detail in favor of a

ccnain

perspicuity. The first pan analyses Deleuze's theory of sensa­ . tIon; the second, his attempt to connect this theory with the structures the work of an.

of

Dam"el

30

1

W.

Smith

The Theory of Sensation: 'The Being of the Sensible' J. J

Beyond Recog'licion and Commorl Sense

Deleuze frequently begins his discussions of aesthetics by cel'en;n,g t,� a passage in the Republic where Plato distinguishes between twO of sensations: those that leave the mind tranquil and inactive, those that force it to think. The first are objects of recog" iri on ('This a finger'), for which sensation is a more or less adequate judge. these cases,' writes Plato, 'a man is not compelled to ask of 1h"UI!h1 the question, "What is a finger?" for the sight never intimates to mind that a finger is other than a finger . . . There is nothing

which invites or excites intelligence. 'z Deleuze defines recognition, Kantian terms, as the harmonious exercise of our faculties on

object that is supposedly identical for each of these faculties: it is

same object that can be seen, remembered, imagined, conceived, so on. To be sure, each faculty (sensibility, imagination, understanding, reason) has its own particular given, and its own of acting upon the given. We recognize an object, however, when faculty locates its given as identical to that of another, or more p,ec'''' Iy, when all the faculties together relate their given and relate

selves to 8 form of identity in the object. Recognition cons,equen" finds its correlate in the ideal of common sense, which is defined

��:�;���

Kant, not as a special 'sense' or a particular empirical faculty, but the supposed identity of the subject that functions as the of our faculties, as the principle that unites them in this

accord. These are twO poles of what Deleuze terms the

:::;;:=

image of thought, and which constitutes one of the main objects critique: the subjective identity of the self and its faculties (c sense), and the objective identity of the thing to which these �

refer (recognition). Thus in Kant, the 'object in general' or 'object

x' is the objective correlate of the 'I think' or the SUbjective unity consciousness.1 But there also exists a second kind of sensation in the continues Plato, sensations that force us to think, that give rise

thought. These are what Deleuze will term 'signs', for reasons we see below: they are no longer objects of recognition but objects ('If

��:::�::

fundamental encounter. More precisely, they are no longer even " , ognizable as objects, but rather refer to sensible qualities o

that are caught up in an unlimited becoming, a perpetual n : , of contraries. A finger is never anything but a finger, but a large

Dtleu::e's Theory of Sensation: Owrcoming the Kantian Duality 31 at the same time b e said t o b e small in relation to a third, just as is hard is never hard without also being soft, and so on. Recogni­ at measures and limits these paradoxical qualities by relating them 00 n ct, but in themselves, these 'simultaneously opposed sensa­ t an obje ' ons , says Plato, perplex the soul and set it in motion, they force it to ink because they demand 'funher inquiry'. Rather than a voluntary and harmonious accord, the faculties here enter into an involuntary discord that lies at the base of Plato's model of education: sensibility intelligence to distinguish the large and the small from the compels the appearances that confuse them, which in turn compels the sensible begin to remember the intelligible Forms.4 memory to of this second type, Deleuze argues, that constitute sensations It is for any possible aesthetic. Phenomenologists like Merleau­ the basis pontY, Straus, and Maldiney had already gone a long way toward freeing aesthetics from the presupposition of recognition. They argued that sensation, or rather 'sense experience' [/e stnrir1 , must be analysed not only insofar as it relates sensible qualities to an identifiable object (the figurative moment), but insofar as each quality constitutes a field that stands on its own, even though it ceaselessly n i terferes with other qualities (the 'pathic' moment).� But they still remained tied to a form of common sense, setting up 'natural perception' as a norm, and locating its conditions in a sensible form or Gestalt that organizes the perceptive field as a function of an 'intentional consciousness' or 'lived body' situated within the horizon of the world. If Proust and Signs occupies a critical place in Deleuzc's oeuvre, it is because A la recherche du temps perdu, in Deleuze's reading, presents itself as a vast experi­ ment with sensations of this second type, but one freed from the presuppositions of both recognition and common sense. In Proust, these signs no longer simply indicate contrary sensible qualities, as n i Plato, but instead testify to a much more complicated network. of implicated orders of signs: the frivolous signs of society life, the deceptive signs of love, the sensuous signs of the material world, and the essential signs of an, which will come to transform the others. Proust's narrator will discover that, when he thought he was wasting his time, he was in fact already embarked on an intellectual appren­ ticeship to these signs, a search for their meaning, a revelation of their truth. In each of these orders, the search inevitably passes through two eSSential moments: an 'objectivist temptation' that seeks for the lTleaning of the sign in the object emitting it (his lover, the madeleine), and a 'subjective compensation' that seeks their meaning n i a subjec­ . tlYe association of ideas. But in each case, the hero discovers that the lrUth of signs 'transcends the states of subjectivity no less than the ca

:

� ?

�

32

Daniel W. Smith

propenies of the object': it is only in the work of art that their nature will be �vealed and their truth made manifest.6 This distinction between the recognized object and the encountered sign, Deleuze argues, corresponds to a more general distinction be­ tween two images of thought. The 'dogmatic' or rationalist image can be summarized in several interrelated postulates: thought as thought Connally contains the truth (innateness of ideas, a priori nature concepts); thinking is the voluntary and natural exercise of a faculty, and the thinker possesses a natural love for the truth, a philia (hence the image of the thinker as a philo-sophos, a friend or lover of dam); we fall into error, we are diverted from the truth, by external forces that are foreign to thought and distract the mind from its vocation (the body, passions); therefore, all we need in order to truthfully is a 'method.I that will ward off error and bring us back to the truthful nature ofthought.1 It is against this more or less Greek image that Deleuze counterposes the empirical power of signs and the ibility of a thought 'without image': thinking is never the product of. voluntary disposition, but rather the result of forces that act thought involuntarily from the outside: we search for truth, we to think, only when compelled to do so, when we undergo a v';o)"oo:. that impels us to such a search, that wrests us from our natural - what calls for thought, says Heidegger, is the perpetual /act that are not yet thinking';' the negative of thought is not error, which is mere empirical fact, but more profound enemies that prevent genesis of thought: convention, opinion, cliches, stupidity finally, what leads us to truth is not 'method' but 'constraint' 'chance': no method. can determine in advance what compels us ' think, it is rather the fortuitousness of the encounter tha,tt ' the necessity ofwhat it forces us to think. W"ho is it that in f�, , for the truth? It is not the friend, says Proust, exercising desire for truth in dialogue with others, but rathet the jealous maD, under the pressure of his lover's lies, and the anguish they inflict OD him.lo If Deleuze has always considered himself an empiricist, it is because. 'on the path which leads to that which is to be thought, everything begins with sensibility' . 1 I What then is a sign? In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze assigns twO primary characteristics to the sign. The first is that the sign riots the soul, renders it perplexed, as if the encountered sign were the bearer of a problem. The second is that the sign is something that can only be felt or sensed [ce qui ne peut eIre que smlll : as Francis Bacon says, it actS directly on the nervous system, rather than passing through the detour of the brain.12 It is this second characteristic that reveals most clearly

�:;:�:i

De!eu=e's Theory of Se"sotio,,: Overcoming the Komian Duality

33

erence between the encountered sign and the recognized ab­ the diff . c". the latter can not only be felt, but can also be remembered, le conceived, and so on, and thus assumes the accord of the . agined,

Kant calls common sense. By taking the encountered �:uhies thatprimary element of sensation, Deleuze is pointing, object­ sign as the

ively, (0 a sci.mce 0/ the sensible .t:eed from the m�1 of recognition a"d,

subjectifJely,

w

a use of the foeullles /reed from the Ideal 0/ commo" sense.

Now Kant himself had already hinted at this latter possibility in the Critique ofJudgment where, for the first and only time, he considered a

faculty freed from the form of common sense, namely, the faculty of the imagination. Up to that point, Kant had been content to create as many common senses as there were natural interests of reasonable thought (knowledge, morality, reflection), common senses which dif­ fered according to the conditions of what was to be recognized (object

of knowledge, moral value, aesthetic effect . . .) . In the en"rique of Pure

Reason, for example, the faculties are made to enter into a harmonious accord in the speculative interest, in which the understanding legis­ lates over and determines the function of the other faculties ('logical common sense'); in the Critique of Practical Reason, the faculties enter into a different accord under the legislation of reason in the practical interest ('moral common sense'); and even in the 'Analytic of the Beautiful' of the Critique ofJudgment, the reflective imagination is still

said to be under the 'aesthetic common sense'" Il

But the third Critique opened up the possibility of a new domain, a 'disjunctive' theory of the faculties. In the 'Analytic of the Sublime', the faculty of the imagination is forced to confront its own limit, its Own maximum: faced with an immense object (the desert, a mountain, a pyramid) or a P9werful object (a storm at sea, an erupting volcano), the imagination strives to comprehend these sensations in their to­ tality, but is unable to do so. It reaches the limits of its power, and finds itself reduced to impotency" This failure gives rise to a pain, a cleavage in the subject between what can be imagined and what can be thought, between the imagination and reason" For what is it that Pushes the imagination to this limit, what forces it to attempt to unite the immensity of the sensible world into a whole? Kant answers that it is nothing other than the faculty of reason: absolute immensity or POwer are Ideas of reason, Ideas that can be thought but cannot be

k.nown or imagined, and which are therefore accessible mlly to the faCulty of reason. The sublime thus presents us with a disunsion, a 'discordant accord', between the demands of reason and the power of the imagination. But this painful admission also gives rise to a plea­

SUre: in confronting its own limit, the imagination at the same time

34

Daniel W. Smith

goes beyond this limit, albeit n i a negative way, by representing

itself the inaccessibility of this rational Idea. It presents to itself

fact that the unpresemable exists, and that it exists in sensible nature,l. From the empirical point of view, this limit is inaccessible and aginable; but from the transcendental point of view, it is that can only be imagined, that which is accessible only to the imagim,ti,oQ ' ; in its transcendental exercise,

:':�f :

The lesson of the 'Analytic of the Sublime', in Deleuze's ':� that it discovers this discordant accord as the condition of �;

' ]i

for the harmonious accords of the faculties that Kant evoked in

first two critiques, an accord that is not derived from

external 'facts' (the 'fact' of knowledge. the 'fact' of morality), but ' engendered internally in the subject. It is this possibility of a &sjunc. tive use of the facu1ties, glimpsed fleetingly by Kant with regard to imagination, that Deleuze will extend to the entire critical proj"ct Rather than having all the faculties harmoniously united in an act recognition, each faculty is made to confront its own differential and is pushed to its involuntary and 'transcendental' exercise,

exercise in which something is communicated violentlyfrom one faculty

;�;:

another. but does not fonn a common sense. Such is the use of the fa

put forward by Proust: a sensibility that apprehends and r � signs; an intelligence, memory, and imagination that interpret

and explicate their meaning, each according to a certain type of ,;,,, and a pure thought which discovers their essence as the reason of the sign and its meaning. What Deleuze calls a therefore neither a recognizable object nor even a particular q,,,]ity . an object, but constitutes the limit of the faculty of sensibility each faculty in its tum must confrOnt its own limit). As Deleuze it, the sign is not a sensible being, nor even a purely qualitative

(aisthlwn), but the being afthe sensible (aisrhetton). From the cal point of view, the sign, in and of itself, is unsensible, not in contingent way, as if it were too small or too distant to be grasped our senses, but in an essential way, namely, from the point of view

recognition and common sense, in which sensibility can only grasp can also be grasped by the other faculties. But from the trans,ce"d,,",a1 point of view, the sign is what can only be felt or sensed, that which accessible o,dy to the faculty of sensibility in its transcendental cise. The sign, in short, points to a pure aesthetic lying at the ·

.

sensibility: an immanent Idea or differential field beyond the norms common sense and recognition. What then is this Idea of se,,,ibilii,,­ What are these forces of the 'outside' that nonetheless give rise thought?

Deleu=e's Theory of Sensation: Owrcomi"K the Kamian Duality 35 1.2

The Idea of Sensibility: Differential Relations and Differences in Intensity

1790, Salomon Malmon, one of the first post-Kantians to Already in ibniz, had proposed an essential revision of Kant on to Le relurn point. I' Leibniz argued that a conscious perception must this ely reciS

to a recognizable object situated in space and time, but �e related, notand unconscious perceptions of which it is composed. I

to the minute apprehend the noise of the sea or the munnur of a group of people, for instance, but not the sound of each wave or the voice of each person that compose them. These unconscious 'molecular' perceptions are

�lated to conscious 'molar' perceptions, not as pans to a whole, but as what is ordinary to what is noticeable or remarkable: a conscious perception is produced when at least two of these elements enter into

a dijfermu·al relation that detennines a singular point.16 Consider, for example, the colour green: yellow and blue can be perceived, but

if

their perception diminishes to the point where they become indiscer­ nible, they enter into a differential relation (db/dy

=

G) that deter­

mines the colour green; in tum, yellow or blue, each on its own

account, may be detennined by the differential relation of two colours we cannot detect (dy/dx

=

V).

Or consider the noise of the sea: at least twO minutely perceived waves must enter into a relation capable of detennining a third, which 'excels' over the others and becomes conscious. These unconscious perceptions constitute the 'ideal genetic elements' of perception, or what Maimon called the 'differentials of consciousness'. It is such a

virtual multiplicity of genetic elements, and the system of connections or differential relations that are established between them, that De­ leuze terms an 'Idea': the relations are actualized in diverse spatia­ temporal relationships, JUSt as the elements are actualized in diverse

perceptions and forms. A sign, in its first aspect, is thus an 'effect' of these elements and relations in the Idea: a clear perception (green) is actualized when cenain vinual elements (yellow and blue) enter into a differential relation as a function of our body, and draws these ObScure perceptio ns into clarity. 11 Deleuze suggests that Bergson, in The Creative Mind, had developed somewhat parallel conception of the Idea, using the domain of color

a

�s an example. There are two ways of detennining what 'colours' have Either one can extract from panicular colours an abstract �nd general idea of color (,by removing from the red that which makes It red, from the blue what makes it blue, from the green what makes it

In comm on.

Daniel W. Smith

36

green'); Qr onc can make all these colours 'pass through a conve"g... lens. bringing them to a single point', in which case a 'pure white is obtained that 'makes the differences between the shades out'.'8 The first case defines a generic 'concept' with a plurality objects. in which the relation between concept and object is one subsumption, and the state of difference remains exterior to the The second case defines a differential Idea in the Deleuzian sense. different colours are no longer objects under a concept, bo,t< 'm,,'i",�

::��:����:

an order of mixture in co-existence and succession within the Idea; relation between the Idea and a given color is not one o

but one of actualization and differentiation; and the state . . of

between the concept and the object is i,llenlaJized in the Idea

White light may be a universal, if you will, but it is a cone.... universal, a universal variation, and not a genus or generality. It,, ,,,"

of colour is like white light. which 'perplexes' within itself the

elements and relations of all the colors, JUSt as the Idea of sound be conceived of as white noise.ltu", '�

which tends to escape its grasp, in other words the process in is engaged and in which it panicipates. It remains to consider Deleuze's interpretation of the infinhesimal calculus. My intuition is tha[ all attempts to mathematical conceptuality outside ofquamity stem from the idea reticent towards what is most important in

These attempts are drawn from mathematics as a cultural and tual event, but they do not really allow themselves to be affected they do not strive to satisfy what mathematics, dare I say, d,m,oacll us. The infinitesimal is a paradoxical and intense modulation concept of quantity, and to ignore this is to destroy its most

characteristic. Yet it is well known that the debate and the .n,n,," 'iii those of the infinitesimal calculus.

Nevertheless, in an entirely original and profound fashioa,

developing the concept of a problemati c idea from the ",m'pl,,,, pol

of departure of differential calculus itself - and of mathematics,

citly considered as the domain which manifests the blueprint of

good dialectic - Deleuze concludes that the soul of calculus

quantity, deserving instead the name of problem, qualitative complete determination, genesis, etc. The will to envisage the nitesimal beyond representanon seems to me to lead in the same tion: it is well known that quantity, be it infinite, cannot elude order of representation, that it is in many respects

.

can·only-be-represented, to speak like Deleuze (even if quantity to the acted presentation [presentation agieJ of number, to what generally called constructive intuition and which is in principle representative). My feeling is that there is a link between .the option consisting in the omission of destinality from the ph;lo'sop portrait of the idea, and the particular critico--interpretative

'�

Idea and Desrination

11

�

sitivitY to the demand of ma ematical discourse that it be . f insen usly as a discourse on quanbtY.)2 If the fact that the ques­ serio ken 1'1 that launches all problematizing elaboration of the idea is des­ t�O ed' is addressed to me, is constitutive of the idea of the idea, then n avoidable maxim for ushering the idea into culture is one of u to what discourses want from us, the susceptibility to pass to (tendon which they engage us. Conversely, if the idea is entirely th at wi with genesis, with the event-adventure which spreads out up bOund o

t�

: �

virtual which is itself commanded by the total affirmation of from the I will be infinitely tempted to forget what is addressed then e, chanc to speech, text to text, discipline to discipline, in favour ech spe from

ofa 'what happens' on which I will have conferred in advance and on principle a sort of trans-human prestige. Of course, Deleuze's book and particularly the chapter com­ mented upon here bear wicness to an exceptional ear for culture, as is fitting for a philosopher in my opinion as great as Deleuze, and it

would be superlatively unjust to describe him as walled up in his metaphysico-genetic prejudice. Perhaps what he names event or gen­ esis is something altogether removed from the neutralitY I sense. Or perhaps we must acknowledge the presence of twO incompatible clans: the ontologico-metaphysical-genetic, and the deontologico­ logical-interpretative, and accept that their confrontation will never be decided in some test of truth. However, these virtuous concessions are hardly satisfying, for there is little sense in pretending not to

think what one thinks. 1 do maintain that the initiative of the idea coincides with the compelling repercussion of address, and that the beSt possible adhesion to the genius of the culture is the one which results from observance of the maxim of attention to what discourses rtquire of us.

One last word to evoke an example given by Deleuze in Dijfermce

ond

Repetition which fascinated me twentY years ago and which I rtmember 'as if 1 were there'. Describing the function of learning, and

�� �

ng up me familiar example oftearning to swim, Deleuze writes that It IS after a brief phase in which the swimming instructor explains and emonstrates the movements on sand that real apprenticeship begins,

� the Course of which the student combines his distinctive points with

osc: of the water, and in a sense actualizes his movements.)} This Poetic perspective on the joy of adventurous abandonment to the attracted me no end, and still does. But at the time I retained 'torn the example the lesson of the inessential character ofthe instruc­ ".S d demonstration on sand. Today, I would say that whatever the

;ater

escf1ptlve ' accuracy of Deleuze's example as regards the personal .

78

Jean-Michel SaJanskis

clement of apprenticeship, the example also highlights the

function of a prescription. When I am at last able to swim n i

tion with the ocean, I remain attached to the interlocutionary the human act of swimming, what I express is also the genius combination of gestures whose example I faithfully follow. All is an

understanding as well, and understanding requires a ..n"'til",

ideal destinality.

translated by George

NOTES I may, I believe, name at least Gilles Chiteiet and Jean Petitot those of Deleuze's readen who have manifested an enthusiasm

equivalent to mine, and which has been the starting-point of an through the relation of philosophy to mathematics.

2

See his recapitulative publication: Enai fur Funiti dts Paris: Union Generale d'Editions, 1977.

3

Lautman's comments concern mainly the results of the P"'-'''' '''�

m'.",,"'�

co-topological school, which had deployed the potential of an structunlism': these are the new mathematics that, in poine inspired the Bourbaki project (for a description of this epoch atmosphere, cr. Hourya Sinaceur, Corps tt Modiks, Paris: Vrin,

150-60).

4

Gilles Deleuze, Dif/btnct tl France,

�tjn'on,

,.;....�

Paris, Presses U, " "'

1968. Difftrmce and &/Htition, trans. Paul Patton, New

Columbia University Press and London: Athlone Press Limited, pp.

5

16S-70. All further references will be to this translation. 171, translation slightly modified.

Dif/ertrtU and Rtpetition, p.

gives 'continuousness' for the continuum [trans. note).

6 7 8 9

1 72-3. 175. Ibid., p. 182.

Ibid., pp. Ibid., p.

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guanari, Rhizome, Paris: Editions de

1976. English translation by John Johnston, in On the Lint, 57. See also A Thowand Plauaw, trans. Brian Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987, p. 24. On the Line, p. 47; A Tlwwand Plaltaw, pp. 20-1. Difference and Repetition, p. 187. Ibid., p. 190. Ibid., p. 177. Ibid., pp. 1 78-9. Ibid., pp. 195-6. Ibid., p. 197.

Semiotext(e), p.

10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Idea and Destination

79

Ibid., p. 198. 17 Ibid. , p. 198. 18 Jean Petitot, Morphogenese d,.. sens, Paris: Presses Universitaires de 19 France, 1985, IlIA, pp. 65- 71. ence and Repetition, p. 176. 20 Differ p. 178. , Ibid. 21 p. 86. , Ibid. 22 p. 178. , Ibid. 23 Maddy, 'Believing the axioms', The Journal 0/ Symbolic Logic, lope 24 Pene 1 988, vol. 53, no. 2, pp. 481-5 1 1 . 25 Difference (HId Repetition, p . 218. 26 Ibid., p. 197. 27 The whole comment should be cited, but the following is a particularly significant example (the reader will notice that the term for the Gennan Begnf/ in the English translation is Notion, whereas I prefer to follow French usage in translating it as Concept): 'It is this concept which has been the target of all the anack, made on the fundamental determination of the mathematics of this infinite, i.e. of the differential and integral calculus. Failure [0 recognize it was the result of incorrect ideas on the pari of mathematicians themselves; but it is the inability to justify the object as Notion /Concept} which is mainly responsible for these attacks. BUI mathematics, as we remarked above, cannot evade the Notion [con­ cept] here; for, as mathematics of the infinite, it does not confine itselfto thefinile determinations of its objects (as in ordinary mathematics, which considers and relates space and number and their determinations only according lO their finitude); on the contrary, when it treats a determina­ tion taken from ordinary mathematics, it converts it into an identity with its opposite . . . Consequently, the operation which it allows itself [0 perform in the differential and integral calculus are in complete contra­ diction with the nature of merely finite detenninations and their relations and would therefore have to be justified solely by the Notion /Concept}.· Hegel's Science 0/ Logic, trans. A. V. Miller, Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press International, Inc., 1991, pp. 253-4. 28 Hegel, ibid., p. 253. 29 Ibid., pp. 3 1 4--25 . 30 Cr., for the introduction of quantitability in its relation to freedom: Fichle, Doctrine de fa Science, 1801-1802, trad. fro Alexis Philonenko et C: Lecouteux, Paris: Vrin, 1987, Paragraphe 22, p. 89. For the underlYIng Fichtean conception of quantity, see p. 69. 3 1 Cr. Edward Nelson, 'Internal Set Theory', Bulletin o/the Americun Math32 emUI;cu/ Society, vol. 83, no.6 (Nov. 1977), pp. 1 165-98. 1 hasten to add that this is not at all to say that the thinking and qualitative dimension or mathematical thought and of its tale should be underestimated. I believe my L 'hermenewique /ormelle presents a perfectly unambiguous position on this question: but this dimension is developed

80

33

Jean-Michel Salanskis in an activity taking up and into account the quantum in ;;'" "IT,,, •.., literalness. Jean-Michel Salanskis, L 'hennintutiqlU Jormtlle. Plrit: tions du CNRS, 1991. Difference and Repetition_ p. 23; see also p. 165 .

•

5

Deleuze-Bergson: an Ontology of the Virtual �-------�-Constantin V. Boundas

Bers,on,

of course, was also caught up in F�nch style history of philosophy, and yet in him there is something which cannot be assimi­ lated, which enabled him to provide a shock, to be a rallying point for all the opposition, the object of so many hatreds: and this is not so much

because of the theme of duration, as of the theory and practice of becomings of all kinds, of coexistent multiplicities. I

Deleu:ze's admiration for Ber�on has been maintained for the last

forty years and has manifested itself in numerous writings. A long es ay 'La Conception ck Ja difference chez Bergson' ( 1 956] and a chapter,

s

'Bergson 1859-1 941' in us Philosophes dlibres. edited by Merleau­ Ponty

I I 956) were followed by an anthology of Bergson's writings, mt! " (1957), and then by a book, Le Bergson­ lJ�t (I 966). Bergson is arguably one of the two or three more sus­ ed prese �ln nces in DIfference and Repetition [ 1 968), and references to n,rn abound in Dialogues [ 1 977) and in A Thousand Plateaus ( 1 980). MOlJement_Image ( 1 983J and then Tht! Time-Image ( 1 985) revisit

1!tnn° Bergson, Mimaire el

a:

til

gson and show � that cinema, despite Bergson's own scepticism, hiS vision and illustrates the practices of becomings and multi­

\

s that he himself summoned out of obscure indistinction and ) nPlt�t" i d�es :../ Ilierenc e .l I is, the refore, curious that the centrality that Bergson has in

�

De

"SCh:)uze's

work (rivalled only by the centrality of Spinoza and Nietz­ has not yet found among Deleuze's readers the attention it deSeryes. Madeleine Barthelemy-Madau!e,' Maria Rosario Restuccia:

82

Conslamin V. Boundas

Gillian Rose,' Bruno Paradis," Paul Douglass,7 and above all Hardt' have so far been the only bright exceptions. My Own the expression of my desire to strengthen the voice of those w,.o. .. , face of the now fashionable interdiction against ontology, stand behind Deleuze's claim that, in the giants' struggle for there are still a few baldes left worth fighting. The intention essay is not to fine-rune the agreements or disagreements Deleuze and Bergson, but rather [0 fe-enaCt the Deleuzean '"" . .... of Bergson's themes. I accept Fran�ois Zourabichvili's point the commentaries that Deleuze devotes to those he loves are free indirect discourse, and the untimely thinkers who are the ofthase commentaries 3fe veritable intercessors, p,m.h,ing I .m •• what he wants.9 That is why in the rest of my essay I find it work with the composite name 'Deleuze-Bergson.'

Multiplicity and Movement Were we to say that Deleuze-Bergson's work revolves around tions of multiplicity, movement, becoming and difference, we have stated not four distinct concerns but one and the same facing his work, viewed from four different an "gl 's. , formula 'multiplicity = movement = becoming d , only one kind of multiplicity and for one kind of difference. It ofthe multiplicity which is continuous or intensive and of the notion of difference that Deleuze named 'different/ciation'. tensive multiplicities are virtual, internally differentiated " which actualize themselves through differenciation" o different/dation is able to account for the qualitative h�;, movement, without which a plausible theory of becoming worked out. I shall defer the discussion of different/ciation in order t� the notion of multiplicity. Deleuze-Bergson's theory of ci grievously misunderstood whenever 'multiplicity' is taken to set of entities, each one of which is identical to itself and also from all the other entities of the same SCt. Equally misguided attempt to assimilate Deleuzean difference to the Heraclitean more level-headed discussion of the role that multiplicities play writings of Deleuze-Bergson might begin with Riemann's of manifolds into discrete and continuous. and with the con"''' that Deleuze's theory of difference requires something like the Duum for its aniculatioD.'o For Riemann, discrete multiplicitid =

r:�:,; �.�:�::

;':��::'

�;::

Deleuze-Bergson: an Ontology 0/ the Virtual

83

....,hose metric principle is within themselves, because the

tb°se' re of their part is given in the number of elements that they t1IellSu

As a consequence, discrete multiplicities are quantitative and ve hll ·rnerable. On the other hand, continuous multiplicities are those

dePUe principle is outside of them - in the forces, for example, ,,",hoS rnetric from the outside. As a consequence, continua are them h" h act on w " ive and non-denumerable.

..." Riemann's characterization of multiplicities does not find �litat o.

qu

ur with Deleuze. For the latter, continuous multiplicities uch favo related to duration or, at least, conceived according to s e e sentially

rTI

to it and, therefore, neither their divisibility (or indivisi­ &I' analogy their denumerability (or non-denumerability) nor our :;itY) tonorthink of them as isomorphic to number systems defines them

abilitY essentially. What defines them essentially is this: discrete mUltiplicities Ife extended magnitudes whose nature remains the same after they

have been divided, whereas continuous multiplicities are intensive magnitudes whose nature changes each time they are divided. ' 1 The imponance of these definitions for Deleuze's theory of difference cannot be overestimated. They

given into two

will preside over the division of the

tendencies - extension and intensity, space and dura­

tion, dilation and contraction; if left uncoordinated, they

will be the will

constant source of transcendental illusions; their coordination

require the aniculation of, and strict adherence to, a method called

'transcendental empiricism'; finally, the choice of continuous mwti­

plicities as the cornerstone of Deleuze's theory of difference and

becoming can no longer be understood within the old parameters of

the one and the many. Neither 'multiplicity' nor 'the multiple' convey

precisely the sense that Deleuze-Bergson wishes to convey. One needs a

noun

like 'the multiplier' or a gerund like 'the multiplying' as a

qualifier of multiplicity in order to capture the sense that Deleuze

assigns to different/ciation.l: We may now ask: For what purpose is this ontology of continuous

multiplicities mobilized? It is well known that movement is betrayed

�.h time we think of it as a relation between actual, fixed terms, � lch are mapped on to discrete, temporal multiplicities, understood

a sUccession of presents and of static cuts. Deleuze-Bergson reminds u ps that it was

has to

who showed that the arrow will not fly if it �$S first, oneZeno by one, all the discrete points at the discrete times of

e ended manifold; it will not fly because movement cannot be re xt ti tUted on the basis of instants any more than being can be On� cO (j St1tuted on the basis of presents. It is evident that the opposition to iscret e muItiP " I"Icltles " " rests on the correct conclusion that instants,

�

84

Constanrin V, Boundas

bdng durationless snapshots of movement, cannot he blocks of movement. because the lauer presupposes mobile se,lD>. .

of duration.

Movement continues to be betrayed as long as the identity

body moving through the continuum is not itself conceived

iog to the logic of continuous multiplicities. Real movement, transformation and change seem to require that the distinction

tween movement (the process) and moving (the agent or patient) abandoned. I ) Movement affects both space and the bodies

through it. To move is not to go through a trajectory which

decomposed and recombined in quantitative terms; it is to

other than itself, in a sense that makes movement a qualitative

It is, as Jean Milet says, because the continuum cannot he <e,j.,coO a discrete manifold (to an aggregate of points) that movement

be reduced to what is static.14 Continua and movements imPll " another. Deleuze's critique of phenomenology begins at this point."

nomenology grounds itself on the normalcy of natural pe,,,,epti,. gives natural perception a privilege which makes movement 'poses'. Bergson's significance, on the other hand, for Deleuz:e. precisely in his refusal to yield to the lure of natural pe",,'P'I According to him, the staning point is a world of continuously ing movement-images - a world of matter in constant flux, anchorage or assignable points of reference. In the case of enology, natural perception and movement imply the notion subject. In the case of Bergson, movement is not subordinate subject which performs it or undergoes it. Where light diffuses

with a minimum of resistance or loss, the eye is inside things.

�::th� a :,:��,;:,

been arrested or refracted. We are dealing here W 'i 'inhuman' world having a privilege over the h

::;

bas

of (f)light do not yet appear to anybody, because

��

world of phenomenology, where consciousness is the

summoning up things from their native obscurity. Fo,d )elellz.,..I� son, things are luminous with nothing but themselves to light is consciousness that constitutes the opaque blade without which would go on to diffuse itself forever.

If we now call Deleuze-Bergson's reduction of consciousness

tensive' and we compare it to the phenomenological reductiOll

consciousness, we can see immediately how these two give rise

preside over, two different tasks. The phenomenology of con,,"01 ness will strive to eliminate the brackets from the real in achieve the status of a critique of what is consensually given.

Deleuze-Bergsmi: an Ontology oj the Virtual

85

with the intensive singularities of the 'pre-human' world, on the

;!r hand, Deleuze-Bergson will have to accoum for the fonnation of ded' or 'cool' systems inside the open-ended, intensive °1 ed 'exten cho:s,,:it: virtual. He will have, in other words, to embark upon a . fll

, a ..

constitution of the given in order, at the end of it, to give gen..tic a theory of the actual. hitflself

'Transcendental Illusion and Transcendental Empiricism The expression 'transcendental illusion' points back to Kant. In the

Critique oj Pure Reason, transcendental

illusions are errors to which we

succumb when we mistake guiding principles for knowledge-constitu­ rivc categories. Deleuze praises Kant frequently for his decision to

tum his back on the childish notion of error as misrecognition, mis­

identification and miscalculation, and to replace it with an error which

is internal and endemic to thought (Kant's 'Transcendental Dialec­

tic').

A similar notion of transcendental illusion can be found in Bergson, albeit with a significant difference. 16 Given Bergson's rejec­

tion of the Kantian distinction between appearances and thing in

itsclf, the possibility of transcendental illusion is now accounted for, not

in terms of mental faculties mistaken about jurisdictions and

territories, but rather in tenns of tendencies rooted in things them­ selves, and being actualized in ways that bring them into conflict with

one another. Only a methodic intuition, never assured in tenns of its final success, can grasp the complementarity of these tendencies and, even more importantly, account for the generation of the one tendency

from the Other. It is the Bergsonian rather than the Kantian transcend­ ental illusion that Deleuze sets out to reveal and to criticize. But what are these tendencies which, rooted in things themselves,

generate, under certain conditions, transcendental illusion? Put in a nutshell, the transcendental illusion that Deleuze denounces is the result of Our exclusive preoccupation with extended magnitudes in sPace at the expense of intensities in time.11 It is the result of our txcluSive preoccupation with discrete manifolds at the expense of Conlmu · a, differences of degree at the expense of differences of nature, e at t e expense of lime, with things at the expense of processes,

�� th

e

�

solutions at the expense of problems, with sedimented culture at

xpense of learning, with recognition at the expense of fundamen­ lat�nco. u nters, with results at the expense of tendencies.18 And as if a list of allegedly similar errors were not enough, Deleuze sums it a 'u up by saying that the transcendental illusion is the result of our

"8\1

Constantin V. Boundas

86

exclusive preoccupation with the real and the possible at the . . ... �

of the virtual and the actual.

Let us examine some of these claims more carefully. Bergson, well known, used to be critical of those who sacrifice dillfe,..,,,,,nature for differences of degree. Only differences of natur�'

;

��::::

thought, support a concept of difference which withstands the ure of identity, whereas differences of degree support only d

between self-identical entities,I9 Deleuze's ontology makes : . critique its own, substituting 'extended' for discrete magnitudes 'intensive' manifolds for continua. Extended magnitudes are to decomposition into parts each one of which differs from the parts according to degree only. But between intensities there are

differences of nature, since the division of an intensity "sullll , 'segments' which differ in nature from each other.1o Now magnitudes are taken to be spatial. With respect to them, we think that the only differences possible are differences of

differences according to the more and the less, that is, qu11

of �

Who's Afraid of Hegelian Wolws?

121

(

'olves reduce to a single wolO, and a unity by secrelon i of the pack ppearance of the exceptional individual on the edge of excessiveness a bord de dibordement]) , Oeleuze reduces Hegelian multiplicity 'comme by subtraction and makes Hegel appear as his outsider. The problem is then to know why Deleuze never recognizes Hegel as his white whale. leaving to the reader the task of recognizing in his relentless opposition to the dialectic the impassioned limping of a Captain Ahab. ThiS non-recognition might also take on the value of a symptom that readers, as ad hoc psychoanalysts. would take it upon themselves to interpret. What Hegel would thus be the symptom of, in incarnating both unities at once. is perhaps the impossibility of maintaining their difference right to the end, of keeping the 'lone wolr apart from the 'leader of tbe pack'. Perhaps the wolf and the anomalous would in this way revert to the same thing. I shall let Hegel be the judge of that. proposing a confrontation between a Oeleuze visited by Hegel. and a Hegel revisited by De1euze. Such an enterprise involves bringing Hegel into the field of the pack. which offers the advantage of deterritorializing the expected place of debate, and interrogating, on an uncharted terrain. the old concepts of unity, system, becoming and teleology. Unity by subtraction and unity by exception do not seem, at first glance, to have anything to do with one another, Their two economies are reflected in A Thousand Plateaus as two contrasting, even contrary move­ ments. The fint, you will remember. is elaborated in the chapter entitled 'One or Several Wolves?' the second in 'Becoming-Intense, Becoming­ Animal, Becoming-Imperceptible.' The development of the second relies On various examples. the most striking being the film Willard by Daniel Mann, whose subtitle might be the 'Rat-Man; and Moby Dick. What brings about the essential difference ofthese two economies is the conception of becoming that underwrites them. In the first case (Freud's assimilation of the pack of hallucinatory wolves to the single gure of the father), becoming is assigned to a teleology, with unity as Its result. In the second ('Captain Ahab has an irresistible becoming­ hale', ATP 243), becoming is 'adestinal', in that the exceptional IOdividual does not result from it but forms its border. Teleological becoming is conceived of as a 'tension towards'; it is necessarily oriented or destined. Even if Deleuze and Guanari do not ake this explicit. it is clear that for them Freud inherits this concep­ of becoming from a whole philosophical tradition represented above all by Hegel, a tradition that thinks the fundamental articulation becoming and of the telos. Becoming. Hegel explains in the Science

�

�

� tiOn

of

122

Catherine Malabou

of Logi in Hegel, habit is completely tied to a teleology and the logic genus; but it would now be possible to show that teleology, rar suspending the economy of multiplicity, instead brings it about" be important to see how teleology as conceived of by Hegel nh"'"

Who's Afraid of Hegelian WoJws?

131

rocess of production of unity that i s neither subtraction nor excep­ but a wearing down of the pack. Let us investigate the question of animal habit. It may be noted in this regard that I am reading Hegel from the point of view of Difference tJtld Repetition, but what I read there, starting from Delc�uze's presup­ positions, leads me in fUm to respond to Deleuze concerning Hegel. I shall begin by recalling Deleuze's analysis of the fundamental role played by habit within the living being. He refers in that context to the Aristotelian conception of the living as composed of small animals:

�on.

A soul must be attributed to the hean. to the muscles, nerves and cells,

but a contemplative soul whose entire function is to contract a habit.

This is no mystical or barbarous hypothesis. On the contrary, habit here manifests its

full

generality: it concerns not only the sensory-motor

habits that we have (psychologically), but also, before these, the primary habits that we arc; the thousands of passive syntheses of which we

are

organically composed. It is simultaneously through contraction that we

afe habits, but through contemplation that we contract. (DR 74)

The precise question is this: how is it possible to read contraction and contemplation as well as their relation, and moreover, how should one interpret the precession of contemplation over contraction such as the syntax - 'but through' - suggests? It would be necessary to substitute proceed for precede. as we are invited to do in terms of the following statement: 'We do not contemplate ourselves, but we exist only in contemplating - that is to say. in contracting that from which we come' (DR 74). We can consider that in Deleuze's analysis there is a starting 'situation'. described in these terms: 'We are made of con­ tracted water, earth. light and air - not merely prior to the recognition or representation of these, but prior to their being sensed' (DR 73). A beginning in the inorganic. starting from the inorganic and from the four elements. by a process of contraction. As the living being gets more complex it increases the number, mass and quality of its contrac­ liolls in the triple sense of passive and acl£w structuration, of a permanent aplitudejor acquisition, and a multiplying reducn·on. This triple process makes possible the ethological assemblage of affects that I analysed earlier. In fact it is habit that allows the individ­ ual to become singularized. a genus all to itself. Habit draws the dIviding line between the racehorse and the workhorse. The exercise that is inherent in the functioning of habit binds vital energy: 'An animal forms an eye for itself by causing scattered and diffuse lumin­ �us excitations to be reproduced on a privileged surface of its body. me eye binds light, it is itself a bound light' (DR 96). The activity that

132

Catherine Malabou

involves binding difference(s) 1 I (here, the activity of perceptioQ lig t) is double. On the. on� hand it means cont�mplation: it is only " , seemg. and thus by subJecting oneself to the action of the sensible, tbit vision is achieved. On the other hand it means action: it is in fact the same process of subjection, paradoxically, that the eye is f",,,,,,

�

..

and exercises iuclf: 'The eye . . . contemplat[esl the excitation that . binds. It produces itself or "draws itself" from what it c n rrpl... ; l (and from what it contracts and invests by contemplation) ' .

?: ��

The arrangement or composition of affects presupposes habit law of reversibility of energies, the reciprocal mutability of P"uiOior and activity. The continuity or repetition of a change modifies _ respect to that very cbange - the disposition of the being. What

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place in tenns of habit is a reduction in receptivity and an increase spontaneity. The progressive development of an internal .� : plains the progressive decrease in passivity. Actions that are

over and over reach a higher and higher level of sufficiency and being familiarizes itself with their circumstances. As a result appears at the same time as what disciplines the pack and what from affect. One is struck by the fact that, in the Philosophy oj Nature,

develops a problematic of habit that is very close to that of 0,1...... II

his work a conception of the organism as energized horde eKiltl conjunction with the logic of the process of the genus.

The organism is made of the same maun'als, the very

materials

inorganic, which are at one and the same time conlrfuttd. The living thing, as I shall establish by following Hegel's analyses, is reduction and a condensation of the elements of its milieu: water, nitrogen and carbon molecules. In the fll'St place habit signifies

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power of contraction. The result of such a contraction actuall.Y the habitus, that is to say the internal disposition and general co · tion of the organism. Hegel calls the dialectical relation - that identity and difference - between the inorganic components of

milieu and those of the organism, a 'theoretical' process. This

in turn to observe that every mechanism of adaptation of the thing is already itself a type of rheorei", according to the double sense that lenn developed by Aristotle, namely contemplation and exerci.e·

In fact Hegel also shows how the living organism contracts witbiD l itself the very things it derives from: inert maner, elements, chemica processes, etc., all the constitutive moments that are dialecticaU1 linked in the Philosophy oj Nature. In the 1805-6 text, Hegel writet: 'The general animal organism is the reconstruction of physical

�IC'"

ments in a single ensemble (zu EinzeinenJ. ' IZ The organism is a habltflS

W'ho's Afrad i of Hegelian Wolws?

133

respect of the internal disposition of its organs, a synthesis of the An ani­ he remember, is a synthesis of air, water, light, carbon, must we al .

111terogeneous multiplicity of elements constituting the body.

that is to say of particles of energy that assure the :tr�gen, etc., . the organism.

fluidi ty of . . . Contraction and the fonnatton of the habllus are closely hnked. In al, this relation already appears as subjectivity. In the e"cyclo­ the anim n of the Philosophy of Nature Hegel states that 'the animal versio a pedi

organism is the reduction of inorganic nature, sundered into separate moments, into the infinite unity of subjectivity' ('die Reduktion der

aussereinander ge/allenen unorganischen Natur in die u"endliche Einheit der Subjektiflittit') (PN 382). Failing an equivalent usage of the concept of contraction in Gennan,ll one finds in Hegel the more powerful

concept of 'idealization,' referring back to Deleuze's analysis of habit as contemplation, that is to say as a theoretical process. I shall quote from paragraph 350 of the Philosophy of Nature: 'The organic individ­

uality exists as subjeGtiflity in so far as the externality proper to shape is into members, and the organism in its process outwards dealized i

preserves inwardly the unity of the seIr (PN 351). Hegel's sense of idealization, referring as it does to the process of conservation and suppression, appears at the same time as a process of condensation and of synthesis, what he also calls an 'abstraction'. As we have seen, habit presumes that change can be preserved and leave a trace. The fact that the repetition of changes produces a difference in the subject experiencing it, means that change coming from the exterior is gradually transformed into a change coming from within the organism itself, involving the body in the becoming of its singularity. Impressions lose their force as they reproduce. Hegel n i sists on this point in paragraph 4 1 0 of the Philosophy ofMi"d. Under the effect of habit, he writes, 'the immediate feeling is negated and treated as indifferent. One gets inured against external sensations (frost, heat, weariness of the limbs, etc., sweet tastes, etc.) . . . There is indif­ ference towards the satisfaction: the desires and impulses are by the

habit of their satisfaction deadened. >14 Paradoxically, a decrease in

�ensitivity excites spontaneity. What to begin with was simply sub­ �cted to in a passive way, comes, through the action of repetition, to ,

n lttate movement and so to develop a new arrangement, a new organic becomin g. It needs to be understood that in Hegel, and this is what interests me ove all, this becomi"g underwrites the becoming that is inherent in e process of the genus. In limiting his thought concerning becoming "

�

134 to generic becoming, one loses sight of this most imponant namely that for him the latter is always lacking, always a failure.

;

Hegel the animal experiences the fundamental failure aCthe b.... ... of the animal. It is true, as we have seen, that the 'feeling of defect' revealed in the animal as a tendency to copulate. But we have also that the process of procreation (Forrpj1anzu"g) comes, in the analysis, simply to be that of the bad infinite (schlechu The animal

cannot

U,,,ndlidd!oiG

fully present the genus. It cannot set up its

larity as a universal and erase the disproportion between them. But only habit allows the animal to dispense with the bad

infini1e

copulation. Habit is what makes death possible by progressively

the affective possibilities whose creation it has ncvenheless .o,ntrib.. to. Bit by bit the body as habitus, as singular individual witbia.

energized horde, ossifies, tires out utterly. In paragraph

375

Philosophy ofNature Hegel writes that 'the individual [."inoal] only an abstract objeCliwty in which its activity has become d.:od. and ossified and the process of life has become the inertia of"h.zbi�1 in this way that the animal brings about its own destruction'

(PN

By means of its double and contradictory functions, yj'taiizU.. .

thanatological, habit in Hegel traces a path within the telos. It ens vitality to the extent that it contracts affects. It dulls it as it sharpens it. This double play of the slice of lifeL5 is Hegel as the dialectical logic of abbreviation. In his work not systematically and violently reduced to a unity, it itself, and abbreviation is the necessary wearing out that pack, holds it in check, suspends its infinite becoming.

Abbreviation - and not unity by subtraction - is the Sensl

dialectic and the law of thinking. What I have JUSt concerning the animal is upheld by the Hegelian

;���:;::

thought as acceleration, shortcutting, wearing down [usu,.,] of qualitative intensity of its object. Understanding proceeds

reduction that the Science of Logic describes as follows: 'The standing does indeed give them [the determinations of thought],

speak, a rigidity (Hartl) of being such as they do not possess in qualitative sphere and in the sphere of reflection; but at the same it breathes life (begeistet) into them and so sharpens them.'I' It them the form of 'points.' How should one understand Hegel's idity'? In several senses. 'The rigidity of being' could first of all to 'the consistence (Hait) of being, ' at the same time firmness, quenee and resistance (with respect to time, for example, greater the resistance of the phenomenon in general). This rigidity is dialectical emergence of a quality by means of a reductio" of the

Who's Afraid oj Hegelian Wolws�

135

i the detennina­ omenal qualifier. I t follows that there is a hardness n

that of the heart, since the effect produced by the �on of thought, can be infinitely less 'sensitive' than the affect produced by

concept nomenon. In fact, the subject is implicated to a much lesser the phe it comes into relation with the 'point' of determinateness, when ree deg when in contact with the practically innumerable trailS of the is it n tha

phenomenon. Paradoxically the pricking that the 'point' effects can leave the tissue insensitive. But on another level the point allows one to follow the phenomenon right to the end, to accomplish it in a sense. Of course that also means that it is put to death in its concept.

Hardness and pointing evoke at the same time the abrupt and the punctual [point], that is to say the �cision by which inversion occurs, that is to say the 'point it stans from'. What becomes of the 'breath of life' ,'animation') with respect to the hardness and pointing that refer

precisely to an absence of soul, if not of mind, even an absence of heart? This breath of life or inspiration is the very 'soul' of the relation

that is summed up in the concept. The totality of inspirations bound to the phenomenal are found to be at the same time abstract, reassem­

bled, related and unified by the concept. The Jormalizing reduction of speculative content, its logical writing, paradoxically confer on the

being that is deprived of its singularities a type of singularity par

chkeit). excellence that is its 'characteristic' (Eigentamli

Unity by abbreviation appears as the median way between unity by Subtraction and unity by exception. The points of being are not subtracted from themselves. They remain potentially rich in qualita­ tive multiplicity and intensity. None of them plays the role of the Anomal either, none borders the other. To put it another way, each is, if you wish, the anomaly of the other, its possibility and its incompossi­ bility. Its consequence and its flight [sa suite el sa Juite) .

Wolves travel in packs. They leave their footprints in the snow, their Wolf lines. But these imprints get smaller and smalier, they get abbre­ viated. Why do Deleuze and Guanari speak of 'small' holes without analysing this smallness, this logic of reduction that bas neither father outsider? Hegel answers back 'little wolves' to those who call him a 'big dog'. Without these Iinle wolves the pack. would not wear out Ise

nOr

fatigue] ; becoming, even though unpredictable, gets reversed, para­

dOXically, as constancy, hard-wearing presence, substance. The rhi­ k.,