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Towards
A
Schizogenealogy
Heretical
of
Materialism:
Bruno
Between
Spinoza,
and
Nietzsche, eleuze
other
and
Philosophical
Recluses
Eliot Albert
Submitted for PhD
University of Warwick
Department of Philosophy
10-v-99
? ao
'o
$y
rI -C-
437
9921
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ýý
*--I"C12
-
summary
The central problematic of this thesis is the formation of a philosophy
of creative
matter, a philosophical materialism, deriving from the work of Gilles Deleuze and
Fdlix Guattari, and based substantially upon an examination of the consequences
of their engagement with the philosophical tradition. I have supplemented the
writers used by Deleuze and Guattari with the resources of Giordano Bruno's
philosophy, as well as numerous examples and arguments from the natural
sciences. Bruno is particularly important here, in that in his work and life,
materialism is most tightly bound up with monism. Philosophical materialist
monism can be crystallised as a sustained meditation upon one problem: that of
the overcoming of dualism; and in this sense to speak of materialism is to speak of
the problem of hylomorphism. The hylomorphic model, formalised by Aristotle, and
operative in both philosophy and science, implies both a transcendent form that
dead
organises matter, and a
matter, passively moulded by the imposition of that
form. These ontological and epistemological assumptions have clear political and
theological ramifications, contributing to an abstract diagram of State power. The
for
this
critique of
model calls
a philosophy of active, self-organising matter- a
heretical,
thought, constitutionally
necessarily
materialist
opposed to all
transcendent powers.
I
In this chapter I produce a performative diagram of DeleuzeGuattari's
heterogenetic
the
understanding of
nature of the concept by examining those of
drive, assemblage, multiplicity.
The case used here is the linked complex of
problems associated with death and entropy. These issues are posed throughout as
means of indicating Deleuze and Guattari's challenge to dominant modes of
philosophising.
II
Here I offer an elaboration of Deleuze and Guattari's relationship with
cybernetics, through an outline of the work of Gilbert Simondon. The principal
developed
here,
concepts
are individuation and becoming. This is followed by
hylomorphism
extensive critiques of
and autopoiesis. The categories of minor or
nomad, and major or State, sciences, are introduced along with the related concepts
of following and reproducing.
This chapter
III
between
the oppositions
explores
consistency
and
immanence and transcendence. Here I read two of Deleuze and
organisation;
Guattari's key concepts- intensity and incorporeal transformationin terms of
Spinoza and Schelling respectively. Symbiosis and morphogenesis are examined as
examples of the minor sciences introduced in the previous chapter. The minor then
poses the questions of invention and pragmatics in philosophy.
IV
This chapter is devoted to a critique of Manuel De Landa's reading of
Deleuze and Guattari that aims to demonstrate, against his claims, the centrality
The
Marx
to
their
of
philosophy.
chapter also elaborates upon the concepts of
Geophilosophy, the machinic phylum, and machinic surplus value.
This chapter offers a set of elaborations upon the nature of the materialism
V
by
bringing
Bruno
into contact with that of
Giordano
the
thought
of
produced
Deleuze, thereby transforming both. Inverted vitalism is posed as a key marker of
Deleuze's genealogy. I show the identity of metaphysics and politics, and its role in
heresy.
an account of materialist
The final chapter consists of a critique of Kant's claim to being `Copernican',
VI
being
demonstrates
Bruno's
It
to
Copernicus'
the
claim
revolutionary.
extent
of
and
I
Nietzsche's
further
ideas
`perfect
to
the
revolution.
use
of
nihilist'
cosmological
invention and heresy advanced earlier, to end with a demonstration of philosophy's
hybrid,
being
becomings
dominant
its
in
ideas
to
as
opposed
a
of
ever present
permanent state of mourning.
AC
i
OWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
Mathematical
osovhv's
'h
Straitiacket
0
Faultline
I
3
Tendencies:
Entronic
Nomolo
ical Processes, Death,
DeleuzoGuattarian
Practice
10
Pulsional
Freud
13
Freud,
Death,
Twice
Final
States,
Oedipal
15
Processes
Eternal
20
Critique
22
Entropic
Multiplicity
26
Against
Manichaean
Prigogine's
Dualisms
27
Vers la Grande Identite
iI
33
Singularity
Preindividual
Entropic
29
Entropy
Philosophy/Philosophical
Ma tter. Tracking
Following
Tran sduction.
membranes).
36
Haecce ity (singularity!
44
Metast abiUty
47
Why Simondon?
Simondon and the Critique
Intensive Individuation
le Devenir sans Fin
51
61
Hylozoic Pragmatics
63
Nomadism and Life at the Limit
Simmondonwith Spinoza
67
The Vampire
ITI
ý
of Cybernetics:
75
of Thought
Org anisation
Stratific
as
Immanent
atio n:
Pragm
Materialism
atic
Del euzeGuattari's
Horizontal
72
and Vertical
Relations
in
M
81
84
Go and Chess
Transcendent
and
86
Excursus on Affective Bodies
Incorporeal Materialism and Schelling
91
Immanent
Spinozist
Immanence
96
Bodies
99
partout
100
Philosophical
Invention
103
Practice
106
Topological Thermodynamics. Simondon Again
Che al vero filosofo ogni terreno e patria
112
Immanent
Criteria,
117
N
V
S-chizoama ytic Materialism
I
Marxism:
and
1000 Years or
1000 Plate aus?
l
Unevenness
and Heterogeneity
The Internal Limit. Spinoza
127
Machinic
133
130
Critique
Elaborations
'Z.
between Bruno and Deleuze
Materialism
on
.s.
139
Chasm
140
Return of the Machinic Phylum
Expression-Immanence-Neoplatonism
142
Immanence, Conatus and Death by Degrees
A Rather Forbidden History
148
Bruno, Philosophy,
154
Eternal
163
Creation
Biology
156
filoso faa
160
Brunian
Antica
145
Horizon of all Metaphysics
Anima Mundi
160
Dead Matter
163
Political
Inorganic
VI
161
165
History
Crystal
the
of
The Shattering
Spheres: `rolling
from
the
i6
I'...
toward
centre
Bruno, Architect
176
of the Future
181
Kant's Secret Path
"The Philosopher's
Serenity
and Philosophy's
191
Schizogenealogv
a
CONCLUSION
Towards
APPENDIX
Georges Bataille,
Sadism' (Monday
186
Achievement"
12 May 1947)
`Evil in Platonism
and
197
REFERENCES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
267
1
ach
ledgements
I want to thank Keith A-P, for grasping this thesis as a virtual whole long
before I was able to, and for scrutinising
and commenting on every word
with amazing precision and seemingly infinite patience, joy and generosity,
for giving
me immense
support,
literally
I
without whom quite
encouragement
and confidence,
and
have
couldn't
written this, and certainly not
now,
helped
in so many other ways,
and my parents who
Arnaud
Desjardins,
Nick Land, Alphonso Lingis, and Caroline Warman
helped me to drag the Bataille translation, kicking and screaming, to life,
Matteo Mandarin,
Paul Bains, and Catherine Mary Dale read chapters,
beautiful
advice,
offered stringent critiques, and sometimes
for
like
Margarita.
This,
is
finally,
I
to
everything else,
and
owe everything,
her, because of her, and in a million tiny ways inspired by her.
10--v-99
04: 16: 25
introduction
Philosophy's Mathematical Strain ticket
it is of course clear why our academic thinkers
are not
dangerous;
out of
tradition
for their
thoughts
grow as peacefully
bore
its
tree
as any
ever
apples: they cause no alarm,
they remove nothing from its hinges; and of all their art and
be
Diogenes
there
said when someone
could
said what
aims
praised
in his presence:
a philosopher
`How can he be
for
long
been
he
has
a philosopher
so
considered great, since
has
DISTURBED
never yet
and
to be the epitaph
'
That,
indeed, ought
anybody?
of university
philosophy:
`it disturbed
nobody'.
(Nietzsche 1983 194)'
Most materialists,
do
have
to
they
though
wanted
may
even
away with all spiritual
entities, ended up positing an order of
things whose hierarchical
idealist.
They situated
it
out as specifically
relations mark
dead matter
at the summit
of a
facts,
that
diverse
hierarchy
perceiving
without
of
conventional
form
ideal
the
into
of
in this way they gave
an obsession with
to
form
than
that
what
other
any
was closer
matter, with a
God.
idea,
be.
Dead
the
and
pure
matter,
matter should
(Bataille 1 179)
I
If out of the multiplicitous,
heterogeneous
polyvocal and
corpus of
Deleuze and Guattari's thought one can isolate a defining characteristic
it would be the relentless
maps, of immanent
attempt to construct a series of dynamic
forces and constitutive
relations, of trackings of
lines of power and affect. The combination of these terms in Deleuze
Guattari's
and
thought indicates a revolt against philosophy as the
judgement
system of
and principles,
[
the
and
event, and not
logic
"a
an advocacy of
of sense
]a logic of predication and truth" (Deleuze
...
1969/90 151/111), so that in every area of concrete enquiry, one is
infinitely
confronted with an
immanent
growing set of
explorations set
in motion,
by drives. Slavoj Zizek notes that the
introduction
"radical
and constituted
drive
for
(by
Freud
Zizek),
of a concept of
guarantees
immanence"
1997 84). This connection
(Zizek
between
immanence and drive appears at numerous points, in several guises in
Deleuze's work related variously to Spinoza's conatus, Nietzsche's will
to power, Bruno's
remarkable
thinking
creative power of matter.
article
articulating
but not usually related--
expressed this commitment,
two thinkers,
Etienne Balibar,
in a
Deleuze's
to
central
Spinoza and Simondon-
has also
here
be
to
argued
common to all of the
figures in Deleuze's genealogy, not just the two to which Balibar applies
it. Commenting
on the underlying
both
in
immanence
perspective of
Leibniz and Spinoza, by which, Balibar writes "any individual
be
can
be
inner
its
the
activity, which can
own
effect of
singularised only under
`tendency'
(vis),
`energy'
`force'
(conatus),
some
some
conceived as some
(appetitus), or some `desire' (cupiditas) to realise all its possibilities"
(Balibar
be
drive
forms
different
The
this
32).
1993
will
concept of
of
continually
hold
it
in
to
throughout
this
one sense
work, and
returned
Philosophy's Mathematical
Straitjacket
2
x
together, it is dealt with at greatest length in the first chapter dealing
Deleuze's
with
complex, multifaceted
deployment of the concept of the
death drive; and in the fifth, which stages an engagement between
themes in Deleuze and in Giordano Bruno. The concept will have to
here
definition,
lapidary
indeed
Deleuze
pass
without
as with all of
and
Guattari's
it
is
concepts,
characterised
by its resistance
to such
definitions, it being constituted only through use, through its immanent
has
Hence
in
the
concept
specific concrete assemblages.
emplacement
for
it
It
definition,
is
this
that
tffect.
reason
only sense or productive
no
is insisted that philosophy is neither a closed system, a totality, nor is it
fitted
be
having
its
jigsaw
that
exactly
can
pieces
neat edges
puzzle,
a
together in one way and one way only, rather it is an assemblage of ill
fitting,
sometime overlapping
has
no
machine parts each of which
in
but
is
response
combined with other such parts only
single purpose,
to a particular
dictionary
Bataille's
the
In
attack on
a sense
question.
applies particularly
by
DeleuzeGuattari.
to
philosophy as practised
well
Bataille writes that "a dictionary
begins when it no longer gives the
has
C...
Philosophy
]
but
tasks
their
aim
no
other
meanings of words
than
fitting
straitjacket"
all that
into
exists
a straitjacket,
(Bataille I 217). This straitjacket,
Platonic forms, Kantian
a mathematical
composed variously of
is
"the
judgements
what
of god",
categories,
It
is
this
to
to
end
Guattari's
thought attempts
Deleuze and
relinquish.
initially
idea
introduces
the
Deleuze
that
of plasticity,
to
with regards
formation
the
of a superior empiricism,
the place of will to power within
[is
A
"plastic
principle
the reconciliation of principles with empiricism.
itself
that
it
with
than
changes
is
that]
conditions,
what
no wider
one
determines",
it
determines
itself
as
what
along
with
the conditioned and
Philosophy's Mathematical
Straitjacket
3
=
such the plasticity
is
index
of concepts
an
of their immanence, or
flatness, with that which they determine; a plastic concept "is never
determines
it
between
to
the
that
forces, it is
superior
ways
a relation
always plastic and changing" (Deleuze 1983 50).
Faultling
In the Logic of Sense Deleuze makes it clear that he considers
be
fundamental
faultline
"established
to
philosophy
organised around a
between those who linked sense to a new transcendence, a new avatar
heaven,
found
God
in
transformed
those
man
and a
and
who
sense
of
depth
his
and underground"
abyss, a newly excavated
and
(Deleuze
1969/90 98/71). The presentation of this critique is important, for it is
distant
cast as a
precursor
of a central
Deleuze
and
concept of
Guattari's final joint work, What is Philosophy?, that of the conceptual
bearer
`effect',
idea
Here
the
as a
of an
we are presented with
persona.
in
the
science and medicine,
examples of effects
of sense, we are offered
in which an "effect is [... ] designated by a proper name", or a disease
doctor
for
the
who elaborates
named
Philosophy?, this idea is returned
its symptoms.
In What is
to, to give form to the creative
"completely
demand
the
that
the
imperative of philosophy,
philosopher
Guattari
(Deleuze
image
thought"
the
and
of
changes
1990/94 63/65).
To return now to the critique, Deleuze goes on to give two, perhaps
his
former
the
side of
three, thinly veiled, examples of philosophers on
faultline,
Nietzsche
Kant,
is
first
writes:
the
whom
since
obviously
"transcendentalists
[... ] have been emancipated from the theologians:
by
they
Kant
on
them
may,
joy!
which
path
a
secret
showed
what
--
Philosophy's Mathematical
Straitjacket
4
their own initiative
and with all scientific respectability,
from now on
follow their `heart's desire' (Nietzsche 1969 III § 25). This Kant is, for
Deleuze, the perpetrator
of a new theology and a new humanism,
beneath
the "misty sky [... ] of Königsberg" (Deleuze 1969/90
pacing
98/71), and in whom "both God and the I
underwent
resurrection"
persona,
a practical
(Deleuze 1968/94 117/87). The second philosophical
author
of the second philosophical
effect, is perhaps
Heidegger. The latter will, in What is Philosophy? be
"strict
the
called
professor [ ... ] perhaps madder than he seemed", for whom "sense is
presented as Principle, Reservoir, Reserve, Origin [... ] said to be
fundamentally
forgotten
deeply
[...
]
or veiled
erased, diverted and
alienated" (Deleuze 1969/90 99/72). We might also hear in this the
Derrida,
sound of a
especially when written in 1969, for he had recently
published
the trilogy
of works,
Of Grammatology,
Writing
and
Difference, and Speech and Phenomena, all in 1967, in which he would
seek to place transcendental
principles sous rature (or under erasure).
The trenchant critique of Derrida and his rhetoric of presence continues
lines
two
this
to
the
along
and
passage
alone
should
serve
as
rebuke
many commentators
who seek to impose common purpose on the
respective positions of Derrida
Deleuzeand
first, to suggest that
beneath the "erasure and the veil, we are summoned to rediscover and
to restore meaning, in either a God which was not well understood, or in
fully
fathomed"
by
(Deleuze
99/72).
And
1969/90
not
a man
second,
how
Deleuze
figures
two
sketches
offering
of
who are of great
will read
importance to Derrida, that is Nietzsche and Freud, in ways that are
totally antithetical
to him. The form of the distancing from the current
both
for
is
Nietzsche
to
clear
and
emphatic,
and
reading
with regards
Philosophy's Mathematical
Straitjacket
5
Freud, Deleuze writes that "We do not seek in" Nietzsche, Freud,
a
prophet of reversal and transcendence, schemas for interpretation
(Deleuze
1969/90 99/72).
respectively
Whilst
most contemporary
philosophies
have adopted variants
of
Derrida's textualism, embodied in his declaration il n'y a pas de ýotvjt-*K,
texte, Deleuze
Guattari
and
have simultaneously
retrieved,
and
invented, a distinctive tradition of materialist thought, one that stakes
itself upon the following of "matter in movement, in flux, in variation,
matter as a conveyor of singularities
Guattari
and
1980/87 509/409). The specific details of this materialism
immanence
further
of
are
particular
and traits of expression" (Deleuze
worked out throughout
the thesis and in
in the treatment of the critique of hylomorphism in chapter
two. Whilst the Kantian critical revolution is conventionally taken to be
the foundation of modernity, an assumption that is severely criticised
here in the chapter dedicated. to Giordano Bruno, it is a modernity
harbouring the covert mission of a "renovated theology" (Deleuze 1983
93). This mission, clearly marked from its inception by a legislated
dissenters,
in
have
did
the
Spinozism,
for
and
of course
repugnance
immediately post-Kantian
them
the
was
of
of
most
notable
period, one
Friedrich von Schelling. One of the themes running through this thesis,
then, is the location of Deleuze and DeleuzeGuattari's
describe as a tradition
just heretical
heretical
materialism,
of
vis a vis mainstream,
I
in
what
work
is
that
tradition
not
a
or State philosophy,
but also
by
for
it
image
heretical with regards to the
of materialism constructed
that State philosophy. The characteristics
be
explicated continually,
will
Philosophy's mathematical
Straitjacket
heretical
tradition
this
of
it
I
to
summarise
and will not attempt
6
here. Needless to say it includes those names familiar from Deleuze's
but
is supplemented by two significant
own work,
Giordano
others:
Bruno and F. W. J. Schelling, two writers who have traditionally
been accorded a place within
neither
have
they been
nor
materialism,
discussed in relation to Deleuze2. The images assigned to these
writers,
that
Hermetic
of
representative
magician
(Yates
of anthropomorphic,
1996 7) respectively
will
1964), and "the
last
great
theosophy" (Zizek
prescientific
have to be dispelled,
and their
ground
dismantled.
Schelling's work represents a massive attempt to engage with both
Spinoza, and importantly
for this thesis, with Giordano Bruno (going so
far as to name one of his dialogues in the latter's honour, the 1802
Bruno, oder über das göttliche und naturliche Prinzip der Dinge), the
for
beyond
Kantianism,
is
this
the
to
grounds
engagement
need
move
and principally
Kantian
distance
to
the
that the
overcome
vast
with a need
between
had
man and the rest of the
system
opened up
lack
he
Schelling's
"the
Hence
the
sees as
of
cosmos.
critique of what
in what is clearly meant to be Kantianism,
humility",
requisite
highest
the
away with
insists upon "beginning
everything
bypassing
concepts and
the mute beginnings
straight
which
life
]
[...
this
of all
from
bedazzle
the
that
very start with
would rather
overhasty nature
beginnings
descend
to
the
than
of
natural
spiritual concepts and cliches
every
life"
manifestations
(Schelling
1997
148).
Spinozism
is taken, in this thesis, principally
in
its
various
for
a
as a sign
immanence,
hylozoism,
hence
thought
thought of active matter, or
of
a
the
principal
as
and
Philosophy's Mathematical
into
means of making man
an active part of
Straitjacket
7
=
nature. It is in the name of a Spinozism that Deleuze and Guattari
create a philosophy that is a positive discipline, in contradistinction to
its two dominant characterisations, it is
neither the Lockean under
labourer nor the Kantian prescriber of limitations;
has
it
as such
a
positive, creative task, governed by the recognition that "there is no
other truth than the creation of the New: creativity, emergence"
(Deleuze 1985/89 191/147), and by the Nietzschean demand to
make
(Nietzsche 1974 § 110). This positive task of
philosophy experimental
philosophy
is defined on occasion by Deleuze and Guattari
invention of concepts, or of multiplicities
continually
explicated
possessed
of two
throughout
dominant
as the
(this sense of invention will be
this thesis). These concepts are
characteristics:
immanence
and
transversality.
Deleuze and Guattari's approach resonates with Schelling's critique of
the top-down tendencies in philosophy that he rejected in favour of his
wonder
that:
determinations
"Even
the smallest
grain
of sand must
contain
itself
have
laid
that
within
we cannot exhaust until we
leading
(Schelling
it"
It
the
1997
to
122).
out
entire course of nature
up
is these
multiple,
DeleuzeGuattari's
segmentarities,
heterogeneous
becomings
field of study: "multiplicities,
lines of flight and intensities,
that
constitute
lines, strata and
machinic assemblages
bodies
their
types,
without organs and their construction
and
various
(Deleuze
Guattari
1980/8711/4).
and
selection"
and
What these objects hold in common is their character of being always
already multiple,
differential,
already
Philosophy's Mathematical
Straitjacket
they cannot be plotted as points
8
but rather must be diagrammed, with attention paid not to points but
to the lines between the points; and as Deleuze has said of these lines,
"lines aren't things running
lines
intersect"
several
between two points; points are where
(Deleuze 1990/95 222/161). In so far as both
Nietzsche and Spinoza are philosophers who affirm the one, and who
affirm the multiple within this one, this project is distinctly marked by
them. For both, to parallel the preference alluded to above, the most
amazing question is not that of the soul or spirit which "seems to me to
be actually a life-endangering,
life-caluminating,
life-denying principle"
(Nietzsche 1968 § 644) but that of the body. As Deleuze writes, of a
body "we will not define [it] by its form, nor by its organs and its
functions,
by
define
]
it
[...
nor as a substance or a subject
we will
longitude and latitude" (Deleuze 1988b 127; Spinoza 1985 E IIP13L1).
The former, longitude, indicates a mode of defining a body by "the set of
between
particles
relations of speed and slowness, of motion and rest,
that compose it from this point of view"; whilst, latitude is "the set of
The
together
body
taken
two
that
at each moment".
occupy a
affects
constitute
The
centrality
a map.
DeleuzoGuattarian
of cartographic
fundamental,
is
project
the
to
strategies
it
is,
to the
allied as
intensive working out of the concept of the machinic. The radicality of
this aspect of their work is too often understressed
(whilst
that of
I
The
that
distortion).
to
reading
Spinoza's is ignored or subject
massive
the
failure
to
here
the
subaltern
mark
properly
exposes
am proposing
heretical
the
path,
philosophical
materialist
tradition
the
currently
of
path, out
canonised
indicated by the way in which Deleuze and
by
Deleuze,
initiated
Spinoza
The
Spinoza.
Guattari mobilise
reading of
furthered
and
in the joint works with Guattari,
Philosophy's Mathematical
Straitjacket
indicates a massive
a
critique of ontology. The Spinoza offered here, though materialist, is far
from the determinism
attributed
to him by orthodox readings, his
matter is not the dead, brute force of the hylomorphic scheme, but the
intensive
site of
individuation.
Spinoza's construal
body,
the
of
of
materiality,
is not of a homogeneous mass but a concatenation
differential
forces, "distinguished from one another by reason of motion
of
and rest, speed and slowness, and not by means of substance" (Spinoza
1985 E IIP13L1).
This
thesis,
materialism,
a contribution
to a Schizogenealogy
heretical
of
history
to
the
attempts
of philosophy, scanning it
survey
for those moments
where philosophy
invents
new concepts that
how
We
itself.
the
that
tells
these
of
shall see
contest
story
philosophy
State
beholden
into
to
a
philosophy
events occur where matter erupts
transcendence and theology. In this way, political-philosophical
heresy
is shown to be ineluctably
and constitutively
not just to any materialism,
but to a materialism on the side of matter,
tied to materialism,
and
its
self-organisation,
and
a materialism
that refuses the image foisted
by
it
transcendence.
upon
As Bataille
in
the epigram above,
shows
has been idealist insofar as it "situated dead matter
most materialism
the
summit
at
of a conventional
hierarchy"
"gave
into
an
and so
has
1179).
Bataille
(Bataille
form
ideal
the
of matter"
with
obsession
here,
lecture
included
in
the
this
as an appendix
scheme
sketched
indicating
how, following
its theological framework,
has
philosophy
By
inert.
those
where
moments
reclaiming
evil
as
or
matter
evaluated
be
to
this scheme is challenged we gain new conceptual weapons
is
Kampfplatz
that
in
the
contemporary philosophy.
utilised
Philosophy's Mathematical
Straitjacket
,
lRter
Processes,
Tendencies:
Nomoloeical
Death.
ntronic
DeleuzoGuattariau P arctice
It is absurd to speak of a desire for death that would oppose
itself qualitatively to the desires for life. Death is not desired,
there is only death that desires, by virtue of the body without
life
immobile
is
there
that
the
also
motor,
and
or
organs
desires, by virtue of the working organs.
(Deleuze and Guattari 1974/83 393/329)
don't
death,
line
line
flight
into
turns
time
we
of
a
a
of
every
de
[instinct
death
like
instinct
drive
internal
the
invoke an
desire
into
but
that
play an
puts
again an assemblage of
mort],
objectively or extrinsically
definable machine.
(Deleuze and Parnet 1977 171)3
Artaud
expresses the multiplicity
fusionability
fusion,
of
as
Matter
there
are
the
where
plane of consistency,
zero,
forces,
elements,
substances,
essences,
as
gods;
principles
no
infinite
being
modalities
or
of
manners
productions;
remissions,
breaths,
Numbers.
intensities,
vibrations,
produced
as
(Deleuze and Guattari 1980/87 196/158)
de
[pulsion
drive
death
kind
mort].
We are not invoking any
of
desire,
drives
in
internal
only assemblages.
There are no
Desire is always assembled; it is what the assemblage
determines it to be.
(Deleuze and Guattari
1980/87 280/229)
11
The principal
concern of this chapter is to make a deviation through
DeleuzeGuattari's
work, not to engage in a direct exposition of their
dicta,
various
statements etc. upon the field of problems indexically
located under the heading,
transcendental
ethical
`death': an entity
treated either
as a
problem in the field of philosophy, or as an object of
bons
around which a series of
mots or ethical
speculation
statements circulate.
Rather, the concern is with the relationship
deathof
principally
between one construction
that found in Freud's 1920 account of the death
drive, or rather one swathe of problems in which death figures, as a
predicate of materiality-
figure
into
the
this
the
explosion
of
and
DeleuzoGuattarian
expansion of
development
within
novel
procedures, understood as an entirely
a certain philosophical
materialism.
figure of death then is demonstrated to be an extraordinarily
for
invention
the
resource
The
productive
that
the
mark out
problems
specific
of
DeleuzeGuattari's philosophical territory.
Ever since its Kantian fixing-
fixing
Husserlian
its
or more precisely
to consciousness
as an appearance
factas
form
the
the
of
as
humanist
its
death
has
role within
transcendental question,
played out
This
figure
the
the
noumenalisation
noumenal.
of
philosophy as
is the
deep conceptual reason why death has been relegated to the realm of
However,
ethics.
Blanchot,
traditionally
in emphasising
Deleuze
the double aspect of death, after
has made those aspects of death that
have
been considered `noumenal' to be the source of a profound
Foucault
has
death;
`event'
pointed
the
as
and
shown,
of
meditation on
Processes
Nomological
Tendencies:
Entropic
12
death
to be the very form of the
out,
remain
within
the framework
event (see Foucault 1977 173). To
of the Neo-Kantian
liberalism
that
dominates both wings of contemporary
philosophy, that is to say the
phenomenological or deconstructive, and the analytic, is to continue
mistaking death for a personal limit. This is to continue treating death
as an empirical fact discussed within
discourse
distinguished,
a
if by
nothing else, than by its pieties and by the obfuscation of what can only
be described as a reconfigured religiosity. To
evade this tradition means
to investigate the resources of materialism: roughly a line stretched
out-
has
been
as
said-
between Bruno, Spinoza, a non-Oedipal Freud,
and the work of DeleuzeGuattari.
Finally, this chapter is, in part intended as a performative illustration
heterogenetic
the
immanent
of
and
DeleuzeGuattari's
character
of the concept in
Deleuze
work.
speaks of the assemblage as the
bringing into relationship
disparate
of
singularities,
of elements from
heterogeneous series Here the principal concepts are intensity, drive,
multiplicity,
far
from
being
imposed,
and
an attempt is made to extract
them from the material examined. In this case the line followed is that
death
figuring
its
of
and
in a range of disciplines from Freud's non-
Oedipal, or pulsional work, to the development of thermodynamics from
linear
a
entropic narrative
Heat
in
the
promising an apocalypse given
Death of the universe, to its development into an account of infinite
productive complexity.
Entropic Tendencies: Nomological Processes
13
Pulsion&d Freud, Oedipal Freud
Deleuze, and DeleuzeGuattari's
various treatments
of the concept of
the death drive constitute a complex, multi-dimensional
heterogeneous
terrain.
Notionally
diagram of a
the concept is constructed
and
deployed within the field of psychoanalysis. Here, its
position in a series
different
disciplines
is examined, and its place amongst the governing
of
figures of Deleuze and Guattari's construction
libidinal
of
or energetic
materialism
is explicated. As a point of scholarly rectitude it might also
be worth noting that the specific figure of the drive in Deleuze has
an
his
in
treatment of the Spinozist conatus, a doctrine which if
ur-source
it mobilises nothing else in DeleuzoGuattarian
thinking
thinking, mobilises the
of the Body without Organs. The BwO in the twin volumes of
Capitalism and Schizophrenia is always associated with Spinoza, it is
for
not
nothing that the Ethics is named as the "great book of the BwO"
(Deleuze and Guattari
1980/87 190/153); it is further
invoked as a
humanist,
therapeutic or interpretative
weapon against any
death drive. This is meant in the fashion of Logic of Sense
the principal
critique
Freud
in
Anti-Oedipusthe
of
use of the
is
this
and
--
that what is
he
Freud
be
is
human
in
depth
"an
that
sought
not
explorer of
and
but
discover
"the
prodigious
rather
originary sense"
of the machinery of
the unconscious" (Deleuze 1969/90 100/72). Hence for DeleuzeGuattari
it is always a question of sense and not meaning, of production and not
factory
the
theatre
the
than
the
rather
of
unconscious
representation,
(Deleuze
latter
Guattari
31/24).
This
1974/83
and
of representation
disastrous shift, marking the replacement of the pulsional, materialist
Freud, with "a new brand of idealism" is dated to the introduction of
Entropic Tendencies: Nomologi. cal Processes
14
Oedipus, and as the title of Deleuze and Guattari's
first book makes
abundantly clear: it is a polemic Anti, against, Oedipus.
The death drive predates Oedipus. However, the Manichean struggle
between Eros and Thanatos, will not be seen as a means of deriving a
master
for
schema
psychodramas,
complexity
of a thinking
but will
be placed within
force,
intensity
tendency,
of
the
and matter.
Freud's `Beyond the Pleasure Principle'
"he
1920,
engaged
of
where
directlymost
in specifically philosophical
how
and
penetratingly-
being
(Deleuze
1989
111),
the locus classicus of the
as well as
reflection"
death drive occupies a privileged
discourse
of the
Consequently,
subject,
position
in the thermodynamic
in the materialist
it has a critical
energetic
Freud.
DeleuzeGuattari's
in
to
role
play
production.
It is free action, however, which by its essence unleashes
the power of repetition
force
that
multiplies
a
as machinic
its effect and pursues an infinite
Traits
[...
]
of
movement
it
describing
a smooth space and connecting with
expression
a matter-flow
thus should not be confused with striae that
that
form
it
grids
expression
of
a
make
and
space
convert
and organises
matter
(Deleuze
Guattari
and
1980/87
622/498)
To examine the multiple
drive
death
the
the
series of
and
status of
it
in
Deleuze's
in
it
appears
as
particular
that
work,
up
opens
questions
back
to
Principle',
Pleasure
take
`Beyond
the
some of
will
us
in Freud's
Processes
Nomoiogical
Tendencies:
Entropic
15
a
Deleuze's earliest texts, principally
Coldness and Cruelty, The Logic of
Sense, and Difference and Repetition, all of which contain lengthy and
detailed treatments
We
follow
to
this
this
will also attempt
of
area.
thread in the multiple tracks it carves through the collaborative twin
Capitalism
Schizophrenia.
volumes of
and
The death drive constitutes a paradigmatic
diagram-
understood as
"the presentation of pure relations between forces or the transmission
of' singularities
describe
(Deleuze
1988a 82)4-
DeleuzeGuattari
of what
"the
images
Noology,
thought,
of
study
of
as
historicity"
(Deleuze and Guattari
and their
1980/87 466/376). How, it is asked,
does the death drive connect with "the forces of the outside" (Deleuze
is
kind
What
Guattari
467/377)?
1980/87
mobilised
of war machine
and
by putting the death drive in to the centre of the DeleuzoGuattarian
project?
Death. Twice
disciplinary
temptations
in
and
First a warning:
spite of metaphorical
beware
literature,
`critical'
in
of
the
must
too
we
common
pressures, all
in
Principle'
Pleasure
`Beyond
in
the
for
Freud's
understanding
settling
inanimate
"return
to
flattened
to
drive
is
death
matter"
the
a
which
he
that
important
(Deleuze 1968/94 137/104). Deleuze thinks this so
death
of
picture
a
accept
not
the
must
we
elsewhere:
warning
repeats
increasing
"tendency
towards
is
it
in
drives
read
as
a
the
which
and of
333/259).
(Deleuze
1968/94
inanimate
to
matter"
return
a
or
entropy
the
Spinoza's
to
of
conatus writes
Freud, coming only superficially close
Processes
Nomological
Tendencies:
Entropic
ia
"universal
living
endeavour of all
substance-
namely to return to the
quiescence of the inorganic world" (Freud 1920 267). As Deleuze makes
clear, the problem
"inseparable
material
with
the Freudian
from the positing
bare
and
repetition
model is that
of an ultimate
it remains
term, the model of a
and the conflictual dualism between life
death"
(Deleuze 1968/94 137/104). Not least
and
of the problems with
this model is its completely inadequate dualist understanding of both
life and death. Against the Freudian model
we must insist that the
difference between "death as an empirical event
death
and
as an
`instinct' or transcendental instance" (Deleuze 1968/94 149ff/112fi) be
maintained,
hence, contra Freud who restricts his model of death to a
purely physical entropic model, Deleuze seeks to add a noncorporeal
account, an account of death as an event. Whereas Freud restricts
death to "the return of the living to inanimate
matter" giving death
"only an extrinsic, scientific and objective definition" (Deleuze 1968/94
147/111), and thus refuses death any other dimension. Deleuze seeks to
dimension
death
by
distinction,
following
this
to
restore
other
a
making
Blanchot, between a `personal' and an `impersonal' death. This first is
the one to which Freud is restricted; Deleuze, on the other hand, seeks
to pursue the second, impersonal death, "the other face, or aspect of
death" which "refers to the state of free differences when they are no
longer subject to the form imposed upon them by an I or ego, when they
less
that
than
of
assume a shape which excludes my own coherence no
identity
any
whatsoever"
(Deleuze
1968/94 149/113). Curiously,
Freud's essay contains the germ of such an account, but leaves it
separate and unintegrated.
Herein lies the problem, for Freud does not
integrate the account of the death drive, the account of cosmic entropic
Entropic Tendencies: Nomological Processes
17
linear
time (chronos),
introduction,
with
the central
section of the essay: the
in the account of the fort-da game, of repetition,
the
local
(aion),
time
the time of complexity and of the
account of
cyclic
Repetition
"as conceived by Freud's genius is in and of
eternal return.
itself a synthesis of time-
`transcendental'
a
synthesis. It is at once
before,
during
repetition of
and after, that is to say it is a constitution in
time of the past, the present and even the future" (Deleuze 1989115).
Deleuze's account of death as event is perhaps best summed up in his
last published piece, the moving `L'immanence: une vie... ', a Lucretian
dismissal of the fear of death (Lucretius
1947 3 830). Deleuze writes
that "Between life and death, there is a moment which is no longer just
that of a life playing with death. An individual
life gives way to a life
impersonal
yet nevertheless singular, extricates a pure event
which,
from the vicissitudes of the interior and exterior life, that is to say from
the subjectivity
and objectivity
from which it comes [... ] It is a
haecceity, which is no longer individuation,
immanence"
pure
but singularisation:
life
a
of
(Deleuze 1995 5). The achievement of Deleuze's
it
is
drive
to
death
that
Freud's
the
able
such
account of
reworking of
it
from
death
incorporate a
making
on the side of repetition, apart
demonstrate
is
to
thermodynamics,
the
new non-linear
with
consistent
Freud's
the
depth
of
recognition
essaytruly
the
of
great philosophical
the synthesis
in
time
repetition.
given
of
It also enables us to
that
basis
question
a
philosophical
materialist
a
renewed
on
reconsider,
Derridean
in
terms
been
has
and
a
of
only
to
considered
now
up
Freud
74)
1995
(Guattari
as a reader of
of
Lacanian `petrification'
iterative
is
That
the
afterwork,
of
question
texts.
Processes
Nomological
Entropie Tendencies:
Nachträglichkeit.
In
18
Deleuze this question is explicitly posed in opposition to the readings of
Freud defended by Derrida and Lacan. Deleuze's major discussion of the
"the
thus:
question opens
question of whether psychic experience is
like
language",
famous
Lacan's
in
formulation, "or even
as
structured
a
whether
the physical
be
book"
(Deleuze
world may
regarded as a
1968/94 160/122), as in Derrida's
all consuming
textualismb.
Deleuze, both of these questions are subject to the tyranny
signifier
and the pursuit
of an originary
For
of the
both
be
presence, and
can
Nietzsche.
between
from
As
Freud
and
critiqued
a position suspended
have
throughout
seen
see
and as we shall
we
incorporeal
materialism
is predicated
this thesis, Deleuze's
difference-in-itself,
upon a
"ontogenesis
[the
Gilbert
Simondon's
that
to
process
principle
according
of individuation,
EA] becomes the point of departure of philosophical
thought; it really will be first philosophy", and so contrary to Levinas'
"ontogenesis
in
first
is
this
that
perspective
philosophy;
ethics
claim
(Simondon
precedes ontology"
1989 163). This is the ground for a
to
being
there
which we can
of
plenitude
any original ground
rejection of
heading,
that
truth
to
we
telos
a
or equally of
which we are
return or a
by
the
Deleuze's
Rather,
discovers.
eternal return,
world governed
can
"excludes
"monster
is
`law'
of energy"
the groundless
a
of a world which
the assignation of an originary
derived
there
though
were a
as
and a
]
difference
[...
the
is
because
the
first and second occurrence,
sole origin
absence of any assignable origin-
in other words, the assignation of
difference as the origin" (Deleuze 1968/94164/125).
DriveDeath
the
Nonetheless, an association of
dragging
force
a
dissolution
death,
Spinozist
towards
and
bodies (in the wide
sense)
Processes
Nomological
Tendencies:
Entropic
19
dissipation in an undifferentiated
energetic soup-- with the irreversible
tendency of the Second Law of Thermodynamics
DeleuzeGuattari
is a necessity, for
insist that the unconscious belongs to the realm of
body
"the
physics
without organs and its intensities are not metaphors,
but matter itself" (Deleuze and Guattari
the
and
complex,
thermodynamics
now
1974/83 336/283). However,
complexified,
for
allows
a stratification
structure
of nonlinear
dimension
the
of
of time, we
local
fort-da
(the
integrate
the
game) with
can
repetitive cycles
cycle of
The
(Thanatos).
towards
maximal entropy
an exponential movement
distinction
critical
is
beneath
just
this
the
enquiry
surface of
running
that between telos (and its contemporary definition as teleonomy) and
tendency. The stating of this distinction here has the specific purpose of
framework
from the
disengaging
thermodynamic
acceptance of a
millenialist
the
(apocalypsis)
the
truth
for
of
of
a revelation
craving
32)
(Wiener
1950
that
Ragnarök
Wiener's
we
as
were,
universal
world,
be
This
to
it
in
the
needs
nineteenth century.
shall see, attendant upon
by
First,
distinct
in
two
albeit
seeking,
ways.
and
strongly
more
stated
by,
investigate
the
indirectly,
to answer, and also to
role played
in
"interested
the
Nietzsche
linked
to
Deleuze's
was
why
questions as
find
in
he
to
it
that
"discover
his
to
time"
sought
was
what
of
energetics
the science of intensive
quantities"
(Deleuze 1968/94 313/243)? And
by
in
the
Nietzsche
"what
discover
context of
noble"
further to
means
that
language
"the
noble
his borrowing
of energy physics and call[ing]
transforming
is
of
capable
energy which
Investigating
55)?
42
1983
and
also
by
done
be
providing
only
Nietzschean
itself" (Deleuze 1968/94 60/41,
and answering these questions can
a philosophical
Deleuzian
and
Processes
Noi
Tendencies:
ological
Entropic
perspective,
from
a
account, culled
in which
elements
of
20
thermodynamics
deployed
in a resolutely anti-teleological fashion,
are
analyses of such sort being rejected as indissolubly theological. Second,
scientifically,
with an examination
thermodynamics,
principally
of more recent interpretations
of
Prigogine's nonlinear refinements which
beyond
it
places
mechanistic
interpretations,
such that
entropy
becomes an index of complexity.
Final States, Eternal
Philosophical
Processes
critiques
of mechanism
however, long predate the
being
found
from
Bruno
in
tradition
to
threaded
scientific, principally
a
Schelling,
thence to Nietzsche and Deleuze. As Nietzsche, echoing
Schelling almost verbatim who is in turn echoing Bruno, repeatedly
final
"if
the
that
the
aimed
a
state,
state
motion
at
stresses,
of
world
1
been
[...
have
that
the
as
a
movement
circular
world
reached
would
has already repeated itself infinitely
infinitum"
in
its
and
game
plays
often
(Nietzsche 1968 § 708,1066). Theses positing a beginning or
Day
Big
Bang,
Genesis,
be
the
it
the
of
or a
account of
end, whether
Judgement, or the Heat Death of the universe are born from the same
theological source'. As noted, Nietzsche's critique of any thesis that
(ie.
time
the
reversibility),
of mechanism
same
posits an end, at
is an
final
"Has
in
Schelling's,
the
goal?
a
creation
question
couched
of
echo
has
"
Schelling
Elsewhere
it
And if so, why was not reached at once?
a
have
few
"If,
supposed sages
as a
stunning rejection of mechanism:
claimed,
the world
that
ran
and
effects
were a chain of causes
backward and forward to infinity,
future.
past nor
then there would in truth be neither
But this nonsensical
Processes
Nomological
Tendencies:
Entropic
thought
should rightly
have
21
vanished along with the mechanistic system to which alone it belongs"
(Schelling 1997 120). Indeed Spinoza is quite clear in the astonishing
Appendix to the first part of the Ethics
Appendix
deserves
that
to
an
--be recognised as the true precursor to the critique
theological
of ideology and
"asylum
ignorance",
the
and of the powerunreason,
of
knowledge complex-
that "not many words will be required to show
that Nature has no end set before it, and that all final causes are
This
but
human
fictions"
EI
(Spinoza
1985
part of
appendix).
nothing
Spinozism is important in the way in which it connects to a key thread
in the materialism adhered to, and developed by, DeleuzeGuattari. That
is the critique
symptom
of mechanist
determinist
or
for
is
of this
DeleuzeGuattari's
clockwork,
the
complete
absence
in
French
Eighteenth
to
century
work of any reference
Holbach)
(La Mettrie,
materialism
Stalinism,
example
materialism,
a telling
the zenith
is
perhaps, along with
which
determinism,
of such a
a materialism
of
This
is
dead
the
materialism
matter.
of a
and critically
following
terms:
in
Bataille
the
have
precise
that, as we
castigates
seen,
Most materialists,
have
to
they
though
wanted
may
even
do away with all spiritual
entities, ended up positing an
hierarchical
things
whose
order of
specifically
summit
without
idealist.
They situated
of a conventional
perceiving
it
out as
relations mark
dead matter
at the
diverse
of
facts,
hierarchy
that in this way they gave into an
form
that
form
ideal
the
a
with
matter,
of
with
obsession
be.
Dead
to
than
matter
should
what
other
any
was closer
God
I
(Bataille
179)
idea,
the
and
pure
matter,
Processes
Nomological
Entropic Tendencies:
22
Developing
a position
Guattari's
diagramming
method
with
out of their
approach attempts
to the
regard
varied resources, Deleuze and
selection
developments understood as intensity
to produce a rigorous
of problems:
tendential
shifts (becoming, process). The
here
is that produced, in Michel Serres' words, by "the theoretical
axis
reconciliation
between information
theory and thermodynamics
[that]
favours and advocates the practical reconciliation between those funds
knowledge
of
which exploited signs and those which exploited energy
displacements"
(Serres
1977/82 270/81). The importance
of this
synthesis is to allow for the introduction of what I have described above
fluidity
into the way in which we are able to
as a massive plasticity, or
manipulate
concepts.
DeleuzeGuattari
The
importance
Serres'
of
work
for
is inestimable, implicated as it is on the base level of
the series of distinctions clustered around the `royal', the `nomad' or the
`minor' (Deleuze and Guattari
1980/87 446/361), and more specifically
for their consistent engagement with a series of questions derived from
the manifold deployment of thermodynamics.
for the introduction
inquiries
of a series of
This deployment allows
irreversibility,
to
related
probability, population, complexity.
Prigoirine's
Citiaue
"The cosmologists had predicted an eventual heat-death for
the universe
(something
like Limbo: form and motion
heat-energy
identical
abolished,
meteorologists,
in
it);
the
at every point
day-to-day, staved it off by contradicting
Processes
Nomological
Tendencies:
Entropic
with a reassuring array of varied temperatures" (Pynchon
19875)
The possibility of a thermodynamics
scenario of its nineteenth
work
of the physicist
breakthrough
came
thermodynamics,
longer
limited to the end-game
no
century incarnation
Ilya
Prigogine
from
his
was opened up by the
in the 1960 s. Prigogine's
development
of a non-linear
his
and
research on `dissipative structures'
which
resulted in an account of the production of order out of chaos in open
systems far from equilibrium:
self-organisation.
His innovation,
well
by
Capra,
summed up
was to move beyond the framework of classical
thermodynamics
friction,
in which "the dissipation of energy in heat transfer,
like
the
and
was always associated with waste. Prigogine's
concept of a dissipative structure introduced a radical change in this
by
in
that
view
showing
open systems dissipation becomes a source of
order" (Capra 1996 88-9). In this way, Prigogine's work appears as the
physical
confirmation
of the concept of excess that Bataille
had
his
in
audaciously elaborated
work on the general solar economy in the
Accursed Share. Prigogine, in a reversal of the classical evaluation,
how
shows
prodigious
(similarly,
is
excess
productive,
rather
than wasteful
finding
important
biology
is
`germs',
that
an
of symbiogenetic
be
bringers
just
death
disease
but
should not
understood as
of
and
as
bearers of vivifying
It
is
the metaphysically governed, and
complexity.
politically expedient, model of the self-contained organism adequating to
Platonic perfection that has prevented this from becoming clear for
leap
The
long).
begin
to
to understand the
epistemic
required
quite so
long observed but numinous
Entropic Tendencies: Nomological Processes
natural
patterns
now associated with
-
complexity, was an acceptance of Bataille's intuition,
revolutionary
elaborated into a
attempt to explain the "general problems that are linked
to the movement of energy on the globe" (Bataille I 27/20). Prigogine
had discovered that the flows of matter and energy that pass through
certain physicochemical systems and "keep them far from equilibrium
can nourish phenomena of spontaneous self-organisation,
symmetry,
evolutions
toward a growing complexity
ruptures of
diversity"
and
(Stengers 1997c 38). Here is how Prigogine, in words written with his
collaborator
Isabelle Stengers, summed up the contribution
by
made
his elaboration of dissipative structures to the philosophy and science
of matter:
In
far-from-equilibrium
transformations
conditions
have
we may
from disorder, from thermal chaos, into
dynamic
New
order.
states of matter may originate, states
the interaction
that reflect
surroundings.
its
of a given system with
We have called
these new structures
dissipative structures to emphasise the constructive role of
dissipative
formation.
in
their
processes
(Prigogine
and
Stengers 1984 12)
Prigogine's
is
the
then,
reintroduction
achievement,
into physics, of
time, and more specifically, the defence of the essentially Bergsonian
thesis of a multiplicity
lived
durations,
"a
radical multiplicity
of
(Deleuze 1991 78)8. It is the introduction
of time"
of a synthesis capable of
both
different
time,
holding
together
rhythms
reversible
of
coherently
irreversible.
and
The recognition of the "irreversible time of evolutions
Processes
Nomological
Tendencies:
Entropic
toward equilibrium,
time of structures
the rhythmic
whose pulse is
nourished
by the world they are part of, the bifurcating
evolutions
by
instability
generated
time of
[... ] and even microscopic time"
(Stengers 1997c 41). This is not far enough, to stop here would be a
simpleminded
Guattari
pluralism;
have
further
to
we
go
to make "PLURALISM
MONISM"
=
Deleuze
with
and
(Deleuze and Guattari
1980/87 31/20); this formula is the key used by DeleuzeGuattari
dominates
theology,
that
as
enemy"
necessary
dissolve the "entirely
well
to
and transcendental
as metaphysical
Man.ichaean dualism (Deleuze and Guattari
philosophies
alike:
1980/87 23/14). It is the
in
to
the
surmount
attempt
guide
the irrevocable split in the world
by
dualism
that
motivates
posited
is
it
their
philosophy, and
all of
line
bastard
found
the
formula
throughout
that
of
are
variants of this
philosophy
with
which
they
identify
themselves:
from Bruno's
Bruno
to
the
holding
the
together
the
multiple;
one and
of
complicatio,
Spinoza's
in
differentiation
Spinoza's
of one matter, given
modal
and
for
is
"mutation
Bruno's
body
another
definition of a
not
striving
and
intensive
89);
to
1998
being"
(Bruno
for
but
being,
another mode of
in
"repetition
that
is
difference. Finally, this formula
opened out such
basis
the
the
in
of
same on
conceiving
the eternal return [... ] consists
Here,
this
60/41).
1968/94
(Deleuze
different"
unity of multiplicity
the
the
that
time,
is
plurality
such
at
aimed
and unity
of times, posited
in
lived
the
"livable
single
a
of
perspective
is
or
only possible,
above,
in
local
folds
in
time,
a
they
spirals
199181),
a
single
(Deleuze
are
time"
demonstrations
river,
truth,
but a truth
the
truth
the
relative, not of a relativity
of
of
the
relative
of
Guattari
Deleuze
and
191/147 and
Processes
Nomological
En,tropic Tendencies:
of
(See Deleuze 1993 20,1985/89
1991/94 55/54,123/130;
and the
26
of this
expansion
issue in chapter
below).
Perhaps the best
six
exposition of this phenomenally complex attempt to hold together the
times of difference and of repetition,
irreversibility
of increasing complexity, and of
is Massumi's: "there are many time lines, as many as
there are universes that will have been, even more, as many as the
have
been born and died in those worlds [... ] this
that
phenomena
will
amounts to a scientifically
derived version of Nietzsche's theory of the
difference"
(Massumi 1992 168).
eternal return of
Entropic
The
Muitinlicit
death
drive,
deterritorialised,
in
a sense is already
transversal.
plasticised,
It can be classified
already
according
to
Guattari's schema proposed in his `Machinic Propositions' as belonging
to the first
`Flux
the
of
Deterritorialisation',
Propositions',
that
is as a `Positive
"basic
those
component[s] of propositions of
one of
intensive flux (line of escape and line of abolition)" (Guattari 1977 357),
it introduces
a thought
Deleuze
suggests,
of entropy which moves,
beyond the philosophical economy of truth and judgement and towards
instinct
"not
it
is
the
among others,
merely one
event;
one of sense and
but the crack itself around which all of the instincts
(Deleuze 1969/90 431/326). The history
disciplinary
various
congregate"
law
its
in
the
entropy
of
deployments displays characteristics embodied in
but
"not
is
distinction,
it
a
Guattari's critical
a surplus value of encoding
(Guattari
trans-encoding"
1977 333), that is to say, it is transversal. It
has
itself
the
taken
that
of
vector
"a
specialised
upon
is
component
deterritorialisation.
In effect, what holds an assemblage together is not
Processes
Nomological
Tendencies:
Entropic
27
the play of framing
forms
linear
or
causalities
its most deterritorialised
potentially,
deterritorialisation"
but, actually
component, a cutting
(Deleuze and Guattari
or
edge of
1980/87 415/336). When
engaging with the death drive, with the multiple disciplinary structures
and thought-events
in which it is implicated,
and with the multiple
series in which it is engaged in Deleuze and Guattari's thought, we will
have to be attentive to the writing procedures by which they operate.
By this, an evolutionary
drawing of the passage of the death drive
through a series of texts made from an external position of judgement
be
will
rendered impossible, rather we will have to diagram the lines
along which
this particular
heterogeneous [by] jumping
rhizomic
operates "in the
from one already differentiated
another"
(Deleuze and Guattari
always
be immanent,
DeleuzoGuattarian
structure
that
line to
1980/87 17/10). The method must
is to say that
critique militates
the
operation
of
by
transcendence
against
a
base
level).
(intensive
production at
process of self-organisation
Against
Manichaean
Dualisms
Subordinate,
death
drive
is
the
the
to
this
recasting of
and adjacent,
recognition,
literature,
in
the
too
secondary
often overlooked
all
that
Guattari
Oedipus"
(Deleuze
imperialism
"analytic
from
the
and
of
apart
1974/83 30/23), the major attractor of DeleuzeGuattari's
Freudian
is
the
maintenance
corpus
in
the
animus
First
dualism.
`The
Indeed,
of
Positive Task of Schizoanalysis'
(Deleuze and Guattari
1974/83 385-
406/322-39) is almost entirely
taken up by a critique
Freudian
of
dualism,
the
proposal of a materialist
and
Processes
Nom.
ological
Entropic Tendencies:
psychiatry
based on a
28
philosophy of machinic intensity, the discovery of a "new energetic
conversion [... ] the third kind of synthesis, the synthesis of conjunction"
(Deleuze and Guattari
1974/83 395/330). In accord with Karl Krauss'
notion that "psychoanalysis is that illness of which it believes itself to
be the cure", the argument of Anti-Oedipus is that Oedipalisation
is
indeed an incurable disease and one only propagated by its supposed
cure. That is to say from a certain, dominant, way of understanding
Freudian thought, a path that is unavowedly semiological, welded as it
is onto the foundations of the primordiality
the machinations
of the phenomenologically
Guattari
presence.
Freudianism
linguistic
the
of
signifier, and
economically
inspired
discourse of
the evolution
summarises
of
being
from
"the seething richness and disquieting
as
atheism of its origins" to a structuralism
"recentred on the analysis of
the self, its adaptation to society, and its conformity with a signifying
order" (Guattari
1995 10), its reterritorialisation
by
a priesthood.
system operated
into an overcoding
This recentring
is one that in
DeleuzeGuattari's
demonstrates
"signifiance
the
symptoms of
words
interpretosis"
and
the "two diseases of the earth or the skin, in other
humankind's
words,
fundamental
Guattari
(Deleuze
and
neurosis"
1980/87 144/114). Even if Oedipus is a dead end there is still much to
be gained in removing dualism from the Viennese body, it is this task
that DeleuzeGuattari
singular.
is
in
that
assiduous, radical and
a way
set about
How is this operation to be effected? Deleuze argues that
Freud can be taken beyond crippling
dualism:
by suggesting that
is a "difference
underlying
qualitative
difference
amplitude
difference
a
time-scale"
a
on
in rhythm
and
(Deleuze 1989 115). The
from
is
dualism
the
the
then
always
attacked
perspective
of
question of
Processes
Nomological
Entropic Tendencies:
a
problematic
intensity"
of intensity,
(Guattari
"ontological
the
proposal of a concept of
and
1995 29), set up by the resonances produced
between a Spinozist and a Nietzschean
relinquish
framework,
in which "if we
the soul, the `subject' in general disappears. One acquires
degrees of being, one loses that which has being" (Nietzsche 1968 §
485). With this elimination
of any adherence to the atomic subject
Nietzsche reaches the point of seeing the "subject as multiplicity".
Vers la Grande Identity
As has been suggested, much of Deleuze's work, both with and without
Guattari,
is geared towards the derivation
is
formula,
that
of a vital
(Deleuze and Guattari
1980/87 31/20),
"PLURALISM
MONISM"
=
philosophically
this is mapped out within the space of the concept of
fifth
for
the
this
The
chapter
of
intensity.
are
coordinates
early
crucial
in
Sensible',
Synthesis
the
`Asymmetrical
Difference and Repetition,
of
how
a
the
Deleuze
produce
one
might
of
problem
addresses
which
transcendental
principle
from energy; and the second chapter of
These
two
Reactive'.
`Active
Philosophy,
chapters
Nietzsche and
and
to
this
that
by
threads
central
are
together
of
tied
number
a
are
flight
line
of
discussion. i) The strong identification of a subterranean
has
Deleuze
to
which
between Nietzsche and Spinoza, the constitution,
"great
leads9,
the
history
in
of
his
the
philosophy
of
work
said all of
here
the
1988c),
(Deleuze
upon
configured
identity Nietzsche-Spinoza"
basis of
Nietzschean
the
Spinozist
conatus and
the "common sun of the
71)
the
1995
selective
of
a
(Zaoui
principles
operative
as
to
power"
will
The
to
ii)
60/41),
1968/94
Deleuze
produce a
attempt
(see
ontology
Processes
Nomological
Entropic Tendencies:
30
concept of dynamic, generative force as the basis of a philosophy of
immanence. iii) An account of the role played by thermodynamics
as
the starting
from
Deleuze
Guattari
begin
their nonpoint
which
and
dialectical,
non-dualist
that
accounts of classical philosophical
is to say the development
intermeshed
the
of
questions;
concepts of
intensity, drive, multiplicity.
The Nietzschean critique of science is separated by Deleuze into three
levels operating,
simultaneous
"against
logical
identity,
against
(Deleuze
1983
mathematical equality and against physical equilibrium"
45). These three levels are taken by Deleuze to be unified by their
opposition to the undifferentiated,
he gives as an example the promise
Nietzsche
(Deleuze
1968
(`heat'
1983
45
"death
and
or otherwise)"
of a
§ 1053-1067),
that is the cosmological ground plan of nineteenth
endtime thermodynamics'°.
century
Indeed the thought
is based, albeit complicatedly
recurrence
and critically
of eternal
have
as we
begun to see, upon that thermodynamics: "The law of the conservation
That
Nietzsche
demands
should wed,
eternal recurrence".
of energy
albeit
problematically,
understanding
subsuming
entirely
a critical
element
law
think
us
make
should
of physical
him to a phenomenological
limited
his
thought,
of
tradition
twice before
that has almost
itself to textual exposition, and become increasingly
hostile to technoscience. But more importantly
attention
to an
to the limits
it should draw our
for
this
Nietzsche's
point,
on
own science,
of
Deleuze
in
in
the
is
and
sense
which
Nietzsche
not abstract enough,
Guattari
for
inventing
That
is
Spinoza.
praise
"elements that have
in
though
this
function,
that
form
even
abstract
sense
are
nor
neither
Processes
Nomological
Entropic Tendencies:
A
they are perfectly real [... ] distinguished
solely by movement and rest,
slowness and speed" (Deleuze and Guattari 1980/87 310/253).
Nietzsche's
important
thought
of the eternal
recurrence,
one of the most
and complex elements of his thought, is inextricably
up with thermodynamics.
bound
One of the most striking things about this is
his attempt to launch, what turns out to be, an astonishingly
prescient
critique of the thermodynamics of his day, then committed to a thought
of the universe culminating
nontheological,
in a heat death, a cosmological, apparently
day of judgement, the physical levelling of differences.
Nietzsche insists on numerous occasion in his work, principally in The
Will to Power, that "we deny end goals: if existence had one it would
have been reached" (Nietzsche 1968 § 55), as such Nietzsche's critique
is also the start of an exposure of the transcendental illusion of entropy
and of an account of the world in terms of becoming. The problem of
here
lies
fact
Nietzsche's
in
justification
the
that
abstraction
for this
his
lies
being
in
infinite
the
there
position
rejection of
possibility of
an
draw,
he
idea
that
the
an
reservoir of novelty upon which
world may
describes as "unforgivably insane". That Nietzsche should be led to this
conclusion
leads us to the limit
materialist
limit of the possibilities for his thinking, for as Lee Smolin,
was right
or rather
to the
cosmologists,
has put it
to worry about the impossibility
of novelty,
the
most eminent
of
one
"Nietzsche
his
thinking,
of
contemporary
because on the physics of his time it was indeed impossible to imagine
how it might occur" (Smolin 1997 298)'1. If on this point Nietzsche
by
a mechanistic materialism,
remains somewhat constrained
in other
beyond
his
he
far
in
this,
his
thought
principally
goes
adoption
of
areas
Processes
Nomological
Tendencies:
Entropic
OC)
24L
force-point-world,
dynamic
of a
or a
relational view of matter deriving
from the Dalmatian physicist Ruggiero Boscovich'. As
an example of
an advocate of such an unmitigated mechanism that presupposes a
final state, Nietzsche refers to William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin, the
author
in 1852 of the first
thermodynamics).
formulation
law
the
of
second
of
Thomson's claim here lies in the introduction, in the
second law, of the idea that there is a universal tendency operative in
the cosmos toward
the degradation
somewhat complicated formulation
becoming "rigid,
equilibrium"
of mechanical
In
energy.
a
impossibility
the
of
of the world
dry, dead, nothing"
its
reaching
of
"a state
of
Nietzsche writes: "If, eg., the mechanist theory cannot
drawn
by
for
it
William Thomson, of leading to a
the
avoid
consequence,
final state, then the mechanist theory stands refuted" (Nietzsche 1968
1066). Nietzsche's formulation
of eternal return, then, offers a glimpse
Schellingian
have
is,
in
seen, a
as we
of a critique of mechanism
what
fashion, followed by a magnificent
infinite
of
an
vision
universe as a
"monster of energy, without beginning or end [ ] as a play of forces and
...
forces
[...
]
forces,
the
time
a sea of
one and many
at
same
waves of
flowing and rushing together, eternally
flooding
changing, eternally
back" (Nietzsche 1968 § 1067). Nietzsche's account, when written,
the end of the nineteenth
diametrically
century,
to
the
scientific
opposed
was moving
at
in a direction
it
consensus,
was utterly
has
is
the
Yet
it
that
correspondences
enormous
with
a vision
untimely.
opened
possibilities
transformation
twentieth
by
developments
up
of thermodynamics,
since the
the complexity
nonlinear
late
the
of
demonstrates,
It
than
perhaps
more
convincingly
century.
his
Nietzsche
"possessed
that
thought,
an
acute
of
element
other
any
Processes
Nomological
Tendencies:
Entropic
33
untimeliness
in his instincts
sciences" (Whitlock
concerning the future direction of the
1996 220). Nietzsche's own description
of the
philosopher in his `Schopenhauer as Educator' is fully applicable here:
"Nature propels the philosopher into mankind like
an arrow; it takes no
but
hopes the arrow will stick somewhere. But
aim
countless times it
misses and is depressed at the fact" (Nietzsche 1983 177).
Preindividual
Sinfalarity
The
of
r
point
thermodynamics,
rr_.
mapping
out
and principally
Nietzsche's
engagement
its second law, goes beyond fidelity to
historical
scholarship,
adequation
Nietzsche's
of
position to the contemporary
status of thermodynamics
with
beyond
and
an assessment of the formal
(his or our)
from the position of scientific objectivity, the
law
is anything but settled, thermodynamics as a
the
status of
second
discipline and as a set of metaphorics is almost by definition far from
equilibrium'.
What must be attended to here is the introduction
change in the possibilities
radicalisation
of conceptualisation
by
the
opened up
of energetic and tendential categories, and the necessity
them
mapping
onto representational
of
looking
of a
in some detail
impersonal singularities,
by
do
I
to
this
problems. want
Deleuze's
at
account of preindividual
and
between
the
this account
connection
and at
Deleuze's
importance
first,
to
the
philosophy of an energetics, and
and
drive.
death
In
Freud's
immensely
intricate
of
an
second, of an account
Sense
Deleuze
"problem
The
Logic
that
the
recognised
of
of
passage of
his
because
it
to
is
the
work
precisely
concentrates
crucial
entropy"
fashion
in
transversal
a remarkably
question of singularity
Processes
Nomological
Tendencies:
Entropic
34
The question whether the world itself has
a surface capable
forming
of
again a potential
of singularities
is generally
resolved in the negative. A world may be infinite in an order
of convergence and nevertheless may have a finite energy,
in which case this order would be limited. We recognise here
the problem of entropy, for it is in the same way that a
is extended over a line of ordinary points and
singularity
that a potential energy is actualised and falls to its lowest
level (Deleuze 1969/90 145/110)
This is the conclusion to Deleuze's principal
transcendental
field, constituted
attempt to reconstruct a
by "impersonal
and preindividual
(Deleuze 1969/90 145/109), an account, that
nomadic singularities"
be
here,
implications
its
must
explicated
as
will reverberate throughout
this thesis. Deleuze's location of singularities
philosophy of energetic materiality
founded on two principles:
his
as a conceptual core of
is an attempt to guarantee its being
immanence,
intensity.
and
This whole
basis,
for
is
the critical problem
account
predicated upon an energetic
Kantian
its
in
philosophy
with transcendental
lies
Deleuze
illegitimate
in its
strictly
metaphysical
form as identified
dependence
between
"either
an undifferentiated
choice
by
upon an
ground,
a
differences
formless
and
nonbeing, or an abyss without
groundlessness,
Being
individuated
intensely
an
and
without properties, or a supremely
impersonalised
Form" (Deleuze 1969/90 141/106). In other words
Kantian
transcendental
strictly
incapable
philosophy remains theological: in that it is
of offering
Processes
Nomological
Tendencies:
Entropic
a coherent
account
of genesis or
M.
individuation,
and incapable of thinking matter without imposing upon
it a whole series of dictats which are imposed
on it from the outside (eg
Spirit, the subject, Platonic form,
species, Kantian categories, all forms
of what DeleuzeGuattari
condemn as the strata or "the judgements of
god"), all the generalities to which a thought of singularity is opposed.
As such, we can see the great stakes, political
and philosophical,
involved in the maintenance, in transcendental
thought of the
hylomorphic schema, and correspondingly of the
critique of that
hylomorphism, and the active advocacy of a hylozoism,
a philosophy
ascribing immanent power to matter, in heretical thought. A heretical
materialism
here
represented
principally,
by the work of Deleuze and
Guattari,
drawing
and
Gilbert
upon
philosophy'.
Kant is conventionally
substantially
Simondon's
seen as transcending and unifying
competing strands in philosophy (represented in Kant's own account
principally
by Rousseau and Hume), but as we will have cause to
repeat on a number of occasions in this thesis, this was achieved on the
basis of a hegemonised hostility
Spinozist
This
questions.
to Spinozism, and the silencing of
silencing,
though,
was not entirely
homogeneous and contained substantial cracks: their dominant names
being Schelling, Marx, Nietzsche. Regardless of the massive differences
between
these figures,
Spinozist prioritisation
it is their
common attempt
body,
the
of materiality
of
to think
the
that is of concern
here. Schelling for example, in what has judiciously been called "one of
the seminal works of materialism"
(Zizek 1996 7), the remarkable
drafts of his projected Weltalter, notes that things "stand before us as
incomprehensible
an
find
its
traces
of
manner of growth
whole until we
before
]
learn
[...
distinctive
development
the
we
about
and gradual
Processes
Nomological
Tendencies:
Entropic
36
circumstances in which the individual developed and formed" (Schelling
1997 121), it is as a development
Schellingian
this
of
Simondon's account of individuation
is presented in the next chapter.
This is part of Schelling's
theme that
doctrine (vital for DeleuzeGuattari)
of a
germinal life, which is precisely one of those `extraordinary moments',
of which Deleuze speaks, in which "philosophy makes the Abyss (Sansfond) speak
finds
and
the mystical
language
its
of
wrath,
its
formlessness and its blindness" (Deleuze 1969/90 142/106). However,
Deleuze explains, to make the formless speak is not sufficient to escape
the alternative
of transcendental
beyond
this
move
philosophy
and metaphysics; the
lies
in
the exploration
choice,
impersonal and preindividual
singularities"
"a
of
world
of
(Deleuze 1969/90142/107).
Deleuze credits Nietzsche with this discovery, and for renaming this
"the
free
by
to
world
power,
will
a
and unbound energy", populated
"nomadic singularities
individuality
longer
imprisoned within the fixed
which are no
infinite
Being
(the
immutability
the
of
notorious
God),
of
finite
boundaries
inside
(the
the
the
nor
sedentary
of
subject
notorious
limits
knowledge)"
of
(Deleuze
Deleuze's world of intensities,
constitutive
relations
between
1969/90 142/107). In this world,
singularities,
multiplicities,
"[c]rowned
series,
and the
anarchies
are
distributions
hierarchies
for
the
of representation; nomadic
substituted
for the sedentary distributions
"
(Deleuze
1968/94
representation.
of
356/278).
Entrouic
Philosonhv/Philosonhical
Entropy
The conceptual issues involved here revolve around the possibilities of
Processes
Nomological
Tendencies:
Entropic
37
there
being
a philosophical
manifestation,
nonlinear
account
and statistical,
here
Critical
is
a reworking
chaos'.
(assemblages)
machines
(Deleuze and Guattari
of entropy
in its current
and as a map at the edge of
desiringthe
three
of
elements of
in Deleuze
Guattari's
and
Anti-Oedipus
1974/83 404/338) in terms of parts: working,
Numen,
Voluptas;
forms
Libido,
and
of energy:
mobile motor, adjacent;
finally
its three operative syntheses: connective syntheses of partial
disjunctive
flows;
objects and
and chains;
syntheses of singularities
conjunctive
intensities
syntheses of
These
becomings.
positions
and
definitively
DeleuzeGuattari's
mark
from
their
the
rest
of
work off
philosophical
Derridean
thinking
milieu-
the
uncomfortable
settlement
between
defanged
Frankfurt
and a
style critical
that so dominates contemporary philosophy-
in a way that
deconstruction
Spinoza
designation
the
felicitous
Negri's
savage
as
of
corresponds with
breach
the
to
have
this
As
corresponds
already seen
we
anomaly.
Kantian
by
in
the
Spinozism
hostility
to
ushered
unprecedented
reformulation
to
reconstitute
able
of philosophy, as such we are
DeleuzeGuattari
that
allow
moves
Philosophy
thought
to claim that with them
is no longer synthetic judgement;
synthesiser
the
functioning
it is like a
to make thought travel,
Cosmos
(Deleuze
force
the
it
and
it
of
a
make
mobile,
make
Guattari
The point
1980/87 424/343)
here
being
to
for
its
the
referred
reason
this
and
statement
of
is that it captures the effort made
the material,
to "unite disparate elements in
formula
from
to
the
transpose
one
parameters
and
Processes
Nomological
Entropic Tendencies:
k
another" (ibid. ), this is a path not lacking in dangers, as Deleuze and
Guattari
stress, for one might "overdo it, put too much in". It is a
longer
philosophy no
subject to the tyranny of the true, one that has
logic
"a
renounced
of predication and truth" in favour of a "logic of sense
and the event" (Deleuze
1969/90 151/111, emphasis added). The
seismic importance of this move can hardly be exaggerated because it
allows for a positive assimilation of modern information theory, that is
the negentropy principle of information
fundamentally
(Prillouin)'
energetic and so materialist,
is able to derive
squabblings over ontology
differentiations
are reconfigured as quantitative
a thermodynamic
is
that
a model
from zero, as such one
principle
for the selection of
problems (Prigogine and Stengers 1988 285), for the pursuit of signsfor
the substitution
particles, and
for
It
is
of sense and affect
meaning.
that one is able to draw some of
non-coincidental,
and non-trivial,
DeleuzeGuattari's
into,
from,
concepts
and of course
energetics and not
least of all because there is a complex network of personal associations,
intellectual
two
way
and a
between
their own thought and
relationship
that of one of the pioneers in the field of nonlinear thermodynamics,
Ilya Prigogine
have
already
whose work we
encountered.
With,
Stengers, his sometime philosophical collaborator, Prigogine has echoed
Guattari
is
from
Deleuze
to
the
that
theme
critical
with
regard
and
a
discussion
current
Matter is not given. In the present day view it has to be
fundamental
constructed out of a more
quantum
fields.
thermodynamic
In
this
construction
(irreversibility,
concepts
Processes
Nomological
Tendencies:
Entropic
in
terms of
concept
of
matter,
have
entropy)
a
ý
-9
role to play (Prigogine and Stengers 1984 288)17
Elsewhere Prigogine has noted the indissoluble relationship between the
being-far-from-equilibrium,
condition of
and the immanent creativity of
"matter
matter,
acquires new properties when far from equilibrium
that fluctuations
instabilities
and
in
becomes
Matter
the
are now
norm.
more `active' [... ] matter far from equilibrium
acquires new properties"
(Prigogine 1997 65-7)'8.
The question of the link between energy and death in DeleuzeGuattari
be
death
they argue
can now
restated:
is part of the desiring machine, a part that must itself be
judged, evaluated in the functioning of the machine and the
its
energetic conversions and not as an abstract
system of
Guattari
397/332)
(Deleuze
1974/83
and
principle
What happens here is an attempt to extract from a Freudianism that
has become frozen
into
dualist
a
molar
overcoding
system par
lack,
Oedipus,
(all
is
to
to
to
or
or
what ever master
reduced
excellence
code the particular
function.
What
death instinct
as a
immanent
analyst chooses), an
became the manipulation
"transcendent
of a
398/333),
is
into
Guattari
1974/83
(Deleuze
reinserted
a
and
principle"
conjunction
Deleuze
with
Spinozist
a
uncoupling
judgement.
the
system of
calls
of philosophy
from what
In `Beyond the Pleasure
bound
for
Freud,
ineluctably
is,
Drive
Death
the
Principle',
up with the
him,
to
then
specifically
available
energetics
Processes
Nomological
Tendencies:
Entropic
that of Helmholtz,
it
40
expresses an irreversible
tendency for entities to return to inorganic
matter. The relationship
between forms of matter (modes of substance
in a Spinozist vocabulary), the routes between them and immanence, is
deep
But
in
theme
their
a
work.
note that "immanence is not said to
but
substance,
substance and its modes are in immanence" (Deleuze
immanence
is never to something, to suggest this is to
smuggle transcendence
back in under cover of this `something' (see
Deleuze and Guattari
1990/94 46/44), an analogous formula will be
1995 4)-
applied later to a Bergsonian
consciousness
understanding
(ie.
of consciousness
is always
said of something,
do
we
not make a
principle
In
Thousand
A
of consciousness per se).
transcendental
Plateaus they write:
it is, in effect, a distinction
between matter and life, or
between
is
two
there
states,
only
matter,
since
one
rather,
two tendencies of atomic matter [... ] Stating the distinction
in the most general way, we could say that it is between
stratified
systems or systems of stratification
hand, and consistent, self-consistent
on the one
aggregates on the
being
far
from
is
But
that
the
consistency,
point
other.
forms,
fully
life
the
to
to
most
pertains
complex
restricted
elementary
atoms and particles
(Deleuze and Guattari
1980/87 413/335)
life-death,
lifethat
thinking
this
to
important
It is most
of
understand
but
is
these
just
does
of
philosophy
said
particulars,
concern
not
matter
itself,
and of everything
that
Processes
Nomological
Entropie Tendencies:
comes within
the
purview
of
Al
DeleuzeGuattari's
thought. This adherence to a thought of an intensive
continuum
derives from the critique
hylomorphism
of
that will be
elaborated
in the next chapter, and is the illustration
of the core
position that the thinking
has
to DeleuzeGuattari's
of matter
thought.
As Deleuze claims in a lecture on music:
In every domain we are done believing in a hierarchy that
from
the simple to the complex, according to the
would go
scale. It could be on the contrary
matter-life-mind
matter
is more complex than
simplification
durations
life,
and that
that
life is a
It
be
that vital rhythms and
of matter.
could
are not organised and measured by a spiritual
(spirituelle]
form but take their
articulation
from the
outside, from molecular processes that traverse them. In
have
as well we
abandoned the traditional
philosophy
coupling
of an undifferentiated
categorical
forms of thought
thinkable
matter
with
We
or grand concepts.
are
trying to work with carefully elaborated thought materials
to render thinkable
those forces that are not thinkable by
themselves [... ] In philosophy it's no longer a matter of an
thought
absolute
such as classical philosophy wanted to
but
impossible
is
thought,
that
to say
rather an
embody,
the elaboration of a material that renders thinkable those
forces that are not thinkable by themselves. (Deleuze 1978)
To recapitulate
tendential
the
principal
repeat
and
analysis
is not metaphorical,
Processes
Nomological
Tendencies:
Entropic
point of this chapter: entropic
it is directly
allied
to the
42
onslaught
by
DeleuzeGuattari
made
quantitative
difference in every variant of metaphysical or signifying
upon the prioritisation
of
regime.
The drives (Eros and Thanatos)
Guattari
to the realm of physics, that is, to recall `The Molecular
Unconscious',
"the body without
belong, for Deleuze and
its
intensities
organs and
are not
but
matter itself' (Deleuze and Guattari 1974/83 336/283).
metaphors,
The figure of entropy is not considered here to be merely a trope (as
Martin
his
in
suggests
paper on the subject),
Rosenberg
nor a
it
is
metaphor,
an essential marker on the plane of consistency, and
finally thermodynamics,
is
the
status of
not
given
of whatever variety,
discourse,
down
top
royal
a
it is taken
rather
accepted,
its
is
teleological
nor
interpretation
to be a fundamental
DeleuzeGuattari
constructing what
element
posit as a transformative
in
diagram.
Entropy is sedimented into at least seven different regimes: classical
linear, and nonlinear
biology,
molecular
Freudianism',
transversal
Neo-Darwinism,
information
theory,
non
Oedipal
economics',
for
the
is
creation of
coordinate
a prime
and as such
connections,
deterritorialisation
Isabelle
thermodynamics,
Stengers
it
acts
as
a vector
of potential
in each of these disciplines.
I concur here with
has
perfectly
who
this
captured
sense of the
by
by
thermodynamics
suggesting
occupied
position
peculiarly powerful
that it offers an exemplary opportunity
concepts, of shifting
for "modifying
the scope of
introducing
landscape,
into
of
a new
problems
drastically
that
questions
(Stengers
disciplines"
the
nature of
change
1997c 36), it is precisely this modifying, shifting, questioning, activity,
this, irrepressible
is
that
the
inventing that characterises
philosophy
As
as
configured
necessarily
here`.
are
profiles
for
entropic
such
argued
Processes
Nomological
Entropic Tendencies.
43
the horizon of DeleuzoGuattarian problems; problems that are simply
not amenable to the preformed
logical orders, and overcoding
lead
These
thought.
procedures characteristic of stat/e/ic
questions
us
towards the nomos...
Processes
Nomological
Entropie Tendencies:
4b
In their book on Franz Kafka DeleuzeGuattari note that
long
form
deformation
the
the
as
as
and
or expression are
for
themselves, there can be no real way out,
not considered
level
the
Only
at
even
of contents.
expression gives us the
method (Deleuze and Guattari 1975/86 29/16)
This proposition in the text that appears between the twin volumes of
Capitalism and Schizophrenia serves as an indicator of the centrality
logic
has
his
logic
Deleuze
the
that
of
of expression, a
understood since
earliest work as underpinning
Spinoza's monism, to their exposition of a
deriving
formation
The
philosophy of matter.
of a philosophy of matter
from the work of DeleuzeGuattari
is forged substantially
out of an
Gilbert
their
the
engagement with
consequences of
of
examination
Simondon'. The nexus of problems encountered here can be simply
in
hylomorphic
linked
the
the
models
critiques of
rubric of
cited under
philosophy
to
their
concept
respective approaches
and science and
formation.
Hence the focus of this chapter will be a pursuit
of the
by
DeleuzeGuattari
launched
the
attack
specificity of
"classic
the
on
(Deleuze 1968/94), upon hitherto
existent ways of
image of thought"
It
is
problems.
philosophical
selecting
of
questions,
asking philosophical
in this particular
DeleuzoGuattarian
locate
the
that
one must
sense
enterprise
as a challenge
philosophy
immanent,
to philosophy,
just
not
as the attempt
discipline
a
to make
that manipulates
the
This
then
this
but
that
as
practice.
`immanence'
maintains
one
concept
is a response
to Deleuze's
Haecceity
Tracking
Matter,
Following
summary
definition
of philosophy
in
Dialogues as "la theorie des multiplicites"
179),
and
to learn
an attempt
(Deleuze and Parnet 1996
how to become a "keeper
(Serres 1995 24). The relationship
multiplicities"
and multiplicity
of
between immanence
is given by Deleuze and Guattari
by the above
suggestion that expression provides us with a method. How so? As we
have already seen, the question of multiplicity
is always posed, by
Schelling, by Bergson, and by Deleuze and Guattari,
finding
a philosophical
as a means of
rejection of the absolutism of dialectics or of
dualism (they play the same ordering role in philosophy), the response
to dualism is not to posit the one, but the multiple, and "to attain the
multiple,
have
one must
a method that effectively
(Deleuze and Guattari
it"
constructs
1980/87 33/33). That method is expression or
immanence, and "immanence is revealed as expressive, and expression
The
immanent"
(Deleuze
1968/92
159/175).
multiple, a multiplicity,
as
holding
becoming
is
together
the
as
a
means
of
understood
a symbiotic
heterogeneous,
it is the task of philosophy
heterogeneities,
logical
(Deleuze
"preformed
that
the
and
order"
such
Guattari
1980/87 307/251) of transcendental
actively militated
to understand
philosophy
such
will
be
instead
the consistency of an assemblage, a
against;
multiplicity,
be
heterogeneous,
`holding
the
together'
the
can only
of
understood
"case to case" according to immanent
criteria.
In the
here
this
that
the
concept of
note
present chapter, we must
context of
consistency
its
relationship
and
to that
immanent
of
function
Guattari,
Deleuze
like
in
is,
in
and
(developed
much else
chapter one)
"the
that
Simondon
from
relation
derived
who argues
to the milieu
during
individuation,
before
be
or
either
envisaged,
cannot
as relation to
homogeneous
milieu.
and
a unique
Haecceity
Tracking
Matter,
Following
The milieu is itself a system, a
47
synthetic grouping of two or more levels of reality, between which there
`intercommunication'
individuation"
to
was no
(Simondon 1995
prior
28n6) As such Deleuze and Guattari's
philosophy is guided by the
principle that Deleuze sees as informing Foucault's work: "that every
form is a compound of relations between forces. Given these forces,
our
first question is with what forces from the outside they enter into
a
relation,
and then what form is created as a result" (Deleuze 1988a
124).
Why Simondon?
Gilbert
Simondon's
individuation,
unique
career
dedicated
was
to thinking.
drawing
degree
to
to
the
to which
and
attention
extreme
both philosophy and science are subject to the pernicious influence of
the hylomorphic
fixed
"assumes
that
the
matter-form model
a
schema:
form and a matter
deemed homogeneous" (Deleuze and Guattari
1980/87 508/408). Simondon's thought is distinguished
by
drawn
DeleuzeGuattari
upon
myriad resources
far
more conceptually
each
significant
amongst the
for several reasons,
than the pedagogic task of
tracing `influences', or of reducing DeleuzeGuattari's
in
to
a stage
work
in
is
the
Simondon's
that
history.
amongst
singular
work
philosophical
his
in
infest
Deleuze
to
`great' names of philosophy whose work
claims
his
own philosophical
account of
reconstructed,
critical
formation,
but its conceptual invention
component
Second, substantial
in the diagramming
it is not substantially
is directly
utilised
as a
of concrete assemblages.
being
for
his
than
adapted
work, rather
sections of
for
for
they
the
purposes
were
which
in
used
are
problems
novel
use
Haecceity
Tracking
Matter,
Following
4.
designed. Third, Simondon operates as the key
conceptual resource for
one of the most striking
DeleuzeGuattari's
distinctive,
and
yet understudied, elements of
philosophy;
that is their obscured yet trenchant
involvement
critique of,
with, and recognition of, the great importance
of, cybernetics
in its most stratified
DeleuzeGuattari's
form. This critique is posed in
attempt to think the meaning of the shift of man's
dominant relationship
forces
the
with
of the outside (see the books on
Kafka and on Foucault) from carbon to silicon. For Deleuze this means
to think
an attempt
into
enter
a relation
the superfold by which "the forces within
man
forces
from
the outside, those of silicon
with
Simondon's
(Deleuze
fact
1988a
In
those
131).
superseding
of carbon"
critique,
simultaneous
(in which
cybernetics
with
the development
the observer
of second-order
to be an intrinsic
is taken
decisive
for
description
is
that
of a system),
component of any adequate
of what we might call third order cybernetics',
applications
in the cultural
inaugurated
arguably
its current generalised
This
new phase of cybernetics,
sphere.
by the libidinal
materialism
of the 1970's and
is
the
by
Bataille's
most
of
one
perhaps
general economics,
precursed
features
significant
Mechanosphere
the
of
in the late twentieth
that
that
to
As
any philosophy
say
such, one might venture
century.
by
is
to
doesn't attempt to make a response
almost
cybernetics
definition
be
to
politically
going
philosophies
and culturally
irrelevant.
Of those
that do engage with cybernetics, they either reject the
in
the
in
the
animal and machine'
`science of control and communication
human,
is
defence
to
the
kind
a
proper
of
what
of
name of some
inspiration;
the
HeidteSge
distinctly
NO
other
else
on
or
technophobia of
hand offer an equally anthropocentric
Haecceity
Tracking
Matter,
Following
and mindless celebration of all
49
things cyber that imagines that the coming of the
computer is the first
time
that
has
man
DeleuzeGuattari
come
into
contact
with
a prosthetic.
biologists
the
and
of symbiosis show to the contrary
that life has always been a question of a coeval relationship
between
the bios and technics to the extent that a separation of these terms is
almost meaningless, and can only be made on the basis of an arbitrary
As one of Deleuze and Guattari's
anthropocentrism.
Samuel Butler,
his
in
wrote
astonishingly
heroes,
great
prescient novel Erewhon
(1872) "Where does consciousness begin, and where end? Who can draw
the line? Who can draw any line? Is not everything interwoven with
Is
linked
life
in an infinite variety
anything?
not machinery
with animal
"
(Butler
of ways?
philosopher
1965)'. One of Deleuze's teachers, the historian and
Georges
Canguilhem
of science,
Butler
merely updates
he
"consider
that
technology as a universal
when
one must
writes
biological phenomenon and no longer simply as an intellectual operation
to be carried
by
(Canguilhem
man"
out
lineage DeleuzeGuattari
but everywhere
1992 64). Furthering
this
declare: "There is no biosphere or noosphere,
the same Mechanosphere"
(Deleuze and Guattari
1980/87 89/69). Fourth, Simondon, by lodging his work so concretely
within
a problem,
demonstrate
that of individuation,
is able to performatively
his
critique
efficacy of
the immanent
to so central a
by
is
hylomorphism.
Fifth,
it
that
pursuing
of
philosophical complex as
the limitations
contact
with
is
into
Simondon's
that
put
one
work
and edges of
the serious
challenge
by
DeleuzeGuattari's
posed
to
other schools of philosophical research.
achievement
Finally, and as if in illustration
Haecceity
Tracking
Matter,
Following
Deleuze's
the
above,
can
of
we
consider
50
Simondon
importance
the
to his thought given in a
own account of
of
Logic
Sense
(Deleuze
to
1969/90
136n. 1/344n. 3). Deleuze
note
of
Simondon
credits
with inspiring perhaps his most important and radical
legacy, that of the creation of a new, non-Kantian
philosophical
non-phenomenological,
basis for the transcendental
and thus of anti-generalities
singularities,
hypothesis for the determination
and
field, "the idea of
[... ] must now serve as our
domain
[the
this
transcendental,
of
EA] and its genetic power" (Deleuze 1969/90 122/98). Deleuze writes
field, composed of
that the five characteristics
of this transcendental
impersonal and pre-individual
Simondon's
in
singularities, are all given
difference
that
the
only
et sa genese physico-biologique and
L'individu
between the two writers lies in their conclusions. Just to ensure that
the importance
proposed
I
is
this
reiterate
not missed.
of
here,
phenomenological
that what is being
both
to
a radical
break
and analytic
traditions,
in so far as both are
amounts
with
the
to
different
to
in
a philosophy of subject-object,
ways,
committed, albeit
transcendental
a
field populated by such unities, and to the parallel of
Derrida).
Husserl
found
in
(as
and
the transcendental and the empirical
Taking
this as the basis of his philosophy
DeleuzeGuattari's,
very
serious
alternatives.
to the
challenge
The Mawrcharacteristics
Deleuze's,
and
marks
philosophical
transcendental
this
new
of
field
are given as:
1. internal resonance of series
2. topological surface of membranes
3. organisation of sense
4. status
the
problematic
of
Haecceity
Tracking
Matter,
Following
(Deleuze
1969/90 136n.
51
1/344n. 3)
Simondon
and the Critique
Cybernetics:
of
1e Devenir
sans Fin
In the same way that Deleuze and Guattari describe Spinoza's Ethics
as the great book of the BwO, I would like to describe Vladimir
Vernad. sky's The Biosphere as the great book of the geology
of morals, of
more specifically, the plane of consistency. For Vernadsky went further
than anyone in the direction of the cosmic monism elaborated in the
account of the abolition of all distinctions.
It is Vernadsky who first
attempted an answer to the question "Who does the Earth think it is? ".
The Biosphere offers an extended account of the "relationship between
the development of life on earth and the formation of the biospherethe envelope of life where the planet
(Vernadsky
1998 39), which
meets the cosmic milieu"
demonstrates
how the "plane
of
knows
differences
level,
in
consistency
nothing of
orders of magnitude,
distances.
knows
difference
It
between
the
the natural and
or
nothing of
the artificial.
It knows nothing of the distinction between contents and
between
forms
formed
(Deleuze
that
and
substances"
expressions, or
Guattari
and
1980/87 89/69).
Following Simondon explicitly, and I hope to show Vernadsky indirectly,
Deleuze and Guattari have gone some way towards constructing a set
highly
form
together
that
a
original and extremely powerful
of concepts
critique
Wienerian
that
the
riddle
problems
of
canonical cybernetics
domains)
for
(in
its
that
passes
certain
the
orthodoxy
autopoietic
and
Guattari
these
Deleuze
Whilst
address
questions
rarely
and
successor.
Haecceity
Tracking
Matter,
Following
52
directly,
an exception being perhaps Guattari's
brief discussion of
his
in
Chaosmosis, one can argue on the contrary that the
autopoiesis
idea that underpins everything that we are about to discuss, that
the
of
concept of system and in particular
the difference between open and
closed systems, is all that they have ever written about. In a discussion
A
Thousand
Plateaus, Deleuze makes it clear that he considers the
of
guiding idea of that book, the rhizome, to be "precisely one example of
an open system" and goes on in the same work to discuss the concept of
the "open totality"
(Deleuze 1990/95 43/32).
Autopoiesis is a term and a body of theory developed by Humberto
Maturana
Francisco
and
Varela
living'.
the
of
the `organisation
characterise
in the 1970's as an attempt
The term
to
is self-
Greek
(self)
its
to
explanatory when returned
components: auto
poiesis
(creation/production).
As such it characterises the living as that which
replicates
itself. As Maturana
"resulted
from
characterisation
the direct
it,
the construct of autopoiesis:
put
[... ] to provide
attempt
of the organisation
a complete
that makes living systems self-
the
that
relations
explicit
makes
and
contained autonomous unities,
among their
components
continuous
structural
(Maturana
1980 45).
which
must remain
transformation
invariant
and material
under a
turnover. "
few
to
Kampis,
George
the
seriously and
The systems theorist
one of
has
Bergson,
of
an
assessment
with
engage
sympathetically
"music
he
the
that
I
fully
of
writes
agree,
autopoiesis with which
details
however
[...
]
the
harmonises
efforts
our
own
with
autopoiesis
Haecceity
Tracking
Matter,
Following
53
implications
and
considerably.
Maturana
of
and Varela's and our developments differ
The words that describe what an autopoietic
system
looks like could be our words; this is not true for the logic behind [sic]
for
and
some of the conclusions" (Kampis 1991 387). As such, Kampis
expresses my own reservations
about autopoietic theory. Maturana
Varela
be
inspired by laudable intentions, and their theory
to
and
seem
be
to
appears
consonant with the positions expressed here. They insist
for example, that their approach is a materialist
in
forces
"no
that
one
be
will
adduced which are not found in the physical
or principles
Similarly,
universe".
the potentially
nonessentialist
approach given in
the statement
"our problem
is the living
organisation
that
and
therefore our interest will not be in properties of components, but in
processes
and
relations
components" (Maturana
between
processes
realised
through
least
Varela
75)
1980
and
seems promising at
from the perspective of the relational, machinic materialism argued for
here. In spite of this apparently m.achinic character of autopoiesis, the
first quote from Maturana reveals the fundamental problem with their
deployment
lies
`autonomy'.
For
it
in
term
the
the
of
approach, and
its
is
this
the
at
show,
organised
section will
rest of
autopoiesis, as
deepest level around a fundamentally
molar understanding
molar-molecular
reactionary, metaphysical, and
(the
it
is
that
characterises an entity
of what
distinction
in DeleuzeGuattari
is not a question of
the
but
the
the
entity concerned).
of
organisation
nature of
one of
scale,
Stengers,
in
leads
Isabelle
that
It is this metaphysical prejudice
one of
Cosmopolitiques,
her
the volumes of
remarkable seven volume series,
that
judgement
judicious
one
deliver
when
she
writes
on autopoiesis
to
a
Varela's
Maturana
faut
[il
be
and
attempt
of
mefier]
se
suspicious
must
Haecceity
Tracking
Matter,
Following
54
to "found a general epistemology of the living
basis
the
on
of the
(Stengers 1997b 123) and that
autopoiesis
simply "does not explain the living".
concept of autopoiesis"
Maturana
Varela
and
rely upon an ill conceived understanding of the
both
the organism and of the machine; an understanding that
nature of
when pushed, reveals itself to be thoroughly metaphysical, relying upon
eighteenth
century
consequence, utterly
physicalist
incapable of conceptualising both individuation
and the machinic thinking
this latter initiates
that,
in terms of assemblages and becoming that
in DeleuzeGuattari.
I have suggested,
investigation
models of both terms, and is as a
pervades
of the starting
The metaphysical prejudice
autopoiesis
is revealed by an
point, and perhaps the most important
Simondon's
hylomorphism.
point, of
extensive critique of
Simondon starts out from a fundamental
critique of all philosophies
that remain attached to a transcendent principle, on the basis that, in
forms
they
the
that
the
rely
ontological
all
upon
presupposition
varying
individual
of
an
concept
is a meaningful one, they claim, in Simondon's
"that
individual
it
is
the
words,
is
individual
that
as already constituted
the reality of interest, the reality to be explained" (Simondon 1995 21).
Kant,
for example, insists
that "one must make one's beginning
deriving
from
incapable
human
is
that
of
any
reason utterly
something
fully
formed
begin
[...
1
with man as a
one must
previous natural causes
by
Simondon
that
49).
1983
(Kant
scientific
arguing
continues
adult"
"accords
privilege
an
ontological
assumptions
such
on
out
work carried
to the already
constituted
Haecceity
Tracking
Matter,
Following
individual"
(Simondon
1995 21). For
55
Simondon then, the problem to be addressed is that of the assumption
of the unified one as the starting point of any philosophy or science. In
contrast to this, Simondon proposes that the starting point must be
"the idea of a principle
individuation
of
[... ] which would provide a
how
had
be
individual
individual
the
to
sufficient explanation of
an
come
for
its
and account
singularity
(haecceity)" (Simondon 1995 21). We
have already seen in chapter one that this critique was adopted by
Deleuze in his positing of difference in itself. As if to provide a case in
point,
Maturana
Varela
and
kind
from
the
of
precisely
start out
be
the
Simondon
they
that
posit
avoided:
suggests must
assumption
autopoietic
unity.
Simondon's, and by extension DeleuzeGuattari's,
be
from
it
for
to
apparent
should
autopoiesis,
critique clearly applies
between
division
brief
look
that autopoiesis relies upon an a priori
our
impervious
to
the
itself
hence
the
the organism and
renders
world, and
in
the
between
distinction
the
pursued
and
assemblage
machine
critical
In
411/333).
Guattari
1980/87
A Thousand Plateaus (Deleuze and
contrast
to this presumed unity,
Deleuze and Guattari
the
assemblage or multiplicity.
concept of
the
posit
Following Bergson, Deleuze
into a substantive,
into a noun: a
Guattari
and
the
multiple
make
multiplicity,
"An
the
one.
in
this
with
connection
all
sever
way
and
dimensions
in
the
increase
multiplicity
a
of
this
is
assemblage precisely
that necessarily
in
nature
changes
(Deleuze and Guattari
its
it
connections"
expands
as
is
then
An
15/8).
always
1980/87
assemblage
the
by
nature
the
paranoiac
whilst
fact
in
outside,
to,
constituted
open
In
by
the
its
terror
is
outside.
of
theory
exposed
of autopoietio
dictates
that
autopoietic
an
autonomy
the
of
concept
autopoiesis,
Deleuze
by
the
and
being
by
outside.
destroyed
contacted
is
entity
Haecceity
Tracking
Following Matter,
56
Guattari's concept of the assemblage corrodes
false
any
security given
by the assumption that the outside can be separated from the inside
and vice versa.
We have already seen the acuity of Isabelle Stengers
critique of
autopoiesis, however she goes on to become inexplicably soft on
for
from
her
justified suspicion of its claims, to
autopoiesis,
she moves
thinking that Guattari's modifications of autopoiesis in C'haosmosisare
sufficient to make it workable.
In spite of the implied critique of autopoiesis that Guattari had helped
to develop in the joint work with Deleuze, in his sole authored book,
Chaosmosis, he is oddly optimistic
for
the
of
possibilities
a peculiarly
has
What
Ansell
Pearson
Deleuze
autopoiesis.
modified
written of
and
neo-Darwinism,
seems especially apposite here of Guattari,
"does not appear to appreciate [... ] that his thinking
fundamental
that he
] presents a
11...
(Ansell
Pearson
tenets
to
the
some of
core
of"
challenge
1997 129) autopoiesis. As we shall see Guattari does not seem aware
that his earlier work constituted, albeit indirectly, a devastatingly fatal
Stengers,
here
Like
he
to
tries
that
the
save.
autopoiesis
critique of
Guattari
living
"lacks
that
characteristics
autopoiesis
concedes
organisms,
essential to
like the fact that they are born, die and survive
Given
39).
1995
that autopoiesis only
(Guattari
through genetic phyla"
Guattari
is
biological,
to
it
the
to
as
why
mysterious
explain
claims
it
that.
it
that
to
even
cannot
explain
clearly
given
save
would want
has
his
he
inexplicable,
that
is
at
Guattari's next move even more
given
to
the
assemblage with which
disposal the superbly mobile concept of
Haecceity
Tracking
Matter,
Following
57
assess the "institutions
and technical
machines"
proposes to account for on the basis of a rethought
Autopoiesis,
he writes, "deserves to be
rethought
evolutionary,
relations
collective
of alterity,
institutions
entities,
and technical
product
themselves"
autopoiesis.
in terms
of
diverse types of
which maintain
rather than being closed in on themselves [... ]
machines appear to be allopoietic".
latter term is merely Maturana
as the
he now
which
of their
(Maturana
This
and Varela's for systems which "have
functioning
different
something
from
Varela
1980 135; Varela, 1979 15), in
and
other words: man or indeed, animal, made machines and technologies
are allopoietic, `natural' machines are autopoietic. Guattari goes on to
from
level
the
regress
of sophistication
Capitalism
in
reached
and
Schizophrenia with the suggestion that autopoiesis be viewed "from the
of the
perspective
mechanosphere
ontogenesis
superposed
and phylogenesis
biosphere"
the
on
proper
(Guattari
to a
1992/95
62/40). In order not to be too uniformly hostile to Guattari's solo work it
is worth noting that in his earlier Cartographies schizoanalytiques, he
marks
the distance between schizoanalytics
theories, vis. that their utility
principles
intelligibility
of
and general systems
is limited to the extent to which "their
renounce all universalist
pretensions and
in
have
than
that
they
that
of combining
a
no other mission
admit
territories"
existing
of
cartography
In his article
(Guattari 1989 12).
`Du Chaos et de 1'Auto-Organisation
Neocomme
25,
Gilles Chätelet sets up what is politically
Conservatisme Festif
mathematically
regressive
in most complexity
thinking,
and
but his
Contrary
directly
be
to
to
most
autopoiesis.
applied
thought could
Haecceity
Tracking
Matter,
Following
58
commentary
on these
questions
le
betail
chaotique and
cyber
Chatelet
aligns
l'enthousiasme
with the Robinsonade Right, and clearly
demonstrates the collusion of much cybernetic thinking with rampant
free market individualism'.
attempt
Whilst, autopoiesis is clearly not the only
to adequate a revamped cybernetics to developments in a
developed
instantiation
the
range of sciences
since
it
is
important
project
the
cybernetic
of
for
for
its
to
a)
claims
provide a general model
the biological and b) for its impingement upon certain attempts to give
Deleuze and Guattari's
hard
In
in
these
these
edge
areas.
work a
it
On
Simondon's
is
other strata
an essential counterfoil.
work
respects
is apparent that connectionism
with,
is a more important
locked as it is in to the architecture
processing,
and problems
within
cognitive
field to grapple
of parallel
distributed
science and artificial
intelligence, the questions at stake here seem to be variants upon those
attached
to the critique
dynamical
of
Kampis'
George
systems.
limited
the
the
autopoietic
of
utility
extremely
summary assessment of
that
the
devastatingly
is
observation
simple and revolves around
model
"excludes
it
is
that
external control or
the problem with autopoiesis
higher
"allopoietic
basis
these
a
that
of
notions
the
are
selection" on
(Kampis
level"
the
destroy
the autopoiesis of
given
level, that would
but
hand
true,
is
only
on the one
1991 390). Ultimately, autopoiesis
trivially
in
its
basic
level
the
the
embodied
statement
of
at
so and only
definitional
own
is
ie.
that
a characteristic
terms
self-production
of the
"selffor
its
closed
living; but more perniciously
conclusions only allow
from
insulated
),
ibid.
(Kampis
artificially
units"
referential, autonomous
in
the
Uexküll,
Jakob
encounter
we
shall
Like
whom
von
the outside.
he
Uexküll,
Kantian,
Maturana
unlike
a
off
as
starts
next chapter,
Haecceity
Tracking
Matter,
Following
59
remains one, and his autopoietic units cannot be estranged from this
02'lgl L
To continue this critique from DeleuzeGuattari's
argue
like
that
classical
cybernetics
with
be
to
position would
its feedback
sets up closed systems as idealised
autopoiesis
entities
loops,
and so
forecloses upon their essential innovation of the predication of external
metastable
milieus
and therefore
singularities.
seems to suppose that it is legitimate
operationally
Maturana
himself
to take the biological entity as
closed to the world. From our perspective, and that of
Vernadsky, Bataille, Deleuze and Margulis such a position is entirely
be
herself
It
Margulis
that
untenable.
might
counterclaimed
uses the
but
it
is
autopoiesis,
word
clear on closer examination that she uses the
term in an extremely limited fashion and that her substantial position
because
Margulis'
is
work
and not only
beyond
itactually goes way
central to problematising
dead that Maturana
autopoietic
Maturana
the distinction
between the living and the
by
be
imposition
the
the
to
of
resolved
assumes
The
conception
scheme.
Varela
attribute
and
`operational
of
to a discriminable
that
closure'
Varela
(see
unity
defined
[are]
(dynamic)
"mechanistic
1979 54-9), such that
as
systems
by
their
organisation.
a unity
are organisationally
We shall say that autonomous systems
is
is,
That
their
characterised
organisation
closed.
by processes such that (1) the processes are related as a network, so
depend on each other in the generation
and
(2)
they
themselves,
constitute
the
and
processes
of
the
that they recursively
realisation
(domain)
in
the
in
the
which
space
recognisable
unity
a
system as
favour
be
in
55)
then
1979
"
(Varela
of
an
rejected
must
processes exist,
Haecceity
Tracking
Matter,
Following
§Q
understanding
of all entities
semipermeable
membranes,
as open to the cosmos across selective
flows
to
open
of matter
and energy,
becomings.
to
The only entity to which Maturana
subject
alien
Varela's
definition
metaphysical
and
be
can
applied, without
illegitimate
making an
is the entirety
known
the
of
universe.
assumption,
Nietzsche then is prescient in insisting that "it is part of the concept of
the living
that it must grow -
that it must extend its power and
[...
incorporate
forces
]
it
is
all the same whether one
consequently
alien
has in view an individual
living
or a
body, an aspiring
`society'"
(Nietzsche 1968 § 728). Maturana
is,
Varela's
ultimately,
and
world
dead,
metaphysically
composed of
legislated, artificially
sterile, closed
entities.
One final point that renders autopoiesis incompatible
Deleuze
Guattari's
and
distinction
thought
is the assumption
with
binary
of a
between the living and the dead. As we have seen, Deleuze
transformation
Guattari
the
concept of a noncorporeal
posit
and
to deal
life,
his
In
artificial
of
study
superb
a
question.
such
with precisely
him
for
that,
Claus Emmeche critiques Maturana on the grounds
he
25),
1994
(Emmeche
half-dead"
being
and
"there is no such thing as
being
"rather
than
as
concept"
that
all-or-nothing
an
to
write
goes on
it
is
features:
has
"life
a continuum
Maturana suggests,
continuum-like
`more
than
alive'
are
of
which
some
patterns,
property of organisational
is
Sagan
"there
Margulis
for
no
39),
1994
and
(Emmeche
and
others"
life
is
finger
this
ends
where
to
say
and
your
point
way
convincing
really
(Margulis
begins"
and
inorganic
nonlife
the
of
is
realm
this
where
and
the
of
that
have
question
We
evades
autopoiesis
92).
seen
Sagan 1986
life,
the
and of
of
individuation:
limits
the
that
it also evades
of
transformation
between the two, most contemporary
Haecceity
Tracking
Matter,
Following
research on
61
which, suggests that "the roots of life reach down into the realm of
nonliving
(Capra
1997 94), and that it is "virtually
matter"
impossible
to give a concise definition of the difference between living and nonliving
substance"
(Margulis
Sagan
1986 72). Deleuze and Guattari
and
suggest too that there can be no strict distinction
death, arguing,
Maturana,
Emmeche,
Margulis
with
between life and
Sagan,
and
and against
basis
the
on
of a continuum, or of intensity, that "if we ask
life
fits
[...
] we see that it undoubtedly
where
consistency,
in other,
destratification).
words,
a surplus
implies
in
a gain
(surplus
value
value of
[... ] But the question is almost contradictory, because
life
fits
it
in
to
treating
amounts
as a particular
asking where
having its own order and befitting
[
substances
stratum
forms
having
its
and
own
order,
] From this standpoint, we may oppose the consistency
...
to
the
stratification
assemblages
of
is
only relative,
opposition
entirely
But
once again, this
of milieus.
relative"
(Deleuze and Guattari
1980/87 414-5/335-7). It is to questions of intensity
individuation
and
that we now turn.
Intensive
Individuation
transduction
[... ] denotes
a process-be
it physical,
biological, mental or social - in which an activity gradually
itself
sets
in motion,
through a structuration
propagating
within
a given area,
it
the
operates.
area over which
of
(Simondou 1995 31)'
for
the
powerful,
a
necessary
concepts
then
Simondon
provides
Haecceity
Tracking
Matter,
Following
62
1
pragmatic
critique of scientific research programmes which start out
from an assumption
of the one, of unity. I want to develop this by
examining three key concepts that contribute to Simondon's proposal
haecceity (thought
of an alternative:
singularity),
transduction,
extensively
worked
DeleuzeGuattari,
of in terms of membrane and
metastability.
out in Simondon
These three concepts are
with
decisive
results
for
it is also worth noting that haecceity is also a term
proper to the Leibnizian
Spinozist
and
components of their work,
deriving as it does from Duns Scotus, one of the key figures in the line of
(in
Difference
Repetition,
Duns
Scotus
is the third
univocal ontology
and
besides
familiar
the
name
more
Spinoza
Nietzsche),
it is
ones of
and
therefore the pivot around which one brings an unexpected Spinozist
thought into the set of problems generated by Simondon. It is perhaps
little
a
surprising
then that the helpful footnote on the history of the
does
Simondon,
"This
is
haecceity
instead
it
mention
word
not
reads
deriving
from
This
`here
is
is'.
`ecceity',
the
word
ecce,
sometimes written
from
haec,
Scotus
Duns
the
the
concept
word and
created
an error since
because
it
suggests a mode of
error
`this thing'.
But it is a fruitful
individuation
that is distinct from that of a thing or a subject" (Deleuze
Guattari
and
1980/87 318n1/540n33),
derivation
a
then from the
(Deleuze
57/39).
1968/94
book
"greatest
the
of pure ontology"
author of
dealing
Nonetheless
we are still
individuation
is a thought of intensity,
with
Spinozist
questions,
for,
Spinoza
is
to
it
gives
who
and
is
for
individuation
intensive
his
Deleuze
whom
quantity, and
concept of
"neither
qualitative
nor extrinsic,
but quantitative
intrinsic,
and
intensive"
(Deleuze 1968/92 181/197). Deleuze recognises that to
attribute
heterodox,
difficult
Spinoza
is
that
to
and
and
such a position
Following Matter, Trading
Haecceity
63
Spinoza "does not appear to have had any clear
solution at the outset,
nor even a clear statement of the problem" (ibid. 178/197), however it is
difficult
to see that an intensive theory of individuation
not
possibility
entailed
individuations
by modal difference
is the only
and Spinozist
univocity:
on a plane composed of one substance can only be posed
individuations
as
degreeof
matter congealed at different degrees, of
heat,
latitude
longitude.
In Difference and Repetition
whiteness, of
of
and
the link is made even more direct: "The essential process of intensive
is individuation.
quantities
Intensity
quantities are individuating
Hvlozoic
is individuating,
intensive
and
factors" (Deleuze 1968/94 317/246).
Pragmatics
We can turn
now to an assessment of the pragmatic
Schizophrenia
and
in
Capitalism
elaborated
distinction
2 between reproduction
Eric
must,
but
following.
however,
Alliez,
First
to
to
quote
and
we
displace his comments from What is Philosophy? to Capitalism and
Schizophrenia
how
2, elaborate
DeleuzeGuattari
"sketch
the
but
follows
from,
the
at
on
programme of a physical ontology which
same time
surpasses
`phenomenology',
phenomenology
founded
the opposition
between
integrating
the
by
of scientific
thought
upon a generalised
characterisation
`physicalism'
physico-mathematical
to a speculative
dynamics"
and
(Alliez
materialism
1993 48)'. Alliez'
is problematic in that it seeks to return the specificity
DeleuzoGuattarian
the
of
discredited
back
to
two
philosophical
moves
Any
those
phenomenology
of ontology and phenomenology.
endeavours:
however,
any
ontology,
Haecceity
Tracking
Matter,
Following
that
emerges
from
DeleuzeGuattari's
64
programme would be entirely unrecognisable to those who currently
practice
those disciplines.
Here their
innovations
located
are
as
relentless rejections of the assumptions of the above principally
a
vis
issue
individuation.
the
vis
of
The axis for their move consists in taking
the problem of the individual,
the entity, whatever it might be in the
case under consideration, out of its ontological founding and replacing it
with the resolutely materialist
Deleuze and Guattari
critical
with
deployed
by Simondon.
set of concepts
follow Simondon in this move, such that the
issues are displaced from the (post) metaphysical obsessions
Being,
identity,
diagrammatisations
absence
and presence
becoming,
of
singularity,
and switched
to
Central
and assemblage.
to Simondon's own agenda is the consignment of this former set of
categories to the reservoir
"metaphysical
of redundant
metaphysical
baggage, the
bog where", Bataille reminds us "it sometimes seems a
laugh"
(Bataille
for
serious person would only go
a good
"Unity
and identity"
1988 79).
Simondon writes "are useless in helping us to
discover the process of individuation
itself", metastability,
potential
(Simondon
1995
their
replacements,
energy and entropy are amongst
24). For as Simondon goes on to argue, the terms and concepts of
individuation:
incapable
of comprehending
classical ontology are utterly
"none
them
dualistic
too
of
too
they are
and as a consequence
static,
can completely
(Nietzsche
explain
1983 188)-
to me the simple
becoming"
process of
be
invented.
as such new concepts must
both
have
"we
to
determined
this:
new methods
Simondon is
use
will
on
by
"construct
the
to
reality
given
a
of
essence
refuse
and
and notions"
Relation
30).
(Simondon
1995
rather,
relation"
means of a conceptual
be
understood
must
as constitutive,
Haecceity
Tracking
Matter,
Following
the
entity
of
part
as
under
K
for
in
the context of the critique of
consideration,
shall
as we
see again
DNA, ontology only perceives a diminished being "due to its having been
separated out into milieu and individual. They do not refer to the whole
[... ] to the totality that will be formed later by the individual together
with
(Simondon
the milieu"
1995 30). It is on the basis of this
Simondonian critique of ontology that Deleuze Guattari say "What is
becoming
block
is
itself,
becoming,
the
the
real
of
not the supposedly
fixed terms through which that which becomes passes" (Deleuze and
Guattari
1980/87
interdependence
291/238).
This
interweaving
between, individual
of, and mutual
is taken up
and environment,
line
direct
Guattari,
by
Deleuze
to
them
via a
and comes
and
wholesale
thinking.
of
Claude Bernard's distinction between `milieu interieur' and
`milieu cosmique' was taken up both by one of the early cyberneticists,
Walter
Cannon (originator
by
homeostasis),
the
and
concept of
of
Vernadsky. It is the latter who makes a point directly paralleling that
"in
he
their
by
Simondon,
works studying
of
most
writes
made above
living organisms, the biologists disregard the indissoluble connection
In
the
living
the
between the surrounding milieu and
studying
organism.
the
from
distinct
the
cosmic
environment,
organism as something quite
but
body
pure
a
they
Bernard
natural
a
not
study
said,
milieu, as
thinking"
their
product of
Alliez'
final
(Vernadsky 1998 30).
term `generalised
DeleuzeGuattari's
transcendentally
position
generated
dynamics'
Haecceity
Tracking
matter,
Following
as
kind
any
of
as well
as
is seen to eliminate
general
for
demand
Their
a return
dynamics.
"language never has universality
is also problematised
systems
theory
to pragmatics,
that in which
in itself, self-sufficient formalisation,
a general
semiology,
(Deleuze and Guattari
or a metalanguage"
1980/87 140/111), necessitates precisely this attack. The
pertinent
latter
the
of
characteristic
simplicity-
not as
being an attachment
to invariance
and
opposed to complexity in any technical sense- to
degree
that verges on the theological, although Deleuze will write in
a
the Logic of Sense that simplificatio,
unity
"identity
the
One
the
or
of
or the
Whole"
(Deleuze 1969/90 398/297) is quite precisely,
the
of
Christian. Attention
of the critique
hylomorphic
be
directly
to
the
must also
paid
political element
hylomorphism,
of
that
is to stress the origin of
down
in
top
schemas
control
Deleuze
systems.
and
Guattari write that "[r]oyal science is inseparable from a `hylomorphic'
model implying
both a form that organises matter
and a matter
derives
been
for
form;
has
it
this
the
that
prepared
often
schema
shown
less from technology or life than from a society divided into governors
Gilbert
Hottois
Guattari
(Deleuze
457/369).
1980/87
and
and governed"
in his Simondon et la philosophie de la `culture technique' has gone some
Spinozist
in
the
towards
sense of course, of
explicating an ethics,
way
hylozoism. We will see later how those thinkers
Bruno's
led
been
have
thesis
all
of animate matter
advocacy of a
heresy,
theological
the
and also
road of political and
along
ineluctably
how his critique
democratic,
attention
have
followed
who
Copernicanism
of
bottom-up
politics.
to singularities
is intimate
Against
with
a radically
dynamics we counterpose
(haecceities), coupled with the position that
Repetition
Difference
in
developing
where contra
Deleuze was
and
between
distinction
the
is
placed upon
general systems, emphasis
basis
the
biological)
the
(physical
of
on
different types of system
and
"process of individualisation
Haecceity
Tracking
Matter,
Following
determines
which
that actualisation"
67
(Deleuze 1968/94 328/255). Similarly
form
substance,
and matter
notions of primary
by
fundamental
the
are replaced
more
information,
and orders of magnitude"
for Simondon, "the notions of
internal
(Simondon
resonance, potential energy
1995 30). As such Simondon
places considerable emphasis upon the political
his
to
position,
express
chosen
charge of the words
demonstrates
his
that
range of
and
dynamism,
fixity
intensity
than
and
rather
concepts are all concepts of
direct
is
Simondon's
is
terms
it
that
a
choice of
also clear
and stability;
Guattari's
Deleuze
and
parallel with
outline of the terms associated
bodies.
As
this
Spinozist
the
see,
shall
we
analysis of affective
with
latter thesis is ramified and radicalised into an onslaught on ontological
Capitalism
in
generalities
have
As
2.
Schizophrenia
already
we
and
seen, the only other position,
different
disciplinary
conceptually
in
an entirely
albeit one embedded
to,
that
or as
close
seems vaguely
assemblage,
DeleuzeGuattari,
that
of
rigorous and productive as,
is
to
Bergson
his
Kampis,
seems
George
that of
positive engagement with
be critical
implicitly,
in this regard. I shall draw upon Kampis' work, mostly
in
thesis
the
in
the
rest of
throughout this chapter and
general.
Nomadism
Limit
the
Life
at
and
The section of Capitalism
Schizophrenia
and
2 with which we are
directly concerned is
is
the
also
The
III:
machine
war
of
Proposition
exteriority
the
intimates
existence
by
which
to
epistemology,
attested
Haecceity
Tracking
Matter,
Following
68
and perpetuation of a `nomad' or `minor science' (Deleuze
Guattari
and
The critical
formalisation"
1980/87 446/361)
here
isolatable
"modes
the
question asked
concerns
of
(Deleuze and Guattari
1980/87 448/362) operated by
these generic types of scientific enterprise.
The distinction
between
following
derived
is
from
reproduction and
a properly pragmatic one
different modes of concept production, they are the modes of operation
Here
`royal'
`nomadic'
the
to
the
and
sciences respectively.
appropriate
declension
is
in
the
take
that
there
of the
note
more at stake
we must
frequently
is
than
nomad
reading
assumed-
DeleuzeGuattari
particularly
as operating
in a certain way of
a quasi-Feyerabendian
its
equally simplistic political analogue.
epistemological anarchism, or
layers
deeply
in
itself
is
The concept of the nomadic
several
embedded
briefly
here
DeleuzeGuattari's
Deleuze
enumerated
work,
and
of
formations
their
Nomadic
i) in a reading of the great
and
socioeconomic
technologies;
implication
with metallurgical
modes of
defines
itself
through
that
the
figure
ii) as the
society
par excellence of
(a
history
of
one
against
than
number
of
principle
geography rather
identified
frequently
being
latter
as a
Euclidean geometry; this
paradigmatic
State science);
less
romantically
and
that
as a society
fixity
the
of movement against
of the sedentary
iii) perhaps more importantly
deploys a principle
the
form
the
which
against
(the
enemy
of
form
condensed
state
Haecceity
Tracking
Matter,
Following
Ul
entirety
DeleuzeGuattari's
of
thought
is directed). In this respect
Deleuze's work is unique amongst that of his contemporaries, in being
one of the only attempts
Nietzsche's singularly
to follow the positions
in
sketched out
important essay on `Schopenhauer as Educator'
(the major discussion of the `following-reproducing' distinction is directly
related to this essays' magnificent
State
assault on
philosophy, the
professor
State
or
functionary");
the value of this is attested to by taking
Kant as
representative
firm
has
State
For
Kant
the
thought.
grasp
upon
a
of
conversion
of the philosopher
into
"public
a
threat posed by the nomad to sedentary thought, declaring that "the
life,
broke
despising
up
all settled modes of
sceptics, a species of nomads,
from time to time all civil society. Happily they were few in number,
[that
is
its
the
to
sedentary
of
government
prevent
unable
were
and
further
Aix).
Kant
is
(Kant
1929
being
EA]
established anew"
reason,
doctrine
its
"tracing
form
juridical
giving
and
a
philosophy
with
credited
faculties
of
Guattari
(Deleuze
and
the
power"
state
of
organs
onto
final
in
two
further
the
be
This
theme will
pursued
1980/87 466/376).
in
inscription
the
Bruno
the
Giordano
state
of
and
chapters examining
the cosmos.
launched
devastation
in
upon ontological
figure
the utter
iv) as a critical
in
the
Repetition
played
role
Difference
and
from
onward,
and
questions
Capitalism
from
distribution,
and
which
by the concept of
is
for
it
by
joined
within
population,
Schizophrenia onwards is
"logos
the
between
the
nomos"
and
that a split occurs
distribution
is
distribution
form
distinction
In
this
of
54/36)30.
a
1968/94
(Deleuze
is
`nomadic',
the
the
which
of
effect
is
name
that
discovered
accorded
Haecceity
Tracking
Matter,
Following
70
the introduction
structures
"unsettling
of
difficulties
[... ] into the sedentary
of representation"
(Deleuze 1968/94 55/37). Crucially, the
denoting
distribution
nomos,
a
in space, marks out the importance of
the topological
transductions
dimension
of the membrane/limit
as operator
of
(transcodings), the flattening or equivalence
of exchange
and production,
the redundancy of the bounded entity. As Simondon
writes
the living
lives at the limit of itself, on the limit
[... ] the
life
of
of the
characteristic
polarity
is at the level
here
it
life
is
that
membrane;
exists in an essential fashion
dynamic
topology which maintains
as an aspect of a
metastability
the
by which it exists [... ] the entire content of
internal space is topologically in contact with the content of
the exterior
limits
the
at
living
the
of
(Simondon 1995
224-6).
The theme of the constant topological contact between organism and
milieu,
and the assault upon the integrity
consistent refrain
worked
in the DeleuzoGuattarian
the
all
of
strata
out across
anthropomorphic
distinction,
that
of
less
no
than
the
with
more
is a
finds
itself
corpus and
which
they deal, the
obviously
germane
(Deleuze
Guattari
1980/87
627/502).
and
organic
physicochemical and
It is necessary to insist again that DeleuzeGuattari's
deployment of
Simondon also pays attention to the political implications
of the
formits
the
hylomorphism,
terms
as
replacement
as
well
of
critique of
Haecceity
Tracking
Matter,
Following
71
matter, with the more mobile content-expression. The embeddedness of
politics in this seemingly abstruse critique is already well attested to in
Capitalism
Schizophrenia
and
discovering
the roots of the machinic
technological
developments
"relation
conceived as a
1 where Simondon is credited for
for
and
rendering
phylum,
immanent
and allowing
that is subordinated
them to be
to a field of forces
operating as a concrete physical system" rather than as "an abstract
unity
intellectual
or
(Deleuze and Guattari
system reigning
over separate subaggregates"
1974/83 262/221). Similarly, the problem of the
lineages
in
those
in
theory,
state
of political
which it is conceived of as
an abstraction,
transcendental
is transformed
"it
so that
is no longer
the
law that governs fragments"; rather "it must fashion as
best it can a whole to which it will render its law immanent"(Deleuze
Guattari
and
tradition
1974/83 262/221). This opposition
is the Spinozist
by
Hardt
Negri,
"against
the negative
constructed
and
which
dialectic
]
[...
the
present a positive process of constitution
movement of
[and] conceive of democracy as an absolute, completely immanent
Negri
(Hardt
1994
free
from
transcendent
and
any
norm"
government,
285 and 6). It is at this point that it becomes possible to insert the
importance of the Spinozist move for Deleuze and DeleuzeGuattari
on
the grounds of the centrality of the logic of expression, of capturing the
State
instantiates
in
the
the
which
ways
specificity of
to precise diagrammatisations.
itself according
Read in this way the immense range
hylomorphism
the
attack upon
and power of
diverse corners of the DeleuzoGuattarian
itself
in
the most
reveals
trajectory in all strata where
individualisation
bare
lays
it
specific modes of
without
positing the
bare
form
being
to
there
substance.
abstract
welded
a
of
necessity
Haecceity
Tracking
Matter,
Following
72
Deleuze's destruction
entity"
(Deleuze
"fallacious
the
of
concept of a sadomasochistic
1967/89 50/57), for example, is implemented
in
briefly,
it is suggested that this entity cannot be
these
terms;
precisely
described using either material or moral categories of identity, but must
be tracked
formally
patterning.
Ultimately
with
attention
fixed on the specificity
then, masochism,
its
of
like
other
and sadism,
be
flattened
"with
`grid',
cannot
out
an abstract
material instantiations
libidinal
though
as
a common
flowed
form,
into
now
substance
one
now
into another" (Deleuze 1967/89 41/45). In the same fashion, in Cinema
2: The Time-Image,
the traditional
by taking
film
canons of
the components
theory
are
of cinematic
economically
reduced
representation
linguistically
formed
"a
material not
as produced out of
even though
it is not amorphous,
aesthetically
and pragmatically"
be
multiplied
cases could
formed
is
and
semiotically,
(Deleuze 1985/89 33/29). These two
but
is
the
a significant move
result
endlessly,
towards developing a radically new philosophical pragmatics.
Simondon
with Spinoza
An important
Spinozist
dimension
to the critique
hylomorphic
of
that
to
transcendence
of
the
lies
in
the
of
plane
opposition of
schemas
book,
Spinoza
little
titled
Deleuze's
In
significantly
consistency.
the
types
these
of plane are accorded
Spinoza: Practical Philosophy,
respective characteristics
transcendent
the
organisation
of
or theological,
development
the
of
or
to
the
composition
as opposed
of the
Us',
`Spinoza
in
the
In
this
and
chapter
case,
immanent or consistent.
is
Philosophy
constructed
plane
Practical
ethological
an
Spinoza:
in
Traces
Matter,
Following
Haecceity
73
in
terms of milieu,
couched
velocity,
elements, composition,
spine that effects a transductive
a conceptual
between different
unformed
material
is
the working
respect
and conceptual
strata.
and
operation
Critical
in this
of the concept of immanence as an aspect of
expression.
The earliest
location
Philosophy:
Spinoza, where Plotinus
for this is in Expressionism in
Spinoza
for
and
are praised
latter
The
immanence.
creating an expressive
plane, that of consistency
immanence,
or
components
is explicitly
from the Spinoza-Simondon
rejection of any transcendentally
otherwise,
conceived
being
built
of as
structure
conjunction,
out of
and as the
formation,
pre or
governed schema of
"only
instead
What
is
are
offered
or genesis.
haecceities, affects, subjectless individuations
that constitute collective
326/266):
Guattari
1980/87
(Deleuze
and
assemblages"
Spinoza writes
Bodies are reciprocally
distinguished
with
to
respect
in
to
relation
and
not
movement or rest, speed or slowness,
I)31
L
P
II
13
E
1989
(Spinoza
substance
Similarly for Simondon:
The existence of a plurality
interpreted
be
of systems of norms can
is
There
in a way other than as a contradiction.
from
the
multiplicity
resulting
contradiction
only a
if one makes of the individual
individuation
an
of
expression
Haecceity
Tracking
Matter,
Following
of norms
the
not
and
an absolute
creating a metastable state
74
only and provisionally
discontinuous
as a
phase of transfer. "
(Simondon 1995 245).
Having made this connection between Spinoza and Simondon it
seems
Simondon's
to
have
I
tried to show misplaced,
necessary
point out
own,
and somewhat conventional hostility to Spinoza (in this connection one
bear
in mind that Wiener's own attitude to Spinoza was equally
might
if considerably
negative,
less nuanced,
highlighted
and
by his
Leibniz
"patron
for
for
the
three
championing of
as
saint
cybernetics"
reasons, the third
universal
being the most pertinent:
i) for his pursuit
of a
ii)
the avowal of a calculus of reasoning, from
symbolism,
his
Wiener
which
modernist
with
orientation
derives mathematical
logic,
less
directly,
for
his
iii)
notation and symbolic
adherence to
and
dynamics
as against
Spinozist
geometry').
Simondon
objects to
basis
(Simondon
238)
1995
the
on
monism"
Spinoza's "substantialist
that all theories of substance, and here Simondon is using the terms of
the above quoted Spinoza passage, but misreading them, "rely on a
conception of exchange and modification
know
alteration
which only
not metastability"
(Simondon 1995 238)'. From
and stable equilibrium,
Simondon's
Spinoza,
the perspective of a conventional understanding of
the
but
the
it
is
that
is
of
major claims
one of
clear
a valid one,
point
BalibarNegri
Deleuze,
following
in
and
we
are-which
way
reading
Spinoza, is that this critique is seriously misplaced.
The Vampire
Thought
of
"imply
is
to
in
is
The distinction then set up this way: reproduction said
Haecceity
Tracking
Matter,
Following
75,
the permanence of a fixed point of view that is external to
is
what
and in a sense that could be seen to ally it to
reproduced", similarlythose sciences that
are mechanical,
perspective of reversibility
dynamic
(linear),
or take a
vis a vis physical processes- reproducing
"treats differences of time and place as so many variables" (Deleuze
Guattari
and
1980/87 461/372), ultimately
then these positions remain
Kantian
the
within
orbit, and are irrevocably transcendental. As early
Difference
Repetition
Deleuze
had
as
and
realised that the concept of
difference was only to be conceived in an empirical and materialist
fashion, and was equating difference with intensity,
intensity'
"`difference of
is a tautology" (Deleuze 1968/94 287/222). In Logic of Sense
the constitution
difference
is
(as
intensity
taken
of
noted
again
as
up
field
Simondonian
themes,
transcendental
a
above) as an elaboration of
impersonal
and
"pre-individual
composed of
1969/90 348/297). Singularities
singularities"
(Deleuze
in this Deleuzian and Simondonian
intensive
in
themselves,
composed of
and of
sense are always multiple
degrees, each of which is already difference in itself: "Intensities
differentthe
in
the
themselves
unequal or
comprehend
different
in
itselfalready
manifestation
is
each one
in
the
them
that
are comprehended
all of
so
Intensity
348/297).
(Deleuze
1969/90
of every one"
is
is
"philosophy
that
but
to
not
the
to
such
n
one,
never equal
-1,
but
(Deleuze
1997),
(l'etre)"
being
with
the
one,
concerned with
multiplicity.
discovers
the
Deleuze
that
positing
Simondon
in
It is also
condition
of metastability-
individuation--problematic of
Haecceity
Tracking
Matter,
Following
a prior material
of the
for
the
grounding
"the existence of a `disparateness' such
76
least
two orders of magnitude or scales of heterogeneous reality
as at
between which potentials are distributed"
Metastability
(Deleuze 1968/94 317/246).
is defined by Deleuze as the constitutive
exists, contrasted in
which a world composed of singularities-events
equal measure to stability and to instability.
in
state
which concatenations
condition in
Metastability
refers to the
"endowed
are
with a
of multiplicities
differences
between series are distributed"
the
potential energy wherein
(Deleuze 1969/90 136/103). Metastability
is the ground of a cosmos of
febrile becoming, as supposed in contemporary
complexity theory,
dimensions
to
the
map
which proposes
of physical systems whose
far-from-equilibrium,
is
always
condition
just this side of chaos, it posits
that all entities from the level of a cell, to an animal, to a society, a
in
a permanent state of
global economy, a planet, and a cosmos are
disequilibrium,
becoming,
of perpetual
active
difference
intensive
or
is
to
is
It
only now, with what coming
generating new series continually.
be recognised as a third scientific revolution (to surpass the Newtonian,
Quantum')
and
be
that theoretical models, and empirical studies, can
has
been
Nevertheless
glimpsed
a
realm
such
realm.
a
made of such
before, in Bruno's infinite,
will-to-form
by
a permanent
acentric cosmos governed
has
Bloch,
222-4),
(Mendoza 1995
perhaps poetically
what
described as "the formative
inherent
power
in things [which] never
had
been
It
849).
(Bloch
1986
forms"
suggested
new
wearies of creating
to
Share,
Accursed
create an abstract
in Bataille's
a grand attempt
"atom,
disparate
molecule,
as
diagram adequate to such entities as
idea
that
75)
to
the
1988
(Bataille
all
society"
organism,
cell,
micelle,
is
it
this
by
energy
excess
maudite,
a
part
an
excess,
are characterised
1/199120/10).
life"
(Bataille
into
the
of
"translated
effervescence
is
that
Haecceity
Tracking
Matter,
Following
77
In this sense Nietzsche is quite literally
state of equilibrium
he
"that
correct when
writes
a
is never reached proves that it is not possible"
(Nietzsche 1968 § 1064), a world that is a "monster of energy, without
beginning, without end" (Ibid. § 1067). Since equilibrium is the absence
literally
difference,
it
death,
is
for as Depew and Weber
of
equality, quite
literature
the
write summing up
copious
biological
definitions
the
on
of
life and death: "the only time" that entities "achieve thermodynamic
is when they are dead [... ] that is probably the best
equilibrium
definition of biological death" (Depew and Weber 1996 466), stasis.
*ollowing'
is the term that Deleuze and Guattari
investigation
of
critique
appropriate
the `singularities'
is where
pragmatic
in Simondon's
that singularities
metastability
this then
of a matter
461/372),
that has apprehended
[matieere],
discover
to
and not out
[materiau],
becoming"
the
A mode in which one sets out in "search of
hylomorphism.
of
1980/87
to the cosmos of "endless
1995 21) that opens to thought
(Simondon
give to the only mode
form"
a
language
immanentism
of a material
(Deleuze
Guattari
and
it is precisely
within
by
isolated
located
potentials,
and
are
involved
becomes
one
that
or rather
marks
with
the specific form of
DeleuzoGuattarian
the
out
programme.
At the heart
representation
nonetheless,
DeleuzeGuattari's
of
then, is this elaboration
it will be critical
be
constructed
cannot
frequently
frequently
Haecceity
Tracking
Matter,
Following
of
`following',
of a practice of
`following'
figure
the
that
to show
of
fashion,
that
problem
a
to deploy the figure
of the abstract
in a transcendent
plagues attempts
invoked critique
2a
There
is no transcendent method of following, that can be laid
machine.
out in the abstract, for "thought is like the Vampire, having no image,
either to make a model of or to copy" (Deleuze and Guattari
1980/87
467/377). The warning that Isabelle Stengers attached to the concept
of transduction
also applies to that of `following'.
She warns that
anyone who thinks that they can derive from the notion of transduction
the "power to recognise that the production
individuated
having
an
of a child
language
`same'
to
the
to
relation
responds
problem as the
have
genesis of a crystal would
completely misunderstood the concept
[utilise le concept a rebours] and would moreover pay for it with the
derision that would be aroused! " (Stengers 1997b 137)'. Following, like
transduction,
be
in
to
concrete edges of
relation
can only
emplaced
decoding and deterritorialisation
that are constructed in relation to
is
"Each
bodies,
a
abstract machine
problems and concepts.
specific
consolidated aggregate of matters-functions
(Deleuze and Guattari
immanently
(phylum and diagram)"
1980/87 637/511), that can only be invented in
derived analyses based on micropractice.
Haecceity
Tracking
Matter,
Following
chapter
iii
Qrganisation as Stratification: Immanent Relations in
DeleuzeGuattari's Pragmatic Materialism
There is no great difference between false materialism
typical forms of idealism.
(Deleuze and Guattari
Two great
traditions
philosophical
thought,
and
1974/83 29/22)
history
in
the
therefore,
of
clash,
is
Kampfplatz
that
that
setting up
idealism
But
those
these
traditions
two
of
are not
philosophy.
`aleatory
They
tradition
the
of
are
and materialism.
materialism'
and all the rest.
(Negri 1996b 61)
80
Perhaps
the most distinctive
feature
Deleuze
Guattari's
of
and
polyvocal work and the feature that distinguishes them most sharply
from their contemporaries in both Continental
and Anglo-American
philosophy who have taken, to varying degrees, the `linguistic turn', is,
have
as we
seen, their dedication to thinking
a philosophy of matter,
endowed with, amongst other things, the wholly new terms forged by
Simondon in his critique of hylomorphism. This
new materialism must
attempt, as Toni Negri has claimed of A Thousand Plateaus, "construct
the terrain upon which to redefine the materialism
first
the
twenty
of
(Negri
1998a 86), and as such, must adequate to the global
century"
late
the
twentieth century, its cultures, sciences, politics.
conditions of
This c4wpQr attempts
implementations.
simultaneous
to test this claim on the basis of a series of
The peculiar
performance
difficulty
of their
and explication
lies
in
its
work
of the principle
of the
by
difficult
it
is
immensely
isolate
from
to
rhizome,
single strands
which
for
form
it,
is
thought
their
entire
so very tightly enmeshed, each
within
dragging
is
to
that
to
the
start
element with each other,
examine one
it.
Nonetheless,
is
in
to
this
U-,
paid
(L
attention
entire oeuvre out with
that DeleuzeGuattari
the thorough
critique
organisation
and their
offer of the principle
of
in
its
stead, of a principle
advocacy,
of
"the
is
plane of consistency or composition
composition or consistency:
formation"
(Deleuze
that
to
of organisation or
another plane,
opposed
Guattari
and
following,
1980/87 456/368), the former is that encountered in
the latter
in representation.
The route to this question
between,
the
detour
through
relationship
involves a
an examination of
in
their
hand,
the
and
conceptualisation
given
cases
the
material
one
on
Organisation
as Stratification
81
A Thousand Plateaus
Simondon's
work
and, on the other hand, certain elements of
interrelated
the
on
questions
limit
the
of
and
individuation. Arnaud Villani has paid some attention to the role played
by the `the material cases' in what he calls the physical geography of A
Thousand Plateaus. I concur with Villani's
characteristic
claim that the principal
`cases'
is
"effect
in
these
the
they
the
of
way
which
describe"
in
that
they
that
their singularity
movement
and
"immanent
series of
(Villani
syntheses"
constitute
1985 331)"6.As such Deleuze
Guattari's
from
invented,
a case study or
and
concepts are
or extracted
body of disciplinarised knowledge and then given a transversal direction,
in an attempt to achieve a flatness with those cases. It is this flatness
that
constitutes
what
Deleuze
Guattari
and
immanence, which "has no supplementary
call the plane
of
dimension; the process of
for
itself,
be
through
EA]
[of
the
apprehended
must
plane,
composition
It
is
it
in
it
that
a plan of composition,
that which
gives.
which
gives,
128).
(Deleuze
1988b
development"
not a plan of organisation or
Horizontal
and Vertical
immanence,
building
which aims
This process of concept
on a plane of
is
horizons
the
space,
horizontal
conceptual
of
of
the
extension
at
dimension
the
Guattari
to
by
Deleuze
as
verticality
and
counterposed
far,
Philosophy?
they
is
What
In
on
so
go
thought.
of metaphysical
transcendent.
the
with
to
synonymous
verticality
make
as
occasion,
the
throughout
is
horizons
used extensively
This idea of the pushing of
chapter
Philosophy?
What
is
in
Immanence'
Plane
devoted to `The
of
in
the
is
itself
that
horizon
relative
movement:
is
the
"it
that
such
Organisation
Stratification
as
82
horizon
recedes when the subject advances, but on the plane
of
immanence we are always and
already on the absolute horizon"
(Deleuze and Guattari 1991/94 40/38). Deleuze
Guattari
define two
and
types of horizon: the relative and the absolute; the former functions
as
limit
"which
a
changes with an observer and encloses observable states
of affairs" whilst the latter, the absolute is "independent of any
observer, which makes the event as concept independent of a visible
state of affairs" (Deleuze and Guattari 1991/94 39/36). The distinction
is posed in a distinctly
non-Kantian
"has its own horizon,
that
represented,
fashion, for Kant every concept
is a variety
of things
which
be
can
and, as it were, surveyed from that standpoint.
horizon must be capable of containing
an infinite
This
number of points,
has
its own narrower horizon" (Kant 1929 A 658/B 686).
each of which
The Kantian
hierarchy,
horizon
then is an ordering
imposer
concept, an
of
from
"universal
to
the
a standpoint
which one proceeds up
horizon"
A
(Kant
1929
659/B 687). Deleuze and Guattari's
true
and
horizontality,
hierarchy
is on the contrary,
performed
an extension of the abolition
by Cusa and Bruno's thought
"opposed to any [... I hierarchical
of
immanence,
of
(Deleuze
the
conception of
world"
1968/92 157/173), as in the various Medieval chains of being. Antonio
Negri explains that Neoplatonism is interesting
it's own subordination
"'horizontal'
the
of
`vertical' creation and hierarchisation"
to Deleuze insofar as
relation to the order of the
be,
can
and was, transformed
into a philosophy of expression (a philosophy which as he have already
seen, and as will
continually
be stressed, is central
to Deleuze's
thought), "a philosophy of surfaces, in order to eliminate any aspect of
transcendence,
Organisation
hierarchy,
of
Stratification
as
of emanation"
(Negri 1991a 18), this
ý-3
aspect of Neoplatonism
is also stressed in Alliez'
commentary
on
Plotinus (Alliez 1991/95 63-123/27-74). Deleuze
suggests that there is
a counter tradition
to this hierarchical
thinking,
it
is
and
one that
revolves around the linked terms immanence and expression, also
identified with the terms complicare
and explicare in a note he writes
that it is "above all in Nicholas of Cusa and in Bruno that the
notions
acquire a rigorous philosophical
character" (Deleuze 1968/92 159 n.
1/377 n. 12). In one of the most thorough
statements of the direct
relationship
between immanence and expression, `Immanence and the
Historical
Components
`Expressioif7,
of
Deleuze argues that
the
pursuit of univocal ontology, given in Spinozist immanence constitutes
the only pure ontology. That is a "pure ontology" in which "Unity is only
a property of substance and of what is" in which immanence "requires
being,
the
as a principle
equality of
or the positing of equal Being [... ] not
defined by their rank in a hierarchy" (Deleuze 1968/92 157/173). It is
the contrast offered between the rhizome, and the tree or arborescence
that best captures the importance of the determination
dimensions: horizontality
transcendentally
organisation,
and verticality.
of these two
It is precisely these kinds of
imposed schemas that Deleuze characterises
as
imposed
inert
the
presupposing
an
matter,
on
a plan
have
in
This
is,
as we
seen, coupled
critique
existence of stable entities.
DeleuzeGuattari's
thought
to Simondon's revolutionary
thinking
of
individuation,
describes
he
focusing
the
that
thinking
as
on
process of
a
individuation
"an
operation resulting
grasped as
between, and compatibility
of, a singularity
Simondon
for
Hence
conditions".
Organisation
Stratification
as
from the meeting
and energetic and material
84
To seek the principle of individuation in
matter, form, or
force, is to restrict oneself to being
able to explain
individuation
only in those particular
cases that seem
simple, such as the atom or the molecule that is instead of
taking
the genesis of the individual
and supposing that
be
to
genesis
already made in formal, material or energetic
elements, and owing to these elements already bearers of
individuation,
by
generating
composition an individuation
is
which
actually simpler. It is for this reason that we have
never wanted to undertake the study of the individual
as
from
the elementary particle (Simondon 1995 79starting
80)
Go and Chess
The significance
for
I
the
this
thesis
of
above statement
and, would
for
the DeleuzoGuattarian
argue,
by
in
is
project
general,
revealed
by
Deleuze
important
the
most
strategic moves made
examining one of
Nomadology:
Treatise
`1227:
Guattari
in
the
on
plateau entitled
and
-The War Machine'. This strategic move will be used here to position
DeleuzeGuattari
in a critical relation to two of the most radical projects
in contemporary systems theory and second-order cybernetics. That is
George Kampis' work embodied in his theory of `component systems',
`relational
the
project of
and
Nicholas
Rashevsky'.
that
observation
Organisation
as Stratification
biology' pursued by Robert Rosen and
My starting
point is the apparently
banal
K
Chess pieces are coded; they have
intrinsic
properties
situations,
and confrontations
contrast,
from
internal
an
nature and
their
movements,
which
derive [... ] Go pieces, in
are pellets, disks, simple arithmetic
units, and
they only have an anonymous, collective or third-person
function
[... ] elements of a nonsubjectified
machine
assemblage with no intrinsic
properties,
only situational
(Deleuze
Guattari
1980/87 436/352)
ones
and
Thinking along a parallel path, Rosen suggests that
once we talk
about organisation, we are in a relational
We
basically
defining
context.
are
a machine as a material
system
that
admits
(ie.,
that
realises) a relational
description, a description in terms of sets and mapping, and
between
them (Rosen 1991 183)
entailments
Rosen's concept of entailment
generative
relationality
that the properties
perfectly captures the idea of absolute,
that permeates this thesis; his argument is
of components are strictly
emergent and only
"description
in
from
their
their
a system,
changes as
position
generated
the system to which it belongs changes" (Rosen 1991 121). It is this
individuations
complex concatenation of
to which
and their material coordinates
Simondon refers above that provides the motivation
for
Deleuze and Guattari in their pursuit of the (dated) event, which is "not
from
it
inseparable
is
itself
inseparable
from
variations,
only made up
bodies,
lived
in
is
it
reality
actualised or
the state of affairs,
and
which
Organisation
Stratification
as
86
brought about" (Deleuze and Guattari
1991/94 150/159). The crux of
these investigations turns around the concept of organisation, and it is
to organisation
that we now turn.
Immanent and Transcendent
If, as Michel Foucault
Deleuze
Guattari
once claimed,
and
offer an
`introduction to the non-fascist life', and if the mode of living such a life
is embodied in the set of practices (and hence it is a process) known as
the Body without Organs ("you can't reach it, you are forever attaining
it, it is a limit"
Deleuze and Guattari
DeleuzoGuattarian
principal object of
1980/87 186/150), then the
(such
is
an
organisation
critique
by
lead
Nietzsche
in
is
to
the
given
of course
accordance with
emphasis
become,
Whitehead,
to
philosophy,
prioritise
a
process
with
what would
§
Organisation,
655).
Nietzsche
`entities'"
1968
"Processes
treat
as
and
for Deleuze and Guattari
within
is homologous with stratification,
the regime of signs'
constituting
it
is
and
science that organised,
'
importance.
stratified matters are of utmost
Schizophrenia
Capitalism
two
the
Running throughout
and
volumes of
Deleuze and Guattari
between
distinction
raise and elaborate upon a
difference
is
to
this
that
It
is
crucial
clear
made
codes.
axiomatics and
understanding
thought.
In
stratification
the differing
addition
immanent
modes of
attachment
of
is made. It is with the identification
of
to this
to axiomatisation
the
and transcendent
concomitant
immanent
transcendent
code
with
and
organisation,
a
axiomatics with
(compare
importance
its
distinction
this
that
assumes
composition
Organisation
as Stratification
27
Deleuze and Guattari
1980/87 567/454 and 174/143). The axiomatic is
taken to institute
a regulative order (stratification),
a semiotisation,
a physicalisation"
"an axiomatisation,
which is contrasted to "a diagram
[... ] the programme of a stratum, against the diagram
of the plane of
(Deleuze
consistency"
1980/87 179/143). The
and Guattari
mathematician
Robert
DeleuzeGuattari's
understanding
that the axiomatic
t
the
principal
of mathematical
is no longer an analytic
delimits
that
convention
Blanche,
tion). Finally,
field"
source
of
axiomatics, insists
proposition,
but is "a
(Blanche
1990 19, -my
Isabelle Stengers and Bernadette Bensaudea certain
Vincent in their History of Chemistry give specific content to this in the
field of chemistry,
by suggesting that "the multiplicity
crystallography,
industrial
history
to
the
more precisely with reference
of
and often the
interest of the properties linked to `deviations' from the `rule'
were substituted
for the conventional
`normal case' (an illustration
differentiation
between the
`defects'
(a
the
rule) and
nonhierarchical
of
favour
it)"
the
that
circumstances
group of cases, each associated with
Stengers
and
(Bensaude-Vincent
1993 259). The line
taken
by
Stengers and Bensaude-Vincent lies in close proximity to that taken by
DeleuzeGuattari,
for
helps
focus
idea
is
those
it
that
the
to
and what
disciplines that manifest the characteristics associated with the minor,
like
Thom's
interest
bodies
that
seven
the
are,
are of
or states of affairs
catastrophe's,
Thom's
(when
limit
using
phenomena
concerned with
his
basis
Platonic
import
the
to
take
of
not
care
great
must
model one
mathematics,
rather
than
be
implemented
diagrams
to
they
that
to ensure
remain
plans
to be imposed),
displays
of rupture
and
in
they
a state
are
heterogeneity: systems made perceptible only when
Organisation
as Stratification
ff
of collapse,
in
systems
variation
defined
by
"constants
not
homogeneity but on the contrary by a variability
immanent,
are
(variable
continuous,
and regulated
[facultatives]
or optional
rules)"
and
whose characteristics
in a very specific mode
(Deleuze and Guattari
1980/87 118/94). This is a thought that has preoccupied Deleuze since
least
Difference
Repetition
becomes
in
at
real
and
which a concept only
to the extent
continuity
that
"it designates
catastrophes:
in the series of resemblances
either
impassable
or
breaks of
fissures
between the analogical structures" (Deleuze 1968/94 52/35); and it only
be
to
reflexive
ceases
implication
irreducible
equilibrium
in order to become "catastrophic".
Another
to which I return shortly: catastrophe bears witness to "an
ground
which
continues
of organic representation"
to act under
the apparent
(ibid). That is to suggest that
Deleuze's foundation of concepts of irreducible difference or fissure is a
The
fixity
in
critique
the
grounds.
of
ontological
classical
acid
corrosive
is
Anti-Oedipus,
in
important
the
a
the
so
concept of partial objects,
of
key element of this critique of unity, and at the same time one aimed at
lost
for
lament
inspired
Heidegger
Derrida's
dominant
theme
the
of
DeleuzeGuattari
presence.
believe
in
the
longer
"We
no
pointedly write:
like
fragments
antique
that,
an
of
pieces
the
existence of
of
myth
they
that
be
turned
last
to
for
so
the
up,
one
statue, are merely waiting
longer
We
]
[...
no
to
back
together
unity
be
a
create
glued
may all
final
totality
in
a
believe in a primordial totality that once existed, on
1974/83
Guattari
(Deleuze
date"
future
and
that awaits us at some
the
to
of
thought
entirety
is
the
which
grand
50/42). This indeed
in-itself
is
"Difference,
dedicated:
that
is
Repetition
Difference and
is
there
that
169/129),
no
1968/94
(Deleuze
Repetition"
already
Organisation
as Stratification
89
"ultimate
fixed
(ibid.
term"
139/105) to be uncovered; put
or originary
thus, it is also crucial in the critique
systems, that there is no originary
Freudianism,
of
of signifying
trauma to be resolved; only the
effects of the concatenation of heterogeneous series. But this, is to run
ahead of ourselves,
let
and so
us return
to another aspect of the
question of organisation.
In a lecture entitled `The Nature of Flows' Deleuze insists that the
flow
be
is
to
thought in relation to five others: that of pole;
concept of
legal
transformation;
code or accounting system; stage of material or
by
(the
is
inflection
these
terms
their
specific
of
given
sector; and stock
in, and derivation
imbrication
from, the discourse of Keynesian
five
flow
However
is
these
it
to
the
the
second of
relation of
economics).
And
importance.
insisted
is
ie.
that
upon as of primary
code,
correlates,
in regard to a philosophy
is
this
entirely
of matter
It
is
apposite.
impossible writes Deleuze to "seize flows other than by and through the
flow
is,
fact
is
that
the
them:
strictly
non-coded
a
codes
which
operation
(Deleuze
1971).
thing"
speaking an unnameable or merely a
is,
flux,
is
as
axiomatics
As we have seen, code
and
with
associated
DeleuzeGuattari
Guattari
and
intimately
note,
involved with stratification
(Deleuze
Deleuze
If
75/57).
and
1980/87
one goes along with
favour
be
in
is
to
of
rejected
Guattari here, it follows that organisation
In
immanence,
univocality.
composition,
upon
an approach predicated
both
differentiated,
be
is
to
taken
such an approach/ matter
in
by
intensities,
which
of
virtue
only
empirically,
and
philosophically
be
differentiated
individuation,
can
only
the
an
of
objects
particles, or
Organisation
as Stratification
90
by their "speed and that enter into this or that individuated
assemblage
depending on their connections, their relations
of movement" (Deleuze
Guattari
and
1980/87 312/255). It is against this background that
classical ontological
questions predicated
Being
upon
are severely
problematised, the temptation is to say that there is no space for what
counts as ontological questions in a DeleuzoGuattarian
cosmos, simply
because the focus cannot be placed upon a being but rather
upon the
dynamic relationships
that hold them together. Ontological questions
for DeleuzeGuattari
be
from
the perspective
can only
asked
of
Spinozism, and in this latter, ontology is always a substrate of politics
(Antonio
Negri's
for Spinozism
An account,
materialism').
relation/force
formula
of this
is `ontology + politics
character,
(an index of consistency,
predicated
upon
or of consolidation)
or the
intermezzo, is not a moderated or different
species of analysis altogether,
=
different
it
is
a
ontology:
the Greek on is non-existent, and its
described
does
is
Nietzsche
does
figure
figure,
then
what
not
what
study
"seductive
the
as
flash of gold on the belly of the serpent vita"
(Nietzsche 1968 § 577). Haecceities, degrees, intensities, individuation
interrogation,
having
their
own modes of
each
the
rigidity
refuse
which
This
locked
default
into
by
sedentarisation.
of all ontologies which are
language
"in
by
to
latter is expressed
the return
which
pragmatics,
has
universality
never
semiology,
in itself, self-sufficient formalisation,
a general
Guattari
and
1980/87
or a metalanguage"
(Deleuze
140/111), an utter rejection of all philosophical
produce
themselves
as modes of realisation
fail
to
that
positions
immanent
to that
deploys
its
"that
dimension",
materiality
"energetic, molecular
a space
through matter,
Organisation
its
through
traits
itself
that
propels
a number unto
Stratication
as
91
form" (Deleuze and Guattari
1980/87 509/409). This formulation
will
later
importance
assume greater
when we see it emplaced in a
discussion of morphogenesis.
Excursus
on Affective
Bodies
It is absolutely vital to pause here, to stand back, and to note the role
by
Deleuze's
reading
played
bellicose
Spinozist
doctrine
the
of
of
bodies.
Both
Negri
Deleuze
it
affective
and
make
perfectly clear that
they
consider
Spinozism
to have been a declaration
in
of war
Kampfplatz,
is
the
the
always that
philosophy, and
ground staked out,
body,
the
or of materiality.
of
transformation
For Negri,
Spinoza's
corporeal
"horizon
the
of war"
scene of philosophy marks a
of
(Negri 1991a 144), whilst for Deleuze, Spinoza's great provocation that
"no one has yet determined what the Body can do" (Spinoza 1985 E
from
demand
battle
the
to
P2D)
is
U
ground of philosophy
shift
cry, a
a
Spinozist
is
be
Spinoza,
to
To
to
a
the abstract to the material.
respond
Deleuze
the
in
to
think
calls
what
accord
with
a
refusal
refusal,
great
a
"traditional
implicit,
image of thought"
by which he means "a more or less
determines
image
thought
our
which
of
tacit or presupposed
In
the
this
1994
(Deleuze
move
case,
to
think"
try
xvi)'.
goals when we
to
beyond the image of thought constitutes a refusal
define a thing
its
by
its
form,
by its
organs and
nor
functions, nor
]
C...
we
will
a
subject
as
nor
as a substance
be
body
A
latitude.
anything;
can
define it by longitude and
it can be animal,
Organisation
Stratification
as
it
idea;
can
body
an
or
mind
a
sounds,
of
a
92
be a linguistic
corpus, a social body or a collectivity. We call
body
the set of relations of speed and
of a
longitude
slowness,
and rest, between particles
of motion
compose it from
this
point
of view, that
that
is, between
We
latitude
the set of affects that
unformed elements.
call
body
occupy a
at each moment, that is, the intensive states
of an anonymous force (force for existing, capacity for being
In
this way we construct
affected).
a map of the body.
(Deleuze 1988b 127)
What is important
though, is to realise that we have also gained, as a
byproduct, an insight into the apparently flippant designation of Louis
Hjelmslev
"Spinozist
as a
Guattari
(Deleuze
geologist"
and
1980/87
58/43), on the basis that, as John Deely writes, the "priority of relations
intrinsic
the
over
constitution
being
in
the case of objects
of subjective
in their difference from things has best been stated in semiotics by
Louis Hjelmslev" (Deely 1994 217). The horizon of ontological questions
is the Spinozist one of speed, that is to say of an intensive multiplicity,
"a
but
form,
is
complex
rather with
not concerned with
and as such
Correlate
1988b
123).
(Deleuze
differential
between
velocities"
relation
horizon
the
into
the
locking
is
of
the
of ontological questions
with this
"internal
individuation,
the
of
pursuit
about
questions
as
concrete,
intensive
"consist[s]
terms
Deleuze's
in
quantity
of
genesis" which
Deleuzian
In
26/40).
this
1968/94
(Deleuze
than
schema"
rather
fused,
the
that
Simondon
Spinoza
such
are
and
understanding,
infinite
to
from
]
[...
finite
a
quality
an
the
proceeds
"individuation
of
corresponding
Organisation
quantity,
Stratification
as
irreducible
into
divides
which
intrinsic
or
23
intensive parts" (Deleuze 1968/92 182/199)'. The
novelty then of the
ontological position staked out by the tradition
Guattari
themselves
position
philosophies
in which Deleuze and
lies in its predication-
contra the
fixed
not on a
ur-ground, not on a
of representation--
for
lost
search
a
plenitude or origin, or for ideal forms, but on intensive
difference. An ontological perspective cognisant
only of the intensities
generated from what we might call cosmic heterogenesis, something
akin to Bruno's will-to-form
into
affect,
(Mendoza 1995 222-4). Intensity is locked
and affect is always
about relation
and
such that this recasting of ontology has a further aspect.
production,
The prioritisation
of relation (we have already seen that intensity
which
is illustrated
DeleuzeGuattari's,
is
the concatenation
heterogeneous
of
on certain
by Deleuze, and
only generated out of relation,
series),
a question
deployment
strata
of the ethology-
the Umwelt
Uexküll,
"an
Jakob
inventor
the
of
admirable theory
of
von
research-
of transcodings"
(Deleuze and Guattari
1980/87 386/314)'. Or better
becoming-Spinozist
but
deployment,
is
it
a
not a
still,
Uexküll:
in
of
Deleuze
indeed
that
"an
thing"
would
any entity
or
animal, a
which
identify as a body "is never separable from its relations with the world.
The interior
is only a selected exterior, and the exterior, a projected
Uexküll
in
discussion
The
the
125).
(Deleuze
1988b
interior"
plateau
of
Deleuze
First,
in
has
Refrain'
two
Of
and
`1837the
principal results.
Guattari's
for
Kantian
Uexküll's
that
hands,
of a self-confessed
work,
Kant's
is
the
biology
to
research"
"the
of
result
task
expand
of
whom
(Jakob von Uexküll
Uexküll
T.
in
von
quoted
1992 288), and who
interesting
describe
fit
the
to
most
Heidegger saw
as
becomes an interesting
Organisation
as Stratification
biologist alive,
That
Spinozism.
and unexpected elaboration of
94
is to say it lays the grounds for a
possible displacement of the study of
consciousness and subjectivity from its current dominance by rivalling
behaviourism
schools of
and some form of Kantian or Heideggerian
phenomenology,
to a Spinozist
concern with
affect, power and
decidedly
a
nonhumanist and nonanthropomorphic approach.
relation--
Second, it allows for a Spinozism expressed in the terms
Simondon's
of
analysis of the role of the membrane in the living. Needless to say, this
detour through Uexküll, gives us a central mechanism of the SpinozaSimondon conjunction or thought-event,
had previously
distinctions
been subject to the stultifyingly
artificial,
reifying
between subject and object, organism and environment,
in
to
reside
come
relation,
Simondon
in which all questions which
Uexküll
and
in the intermezzo". The combination
is of especial importance
of
here because in
for
to
a philosophical programme
a recasting of an ontology of
addition
becoming,
and a critique
Kantianism,
the
of
stasis of
individuation
the
mechanisms of
concrete studies of
the formation
of milieus
they offer
(Simondon), and of
becoming
from
the
the
of
perspective
of
nonhuman.
The `thing-in-itself
relationships,
nonsensical.
`properties',
the
all
If I remove all the
`activities'
the
all
of a
because
thingness
does
thing
thing, the
not remain over;
has only been invented by us owing to the requirements of
bind
(to
defining,
logic, thus with the aim of
communication
together
the multiplicity
of relationships,
§ 558)
1968
(Nietzsche
activities).
Organisation
as Stratification
properties,
95
The emphasis on production, or alternatively
becoming, is a necessary
component of an ontology predicated upon the priority of relation or of
force. In Deleuze and Guattari
force and relation are almost
his
In
discussion
diagram,
Deleuze
the
"the
that
synonymous.
of
writes
be
like
is
to
force,
power
affected
a matter of
and the power to affect is
like a function of force" (Deleuze 1988a 72), it is then in force or relation
that one apprehends mutant emergences, the creation of the new. This
both
being
having
the power of affecting
emphasis on
affected and
dealing
both
Nietzschean
that
with
are
makes clear
we
a concept with
Spinozist
and
be
to
that
to
elements,
conatus and will
power are
understood conjointly, as means of understanding that mutual process
in which organisms both make, and are made, by their worlds. Acting in
the world adds a new strata to it: affections, forces are never single, it is
in fact absurd to think of them as such, they are always, already plural,
in relation. Massumi and Dean posit this force-relationality
basis of a materialist
political
pair as the
"force
is
that
they
state
philosophy,
relational,
it is the very stuff
differential,
their
less
than
of
thing
point
at
energy
and
matter
a
vector,
indiscernibility
of relationality:
non-coincidence,
This
157).
Massumi
1992
(Dean
becoming"
E...] it is
and
its
relationships
set-up and
Uexktill
the
schema outlined above
with
liquidate
basis
to
the
gives us
questions of subjectivity,
meaning,
Dean
Massumi
and
ideology, in both materialist political philosophy, as
been
have
the
which
in
world,
nonhuman
of
studies
state, and
terms.
importation
dominated by the
of such anthropomorphic
It is in the tradition
Ryan
Michael
that
of such a political philosophy
(potenza)
"potential
power"
against
Spinoza
that
privileges
can write,
Organisation
as Stratification
96
and that "Potential
is the materialist
production and constitution
being in Spinoza" (Ryan 1991b 216). It is
of
basis
this
that we can say
on
that this process of production, individuation
in Simondon, becoming in
Nietzsche and Deleuze is not to be understood as tending towards
a
finished state, a final entity, as Bergson puts it "matter
or mind, reality
has appeared to us as a perpetual becoming. It makes itself
or it
but
itself,
it is never something made" (Bergson 1913 287).
unmakes
Further,
"it does not aim at a final state, does not flow into `being'
(Nietzsche
1968 § 708), any attempt
beginnings
is irreducibly
theological,
at positing
either
it has an "ulterior
ends or
theological
This
(Ibid.
§
Giordano
1066).
is
Bruno and
to
motive"
realisation
crucial
it is the starting point for his conception of an infinite
universe with
limit.
by
definition
This
is
thought
materialist
neither centre, nor
antiteleological, opposed to every shred of transcendence, any attempt to
reintroduce
be
God:
"Becoming
must
explained without
a notion of
final
intentions;
to
recourse
becoming must appear justified
at every
deny
it
is
total
[...
]
To
to
this
a
consciousness of
necessary
end
moment
becoming, a 'God', to avoid bringing all events under the aegis of a being
From
708).
(Nietzsche
1986
this
does
knows
but
feels
not will"
and
who
day
his
the
the
Nietzsche's
offers
science of
scrutiny of
perspective,
in
trends
for
those
basis
and
science
contemporary
of
a critique
vital
God
into
thought
to
of
technoculture that are attempting
reintroduce a
cosmology`.
Incorporeal
Materialism
The relationship
Organisation
Schelling
and
here
is
being
between philosophy and science
sought
as Stratification
97
asymmetric and is bound up with a conceptualisation of the limit, or
rather with what it is that the limit materialises in the specific case in
which it is embedded:
- -philosophy
is dependent upon the passing of words to the limit, the
deformation
of concepts, as in Whitehead's demand that "[w]ords and
phrases must be stretched towards a generality foreign to their
ordinary
usage", (Whitehead
1978 4) or Ciliberto's
description
of
Bruno's concept of language as "an expressive reality" in which "the
linguistic plane becomes interwoven with the essential planes of human
history'" (Ordine 1996 154)4x.
- -science
figures"
is dependent upon bodies overstepping "the limit of their
(Deleuze
instabilities,
Guattari
and
1980/87
138/108),
that are subject to what DeleuzeGuattari
in defects,
call incorporeal
transformations (Deleuze and Guattari 1980/87 132/108).
I propose that the development
incorporeal
of an
materialism
is
derived
DeleuzeGuattari's
Schellingian
in
it
is
work,
as
element
another
by Schelling from his critique of dialectics, and from his deep immersion
in Bruno (for Bruno's account of incorporeal transformation
his
see
1998 75 - 9). As a critique of dialectics it is doubly connected to Deleuze
Guattari.
and
precursor
The Schellingian
direct
is,
as we shall see, a
critique
incorporated
the
one
of
by Deleuze from Bergson. In a
Schelling
the
Hegel,
that
to
problem with
suggests
pointed reference
lack
"its
intermediary
is
of
contemporary philosophy
[...
]
concepts
what
in
is
is
free
not spiritual
is not morally
straightaway mechanistic, what
he
"the
is
highest
only
argues
the
sense corporeal", such concepts are,
genuinely
Organisation
explanatory
as Stratification
be
to
in
the
whole of science" and
concepts
98
without
them is to be "fully incapable of discovering truth" (Schelling
1997 150). It is this insight that leads Schelling to
propose a concept of
the incorporeal, for the above citations are in
response to the question
"what is it that leads most people to slander
matter? " Schelling argues,
basis
his
the
on
of
concept of the intermediary
accepted understanding
coupled
with
incorporeal"
the fact
(or multiplicity)
"the
of
construction
that
forces "are
that the
of matter out of forces"
undeniably
something
compels one to comprehend matter as being constituted
by the incorporeal.
transfiguration"
He goes on to argue that without
the "transition
"point
a
of
from the inorganic to the organic would
be inconceivable" (Schelling 1997 151).
This
Schellingian
incorporeal
the
concept of
DeleuzeGuattari's
to
absolutely critical
transformation
is
because
philosophy of matter,
it is here that the relationship between bodies, the immanent limit and
infinitely
an
longer
is
thematised,
subject
a matter no
variable matter
to the statistical capture of hylomorphic determinations. To quote from
A Thousand Plateaus "an incorporeal transformation
is still attributed
to bodies, but it is now a passage to the limit: that is the only way, not
to eliminate
death, but to reduce it or make it a variation
(Deleuze and Guattari
itself"
1980/87 137/108). This passage goes on to
introduce the opposition between the major and minor sciences such
that the attachment
(materialist
of pragmatics
is
the
clarified.
matter
of
philosophy
and
science
Organisation
as stratification
philosophy) to minor
99
Spinozist
Bodies
From the distinction
given above it can be seen that philosophical
assemblages are those in which it is "words that pass, words that are
of passage" that are to be constructed,
components
"order-words
[that]
composition"
in
and
which
components
of order into components
Guattari
mark
stoppages
as opposed to
or organised,
one is attempting
stratified,
to "transform
the
of passage" (Deleuze and
1980/87 139/110). Whilst scientific assemblages depend upon
the recognition
in
of matter
states in which it is bodies that pass to
"bifurcations,
slowing-downs, and accelerations produce holes, breaks
and ruptures
that refer back to other variables, other relations, and
(Deleuze
Guattari
1991/94 118/124).
other references"
and
This condition of dependency denotes a criticality
deterritorialisation
as a vector of
(transversality),
between science and philosophy
relationship
be
indexed
which can
and as such, the
becomes one that is
linked
Hence
or articulated.
we confront
processed as autonomous, yet
a problem of organisation
(which is, as we have seen, necessarily an
axiomatic or a stratification),
because science also has passwords and
bodies.
Superficially
bodies,
Spinozist
has
to
this
can
appear
philosophy
be implicit
(hence the rampancy of antiphilosophical
tendencies in
Sokal
figures
in
the
best
as
and
work of such
embodied perhaps
science
Brigmont'),
become
in
given
science.
nevertheless concepts can always
drawing
by
This denotes an ambulant coupling of affectation and event,
the distinction
in this way it becomes apparent that there are both
is
is
it
that
philosophy
associated
incorporeal and corporeal events, and
Organisation
as Stratification
I
100
with the former, and science with the latter. These assays of the limit
concur with the attempt by DeleuzeGuattari
breach between
discussion
Linguistics',
and major sciences (see in particular
minor
in the
plateau
Deleuze
20,1923:
Postulates
1980/87 137-9/108-10
forcing
this distinction
object of
binary
of some
invention of a philosophy
variation,
`November
Guattari
and
The
passim).
ultimate
resurrection
to conceive of a historical
choice or prioritisation,
and science of matter
the
of
and
is not the
but the active
infinite
to
subject
the creation of a plane of "a single liberated matter that
deliberately
figures,
is
in
contains no
expression
unformed, and retains
(Deleuze
in
tensions"
those
tensors
and
and
content only
cutting edges,
Guattari
and
1980/87 138/109)'.
Immanence partout
Any attempt to do philosophy under the aegis of DeleuzeGuattari must
be welded to a pragmatic
commitment
immanence that are primary,
in sharp contradistinction
that it is materiality
and
immanence partout. This will mean that
to philosophy understood as the protector of
(the
true
the
images of thought, as an affinity with
philosophy of the
in
in
the
way
State), or the transcendent and absolute; philosophy
lacking
is
declares
the
it,
that
concept
DeleuzeGuattari
practice
which
to
is
it
that
"to
other concepts and
the
connected
not
in meaning
extent
(Deleuze
helps
to
it
that
resolve"
resolves or
is not linked to a problem
is
first
to
in
the
This,
76/79).
chapter,
1991/94
saw
we
as
Guattari
and
in
Guattari's
concrete
produced
Deleuze
as
concepts
and
characterise
body
to
immanent
of
bearing
a
relationship
an
analyses, and
peon
Stratification
as
101
knowledge,
immanent
historical,
of
technical
and political
procedures.
The
character of Deleuze and Guattari's concepts then is posed
in direct contradistinction
to Kant's declaration that "reason is never in
immediate relation to an object, but only to the understanding
[... ] it
does not, therefore, create concepts (of objects) but only orders them"
(Kant 1929 A 643/B 671). DeleuzeGuattari's
distinctly
n,
even anti-Kantian,
philosophy is, therefore,
in that it is only concerned with the
Philosophy?,
What
is
in
that
the
of concepts
are,
words of
production
distinction
by
function
found
the
the
situated
around
a
within
scientific
interlinked
questions
of inseparable
variations
(philosophy),
and
independent variables (science). "Events on a plane of immanence and
states of affairs
intensive
internal
in a system of reference (the different
ordinates
in each case derives from this since they are
but
the
only coordinates of extensive
concept,
components of
functions,
in
abscissas
when variation
Concepts and functions
variable).
multiplicities
Guattari
status of
is no more than a state of
thus appear as two types of
different"
or varieties whose natures are
(Deleuze and
1991/94 121/127). It is in the selection of problems then that
between
draws
a
minor
and
the
science
minor
a
relation
singular
one
deploys
Deleuze
the
here
is
that
A
whenever
point of note
philosophy.
he
is
the
the
signalling
the
multiple
or of
multiplicity
of
concept
dialectic,
to
in
this
opposition
resolute
a
concept
of
embeddedness
in
Bergson,
to
longstanding
his
and
deriving from
commitment
particular
to the decisive influence
by
him
Bergson's
exerted on
in the second chapter of his
kinds
two
the
multiplicity
of
of
analysis
is
it
This
is
a
of course especially pertinent when
Time and Free Will.
introduction
the
for
this
Consider
of
example
question of methodology.
Organisation
stratification
as
102
issue in Deleuze's `The Theory of Multiplicities
notion of multiplicity
in Bergson', "the very
taken as a substantive implies a displacement of
for
thought:
the dialectical opposition of the one and the multiple,
all of
we substitute
the typological difference between multiplicities"'.
introduction
of the concept of multiplicity
beyond
its role in a demonstration
reason
is important
for another
of the abstract
dialectics.
Multiplicity
pejorative sense) character of
The
(in a
Deleuze
and
gives
Guattari a criterion for the selection of true problems, the discernment
false
it
invent
their
them
to
such
gives
as
of
ones: allows
problems, and
philosophical
symptomatology
basis.
It
is
no
a genuinely pragmatic
Deleuze
is
it
is
that
the
that
giving
point
precisely at
mere coincidence
his account of this invention, in the first chapter of his Bergsonism, that
he cites Marx's dictum: "Humanity
it
is
itself
that
problems
only sets
Marx's
Deleuze
199116)'.
in
(Marx
sentence
quoted
capable of solving"
itself
found
be
the
that
"it
only
arises
problem
always
will
continues,
when the material
for
its
are
at
exist
or
already
solution
conditions
least in the process of formation". Invention means the shattering of
;
by
the
thinking
imposed
orthodox canons of
the frameworks
on
it
transmitted
Deleuze
ideas).
(Marx's
knowledge
calls a prejudice
ruling
by order-words
towards accepting ready-made problems, accepting
it
`Being', for example, as the philosophical problematic par excellence,
disciplines
their
problematics.
own
invention
with
the
minor
of
means
in
to
think
is
accord
a refusal
The rejection of ready-made problems
intellectual
its
and
cultural
State-form
various
and
with the
his
in
to
of
Althusser
concept
(what
approximate
would
assemblages
The
these
ISA).
Apparatus'
minor
of
State
character
or
the `Ideological
license
is
this
is
however
no
invention,
arbitrary,
not
this
disciplines, of
Organisation
as Stratification
103
for extreme subjectivism, for as we are always
concerned to show, the
thought of the State and the thought of heresy each have their
own
diagrams,
abstract
and an invention is always made on the basis
of the
possible, in Marks words, "when the material conditions for its solution
already exist".
Philosophical
invention
Philosophical concepts then can be characterised as being produced
locally, embedded in machinic assemblages of thought and matter, as
being immanent to a specific case, and as located on a transversal line
drawn through
the-strata.
Immanence becomes resolved as method
line
This
in
tandem with what
runs
and content.
philosophical mode
a
Antonio
Negri calls the constitutive
method,
a method
whose criteria
tendency, practice, principle
barely
surprising,
philosophical
criteria
determinate
are
`constitution'
of
given that
Marx's
materialist
of
in Negri's
abstraction,
(of the structure),
construction
it is
Marx's
-of
Spinoza,
is
his
only philosophical predecessor
genealogy
that the moment in the Grundrisse from which these criteria spring is
a
that at which Marx identifies production with consumption, and in turn
the Spinozist
determinatio
identifies
this with
Spinozist
Marx will become increasingly
This
est negatioM.
important
as this thesis
formation
the
both
in
terms
of
and
practice
philosophical
of
progresses,
the
selection of problems.
concepts,
The profound singularity
joint
is
DeleuzeGuattari's
marked not
work
of
invention,
just by a mode of conceptual
Organisation
Stratification
as
by
it
is,
nor
a
prodigious as
104
CC=
mere recasting of philosophical concerns in the crucible of a sustained
of a series of legacies, Freudian,
critique
Marxist,
structuralist,
phenomenological, cybernetic, and analytic. The shattered detritus of a
series of modes of thinking
all of which were, to varying
degrees,
characterised by a confidence as to their ability to secure an absolute
point of view, by their harbouring of some kind of progressivist illusion,
and all of which sought to sketch a "transcendental genesis of meaning,
truth, or the conditions of possibilities of every truth" (Althusser 1997
11). Rather, with Deleuze and Guattari one is led to the invention of a
plastic
and positive
set of precise theses, which
fundamenta
describing
of what we are
materialism
(Hardt and Negri 199417).
immanent
as
constitute
the
or pragmatic
The task here then is to continue with the elaboration of the essential
have
I
suggested that a
productive propositions of such an enterprise.
his
for
Simondon's
is
this
enterprise
projection of
own
critical precursor
"the
theory,
theory of
mode of conceptual production as an allagmatic
in
contradistinction
operations"
structures
to, and symmetrical with the theory of
(Simondon 1995 260). Robert Rosen too, in outlining
attack on reductionism,
his
dynamics, and mechanism in the Newtonian-
Cartesian model of science proposes that what is called for is a form of
is
the
in
the
championed
against
component
which
relational modelling
"particle
function"
for
Rosen
is,
the
the
crucially,
of
component
particle;
(Rosen 1991 120), Rosen's position is explicitly
in
terms that are
cast
discrete
be
he
things
the
to
takes
of
stasis
and
to
ontology
what
critical
direct
Rosen's
Karl
In
to
parallel
work,
a
science.
most
underpinning
Pribram",
interesting
the
most
one of
Organisation
as Stratification
of contemporary neuroscientists
105
has explicitly
followed Bergson in developing a position that
seeks to
beyond
both state and process classifications.
move
that when attempting
traditional
Pribram
found
to classify brain cells by function, both of the
options, that is state and process, were severely deficient, on
the basis of such categories, he writes, he could "no more classify the
brain cells than [he] could classify people". In their
he
found that
stead,
it was only a schema based on "the properties of a network or
group of
cells that permitted classification" (Pribram 1987 165). Pribram's work
then points to the necessity of a relational,
intensive
pragmatic and
modelling, and in this respect recalls Rosen's concept of entailment that
we encountered earlier. From a vantage point similar to that of George
Kampis,
Rosen castigates
most of what passes for revolutionary
(here
I refer to the rhetoric
science
of what is vaunted
being
fundamentally traditional
complexity revolution) as
ontology and epistemology'.
of the scientific
continuation
Rosen's position
tradition
as the
level
the
at
of
be
may
seen as a
tracked in Gilles Chatelet's
Les
du
recent
mobile: mathematique, physique, philosophie.
enjeux
Chätelet focuses upon those recurring
history
in
the
of the
moments
in
sciences
which the virtual
has erupted to displace the
physical
dominance of the Aristotelian
presumption
forms.
He
of stable
notes
for example that Galois' Theory of Algebraic Equations
"no longer
describes
but
)
(in
for
`solutions'
an expression such as x =...
searches
the very dynamics of this research through the gradual individuation of roots"64.It
is no surprise
then that in Herbert
Simon's genealogy"
complexity
in his The Sciences of the Artificial
interested
distinctly
are
that the versions
Organisation
as Stratification
of
those in which we are
This
is
resultant
absence
absent.
of complexity
of versions
from the fact
by
Simon
remain within
cherished
the
106
orthodox ontological framework whose persistence and whose unique
claim to authority is undermined by, amongst others, Chätelet and
Rosen.
Immanent
Criteria.
It is imperative
Practice
to note here, that one of the results that is being
claimed for DeleuzeGuattari's
work, as exemplified principally
Thousand Plateaus (and perhaps somewhat formalised
Philosophy? ) is that it represents
in A
in What is
break
thorough
a
with currently
disciplined modes of theoretical work. It is suggested that this break is
level
just
the
not
on
of the ontological and epistemological positions that
it assumes, but, that embodied in Deleuze and Guattari's
is
work
a
down
thrown
the
to
to
to
respond
unavoidable challenge
unique attempt
The
by
Feuerbach.
is
Marx's
then
thesis
on
claim
eleventh
philosophy
that Deleuze and Guattari are announcing a renewal of a philosophy of
interventionist,
practice, an
pragmatic,
materialist
The
philosophy.
light
imperative
in
is
this
as an
element of
seen
critique of organisation
that had fostered heresy and struggle [... ] that
the "long tradition
organises
itself
as a theoretical
practice
that,
battlefield
the
on
between ideologies that philosophy represents, sustains and imposes
an antidialectical,
antihumanist,
antihistoricist
"
(Negri
point of view.
finitude,
teleologies
that
A
61).
1996b
and
and
refuses all
point of view
that positively
maintains
the "search for an open subjectivity
that
is
together,.
that
to
theory
a
practice
say
concept
and
construct
would
(Negri
1996b
59),
to
in
philosophy"
a
practice
resolve
which
of practice
fine
Spinoza's
Balibar,
in
Etienne
to
a
analysis
of
what
adhering
Organisation
Stratification
as
107
politics, calls the "continuous production" of human individuals (Balibar
1998 65)',
Simondon
and that
calls the "fundamental
mode of
becoming: the living being conserving in itself
an activity of permanent
individuation' (Simondon 1995 27). For Deleuze
Guattari,
for
and
as
Negri and Balibar, this cannot be a question of making
revolutionary
proclamations,
conceived
the question
of practice
and executed part
inseparably
intertwined
be
immanently
must
an
hand,
they are
at
of the analysis
indivisible
from each
Practice
in Deleuze and Guattari's understanding
other.
is the art of
forming multiplicities
and constitutionally
becomings
(the two are synonymous), and this
or
be
done
cannot
according to a "preformed logical order" (Deleuze and
Guattari
1980/87 306/251), this however is not to counsel the random,
the unthought, or the simplemindedness of the anarchic. The formation
of multiplicities,
whilst
transcendental
blueprints
and universally
lacking
in "preformed
order"-
dogmatic
the
adherence to a stable
such as
applicable revolutionary
for
(see
example
programme
the politics of the Stalinised Third International,
down politics),
logical
imposition
the
or
a classic case of top
of abstract schemata-
does have
decisions
local,
immanent,
These
that
micrological
are
criteria
criteria.
utilise the material
brought
be
from
in
hand,
for
the
can
nothing
at
They
write:
outside.
Practice does not come after the emplacement of the terms
drawing
in
but
the
actively participates
and their relations,
dangers
the
the
it
lines:
and
same
the
same
confronts
of
variations
Schizoanalysis
like
does.
is
the
emplacement
as
Or
the
rather,
new.
the art of
Organisation
as stratification
there is no problem of
108
application: the lines it brings out could equally be the lines
life,
of a
a work, of literature
or art, or a society, depending
is chosen (Deleuze and
on which system of coordinates
Guattari
1980/87 249/203)
In a parallel move, George Kampis writes
By describing
the general `laws' of component-systems
independently
from their material
realisation
(molecular,
deep
a
unity of the
cellular, organismic, mental, cultural),
domains
be
various phenomenological
can
recognised, and
this
makes a metatheory
of systems that
from
range
biology to society possible (Kampis 1991 275)
To reiterate,
derived
from
drawing
is
the
what
lines
is
of
a set of
demonstrating
concepts, concepts of matter, concepts
immanent
an
character.
differ
themselves
radically
history
philosophical
disciplinarisation,
The terms
from
by their
`pragmatic'
their
canonical
activation
a pragmatic and
`immanent'
and
usage within
as questioners
by their being conceived on, and as, concepts of the
limit, a limit that is always conceived by DeleuzeGuattari
and numerical
(Deleuze and Guattari
DeleuzeGuattari
two,
chapter
construction
of
as material
1991/94 112/118). As we saw in
unquestionably
follow Simondon in the
logic
innovative
their
the
and radical elements of
most
of
distinctive
their
the
materialism;
as
such,
will
we
of
spine
expression,
of
maintain
limit
the
the
that
occupies un role primordiale
question of
for
Simondon
is
limit
The
91).
1995
or membrane
where
(Simondon
Organisation
as Stratification
109
"everything happens" (Simondon 1995 26),
and where for microbiologist
Lynn Margolis, life happen'.
Margulis' theory of symbiotic evolution is
predicated upon and develops
a profound
meditation
upon the meaning
identitarian
sanctity
bounded
the
of
entity,
of membranes
for the
and upon the "old
metaphysical prejudice, [... ] the thinly disguised axiom [... ] that human
beings are radically separate from all other organisms" (Margulis
and
Sagan 1986 19). She anatomises those philosophies and sciences that
take it upon themselves to search for a mark of distinction whether it
be the possession of a soul, of language, of technology "something,
that can be used to "unequivocally
anything"
from `lower' life forms" (loc. cit. ). Margulis'
distinguishe[s]
people
work constitutes powerful
ammunition in the philosophical critique of the unitary self, of the eidos,
basis
for
the
the
and of
species, and provides
necessary scientific
a
materialist,
energetic, contagious antihumanism.
concerned,
develop
the argument
one can
So far as Margulis is
`Memories
the
of
of a
Bergsonian' plateau (Deleuze and Guattari 1980/87 290-2/237-9),
in
is
becoming
proposed, such that
which a
communicative or contagious
the thesis of symbiosis as conceived under the aegis of the concept of
the block of becoming, is mobilised as a key concept in the development
"Becoming
is
involutionary,
Darwinism:
of a critique of molar
involution
is creative" (Deleuze and Guattari 1980/87 292/238). Similarly, against
Darwinism,
"becoming is" shown to be "not an evolution, at least not an
filiation".
descent
by
and
evolution
becomings,
Guattari,
Deleuze
for
only contains veritable
Evolution,
and
Organisation
as Stratification
110
s
and this is a truly Margulisian
thought, in the "domain of symbioses,
that bring into play beings of totally different
scales and kingdoms, with
no possible communication"
(loc. cit. ). This transversal communication
across the heterogeneous
is at the heart
DeleuzeGuattari's
of the machinism
of
thinking; the machine in their work is defined, beyond
any technical specification, as the assemblage of the heterogeneous. It
be
should
apparent how this critique reiterates a point raised earlier as
an element in the construction of Deleuze and Guattari's ontology: the
championing of the horizontal as a principle of immanence against the
of the transcendent.
verticality
Molar Darwinism
lines of descent and filiation
vertical
forms), and critiqued
contagious
(the perfectionism
by DeleuzeGuattari
involution.
Contagious
is built upon pure
Linnaean
of
Margulis'
and
horizontal
"Contagion,
communication.
involves
heterogeneous:
terms
for
that
epidemic,
are entirely
example,
human
being,
bacterium"
a
an animal and a
(Deleuze and Guattari
1980/87 295/242). This is indeed the case with the relationship between
deep sea fish and the bioluminescent
their hosts to illuminate
permitting
bacteria
that inhabit
them,
the Hadean darknesses of the
bottom of the seas (Pain 1999), and between fungi and trees, indeed the
main
reason,
Margulis
points
latter's
for
the
out
resistance
is the intense degree of the symbiotic relationship,
cultivation
factory
in
the
conditions of modern agriculture'.
replicable
to
non-
"There is a
block of becoming between young roots and certain microorganisms,
by
is
in
between
the
the alliance
effected
materials synthesised
which
the leaves (rhizosphere)"
contiguous
(Deleuze and Guattari
1980/87 291/238). A
largely
here,
it
is
that
one
will remain
and
path opens
beginnings
leading
to
the
the
in
of
an
attack
upon
implicit
my remarks,
Organisation
as Stratification
111
Neo-Darwinism
the
of
assumptions
described as "a minor twentieth
that Lynn Margulis
century
religious
has aptly
the
sect within
sprawling religious persuasion of Anglo-Saxon biology" (Margolis 1997
100), an attack
Margulis,
this
born out of the congruence
Rosen, and DeleuzeGuattari'.
would
most closely resemble
developmentalism,
(Depew
The biological tradition
be
that
would
that
of a revivified
has
been
dubbed
the "new Geoffroyism"
what
Weber
and
morphogenesis,
between Simondon,
1996 433), in particular
its emphases
on
Deleuze
"is
folding"
as
suggests
all about
which
(Deleuze 1990/95 216/158), and thermodynamics as applied to radically
open systems, the historical names to which this tradition is attached
be
Geoffroy, d'Arcy Thompson and arguably those elements of
would
Waddington's
work
where it is inflected
by Thom, an affective,
intensive, contagious biology. A figure such as Kauffman would also be
here, as he assigns a critical role to morphogenesis, indeed
important
his
account
of rhythmic
of evolution that operates according to filiation,
theorisation
with
phenomena,
his
and
opposition
the DeleuzoGuattarian
prioritisation
of consistency
of assemblages or organisms,
examination
to a
concurs
in the
with the opposition
of
"epidemic to filiation,
heredity,
by
to
contagion
peopling
contagion to
sexual reproduction
[... ] Unnatural
kingdoms
of nature.
participations
[
] spanning the
...
by epidemic, by contagion,
Propagation
has
heredity"
Guattari
by
do
(Deleuze
filiation
1980/87
to
and
with
nothing
It is these morphological
295/241)'.
characteristics
adequation,
specifications,
Organisation
practices that tend towards the
of nomad science, continuous variation,
inequations,
hylozoism,
as Stratification
pursuit
of singularities
material-forces
the display of
in matter, folding
contra matter-form
(vis.
112
Deleuze and Guattari
1980/87 458/369). The question of consistency is
here
crucial
as it operates as a central weapon in any attempt to
shatter the stratifying procedures of molar or royal science:
the problem of consistencyconcerns the manner in which
the components of a territorial
assemblage hold together.
But it also concerns the manner in which different
hold
together, with components of passage
assemblages
(Deleuze
Guattari
1980/87
403/327).
and relay
and
Topololical
Thermodynamics.
the living
Simondon
Again
lives at the limit of itself, on the limit
[... ] the
life
of
of the
characteristic
polarity
is at the level
here
life
in
fashion
it
is
that
membrane;
exists
an essential
dynamic
topology which maintains
as an aspect of a
metastability
the
by which it exists [... ] the entire content of
internal space is topologically in contact with the content of
the exterior
limits
the
at
living
the
of
(Simondon 1995
224-6).
The most perceptive observers of the scientific revolution
underway,
currently
the explorers of that unstable realm on the edge of chaos:
have
implications
its
that
most radical
the complexity revolution,
noted
being
overlooked.
are
Those implications
level
the
are at
of the
to
to
and
ontology
welded
stability.
epistemology
an
posed
challenges
What is missing is a philosophy sufficiently powerful to take cognisance
Organisation
Stratification
as
113
of these explorations. I have tried to suggest that one place to look for
such a philosophy is Deleuze and Guattari's critique of organisation, the
inverted vitalistic philosophy of matter that is produced by their
work.
What I have initiated then is an examination of that "whole history on
the level of the membrane or limit" (Deleuze and Guattari 1980/87
67/51) that DeleuzeGuattari seek to uncover.
The problem of morphogenesis introduced
above is part of a minor,
biology,
it
is
aware
and
one that sits well within the
philosophically
DeleuzeGuattari's
range of
scanning of critical problems in the natural
In
it
is
for
testcase
their theoretical
sciences.
a sense,
something of a
does,
key
it
issues
in
the
their
as
so many of
work, encapsulating
discernment
of problematics.
Morphogenesis,
with
its hylozoic,
form
into those of
the
expressive collapsing of
categories of matter and
intensity.
and
matter
As such it acts as a condensation
hylomorphism
index
that
the
questions
critique of
of the
basic
as a
structure
for scientific and philosophical practice. Simultaneously it poses severe
difficulties for molar, zoocentric biology predicated upon the species.
In a paper entitled
Prusinkiewicz
`Visual Models of Morphogenesis'
Przemyslaw
be
discerned
in
the
two
types
that
of
approach
can
notes
forms
development
(the
in
the
of
patterns
and
study of morphogenesis
domain of the living)
d'Arcy
Thompson,
following
is
first
tradition
1. the
where one would
form
Rosen,
in
is
taken as a
figures
locate
which
such as
derivative
Organisation
Thompson
"that
"It
is
the
writes
obvious"
of growth:
Stratification
as
114
form of an organism
is determined
by its rate of growth in
directions;
hence rate of growth deserves to be studied as
various
to the theoretical
study of form, and
form
itself is found, mathematically
organic
be
to
speaking,
a
a necessary preliminary
function of time" (Thompson 1952 79).
2. the second approach, deriving from Turing, focuses on the flow of
substances through a medium, in which "the systems considered
consist of masses of tissues which are notgrowing, but within
which certain substances are reacting chemically, and through
diffusing"
(Turing
they
38).
which
are
Evidently,
this first tradition
identified
in his work on Spinoza as intensive
individuation
intrinsic,
is one that exhibits, what Deleuze had
quantity,
Spinozist
is "neither qualitative nor extrinsic, but quantitative
and
intensive" (Deleuze 1968/92 181/197). That this principle is
Guattari's
biology,
brings
it
Deleuze
that
to
and
and
critique of
critical
them into direct relation with the former morphogenetic tradition,
evidenced
by the following
key
a
statement
citation,
is
of their
Occurring
in
the
middle of one
growth.
of
morphogenetic
comprehension
intricate,
the
most
of
iconoclastic, conceptually fertile and at the same
time rarely considered passages in A Thousand Plateaus, this passage
individuation
that
questions of
makes clear
in the natural world from
Deleuze
Guattari
to
to
the
the crystal
and
as
organism are as central
demonstrates
it
Moreover
that these questions
Simondon.
they are to
be
treated
to
metaphor,
as
not
are
pragmatic
but rather
deployments, of transversal
as Strat
cation
and
derived
from
concepts
a range
immanently
disciplines
diverse
rendered
and
of
Organisation
distillations,
as
functional
in defined
115
milieus:
When content and expression are divided
lines
the
along
of
the molecular and the molar, substances move from state
to state, from the preceding state to the following state, or
from layer to layer, from an already constituted layer to
a
layer
in the process of forming,
forms
while
install
themselves at the limit between the last layer or last state
and the exterior milieu.
Thus the stratum
epistrata
this is accomplished through a
and parastrata;
develops into
inductions
layer
from
layer
to
set of
and state to state, or at
the limit. A crystal displays this process in its pure state,
form
its
directions
but
in
since
expands
all
always as a
function of the surface layer of the substance, which can be
emptied of most of its interior without interfering
with the
Guattari
(Deleuze
1980/87
78/60)
growth.
and
Schizoanalytic
limit
the
questions concerning
are cemented into a
highly complex, mobile and immensely powerful abstract machine, or
The
by
Margulis
elements
contributed
minor philosophical assemblage.
Simondon
and
taken
are
deterritorialisation
finely
up as
honed cutting
individuation
aimed at symbiosis and
the nomos and transduction
(transcoding).
edges of
respectively,
But to unleash its full
delineated
These
do
operations.
operations
potential requires carefully
to
the
to
of
philosophy
supposedly superior
an abdication
not amount
in
implementations
forged
the
clarity of concepts
and encodings of the
physical
implementation
the
sciences,
practices,
Organisation
as Stratification
of empirical
the
==
encoding of material
phenomena in physical law. Nor can they be
by the Kantian
contained
theorisation.
prescription
limits
the
of
Instead, the full weight of DeleuzoGuattarian
of scientific
pragmatics
is directed at the production of transversal concepts which dislodge, and
then follow, singularities
produced in a range of cases, across the
strata, always governed by a pursuit of materiality
diagrammatisation,
its
and
generative
this pursuit is always creative, for having liberated
from
the tyranny
philosophy
its
is
the
true,
of
object
emergence, the
creation of the new. The meaning of the heterogenesis of the concept
becomes particularly
basis
for
it
is
this
the
at
point, as
pertinent
dignity
longer
it
is
the servant of science
philosophy's
and autonomy,
no
interpreter
the
nor
it
its
The
of art, regains
convergence
own creativity.
that is run here is between parallel theses in minor disciplines, a minor
science and a minor philosophy.
It is in this sense then that at the
level
its
the
production of affects
structure of a philosophy,
micrological
history,
level,
this
term
the
and
will
a
macrological
concepts,
and
at
and
be a misnomer,
of philosophy
and that of the relationship
between
is
(nonphilosophy,
its
art, science) cognised as
outsides
philosophy and
"becoming,
history;
not
it is the coexistence
Guattari
(Deleuze
and
succession of systems"
philosophical
of planes, not the
1991/94 59/59). Hence
time is a time of coexistence, a time that superimposes
the before and after in a "stratigraphic
Guattari
(Deleuze
and
order"
Prigogine
Ilya
Stengers
Isabelle
As
58/59).
1991/94
and
write of the
dispute between Bergson-
"homogeneous
his
and
rejection of
and
different
"many
favour
in
rhythms which, slower
independent time"
of
different
kinds
degree
tension
the
relaxation
of
or
faster,
of
measure
or
Einstein1991207)
(Bergson
and
of consciousness"
Organisation
as Stratification
had
sought
who
117
to eliminate
time from physics altogetherdurations,
of
existence of a plurality
on the questions of the
of time and its irreversibility,
"[e]very complex being is composed of a plurality
of times, connected
together by way of subtle and multiple articulations"
42). Indeed, prioritised
(Stehgers 1997c
by Deleuze and by Guattari (see in particular
the latter's Cartographies schizoanalytiques) are geographic as opposed
to historical
principles, the multidimensional
complexities of topology
against the simplistic
of monodimensional,
and cartography
rigidity
dialectical
oppositional or
schemas.
Che at vero filosofo oM i terreno 0 xýatria6'
Deleuze and Guattari's work is replete with references to the sciences
in
demands
for
from
the
the
a new earth
continually reiterated
earth,
of
both Anti-Oedipus and What is Philosophy?, to the great concepts of deand reterritorialisation,
stratification,
folding, and sedimenting, culled
from geomorphology and geology, Guattari's
cartographic strategies,
joint
in
the
the
the
worksmapping of milieus
emphasis on
and
the
insistence that "we are not even doing history [... ] we are trying to
make maps of regimes
Guattari
(Deleuze
and
of signs"
1980/87
Geology
Morals
`10,000
BC:
the
149/119), and of course
of
plateau
Villani,
Arnaud
Is?
)'.
It
Think
Earth
(Who Does the
have
as we
seen,
describes A Thousand Plateaus as containing a physical geography, and
Philosophy?,
is
What
of
an exceptionally
the
of
one
chapters
programmatic
"thought
for
a geophilosophy which puts
chapter, calls
Guattari
(Deleuze
1991/94
the
and
earth"
into a direct relationship with
is
tellurian
emphasis, a geomorphism,
82/85). This adoption of a
Organisation
stratification
as
l lý
deployed
to deliberate
Principally
it serves as a means to ward off "the slightest
slightest
pragmatic
interpretation"
key
tactical
ends, as a
(Deleuze and Guattari
move.
[...
]
the
risk
1980/87 392/318) of
To make philosophy a geophilosophy is a great
anthropomorphism.
affront to the way in which Deleuze had been taught the discipline (as
he reminds us in Negotiations), that is as the history
of philosophy. It is
also of course a rejection of the dominant forms of philosophy adhered
to by Deleuze
Heideggerian
Guattari's
and
whether
they be
Hegelian,
or
which remain avowedly historicist
in their
contemporaries,
of the unfolding of the concept, "inasmuch as they
various narratives
history
form
posit
as a
of interiority
in which the concept necessarily
develops or unveils its destiny" (Deleuze and Guattari 1990/94 91/95).
This transformation
of philosophy,
Deleuze and Guattari
is
write,
imagined in much the same way as Fernand Braudel's transformation
history
Braudel's
itself,
into
is
of
concerned with
a geohistory.
work
"this rich zone, like a layer covering the earth [... ] material
material civilisation"
life or
(Braudel 1985 23), and his questions always ask
`how
(recall
`where',
`what',
the
the
the
and
many'
our comments
about
Bergson
and multiplicity')
above on
he
`when',
than
the
talks of
rather
history in terms of "numbers, lines of force, repetitions and typologies"
(Braudel
1985 92), and of certain
here,
the coming of the
events,
Nomads,
towards
"cyclonic
zone, an enormous
a
as an attraction
"electric
[...
]
96),
towns
1985
transformers
(Braudel
and
of
as
vacuum"
restrictive
distinctive
and
both DeleuzeGuattari
the irreducibility
(Braudel
1985 479,491).
geometries"
For
Braudel,
is
the
geographical
associated with
and
to
the
the
cult of necessity
as
opposed
contingent
of
Guattari
(Deleuze
1990/94
92/96),
historical
by
the
and
harboured
with
Organisation
as Stratification
11
the currents of winds and oceans, the shearing points of ice masses, the
lavas, and shifting
It
is
this same
magmas.
that provides the character
Guattari's
Deleuze
of
and
speed of overflowing
contingency
becomings, the meetings of the heterogeneous, hence their association
becoming,
They
the
of
concept with
write
and so with geography.
"becoming is the concept itself. It is born in history, and falls back into
it, but is not of it. In itself it has neither beginning nor end but only a
milieu.
It is thus more geographical
Guattari
than historical. " (Deleuze and
1990/94 106/110).
In the next chapter we turn to a critique of a work that seeks to pursue
the meeting
DeleuzeGuattari's
of
geohistory.
Organisation
Stratification
as
geophilosophy
Braudel's
and
chapter
-R Ar
-0
Ar
0
1004 '1ateaus?
ý1
In this way the boundless refuse of activity pushes human
plans- including those associated with economic operationsinto the game of characterising universal matter; matter, in
fact, can only be defined as the nonlogical difference that
in relation
to the economy of the universe what
crime represents in relation to the law.
represents
(Bataille 1/1985 319/129)
Hence it happens
that
one who seeks the true cause of
like
is
miracles, and
eager,
an educated man, to understand
natural things, not to wonder at them like a fool, is generally
denounced
heretic
by
impious
those
considered and
as an
honor
interpreters
the
people
of nature and the
as
whom
Gods. For they know that if ignorance is taken away, then
foolish wonder, the only means they have of arguing
defending their authority, is also taken away.
and
(Spinoza, 1985 EI appendix)
121
In the `Conclusions
Nonlinear
History
and Speculations'
(De Landa
to his A Thousand Years of
1997 257-74)
describes his book as offering
"historical
a
`stuff,
as well as with the hardenings
Manuel
De Landa
flows
these
survey of
of
themselves" (De Landa 1997
259). The stuff referred to is broken down in the
book
the
structure of
into three sections, each corresponding to one of Gilles Deleuze and
Felix Guattari's
organic
three major strata, that is, the "physicochemical,
and anthropomorphic"
(Deleuze
Guattari
and
1980/87
627/502), which for De Landa are taken to be `Lavas and Magmas',
`Flesh and Genes', and `Memes and Norms'.
The hardenings,
or
elsewhere `slowings down' of this stuff, or matter-energy in movement,
take different
forms on the three strata: the formation of features of
the geological landscape by the hardening of the eponymous lavas and
flows
biological
the
"biomass,
the
magmas;
coagulation of
of
matter,
genes, memes and norms" (De Landa 1997 258) into human and
bodies;
languages
from
the
the "momentary slowing
animal
extrusion of
downs or thickenings
institutions
in a flow of norms",
and the creation
of
hardenings
flows
"transitory
in
the
considered as
of money,
A
further
(De
Landa
1997
259).
is
in
qualification
routines and prestige"
hardenings
flowing
further:
before
the
to
which
matter
we go any
order
is subject come in two different forms, forms named by Deleuze and
Guattari
it
and
renamed,
would
as strata and self-consistent aggregates,
appear quite arbitrarily,
by De Landa as `hierarchies' and `meshworks'.
builds
De
Landa
In executing this analysis
a conceptual armature out
first,
two
elements:
of a weave of
patterned
Fernand
on
Schizoanalytic Materialism
Braudel's
historical
a
magisterial
perspective
Civilisation
closely
and
122
Capitalism:
15th-18th
Century,
the fine grain
the
of
micrological
secured by the perspective of the longueduree and an attention to the
flows
life:
Kondratieff
cycles and
of economic
lenses of nonlinear
the
through
seen
waves
dynamics. Second, and perhaps more important
here is De Landa's extensive engagement with key concepts drawn
from the two volumes
Schizophrenia,
Deleuze
Guattari's
of
and
in particular
Capitalism
and
from the second volume, A Thousand
Plateaus. What would appear to be most in accord with the approach to
these concepts argued for in this thesis, is De Landa's attention to the
pragmatic
emplacement
in
the
an empirical
of
concepts
study, the
DeleuzoGuattarian
The
lodge
to
them
on a specific stratum.
attempt
Deis
De
Landa
those
and
of
most concerned are
concepts with which
restratifccation,
Body
life,
the
without
nonorganic
Organs, and the
fusion
The
two
these
the
elements, allows
of
result of
machinic phylum.
demonstrate
Years
to
A
Thousand
as a sustained attempt
one to read
Consistency'
Plane
`The
his
in
Guattari's
of
the validity of
article
claim
historythread
"what
the
that
of
makes
scientific revolutions-
from protohistory until the
is the machinic phylum" (Guattari
1977 315).
familiarity
Years
A
Thousand
In a certain respect
presupposes a
Intelligent
Age
War
in
book,
first
the
De Landa's
of
his
detailed
he
first
that
understanding
there
with
Machines as it is
in
the
the
way
of
which
in
human,
is
imbricated
and
particular
military,
with
machinic phylum
detailing
by
this
is
it
that
Landa
relationship
history. De
only
contends
be
history
written.
can
that a genuinely materialist
Lurking
De
is
Landa's
beneath
the
far
an
of
work
too
surface
not
unexpected
clearly
most
one
agenda,
Materialism
Schizoanalytic
in
his
revealed
spoken
123
presentations
his
of
research: that is an unmitigated
attack upon, and
rejection of, Marxism as a tool of historical analysis, it is significant in
this respect that the only overt criticism of Deleuze and Guattari given
inA Thousand Years is precisely for their commitment to Marxism:
[d]espite the fact that their philosophical work represents
intense
an
movement
destratification,
of
Deleuze and
Guattari
have
to
seem
preserved
Marxism,
hardly
they
touch or criticise (De Landa
which
their
own stratum,
1997 331).
The problem
with
this attack is principally
this: commitment
to
Marxism
by
Deleuze
Guattari's
is
on
no means accidental or
and
part
liminal,
it plays, I want to suggest, a privileged
role amongst the
draw.
Indeed
from
it
they
plays a critical
cornucopia of sources
which
key
dominant
in
Capitalism
in
set of concepts, most
role
organising a
Schizophrenia.
and
such that the substantial
third chapter of Anti-
Civilised
and
Men' can barely be
Oedipus, `Savages, Barbarians
Marx's
is
to
scarcely comprehensible, without reference
understood,
Grundrisse, the chapter is in fact best read as an attempt to rewrite
fundamental
and expand certain
themes of the Grundrisse, and in
that section of it that deals with `Precapitalist
particular
Formations'.
Economic
At the same time, this chapter is preoccupied with a
debate central to Marxist
theory, that of the presence or absence of
human
history.
account of
teleology
in Marx's
resolutely
his
in
opposition
clear
identifying
it as a "metaphysical
Materialism
Schi.zoanalytic
Marx himself
was
to any semblance of teleology
(Marx
Engels
1976 59),
spectre"
and
12244y
writing
that "history
is nothing but the succession of the separate
generations [... ] This can be speculatively distorted so that later history
is made the goal of earlier history [... ] thereby history receives its own
special goals and becomes a person ranking with other persons' (to wit:
`self-consciousness, criticism, the unique', etc), while what is designated
with the words `destiny', `goal', `germ', or `idea' of earlier history is
nothing more than an abstraction from later history" (Marx and Engels
1976 59). Such is Marx's consistently held position on this subject. Let
be
us
perfectly
clear about this:
impositions
of telos, necessary
history
Marx
imputed
Marxism
the
to
progress on
course of
or
are
distortions introduced by, on the one hand, Stalinists, who had political
do
later
Marxists
to
so, and
reasons
failed
to understand
who
the
known
depth
Marx's
Hegel
(as
Marx
is
well
and
of
critique of
radicality
himself
disassociated
from
to
the
that
thought
much
of
claimed
sharply
be produced under his aegis). All of the latters' categories are for Marx
irretrievably
theological; and, on the other hand, by opponents of any
form of Marxism.
As Marx makes clear, in his analysis of the "ruling
have
ideology
in
ideas",
the
general, and as we
and of
ruling
class and
Guattari
Deleuze
in
in
their
this
thesis,
and
concur
repeatedly shown
ideas
in
State
teleological
the
necessity
are
of
cast
science,
analysis of
This
Hegel
is
theological
philosophical event called
ones.
same mould as
State,
Spinoza
Hegel
functionary
is
in
it
the
Spinoza",
a
of
and
and
ou
its most virulent
Spinoza
"regard
It
is
these
that
grounds
on
we can
critic.
Marx's
as
standpoint"
direct
only
ancestor,
from the philosophical
(Aithusser and Balibar 1970 102)'. Understood in this way
it is possible to reconceptualise
Deleuze's continual prioritisation
Materialism
Schizoanalytic
the political
stakes invested
in
Spinoza
Hegel.
For
of
over
all of these
'ý
s_.
_
reasons, any project that attempts to account for social history in a
way that claims some fidelity
to Deleuze and Guattari
doomed if it pretends that Marxism
is an irrelevance
is ultimately
or a nostalgic
affectation
hung onto by disappointed soixante-huitards. Deleuze and
Guattari's
attempt
to understand
capitalism
as a voracious,
ever
expanding, all consuming producer of axiomatics is incomprehensible
without reckoning with the event of Marx. De Landa states that there
least
"at
two things" that prevent him from subscribing to Marxist
are
concepts, these are "the labour theory of value which Piero Schraffa
[sic. this should read `Sraffa', EA] has clearly shown to be a redundant
part
Marxist
of
traditional
built-in
[...
]
the
economics
and
teleology in the
Marxist periodisation of history" (De Landa 1997 281). Both
demonstrate
for
I
insufficient
these
that
reasons
of
are,
shall
entirely
function
and
Sraffa
Whilst
it
is
the
true
that
as
crudest caricature.
launched an attack on the labour theory of value and by so doing exited
from Marxist economics it is also the case that the one need not lead to
the other. Support for the labour theory is by no means a prerequisite
long
is
Marxism,
indeed
tradition
there
a
of
Marxism
(one
that
within
A
Marx)
it.
that
also rejects
contemporary, and
starts arguably with
virulently
Marxist, argument in favour of rejecting the labour theory is
Negri
by
Antonio
the
the
rubric
real subsumption of
of
under
presented
labour
For
Negri
the
the
theory
to
redundancy
of
of
capital.
society
"to
is
tied
a previous and out-dated organisation
value
accumulation"
labour
of
and
has
to
that
taken
a
major
shift
goes
on
write
place
and
in the political landscape of the developed world (or the core) and that
hypostatised
in
for
the
name of a
a politics maintained
problems exist
his
bringing
Negri
the
of
project as
assesses
industrial proletariat.
Materialism
Schizoanalytic
16
two traditional
thematics, the question of the validity of the
law of value, and the development of the transition between
socialism and communism, into contact with the new phase
history: the subsumption
of political
of the entire society
under capital in the process of capitalist accumulation, and
therefore the end of the centrality
factory
the
of
working
class as the emergence of revolutionary
subjectivity (Negri
1996a 149).
It is the conjunction of "post-Fordism as the principal condition of the
new
social
organisation
labour
of
and as the new model
of
ideology
the
accumulation, and post-Modernism as
capitalist
adequate
to this new mode of production"
that together form the assemblage
by
(Negri
Negri
"the
named
real subsumption of society within capital"
1996a 154). De Landa is constitutionally
because his understanding
incapable of recognising this
Marxism
incontrovertible
is
as
a
set
of
of
lucidly
Guattari
Felix
than
truths
points
rather
as a method.
empirical
Grundrisse
"insisted
Marx
in
it
is
the
the
that
absurdity and
who
on
out
the transitional
(Guattari
based
on work time"
character of a measure of value
1996 205), the simple reason for this is that as Marx
between
discrepancy
is
the
there
machinic,
a growing
recognised,
intellectual
labour,
"Human
that
time
of
such
and manual components
is increasingly
by
(Guattari
time"
machinic
replaced
is
the
factor
in
transition
this
of
course
crucial
1996 207). A
of the economies of
being
based
America
from
North
the
Japan,
Europe,
production
on
and
information
the
the
to
of
predominance
of physical commodities
Schizoanalytic Materialism
and
127
service industries.
De Landa's second reason for rejecting Marxism ie.
that it is beholden to a predetermined teleological progression of
stages
is simply, and I return to this point later, laughable. Such
an argument
is a fatuous irrelevance that can only be countenanced seriously in
a
culture where Marxism's image has been so thoroughly tarred with the
brush of Stalinism that it is possible to present it in such a
caricatured
form.
Unevenness
and Heterogeneity
De Landa's book then is significantly
by
the total inadequacy of
marred
this attack, and it is upon this that I wish to concentrate. The Marxism
that he professes to reject is one entirely
stripped of subtlety, one
debates
have
the
that
of
extensive
raged within
ignorant
theory on the genesis of different
literatures
concomitant
various
positions
Transition
modes of production,
Marxist
and of the
`stageism',
on
on the origins of capitalism (the
in this debate are collected in the volume The
from Feudalism
to Capitalism,
Aidan
in
assessed
and
Foster-Carter's
important
Modes
`The
Production
survey article
of
Controversy'),
the nature of the world system (a concept cursorily
by
being
De
Landa
in
terms
classic postmodernist
rejected
as
a "great
homogenisation",
the
master concept,
great
De Landa 1997 267), and
development.
It
is
the
and
of
combined
uneven
concept
most notably
this latter idea which plays a crucial role in DeleuzeGuattari's
Marx,
in
particular
of
Landa
in Anti-Oedipus,
has, in recent
apparent
and curious
Schizoanalytic Materialism
De
the
text,
a
sense of which
spoken presentations',
ignorance.
reading
Marx
demonstrated
an
discusses
the
explicitly
128
existence of the symptoms of a previous social form in a
continued
period when its material base or `cause' has long vanished: "Alongside
the modern evils, we are oppressed by a whole series of inherited evils,
arising from the passive survival of archaic and outmoded modes of
production, with their accompanying train of anachronistic social and
political relations. We suffer not only from the living, but from the dead.
Le mort saisit le vif./" (Marx 1976 91). So much for linear causality in
Marx.
Rather
involution
have
here
the presaging
we
that Deleuze and Guattari
that are without finality
of a complex view of
describe as "reverse causalities
but testify nonetheless to an action of the
future on the present, or of the present on the past", and note this well,
"it is these reverse causalities that shatter evolution" (Deleuze and
1980/87 537/431). On this latter point De Landa suggests
Guattari
that only his model, nominally derived from the application of nonlinear
dynamics to economic theory, can account for a situation such as that
in which one sees the existence of an urban agglomeration evincing
nominally
capitalist
relations
of production
surrounded
by a rural
however
by
dominated
feudal
It
is
precisely such
relations.
expanse
by
for
heterogeneous
that
the
are
accounted
elements
assemblages of
development
for
(see
Marxist
example
concept of combined and uneven
analyses of the situation
Revolution,
Petersburg,
production
Trotsky
in Tsarist
Russia on the eve of the 1917
in which one finds large urban centres, Moscow and St.
characterised
including
by advanced
capitalist
relations
of
the largest factories then extant in Europe-
US
in
in
1914
17.8%
for
the
the
that,
of
example
notes
in
factories
Russia
1000
in
of
workers or more,
workforce was employed
by
in
figure
41.4%
the corresponding
surrounded
a
countryside
was
-
Schizoanalytic Materialism
129
which social relations
were entirely
feudal, peasants were still, in
Gogol's phrase, and as detailed in his novel of the same title, dead souls
that is chattels bound to, and sold with, plots of land rather than being
free agricultural
labourers selling chunks of variable capital embodied
in their labour, the existence of serfdom was a de facto reality into the
1920's
early
even though it was juridically
Here,
1861).
"Unevenness,
reveals
itself
then
is the
classic
annulled in the reforms of
of the
statement
principle:
being the most general law of the historic
most sharply
process,
in the destiny
and complexly
of the
backward countries [... ] From the universal law of unevenness thus
derives [... ] the law of combined developmentarchaic with more contemporary
finds
its direct
correlate
[... ] an amalgam of
1980 6). This law
forms" (Trotsky
in DeleuzeGuattari's
deterritorialisation
theorem
eight of
generalised
double
assemblage
does not have the same forces or even speeds of
deterritorialisation
coefficients
as another;
be
must
calculated
under consideration"
the mechanisms
generated
different
states
in each instance,
"one
the indices and
block
becoming
the
to
of
according
(Deleuze and Guattari
by which
between
which
that
1980/87 377/307). It is to
these grotesque
economic
dissymmetries
are
by
Capitalist
the
zones
his
dedicated
has
Samir
Amin
that
project.
a major part of
axiomatic
Amin's work, we should note, plays a critical
Deleuze
in
and
role
Capitalist
in the
Guattari's
account of contemporary
thirteenth
Apparatus
BC:
`7000
plateau
axiomatics
Capture'.
This
is
account
of
becoming
has
described
Negri
Antonio
as
evermore prescient,
one that
is
in
Mille
Plateaux
he
has
the
time
still
of
suggested,
and consequently
the future,
it is in the process of becoming, and it is "Becomings,
Schizoanalytic Materialism
130
becomings-animal,
history, individual
Whilst
becomings-molecular,
Guattari
(Deleuze
1980/87 200/162).
or general"
and
one may critique
progressive
Amin's
impoverishment
underdevelopment
[that, EA] have replaced
which
for
from
the
proposals
escaping
by the
generated
is contingent
development
of
upon these asymmetrical
ludicrously
being
briefly,
Put
Amin
idealist.
relations as
proposes and
directly
development
advocates a model of autarchic economic
which
opens onto and supports the third-worldist
ideology rampant in the
1970's, one cannot help but find his general thesis, which serves as a
inanities
to
the
patent
caustic rejoinder
bourgeois
faith
in
the
the
of
be
down
to
the
trickle
effect played out on a global scale,
generosity of
convincing'.
The Internal
I, mit. Spinoza
'Integrated World Capitalism', to use Alliez and Guattari's terminology
Marxist
in
is
de
Landa's
to
never characterised
claims,
and contrary
theory as a smooth space of homogeneous relations,
but rather
is
level
by
the
of
every
at
of
unevenness
coexistence
radical
marked
investigation.
Marxist economics at its most powerful, is committed to
an anti-Platonism
it
the
in
that
the
possibility of
rejects
sense
precisely
the existence of pure forms, an evolutionary
it
is
procession of stages,
indeed predicated upon the existence of noncapitalist
relations, the
has
"no
Guattari,
Deleuze
to
and
quote
global axiomatic of capitalism,
believe
it
for
like
that
It
to
but
laws
immanent ones. would
confronts
us
limit
Universe,
the
limits
the
the
of resources and energy.
extreme
of
But all it confronts are its own limits" (Deleuze and Guattari 1980/87
Schizoanalytic Materialism
131
579/463)
so that
to the "deepest law of capitalism;
according
it
sets and then repels its own limits, but in so doing gives rise
continually
to numerous flows in all directions that escape its axiomatic" (Deleuze
Guattari
and
Capitalism
capitalist
1980/87 590/472). In more orthodox Marxist
"is born and develops within
the framework
terms,
of a pre-
(Mandel 1977 125). The model that De
mode of production"
Landa projects onto Marxism
is one that the Trotskyist
economist
Ernest Mandel has diagnosed as "isolat[ing] `pure' forms which in real
life are combined, or have more or less degenerated. To reduce economic
history
to a series of `stages' or to the successive appearance of
`categories'
is to make it excessively mechanical,
to the point of
it
The
Marxist
[...
]
rendering
unrecognisable
conception of economic and
has
for
fatalism
No
phase of
social change
any
or automatism.
no place
social organisation
`must' necessarily succeed another" (Mandel 1977
91). As such the development
Guattari
for
Marxism,
and
Capitalism,
of
for both Deleuze and
is predicated upon the existence of the
different
is
it
is
development
that
to
sectors,
say,
an axiom of
of
uneven
Capitalism,
a structural
demonstrating
difference
has
This
a structure
necessity.
selfsimilarity
(between hemispheric
from
the global
on each and every scale
(between
to
the
to
regions),
national
sections),
the local (between and within, for example, the different areas of a city).
This proposition takes the form of the internal limit, "the South is an
Third
designating
World
the
term
or the periphery, and even
abstract
that there are Souths or Third Worlds inside the centre" (Deleuze and
Guattari
1980/87 585/468). The problem with De Landa's position as
he
book,
be
is
that
in
to
this
whilst
claims
consistent with
staked out
DeleuzeGuattari's
Schizoanalytic Materialism
has
he
fact
in
project
chosen to ignore or reject an
12
fundamental
absolutely
part of their work, a part of their work to which
the bulk of Anti-Oedipus
least
two plateaus of A Thousand
and at
Plateaus is dedicated, and that is their account of Capitalism's spread
across the globe in terms of "(t)he four principal flows that torment the
of the world economy, or of the axiomatic, [which] are
representatives
the flow of matter-energy,
the flow of population, the flow of food, and
the urban flow [... ] the axiomatic never ceases to create all of these
problems, while at the same time, its axioms, even multiplied,
deny it
the means of resolving them" (Deleuze and Guattari 1980/87 585/468).
This account is explicitly
derived
in
from,
terms
given
and consistent
with, the most sophisticated Marxist accounts of the functioning of the
Capitalist world machine or axiomatic, and Deleuze and Guattari's twin
volumed
Capitalism
Schizophrenia
and
is nothing
if
else
not a
There
be
Marx.
to
this
to
sustained engagement with
seems
reader
no
possible way around this without
misrepresentation
of their work.
engagement
Freud
with,
committing
the most grotesque
Hence, whilst the critique of, and
in the two volumes
Capitalism
of
and
Schizophrenia is often remarked on, the equally important development
Marx,
to
think
the
attempt
of
Marxism,
a
is overlooked. The entire
Anti-Oedipus
is
third
to
the
on
of
already
remarked
chapter
point of
history
Hegelian
its
which will escape
secure an account of universal
determination
by
hold
"the
(teleology)
theology
of
conditions
seizing
as a
its
contingent,
of
its
irony,
its
and
singular existence,
own critique"
(Deleuze and Guattari
1974/83 324/271). Deleuze and Guattari's work
having
do
far
be
to
then can
more
with that particular
seen as
Marxism,
school of
Marxism
by
Althusser,
inspired
which
French
develop
to
a
sought
inspired by Spinoza rather than by Hegel. Why? "Because
Schizoanalytic Materialism
133
Spinoza is the founder of an absolutely original conception of
praxis
because
he
teleology,
thought the presence of the cause in its
without
effects and the very existence
of structure
in its effects and in
(Negri
1994/95 125/12). One can only agree with Fredric
presence"
Jameson's judgement
thinkers
"Deleuze
is alone among the great
this:
on
in having accorded Marx an
of so-called poststructuralism
fundamental
his
in
absolutely
role
philosophy" (Jameson 1997 395).
Machinic
Critique
To return to this question of the nature of the Capitalist machine we
must
ask
what,
DeleuzeGuattari,
in
this
in
sense,
the
sense understood
by
is a machine? In beginning to address this question we
be
in
that
a way approaching one of the most
must
quite clear
we are
distinctive elements of their thinking
is
that
precisely their attack
and
upon one of the great structuring
dualisms of Western thought, that
between mechanism and vitalism,
and their transcending of the split
',
"which
is
thinking,
the
a
proposal of a great machinic
machinism
with
fluxes
designates
it
that
every system
cuts off
something else entirely:
beyond
both
technology
the
the
organisation of
and
mechanics
of
going
the organism, whether it be in nature, society, or man" (Guattari 1995
99). Deleuze and Guattari
lengths
is
to
to
that
stress
great
what
go
being proposed here is in no way subject to the great dispute between
for
in
this
to
they
above,
are not alone
mechanism and vitalism alluded
the biologist Robert Rosen too makes clear that there is a third way
immutable
for
Rosen
it
is
beyond
two
these
alternatives,
called
passing
biology
he
that
mustnotes
complexity,
Schizoanalytic Materialism
for
biological
indeed
and
some
134
scientists,
notably
Kauffman
and
this is a basic
beyond
move
mechanism, and the "alternative
starting pointvitalism,
Rosen, Margulis
it is complexity"
is not
(Rosen 1991 262)'. Deleuze and Guattari
make much of this set of distinctions, recall the section of Anti-Oedipus
entitled `Beyond vitalism and mechanism', a beyond that returns us to
the opening of this section: with the machinic phylum.
In the present circumstances
it will have to suffice to note that the
in DeleuzeGuattari's
is by no means something
machine
work
de Landa gave an exemplary
metaphorical
(something
demonstration
in his previous book's discussion
of which
Sadi
Carnot's
of
discovery of the abstract diagram in relation to his research into the
heat
De
Landa
The
1994
141).
machine
engine,
of a
construction
denotes something
that is "constituted
from the moment there is
communication
between two portions of the outside world that are
distinct
really
in a system that is possible although less probable"
(Deleuze and Guattari 1974 466); it is axiomatic then that a machine is
definition
heterogeneous
its
that
goes
elements and also
composed of
beyond
technical.
the
merely
way
The analysis of the machine is
historicopolitical
for
its
towards,
example,
extended
Deleuze's article
deployment in
devenir'
focusing
intimacy
`Controle
the
on
et
on
between the changing nature of the abstract diagram through time and
the different
relationship
forms
in
it
is
embedded: think
which
societal
between clockwork and the absolutist state, disciplinary
thermodynamic
and
societies
information
of the
"control
[...
]
machines,
societies
with
technology and computers" (Deleuze 1990/95 237/180).
Pierre Levy has extended some of these considerations in his account of
Schizoanalytic Materialism
135
the virtualisation
his
demonstration
the
tool
of
and
that "material
instruments
large
and artifacts provide us with a
number of concrete
and socially
shared
models,
with
which
we can metaphorically
apprehend more abstract phenomena or problems" (Levy 1998 125).
This machinic account is one that is philosophically
and pragmatically
rigorous, one that operates according to an expanded logic of general
economics to the scale of the universe. Intimately
DeleuzoGuattarian
concept of the machine
connected to the
is that
of machinic
enslavement, now the Marxist concept of the machine obviously has a
direct correlate
to this in that of exploitation,
vaguely resembling
essentially
is
such a concept
entirely
but anything
even
in
De
Landa,
absent
he elaborates a concept of capitalism
(and indeed of all
devoid
is
that
social regimens)
of conflict either endemic or accidental,
he leaves therefore
ultimately
for
no space
politics,
presents an entirely theoreticist
class or otherwise,
and
devoid
position
of praxis,
devoid of any conceivable pragmatic implementation
implication.
or
The ultimate reason for the absence in De Landa of an understanding of
lies
his
in
conflict or exploitation
utter misunderstanding
the
theory,
of
Marxian
Antonio
is
Negri
to
crucial
analyses, of surplus-value, which
as
notes "the centre, now and always, of Marxist theory" and the key to
demonstrating
the "productive
materialisation"
its
(Negri
of
method
1991b 60). Hence the deformations and deployments that the theory of
Capitalism
Schizophrenia
in
(principally
surplus value undergoes
and
distinction
between
in
the
machinic and
as surplus value of code, and
human
surplus
distinction
between
and social subjection) constitutes
a critically
value with
the concomitant
machinic
enslavement
important
DeleuzoGuattarian
in
the
element
Schjzoanalytic Materialism
conceptual assemblage.
136
The transfiguration
of the theory of surplus
value of code is to be understood
DeleuzoGuattarian
principal
into
value
one of surplus
as the principal
mechanism
of
A mechanism cutting across the three
thought.
strata, as follows: "Each chain captures fragments of other
from
it
`extracts'
just
chains
which
a surplus value,
as the orchid code
`attracts'
the figure
both
demonstrate
of a wasp:
phenomena
surplus value of a code" (Deleuze and Guattari
of this
ramifications
DeleuzeGuattari's
transfiguration
the
1980/87 47/39). The
wide,
are
because
in
hands the concept of the surplus value of code, the
fragments,
has
two principal results. First, it gives the
capture of code
principal mode of understanding deterritorialisation
processes, they are
indeed functionally identical in the analysis of the flows of capital in the
third
substantial
Anti-Oedipus
chapter of
(as well as in Deleuze's
',
Vincennes
in
1970's)
the
of
which
University
the
weekly seminar at
is, as we have seen, principally
Grundrisse
the
an engagement with
and
in
"great
which
the
we witness
movement
decoding
of
or
deterritorialisation"
(Deleuze and Guattari
second fundamental
result of the analysis of the surplus-value of code
is to produce the principal
representation
mechanism
1974/83 308/259). The
whereby philosophy
(the goal of a nonrepresentational
in turn deterritorialises
by joining
avoids
thought): "the wasp
with the orchid: the capture of a
fragment of the code, and not the representation of an image" (Deleuze
Guattari
and
1975/86 26/14, trans.
surplus value and consequently
altered).
Lacking
one of machinic
a theory of
surplus value, De
Landa has no means of constructing a concept of conflict, neither one of
class nor one of minorities
whatever
it's other
Schizoanalytic Materialism
merits,
his work,
and majorities,
consequently
and contrary
to its author's
claims,
137
constitutes
not
DeleuzeGuattari's
always
development
a
but
of,
definitive
a
break
with
theoretical innovation, which, whatever else it is, has
been, as Deleuze reminds
Marxist
us,
(Deleuze
1990/95
232/171)'.
De Landa
for
the originality,
of grand claims
makes a number
perspicacity and cutting edge nature of his work, however throughout
this thesis I want to demonstrate that far more effective analyses of
the kinds of phenomena that preoccupy De Landa exist; the tradition
that
I am thinking
revolutionary
Vladimir
work
here
is
that
of
from the genuinely
long
biogeochemist
Russian
the
of
neglected
I. Vernadsky whose 1926 magnum opus, The Biosphere has
been
translated
this
only
year
Vernadsky
deriving
into English in its entirety'.
It is to
his
his
Bataille
in
influence,
and under
explicit and cited
Accursed Share (and not, in spite of his protestations
De Landa) that we owe the complimentary
dynamic
earth as an open
to the contrary,
modern conceptions of the
flows
to
of matter
system subject
Lovelock
Margulis'
(precursor
to
and
energy
and
Gaia theory), and that of
life
in
A
living,
the
spoken of
prodigious realm of nonorganic
matter as
Thousand Plateaus and constantly affirmed and reiterated throughout
Deleuze's work from Bergsonism, to the two books on Cinema, to The
Fold. It is this theme that runs like a transversal spine throughout the
invention
line
bastard
from
Bruno,
Leibniz,
to
the
of philosophy,
of
Nietzsche and Bergson all united under the arch of a stripped down
Spinozism
singularity,
Guattari's
directed
towards
number
intensity
and
concentration
Schizoanalytic Materialism
discovery
haecceity,
of
in and of matter.
Deleuze and
the empirical
"matter
on a
that is no longer a chaos to
138
conquer and organise, but matter moving in continuous variation"
(Deleuze and Guattari
1980/87 419/340 trans. altered, EA) is given in a
discovery.
discovery
Such
is
in turn an opening of
process of creative
a
philosophy to the enormity of its altneu task of confronting a matter no
longer subject to its expulsion from the realm of the living, beyond
hylomorphic
and
theological
determinations
of theological
constraint,
longer
no
subject to the
philosophy.
It is a granting
to, and a
by, philosophy
frozen
beyond
the
of a new set of objects,
rigidities
of philosophical
dualisms, a philosophy, not of the inert and
finished,
but of "unformed
directions
[... ] free intensities
gaining
and unstable
matters
[... ] flows in all
or nomadic singularities
(Deleuze
Guattari
and
[... I mad or
1980/87 54/40). A
transitory
particles"
philosophy
becoming
than
than
rather
of
goals,
of processes rather
being. The discovery of a new Earth.
In the next chapter we turn our attention
to the production
of this
he
between
Deleuze
thinker
in
interstices
the
about whom
and a
vision
to
but
contribution
whom we shall argue makes a crucial
rarely writes,
the vital intellectual
great representativeNola.
Schizoanalytie Materialism
tradition
just
is
Deleuze
the
most recent
of which
Giordano Bruno, the apostate Dominican
of
chapter
v
Elaborations on Materialism Between Bruno and Deleuze
The general framework seems at first to be an animist,
hylozoist, pre-Socratic one. But vitalism finds itself inverted at
the very moment that it is asserted, for it does not present
itself either as an envelope of the real, or as a conception of
the world, nor as a force which is not distinct from the
but
historical,
the
as all
production of
real, whether natural or
of these elements at once, placed at the service of the
production of singularity,
of the emergence of singularity
(Negri 1995 99)
Life is not only everywhere,
but souls are everywhere
in
matter
(Deleuze 1988/93 15/11)
A Thousand Plateaus [... ] remains forever open is constantly
being reopened through an amazing will to theorise, and with
heretical
proclamations.
a violence worthy of
(Negri in Deleuze 1990/95 232/171)
What is it that leads most people to slander matter as therdo?
In the end, it is only the modesty of matter that is so offensive
to them. But this very composure proves that something
dwells within matter, something of that original essence, of the
is
that
something
germ and primordial material of existence,
but
itself
is
in
the
the
purest spirituality
outside
passive on
(Schelling 1997 150)
140
chlasm
There is a sense shared by many commentators
Guattari's
Deleuze
on
and
"stems
that
from the fact that [they]
their
work
power
detaching
in
themselves from Parisian
succeed
temporality"
(Land
1993 66)73.The question to be pursued in this case then is, in what time
Deleuze
Guattari
best
be
located?
The implication made here is
can
and
that Deleuze, principally,
be located in the period prior to the invention
Kantian
hence
location
to
the
of
critique, and
prior
conventional
of the
birth of modernity with Kant and the Aufklärung.
That is on the cusp of
the Renaissance and the Baroque. The towering figure of this period is
without
doubt, Bruno, and in these theses it will be shown how, on a
drawn
lines
be
directly
between
issues,
him
number of crucial
can
and
Deleuze. These lines descend from those elements of Bruno's thinking
that are most heterodox to those in Deleuze that are most untimely.
The questions to be activated here are: the truth of the relative; the
invention
haecceity
individuation;
of
as a concept of
active matter
entails;
dissolution
the
and
of eternal
ontology
hylomorphic
the
of
the doctrine of
glue that this
flow; concept of the universal
nous,
immanent in the universe; revised vitalism; hylozoism. A chasm can be
lies
his
his
from
it
in
Deleuze
that
contemporaries,
separates
opened
immersion in a conceptual world that is resolutely, pre-Kantian? 4,and in
the identification
distinctive
Deleuze's
concepts as
most radical and
of
being clearly adumbrated
in Bruno. Principal
in this regard is the
hierarchy
the
rejection of
being
(a
initiated
rejection
of
by Cusa and
decisively developed by Bruno), in favour of philosophy as survey of a
flat zone of immanence, univocal ontology: "Immanence [... ] implies a
Elaborations on Materialism
141
Being
in
Unity
is only a property of
theory
pure ontology, a
of
which
substance and of what is. [It] requires as a principle the equality of
being, or the positing of equal Being [... 1 not defined by their rank in a
hierarchy"
(Deleuze 1968/92 157/173). Recall here Deleuze's succinct
letter to Badiou, which read in its entirety: "immanence = univocity"
(Badiou 1998 28).
For critics of Bruno like Frances Yates, who is, as some have pointed
be
detractors,
Bruno
is
his
long
line
Catholic
last
to
in
the
out,
of
a
identified
religion
identifying
founding
heretical
the
of a new
priest preoccupied with
as a
a neo-Egyptianism
or cult,
him with Rosicrucianism,
(hence her insistence
upon
the precursor of Free Masonry,
from
derived
language
does
draw
for
its
rituals principally upon a
which
Bruno
however,
it
is
Guattari
that
Deleuze
Following
Egypt).
clear
and
immanence,
insistence
his
be
instead,
upon
absolute
with
read
can
flatness, the spiral, and his opposition to hierarchy, as being committed
to philosophy understood in part as naturalism.
"Whenever there is
State
in
imperial
the sky or on earth,
Being,
transcendence, vertical
immanence"
is
there
is
there is religion; and there
philosophy whenever
(Deleuze and Guattari
1991/94 46/43). It is imperative
in setting up
Antonio
that
the
Bruno
that
sickness
avoids
one
of
such a reading
has
Anomaly,
Savage
The
Spinoza,
Negri, in his magisterial reading of
diagnosed as afflicting
the alternatives
historiography,
philosophical
that of "orienting
So
than
1991a
(Negri
the
rather
toward
xxi).
past"
in
"a
cultural
study
offering
here
"a
is
is
at stake
genealogies" what
is
functions
this
thought",
not
of
and
conditions
of
material genealogy
is
its
thought
such
context,
sociopolitical
within
the
a
setting of
merely
Elaborations on Materialism
142
all that
be
done
by
can
standard
materialist
accounts, what are
engaged in Negri's proposed superior materialism
are the contours of a
conceptual work's constitutive-productive
profile: thought rendered as a
material
force, the interweaving
historical
planes alluded to above. For Negri the "liberation
linguistic
the
of
human
the
with
of a
be
"if
it
is
cumbersome past" will
worthless
not carried through to the
benefit of the present" and critically,
"to the production of the future".
Bruno, treated in this way becomes the conceptual architect of such a
future.
The point then is not to ask such questions as "What does
Deleuze say about Bruno? " or "What is the influence, direct or other
but
Bruno
Deleuze?
",
in
to
a non-personalist
on
rather
examine
wise, of
fashion the force or life of concepts, the degree to which they become
The
forces.
investigation
then
this
mode
of
material
Kantian
in its refusal
is resolutely non-
to be bound by subjectivity;
rather,
it is
force
the
of the concept as event, with conceptual
concerned with
Guattari
3).
(Deleuze
1991/94
and
chapter
personae
Return
Eternal
A fundamental
materialist
thought,
claim
monism
Machinic
the
of
P1ylum
by
for
Deleuze
and
made
is that
distinctive
of a
(re)discovery,
the
of
Guattari's
and
sedimented
into
matter.
This
mode of apprehending
had
hylomorphic
that
to
the
model
presupposed
apprehension, opposed
"a fixed form
Guattari
and a matter
deemed homogeneous"
(Deleuze and
1980/87 508/408), is of a matter reconceptualised, redefined,
"materiality,
is
it
to
matter as
an approach
as the machinic phylum,
natural or artificial,
both
is
it
in
simultaneously,
matter
movement,
and
in flux, in variation,
matter as a conveyor of singularities
Elaborations on Materialism
and traits of
143
expression" (Deleuze and Guattari
century materialist
this phylum
1980/87 509/409). The sixteenth
heretic, Giordano Bruno, had also offered a vision of
in his Anti-Aristotelian
formulation:
"matter produces
forms from itself [... ] and does not receive them as from outside" (Bruno
1998 81), and this is no surprise, for as Whitehead notes "the nonevolution of matter has been a tacit assumption throughout
modern
thought. Until the last few years the sole alternatives were: either the
material universe, with its present type of order, is eternal; or else it
into
being,
being,
fiat
to
the
came
and will pass out of
according
of
Jehovah"
(Whitehead
machinic
phylum
1978 95). Hence, the indication
be
"(re)discovered"
to
was
be
it
to
the guiding
supposing
tradition
that
is predicated
longstanding,
axis of a
the
upon
serpentine
For
Whitehead
the thought of
within philosophy and science.
the phylum is one that erupts periodically into history, crystallising
particular
thinkers.
in
It is a thought that had forced its way into view
had,
have
Spinoza;
is
I
Bruno,
in
it
that
argued appeared
with
and
Creative
Evolution
Bergson's
in
at the turn of this century,
expressed
lies
The
Deleuze.
in
the
the
within
machinic phylum
concept of
and now
but
derided
it
is
tradition
the,
of vitalism,
oft simplemindedly,
purview of
construed
in such a way as to be one of the
a certain
vitalism
constituent
elements of the counter-tradition
already alluded to, put
by
Geist
is
taken
in
the
it
is
or spirit
place of
which
a vitalism
succinctly
brain
Bergson,
follow
This
is,
brain75.
to
the
a
only actualised
brain
a
immanence,
Consciousness
something.
that
is recognised
in consciousness
from
transcendental,
the
severed
A brain, moreover, that is multiple,
in
of x.
it is always of
fractured,
by
riven
homogeneous
longer
the
phrenology;
object
of
rather
no
clefts,
synaptic
Elaborations on Materialism
144
one in which the "model would be rather a state of things which would
constantly change, a flowing-matter
in which no point of anchorage nor
centre of reference would be assignable" (Deleuze 1983/86 33/57). It is
such a state of affairs, this coexistence of structure and change that
Bertalanffy
von
`flowing
of
his
in
dynamic descriptions
to
was attempting
capture
balance'
Fliessgleichgewicht
(Capra
or
1996 48). Now
Deleuze
Guattari
has
been
insist
indeed
it is
vitalism, as
and
never
one,
had
"has
two possible alternatives: that of an Idea
multiple and
always
that acts, but is not -- that acts therefore only from the point of view of
knowledge
(from
Claude
Kant
Bernard); or that
to
an external cerebral
of a force that is but does not act-
that is therefore a pure internal
Awareness (from Leibniz to Ruyer) [... ] the second interpretation
(Deleuze and Guattari
to us to be imperative"
variant of vitalism,
seems
1991/94 201/213). The
described on occasion as a "technological vitalism'
(Deleuze and Guattari
1980/87 507/407) that is being suggested, is not
the vitalism that is usually baldly counterposed to mechanism. Indeed
as some contemporary
biologists have recognised, the alternative
is not vitalism,
mechanism
but complexity,
of the
imperative
component
materialism'.
This is a vitalism
contemporary
form
is an
of superior
that has ceased to posit entities
by an extra, or metaphysical,
mobilised
latter
this
and
to
force, a "supplementary
dimension" in Deleuze's terminology, but rather one that opens entities
to the outside,
legislation
in
counterposition
and stands
to the metaphysical
infinite
It
is
thought
the
of
a
one, unity.
of
variation
and
"philosophical
As
Bruno,
Spinoza.
the
being
of
minnesinger
pace
modal
infinity"
(Bloch 1986 848), suggests "there is no thing which is all it can
but
he
be"
be,
(Bruno
66)
1998
he
is
and
Man
be.
can
not all
can
what
Elaborations on Materialism
145
Spinoza proclaims: "For indeed, no one has yet determined
what the
Body can do, ie. experience has not yet taught anyone what the Body
do
from the laws of nature alone" (Spinoza 1985 E IIIP2D);
can
driving
thrust
of this thought
definitive
marks a
the
from
move away
classical ontology for it refuses to think the entity as static, as the on,
but rather makes bodies into a locus of force, a condensation of affects,
it makes potentia constitutive".
task of thinking
For Bruno, Spinoza and Deleuze the
is open to the future, to becoming, haecceitas (Scotus's
univocal ontology) and singularisation.
Expression-Immanence-Neonlatonism
Eric Alliez is quite adamant that his treatment of Plotinus
should resist
the dominant
trend of Neoplatonic
scholarship
Judeo-Christian
Plotinus
into
the
reintroduces
that "fraudulently
mould" (Alliez 1991/95
37/77), and he notes secondarily that Plotinus introduces something
into his system that decisively distinguishes it from Platonismthis novel non-Platonic
be
important
to
the
most
addition
Plotinus' system that Bruno adopts - and it is the distillation
I take
element of
here of a
by
dominant
trends
that
the
that
thought
constitute
resists capture
Platonic
Judeo-Christian
being
in
nor
neither
early modern philosophy
(it is obviously non-Aristotelian,
1eoplatonism).
The distinctively
by virtue
being
its
a part of
of
Plotinus
idea
that
adds,
non-Platonic
is that it is the "immanent soul, and not the demiurge, that engenders,
force
its
kosmos
through
the
living
like a
silent
of
sole
organism, a
contemplation
intelligence
intelligible
the
of
identified
with
that life of the
from which it proceeds" (Alliez 1991/95 80/39), and as
Elaborations on Materialism
146
Deleuze confirms in his preface to Alliez' book "there is
a world soul,
and the soul is itself a world" (Alliez 1991/95 8/xii). It is this account
of
the immanent creative force that runs through Bruno's
philosophy of
expressive matter as the anima mundi.
It is only now with the development of the theory
of self-organisation
and the new understanding
dissipative
of
structures
that we are
beginning to create the scientific models that
can adequate to this, the
great tradition of expressive immanence in philosophy.
Seen in this light, it becomes clear that the tradition in which Deleuze's
philosophy of matter is best placed is one that he often describes as
being open to the danger of pantheism, "always subject to the charge of
pantheism"
(Deleuze 1968/92 12/16). Seen in more contemporary
terms, this is the accusation
has
been
that
one
often
of vitalism,
levelled at Spinoza, at Leibniz and at Bergson, amongst others, as is all
too familiar
these figures are amongst Deleuze's philosophical heroes,
happy
he
his
is
for
and as such
own philosophy to run the risk of this
lethal
lethal:
for
be
It
is
to
apparently
accusation.
precisely
accused of
the charge of being a pantheist
irrationalism,
philosophy
or a vitalist
is equivalent to that of
find
beyond
it
is
to
the remit of sound
mysticism,
oneself
however,
Deleuze
For
is
there
a vitalism
and science.
life,
link
between
"a
to
the
profound
signs,
power of nonorganic
subject
life
and vitalism
events,
[... ] Everything
I've written
is vitalistic,
at
least I hope it is, and amounts to a theory of signs and events" (Deleuze
1990/95 197/143).
Elaborations on Materialism
147
In the following passage in What is Philosophy?, Deleuze and Guattari
explicitly
lay out the political stakes at play in philosophy, as well as
the necessary relationship
between philosophical
heresy and the
thought of the State on the one hand, and the philosophy of immanence
and monism on the other: "Putting their work and sometimes their lives
dose
that
the
philosophers
at risk, all
must prove
of immanence they
inject into world and mind does not compromise the transcendence of a
God to which immanence must be attributed only secondarily (Nicholas
burning
be
be
Cusa,
Eckart,
Bruno)
[...
]
Immanence
the
to
said
of
can
issue of all philosophy
philosophy
because it takes on all the dangers that
must confront, all the condemnations,
persecutions and
Guattari
47/45).
1991/94
"
(Deleuze
it
that
and
undergoes.
repudiations
Deleuze notes that this tradition labours under the aegis of the concept
Spinoza
Leibniz,
by
invented
this
that
and
concept as
expression, and
"takes on the force of an Anticartesian
rediscovery
Nature
of
reaction
[... ] It implies
her
power and a recreating
and
`materialism'
ontology: a new
`formalism'
and a new
300/322). The true target of this Anticartesianism
a
logic
and
of
(Deleuze 1968/92
in Deleuze's hands is
be
it
the
dualism,
in
fractured
of
whether
the profoundly
world given
the
Kantian
of
Cartesian,
concept
such
Platonic,
as
and
varieties,
or
expression
to
occupy a position
comes
Expression
has two complementary
heart
the
at
of monism.
"implication
components:
and
in
bound
the
together
of
synthesis
involution
evolution"
and
explication,
One
in
One,
the
in
the
"inherence
of
and
the
multiplicity
of
complicatio,
Plateaus.
Thousand
A
identity
of
the many", ie. the pluralism-monism
Neoplatonism
both,
is
to
and
central
As Deleuze points out, complicatio
Elaborations on Materialism
148
s
Christian
to
thought, this latter being subject to the simplificatio,
alien
the "identity
One
the
of
or the unity of the Whole" (Deleuze 1969/90
398/297). As I have already suggested, complicatio is also critical to
both Spinoza and Leibniz, there is however a gap, both historical and
between
Neoplatonism
conceptual,
hand
Spinoza
the
on
one
and
and
Leibniz on the other. Who fills the gap? In Difference and Repetition
Deleuze suggests a possible answer, when he writes that it is Giordano
Bruno
is
"theoretician
the
who
of complicatio"
(Deleuze 1968/94
161/123). Put this way, Bruno is quite convincingly
the true dark
both
Spinoza
Leibniz,
precursor of
and
and so ultimately
Moreover,
it is precisely
Spinoza and Leibniz
Deleuze.
of
those elements of Bruno that influence
respectively
that
Deleuze picks up on and
his
in
own work.
elaborates
Immanence.
Conatus and Death by Degrees
The Gay Science § 109 is the nexus for a number of convergences
between Nietzsche, Spinoza and Bruno. Greg Whitlock and Yirmiyahu
Yovel note that in developing his unified theory of force and in particular
Spinozist
draws
the
Nietzsche
the will to power
conatus, classically
on
expressed as
The endeavour (conatus) wherewith
to
thing
endeavours
a
the
being
is
than
in
its
of
essence
actual
else
nothing
persist
E
IIIP7)
1985
(Spinoza
thing
that
doctrine
for
Spinoza,
the
however
For our purposes
we cannot stop with
Elaborations on Matexri.alism
149
of conatus can be found directly prefigured in Bruno (Deleuze of course
identifies the Lucretian clinamen as a "kind of conatus
-a
by
the same token, a differential
and,
differential of
of thought"
Deleuze
1969/90 365/269. Bruno was a voracious reader of Lucretius
and the
matter
former's work is redolent with Lucretian tones). Conatus is not just one
theory amongst many, it constitutes the second major axis of the line of
thought embodied in Bruno, Spinoza, Schelling, Nietzsche and Deleuze:
is
the
on
one side expression and on the other, conatus; these two taken
together constitute the plane of immanence drawn by this philosophical
Conatus gives
tendency.
internally
of
us an account
development, that is to say the immanent
involution
driven
form,
of
or put
in
it
gives us an account of selfotherwise and
a scientific register,
organisation,
is
nothing
which
other than an account of order, of
being driven entirely
Spinoza's persistence
internally
without
the
influences,
the
trace
transcendent
of a
slightest
without
stamp of any
Negri
in
This
is
deus
then
the
sense
which, as
ex machina.
mysterious
its
itself
inverts
the
of
enunciation.
at
very moment
suggests, vitalism
This inversion of vitalism will be seen as the horizon of any philosophy
attempting
science
to adequate itself
of the
autocatalysis.
various
to recent conceptualisations
manifestations
within
of self-organisation,
of
That which Nietzsche calls will to power, and Spinoza
Bruno
calls conatus,
terms "vital
internal
"the
elsewhere
artificer"
principle"
(Bruno
1995 156) or
(Bruno 1998 38), and he is quite
than
immanence,
is
earlier
this
so
even
part of
principle
explicit that
had
Bruno
find
that
of
all
purged
already
a
vitalism
posited
expected we
metaphysical residues.
Elaborations on Materialism
150
it shapes matter, forming it from inside like
a seed or root
shooting forth and unfolding
trunk thrusting
the trunk,
from within
the
boughs,
from inside the boughs the
the
out
derived branches, and unfurling
buds from within
these
(Bruno 1998 38)
Everything is caused by the sufficient interior principle by
it
is
which
naturally stirred, and not by an external principle
(Bruno 1995 156)
Kant, however, desperate to hold onto the metaphysical inheritance
by
which
rendering
matter
inverted
hylozoism,
of a
vitalism,
as lifeless refuses this possibility
outright,
he insists
of an
that "the
living
lifelessness,
is
inconceivable
]
[...
possibility of a
matter
quite
since
inertia, constitutes the essential characteristic
(Kant
1952
of matter"
§ 73). Kant offers not an argument, but bald assertion from accepted
definition,
from ideological
hylozoism
is
that
necessity,
atheism-
because
by
be
living
is
inertness.
characterised
matter
matter cannot
The preceding accusation is levelled, albeit indirectly, at Spinoza, but of
the two it is Kant's system, which whilst it may not be theist, and not
Spinoza's, that reintroduces a transcendental
self organised
matter.
The difference
agent into its account of
between Bruno,
Spinoza,
Schelling and Nietzsche on the one hand, and Kant on the other is given
by Deleuze in his distinction between two different "conceptions of the
from
"any
that
He
`plan'".
comes
above and
organisation
writes,
word
hidden
be
be
it
theological
transcendence,
a
to
can
called
a
one,
a
refers
directs
forms
be
transcendence
that
]
it
[...
as
a plan of
will always
plan
Elaborations on Materialism
151
well as subjects, and that stays hidden [... ] always has an additional
dimension;
it always implies
dimension
a
supplementary
to the
dimensions of the given. " Thus Kant. On the other hand "a
plane of
immanence
has no supplementary
dimension;
the process of
be
for
itself, through that which it gives,
composition must
apprehended
in that which it gives. It is a plan of composition,
not a plan of
development"
(Deleuze 1988 128). Kant certainly would
organisation or
have had nightmares had he access to recent experiments, principally
those of Stanley Miller
Harold
and
Urey that have attempted
to
for
brewing
life
"slow
from
the
the
recreate
conditions
of early
nonlife"
(Margulis and Sagan 1997 51). As should be apparent from our earlier
discussion, these experiments
serve as an empirical exploration of a
noncorporeal transformation,
life
in
the realm of
the
roots
of
showing
nonorganic matter.
The view of death posited in both Nietzsche's
particular
The Gay Science, in
in § 109, and in Bruno's Ash Wednesday Supper are also
identical: Nietzsche writes that "Once you know there are no purposes,
beside
for
it
is
know
is
there
that
a world of
only
no accident;
you also
beware
Let
has
`accident'
of saying
us
meaning.
purposes that the word
dead,
is
living
is
life.
type
The
death
is
to
that
of what
merely a
opposed
death
is
So
for
Bruno
§
109).
too
(Nietzsche
1974
type"
and a very rare
"when
intensity:
something
see
we
of
of
composition,
change
a
merely
dies
but
believe
thing
die,
that
that
is
to
rather
not
must
we
said
which
that it changes and terminates
its accidental composition and unity"
it
is
to
that
157),
1995
(Bruno
say: undergoes a change of organisation,
link
further
to
themes
To
elsewhere
pursued
a
out
send
of consistency.
Materialism
Elaborations on
152
in this thesis,
it must be noted that in the same passage Bruno
expresses the view that "since everything participates in life, many and
innumerable
beings live not only within
but
in
us
also
all composite
things" (Bruno 1995 157, emphasis added), this is a line of thought that
directly
into Leibniz's Monadology, Nietzsche's critique of the
passes
unitary
subject, Deleuze and Guattari's
biological involution,
Lynn Margulis'
and eventually
affective, contagious view of
finds empirical confirmation
in
birth
the
account of
of the eukaryotic cell through the
capture of the once independent cyanobacteria that live in every cell
and still maintain
Every living
an entirely separate DNA and RNA.
cell contains aliens crucial to its survival, Deleuze's "thousands of little
witnesses which contemplate
Nietzsche's
alien
DeleuzeGuattari
forces
and their
within
(Deleuze
1968/94 103/75),
us"
(Nietzsche
1968
§ 728).
To follow
source on the concept of consistency,
Eugene Dupreel, "life went not from a centre to an exteriority but from
discrete
fuzzy
from
interior,
to
to
aggregate
or
an
or rather
a
an exterior
its consolidation" (Deleuze and Guattari 1980/87 405/328).
Nietzsche ends The Gay Science § 109 with the programmatic question,
"When may we begin to `naturalise' humanity in terms of a pure, newly
discovered, newly redeemed nature", and as if in response avant la
lettre, Spinoza had written to Oldenburg that "the human body is a part
is
human
I
it
Mind
too
think
As
the
Nature.
a part of nature"
regards
of
(Spinoza 1966 III).
There is a consistent tradition
that seeks to carry out precisely this naturalisation
Lucretius
to the Arab historian
1377, The Mugaddimah,
Elaborations on Materialism
in philosophy
stretching
Ibn Khaldün whose startling
from
book of
holds that "man belongs to the genus of
153
gý
animals [... ] created from a drop of sperm, a clot of blood, and a lump of
flesh" (Khhaldfn 1967 340), and from Bruno to Spinoza
A Rather Forbidden
Amongst the philosophically
fusion of production
dualism),
Nietzsche.
and
History
significant results of this approach is the
and expression (and hence the dissolution
and with it the possibility
of
of gaining access to a certain
hidden,
"a
tradition,
tradition
subterranean philosophical
a
with
rather
history"
forbidden
(Deleuze
A
1968/92
322/300).
tradition
and a rather
that is most forcefully
and subversively
in
the work of
represented
Giordano Bruno. Whilst Deleuze's direct references to Bruno are few,
two to be precise, they are exceptionally important and philosophically
fecund. These two references stand as brackets
philosophical
Deleuze's
around
do
its
(in
1968's
two
they
ends
at
career appearing as
Difference et Repetition
baroque
Leibniz
le
Le
written
et
and
pli:
in
1988). These two direct references stand facing each other on the
Moebius strip that represents Deleuze's thought, for they both refer to
Bruno as the great expositor of the theory of complicatio. Deleuze's
be
then
as a vigilant pursuit of what can
understood
entire career can
Brunian
theme,
be
as a perpetual spiralling around
great
seen as a
now
formula
in
the
the
development
this
magic
of
shape
complicatio
of
a
"PLURALISM
31/20);
this
Guattari
1980/87
(Deleuze
MONISM"
and
=
formula is the basis upon which the DeleuzoGuattarian
philosophy of
intimacy
the
that
is
it
the
built,
is
peculiar
generates
seed
and
matter
in
intensity
that
individuation,
singularity,
the
questions of
of
philosophy.
Elaborations on Materialism
154
Bruno. Philosophy, Creation
For Bruno
the hylomorphic
broken
is
couple
by rendering
form
immanent to matter, and different entities (formed matters) aspects of
substance
(it is from this that Spinoza derives his
intensive understanding
is
it
the
the continual generation of
modes),
of
the singular
form from within matter that is constitutive
the terms of the critique
hylomorphism,
of
Without
of reality.
using
Hilary
Gatti assesses
Bruno's critique of contemporary science in a way that reflects some of
its concerns, she notes that Bruno takes "the new mathematics [... ] as
attempting
a schematic abstraction
formulae
into
static
of matter
to imprison the vital vicissitudes
of universal
hence State science is characterised
validity"
(Gatti 1999 3),
as a mode of capturing,
of
hylozoic,
to
inert
the
vitalistic practice
matter, contrary
overcoding, an
following
singularity.
of
Ilya Prigogine expresses this Brunian project as
being the quest of those explorers of the contemporary sciences who
have understood the need to undergo the complexity revolution,
abolition
the
counterposition
of
the
between being and becoming. For
for
both
has
Deleuze this
epistemological and ontological ramifications,
"there is no other truth
than the creation
New:
the
creativity,
of
first
Bruno
It
is
191/147).
1985/89
(Deleuze
provided
who
emergence"
powerful
to
sustain
enough
this,
in his
an ontological
picture
understanding
it
from
to
form
is
"when
ceases
that
matter
separated
Ordine,
Nuccio
86).
(Bruno
1998
is
the
matter"
with
case
not
exist, as
in his remarkable
book on Giordano Bruno and the Philosophy of the
importance
the
Ass, is also cognisant of
Materialism
Elaborations on
invention
of
to philosophy,
155
4
noting
that
relationship
Bruno's
"concept of language
[... ] expresses a strict
with philosophy. Words and terminology become malleable
materials that are controlled and shaped to express a view of the world
[... ] Bruno reaffirms the possibility of inventing new words [... ] `[Bruno's
language,
' writes Ciliberto, `is an expressive reality [... ] The
concept of]
linguistic plane becomes interwoven with the essential planes of human
history'"
(Ordine
1996 154). Gatti suggests that Bruno's critique of
language, principally
in A General Account of Bonding (De vinculis in
genere), represents
an attempt
to "demonstrate
the ways in which
language in all its forms acts on human behaviour, influencing and even
(Gatti
1999 3), in other words, she attributes
the
enslaving
will"
to
Bruno, albeit in very different terms, an account of the linguistic order
Deleuze
language
Guattari's
State
to
the
the
close
and
account of
of
as
become
demand
Bruno's
that
one of overcoding.
philosophy
a creative
endeavour
is enunciated,
his
is
metaphysics,
as
every point of
in
Ordine
forges
forged
is
in,
and
what
parallel with a political critique, and
"structurally
calls a
language".
Given
Ordine's
final
that
anti-pedantic
`Natural
chapter,
Science and Human Science: A `Nouvelle alliance"
book
Stengers'
Ilya
Prigogine's
Isabelle
the
the
to
title
of
and
of
refers
here
he
is
it
that
is
uncannily close
perhaps not surprising
same name,
to what Isabelle Stengers has called the "the real risk of speculative
thought",
that
"experimentation
is, the
creation
of concepts
which
permit
an
both
habits
ingredient
the
are at once
of which our
Creation,
invention
142).
the
(Stengers
1997b
[cible]"
target
of
and the
demand
for
freedom
being
from
is
a
of
subjective
the new,
converted
he
Brunian
immanence;
to
again
a
plane
of
yet
embodying
expression
for
things,
inventors
be
the
"we
words
new
new
wherever
of
will
writes
Elaborations on Materialism
156
these words might come from. Let Grammarians be the servants of
have
""
words, we will
words serve us.
Bin
Arguments
similar
is
work
peculiarly
contemporary
Bialo
to that espoused here, specifically
has
and
a particular
untimely,
that Bruno's
for
relevance
debates,
have
scientific
come to prominence in various
ways in recent Bruno scholarship,
in particular
in work by Gatti,
Mendoza, and to a degree Ordine. Gatti offers a concrete genealogy to
for
this, suggesting that the interest in Bruno in the Romantic
account
his
by
Schelling
Coleridge
focused
"vitalistic
in
period,
particular
and
on
concept of matter"
(Gatti
1999 141). She notes that in the late
Bruno
"several
one of
commentators would consider
nineteenth century
the principal forerunners of an idea of natural evolution" and cites H. F.
Osborn's 1894 work, From the Greeks to Darwin:
An Outline of the
Idea to this effect, curiously
Development of the Evolution
enough
Osborn was "one of the most eminent
Vernadsky
thought
naturalists
Gatti
111).
(Vernadsky
1998
time"
thinkers
goes
of our
and
that
on, somewhat unfortunately,
to claim that it is "interesting to think of
[Bruno] in reference to the newest biological discoveries such as DNA"
(Gatti
1999 142). Unfortunate
because DNA is a peculiarly
bad
I
to
for
that
explain.
attempt
shall
reasons
example
for
but
debates,
not
Bruno is relevant to contemporary scientific
The
debates
that
to
the
problem
Gatti's reasons, and not
she suggests.
with
has
knowledge
her
is
that
no
she
Gatti's account and with
example
Elaborations on Materialism
m=
of, what we have denoted as, the complexity revolution,
connected to self-organisation.
of science that is strictly
or of ideas
Gatti then, is committed to an account
pre-complexity.
unable to take account of the truly
As a consequence, she is
radical implications
Brunian
of
ontology and cosmology which, as I have been at pains to point out,
coincides not with the molar, overcoding procedures of State science, of
DNA
the
which
model is a case par excellence, but with Deleuze and
Guattari's molecular destratifying
whilst
critique
final
it.
A
critique of
note of caution:
I have claimed that Deleuze and Guattari
carry out such a
they may not have been aware of its full implications,
as
Ansell Pearson makes clear "Deleuze does not appear to appreciate [... ]
that his thinking
[... ] presents a fundamental challenge to some of the
core tenets of the neo-Darwinian
(Ansell
Pearson
1997 129).
synthesis"
Elements of a critique of the popular and scientific `myth' of DNA can
be pieced together from varying sources. But first, the nature of the
myth: principally
the deference to DNA as the overarching, all powerful
biological,
for
embodied
all questions, physical and
source of explanation
in the immense investment of financial and institutional
the Human Genome Project (HGP).
in
resources
The HGP is perhaps the most
international
prestigious and overdiscussed
scientific research project
HGP,
The
the
that
the
in
mapping
entire
of
goal of
existence.
currently
human genome has acquired, perhaps more than any other scientific
AIDS,
for
discovery
the
beating
the
and
cancer
of
cures
even
project,
degree,
in
in
Certainly
to
the
holy
popular,
and
some
grail.
a
of
status
the scientific, imagination
the achievement of this goal is seen as some
human
it
for
kind of panacea
ailments:
will enable a
a cornucopia of
Elaborations on Materialism
158
cure for all genetic diseases, and reveal the solutions to a multitude
the mechanisms
mysteries,
of
of aging and the nature of intelligence
amongst them (an excellent selection of essays on the various social
and scientific issues involved is Kevles and Hood 1992). The elements
necessary for a critique,
problem
ever
set,
DeleuzeGuattari's
transduction
can
of what is essentially
be found
in
several
account of the mechanisms
which together constitute
creative involution,
First,
places.
of transcoding
and
becomings:
or
multiplicities
a critique of the "vapid and foggy notions of the
innate and the acquired" (Deleuze and Guattari
Second, in "the post-Darwinian
[... ] as bricolage"
the greatest coding
(Varela
1980/87 409/332).
conception of the evolutionary process
et al 1991 196), which
is in effect a
recapitulation
Deleuze
Guattari's
Third,
the
of
of
and
account
machinic.
in Vernadsky's
biosphere,
distinction
in
the
the
account of
which
between organisms and the environment is rigorously questioned, and
the relationship
bilateral,
between them conceived as thoroughly
and actively
that is a critique of the idea that "organisms are basically
Richard
Lewontin
(ibid.
into
198).
parachuted
a pregiven environment"
has expressed the idea thus: "the environment
is not a structure
imposed on living beings from the outside but is in fact a creation of
those beings. The environment
is not an autonomous process but a
[...
]
is
biology
there
the
the
no organism without
species
of
reflection of
an environment,
(Lewontin
is
there
no environment
so
Varela
in
quoted
without
an organism"
Following
198).
1991
et al
from
on
Vernadsky, Lynn Margulis has argued that one can no longer imagine a
narrative
in,
that
life
the
organisms evolve
and are
planet such
on
of
formed by a given environment,
Elaborations on Materialism
rather there is a coeval relationship
159
between them: organisms make, just
This is a productivist
environment.
as much as they are made by, the
immanentist
vision, such as that
expressed by DeleuzeGuattari
thus: "man and nature are not like two
opposite terms confronting
each other-
bipolar
opposites within
a relationship
not even in the sense of
ideation,
of causation,
or
expression [... ] rather, they are one and the same essential reality, the
Production
producer-product.
idealistic
all
as process overtakes
categories and constitutes a cycle whose relationship to desire is that of
immanent
an
principle"
(Deleuze and Guattari
1974/83 10/5). In the
biologist
Susan Oyama has radically downgraded the
the
same vein,
by
role played
genetic factors in the characteristics
"there
is no intelligible
distinction
between inherited
(biological,
acquired
(environmentally
mediated)
[... ] What is required for evolutionary
is
change
not
based)
genetically
characteristics
and
encoded as opposed to acquired traits,
genetically
developmental
of the organism:
but functioning
(quoted
in
genomes"
systems: ecologically embedded
Varela et al 1991 200). This metaphysical
prejudice on the part of
biologists had in fact been exposed much earlier than the foregoing
by
long
Sorbonne,
is
in
1920's
the
that
the
that
at
would suggest,
"in
Vernadsky,
far-seer,
their
that
most
of
works
who wrote
neglected
studying
living
disregard
biologists
indissoluble
the
the
organisms,
living
In
the
between
the
organism.
surrounding milieu and
connection
studying
the
environment
[
organism
as something
quite
distinct
from
the
] they study not a natural body but a pure product of
...
here
designed
My
is
30).
1998
to
(Vernadsky
argument
thinking"
their
heretical,
the
kinds
partners
these
are
minor
sciences,
of
that
of
show
non-mechanistic,
non-determinist,
Elaborations on Materialism
materialist,
Aristotelian
anti-,
(and
160
by extension non-Kantian)
cosmophilosophy explicit in the tradition
derived from Giordano Bruno,
here
traced
through Spinoza and
and
Leibniz, to Nietzsche, and thence to DeleuzeGuattari.
Antica
filosofia
Bruno, like Nietzsche and Deleuze, has taste for the
a
pre-Socratics,
and, whilst charging Aristotle with distorting the teachings of the antica
filosofia, he adopts from Heraclitus an ontology
flow,
of eternal
of
becoming, from the Stoics, Lucretius, and Heraclitus
he
takes
again,
the concept of the universal nous, immanent in the universe; and as if
to ensure that no ambiguities
his most unrestrained
remain, castigates "Aristotle"
attacks as "a thoroughly
in one of
and sophist, by his
malignant explanations and his frivolous persuasions, [he] perverts the
statements of the ancients and sets himself against the truth" (Bruno
1998 91).
Political
Horizon
of all Metaphysics
Clearly as soon as one posits an animate matter, or one that generates
form from within,
"matter
have
both
Bruno
Deleuze
do,
seen
as we
and
a
[that] produces forms from itself, so to speak and does not
(Bruno
from
1998
81),
is
them
outside"
one
rendering the
as
receive
metaphysical
question
intimate
with
the political,
initiating
questioning
for
the
a political regulator, philosophically
need
of
constitutes
a powerful
rejection of the viability
a
this
of any transcendent
bottom-up
the
the
championing of
methods of
control mechanisms, and
Elaborations on Materialism
161
self-organisation.
The thought of Brunian
matter then is cast as an
immediate attack upon any form of political authority and an
affront to
the established order, it is the thought of one "brave like Lucretius [... ]
wrathful
human
at
oppression" (Nietzsche 1983 189). It is Bruno's
means of opening philosophy to an expanded zone of immanence, to a
philosophy of expressive production.
Anima Mundi
In Difference and Repetition Deleuze calls Bruno the "theoretician
of
(Deleuze 1968/94 161/123), and it seems clear that The
complicatio"
Fold too is informed by him at certain crucial points, namely the idea
that "Life is not only everywhere, but souls are everywhere in matter"
(Deleuze 1988/93 15/11). This is Bruno's concept of plenitude and the
immanent
hylozoism.
The
Brunian
truly
panzooism,
mind.
universal
revolutionary
discovery of Bruno's ontology: that matter is intelligent
be
begun
has
intelligence
to
realised empirically,
only now
material,
and
in a neuroscience that takes its lead not from Kant, but from Bruno,
Spinoza and Bergson. ' It is under the aegis of the latter that Deleuze
"Intelligence
can write:
is contracted in matter at the same time as
(detendt
is
expanded
matter
in duration; both find the form that is
Current
these
1991
89).
(Deleuze
them"
to
along
research
common
but
Capra
"mind
is
thing
by
Fritjof
thus:
lines is summed up
a
not a
process-
life
[...
Mind]
the very process of
mental process-
is immanent
or, more accurately,
in matter at all levels of life [... ] The
in
the
the
dissipative
process
participates
organism
of
structure
entire
higher
has
brain
the
and
a
organism
a
not
or
whether
of cognition,
Elaborations on Materialism
m
nervous
system"
(Capra
1997 68);
he goes on to quote
the
Candace Pert who argues that "'White blood cells are
neuroscientist
bits of the brain floating around in the body' Ultimately
this implies
that cognition is a phenomenon that expands throughout the organism,
operating
through
intricate
an
integrates
our mental,
suggestion,
by David
chemical network
of peptides that
biological
and
activities".
The
and Andy Clark
in their,
as yet
emotional,
Chalmers
`The
Extended
loose
Mind',
be
from
that
unpublished paper,
prised
mind
its
cranial
container
consciousness
takes
Pert
across the surface
further,
even
and
spreads
For Bruno
of the world.
too,
for
be
localised
body
"spirit,
in
the
consciousness cannot
any one part of
degrees
life
found
fills
is
in
in
things
soul,
all
and
all matter"
varying
(Bruno 1998 45). Deleuze's explication of the "universe that has lost all
be
figure
that
attributed
could
centre as well as any
1988/93 131/124) is given in Bruno's radicalisation
to it" (Deleuze
Copernicus,
the
of
heavens
him
[in
beyond
the
"far
the
ceiling of
which]
and above
move
(Bloch
fixed
left
had
latter
the
the
to
stars attached"
which
cracks,
1986 848). One important consequence of this radicalisation, of Bruno's
is
the
Medieval
the
the
new
crystal spheres,
conception of
abolition of
both
be
infinite
that
macro and
can
extended on
universe
picture of an
micrological
described
has
this
Lovejoy
position as
eloquently
scales.
life,
life
"universal
and of
everywhere preying on
parasitism, of
one of
the human body itself as infested with myriads
creatures"
of tiny predatory
(Lovejoy 1978 238), a picture presciently paralleling
that
bacteria.
biology
the
by
of
to
of
omnipresence
contemporary
us
given
Elaborations on Materialism
163
Dead Matter
One of the central tropes of State philosophy attacked by Deleuze is
representation,
illusion"
principally
condemned as the "site of transcendental
(Deleuze 1968/94 341/265). For the purposes of our interests
here, crucial to the schemas of representation
matter,
is its denigration
that is to say the genetic attachment
coupling
found
of
to the hylomorphic
in both the State sciences of control
and their
concomitant philosophies. To scrutinise this coupling opens us to an
awareness of the antinomy in which matter is held in the different
forms of the dominant philosophical tradition, "the `blessed' tradition of
philosophical thought, that is to say, the tradition that justifies Power
State"
(Negri
does,
1996b
61),
it
in varying
the
and exalts
consisting, as
proportions
Judeo-Christian
of
theology,
Aristotelian
formalism,
Kantian schemas, and liberal politics, and the many varieties of what
Bataille felicitously calls its "metaphysical scaffolding" (Bataille I 220).
The antinomy, central to this scaffolding, in which matter is held is one
in which it is taken to be, on the one hand inert, dead, only subject to
motivation
impact
the
of an external
under
force in one guise or
(consider
form,
Hebrew
be
Platonic
it
the
spirit,
ruah
another, whether
by
dead
Golem,
the
invocation
the
matter
vitalised
of
now canonical
life
the
the
on
other
giving
or
subjectivity;
words'),
external
addition of
hand, matter is qui
simply
latter
This
is
position
e accursed, evil.
tradition
in
ancient
a very
embedded
stretching
from the Gnostics,
latter
baldly
Plotinus,
is
the
that
Augustine
states
through
matter
and
dualisms
in
"evil
to
that
the
"primary evil" and
principal
se",
and
on
per
have dominated philosophical
Elaborations on Materialism
Descartes'.
speculation since
It is this
164
determination
dead,
inert,
the
the
that forms then a
as
of matter
centrepiece
of the,
philosophical
tradition.
ultimately
theological,
of the
architecture
Conversely the minor tradition
invents and that is being augmented here, principally
that Deleuze
with the names of
Bruno,
and Bataille,
virulent
thought of creative, active matter and the practise, actualised
both
is a philosophical
philosophically
heresiology committed to a
following
of
and scientifically,
immanent
singularities
as opposed to the imposition of transcendent plans upon
the inert.
These philosophical heretics have parallels in the sciences,
principally
Vernadsky,
Bateson, Margulis,
Kauffman.
and
These
explorers
have recognised the value invested in the hylomorphic
structure
have
taken
and
shattering
its
of
capture
it upon themselves
of matter,
to engage in the
and to adopt the concomitant
adherence to monism, a vital weapon in detheologising philosophy and
science and simultaneously ridding them of representation.
In such a
by
forms
State
the
thought of Bruno
context,
evaluation
succeeding
of
heretic,
Spinoza
and
as
atheist, materialist
is clear, as is the elaborate
bound
in
"Matter",
these
terms
together.
are caught and
weave
which
by
Deleuze
from
Aristotle
is
taken
philosophers
notes
be
to
onwards
"already formless" such that "form is not separable from the model of
the species or that of the morphe, and the whole is under the protection
of the
internal
to
(Deleuze 1968/94 353/275)ffi. The reconstruction
of a
categories
representation"
materialism
[... ] this
couple
is completely
be
"the
in
Bataille's
then,
the
name would
words,
worthy of
idealism,
to
amounts
saying ultimately,
which
of
obstinate negation
of
I
(Bataille
220),
this
basis
the very
statement comes
philosophy"
of all
inestimable
for
`Base
beginning
of
value
our project,
of an article
at the
Elaborations on Materialism
165
Materialism
Gnosticism'.
An
inestimable
for
its
and
article, of
value
declaration
in
basis
the
of a war
philosophy on
of the evaluation
its isolation
matter;
of the question
of matter
issue at stake in philosophy,
the theological
crystallising
of the status
of
as
centring
around the equivalence of matter with evil; its speculations upon the
utilisation
of a philosophy
of matter
in overturning
the "great
ontological machines"; and finally for its recognition of the importance
Gnosticism
of
Plotinian
for
have
the
the,
as one of
root sources
seen,
as we
doubly
for
Bataille
is
important
equation of matter with evil.
this study: first as already noted for his construction of a materialism
idealism
to
every residue of
opposed
implacably
a tradition
traditions,
philosophical
characterisation
Kantianism
of
following
course
Nietzsche
(Deleuze
is
"renovated
theology"
of
as a
his unconscious
prejudice,
perspective,
dominant",
were
more radical,
both
his moralistic
1968 § 530). Second, and
is his long term
with,
and
I. Vernadsky's (1863-1945)
The
engagement
in
is
Vernadsky
made explicit
engagement with
The Accursed Share
inaugurated
dogmatism,
Nietzsche
development of, themes in Vladimir
Biosphere. Bataille's
that still accords to Deleuze's
here, for whom: "In the case of Kant,
theological
perhaps
in the dominant
1937
in
the
1946
article
and
of
that
`Sacred
is
Sociologie,
College
de
that
the semi-legendary
Sociology and the Relationships
between `society', `organism',
and
`being".
Inorganic
'stor'y
history
inorganic,
is
the
Bruno,
there
a
of
For both Deleuze and
Elaborations on Materialism
an
166
inorganic life of things, "nonhuman becomings" (Deleuze
Guattari
and
1991/94 200/213), such that all things, to use Plotinus's term,
are
contemplations,
not just humans and animals, but plants, rocks, even
planets, carve out a universe,
a specific series of affects that spins
them into being, that allows them to differentiate
matter.
statement
Recall
Deleuze
of their
Guattari's
and
cosmophilosophy:
themselves out of
magnificent
speculative
"not all life is confined to the
organic strata: rather, the organism is that which life sets against itself
in order to limit itself, and there is a life all the more intense, all the
more powerful
for being anorganic" (Deleuze and Guattari
1980/87
628/503). A statement to which Bruno had seemingly responded, in
that Talmudic fashion, with another equally great question: "How much
hold
from
intellect
that
that,
the interior of
superior must we
artistic
the seminal matter, solders together the bones, extends the cartilage,
hollows the arteries, airs the pores, interweaves the fibres, branches
out the nerves and arranges the universe with such praiseworthy
divine
is
"
Bruno's
is
(Bruno
39).
1998
and
pervaded
cosmos
mystery?
by an immanent mind, there is no transcendent deity, and no telos for
Bruno; what there is, is a grand ecological vision, matter in a process of
self
organisation,
manifestations
prodigiously
throwing
forms,
out new
new
(somewhat like the planet in Stanislaus Lem's novel
What
Solaris).
Bruno
film
Tarkovsky's
the
Audrey
of
same name,
and
intuited, what Leeuwenhoeck thought he saw through his microscope, a
universal
parasitism,
beyond
the
and a smearing of consciousness
limits of the metaphysically legislated discrete organism, is affirmed in
Mille Plateaux. "If everything
is alive, it is not because everything is
because
is
but,
the
the
a
contrary,
organism
on
organic or organised
Elaborations on Materialism
167
diversion of life. In short, the life in question is inorganic, germinal, and
intensive" (Deleuze and Guattari 1980/87 623/499).
I will now, in the final chapter attempt to bring some of the concerns of
this thesis, and its projected Schizogenealogy to bear upon a key case:
that of the very birth of modernity itself. The stakes are high here, for
is
is
Kampfplatz
that
the
shown
what
inscribed
one
inception
the
at
is
of contemporary philosophy
of the modernist
The
project.
war
be
by
immanence
is
to
the contestation point,
seen
machine mobilised
then as now, and it is one that simultaneously
implications
incalculable
with
philosophy.
Elaborations on Materialism
reveals and explodes,
the theological and political carapace of
chapter
Th
vi
Crystal S
ter'
from
'rolling
th-e
e:
I...
toward
centre
Since Copernicus man has been rolling from the centre toward
x
(Nietzsche 1968 § 1.5)
himself
have
to
on an
got
man seems
from
faster
faster
he
is
away
and
now
slipping
Since Copernicus,
inclined planethe centre into-
`penetrating
into
into
a
nothingness?
what?
his
nothingness"?
sense of
(Nietzsche 1969 III § 25)
be
he
have
Therein we
the reason why every man, whether
on
has
the
in
the
sun, or on another planet, always
earth,
he
in
impression that all other things are
movement whilst
himself is in a sort of immovable centre; he will certainly
his
place
of
as
according
vary
will
which
poles
always choose
In
Mars
the
the
is
etc.
the
moon,
earth,
sun,
existence
be
whose
mundi
there
a
machina
always
will
consequence,
is
is
circumference
to
whose
everywhere,
speak,
so
centre
he
is
God
is
its
for
and
centre
and
circumference
nowhere,
everywhere and nowhere
(Cusa, De Docta Ignorantia
Bk. II, ch. 12)
169
Kant claims that his achievement in philosophy is the
analogue of that
Copernicus'
in cosmology. Colloquially
of
this carries the sense of a
major paradigmatic
shift in perception: since Kant is claiming for his
Critical
the status of a rupture
philosophy
with the past, a clean
break. The problem with this claim, however, is revealed
begins to examine the cosmological, metaphysical
as soon as one
and concomitant
political
Copernicus'
becomes
It
then
charge of
work.
apparent that
Kant's
claim
is not really
as apocalyptic,
as cataclysmic,
or as
for the terms, conventions, limits and possibilities
revolutionary,
of
thought as he would have us think, or as conventional philosophical
historiography
has claimed ever since. His claim is ultimately
in
Bataille's sense, comical. "No one can say without being comical that
he is getting ready to overturn things: He must overturn, and that is
line
(Bataille
11199120/10).
Put
being
in
the
thought
all"
otherwise,
of
followed here, Kant's thought is characterised as being a "renovated
theology" (Deleuze 1983 93). In consequence, far from constituting the
State-form
"blast
that
the
thought
and
would escape
of a
invention
open the continuum
history"
of
Kantianism
to be a clandestine
is taken
1973 Thesis XVI)',
(Benjamin
means of reinstating
transcendence®. The link between the State-form and transcendence is
the compliment
to the intimacy
diagram of immanent
intimacy
different
critique and philosophico-political
is not accidental
manifestations
transcendence'.
that can be explored in an abstract
Deleuze
but constitutive;
through
Guattari
and
heresy, this
the State-form
history
capture
is
sustained
in its
by
the issue thus:
Being,
State
imperial
in
the
is
transcendence,
"Whenever there
vertical
is
is
there
there
religion; and
philosophy whenever
sky or on earth,
from
`rolling
X'...
the
toward
Spheres:
Crystal
centre
the
Shattering
The
of
170
there
is immanence"
(Deleuze
Guattari
and
1991/94 46/43). An
understanding
of this abstract diagram of power and transcendence is
the necessary
precondition
Copernican,
Kant's
claim
to being
it does of course give that claim an entirely
different,
negative or strictly
contradictory
of accepting
delimited,
value. What is the force behind these
Chiefly,
statements?
that
Copernicus'
revolution
consists merely in carrying out a cosmic swapping of places: that is to
he
Sun
in the centre of the cosmos, where the Earth
the
say,
places
had been. Copernicus, in other words, replaces geo- with the still more
heliocentrism,
ancient
for another,
Ptolemaic
hierarchical
trades
thinking
and
one variant of
he leaves in place the clockwork
cosmos, preserves the crystal
mechanisms
of the
spheres, allows them to
floating
in
the ether, and allows them to continue playing the
continue
had entertained
Despots and Popes, and
the subjected for a millennia
half.
This
and a
celestial
music that
resonating
stupefied
disrupted
is
intervention
the
symphony
not
until
rude
of the apostate
Dominican of Nola, Giordano Bruno and his decision to stop listening to
the "asses dressed up with diadems and hacks decked with rings under
the title of doctors" (Bruno 1998 25)'. It is only with Bruno that the
left
definitively
it
is
is
the
exploded, and
medieval mind
closed cosmos of
to Bruno to venture the possibility of a way of thinking
hierarchical,
the stratified,
necessity of thinking
and the vertical.
the world topologically,
other than the
Bruno announces the
rhizomically,
and of
fluid
the
that
complexity of such a reality,
will reflect
creating concepts
an open conceptual structure,
acentric and connected each point to
lines,
form
by
thought
transversal
a
cosmos
and
a
without
every other
a transcendent
Bruno
it.
to
anchor
proclaims
centre
from
`rolling
the
X'...
Spheres:
toward
crystal
the
centre
Shattering
The
of
an unstable
171
lacking
hierarchy, value and direction, in which "meaning does
cosmos
limit
itself, for wherever it goes, always and everywhere it is
not
visible
at the centre of the horizon, whether it shifts its observation point on
the surface of the earth or on the edges of the universe as it
crosses
other worlds" (Bruno 1879-9111204).
This clearly is a transformation
Cusa's
dicta
of
quoted above that God is an entity whose "centre so to
speak, is everywhere,
whose circumference
is nowhere",
into a
both
statement with
cosmological and epistemological ramifications.
Ramifications
in
which,
contemporary
Smolin's statement
relational;
that any description
cosmology, accord with Lee
be
"entirely
of space must
there must not be any fixed or absolute structure of space"
(Smolin 1997 278)1. As Nuccio Ordine comments, in Bruno's hands
"the old cosmological concept that relegated the `edges' to a perpetually
falls
to pieces, for everything can become the centre,
marginal position
every element
different
can occupy a
Deleuze and Guattari's
(Ordine
place"
1996 166).
here
immanence
is
smooth space, or plane of
Bruno's
in
monistic ontological and epistemological
perfectly prefigured
Nietzsche's
but
is
too
vision,
perspectivism'.
so
When approached in
this way it becomes clear quite how these diverse doctrines are all
derived from the destruction
Bruno's
extension
of the cosmological,
implications
epistemological,
out the trajectory
of transcendental
by
values executed
as well as ontological
and
limit,
Copernicanism
their
to
marking
of
by
the
performed
perfect nihilist
who comes out on
the other side of the inevitable event of nihilism.
Crucial to this trajectory is Bruno's adoption and transformation of the
Raymond
Lull,
in
Catalan
the
and
polymath,
mystic
and
system of
from
`rolling
the
X'...
toward
Spheres:
Crystal
centre
the
The Shattering of
172
particular
his
of
ars combinatoria,
cybernetic
machines
Combinatoria'.
via
its
Lull's breakthrough
so often cited as a precursor
influence
Leibniz'
on
of
De Arte
was to endow concepts with a new
fluidity and dynamism utterly alien to the Medieval world of hierarchies
for
Spinoza
"the
ideas
and categories,
as
order and connection of
writes
is the same as the order and connection of things" (Spinoza 1985 E
IIP7).
Lull
restraints
too postulates
from
"the
free
in
which,
a new world
hierarchical
the
of
structures
The
of medieval concepts.
in
to
relationships
one another,
concepts were now understood relative
that were open because they could be reversed" (Roob 1997 287).
Bruno's critique and development of Copernicanism is explicitly carried
out
on the
simultaneously,
metaphysical,
cosmological,
and political
planes
indeed, as Negri insists in his reading of Spinoza, the
In
Bruno
1994).
(Negri
1991a
is
and
political
critique of metaphysics
this identity
is performatively
demonstrated.
To trace out these
formation
dissect
the
is
to
and
origins,
apparently obscure arguments
by(a
itself
foundations
modernity
of
conceptual
philosophico-political
its
`postmodernity'
terms
is
the
that
and
this
analysis
product of
describe
to
terms
limited
their
a
be
to
as
origins
cognates must
particular
architectural
historically
naive and
theoretically
them
are
style; all other uses of
ill informed-
is
unless of course one enamoured
idea
that
somewherethe
going
are
we
of
by virtue of their being
doctrine
form
teleology,
or
one
or other of
ineluctably tied up with one
birth
look
this
When
to
of
at
start
we
other of universal progress).
to
heart
its
the
in
so
and
find
nihilism;
of
snake
coiled
modernity, we
find
Habermas,
by
distort,
we
made
point
a
take up, and somewhat
happened
and
every
has
again,
and
again,
and
birth
again,
that this
X'..
from
toward
the
`rolling
Spheres:
centre
Crystal
the
.
The Shattering of
173
time that the refrain of modernity is played it comes accompanied by
nihilism:
their
Nihilism
is a constitutively
would appear to be symbiogenetic'.
relationship,
productive element of modernity. It is the
recognition of the inevitable coming of this unwanted accomplice that
composes one of the elements of Deleuze's understanding of Nietzsche,
it
he
is
"Nietzsche
that
and
why
says
can think that nihilism is not an
history
in
event
but the motor of the history
of man as universal
history. " (Deleuze 1983 152).
It is not, then, with Copernicus who, after all, "maintained the idea of
an absolute point of view" (Stengers 1997c 40), that any sort of threat
is posed to the terrestrial
its
celestial
order via an onslaught upon
but
full
Bruno.
The
import
of this shift of attribution
cognate,
with
considerable
has
and
nothing
to do with
correcting
is
Kant's use of
longer
he
ie
that
and other self-aggrandisers no
suggesting
metaphors,
think
of themselves
and their
having
the
the
status
of
works as
Copernican revolution but rather as being Brunian in their shattering
by
described
is
both
This
scientific and philosophical,
revolution,
effects.
Alexandre Koyre as follows
the destruction
disappearance,
Cosmos,
is,
the
that
the
of
from philosophically
the
of
and scientifically valid concepts,
hierarchically
finite,
the
closed, and
world as a
conception of
by
indefinite
its
]
[
an
replacement
ordered whole ... and
by
its
bound
identity
is
the
together
of
which
universe
fundamental
laws,
in
these
all
and
and
which
components
level
being.
This,
in
turn,
the
same
of
concepts are placed on
from
X'...
`rolling
toward
the
Spheres:
Crystal
centre
The Shattering of the
174
implies
the
discarding
considerations
based
by scientific
upon
thought
value-concepts,
of all
such
as
harmony,
finally
perfection,
the utter
meaning and aim, and
devalorisation
being,
divorce
the
of
of the world of value
from the world of facts. (Koyre 1957 2).
Bruno is acutely aware of Copernicus' limits, and notes them curtly, as
follows:
he, Copernicus
"did not go much further
[away from the
common and vulgar philosophy] because he could not plumb and probe
into matters to the extent that he could completely uproot unsuitable
he
did
have
[...
be
]
to
and empty principles
not
sufficient means
able to
defeat
completely,
conquer
and suppress
falsehood
beyond
all
The
first
Copernicus'
(Bruno
86).
in
1995
print of
resistance"
mention
heliocentric
thesis was with the publication
1514, this publication
his
Cornmentariolus
in
of
long
hiatus
by
followed
in
it
which
was
a
was
largely ignored, and when Bruno starts lecturing upon its contents and
implications,
it is not as Copernicus' first acolyte and proselytiser, but
77),
(Mendoza
1995
his
first
and as such,
and most severe critic
as
before the world was able to absorb the implications
bringing
Bruno
was already
system,
unfamiliar,
Copernicus'
of
them news from a much more
disquieting planet: for barely had man been removed from
the centre of the cosmos, than Bruno was abolishing the concept of
but
Galileo
Kepler,
"Bruno
and
not only anticipated
centre altogether.
he passed beyond them into an entirely new world which had shed all
the dross of tradition"
(Singer 1950 49).
demand
Deleuze
Guattari's
that
bold
of
and
Bruno offers a
precursor
from
'rolling
X'...
the
toward
Spheres:
Crystal
centre
The Shattering of the
175
philosophy be in accord with the formula "PLURALISM
(Deleuze and Guattari
against
both
intellect
and
1980/87 31/20), as when he notes, explicitly
Aristotelian
transcendentalism,
MONISM"
=
Platonic
and
forms
dualism
of
and
that "nature descends to the production of things,
ascends to the knowledge of them, by one and the same
ladder. Both ways proceed from unity to unity" (Bruno 1998 93)'. In
this Bruno goes far beyond a naive empiricism and ventures close to a
speculative
materialism
differentiation.
immanence
in his promotion
Bruno
writes
of a monism of modal
is,
in
of what
effect, the plane of
that it is "complicative
[... ] one, immense, infinite
and
being,
in
it
is
comprehensive of all
and
an explicative manner,
present
in sensible
bodies and in the potency and the act that
we see
distinguished in them" (Bruno 1998 93). He goes on to note that it is the
"understand
feeble
it
that
the
multiplicity
mind
cannot
mark of
except
through many species, analogies and forms [... ] The premier intelligence
(Bruno
idea"
1998
in
a single, absolutely perfect
embraces everything
95). This places Bruno directly in the line of univocal ontology, beyond
the Scholastic categories, and in touch with a certain nominalistic
Aristotelian
the
critique of
architecture
of natural
species and of the
Lange's
following
by
Nietzsche
being
latter
The
a critique adopted
eilos.
the
instance
"no
is
there
same
that
at
and
empty
of
so
such
position
time crass a superstition
few
Species,
there
that
are probably
and
of
as
have
in
gone on rocking
which men
points
baseless argumentations
themselves
with such
into dogmatic slumber" (Lange 1879 iii 27).
from
X'...
"rolling
the
toward
Spheres:
Crystal
centre
The Shattering of the
176
Bruno. Architect
of the Future
It is entirely predictable that any discussion
of nihilism will have to
begin with Nietzsche, and specifically
with the writings collected as The
Will to Power. Nietzsche's characterisation
of nihilism is complex,
multifaceted,
and ranged over several levels, referring
ontologically
distinct
objects.
Without
wanting
to several
to attribute
to
Nietzsche a closed, totalising system, it seems that the constellation of
does
indeed knit together several of the most important axes of
nihilism
Nietzschean
To put it in his own words, Nietzsche sees
thought.
himself as "a spirit of daring and experiment [who] has already lost [its]
labyrinth
in
every
way once
future"
(Nietzsche 1968 preface § 2)
the
of
he
finds
is
there
and what
nihilism.
diagnosis of nihilism
The sustained understanding
or
is in a sense the most successful actualisation of
definitions
Nietzsche's
is
the
the
that
role of
one of
of
philosopher:
as a
diagnosis
in
the
physician engaged
of the sicknesses afflicting the world
in which he finds himself, `the philosopher as cultural physician's. "But
it is sick, this unchained life, and needs to be cured. " (Nietzsche 1983
120). The philosopher
"soothsayer-bird
being
a physician
as well as
be
must
a
back
"looks
when relating what will come"
spirit" who
(Nietzsche 1968 preface § 3), and what this soothsayer sees in this
been
"has
toward
is
as
a catastrophe",
moving
a culture which
case,
is
the
that
advent of nihilism.
catastrophe
and
The describer of this
by
this
is
a
vision
perfect nihilist,
of
virtue
catastrophe
that is to say
the
the
has
through
experience
of
nihilism,
conflagration
gone
one who
behind,
himself.
has
left
Nihilism
it
outside
and
transcendent
values,
of
immediate
diagnosis
is
the
of our
then
past, and of our immediate
from
X'...
rolling
the
toward
Spheres:
Crystal
centre
The Shattering of the
177
present. As for Walter Benjamin, so for Nietzsche, both the past and
the future are littered with signs, and speak "even now in a hundred
(Nietzsche
signs"
1968 preface § 2). The past is a transmitter
of
wisdom, and it is only the soothsayer who may read this
oracular
but
Nietzschean
like
Benjamin's and Paul Klee's
oracle;
a
soothsayer,
history
is Janus faced, he is orientated simultaneously
angel of
both
towards
the future
"architect
future"
(Nietzsche
1983 94), who knows the present
the
of
and the past. It is only the soothsayer,
the
it
is imperative that the sooth-sayer "looks
the
may
who
read
oracle;
back when relating what will come" (Nietzsche 1968 preface § 3), the
philosopher
be
beyond"
"telephone
from
(Nietzsche
1969
the
must
a
III 5), and the news that he brings is that of nihilism.
the coming of nihilism,
unavoidable,
and our experiencing
For Nietzsche,
of it, is inevitable,
Nietzsche's
in
is
it
that
much
so
order
and necessary;
vaunted transvaluation
"must
experience
of all values may occur: we
had.
We
`values'
find
before
these
really
out what value
we can
nihilism
Diagnosis
§
"
4).
(Nietzsche
1968
preface
require, sometime, new values.
the
the
revelation
of
and
prescription:
elements of etiology
consists of
cause
of the
sickness,
anatomisation
of the
symptoms,
and
for
It
is
that
these
reasons
precisely
prescription of a curative solution.
Deleuze notes that the "whole of philosophy is a symptomatology, and
a semeiology",
and that
consequently
its object of study,
"phenomenon [... ] is not an appearance or even an apparition
the
but a
force"
(Deleuze
in
finds
its
an
existing
meaning
which
symptom
sign, a
immensely
is
Nietzsche
3).
1983
diagnosis of nihilism,
his
precise with each element of
his
less
in
so
account
and unusually perhaps, no
The
two
in
the
of
than
source
precise
elements.
other
its
etiology
of
from
)C
toward
`rolling
the
Spheres:
centre
Crystal
The Shattering of the
...
178
nihilism for Nietzsche lies in Nicholas Copernicus' overturning of the
Ptolemaic geocentric cosmology, and its
replacement with the, in
certain senses still more ancient, heliocentric model; as is all too
familiar, the immediate consequence of this, is that "the faith in the
dignity and uniqueness of man, in his irreplaceability in the
being"
became
"thing
of
a
of the past", Copernicus'
great chain
projection placed
man on "an inclined plane" so that "now he is slipping faster and faster
from
the centre intoaway
his
sense of
nothingness'
It follows
into
what?
nothingness? into a penetrating
(Nietzsche 1969 11125).
from this that
the Copernican
revolution
be
to
needs
displaced from its principal position in the narrative of nihilism, "this
long plenitude
cataclysm"
breakdown,
and sequence of
(Nietzsche
destruction,
ruin and
1974 § 343). As already noted, Kant prides
himself in carrying out a Copernican revolution in thought, he believes
his own thought to be a seismic event in the possibilities, trajectories
he
believes
his
Critiques
that
and purposes of philosophy,
represent a
in
shift
philosophy
by
Copernicus
in
that
as radical as
represented
his
Chinaman
Königsberg
The
is
to
of course entitled
cosmology.
of
own
Copernicus
is
it
is
that
to
that the
the
not
problem
self-assessment,
bears
his
be
to
that
name ought
attributed,
revolution
the event that Kant believes himself
revolution
hence
that
and
to be analogous to is not a
but a mere holding manoeuvre on the part of a faltering,
thought.
of
crumbling ancien regime
In light
issue
the
the
of nihilism,
above,
of
when understood
as a
diagnosis of Occidental culture since roughly the late nineteenth
from
`rolling
X'...
the
toward
Spheres:
Crystal
centre
the
Shattering
The
of
1779
century
of faith
crisis
be
must
recast.
understood to be precipitated
Classically
it has been
largely by various developments in the
natural sciences, critically the Darwinian
from
the top
removal of man
of the chain of being, or rather the removal of that `chain' altogether,
and the complete absorption of the ramifications
`Copernican'
revolution:
the abolition
of the much earlier
of the geocentrism
of the
Ptolemaic cosmos. A single gathering wave from the sixteenth to the
late nineteenth
However, the advent of nihilism
centuries.
be
can
history
in
the
refashioned as a constantly recurring refrain
of thought.
Understood as a persistent scepticism, and as a resolute rejection of all
transcendent
values, nihilism,
understanding
and at the same
of philosophy's role as a naturalism,
time a part of Nietzsche's
Deleuze's
with
is absolutely intimate
demand that philosophy
become both
immoral and historical. Although his work hurls countless accusations
it
is
that
philosophy,
one can
arguable
and critiques against all prior
isolate in Nietzsche two central reasons as to why "every philosophical
architect
in Europe has built in vain" (Nietzsche 1982 preface § 3).
Kant's answer that the reason for this is the absence of a critique of
ludicrous.
is
adjudged
reason
The first reason, for Nietzsche, is the
by
morality,
eternal seduction of metaphysics
truth,
with
preoccupation
understand,
Guattari
he
in
"succeeded
making us
against which
is creation,
not will
to truth"
(Deleuze and
1991/94 55/54). The demand for "historical philosophising" is
Nietzsche's
failure
thought
and the concomitant
forms
the
the
the
to
of
generalised
second of
response
hitherto
of all
existing metaphysical
is
that
that
philosophy,
he
is
think[ing]
"from
and
now
as
man
they start out
involuntarily
him.
They
an analysis of
their goal through
think of `man' as an aeterna
from
X'...
`rolling
toward
the
Spheres:
Crystal
centre
The Shattering of the
180
veritas [... ] they will not learn that man has become, that the faculty
of
has
become" (Nietzsche 1986 § 2)'. This is
cognition
clearly a charge
that can be laid against Kant, who as we have
already seen specifically
counsels us to "begin with man as a fully formed adult" (Kant 1983
49), and who acts as if science is and always
be
Newtonian science
will
"thereby
branded as impossible any opposition to
and
classical science
that was not an opposition to science itself" (Prigogine and Stengers
1984 86). Kant is quite explicit about this, and it is
his
that
clear
motivation
for such a position, and for much else in his system, is
derived from the necessity of resisting the implications of a philosophy
has
that
of nature
consistently
Spinoza's intention
dethroned the sovereignty of man,
to treat man as if he were dealing with "lines,
bodies"
(Spinoza 1985 E III preface) for example 100.
Here is
planes and
Kant's most forthright
statement of the necessity of limiting science:
It is, I mean, quite certain that we can never get a sufficient
knowledge of organised beings and their inner possibility [... ]
by looking merely to mechanical principles of nature [... ] it is
doing
for
to
thought
men
even entertain any
absurd
or
of so
to hope that maybe another Newton may some day arise,
to make intelligible
to us even the genesis of a blade of grass
from natural laws that no design has ordered. Such insight
§
deny
(Kant
1952
75).
to
mankind.
we must absolutely
For Nietzsche the event of nihilism leaves the way open for a chemistry
in
contradistinction
of concepts and sensations, which
ontological
and epistemological
to the frozen
eternal verities of metaphysics will
from
`rolling
X'...
the
Spheres:
toward.
Crystal
the
centre
The Shattering of
181
recognise that
everything
has become: there are no eternal facts, just as
there are no absolute truths. Consequently what is needed
from now on is historical philosophising
(Nietzsche 1986 §
2)
The dawn of nihilism then, construed as a thinking of "existence as it is,
without meaning or aim, yet occurring inevitably without any finale of
nothingness"
materialism
(Nietzsche
1968 § 55), is a part
of that
that runs through Occidental civilisation
virulent
in perpetual,
destroying
idols,
ideals,
the
absolute opposition,
pronouncing
end of
renouncing states, smashing superstitions, engaging in an indefatigable
"practical
critique
of all mystifications"
from Sextus Empiricus
to Lucretius,
(Deleuze 1969/80 378/279),
Bruno to Spinoza, Marx to
Nietzsche.
Kent's Secret Path
In this way, Kant's self-proclaimed
attempt
be
imagined
as an
revolution can
to cancel time; and the critiques
be
can
envisaged as a
back
horrors
hold
dam
built
the
to
of a world without meaning,
massive
hinges
interpretation
(the
its
from
torn
most profound
a world
Hamlet's
time "out of joint").
Kant himself
is adamant
"concept of noumenon is thus a merely limiting
of
that the
[...
is
]
it
and
concept
A
(Kant
255E
311)
1929
or
therefore only of negative employment"
determinedly
even more
"it is not indeed in any way positive" (Kant
from
`rolling
Y...
the
toward
Spheres:
Crystal
centre
the
The Shattering of
182
1929 A 252). The Kantianism
system then is a sea wall built to ensure
that "the voyage of our reason may be extended
further
than the
no
continuous coastline of experience itself [... ] a coast we cannot leave
without venturing upon a shoreless ocean which II. ] compels us in the
..
end to abandon as hopeless all this vexatious and tedious endeavour"
(Kant 1929 A 395). In other words, to accept the decentring
of man
and the necessity of a transvaluation
Cosmology
would,
for Kant,
of all values implied by a Brunian
unleash
once again the corrosive
speculations of those "sceptics [that] species of nomads" who "despising
all settled modes of life, broke up from time to time all civil society"
(Kant 1929 A ix). And that, needless to add, was not an option that
Kant would countenance. Copernicanism was already conceptually and
empirically
mantle,
discredited, though as is evidenced by Kant's claim to its
not politically
foundations
and culturally
its
shattered;
empirical
redundant,
its ontological
by
the
suppositions superseded
Bruno's
leaping
imagination,
scope of
epoch
before
its general
even
later
by
Galileo
Kepler.
The
the
acceptance, and
observations of
and
Vatican had in fact developed a far more perceptive assessment of the
metaphysical,
ontological
and political
stakes
involved
in the
Copernican `hypothesis' than Kant ever did'°'. The Vatican's censorship
body, the Index Congregation, characterised the Copernican enterprise
"as simply
consequence
doctrina
Pythagorica"
a
didn't
find
(Lange 1879 i 232), and as a
it necessary
to place
the Book of the
Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres on the Index of proscribed books
its
1543
three
publication, and sixteen years
years after
until seventy
"evidence
Koestler
is
indeed
there
Bruno's
shows
of
as
murder,
after
Vatican"
by
Copernican
]
in
[...
interest
the
theory
the
benevolent
early
from
`rolling
X'...
the
toward
Spheres:
Crystal
centre
the
Shattering
The
of
183
(Koestler 1959 155). The Catholic hierarchy then
was fully cognisant
of the fact that the threat posed by the Copernicanism of its author
was minimal-
the old Canon Copernigk stayed in his isolated tower
and troubled noone, unlike the seemingly fearless Nolan driven by an
furore,
had
both Apollinean and Dionysian dimensions "the
eroico
which
former because it was a passion for truth and knowledge, the latter
because it led to death and resurrection"
harboured
no reticence
(Mendoza 1995 xxiv)'
his disdain
about promulgating
for the
established order. The Canon, on the contrary was never persecuted,
he was in fact feted, even encouraged, by elements reaching as high up
the Vatican hierarchy as the Pope himself, and to reciprocate for this
patronage,
it is the name of Pope Paul III that is found in the
dedications
Book
Revolutions,
the
page of
of
written
in June 1542
(Koestler 1959 176); it is in this dedication that Copernicus claims "in
typical renaissance fashion [... ] that rather than presenting a novelty
he was restoring
lost"
had
been
(Gatti
1999
that
an ancient wisdom
15). No such collusion occurs with Bruno, whose purpose is explicitly
revolutionary
dogmatically
destruction
directed
imposed
the
to
of
and
ideas and values. So if Kant can ignore Bruno, if he can write as if
Bruno had never happened, and if he can pretend that the revolution
keep
As
he
intact.
happen
Copernicus
the
does
old order
can
with
really
Nietzsche points out:
Kant,
transcendentalists
since
daythe
more won
have
kind
once
of every
they have been emancipated from the
Kant
them
joy!
a
path
secret
showed
theologians: what
-by which they may, on their own initiative
from
X'...
`rolling
the
toward
Spheres:
Crystal
centre
the
The Shattering of
and with all
184
scientific respectability, from now on follow their `heart's
desire' (Nietzsche 1969 III § 25)
That is, they can sustain the existence
of the transcendental without
having to resort to the theological. They
can garb themselves with the
cloak of revolution
and simultaneously
reconstitute
different
a
"regulative fiction", a new form of "police supervision" (Nietzsche 1974
§ 344). In Nietzsche's judgement, then, Kant is subject to the
rebuke
that
he had himself
indifferentists',
directed
he
dubbed
those
at
`pretended
that they "fell back [... ] into those very metaphysical
assertions which they profess so greatly to despise" (Kant 1929 Ax).
As has already been indicated
tripartite,
Nietzsche's diagnosis of nihilism
is
the third part being prescriptive: for after the revaluation of
formation
the
all values comes
perfect nihilist
The
of new ones.
programme of the
is inscribed, Nietzsche reminds us, on the title page of
his "gospel of the future" and it is "The Will to Power: Attempt
Revaluation
lives through,
at a
All
Values"
(Nietzsche
§
Nietzsche
1968
4),
of
preface
indeed escalates, ("You ain't seen nothin'
yet"), the
drags
from
necessary event of nihilism, and
something shining and new
the catastrophic
wreckage,
the psychic detritus
having
of
been
Christian for two thousand years. Unlike Kant, Nietzsche understands
that the disarmed
surreptitiously
depth charge dropped by Copernicus had been
retrieved,
rewired
depleted
and given a
uranium
by
destructive
Kant
Bruno.
immense
power
retains, claws
warhead of
back, the centre that
Bruno
transcendental,
the
standpoint of
Humanist
had abolished.
In constructing
the
Kant reformulates the Renaissance
dignity,
follow
human
Nietzsche,
Kantian
to
the
vision of
from
`rolling
Spheres:
the centre toward X'...
Crystal
the
The Shattering of
la5
supposition of the scientific human subject deciphering natural law, the
subject of the critical
epistemology
for
his
man
own self-glorification"
Kantian
critical
enterprise
desire for centring
"was immediately
by
employed
(Nietzsche
1990b § 106). The
keeps man in thrall
of the pathological
that still orders the healthy human psyche, the
"coming of Spirit apprehending itself" (Prigogine and Stengers 1984 89)
in Hegelian
language, the psychoanalytic
Freudian
the
subject on
This
drive
for
be
there
to
couch.
a centre is a veritable,
persistent,
Witness,
for
history
languages
the
pernicious pathology.
example,
of
of
the self predicated
health
they
the
as
are upon
equation of
with
beauty
balance,
(vis
ideas
centredness,
symmetry
also conventional
of
the
the
to
average
of
physical
calculate
and current spurious attempts
based
deviance
face
the
the
proportions
of
upon
perfect
features from a statistical
facial
of
is
This
cauterised
norm).
pathology
at
furiously
his
by
Bruno
antitheological,
relentlessly amoral,
and
source
pursuit
figure
lost
has
"universe
that
the
all centre as well as any
of
that could be attributed
to it" (Deleuze 1993 124). In philosophical
history there are two types of hermit or recluse: first is the voluntary
like Kant, and second those condemned to exile, the heretical,
Contrary
outcast.
the
to his own belief that he is "a solitary by instinct
(Nietzsche
in
his
found
has
and
outside"
aside
standing
advantage
who
belongs,
Nietzsche
latter
truly
that
type
1968 preface § 3) it is to the
huntedlong
Outcasts of society,
persecuted and sorely
Giordano
Spinozas
the
and
the
recluses,
enforced
also
Brunos-
in the end always become refined vengeance-
§
25)
(Nietzsche
1990a
brewers
poison
of
and
seekers
X'...
from
toward
`rolling
the
Spheres:
centre
The Shattering of the Crystal
186
"The Philosopher's
Serenity
and Philosophy's
Achievement"
As has repeatedly been intimated, it will not be enough for Nietzsche to
simply
recognise
Nihilism,
the necessity,
the repetition,
and the event of
beyond
it, and take its implications on board in
one must go
the task of creating new values. "Radical nihilism
an absolute untenability
is the conviction of
highest
it
to
the
of existence when
comes
values one recognises; plus the realisation that we lack the least right
to posit a beyond or an in-itself
(Nietzsche
be
`divine'"
things
that
of
might
1968 § 3). The basis for this revaluation,
through, lies in a dizzying perspectivism
defiant
and a
cheerfulness
that enables one to approach the "gloom without
involvement
and above all without
for this living
any real sense of
fear
for
any worry and
ourselves"
(Nietzsche 1974 § 343). Related to this, and presumably with the just
Guattari
Deleuze
Gay
Science
from
in
the
and
mind,
quoted passage
is
commonly
what
make a very simple yet astounding comment about
held to be the archetypal, the pinnacle, event of nihilism,
that "for philosophers
neither
That
[...
I
philosophers
problems
tragedy is astonishing.
atheism
they write
death
God
the
are
of
nor
be
death
to
the
take
a
of god
still
Atheism isn't a drama, but the philosopher's
Guattari
1991/94
(Deleuze
and
serenity and philosophy's achievement"
89/92, my translation).
Now this idea eliminates
whole currents of
both
in
thought, past and present
analytic and continental philosophy,
burdened
by
been
have
the
they
weight
as
by
the
what
past,
of
God.
This
truly
the
philosophical
of
shadow
Nietzsche on occasion calls,
attitude,
described
by Deleuze
Guattari,
and
f
X'...
the
toward
`roiling
Spheres:
centre
Crystal
om
The Shattering of the
is precisely
what
Ig7
Nietzsche means by furor
philosophicus and by cheerfulness, and
Spinoza by joy. This cheerfulness is the
only way to confront the
"monstrous logic of terror" (Nietzsche 1974 § 343)
by
the
entailed
destruction of transcendent values,
and of the consequences of `the
death of god' Nietzsche says
They are not at all sad and gloomy but rather like a new
and
scarcely describable kind of light [... ]
We philosophers
`free
feel,
hear
the
and
spirits'
when we
news that the `old god is dead', as if a new dawn shone upon
heart
us; our
premonitions,
overflows
with
gratitude,
amazement,
expectation. At long last the horizon appears
free to us again, even if it should not be bright; at long last
the horizon appears free to us again, even if it should not be
right,
long
last
at
our ships may venture
out again.
(Nietzsche 1974 § 343)
As we have seen, the most striking
Copernicus is the restriction
Bruno's
result of
radicalisation
of
Canon's
the
of
work to a mere cosmic
The
Nolan,
swapping of places.
on the contrary, eliminates the entire
its
with
armillary
medieval machinery,
hierarchies
fixed
firmament,
its
spheres,
infinite,
it
with an
and centres and replaces
acentric,
topological smooth space.
You will no longer say that there is an edge or limit either to
the extent or motion of the universe; you will esteem the
belief in a primum
mobile, an uppermost and all containing
from
`rolling
X'...
the
toward
Spheres:
Crystal
centre
the
The Shattering of
188
heaven, to be a vain fantasy (Bruno 1950 361)
It is with this invective that Bruno admonishes those who
hang
still
on
to a medieval or even a Copernican cosmos, and he might have added
Nietzsche
with
Admiral
and
would tremble
lot
knew
if
I
a
more
you
where
was taking
Turenne,
"You tremble, carcass? You
you"
(Nietzsche 1974 277)108.It is this abolition of the cosmological primum
had
lead
Bruno to the requisite perspectival and historical
that
mobile,
Nietzsche
for
Two
to
that
approach
epistemology
prescribes.
options
knowledge are posed in the aftermath
of the event of nihilism.
For
Nietzsche both must be avoided with equal vehemence, on the one
hand, there is the stifling atmospheresuicidal-
Kantianism's
of
relativism"
(Nietzsche
had
Kleist
that
so
made
one
"gnawing and disintegrating
1983 140), an atmosphere
scepticism and
in
of scepticism
§
live"
84),
(Nietzsche
1990b
the
the
"no
and
other,
on
can
one
which
its
[which]
in
"belief
truth
appearance as a social
makes
pathological
§
Nietzsche's
91).
(Nietzsche
1990b
has
[and]
a moral origin"
necessity
but
knowing,
in
dire
"lies
in
both
these
to
not
options
of
response
to
One
§
84).
the
1990b
(Nietzsche
statements
as
clearest
of
creating"
follows
by
is
Nietzsche
this
as
means
what
For the plant the world is thus and such; for us the world is
thus and such. If we compare the two perceptual powers we
ie.
be
the
to
the
correct
one,
more
world
of
view
our
consider
The
]
[...
the
truth
to
the one that corresponds more closely
natural
by
Thus
the
things
is
science.
carried on
process
mirror
liberating
themselves ever more clearly, gradually
X'..
from
toward
`rolling
the
Spheres:
centre
The Shattering of the Crystal
.
189
themselves from what is all too anthropomorphic.
plant,
the whole world is a plant;
For the
for us, it is human
(Nietzsche 1990b § 102)
It is a constant of Nietzsche's critique of Kant that the latter remains
ahistorical,
that his philosophy
movement; without
is "entirely
for
his
[...
1
the
time
any eye
actuality of
way off
historical
it
to
when
comes
great
Directly
historical
the
outside
(Nietzsche
§
1968
95,101).
values"
tied to this is Kant's reinvention
subject, and the reinscription
human
the
of
sovereign
of this subject in the centre of the
knowable cosmos though the invention of the categories of reason. It is
basis
for
Kant
the anthropocentric platitude,
that
this
upon
provides a
is
the measure of all things man
dismissed by Nietzsche as the
"hyperbolic naivete of man" (Nietzsche 1968 § 12), the quintessence of
humanism against which Bruno had so diligently
he
posed with
which
Nietzsche,
fought, and against
"smallness
man's
and accidental
(Nietzsche
1968
becoming
flux
in
the
and passing away"
of
occurrence
Serres has emphasised the ontological
§ 4). Similarly
Michel
epistemological
flattening
this
consequences of
Medieval
the
of
hierarchy of being on a cosmic scale thus
Nothing
distinguishes
me ontologically
from a crystal, a
drifting
the
the
are
we
world;
of
order
or
animal,
plant, an
depths
black
the
the
the
toward
of
together
noise and
flowing
diverse
are
complexions
systemic
our
and
universe,
itself
the
toward
adrift
origin,
solar
the
stream,
entropic
up
being.
itself,
[... I this is complexity
which was once called
from
X'...
toward
`rolling
the
Spheres:
centre
Crystal
The Shattering of the
and
190
(Serres 1977/82 272/83)
Since the result of nihilism is the recognition of the destruction of man's
privileged
the acentric, valueless, non-hierarchical
position within
entanglement that is the world, and that Nietzsche warns against and
actively
seeks to circumvent,
the possibility
that his analysis, his
diagnosis of nihilism,
be
taken for a merely negative platitude; he
will
writes that "nihilism
is not just a collection of speculations around the
theme `all is in vain! ': it is not just the thought that everything deserves
to be destroyed: the nihilist
102/§ 24, my translation),
helps to destroy" (Nietzsche 1968/95 §
ds.
104
having
destroyed,
rebuil.
and
X'...
from
`rolling
toward
the
Spheres:
centre
Crystal
The Shattering of the
192
I have tried, throughout
unbreachable,
this thesis to insist upon the radical, and
chasm that exists between, on the one hand, Deleuze
DeleuzeGuattari's
and
heretical materialism, and on the other hand, the
that dominate philosophy. The differences exist on many
traditions
levels as I have endeavoured
important,
least
at
for
to articulate,
my
proposed
but perhaps the most
project
of creating
a
Schizogenealogy, to which this is merely a prelude, is one that appears
level
the
on
of affect and that directly grows out of the conclusion of my
last chapter.
Deleuze and Guattari are not unique in pointing to the event of nihilism,
indeed this is common to most of their erstwhile contemporaries; where
they are unique
contemporary
though,
is in their
French philosophy,
dominated
by a thought
rigorously
describing
in
refused,
mourning;
non-mourning
For
to
this
event.
response
Anglophone
its
reflection,
and
of mourning,
a thought
is
that Deleuze has
his own work as "not a work of
takes even more work" (Deleuze 1990/95
118/84). He goes on to further displace his project: "I've never worried
(Deleuze
death
beyond
the
of philosophy"
metaphysics or
about going
1990/95.122/88),
Guattari
finally,
and
in their last joint work, Deleuze and
declare that "we have never been bothered with the death of
idle
just
it
is
pointless,
metaphysics or the overcoming of philosophy:
incoherencies [d'inutiles,
de penibles radotage]" (Deleuze and Guattari
invitation
is
Deleuze
that
The
an
offers
1990/95 14/9).
philosophy
life, to the active continuation
to
inventive
its
to
creative,
of philosophy,
becomings hybrid. In active opposition to the philosophy that throws
the
the
sciences
in
of
superior
grasp
hands
supposed
its
at
surrender
up
Towards a Scbizogenealogy
193
on truth,
and that mourns the loss of certainty brought about by the
creative destructions of immanence's struggles with transcendence,
philosophical
thought
for Deleuze "is creation,
(Deleuze
Guattari
and
actualising,
of virtual
philosophy
that
not will
to truth"
1991/94 55/54). It is the invention,
potentialities
is sought
and
from the texts of science and
by a Schizogenealogy,
a positively
constructive task, a rebuilding from the ground up, as Marx, Nietzsche,
Deleuze
and
all suggest.
The approach that I have adopted here, and the readings offered, are an
attempt at an original and innovative intervention
into the reading of
our philosophical modernity. The thesis' novelty and radicality then is
triply marked. First by the attempts to produce materialist readings of
Bergson, Spinoza, Bruno, and to a lesser degree, of Schelling which
would
vitiate
determinism
the charges of vitalism,
idealism,
mysticism,
and
in
However,
their
which prevail
reception.
such readings
for
the sake of hermeneutic
are not carried out
superiority,
nor to
ascertain the truth of these texts, nor finally are they arbitrary,
rather
these readings
seek potentialities
but
that can be actualised,
be
build
in
that
to
the
assembled
a
elements
can
war machine active
terrain of philosophy. This is not done with etymological investigation,
syntactical
boldness,
grammatical
invention,
or typographical
Guattari's
Deleuze
(I
techniques
rejection
of
such
and
noted
cleverness
in the first chapter, see 1980/87 33/22), but rather by seeking those
moments
where a philosophical
perhaps most significantly,
references
to Bruno
Towards a Schizogenealogy
opposition
Second,
emerges.
and
I have, by locating the few, very brief
in Deleuze's
work,
been able to: shift
the
194
framework in which the latter is seen;
demonstrate
the crucial role
and
that Bruno
plays in the organisation
materialism.
The discovery of Bruno, the revelation of clear Brunian
heretical
of
of the tradition
influences upon key figures in Deleuze's genealogy (Spinoza, Leibniz,
Nietzsche, Schelling, arguably Marx, and indirectly
the latter's
Bergson through
for, Plotinus),
close study of, and admiration
is doubly
leads
introduction
this
to the third major claim. It is argued
critical, and
that a Schizogenealogy severely contests the dominant construction of
in terms of a generalised acceptance of, and reverence for,
modernity
the projected founding break made by Kant's self-declared `Copernican'
(indeed, the very word `revolution' is historically
revolution
bound up
displacing,
limiting
Copernicus).
The
the radicality of
result of
and
with
Copernicanism,
Kantianism,
thereby
and
tradition
powerful
of ontological
for
the rescue of a
allows
materialism
"wrest
it
tradition
to
obfuscation,
enables us
from
deliberate
from
away
a conformism"
(Benjamin 1973 Thesis VI) that has very nearly convinced everyone of
its power. The retrieval of the conceptual innovations of this tradition,
and their mobilisation
hitherto
for an explosion in the
opens the possibility
closed continuum
history,
of contemporary
"it gives that
configuration
"blast
the
to
of
out
a specific era
a shock" allowing us
homogeneous
history"
course of
(Benjamin
1973 Thesis XVII).
is
eyes,
stratigraphic
"a
figures
in
the
retrieved
time
which
coexistence"
of
grandiose
and
Philosophy,
through
seen
Schizoanalytic
by
State
thought,
them
to
image
from
our
all
are
the
given
rescued
brighter
light
is
dead
"like
luminous
whose
stars
points
contemporaries,
59/59).
Guattari
1991/94
than ever" (Deleuze and
Towards a Schizogenealogy
195
It must also be insisted, and I have done so
often, that contrary to `good
sense' and to doxa, philosophy
is the site of war; it is not a polite
exchange of opinions, the "Western democratic, popular conception of
[...
] providing pleasant or aggressive dinner conversations",
philosophy
has
a conception which
never "produced a single concept" (Deleuze and
Guattari
1991/94 138/144,12/6).
Philosophy as it is understood here,
identity
the
with
of ontology and politics, is the privileged site of political
highest
the
conflict, at which
stakes are raised. Recall that, as we saw
in the chapter
Bruno,
on
the philosopher
"puts their
work
and
lives
is
their
that
this
in
the
sometimes
at risk", and
most
seen
sharply
burning
immanence,
"the
issue of all philosophy because it
question of
takes on all the dangers that philosophy
must confront,
all the
condemnations, persecutions and repudiations that it undergoes [... I the
immanence
is not abstract or merely theoretical. It is not
problem of
immediately
dangerous,
but
is
It
immanence
it
is.
engulfs
clear why
so
Guattari
(Deleuze
1991/94
47/45).
and
and
gods"
sages
The philosophy
Schizogenealogy
in
a
explored
is not a discipline
immanent
active,
is
it
from
the
militantly
world,
abstracted
to the
discussed
in
brain
the
identity
in
the
world
so
eloquently
of
and
world,
the
of
second
two books
Schizogenealogy
singularities
thought
on cinema.
heretical
of
Here,
materialism,
in formulating
I have sought
a
those
doxa,
break
with
where a
where philosophy actualises a
immanence
wrests a materialism
of
by
it
metaphysics.
upon
emplaced materialism
I have tried to show that a pragmatically
always actualises philosophical
cacoethes, an uncontrollable
Towards a Schizogenealogy
from the image forced
revolt, it is a
harmful.
Deleuze
for
asks,
something
urge
196
for whom is philosophy harmful? He claims too, that it is not clear why
immanence
is so dangerous. I have tried to shed some light on the
diagram
dangers
immanence,
in
to
to
this
the
the
second,
of
put
or
terms of the first question, to show that the harm, the damage, that
immanence can do, is to the thought of the State, to the "tradition that
justifies Power and exalts the State" (Negri 1996b 61), to the powers of
mystification,
the
to
transcendent.
and
Towards a Schizogenealogy
198
I have chosen to include this piece for a number of reasons,
reasons
identical to those which drew me to translate it in the first place. In this
lecture, I see Bataille doing something both akin to, and quite different
from, what I am trying to achieve on one level. That is his attempt to
treat, in a direct and unmediated fashion, metaphysical and ontological
first
foremost
As
is suggested in the
questions as
and
political ones.
first
footnote
aftermath
to the piece, this talk
Holocaust,
the
of
concentration
in
immediate
the
was given
"diabolical
the
of
organisation
of the
destruction
(Deleuze
237/207),
1985/89
the
of
of
camps"
Europe. Given in a city barely free from Nazi occupation it represents
one of the earliest
to discuss philosophically
attempts
that most
discuss
"the
death,
the
to
of
world
of
mechanised
momentous eruption
concentration
territories
"operates
camp" which
by
numeration
as
lineages
by
as much
and
[and in which] The question is not one of
Guattari
486/390).
1980/87
(Deleuze
but
bad
and
of specificity"
good or
Furthermore,
it is a particularly
the
achievement of
of
example
virulent
demonstration
that
the
"great
the
post-war philosophers and writers",
"thought
has something
to do with Auschwitz"
(Deleuze 1985/89
history.
In
life
this
immanent
is
to
piece
thought
239/209), and that
and
Bataille
how
internal
"the
shows
the
external
and
of
memory
sheets
layers of reality will be mixed up" (loc. cit. ). It is intriguing
then, that in
French
in
Holocaust
debates
the
philosophy
the
about
extensive
all of
Bataille
in
initiates
it
that
that this piece and the series of arguments
lies
its
in
I
for
this,
A
suggest,
figure.
would
reason
principal
never
its
immanence,
the
concomitant
and
fearless approach to
question of
dominant
traditions
the
of
theological
of
nature
the
critique of
issue
the
to
this
then,
at
very
raised
an
In
returns
a sense
philosophy.
Bataille-
Sadism'
Platonism
in
and
`Evil
199
start of this thesis. For Bataille
focuses questions about death and
breaking
the
matter as
point at which a counter-tradition
singularises,
it takes the eruption of immanence as the starting point of philosophy,
and treats the event of nihilism,
the conflagration
of transcendent
but
`deaths
`ends
of,
values, not as a site of mourning of so many
of and
beginning
the
as
heretical
in
philosophy
of philosophy, of an always
immanence.
Bataille-
Sadism'
Platonism
in
and
`Evil
200
We can interpret the common assumption that
we currently live in a
deep
disorder
in several ways. ' We have forgotten, in
state of
moral
particular, that those contemporary ethics, upon which behavior and
judgements are founded, are based upon very
dualisms
in the
ancient
realm of principles.
It was once thought,
and perhaps it still is, that the world sets two
principles against each other: the principles of matter on the one hand
and of spirit on the other. It is not generally conceded that matter is
held to be evil and spirit, good. It is, I think, nevertheless, the general
tendency of all religions -- the major religions at least
hold
to
matter
-to be evil, and spirit, good.'
I don't want to start out from quite such a crude schema however.
In spite of being unable to accurately
attribute
this more precise
to Plato, even though it has subsequently
formula
taken on more
following
fairly
to
the
proposition a
solid value:
meaning, one can give
the good would not be spirit, it would not be the idea, it would not be
be
be
but
it
the
the
government of reason; and evil would
reason,
would
fact that reason is governed by matter, if you like, and with regards to
behavior, by the passions. According to this Platonic conception, evil is
instantiated
dominated
becomes
by
the
the
reason
when
moment
at
'
passions.
diametrical
in
I think that one can establish an absolutely
and a sense
inevitable
Bataille-
Platonic
between
to
this
notion
and
a
principle
opposition
`Evil in Platonism and. Sadism'
201
Sade,
doesn't
he
directly,
though
it
which
even
express
gave a gripping
form, when, in Philosophy
in the Bedroom, he depicted the death
penalty as the most indefensible
his
he
had,
in
though
act, even
all
depicted
the murder of others as, one can hardly put it
work, only
otherwise, the good.
Nevertheless
he condemned the death penalty as a principle. ' For
Sade, a punishment that implies the unleashing of the passions cannot
be dealt out unemotionally.
It is unacceptable to Sade, to unleash one's
him"
degree
kills
to
that
such a
one
passion on a man
because
simply
because
demands
it.
judge
it
reason
or
a
requests
I think it difficult at best to oppose the two principles which I have just
judgments
in
implicit
Platonism
the
those
to
and
a part of
ascribed
Bedroom.
in
Philosophy
in
formulates
Sade
the
which
We are not at present, overly troubled by ethical questions. In general,
justifiably
and perhaps
by
very crude, very vulgar
we are governed
being
be,
the
hold
to
We
the
the moral,
nice,
judgments.
whole,
on
good,
harming
law,
is
the
living
in
behaving well; and
not
accordance with
it is being
others,
family
a good
duty
doing
one's
man,
in all
fellow
the
citizens"'.
of
one's
esteem
and
earning
circumstances
difficult
it
is
is
It
clearly conceivable, and
contrary,
but ultimately,
to seriously protest to the
be
the
the
posed with
good
question of
can
It
family
that
the
seems
etc.?
man
to
good
of
as
questions
such
regard
do
for
difficult
to
so, and
an extremely simple reason:
to me extremely
Bataille-
`Evil in Platonism and Sadism'
202
that is, if we do good in the current sense, for whatever reason, it is
because there is, in so doing, a good at stake that
follow
we must either
or not, and this good cannot be the action itself, but only that for which
the action is carried out.
In this respect it seems to me that religious perspectives are rich, when
compared to the emptiness of the ideas held by those who live now and
In
the religious
are moral.
perspective, the issues at stake are: the
God.
is,
From this moment on, one can no longer say that it is
that
good,
be
to
pointless
concerned with this or that fact, that it is senseless on
its own but only in relation to other things. At this point one would no
longer be able to say that other things would be nothing: there is no
God.
is
there
nothing,
But you will go along with me when I say that God is dead, and such
that it is difficult to be more dead (d'etrepl us mort). "
What, from here on, is the meaning of the ethics that we follow? The
indefinitely
question of good conduct concerns us
to
regards
an
with
for
to
to
I
come
an
everybody
agreeable state of affairs. am quite willing
be
fact
that an agreeable state of affairs must
agreement around the
he
he
that
tells
but
us
will we still condemn our neighbor when
sought,
be
Will
beyond
he
is
damn
doesn't give a
we
such a state.
going
and that
kind
him
that
doom
the
to
to
moral
that
of abjection
moment
able, at
approbation
brings to bear upon anybody who ceases to behave in
Is
law,
that
in
to
the
good sense?
and even
conformity
conformity with
deaf
is
justified
to
reason
sort of anger which
Bataille-
`Evil, in Platonism and Sadism'
has
to
one
simply when
203
reproach a man for not having acted in conformity with reason? "
This seems to me all the more questionable because it is difficult
to
imagine that reason commands all of men's actions in
a general way.
That man is not reducible to reason, is something that
poses itself
again in relation to the difficulty that I was just discussing. When I say
that it was necessary to propose that acts taken as moral have an end
that transcends them, in the sense that if we are entirely reducible to
reason, it would be impossible for us to carry within ourselves an end
which
transcends
reason, which
be
would always
a principle
of
behaviour, that is, a calculation subordinated to a subsequent end but
is
from
which
one
never given, apart
at the moment at which one
deifies it. But is deified reason exactly reason? This is what I am going
to attempt to examine now.
In principle,
in
idea
theology
the
the
one can encapsulate
entirety of
that reason is deified, because the notion of God is quite precisely
founded upon the principle that reason is divine, and on the principle
that the divine being, the divine essence, is reasonable.
I don't find it particularly
longer
finds
it credible.
helpful to carry on talking about God if one no
There
is evidently
something
in these
discussions that some people are ready to uphold: I don't know if it is
because,
here,
being
trouble
the
after all, when one
of
cautious
worth
has done with the notion of a reasonable God, one is forced to succeed in
turning
God into, I don't know if one can put this in any other way, a
kind of overthrowing of himself, X14
an overthrowing
Bataille-
`Evil in Platonism and. Sadism'
this
to
that
which
of
24
notion is condemned to adhere, to that which it is bound up, particularly
in the experience of mystics.
But everybody knows what a mystic is: it is someone
who refuses to
himself
to any argument which transcends itself in advance. As
confine
it
is
a consequence,
perhaps unnecessary to waste too much time on
their opinions.
But, if we are now able to dissociate ethics from the divine, if to be more
precise, we can dissociate reason from the divine, the deep covenant
upon which
based
decidedly
broken.
is
is
We find
moral outrage
in
ourselves
a situation that is entirely open, entirely new. On the one
hand we surrender ourselves to ill considered judgments, and on the
longer
have
lose
other we no
anything spiritual: we
meaning, the reason
for which we act; we no longer know what the point is when we say that
for
longer
know
is
it
is
the
thing
good.
good
which
one
good, since we no
To find oneself once again in this kind of labyrinthine
unfortunately
is
it
problem,
historically.
What
things
to
take
we
up again
necessary
division
fundamental
is
the
of
origi.nary and
must question, of necessity,
the two principles,
spirit
and matter.
As long as that division
is
is,
there
regardless of what one says, a superiority of spirit
established,
over matter, and spirit acquires every conceivable superiority, namely,
divine,
hand
the
the
the
and
on
other, reason.
one
on
But, this dualist
division is extremely
fragile.
One can see that in
be
divine
the
to
the
the
considered
of
must
notion
as reducible
principle,
Bataille-
`Evil in Platonism and Sadism'
205
Zm=
sacred. Now, it is quite apparent that in its origin the notion of the
sacred cannot in any way be reducible to reason: hence there is a
possible slippage between the two notions. The fact that the sacred is
be
to
transcendent, that it is beyond this world, in excess of
understood
everything, that it is totally other, means as a consequence that it has
some relationship in principle with the world of transcendence taken as
the world of reason. "5
It is perhaps the most fragile part of the edifice upon which the entirety
human
in
thought
the sense that one can say in the simplest,
of
rests,
clearest way that the sacred is precisely the opposite of transcendence,
that in fact the sacred is precisely immanence.
The sacred in both its simplest and its most evolved forms is always
be
is
the
to
sacred essentially communication:
rediscovered,
something
it is contagion. ll6 The sacred exists at the moment when something
be,
is
be,
it
stopped unleashed, and which
must
although
which will not
is going to destroy, which
takes the risk of tampering
with,
the
established order.
The sacred, if one wishes to pay it sufficient attention, can be simply
reduced to the unleashing
unleashing
is
it
this
And
it
is
that
evident
of passion.
For
is
Plato
it
is
to
that
reason.
most contrary
of passion
in
be
the
that
governance of reason,
placed under
which must
precisely
if,
the
that
moment,
government
at
any
such a way
begin.
by
this
unleashing, evil would
exceeded
Bataille-
`Evil in Platonism and Sadism'
of reason was
g06
This immanence of the sacred finds itself completely inverted in the
evolution of religions, the reason for this can be quickly seen: the sacred
itself
to the profane, and it is this opposition of the sacred to
opposes
the profane that introduces
a transcendence. If one passes from the
profane to the sacred world, one does so by a leap: there is no other way
to introduce immanence. But at this point it is necessary to ask what
it
is that is signified by the profane world in relation to some
precisely
principles that I am about to discuss. "
It seems to me that the profane world is quite precisely reason. Reason,
it
divine
it
whether one admits
or not, whether one calls
or whether one
ignores
it, is essentially
equivalent
with
the profane,
is
reason
introduces
far
in
it
the
that
essentially
calculation
equalities; and
as
so
is this calculation, in so far as it introduces equality, it is that which is
totally exterior to us, it is totally exterior to us when we are alive, when
foundations
into
the
of our selves.
we plunge
in a different
is
there
a
way,
If one wishes
to present
transcendence
belongs
to
to
the
objects,
exactly
profane which
of
things
from
is
An
us.
completely separated
everyday object
everyday objects.
This table upon which my hand is resting, is as perfectly separated
from me as I could wish; there is no possible contagion between this
table and me, unless one introduces
irrational
some
concept, which
introduces that table over there perhaps: I don't know. "8
But you will concede that it is easy for me, having this table under my
from
follow
the
that
to
that
the
hand, to point out
myself
all
principles
Bataille-
`Evil in Platonism and Sadism'
207
the equality
stability,
of this table with itself, transcend me at the
same time as the table transcends me, that is to say that it is totally
exterior to me, that is to say that this flow of life which I am cannot
"9
it,
enter
and that it presents a resistance that is inherent to it owing
to the fact that it is not me, because it is before me as an equivalence
(egalite) with itself.
If you have followed me in this account of the constitution of the world
if
is
transcendence,
the
the
and
world of
constitution of
of reason, which
it shows you that at a given moment, owing to the fact that the sacred
it
its
the
through
transcendent
profane,
relationship with
appeared as
became possible - given that the sacred had a great value and that
bestowing
to
merge
value
a
great
on
reason
simultaneously one was
-(confondre) them
by an abuse of language,
transform
but which
reality,
which
can perhaps
leave
intact.
it
can perhaps also
It
became possible to merge them by an abuse of language. And at that
divinity
God
had
the
the
of
reason.
and
of
concept
one
point
It became apparent that this unleashing of the passions which could
have been found in the sacred, found itself chained at this point.
in
the
but
is
it
God,
sense
in
is
same
Perhaps there still
passion
passion
Since
is
it
dog
dog
is
chained.
that
when
even
that one can say
a
still
a
In
itself.
this
to
for
God's
release
God is reason, there is no way
passion
sense perhaps mystical
experience will
it
accord with mine, since
to
an
from
way
the sacred one must give
demonstrates that to proceed
from
the
in
one
to
sacred,
proceed
order
since
unleashing,
unlimitable
limits
the
of
boundary,
to
kind
consider
break
cease
of
every
must
Bataille-
`Evil in Platonism and Sadism'
20
reason or of morality
as possible. But, once again, isn't it evident that
at this point God dies? Isn't it obvious that by separating oneself from
the basis upon which his identity with himself was founded, his
nature
it
vanishes,
ceases to be the guarantor of life that we had become used
to thinking it was; insofar as we attach ourselves to this tradition, by
covering over an abyss into which we sink voluntarily,
or precisely into
which the mystic needs to sink because it is necessary for him to
himself
separate
entirely from this world of reason which is for him
precisely just that which he can hate.
In this sense, the mystic, seems to me to open the way to Sade, and it
is not by chance that, in an experiment which has been carried out in
multiple
forms, even sensual passion, the most brutal passion, the
have
been
most vulgar passion,
always
combined.
been through
Having
this experience it is scarcely credible that
hope,
for
instant,
to return to a world, in which
anybody could
even
an
tables stand and in which one is obliged to submit to the tables simply
because we all want them to stand. And for the tables to stand, there
'
be
but
thieves,
must
not only
police!
Once we have acknowledged this disappearance of God, we go beyond.
Once God is unhinged'
from the frame where theology, positive
theology at least, had fixed him, we are longer confronted by that which
I was just calling the sacred, a name which is perhaps purely pedantic,
is
ultimately
and which
ultimately
Bataille-
just the unleashing of the passions, which is
the world that Sade had depicted and which nobody wants
`Evil in Platonism and Sadism'
-a
becauseit is frightening.
It is clear that these ideas don't make life any easier. As soon as one
loses that control once exerted over reason by the sacred, ' human
possibility
disappears as it were, it becomes somewhat blurred. Once
he has absolutely
lost control of reason man ceases to be man: he
be
And
it is natural that an objection should arise, as it is
mad.
would
quite natural that man should continue indefinitely
-
like a dog forever
behave
its
tail
to
to
that
chasing
well,
men
simply
so
other
continue
behave well; so that there exists a world of good conduct which would
indefinitely
be
this
that
to
chase after something
good
would
contrary
behavior.
However, I don't know if fear can be considered by man as the last
obstacle, whatever
this
to
appear
when
expect
one
may
resistances
fundamental
know
is
it
to
that
"fear"
is
mentioned, one may also
word
Inhering
in
his
fear.
least
be
to
if
then
to
overcome
at
afraid,
man,
not
is
fear.
This
him
in
to
to
is
that
response
give
never
urges
a voice
man
continually
doubtful
for
in
often
all sorts of random acts, and
given,
reasons.
he
is
himself
in
that
to
not subject
But man needs to prove
every way
fear,
that
he
beyond
is
in
the
final
even,
that
and
to fear in a
end
sense,
he
fear
by
he
is
long
he only exists beyond fear, because as
governed
as
is not yet a man.
fear,
the
in
to
very
in
at
But if it is true that
general man cannot give
Bataille-
`Evil in Platonism and Sadism'
2Q
least he indefinitely
postpones that moment when he will have to
himself
his
fear. He indefinitely
the
confront
with
object of
that
moment
bereft
when,
postpones
both
help
the
of
of reason that
God
help
God
that
that reason guaranteed, man finally
guaranteed, and of
of
finds himself confronting his own naked image.
It is necessary to step back, but it is also necessary to leap, and
has
back.
leap
better,
first
in
to
take
to
order
a step
one
perhaps
It seems to me in this regard that Sade's example is one of the most
impressive,
because one cannot say that Sade hadn't leapt! ' And I
think that even if one wants to consider carefully a reality like that
depicted in Sade's work, one must acknowledge that it surpasses us in
One
Hundred
his
in
to
the
and
own world
man able recognise
every way:
Twenty Days does not yet exist. '
There is in this brutality
limit,
the
take
that cannot
cognizance of
leaping
in
before
hesitate
case.
every
one
which
makes
something
be
the
Sade's
precise
Perhaps,
considered as
cruel representations can
definition of the leap that it is necessary to make, in the sense that one
in
Sade
leap
kind
that
represents
is not necessarily bounded by the
of
fantasies.
terrifying
living
the actions of his characters
out their most
the
behavior
follow
these
exactly,
But if it isn't necessary to
characters
in
indicated
is
behavior
by
demonstrated
their
sufficiently
surpassing
depth.
'
by
its
instance
every
If it is unnecessary
Bataille-
that
in
the
way
to set about treating one's neighbor
`Evil in Platonism and Sadism'
211
the characters in One Hundred and Twenty Days do, is it necessary to
liberation
that
grant
moral
marked
that I have just evoked, the distance
by
Sade's
out
cadavers? From a certain point it becomes
impossible
to joke. It is impossible
to joke precisely because the
because
is
the
the unleashing of
unleashing of
passions
at stake, and
the passions is the good, which has always known how to incite men in
the way that we have seen, which has given them licence to behave
with unprecedented
brutality,
whilst
they reduce the good to the
impoverished things that we are familiar with.
The unleashing of the passions is the only good - this is the kernel of
is
from
had
have
I
the
this
to
point when reason no
evening -say
what
longer divine, from the moment at which there is no longer a God. There
is no longer anything which for us can merit the name "sacred, " which
the
"
"good,
than
the
the
passions.
of
unleashing
other
name
merits
What is the meaning of our activities? What does the train of thought
What
the
is
the
following
been
have
of
work
meaning
that we
mean?
which
These
things
do
in
to
eat?
order
we must
always signify
before
like
that
a
beyond
the
places
one
carrot
us,
something placed
have
We
led
if
forward
donkey when one wants it to move
on a rope.
as
for
more
us
but
the
matters
to
nothing
when
point
stop at
no choice
for
us
than that which is free, at the point when nothing matters more
than what exists at that moment.
because
in
this
however,
the
to
argument,
It is possible
see
weakness
have
I
it,
have
I
it,
of
spoken
I
soon
as
and
as
speak of
when
Bataille-
`Evil in Platonism and Sadism'
212
subordinated my life to something that was not immediately
present. I
cannot pretend, even when I raise my voice a little, that I
am
unleashing my passions here. Standing before you, I am not in the least
bit unleashed. I am precisely chained. And
I
when raise my voice, it is
perhaps nothing but a wailing (gemissement), because there is no other
for
find
to
the phrase that corresponds to my will. I am
way
me
amongst you searching, but knowing that as long as I search with you I
be
limited
by
the research that we can do together; and that
will
limitation will remain such that the research
be
but
will
nothing
a
research and in no way will its object appear before us.
In order for this object to appear before us, it would at least be
do
to
necessary
what is unacceptable when we engage in discourse,
because it is discourse that concerns us at the moment: it would be
necessary for me to speak like a poet. I would have to forget that I had
have
I
become
to
to
to
something
say
you.
would
wrapped up with
before
forget
live
but
to
myself
you,
you and
nothing
my madness.
Still, if I were to do it, I would not be able to be sure of success, because
kinds
burden,
itself
is
I
to
poetry
subject
all
of
and think that the
demands which have been made are of a character that shows the
I
weight of which am speaking.
All the work which developedto give poetry back the freedom which it is
losing at every instant, marks the distance that I have said must be
leap
be
but
This
to
leap.
by
when poetry claims
can
poetry,
a
cleared
leap at the moment it evaluates itself, when it sees the leap that must
Bataille-
`Evil in Platonism and Sadism'
213
be made, and when it has not yet destroyed everything, then poetry is
also the powerlessness of poetry.
I'll stop speaking now, but will answer any questions that you might
have.
Bataille-
Sadism'
Platonism
in
and
`Evil
211
J. WAHL: It's obviously very difficult to
respond to such a talk, but
rd
like
to invite someoneto start the discussion.
even so,
I am going to say a few words, but it is very difficult, becausethe
most
formidable objection that I could make to Bataille
be
to say:
would
evidently, you are right! In which case, whatever I would say...
BATAILLE:
I think that I had this objection in mind from beginning to
I
end. think that what I have shown is that it is an objection.
J. WAHL: The second thing, since we cannot talk about that objection,
is this: you said that nothing can count more for you than what is free;
it is not only unchained passion that poses objectives for itself quite
arbitrarily.
But, is this passion? Doesn't it believe its objectives to be reasonable?
The word "reasonable" isn't really the one that we're after. But, the
impassioned man, nevertheless, thinks that he has reason even in his
hard
If
I
it
is
take
to conceive of a
passion.
anger as an example,
very
passion without objective, without content.
Notice that I say this, but on the other hand I'd very much like to be
in
but
difficult
isolate
this
it
is
to
to
very
passion
able
explain myself,
way.
I am coming to the fundamental
been
have
two
oppositions
question:
hand,
immanence
the
the
transcendence
sacred and
on
one
and
set up:
Bataille-
`Evil in Platonism and Sadism'
215
the profane on the other. What is new about this is that you identify
transcendence with the profane, immanence with the sacred. In what
is
It
is
the
transcendent?
in
profane
sense
a sense other than the
This
is
in
You
table
ordinary.
no way me.
said in parenthesis however,
that perhaps it has a very profound relationship with me
BATAILLE:
It is no longer profane.
J. WAHL: Yes, but even when it is no longer profane, it has a certain
I
is
`here
is
to
which
a part of me which
profane,
relationship with me.
but
doesn't
have
it
in
to
to
a sacred me,
a relationship
order
write:
cling
it does have a relationship to a profane me. Yes.
Finally, I detect an echo of Sartre's en-soi and pour-soi. You say. "this
find
to
We
"
I'm
But,
table is this table.
are no more able
not sure.
"this
fiction
to
It
is
in
in
than
the
say
pure
a
ourselves.
world
stability
table is this table. " This table is changing.
BATAILLE:
It is in so far as transcendence is a fiction.
J. WAHL: The immanent
however
to
it
isn't
is the sacred:
necessary
doesn't
imagine
I
a passion which
distinguish between the passions. can
know
there
is
not
to
The
are
whether
have a sacred character.
question
become
to
in
fulfil
sacred.
order
must
some conditions which passion
I
that
That
is
the
posing.
be
am
question
Not all passion could
sacred.
BATAILLE:
Bataille-
It is a very difficult
Sadism'
Platonism
`Evil in
and
dependent
a
upon
one
and
question,
216
profane science, that is, it is necessary to consider
very immediate
things as the foundation of the profane
sciences, as the subject of
sociology.
J. WAHL: I don't even know if that
BATAILLE:
would give us an answer.
It is, indirectly, a way to proceed from
sociology.
J. WAHL: I would like to pin you down
on specifics, since they are not
in
Why
given
your answer.
are certain passions sacred,
BATAILLE:
and others not?
It is always confused because the division between the
sacred and the profane is continually
becoming formal, and when the
defined
is
formally everything gets confused.
sacred
J. WAHL: Would anybody else like to continue this discussion?
ANONYMOUS:
is
irritated
who
I wonder if one can't describe Sade, as a sacred being
by his own damnation;
he
his
and when
seeks
deaths
he
in
finds that an ordinary
isn't
it
tortures
that
characters'
death, the death of a bourgeois in his bed, is a profane death, and that
he tries to make it sacred by surrounding it in torture, plunging these
beings into the fire, or else behaving as some did during the war: we
have plunged entire peoples into the crematorium,
towns with atomic bombs like at Hiroshima
'
Critique.
recent edition of
Bataille-
`Evil in Platonism and Sadism'
have
we
strewn
Bataille
in
a
as
writes
217
What I want to ask then is this: isn't Sade the sacred, irritated by his
becoming profane?
I don't think
BATAILLE:
Sade cared about being either sacred or
In
life
left
if
is
in
there
the notion of the sacred,
profane.
any case,
any
Sade perfectly captured it. The essentials, it seems to me, are given by
Sade in this respect, in that he doesn't allow even for an instant that a
dispassionate interest can intervene in his unleashings. And it is in this
definition
that
the
sense
the profound
Bedroom
is
Philosophy
in
in
the
of evil given
of everything
condemnation
that we have seen the
Germans do. Because it is clear that compared to the executions of the
Terror that Sade contemplated in Philosophy in the Bedroom , Nazi
images,
to
the
the
to
suggestions of
executions responded still more
Sade. But
also, they responded
continually
to the fundamental
from
Terror,
the
Sade
the
to
since
that
of
executions
made
objection
beginning
to end, the unchaining
that
the
raged at
passions
of
was an unchaining
that was under the
And it is because of this that an opposition
be
madecan now
Buchenwald
Auschwitz
or
government of reason.
between,
hand,
the
one
on
traditional
morality
represented
by
hand,
morality
that
stupefying
the
profound,
Platonism, and on
other
that can today take on the greatest meaning, and
127
definitive.
is
that
in
landmark
perhaps
way
a
a
even serve as
Sadeby
offered
ANONYMOUS:
but
to
little
the
extent
what
is
it
Perhaps
subject,
off
a
himself
the
devotes
are
do you think that the civilisations to which man
Bataille-
`Evil in Platonism and Sadism'
218
caricature of the madnesses that he resists?
BATAILLE:
It is very difficult
to reply. I don't know in this sense if
Buchenwald can be considered to be a caricature of One Hundred
and
Twenty Days. The word "caricature" is a little limited perhaps.
THE SAME: rm not thinking of Buchenwald exactly, but of societies, of
civilisations yet to come, as well as of communist society.
BATAILLE:
It is very difficult for me to speak of a society that doesn't
exist.
THE SAME: But nevertheless it is developing!
BATAILLE:
It is developing. Nobody, not even Soviet communists
themselves, would claim that communism exists to any degree.
THE SAME: Potentially, up to a certain point.
J. WAHL: I do not see how your formula can be easily applied.
THE SAME: Nevertheless, since the call to accomplish the communist
to
a certain unchaining
calls
other
society requires
beyond
the
realisation
which can go quite
of the passions
I
that
society; would say
of
is
these
blockage
time
that there comes a
created, when
when a
passions are guillotined.
Bataille-
`Evil in Platonism and Sadism'
219
BATAILLE: It seems quite impossible to me for
a society to exist that
would admit into its breast a multitude of Sades each as free as the
This
time it is not me who makes the objection. I say that it
other.
difficult
that such a society could exist. I would do nothing in any
seems
case to prevent its arrival, and I consider that one would be in breach of
the most profound morality by doing anything that would prevent its
realisation.
ANONYMOUS:
M. Bataille can you explain what you meant when you
dead,
"God
is
is
difficult
it
be
dead?
"
to
said:
and
more
BATAILLE:
This cannot be explained!
J. WAHL: Surely we can discuss the "more dead."
BATAILLE:
It is legitimate,
intervention
is
this
one quite poor.
of a poetic absurdity;
ANONYMOUS:
in
a talk, to sometimes allow the
even
Do you consider Malraues unchaining of action to be a
describing?
that
the
the
you are
passions
caricature of
unchaining of
BATAILLE:
In any case the word "caricature"
being
strikes me as
instance.
in
this
unwarranted
THE SAME: It seems to me that one can draw out as a conclusion the
idea that there is nothing more radical than the unchaining of the
passions.
Bataille-
`Evil in Platonism and Sadism'
220
BATAILLE : In effect.
THE SAME: On the other hand, it seems that through
far
went
enough in intensity
Malraux
action,
losing
himself in a very distinct
when
It
passion.
seems to me that this is superior to what can result (pent
from
the pure passion that you recommend (preconisez); so
aboutir)
long as, according to Malraux, it maintains a means of creation.
BATAILLE:
It is possible that from the perspective of reason, which is
perhaps
the perspective
of communism,
allowing
the intervention
of passion. For at a given time Malraux
Malraux
by
goes wrong
divorce
between
the
announces
reason and passion, and it seems to me,
at the moment, to end in confusion.
THE SAME: I don't want to defend Malraux, but I think that action
have
You
ignored.
term
that
third
opposed
completely
constitutes a
you
is
but
is
to
to
perhaps,
passion
most opposed
reason
passion,
what
action.
I attributed
fact
that
importance
to
the
action,
a certain
is not perfectly
being
of
BATAILLE:
which
reasonable,
which
as a result
lead
to
is
to
anything.
passion,
an action which cannot
subordinated
THE SAME: You would be able to avoid unrestrained
It
is
a
passion.
there
the
are more profound
same, perhaps
question of reason; all
impressions in reason.
Bataille-
`Evil in Platonism and Sadism'
221
BATAILLE:
It is clear to me that history is made up of distortions
similar to the ones that you have made of what I said.
THE SAME: If the unchaining of the passions is the ultimate, is it all
the same historically if one doesn't follow it?
BATAILLE:
It is quite difficult
to speak on this point, because in the
if
is
end, passion
really unleashed to such a point that it is possible to
have spoken about One Hundred
situated
Twenty
Days,
and
well, we are
beyond
far
so
such a conversation
that we cannot free
ourselves of evocations that are really out of place, as soon as one
for
in
is
speaks
example
a meeting; already when one
alone with
is
it
not so easy.
oneself,
THE SAME: Finally
Sade's
in
that
work
are powerful
actions occur
lacking
in
bloody
I
think
a certain
not
enough, which are
enough, even
grandeur;
he
in
that
is
it
this
purely positive sense,
precisely
and
unleashes passion.
BATAILLE:
It seems to me that to the extent to which they have this
least
be,
like
they
to
they
they
at
would
are not exactly what
grandeur,
haven't sought that grandeur
for its own sake, and that they are,
however, subordinated to that grandeur, to the government of reason.
Wasn't this the same minimum
by
Hitler.
possessed
Bataille-
`Evil in Platonism and Sadism'
that
the
was
government of reason
of
222
All action bears a profound weakness,
have
two options: either,
and you
it claims to carry out an act of reason,
and in this case we no longer
speak of passion; or it is a pretence destined to liberate passion, and in
this case passion finds itself morally under the government
of reason to
it
foreign.
is
And this is the deep meaning of everything that I
which
have said this evening, and it is what makes
impossible
to
seem
-action
has
me, since one
not separated it entirely from passion. And perhaps
for that reason, action is, like everything
human,
immediately
else
before
the category of the impossible.
placed
THE SAME: On the subject of reason, the rather shabby appearances
have
it
which you
given
are, all the same, those that are transcended in
the work of someone like Kant, and precisely in the moral sphere. And
here:
Kantian
by
by
kind
its
the
one can see something
reason,
rigor,
of
in
sacred
which
it reflects
itself,
God. As a
ends up postulating
God
does
the
to
consequence,
passage of
reason
not prevent a return to
God by reason itself, reason itself is almost irrational
and surpasses
itself in its assumptions.
BATAILLE:
I would like to learn from that rather than reply. '
J. WAHL:
What
is
that,
say,
one can
work,
bore
"
it
"logos,
he
the
some
word
used
when
Heraclitus'
characteristics
in
when reason appeared
that one could call profoundly irrational.
The two are
birth,
is
"
its
"logos,
more contradictory.
at
more united, and
is
in
have
reason
a particular epoch.
criticised
you
Bataille-
`Evil in Platonism and Sadism'
So, what
223
BATAILLE:
Yes. There is, in the fact of the birth
relationships
with transcendence,
difficult
in
its
reason,
of
infinitely
connections which are
to sever. It is perhaps at the heart of one of the most difficult
philosophical
questions,
historically,
resolved
and especially
be
because
it
can only
so
do
knowledge
I
that
this
not
and
presupposes
possess.
J. WAHL: If nobody has anything else to say we can end the meeting.
Bataille-
`Evil in Platonism and Sadism'
224,
NOTES TO INTRODUCTION
1
All references in this thesis are given in the text by author,
date
publication
of the edition used, and page number. The only exceptions being references to
collected works eg. Bataille's, where the date is dropped in favour of volume and
page number; or else in the case of authors, to whose work there is a standard
scholarly method of reference that eschews page numbers eg. most of Nietzsche's
works are referred to by section number, and Spinoza's Ethics, to which reference is
by
Part, Proposition, Scholia etc, according to Edwin Curley's scheme, and his
made
letters that are referred to by number. Finally documents from the WWW are, of
necessity, unpaginated.
Where two numbers are given in a reference they refer to the French
followed by the standard English translation. In some instances, I have only given
one reference, this is either where only one or the other version was available to me,
or else in cases where I have made my own translations, owing either to
unavailability,
nonexistence, or more rarely to the inadequacy of the extant
have
I
for
indicated
As
translation,
this.
standard
usually
other works, where the
be
French
is
it
to
only reference given
a
edition,
can
assumed that the translation is
largely
is
to
the
the
this
especially
and scandalously
case with regards
my own,
Stengers.
Simondon,
Chätelet,
Alliez,
and
untranslated work of such authors as
Fortunately for Anglophone readers, major works by the latter two are currently in
translation and will be available soon. Hopefully, the availability of such work will
for
that
thinking
the
the
possibilities
exploration
of
encourage
more widespread
these writers provoke, and will facilitate a leap beyond the current frozen image of
the
is
to
This
thesis
spread,
contribution
as
small
a
offered
continental philosophy.
in the Anglophone world, of the renewed materialism embodied in these writers.
2
To the best of my knowledge Bruno has never been discussed in relation to
Deleuze, at least not in print, whilst Schelling crops up only very rarely.
NOTES TO CHAPTER I
(New
Line
On
in
the
the
3
In the translation of this piece published
volume
desir'
de
is rendered as
`agencement
York: Semiotext(e), 1983), the phrase
`arrangement', I have replaced this with the more customary, and more
Guattari
Deleuze
Anti-Oedipus
In
`assemblage'.
and
term
machinically precise
in
because
the
however,
manner
of
frequently used the term `desiring-machine',
by
term
this
interpretation
replaced
itself
was
leaves
to
it
a
subjective
open
which
`assemblage' in A Thousand Plateaus.
References
225
4
Note that
diagram,
a
when presented in this way, is an immanent
counterpart of a Kantian schema: the latter imposes a logical order from the
outside, the former follows forces immanent to that which is studied.
5
Deleuze, and Deleuze and Guattari's,
work contains numerous critiques of
the work of their contemporaries, most of them-- like the two that
have
we
already
pointed to in this chapter are by allusionthat
others, are direct, principally
directed at Lacan in Anti-Oedipus. Most
of the allusory ones are, I would claim,
directed at Derrida, take for instance that to be found in `Introduction: Rhizome'.
"To attain the multiple, one must have a method that
effectively constructs it; no
typographical
lexical
blending
cleverness, no
agility, no
or creation of words, no
syntactical boldness, can substitute for it" (Deleuze and Guattari 1980/87 33/22).
All of these could be said to appear to varying degrees in Derrida's
his
Glas
work,
(1974) being a case in point, displaying typographical cleverness, and the blending
and creation of words, in abundance.
6
This gives us an opportunity
to point out one of the major breaches between
Deleuze and Guattari's critique of `modernist' texts and those deriving from Derrida
and Lacan. I shall use as an example, the self-confessed Lacanian-Hegelian, Slavoj
Zizek's encapsulation of the Lacanian reading of the structure of Freudianism.
Zizek recounts a story about Freud taking a walk in a subterranean cave system,
in the depths of which he encounters "another visitor to the caves, Dr Karl Lueger,
Mayor of Vienna [... ] a notorious anti-Semite", he tells us, portentously, that we
be
fact
German,
`Lueger'
"immediately
in
to
the
that
the
must
attentive
name
associates with Lüge, a lie". The meaning of this story, according to Zizek is that it
goes against
penetrating
New Age approach according to which, upon
the "obscurantist
the ultimate depth of our personality, we discover there our true Self, to
Freud
is
implicit
in
instead
the
that
shows,
whom we must open ourselves", and
kernel
is
discover
deepest
"what
in
the
that
a
of our personality
we
argument
fundamental, constitutive, primordial lie, the proton pseudos". For Zizek, and he
DeleuzoGuattarian,
Foucauldian,
Lacan,
the
this
and also
argues
contraindicates
begins
development
line
the
that
in
the
with
of
of psychoanalysis
Christian practice of confession" (Zizek 1996 1). The problem with Zizek's argument
the
is that, from our perspective, it is not what is discovered by psychoanalysislater
the
lieit
that
of
truth
and
confession,
of
a
part
as
constitutes
or
primordial
"insertion
find
in
is
to
but
that
there
State,
the very presumption
anything
apparatus of the
the first place. Hence it is the structure of psychoanalysis that we object to, its
in
discovered
be
the
to
is
there
that
an originary plenitude/absence
presumption
first place- not what it finds there. It is therefore in its claim to holding the key to
truth.
References
226
For a magnificent account of Millenialist movements throughout history see
Norman Cohn's The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and
Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages.
8
Alison Coudert has argued that an early version of this thesis entered the
philosophical tradition with which we are concerned via the "practicing alchemist
l
Kabbalist"
[...
Lurianic
(Coudert
Helmont's
Francis
Mercury
1995
95)
and
van
influence on Leibniz. Coudert's book provides incontrovertible evidence that Leibniz
by
Helmont,
influenced
van
profoundly
was
and over a considerable period of time,
demonstrates
from
key
derived
Leibnizian
ideas
Helmont
that
she
were
via van
Kabbalist and alchemical ideas, suggesting for example that his monadology draws
Neoplatonic
from
`seeds'
`flower'
the
of substances,
and
on alchemical notions about
hand
here,
On
Kabbalist
the
theories
she argues that
point at
of emanation.
and
"Van Helmont rejected the common view of time as a continuum of infinite
indivisible moments or points of duration [... ] in his view time was not an absolute
Helmont
Van
individual.
It
intrinsic
to
consequently
each
concept. was relative and
biologists"
later
for
idea
`biological
time'
the
which proved so useful
of
arrived at
(Coudert 1995 97), including, as we shall see in chapter three, Jakob von Uexküll.
Pierre Zaoui: "Deleuze says in the course of an interview regarding his work
in the history of philosophy that `Everything leads towards the great-identity
de
travail
d'une
interview,
ä
("Deleuze
en
son
Nietzsche-Spinoza'"
propos
au cours
histoire de la philosophie: `Et tout tendait vers la grande identite NietzscheSpinozae), Zaoui 1995 65. Zaoui is quoting Deleuze 1988c.
9
`From
his
in
by
Landsberg
Peter
paper
See the survey of such positions
10
Entropy to God?'.
References
227
11
Smolin is one of those physical scientists (at the time
12
Two thorough
of publication of his
book, The Life of the Cosmos, he was Professor
of Physics at the Center for
Gravitational Physics and Geometry at the Pennsylvania State University)
who
frequent
make
appearance in this thesis and whose very existence provides
difficulties
for the work of Alan Sokal and Jean Briqmont
empirical
who recently
attracted much media attention for their attacks upon the use made by a series of
French philosophers of examples, concepts, and arguments from the
physical
sciences, usually in the defence of some form of social constructivism. Smolin's work
is interesting for a host of reasons, but we need only mention here the proximity
of
his overall view of cosmology to the philosophical positions espoused in this thesis,
his
and
omnipresent enthusiasm for, and granting of, a prominent place to, the
style of philosophy advocated here. Of interest principally are, his thorough critique
background
Platonic
the
of
of most orthodox scientific thought, leading him to an
ontological and epistemological position close to the Nietzschean perspectivism that
we will encounter in several places below; and for his key statement of relationality
"the world is a vast interconnected system of relations, in which even the properties
of a single elementary particle or the identity of a point in space requires and
reflects the whole rest [sic] of the universe" (Smolin 1997 221). This by no means
exhausts the points of convergence.
Nietzsche's
of
to Boscovich are Whitlock
studies
relation
(1996), and Stack (1983) chapter nine. Whitlock's two excellent articles assess and
by
Nietzsche's not inconsiderable understanding of the
the
explicate
role played
his
focus
his
day
His
is
on the
physics of
central philosophical concepts.
upon
influence of the Dalmatian physicist Roger Joseph Boscovich on Nietzsche (critically
for the interpretation
of Nietzsche in this thesis, Whitlock also emphasises the
Spinozist elements of the eternal return, for which see also Yovel's fine study,
derived
from
Nietzsche
Boscovich,
is
that
to
show
principal point
in
this
thesis
that
intensive
espoused
view of matter, pace
a radically relational or
Coudert,
Alison
Interestingly,
Guattari.
Deleuze
to
whose
and
and attributed
1988). Whitlock's
had
Leibniz
have
that
Leibniz
already encountered, argues
we
work on
In
forces.
"complex
be
treated
in
to
of
as a
which matter was
arrived at a position
this he was anticipating
modern field theory, which treats material particles as
by
founder
[...
]
its
duly
forcefields
recognised
an anticipation
of
concentrated
fascinating
Ruggiero Giuseppe Boscovich" (Coudert 1995 97).
References
28
is
On
these
`Thermodynamic
and related
questions
see L. Ropolyi's
excellent
essay
Elements
in World
ViewsWorld View Elements
in
Thermodynamics'
in Thermodynamics:
History
Philosophy.
and
demonstrates
that
Facts, Trends,
Debates, pp 424-38.
Ropolyi convincingly
even the most
fundamental
intensive
concepts eg. entropy, equilibrium,
extensive
work,
and
he
disagreement,
based
to
total
this
qualities,
are subject
almost
upon
"Thermodynamics
is a science in crisis and a
that
programmatically
concludes
Martin
"
science of crisis.
Barrett
Elliott
and
Sober for example have suggested that
"entropy is not simply a technical system applying to closed gas chambers, but has
larger
To
order".
reinforce this point
meaning
a
of
as measure
organisation and
a
debate
biology
import,
interpretation
in
the
the
might
concerning
also
survey
one
Wiley,
law,
Brooks
E.
O.
inter
Daniel
R.
the
and
see
second
alia
and structure of
Evolution as Entropy: Toward a Unified Theory of Biology (Chicago and London: The
University
Smith,
D.
David
Depew,
Weber,
J.
James
H.
Press,
Bruce
Chicago
1988),
and
of
Entropy,
Physical
Perspectives
Evolution:
New
and
on
and
MA and London: The MIT Press, 1988). In
(Cambridge,
from
tropes
the
of
use
widespread
one can examine
Information,
Biological Evolution
to this,
addition
thermodynamics
across a wide range of social commentators, writers and artists
from Henry Adams, and Spengler, to Freud, to the novelist Thomas Pynchon (in
`Entropy'),
his
Rainbow,
Gravity's
his
in
short
story
and
magnum opus
particular
Matta-Clark.
Gordon
in
the
the
artist
work of
and
in
dealt
hylomorphism
is
the
to
with
14
Simondon's contribution
critique of
here
the
that
to
It
detail
of
in
account
two.
note
suffice
will
chapter
greater
the
its
the
of
concepts
use of
singularity currently under consideration and
in
Bear
from
Simondon.
drawn
is
limit,
and topological surface explicitly
membrane,
French
first
and
is
cybernetics,
the
of
Simondon
philosophers
that
of
one
mind also
thermodynamics,
first
to
modern
the
on
write philosophically
correspondingly one of
these two being intimately entwined.
The
in
Kauffman's
A.
work
This line of thinking is elaborated
15
Oxford
(Oxford:
Evolution
in
Selection
Origins of Order: Self-organisation
and
University Press, 1993).
in Stuart
16
See
1962).
Press,
(Academic
Theory
Leon Brillouin, Science and Information
Columbia
York:
(New
System
Living
Lila Gatlin, Information Theory and the
also
Press, 1972).
References
229
"
The relationship between Deleuze and Guattari and Prigogine and Stengers
has been adequately mapped by James Flint in his `Mapping the Plane of
Consistency', and I shall not attempt to repeat it here. Note though that their
both
friendship
relationship was one of
personal
and intellectual solidarity, and
that the original French version of this book contains not inconsiderable references
to Deleuze and to Michel Serres (the references to the latter alone have been carried
differs
English
from
French,
into
translation
to the
the
the
considerably
which
over
detriment of a solely Anglophone readership). In a recent interview about his work,
including its relations with that of Deleuze, Prigogine has said that he considers
the term `repetition' to be coextensive with the time-reversible frame (that of
dynamics), while `difference' is coextensive with the time-irreversible
(that of thermodynamics, and complexity).
References
perspective
230
18
As Prigogine
informs
us (Prigogine and Stengers 1984 153-6, Prigogine
1997 66-7) this result was only proved by the Belouzov-Zhabotinsky
reaction in the
early 1960 s. This experiment,
a complex demonstration
of regular chemical
oscillation, showed that when matter is pushed to the limits of it stability it begins
to self-organise into new and novel forms. It is the empirical basis for Nietzsche's
"eternally
eternally flooding back, with tremendous years of
recurrence, with an ebb and a flood of its forms; out of the simplest forms striving
toward the most complex, out of the stillest, most rigid, coldest forms toward the
hottest, most turbulent,
(Nietzsche 1968 § 1067). This
most self-contradictory"
world
changing,
experiment, and related research programmes on different strata give rise to a
concept that I would call, `creative instability'. Another, seemingly unrelated, theory
is that of punctuated equilibrium,
developed by Niles Eldridge and Stephen Jay
Gould, as a challenge to the gradualism implicit in orthodox Darwinian evolution.
The theory in brief suggests that the evolutionary
history of most species is
by
long
by
characterised
periods of stability, punctuated
calamitous changes. Such
lead
instabilities
to one or several species undergoing rapid
events or
can
transformation or even extinction, and then the onset of a long period of stability or
dinosaurs
The
is
the
the
this,
extinction of
classic example of
of course,
equilibrium.
into
Research
issues
impact
these
the
object.
of an extraterrestrial
as a result of
in
(Huggett
1997)
has led to a revitalisation
the
the
tradition
of catastrophism
of
Darwinian
"the
to
gradualism" such
challenge
greatest
earth sciences, and poses
that
"catastrophe
replaces
the linear
temporal
with
creep of microevolution
(Davis 1996 75). As such, this is a science that
bursts
of macroevolution"
nonlinear
fully opens the Earth to what Deleuze calls the `forces from the outside' (we return
directly
This
to
detail
in
in
forces
two).
relate
to these
research seems
chapter
more
to at least two distinct
DeleuzoGuattarian
themes, and illustrates
the very serious
i)
their
to
of
critique
their
that
of
science:
philosophy
orthodox
poses
work
challenge
Darwinian linear evolution and its replacement with creative involution; ii) their
development of concepts of external metastable milieus and singularity as concepts
of individuation.
References
231
19
The elements of a thermodynamic
or energetic economics are contained in
sources as diverse as Rosa Luxemburg, Georges Bataille's Accursed Share,
and two
magnificent and obscure studies: Nicolas Georgescu-Roegen's The Entropy Law
and
the Economic Process and Alf Hornborg's `Machine Fetishism, Value,
and the Image
of Unlimited Good: Towards a Thermodynamics of Imperialism'. Like Deleuze
and
Guattari's, Georgescu-Roegen's work rests
on a thorough critique, and definitive
distinction
rejection,
of the nature-culture
and its replacement
with what
DeleuzeGuattari
call the machinic phylum, a commitment to understanding
the
world as a single plane of consistency, a single matter, organised in multiplicitous
ways. This is a commitment to a complete overcoming of anthropocentrism by the
adoption of, a biocentrism by Georgescu-Roegen and Vernadsky, DeleuzeGuattari's
geocentrism, or Bataille's general economy (a concept, incidentally, that Bataille
may have derived from Vernadsky's use of it in The Biosphere), concerned with the
study of "unformed matter" which is "not dead, brute, homogeneous matter, but a
bearing
matter-movement
singularities
or haecceities,
qualities,
and even
operations" (Deleuze and Guattari 1980/87 638/512). Georgescu-Roegen describes
his work as an attempt to show that thermodynamics
"is the foundation of a
physics of economic value [... I the Entropy Law is by its very nature the most
economic of all the physical laws" (Georgescu-Roegen 1995 83), his work represents
flows
body
the
the
an empirical
study of
matter
of
and energy over
of the
"immanent unity of the earth" (Deleuze and Guattari 1980/87 171/146), and as
such it is the realisation of Bataille's project. Whilst Georgescu-Roegen, perhaps not
doesn't
Bataille,
both
have
to
surprisingly,
refer
something very important in
both
heterodox
inspired
in
by
their
the work of
common:
were
economic endeavours
Vladimir
Vernadsky,
a figure whose work we will return to at several points
throughout this thesis. Jacques Grinevald, who has done more to publicise this
his
in
introduction
tradition
than
to a
scandalously overlooked
anyone else, writes
being
from
French
Georgescu-Roegen's
that,
apart
edition of
a
recent
writing
dissident"
he
"one
heterodox
was
of the
and
economist, a scientific
ideahave
development
the
taken
to
theoreticians
seriously
of economic
rare
de
Chardin,
by
Teilhard
Vernadsky,
Lotka,
inter-war
in
the
and
sustained
years
"nonconformist
has
become
that with industrial
a veritable
civilisation,
man
in
living
forces
in
the
the
the
work
at
world
most powerful
geological agent, one of
Georgescu-Roegen
in
Grinevald
(Jacques
Earth"
face
the
the
transformation
of
of
Edouard
le Roy-
As well as advocating Georgescu-Roegen's work, which he names a
`bioeconomics', Grinevald has also written the introduction to the new edition of the
founding work in this area, Vernadsky's The Biosphere.
1995 1,13).
References
232
20
To locate
in Freud is not of course a move unique to
energetics
DeleuzeGuattari,
it is to be found in the other works of libidinal
economics,
Lyotard's Libidinal Economy and Baudrillard's
principally
attempts in Symbolic
Exchange and Death. These latter texts were exhumations of the
Siegfried
work of
Bernfeld, who had made a study of this element of Freud's work in his `Freud's
Earliest
Theories and the School of Helmholtz'. In the fifties Lacan applied himself
Freudian
to excavating
energetics, the pertinent
papers are `The Symbolic
Universe', `Materialist
Definitions
of the Unconscious', `Homeostasis and Insistence',
`Freud, Hegel and the Machine', `The Circuit'. All are collected in Seminar II. " The Ego
in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, 1954-5. As Freudianism
itself into a statist therapeutic apparatus all mention of energetics in
death
drive
became strictly verboten. See also
in particular
the
general and
Guattari's comments in `Les energetiques sßmiotiques' the second chapter of his
Cartographies schizoanalytiques (Guattari 1989). Guattari comments that with the
territorialised
to Id-Ego-Superego
subordination of the triad Unconscious-Subconscious-Conscious
(the shift from dynamic to the topographic), Freudianism shifted its ground from an
he
initially
Lacan's
In
that
to
notes
anthropomorphic
case
energetic
an
model.
but
be
"simple
to
taken
shifts
system of energetic notation",
a
was
declaring "la thermo-dynamique
ä n'etre elle-meme qu'un jeu de signifiant".
libido
Rosenberg
is
1993.
in
this
respect
useful secondary study
References
to
A
233
21
One of the examples that Stengers
gives to illustrate her sense of the term
`invention' is particularly relevant here, it is that
of the birth of thermodynamics in
Carnot's work on the heat cycle. She writes that the immediate backdrop
to the
Carnot cycle is lodged in three distinct `lineages-disciplines'
or assemblages, the
latter defined by her as a complex of "object/representation/practice"
(Stengers
1997c 205): that of theoretical studies of the outputs
of engines and of heat, and of
empirical technical studies on the outputs of steam engines. From this background
she writes: "Carrot invents a relationship that was not contained in any of these
three lineages-disciplines
and creates a new theoretical object, unexpected by any of
them; unexpected for mechanics since one passes from the usual conversions
between kinetic and potential energy to quite different energetic
conversions, which
imply a change in the state of matter; unexpected for the specialists of heat
since
its specific dimension of dissipation is systematically eliminated in the cycle that is
represented as subjected to laws analogous to the reversible laws of dynamics;
unexpected for the engineers who find themselves offered, as a model, an engine
(Stengers 1997c 207). Using this schema we could
zero productivity"
understand Marx's study of "the capitalist mode of production, and the relations of
forms
production and
of intercourse that correspond to it" as the invention of such
an object of study with its concerted attempt to comprehend "the economic law of
with
Stengers we could
of modern society" (Marx 1976 90-2). Following
understand what Lenin calls the "three main ideological currents of the nineteenth
motion
century"
"classical
as the relevant
German
lineages-disciplines
that precursed Marx's work, that is
English political economy, and French
philosophy, classical
be
far
(Lenin
An
in
I
7).
1967
this
way
would
more
socialism"
analysis produced
little
in
Lenin's
is
than
than
more
an
exercise
own
which
rigorously materialist
history. The ideological currents of Lenin's analysis would become
intellectual
interlocked
machinically
assemblages of political
dynamics, technical study and research.
References
international
power,
political
234
NOTES TO CHAPTER II
22
Simondon's primary work and the one
upon which we shall draw most is
L'individu et sa genesephysico-biologique. This is
a reprint of the 1964 edition and
includes some important additions: an extra
chapter and some supplements. The
only text by Simondon yet published in English translation is the introduction to
this latter work under the title `The Genesis of the Individual'. It
was also
reprinted as the first part of the introduction to Simondon's L'individuation
Psychique et Collective, under the title `Position du probleme de l'ontogenese', the
second part is `Concepts directeurs pour une recherche de solution: Forme,
Information, Potentiels et Metastabilite'. These two books together
comprise a
partial reprint of Simondon's Doctoral thesis `L'Individuation it la Lumiere des
Notions de Forme et d'Information'. The English translation of L'individu
et sa
genesephysico-biologique is due to be published by Zone Books in 2000; I have also
heard of plans to publish a translation of L'individuation Psychique et Collective.
23
As a historical
introducing cybernetic
it is worth noting that Simondon was critical in
research into France and gave a major paper at the first
point
French conference to be organised for the benefit, and in the presence, of Norbert
Wiener. The proceedings of this significant event are published as Le concept de
l'information
dans la science contemporaine, ed. by Louis Couf ignal (1965).
24
In the most extensive discussion of Butler in Anti-Oedipus (338/284) he is
by
"shattering
the
credited with
vitalist argument
calling in question the specific or
decisively,
the
the
argument
even
more
personal unity of
organism, and
mechanist
by calling in question the structural unity of the machine". In addition to which,
Butler encounters the crucial concept of surplus value of code, in which "a part of a
fragment
its
of another machine, and
own code a code
machine captures within
thus owes its reproduction
to a part of another machine".
See Stengers Cosmopolitiques 6: La vie et l'artifice: visages de l'emergence, p.
123 n. 15, and Gilles Chätelet `Du Chaos et de 1'Auto-Organisation
comme NeoConservatisme Festif. An expanded version of this paper has been printed in
Chätelet's recent book Vivre et penser comme des pores: de l'incitation a l'ennui dans
25
les democraties-marches.
References
25
26
Steven J. Heims (1991) gives a clear and
politically astute account of the
collusion between the founders of Cybernetics and the American military-industrial
complex, showing for example how Cybernetics research was tied institutionally
financially
to weapons research. More recently, the origins of the internet in the
and
development of a networked computer system, the ARPANET, for the American
have been widely demonstrated by, amongst
others, Manuel De Landa
military
(1994).
27,
As a technical term in virology, transduction is defined as the process in
which "a virus takes up a piece of DNA from its bacterial host and incorporates it
into its own viral genome. After the virus has multiplied, many copies the
of
virus
erupt from the infected cell [... ] Transduction by virus works in eukaryotic
organisms as well. The discovery that large blocks of genetic instructions can be
swapped and transferred among creatures is a clue that the insertion of new genes
could be the mechanism behind evolution. If viruses can transfer eukaryotic genes
across species boundaries, and can install their own genes into their hosts, the case
for the new mechanism is even stronger. " Processes such as this are entirely
inexplicable by autopoietic theory, which cleaves to a paranoid model of selfpreservation of the pure autonomous entity, and go towards a strengthening of the
cases both for Deleuze and Guattari's parallel to Lynn Margulis' symbiogenetic
by
lineage;
Darwinian
filiation
to
challenge
pure
and
evolution
and to a theory of
constitutive heteronomy, or machinic surplus value. Tying these two areas together
DeleuzeGuattari write: "the living thing has an exterior milieu of materials, an
interior milieu of composing elements and composed substances, an intermediary
limits,
and an annexed milieu of energy sources and
milieu of membranes and
defined
by
being
is
Every
periodic
coded, a code
milieu
actions-perceptions.
but
in
transduction.
is
transcoding
or
state
of
code
a
perpetual
repetition:
each
Transcoding or transduction is the manner in which one milieu serves as the basis
for another, or conversely is established atop another milieu, dissipates in it or is
constituted
28
in it" (Deleuze and Guattari
See also Gilles
Chatelet,
1980/87 384/313).
Les enjeux du mobile: mathematique,
physique,
philosophie.
DeleuzeGuattari refer to the Biblical book of Numbers, as the place in
between
discover
Hebrews
a
the
numbers,
and
nomadism
the
connection
which
literally
book
is
translated:
Hebrew
the
title
the
of
connection made clearer when
Bemidbar, in the desert.
29
References
236
s0
The same source is cited for the etymological argument in both Difference
Repetition
and
and A Thousand Plateaus, that is Emmanuel Laroche, Histoire de la
racine `nem' en grec ancien, where it is argued that in pre-Solonic Attica nomos
referred to a distribution of arable land that did not involve division of space into
allotments but rather the scattering of livestock across that land, hence the nomos
designated an "occupied space, but one without precise limit", as such there was a
distinction between the polis (controlled by logos) and the exterior subject to nomos.
All of these distinctions play a critical role in the procedures of both Differenceand
Repetition, and A Thousand Plateaus, principally in the opposition of Riemannian
topological smooth space to the Euclidean geometry of the striated. Such a
distinction is fundamental to Simondon's rejection of Euclidean models in the realm
living
fashion"
"the
be
Euclidean
in
the
of
cortex cannot
a
adequately represented
(Simondon 1995 225). This conceptual continuity is further ammunition to be used
between
breach
Deleuze
the
those
of the
claim
a
clear
against
who would
Deleuze
`academic'
Guattari,
the
the
of
early, sole authored,
and
partnership with
books.
this into English from the French translation by Charles
in a way that is more akin to the Spinoza used by
Appuhn (Flammarion),
As has been noted elsewhere, principally by Antonio Negri in his
DeleuzeGuattari.
31
I have translated
having
English
far
the
this
French
is
than
Spinoza,
the
a
point,
on
clearer
work on
becomes
this
The
Latin.
Spinoza's
direct
obvious example where
relation to
more
between
distinction
types
two
Spinozist
is
the
of power: pouvoir
around
pertinent
(potestas),
(potentia).
and puissance
A distinction
lost in English.
Subjectively,
I
have found that it is only through reading Spinoza in French (presumably the effect
is
Latin)
in
that
is multiplied on an exponential scale
able to grasp the potentia
one
Spinozist
the
challenge.
of
Bergsonian
`Newtonian
in
the chapter entitled
and
32
These points are made
Animal
in
the
Communication
the
Control
and
Cybernetics:
Time' in Wiener's
and
or
Book
`The
in
Needham,
Joseph
of
that
is
Machine. As a side issue it
worth noting
his
in
two
Leibniz',
magisterial
of
volume
Changes and the Binary Arithmetic of
due
is
it
to
China,
that
in
Civilisation
Science
notes
and
of
study
multivolumed
has
that
cybernetics
Leibniz' deep study of Chinese civilisation that one can say
Chinese roots, vis "although Chinese civilisation could not spontaneously produce
the
itself
without
perfect
not
`modern' natural
could
science
natural
science,
340).
1962
(Needham
Chinese
civilisation",
of
philosophy
characteristic
References
27
ss
It was only after formulating this sense of Simondon's
proximity to Spinoza,
in spite of himself, that I discovered a very similar
argument in an article, that I
have had occasion to discuss earlier, by Etienne Balibar. Balibar
writes that "I was
discover
to
that specifically this term [transindividuality, EA), with a full
surprised
definition and theoretical implementation, has been
by
[Simondon] My
used
surprise was even greater when I realised the extent to which Simondon's
arguments in fact are truly Spinozistic, literally converging with some basic
propositions of the Ethics" (Balibar 1993 10). Balibar then goes on to note, as I
have, Simondon's own "rather conventional" rejection of Spinozism.
34
Stephen Brush is somewhat more catholic in his interpretation of the scope
of the second, `probability revolution' giving it a much rider range in both time and
he
scope,
writes: "The first Scientific Revolution, dominated by the physical
astronomy of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton established the concept of a
`clockwork
universe' or `world machine' in which all changes are cyclic and all
in
determined
by
motions are
principle
causal laws. The Second Scientific
Revolution, associated with the theories of Darwin, Maxwell, Planck, Einstein,
Heisenberg, and Scrödinger, substituted
a world of process and chance whose
ultimate philosophical
Weber 1996 330).
meaning
still
remains
obscure. " (Quoted in Depew and
35
See Paul Bains' use of this, and related material, in his 'And if one day the
brain became inobjectifiable'.
NOTES TO CHAPTER III
indeed
programmatic, statement
clear,
gives an extremely
logic
in
both
from
distance
its
thinking
and
phenomenology
and
concerning machinic
An
355.
Moleculaire,
his
Revolution
La
in
`Les propositions
p.
machiniques'
36
Felix Guattari
inaccurate,
but
does
it
is
book
English
this
such
a
translation
so
exist
of
abridged
De
Eric
Alliez'
it.
to
have
I
to
give references
chosen not
poor edition, that
French
the
is
de la phenom nologie
current
l'impossibilite
an essential map of
based
is
Guattari's
how
Deleuze
work
and
clearly
very
scene
showing
philosophical
the
bulk
their
the
different
at
that
contemporaries,
of
of
predicates of
on entirely
demolition
a
and
the
it
is
of
phenomenology,
time
possibility
very
of
an expert
same
demonstration of the need for, and possibility of, thinking in entirely other ways.
References
238
s'
This is chapter eleven of Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza. The French
title of the book is far clearer as to its intention, that is Spinoza et le probleme de
l'expression. The theme of the identity of expression, elsewhere called production or
developed
in
DeleuzeGuattari's
is
immanence
throughout
constructivism
work, with
this thesis, in particular in the sections dealing with Giordano Bruno.
See Robert Rosen, Life Itself A Comprehensive Inquiry into the Nature, Origin
Life:
In
Search
`Topology
Fabrication
Life,
Nicholas
Rashevsky,
of
and
and
of
and
38
General Mathematical
References
Principles in Biology and Society'.
239
39
Deleuze
define a regime of
and Guattari
signs as "any formalisation
of
expression [... ] at least where the expression is linguistic" (Deleuze
and Guattari
1980/87 140/111); the importance
of the introduction of such terms is that it marks
one of the principal routes by which Deleuze and Guattari distinguish themselves
from the rest of the French
philosophical scene. This is elegantly, albeit negatively,
marked by an essay, stunning in its uselessness as a discussion
of Deleuzian
philosophy, but useful in stating the breach opened up between Deleuze
his
and
I refer to Jean-Luc Nancy's `The Deleuzian Fold
erstwhile contemporaries.
of
Thought' in which he acknowledges that "Deleuze's thought is
so far removed from
the sources, schemata and modes of conduct
which, for me, are those of
"within
philosophical
work" and insistently
(Nancy 1998/96
my tradition",
115/107). Establishing
a clear and distinct breach between the work of Deleuze
and Guattari and the rest of the French philosophical scene (and for what it's
worth, the British establishment of an image of thought for Continental Philosophy)
is one of the tasks implicit
in this thesis. Alliez' work (1993,1995) in this
area is of
course exemplary in its invention of a Deleuzian counter tradition, this work must
exceed the discursive formation of `history of philosophy' and even of genealogy to
invent
thought
that
can explode the present time of
philosophical actualityas is common to that line of thinkers of a materialism in
which thought sediments itself as a material force, following Bruno, Spinoza, Marx,
Reich, Bataille,
including
Deleuze and Guattari.
to
A philosophical
up
and
heresiology. Most, principally
deconstruction inspired, philosophy that claims to
singularities,
events
exceed the Greek inheritance, the logos, then. is shortcircuited from the start by the
irrevocable indebtedness of the sources used precisely to that tradition (Levinas'
stated aim is precisely to fold Judaism back into Western thought, into sacred
history),
failure
their
to comprehend the extent to which philosophy is
and
dominated at the deepest and most profound levels by the politico-theological
complex, Control. In order to genuinely break from that tradition
requires a
has
kind
hitherto
been
that
rethinking of a
not
attempted, and one of its principal
be
in a sense a revocation of Casaubon's 1614 redating of the
resources will
Hermetic texts (for two differing assessments of the impact of Casaubon's work on
Black
Athena
Martin
Bernal's
I
thought
seventeenth century
and culture see
vol. and
Frances Yates' Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition). Hardt and Negri have
difference
following
by
illustrated
that
tradition
the
that
the
we
are
elegantly
noting
is "in line not with the Judaism of Emmanuel Levinas, which Derrida seems to
Deleuze
330).
but
Negri
1994
heretical
Judaism
Spinoza"
(Hardt
the
of
and
prefer,
declaration
his
his
State
to
the
thought,
total
tradition
of war,
opposition
of
signals
down to the detail of mirroring Schopenhauer's programming of his lectures to clash
Lacan's
lecturing
by
Vincennes
Hegel's,
own
with
at
contemporaneously
with
Paris.
in
seminars
References
240
40
It is unfortunately
beyond the scope of the
present chapter to bring these
concerns to bear upon the relationships
between a DeleuzoGuattarian
and a
Marxist materialism in the
context of stratification in the social domain. There is a
further exploration of the relationship in
chapter four. Another route to follow would
be one in which the principal
axis of engagement is with Althusser and Negri's
`aleatory materialism',
see Louis Althusser, `Sur le materialisme aleatoire', and
Antonio Negri, `Notes on the Evolution
of the Thought of the Later Althusser'.
Essentially this is an assemblage
composed of Deleuze and Guattari's joint and
separate works that are specifically concerned with Marxism, and the peculiarly
French school of Spinozist Marxism. A
good survey of these Marxist "detours"
(Althusser) through Spinoza is Tosel's Du
materialisme de Spinoza.
41
This quote is from Deleuze's preface to the English translation
Difference
of
and Repetition. Hence the single page reference.
42
This idea is subject to an extended elaboration in the important twelfth
chapter of Deleuze's Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza and in chapter seven of
Antonio Negri's The Savage Anomaly.
43
For an excellent introduction
Uexküll
to Uexküll's own work see both T and J von
to Uexküll see Ansell
of Deleuze's relationship
1992; for treatments
Pearson (1996), and Bogue (1997).
44
Deely goes on to show how this line of thought, following the prioritisation of
relationality and an immanently creative matter, permits the development of the
biosemiosis.
field
The `Actor Network Theory' which is "a ruthless
relatively new
of
application of semiotics [in which] entities take their form and acquire their
attributes as a result of their relations with other entities. In this scheme of things
have
divisions
bonfire
inherent
thrown
the
on
entities
are
no
qualities: essentialist
dualisms"
Latour,
(Law)
Bruno
Michel
Callon
is
the
and
others
of
associated with
be
development.
Guattari's
It
very
worth examining
yet another cognate
would
he
from
1960
the
s where
very clearly adumbrates certain themes
prescient papers
that will later be developed in biosemiotics and in various non or anti-Darwinian
biologies. Clearly we will have to deal here with the persistent critique of
Darwinism that exists in Deleuze's work at least since Difference and Repetition.
Noone has devoted more time or acuity to Deleuze's complex involvement with
Darwinism than Keith Ansell Pearson (see especially his Germinal Life 1999).
References
241
45
For examples of such texts which are unashamedly theological: Paul Davies
God and the New Physics ; John Barrow and Joseph Silk, The Left Hand
Creation;
of
John Barrow and Frank Tippler, The Cosmological Anthropic Principle; Arthur
Peacocke, God and the New Biology; Paul Davies, The Mind of God. Scienceand the
Search for Ultimate Meaning. Countless others such as Roger Penrose are more
making the theist move by an adherence to a remarkably
Platonic
forms
theory
to account for, in Penrose's case, mathematical
unmediated
of
objects. For a critique of the latter, coupled with an attempt to found a corporeal,
surreptitious,
materialist
mathematics that avoids the unexamined mentalism of constructivism
(mathematical
Platonism
"shuck
that
to
stricto sense rather than philosophical),
aims
and
off in the end as a theological obfuscation of `number'" see Rotman 1993
passim.
46
to L'effet Whitehead, pp. 9 -11 for
between this aspect of Whitehead's thought and
See also Isabelle Stengers `Introduction'
commentary on the relationship
that of DeleuzeGuattari.
This tendency in science can be seen in such popular figures as Hawking
Lewis Wolpert, and Steve Jones who simultaneously
arrogate to themselves the
in
those
justify
`philosophy'
their
to
claims,
and
scientific
role of providers of a
in
`scientism'
inspiration,
Heideggerian
scornful of a supposed
philosophers, of
47
has
to
that
nothing
the
philosophy
claim
most extreme of whom will
philosophy,
learn from or say to science. To the latter one can only repeat Nietzsche's critique,
flee
from
his
"Philosophers
day,
to
Kantianism
that:
science,
wish
the
of
aimed at
lead
longer
lies:
the
they
but it pursues them. One can see where their weakness
no
into
is
turning
is
itself
because
gradually
and
science
merely
philosophy
way,
§
but
1974
112,
1990b
(Nietzsche
border
also
but
patrolling"
professional
nothing
"this
that
the
editor rightly notes
344,1983 188 for a similar argument), of which
in
in
1870's"
it
the
than
today
is
was
wide-spread
more
conception of philosophy
both its `Analytic' and `Phenomenological' varieties.
Situating
Invention:
Power
Stengers
and
The essays collected in Isabelle
48
here.
invention
suggested
Science,constitute a powerful statement of the sense of
The
Bergson'.
in
provenance of
49
Murphy,
Tim
its
translator,
this text is hazy. In a personal communication,
"apparently
is
of
text
a
set
the
the
that
manuscript containing
explained to me
the
France,
though
in
Philosophy
Society
lecture
to
invited
of
for
some
an
notes
important
An
"
MS.
date
the
There
is
either.
on
no
specific.
coordinates aren't
in
which
the
number
of
analysis
Bergson's
theory
of multiplicity occurs
statement of
Duration',
The
Idea
of
States.
Conscious
of
Multiplicity
`The
two,
of
chapter
opens
his Time and Free Will, pp. 75-90.
Gilles Deleuze, `The Theory of Multiplicities
References
242
60
Deleuze
invites
the citation from Marx with this from
Bergson: "The truly great problems are set forth only when they are solved". The
quotation from Marx is from A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy By
.
Deleuze
key
is
this,
citing
endorsing a
part of Marx's philosophy, a question that is
debates
the
the
centre of all of
right at
about determinism in Marx (debates that
we are in no position to examine here). The position that I would support, and that
us to compare
Deleuze is indicating,
is one that seems to be true to Marx (the dubious value of
being
fidelity
such a notion of
accepted in silence). It is summarised in the idea that
`man makes history but not in conditions of his own choosing', this is the formula
that needs to be applied to the question of conceptual invention that we are raising
here- it avoids both arbitrary subjectivism and mechanistic determinism.
pp. 47--58
Karl
Marx
Marx's
for the constitutive
method, and
materialist
elements of
Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (Rough Draft), p. 90 for
51
See Antonio Negri Marx Beyond Marx: Lessons on the Grundrisse,
Production',
`Consumption
Spinoza,
the
pp.
to
and
the reference
section entitled
and
90-4 for an expansion of this equivalence.
Rosen,
Pribram
52
It is the work of such philosophically astute scientists as
dismiss
"we
Watson's
Sean
that
truth
the
Margulis
that
comment
of
confirms
and
the
biological
in
naive
of
epistemologically
the
work
as
general,
neuroscience, and
implications
is
just
It
the
(Watson
15).
philosophical
`technicians' at our peril"
not
direction
their
but
the
philosophical
own
of
these
the
moreover
scientists,
work of
of
Briqmont,
that
Sokal
and
he
and
the
to
interests, that gives the
recent outbursts of
irrelevant
for
defend
latter
the
and
the
reactionary
that
the
science
view of
exposes
it
is.
that
charade
`Science
in
the
of
work
much
of
the
For
conservatism
53
political
an account of
Neol'Auto-Organisation
de
Chaos
comme
`Du
Chätelet
Gilles
et
Complexity' see
term
the
the
of
misuses
Conservatisme Festif, and for a careful study of some of
Situating
Invention:
Power
her
in
',
Fad?
and
`Complexity:
Stengers
Isabelle
a
see
Science, pp. 3-19.
54
Gilles Chatelet,
`Virtuality
That',
unpublished,
as
yet
all
and
hence
unpaginated ms.
55
Artificial,
the
Sciences
The
Herbert A. Simon,
of
Views of Complexity', pp. 170-81.
References
`Alternative
chapter seven
243
56
In the context of my earlier comments on the productive results of forcing a
Spinoza
Simondon,
it is perhaps not surprising that it is Balibar
of
meeting
and
Because
knowledge,
it
is
Balibar,
Balibar
this
to
comment.
who makes
and
my
has
lenses.
Spinoza
Simondonian
See Balibar
through
alone, who
also written on
1993. In this unique article, he surveys Spinoza's conception of the continual
individual,
therein
the
the
the
to
of
paying
particular
of
role
attention
production
immanence
of relation, and conceives the whole complex as a precursor of
necessary
his "veritable theatre of individuation"
Simondon's concept of transindividuality,
(Simondon
1995 25).
Margulis and her son Dorion Sagan state that "No life without a membrane
in
Fritjof
Capra,
Similarly
Sagan
kind
known"
54).
(Margulis
1986
is
and
of some
his exemplary exposition of autopoietic theory, notes that for Maturana and Varela
living
in
their
definitive
that
limit
is
the
system
the creation of a
of
or membrane
"autopoietic organisation includes the creation of a boundary that specifies the
domain of the network's operations and defines the system as a unit" contrary to
is
boundary
because
their
living
do
"constitute
systems,
not
catalytic cycles which
(Capra
the
independent
]
by
factors
[...
determined
that are
catalytic processes"
of
1997 98).
57
References
244
58
See chapter eleven of Microcosmos, `Late Bloomers:
Animals and Plants', in
particular the passage on fungi. Elsewhere in this
remarkable book, Margulis and
Sagan tend towards DeleuzoGuattarian
theses, vis. the thorough machinism of
their discussion of the virtual impossibility that biologists face
in giving a "concise
definition of the difference between living
and nonliving substance" (Margulis and
Sagan 1986 72). It is precisely this
nondeterminate difference that is traversed by
the machinic phylum as laid out by Deleuze
and Guattari (1980/87 414/335) and
by Deleuze alone in his Bergsonism (1991 101),
such that one cannot ask about the
distinction between life and
matter, but rather two states of matter: "stratified
systems" and "self-consistent
aggregates". Which as DeleuzeGuattari
conclude is
cut across by "a machinic phylum, a destratifying, transversality [which]
moved
through elements, orders, forms and substances, the
molar and the molecular,
freeing a matter and tapping forces". Margulis' biology
and DeleuzeGuattari's
schizoanalytics
between on the one hand,
converge also in the relationship
Deleuze's theory of contraction and habitus
sketched out in chapter 11 of Difference
Repetition
and
resulting in the dissolution of the unitary self in favour of the
complicatio of "thousands of little witnesses which contemplate within us: it is
always a third party who says `me'" (Deleuze 1968/94 103/75) and again in Logic of
Sense in an analysis of Klossowski's critique of the Kantian-Christian
self and the
concomitant untenability
of any account of the psyche based on phenomenology, "I
be
may
an other, that something else thinks in us [... ] because so many beings and
things think in us" (Deleuze 1969/90 399/298); this thought is to remain with
Deleuze and Guattari up to their last collaborative work, where it is given an
inflection that relates it to the inverted vitalism discussed at length elsewhere in
my work. They write that "even animism, when it implies little immanent souls in
organs and functions, is not so far removed from biological science as it is said to
be, on condition that these immanent souls are withdrawn from an active role so as
to become solely sources of molecular perception and affection [... ] bodies are
by
little
infinity
populated
an
of
monads" (Deleuze and Guattari 1991/94 124/130).
This philosophical
move is coupled to Margulis' empirical confirmation in her,
increasingly
accepted, thesis that "all organisms of greater morphological complexity
than bacteria, that is nucleated or eukaryotic organisms [... ] are also polygenomic,
having selves of multiple origin [... ] comprised of heterologous (different-sourced)
kind
(Margulis
from
than
ancestor"
and
genomic systems, evolved
more
one
of
Sagan 1997 65). In an article outlining the tenor of the `new biology', which is, he
tells us characterised by its mutually interdependent critiques of i) the dominant
between
distinction
body,
ii)
the
the
the
plant and
and
monolithic model of
unified
`assembly',
kingdoms,
Dorion
Sagan,
the
eukaryotic cell as an
characterises
animal
hence
comes tantalisingly,
and
Guattari's
Deleuze
to
and
close
usage of the concept
`animal' cell is, in fact, an
Sagan writes: "each eukaryotic
distinct
the
prokaryotic metabolisms.
evolutionary merger of
uncanny assembly,
Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a one-celled plant or animal [... ] all
of the assemblage.
References
245
biology
has
been
previous
grossly zoocentric" (Sagan 1992 363). For yet another
convergence see Guattari's `Redondances Intensives et Redondances Expressives'
he
where
writes
that "multicellular
living
organisms continue to be colonies, packs of
in part by a system of intracoding, and in part by
unicellular
organisms,
transcoding" (Guattari 1977 336). Guattari's anticipation of the nascent field of
biosemiotics is astounding.
I take these themes up in more detail elsewhere.
Finally, this material takes on another dimension in the context of the critique of
for
being
dicta
living
is
Goethe's
"[e]very
that
not a
example
ontological unity, see
but
it
individual,
insofar
it
thing,
to
single
a plurality; even
appears
as
us as an
living,
beings"
Morphologie,
(Goethe,
independent
quoted
still remains a collection of
in Stack 168 n. 27), and the influence on, and development of, this line of thought
from
the
incisive
in Nietzsche. An important
these
questions
survey of
and
Eighteenth century onwards can be found in the fifth chapter of Michel Foucault's
The Order of Things, the sections on `Monsters and Fossils' and `The Discourse of
deployed
to
Foucault's
Elements
approach
are
of
are especially apposite.
Yoxen's
(1981)
in
the
presuppositions of contemporary
study
of
critical
great effect
biology.
molecular
Nature'
Valuable work in this area, concentrating entirely on Simondon's
her essay `L'individuation
in
by
Fagot-Largeault
done
Anne
been
has
contribution,
59
biologie'.
en
60
See the chapter `Morphology,
The Origins of Order.
Maps and Integrated
Tissue' in Kauffman's
is
(1998
21)
the
variously
philosopher
of
61
"to
true
the
is
the
as
else
world" or
translated as "the true philosopher's country
Bruno's
discussion
in
This
of
his
a
lands
occurs
comment
own".
are
philosopher all
his
interlocutor
that
by
idea
the
Aristotelians
Oxford
proposed
the
and
attack on
is
it
that
this
evinces
in
be
own",
one's
not
"must
a country
an agitator
not
one
latein
the
is
taken
idea
This
up
of course
internationalist
Bruno's
response.
Giordano Bruno's fine description
revolutionary
of
a
watchword
and
nineteenth
Manifesto
in
homeland;
the
has
of
the
no
internationalism,
revolutionary
such that,
have
"working
country.
no
the
that
men
for
Party,
example, we read
the Communist
have
they
from
got".
them
not
take
what
we cannot
twentieth
References
centuries
as
246
N
CHAPTER IV
ATO
62
As exemplified for example in the title
of Pierre Macherey's book. In a far
cruder register see Jean-Bernard Pouy's Spinoza encule Hegel, literally `Spinoza
fucks Hegel up', a science fiction
novel in which les Spinozistes are a group of
nomadic antistate rebels carrying out guerrilla type attacks on the forces
of an
authoritarian state.
63
For recognising the decisiveness of Spinoza for
reconstructing
theory, if for nothing else, Althusser's greatness must be
acknowledged.
Marxist
64
1 refer here to two talks given by De Landa in Winter 1997 the `Institute
at
of Contemporary Art' and the `Architectural Association', both in London.
65
Kenneth Surin offers a particularly lucid account of Amin's
work from a
perspective close to our own in his article '"Me Continued Relevance of Marxism' as
a Question. Some Propositions'. A different critique, focusing on the "third-worldist"
implications of Amin's position is contained in Robert Brenner's dispute generating
article `The Origins of Capitalist Development: A Critique of Neo-Smithian
Marxism'.
66
See their immensely important
article `Systems, Structures
and Capitalistic
Processes'.
67
To redress the balance, De Landa is not the only reader of Deleuze and
Guattari to ignore the seriousness and centrality of their engagement with Marx, it
is a conjuring act common to most Anglophone readings. There are of course notable
exceptions: Jameson, Hardt, Holland to name the most prominent; as well as those
Warwick,
have
done
integrity,
from
of
great
considerable
work
recent graduates
who
formation
to
the
contributing
of a Marxism, reinvented, reconfigured through the
future oriented lenses of Deleuze and Guattari. The disappearance of Marx from
his
indices
is
DeleuzeGuattari
those
of
relatively
merely another of
reception of
recent, yet extremely thorough,
intellectual coordinates.
from
the set of commonly possessed
excision
The section entitled `The Molecular Unconscious' in Anti-Oedipus is one of
the most important passages in DeleuzeGuattari's joint work dedicated precisely to
68
this task.
References
247
69
It is relevant
to point this out because it is of course in the field
biology
of
that the question of vitalism originally
arose and in which it has the greatest
pragmatic implications.
70
In an act of inestimable value to all those interested in the
evolution of
Deleuze's thought, his notes for these lectures have
been
transcribed and made
now
available to all on the WWW at imaginet. fr/deleuze.
71
The full
quote, in a discussion with Toni Negri, reads "I think Felix
Guattari and I have remained Marxist, in our two different
both
but
ways,
of us. "
As is well known, the text upon which Deleuze was working at the time of his
death was a book on Marx, apparently to be called La Grandeur de Marx,
of which
Negri has written: "In a text carefully drawn up [elaborato] by Gilles Deleuze, and
his
death
which
untimely
prevented him from publishing, La Grandeur de Marx, it
is precisely this realisation of Marxist theory which is studied and identified as an
dispositif/apparatus.
Communism, Deleuze says, is a concept which
ontological
becomes a `common notion' through
the power [puissance/forza]
of the masses, a
notion/name that corresponds to the way of existing/being of the multitude/masses,
becoming,
in
it gives reality to the masses/multitude" (Negri 1998b
that
or rather
8). The translation of this section is in a private communication to me from Matteo
Mandarini.
For more on this, now nonexistent,
Holland
(1997).
and
References
book see Negri's Exil (1998c 28),
248
72
A complete
French
translation,
that used by Bataille, was published in
1929. Jacques Grinevald's introduction
to the new scholarly English translation,
the first complete one, of The Biosphere, `The Invisibility
of the Vernadskian
Revolution', gives an excellent account of the
political and scientificoideological
background to the half-century long
neglect of Vernadsky's work outside the Soviet
Bloc. On the Soviet side of the Iron Curtain, Vernadsky has the
status of a scientific
giant, to the extent of there being institutes, scientific prizes, streets, a mineral
(vernadite),
mountain ranges, a lunar crater, and even a species of bacteria (one
active in the formation of sea bottom manganese and iron ores) in his name; in
there was also a significant and well
addition to which, and more importantly,
funded multidisciplinary
Biogeochemistry,
founded on
research programme,
Vernadskian
lines. A fascinating
be
is
to
explicitly
study
waiting
written of the
`positive' effects of the Soviet attempt to invent a proletarian science, a science in
frozen
form
the
accord with
of Marxism developed to justify Soviet power, Dialectical
Materialism
(Diamat),
or again a science that claims to follow from Engel's The
Dialectics of Nature. Vernadsky's theses with their rejection of the idea of passive
by
distant,
being
his
`life
is
acted on
organisms
a
reified environment,
slogan of
a
force',
his
geological
research on the manifold ways in which the environment is
and
by
beyond
bemoaned
formed
fact,
far
in
in
those
naive
piously
shaped,
ways
be
that
could
easily coopted and made to
are clearly ones
environmentalists,
how
Vernadsky's
This
is
Soviet
the
the
clearly
of
state.
rhetoric
with
his
leading
Lapo.
That
Andrei
Soviet
by
commentators,
one of
work was portrayed
being said, Lapo is able to cite certain comments by Vernadsky himself that are
little
but
but
]
I
know
[...
Marx
"I
in
Marx
to
a most superficial way:
sympathetic
think that the noosphere will be fully in accordance with his basic conclusions"
harmonise
life
by
Vernadsky's
68).
Lapo
1987
as a geological
concept of
quoted
force is in fact fully in accord with Marx and Engel's critique of the nature-culture
division in The German Ideology, where they write against Feuerbach that "He does
(Vernadsky
from
direct
him
is
thing
all
given
not a
not see that the sensuous world around
industry
the
but
the
of
the
state
of
and
of
product
same,
ever
eternity, remaining
by
few
transplanted
]
[...
The
[...
1
centuries ago
was only a
cherry tree
society
of
the
The
47).
1976
Engels
(Marx
aspects
into
negative
and
our zone"
commerce
in
the
having
known,
their
for
too
apotheosis
well
such a science are all
campaign
Guattari's
Deleuze
and
Lysenko episode. From the perspective of the genealogy of
Deleuze
from
Uexkull,
and
the
that
whom
ethologist
work we might observe
in
the
like
Vernadsky
key
quite neglected
Guattari draw certain
concepts, was,
University
the
of
his
Estonia,
at
West, yet championed in
a
centre
where
native
derived
directly
field
in
a
Tartu still bears his name, and now carries out research
in
important
level,
there
ways
are
from his work, Biosemiotics. Beyond this trivial
by
described
biology'
`new
both,
the
as
to
of
themes
are
elements
common
which
the
Finally,
for
general
this).
(see
given
the
Dorion Sagan
more on
previous chapter
intellectual
References
background
lectured
Vernadsky
it
is
at
that
thesis
this
to
worth noting
14-9
the Sorbonne in 1922 on `Geochemistry', where he
was in contact with Bergson,
whose work he read and is explicitly influenced by. This Bergsonian influence is
further felt in the work of Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen,the
economist who has done
most to create a thermodynamic economics explicitly building on both Vernadsky
and Bergson, and indirectly on Bataille's general economics.
1VQTESTO CHAPTER V
?s
This is Nick Land's judgement on Deleuze
alone, in `Making it With Death:
Remarks on Thanatos and Desiring Production'.
The idea that there is an
unbridgeable chasm between Deleuze, Guattari and their contemporaries is derived
from Land, but the one carved here is through very different
has
materials,
a
different shape, and so very different consequences. Deleuze himself has indicated,
albeit for very different purposes, some of the components of his philosophical make
him
belonging
that
to a tradition utterly at odds with that of his
mark
up
out as
he remarks
in a letter that "What I most detested was
contemporaries;
Hegelianism and dialectics" (1990/95 14/6), a moment in philosophical history in
which most of his contemporaries are of course immersed to varying degrees; he
has
he
"never worried about going beyond metaphysics or the death
too
that
notes
big
[...
]
thing about giving up Totality, Unity, the
of philosophy, and
never made a
Subject" (ibid. 122/88) one could add to this his utter rejection of Heidegger and
his
having
lifelong
been
his
CPF;
the
phenomenology;
and
a member of
never
outspoken adherence to Marxism; his utter refusal to succumb to psychoanalysis;
his preference for Anglo-American over French literature (Deleuze and Parnet 1996
47ff),
for
Hjelmslev
Saussure,
ie. the
turn
in
Capitalism
and
over
to semiotics. In the Abecedaire, Parnet poses Deleuze's tradition to
him in terms of his preference for the `z' in philosophy": Zen, Zarathustra, Spinoza,
Leibniz, Nietzsche, BergZon (Deleuze), and one might oppose to this the three `h's'
and
Schizophrenia,
Husserl,
Heidegger.
Hegel,
of phenomenology:
See Alain Badiou (1997 69) for an elaboration of the idea that Deleuze's
doesn't
denotes
that
Badiou
By
is
`Classical'.
this
any philosophy
philosophy
by
invented
if
the
Kant's
injunctions,
that
critical process
acts as
critical
submit to
74
Kant was null and void; and that also opposes any of the much-vaunted "returns to
demarcate
Deleuze's
doing
to
Badiou
too
In
Kant", to critique, etc.
sharply
seeks
so
in
his
from
participate,
of
whom
that
all
contemporaries,
erstwhile
of
position
degrees,
in
this
neo-neo-Kantianism.
varying
References
250
'5
This formulation
76
The relevant
originates in Negri `On Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari,
A Thousand Plateaus' 98. In an
extremely unusual, highly provocative, and to my
mind quite superb, analysis of Leibniz and the Kabbalah Allison Coudert
writes
that Leibniz and his close associate Francis Mercury
van Helmont "both reject the
corpuscular philosophy of the Cartesians and Gassendists for a vitalist philosophy
that endows matter with force and activity" (Coudert 1995 54). Coudert
performs a
minor reading of Leibniz, exploring his relationship with, and in some cases, active
production of Kabbalistic and alchemical texts that explodes his insulation by the
philosophical establishment in a hermetic and teleological discipline by allowing
these excluded traditions of thought to leak in and corrupt the
body.
philosophical
She writes for example of Leibniz "Ghost-writing
book
for
a
a self-proclaimed
Kabbalist [van Helmont, EA]" and notes dryly that this is
"extraordinary
for
an
act
someone supposedly repelled by fanciful Kabbalistic theories" (Coudert 1995 13). A
similar minor reading that incurred perhaps greater hostility is Betty Jo Teeter
Dobbs' pioneering work on Newton's lifelong involvement with alchemy.
biology
to which I refer are Robert Rosen's Life Itself
works of
A Comprehensive Inquiry into the Nature, Origin and Fabrication of Life, and Lynn
Margulis and Dorion Sagan's Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Microbial Evolution.
The pertinent
critique
issues in these works are akin to those we had encountered in the
of autopoiesis: the recognition that mechanism is not counterposed by
but by complexity; and that the boundary lines separating the organism
vitalism
from the world
increasingly
are
life
lies
its
in
of
under
challenge,
such that
the dominant
symbiotic,
contagious nature: the mutual
Deleuze
Guattari
that
the
and
entity,
of each and every
process
heterogenesis.
This concept suggests that one can no
characterise as machinic
longer ask about the identity, the bounded unity of a being, but rather about its
characteristic
interdependence
both
forces
that
cut through and transverse
network
of
with a
[...
]
in
"the
its
which a part of a
phenomenon
surplus value of code,
of
complex interlocking
it by virtue
fragment
its
of another machine, and
own code a code
machine captures within
thus owes its reproduction to a part of another machine" (Deleuze and Guattari
1980/87 339/285), and see the discussion of this concept above. The second
direction from which this challenge comes is in that work that (to name four very
Pert)
Butler,
Candace
Samuel
Clarke,
different
Chalmers
and
and
authors:
brain
indeed
the
be
the
or
that
contained within
not even cognition can
suggests
body, but is rather smeared across the world, and embodied, or immanent to
matter.
References
251
xs
77
For some fascinating, if
characteristically idiosyncratic, comments on the
continuities between Spinoza and Bruno, see Ernst Bloch's `Bruno
and the Infinite
Work of Art; Spinoza and the World
as Crystal'. Bloch credits them both with
espousing an immanent philosophy of "sorrowless
and daybright materialism"
(864), and sees them both as direct
philosophical precursors of Marx.
78
Fred Beiser's chapter on `The Rise
of Spinozism in Germany 1680-1786'
gives a vivid account of the terror that Spinozist materialism
and atheism inspired
in the forces of authority, and principally in Kant.
79
For a popular account see Margulis
work see her Symbiosis in Cell Evolution.
80
and Sagan 1997, for Margulis'
technical
Bruno, De minimo in opera latine
conscripta I, III, p. 135 quoted in Ordine
155.
81
Steven Rose, one of DeleuzeGuattari's
favourite biologists on whom they
frequently rely for their understanding
of the sciences of the brain, has superbly
summarised a similar critique of the DNA myth thus: "to put the organism and its
lifeline back at the core of biology [... ] means replacing the
static, reductive, DNAcentred view of living systems that currently pervades biological thinking with an
emphasis on the dynamics of life. We need instead to be concerned with process,
with the paradox of development by which an organism has simultaneously to be
and to become" (Rose 1998 18). Roses's work on the Conscious Brain is referred to in
both A Thousand Plateaus and in What is Philosophy?
82
One can similarly detect the emergence of a nascent Spinozist influence in a
heretical
wilfully
research programme in the field of Artificial Intelligence and
Robotics. I refer to the work of Rodney Brooks at MIT, announced in his 1987
paper, `Intelligence Without Representation'. Brooks' approach to building
`intelligent autonomous robots' is anti-representational, acentric, embodied, and
bottom-up; and based on the argument that intelligence is not abstract and
his
but
The
immanent
Spinozist
work
representational,
element of
and embodied.
lies in his method, which is not "the usual decomposition of a system by function
but rather a novel decomposition by activity" (Varela et al 1991 209); an account
bodies.
further
Brooks
directly
Spinozist
Deleuze's
argues
recalls
account of
which
that "there is no single place where `perception' delivers a representation of the
Brooks
is
In
in
ibid.
211).
(Brooks
there
in
the
traditional
work
quoted
sense"
world
no representation, no central system, and no transcendence.
References
252
83
See chapter two of Aryeh Kaplan's
excellent, instructive translation of and
commentary on the Sefer Yetzirah: The `Book of Creation' in Theory and Practice,
this text is both the most ancient and one of the most important
works in Jewish
Kabbalism, being the urtext of that literature
deals
which
with the creation of both
spiritual and physical Golems. Kaplan reminds us that in Genesis 1: 2 "The Earth
was chaos (Heb.: tohu) and void (Heb.: bohu)" and that "Tohu denotes pure
does
that
Bohu is pure information that does
substance
not contain information.
not relate to any substance". It is impossible to state the hylomorphic coupling
more clearly. This coupling resonates through the ages and as I am concerned to
is
show
one of the most important axiological structures of State thinking. The
trope of the Golem is far reaching, for beyond its origin in Kabbalist speculations on
the creative power of the word, it has exerted its influence upon, for example,
Norbert Wiener one of the originators of cybernetics who saw fit to suggest that one
of the earliest computers be named Golem, see also his collection of essays God and
Golem Inc., and has generally served as a metaphor for passive matter activated by
force;
to its recent use by blind technophiles
as a
fashionably recondite metaphor for `matter out of control', it is in fact the model of
State science par excellence. For a detailed treatment of the history of the Golem see
G. Scholem's essay `The Idea of the Golem', and Moshe Idel's monumental Golem:
a transcendent
contrary
Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions
on the Artificial
Anthropoid.
his
Confessions,
for
Enneads
Plotinus
Book
VII
the
see
of
see
in
Evil',
Matter
`Plotinus
text
Denis
O'Brien's
the
and
my
are
quotes
on
paper
and
from Enneads 1.8.3.35-40 and are cited by O'Brien. For the beginnings of a critique
84
For Augustine
lecture
Platonism
`Evil
in
Bataille's
1947
George
the
on
matter-evil complex see
of
le
le
divin
`Du
his
Sadism',
the
et
rapport entre
same year,
review article of
and
Gnosticism'.
Materialism
`Base
breaking
his
and
article on
ground
mal', as well as
References
zu
The price for such heresies has differed through history. Whereas now it
be
difficult
kinds
funding
for
to
secure an academic position or
might simply
certain
his
formed
Beiser,
in
Spinozism
the
that
multifronted war on
of research,
account of
the backdrop to the writing of the Kantian critiques, writes in his The Fate of
85
Reason (Beiser 1987 48) that by 1710 in the German states there was a Catalogus
in
had
held
Anti-Spinozanorum
in
Leipzig
to
to
subscribe
which one
scriptorum
Century
in
Sixteenth
license.
R.
Mendoza
G.
that
to
teaching
writes
secure a
order
Oxford "every bachelor and master who dared to diverge from Aristotle's Organon,
indeed
24),
five
(Mendoza
1995
fined
it,
until
shillings"
was
or violate any point of
the late nineteenth century both Oxford and Cambridge were closed to religious
has
the
Nietzsche
most scathing attacks
of
one
written
of
course
nonconformists.
University
between
State
the
syllabi,
the
the
of
management
and
complicity
upon
kind
between
intimacy
this
censorship
the
to
of
peculiar
attention
paying particular
Educator'.
his
`Schopenhauer
in
as
the
of
paragraphs
closing
and philosophy
his
based
principally upon
Bruno's own critique of the academic politics of exclusion,
his
in
theme
is
deeper
is
Oxford
constant
a
and
study
of
worthy
at
experiences
The
Expulsion
the
Supper
Wednesday
Ash
The
of
in
See
and
particular
work.
Unity.
Cause,
Principle
found
in
be
and
Triumphant Beast, references are also to
bizarre
Patton
the
Paul
takes
86
It should be noted that in his translation
is
"matter
dej
informee"
ä
already
"la
as
est
the
matiere
sentence
step of rendering
here.
to
informed", it is, needless say, corrected
References
254
87
This article is published in English in Denis Hollier's
valuable collection of
lectures and other material connected to The College
Sociology
1937-39, pp.
of
73-84. Regrettably the history, trajectories, and influences both intellectual
and
political of the College have not yet been treated to the detailed study they so richly
deserve; it was without doubt one of the most important, innovative
and seminal
events of modern intellectual life. One of the reasons, I suspect for the absence of
lies
in
the nature of the concerns guiding the current orthodox reading
study
such a
Bataille,
crudely put, the `transgressive' reading. The Bataille that emerges from
of
the Collegeperiod is somewhat inassimilable to this reading, focusing as he does on
political and scientific, as opposed to literary and phenomenological questions. One
deal
to
admirable attempt
with this side of Bataille's work is Richman 1982.
Issues arising from Vernadskian themes in Bataille, Nietzsche's critique of science,
and related elements of superior materialism reappear in numerous places
throughout this thesis. Bataille's work has suffered from an exceptionally thin
both
for
by
is
inspiration:
the
that
to say,
a narrow
reception, governed,
most part,
largely
by
his
defined
is
Derrida's
`From
interests
in
that
the
one
essay
scope of
Restricted to General Economy: A Hegelianism Without Reserve'; directly related to
this is a severe limiting of the Bataillan corpus, a Bataille composed of his erotic
hence
his
`properly'
texts,
we
philosophical
more
novels, and a careful selection of
Bataille.
In
dominant
`transgressive'
image
the
the
the
current work, a
of
are given
Bataille's
by
is
to
this
upon
concentrating my attention
offered,
picture
corrective
by
imposing
is
this
a periodisation
case
of
no means a
economic and political works:
he
for
is
Bataille's
to
consistently produced work attuned
as self-evident,
career,
on
he
"the
Bataille's
issues.
calls
to economic and political
engagement with what
(Bataille
the
linked
to
the
globe"
movement of energy on
general problems that are
VII 27) ranges from the articles for Contre-Attaque and Acephale in the 1930's, and
Share.
The
Accursed
culminates in the already mentioned magnum opus,
NOTES TO CHAP
Benjamin
Walter
History'
Philosophy
88
of
In Thesis XVI of the `Theses on the
his
be
"in
to
historical
of
control
it
is
the
critic
task
the
materialist
that
of
writes
following
The
thesis,
history".
blast
the
of
to
continuum
open
enough
man
powers,
historical
that
theses,
the
such
theme,
the
permeates
which
elaborates on
"based
but
on
a
is
a
constructivism,
not a passive empiricism,
materialism
homogeneous
the
course
"blast
it
of
to
out
era
specific
a
seeks
constructive principle"
lifework".
the
life
of
out
the
work
1
history
[...
a
specific
or
era
out
of
a specific
of
history
the
of
to
continuum
they
that
"the
make
Again,
are about
awareness
their
action"
the
of
moment
the
at
is
classes
revolutionary
of
characteristic
explode
(Thesis XV).
References
M
89
For a detailed exposition of the concept of the `State-form', its differences
from the classical Marxist model, and the necessarily transcendent nature of State
thought see Hardt and Negri, Labor of Dionysus: A Critique of the State-Form. Of
particular relevance is the section called `Genealogy of the Constituent Subject', pp.
308-13.
The construction of this abstract diagram is sketched out in greater detail
in the previous chapter, `Elaborations on Brunian Materialism in Deleuze'. Antonio
Negri's work (1991 and 1994) on the identification of politics and ontology, in
Spinoza and Descartes in particular, is also essential in this respect.
90
Frances Yates offers a detailed account of the long history of heliocentrism,
Neopythagorean
Neoplatonic
in
to
the
the
and
role of
sun
paying especial attention
between
boundaries
how
As
index
the
were
artificial
an
of quite
mysticisms.
91
"science and Hermeticism in the Renaissance" (Yates 1964 155) she writes that
"Copernicus' discovery came out with the blessing of Hermes Trismegistus upon its
head, with a quote from that famous work in which Hermes describes the sunI
And
t...
the
in
Egyptians
their
moment,
the
crucial
at
religion
magical
of
worship
just after the diagram showing the new sun-centred system comes a reference to
Hermes Trismegistus
References
).
(loc.
the
cit.
sun"
on
266
92
For a snapshot
of the range of different interpretations
of the Brunian
achievement vis a vis Copernicanism,
and specifically, on the limitations of the
latter,
see Gatti (1999 102-6)
Whilst Yates is
and Yates (1964 237-9).
concerned to show either that Copernicanism is marginal to Bruno's thinking or else
that his writings on cosmology, far from being inspired by contemporary
science are
entirely indebted to hermeticism and Gnosticism, that he is concerned not with
but
"Egyptian
truth, magical truth" (Yates 1964 239). Gatti's book
scientific,
with
is dedicated to showing that Bruno is the first philosopher of the
new science, and
with regard to the issue at hand, that "Bruno never believed that Copernican
cosmology in its original formulation
abolished the celestial spheres. He claimed
that discovery for himself" (Gatti 1999 104). Yates' project is extraordinary for two
connected
here: first, whilst the great bulk of her
reasons worth mentioning
output is dedicated to Bruno, and as a whole constitutes an invaluable
scholarly
body of work
kept interest in him alive in the
almost singlehandedly
Anglophone world in the middle part of this century. And that second, this body of
dimensional
Bruno who is
to
constitutes
as
work
unrelenting attempt
portray a one
nothing more than "an out-and-out magician, an `Egyptian' and Hermetist of the
that
deepest dye" (Yates 1964 450); as such Yates' work acted as a dam for decades
by
kind
hopefully,
Gatti,
Mendoza,
the
and
myself.
preventing
of work carried out
Yates was, as Lindsay has pointed out, perhaps the last in the long line of Catholic
is
another), the
cosmologist
but
has
throughout
the
centuries,
whose
changed
manifestation
of whose work
him
belittle
Bruno's
has
to
to
reject
work, or
sideline and
remained constant:
object
detractors
Bruno
of
as a mad apostate.
both
that
pointed out
(the Catholic
Mendoza,
in his comparison
Stanley
Jaki
Bruno
of
with
Nietzsche,
has
by
by
their
contemporaries and
were grossly misunderstood
highly
[...
]
thinking
interpreters
their
their
was
subversive
as well
modern
many of
derangement"
219).
(Mendoza
1995
by
to
their
mental
enemies
some of
attributed
Finally, for a comprehensive survey of the varieties of Bruno interpretation
see
had
I
book
Gatti's
Unfortunately
(1998).
Antonio Calcagno
was published when
been
have
I
this
able
the
not
consequently
and
chapter,
of
writing
almost completed
The
liked.
that
have
I
fully
her
note
will
integrate
reader
to
as would
research as
Gatti,
1999
taken
1998,
Calcagno,
1995,
dates
Mendoza,
and
the publication
of
four
the
Nolan
in
interest
the
as we approach
together indicate an intensification of
hundredth anniversary of his immolation in 2000.
Smolin, whom we have encountered before, is rare amongst contemporary
for
Bruno
post-complexity,
his
in
contemporary,
of
positive assessment
cosmologists
93
cosmology.
References
M7-
94
For Deleuze and Guattari philosophy is characterised as a constructivism
with two interconnected yet distinct elements: "the creation of concepts and the
laying out of a plane" of immanence, this latter "constitutes the absolute ground of
deterritorialisation,
its
the foundation on which it creates its
philosophy,
earth or
concepts" (44/41). Philosophy in this sense is coterminous with immanence, it is not
that immanence is one concept among many that one can choose to think or not, at
the same time it is not a master key, for "whenever immanence is interpreted as
to Something,
(48/45);
transcendent"
immanent
be
Something
that
this
reintroduces
can
sure
we
defined
by
immanence
is
rather
philosophy
the
in
"Whenever
there
characterises
religion.
which
contradistinction
is transcendence [... I there is religion; and there is philosophy whenever there is
immanence" (46/43). There is no one plane of immanence; it is the mark of great
to the transcendent
"functionary"
the
to
as opposed
philosophers,
(Nietzsche
recognised guild of pseudo-thinkers"
(52/51),
Nietzsche's
"officially
1983 190), that they invent their
the
invention
It
is
that
immanence.
this
specific mode
gives
planes
of
own plane of
linear
for
it
is
succession,
time
of
a
not
question
a
as
stratigraphic,
philosophical
of
but
interlacing
dead
(a
Necronomicon),
no
list
of
planes,
the
an
rather
a
of names of
is
"Philosophy
below.
but
by
before
longer characterised
rather above and
or after,
becoming, not history; it is the coexistence of planes, not the succession of systems"
in
Bento
be
found
is
to
this
(59/59). An excellent, extended treatment of
matter
Prado Jr. 1998.
Deleuze
from
and
in
the preceding paragraph are
All nonsourced quotations
Guattari's
References
What is Philosophy?
258
99
Recall that Norbert
Wiener acknowledges Leibniz as the "patron
for
saint
cybernetics" (Wiener 1994 12) for two reasons: first, for anticipating mathematical
notation and second for constructing
an early symbolic logic; but one can also
construe a third reason, and that is for the implications of Leibniz's thought for the
mechanical actualisation of thought "in the metal". However as Ernst Bloch argues,
the credit here should go to Lull, whose combinatory circles take pride of place as
the first abstract diagrams of a calculating device, and now "Lull's arithmeticised
dream has been turned into a whole intellectual industry,
with speed as witchcraft"
(Bloch 1986 652). Both Yates and Bloch show that a considerable
Bruno's
part of
work, principally his earlier texts on mnemonic techniques, constitute an attempt to
improve upon or rationalise the Lullian art. It should though be born in mind that,
for Bruno's syncretism,
his
as with all of the other figures cannibalised
interpretation
Lull
"even
is
of
more peculiar, and more remote from the medieval
Lull,
than [that
found] in normal Renaissance Lullism" (Yates 1966 207). Once
again then we see Bruno's decisive stamp on one of the key figures of the Deleuzian
genealogy. Calcagno is right to point out that "the exact relationship between
Leibniz and Bruno has never been established" (Calcagno 1998 38), however
Bruno's
is wide, as is evidenced by the frequency of his
from
Bruno,
The
Fold:
brevis,
Leibnizian
is
in
in
taken
the
monad
appearances
]
"Neoplatonic
[...
for
its
in
to a
the
transformation
of
emanations
role
principally
influence
large
on Leibniz
(Deleuze
immanence"
1993
24);
the supposition
of
zone
parasitism is Brunian; as is the Leibnizian complicatio.
of a universal
In what is, I suppose, a landmark essay `Modernity-- An Incomplete
Project' Jürgen Habermas notes the frequency, dating back to the fifth century, of
the use of the term `modernity' to denote "the consciousness of an epoch that relates
itself to the past of antiquity, in order to view itself as the result of a transition
from the old to the new" (Habermas 1985 3.)
96
his
Bruno's
Calcagno's
interesting
entire
97
Antonio
reads
analysis of
identity
this
dedicated
multiplicity.
to
and
of
unity
of
out
working
a
as
philosophy
in
See
the
Nietzsche's
in
collection
particular
98
This is a common theme
work.
69-76;
the
Truth,
Philosophy
notion
in
and
title
pp.
this
and
of aphorisms under
health
ideal
the
the
Nietzschean,
great
of
pursues
that the perfect nihilist, the
(1974 § 382).
German
The
in
Feuerbach
99
Marx and Engels have a similar critique of
hand
the
is
one
confined on
Ideology, "Feuerbach's `conception' of the sensuous world
`Man'
he
feeling;
to
posits
it,
the
mere
other
to mere contemplation of
and on
(1976
48).
German'"
`the
`Man'
is
historical
really
instead of `real
man'.
References
259
100
For an account of the role that the
rising tide of Spinozist inspired Natur
had
philosophie
upon much of Kantianism see Fred Beiser's chapter on `The Rise of
Spinozism in Germany 1680-1786'
referred to above. Zammito's work is also
indispensable for understanding
the role that opposition to Spinozism played in
inspiring the critical system, and in particular the third
critique, again suggesting
that Kant is principally motivated by a need to
combat hylozoism. Zammito goes so
far as to suggest that it is impossible
to understand
Kantianism
without
considering this polemic and its political dimensions.
101
Between the completion of the manuscript of The Book
Revolutions
in
the
of
1530 and its eventual publication, Copernicus vacillated, terrified by the possible
consequences of the public availability of his book and his neurotic obsession with
maintaining a Pythagorean secrecy. Like Copernicus, Darwin too vacillated in
his
publishing
genuinely revolutionary findings, unlike Copernicus, Darwin was
genuinely terrified about the social, political and religious conflagration that his
did,
work might, and
spark. Darwin's fears are minutely detailed in Desmond and
Moore's magnificent biography. When Copernicus' book was eventually published it
came with a preface by the cofounder of Lutheranism, Andreas Osiander, who
unlike his colleagues, Luther himself and Melanchton, was favourable to
Copernicanism. There is some historical controversy as to Copernicus' attitude
towards this preface, indeed it is not even certain that he was in any position to
death
his
book
hours
before
his
by
first
it,
the
read
printed copy of
as
arrived only
had
become
Earth
his
the
time
soon
mind
apparently
quite as unhinged as
which
for
it
be.
it,
is
The
that
this
mentioning
and
my
sole
reason
would
preface,
point of
describes the contents of the Revolutions as "hypotheses [which] need not be true
be
found
Koestler
573
in
1959
full
(the
the
text
n.
of
preface can
nor even probable"
59).
Eroicofurore is the title of one of Bruno's books, the most recent English
The
Heroic
Bruno's
Giordano
by
Memmo
Paul
is
that
translation of which
entitled
Frenzies, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1964).
102
This quotation has a page reference, rather than a section number as is
The
Fearless
Ones'
book
five
We
because
it
is
the
of
Nietzsche
of
motto
usual with
Gay Science. According to Walter Kaufmann's commentary, this splendid quotation
French
de
Turenne,
general.
Vicomte
the
from
century
the
seventeenth
great
comes
103
References
260
10'
That
"Nietzsche
was aroused
from
his dogmatic
(Kaufmann
slumber
by Darwin"
1962 142), is a commonplace. But
what is less remarked upon is that
whilst Nietzsche had a long and sustained engagement
with Darwin, it is
Darwin
substantially
a
mediated through the book that Nietzsche called
variously
"treasure
house" and `the most significant
a
philosophical work to have appeared in
the last hundred years'Friedrich Lange's History
of Materialism. Of the small,
but growing literature on the influence,
upon Nietzsche, of Lange's astonishing and
compendious three volume work, I have consulted the work of Stack (1983),
and
Ansell Pearson (1988).
A detailed examination of the complex
Nietzsche and
set of relationshipsLange, Nietzsche and Darwinis beyond the scope of the present thesis. However,
I would like to examine some
aspects of the latter elsewhere. Especially worth
pursuing would be the resonances of Darwin's horrendous realisation that "It is
absurd to talk of one animal being higher than another [... ] We consider those,
where the intellectual faculties [are] most developed as highest.
bee
doubtless
-A
would [use] instincts [as a criterion]" (Darwin quoted in Desmond and Moore 1997
232) in Nietzsche's
diagnosis
his
of nihilism
and
coterminous
project of
It might also be pointed out, although not pursued here, that
perspectivism.
Spinoza had advanced an equally radical perspectivism in his
polemical letters on
superstition to Boxel. Spinoza writes "when you say that if I deny to God the acts of
seeing, of hearing, of attending and of willing etc. [... ) I suspect therefrom that you
believe that there is no perfection greater than that which is
unfolded in the said
attributes [... ] I believe that a triangle, if only it had power of speech, would say in
like manner that God is eminently triangular,
and a circle would say that the
Divine Nature is eminently circular" (Spinoza 1966 LVI). One of the principal
objects of Nietzsche's implacable philosophical scorn is the skin of humanism that
bounds the dominant traditions of philosophical history, an anthropomorphism
that Spinoza had
stretched between Plato and Kant. An anthropomorphism,
his
banish
from
I
here
"All
to
thought:
the
attempted
own
prejudices
undertake to
expose depend on this one: that men commonly suppose that all natural things act,
line
There
direct
do,
is
EI
(Spinoza
1985
a
as men
appendix).
on account of an end"
from this Spinozism to Marx's critique of reification. This humanism which grounds
feel
ie.
instrumentalism
("to
`humanise'
to
the
ourselves more and more
world,
an
by
is
§
613)
Nietzsche
the
it",
1968
towards
cosmos
skewered
masters within
Nietzschean perspectivism and its speculations upon the possibilities of nonorganic
by
"interpretations"
Nietzsche
that
the
writes
nonhuman senses.
perception and
human
"than
insects
different
ones are
merely
other
species of animals and
The
§
616).
(Nietzsche
1968
existence of such senses
perhaps somewhere possible"
deep
from
the
by
is now supported
sea
studies of
solid empirical evidence ranging
fish that can see light at wavelengths well beyond the range perceptible to the
human (eg. Pain 1999), to the sonic abilities of bats and dogs, and beyond the
Uexküll's
to
von
senses
References
writing
on the temporalities
different
organisms ranging
of
261
from the tick to the tree, to a bacteria.
The line of thought opened here, has, it
can be argued, culminated in, or at
least currently arrived at,
what Ilya Prigogine has called the end of certainty. In
Prigogine's
interpretation,
is the apotheosis,
quantum
mechanics,
and
actualisation,
of the analysis of nihilism
and its transvaluation
that we have
developed out of Nietzsche. Prigogine
writes that "we are on the eve of the
`probabilistic revolution', which has been
going on for centuries. Probability is no
longer a state of mind due to
our ignorance, but the result of laws of nature"
(Prigogine 1997 132): we must henceforth
confront not a relativity of truth, but a
truth of the relative. (See Deleuze 1993 20,1985/89
191/147 and Deleuze and
Guattari 1991/94 55/54,123/130).
NOTES TO APPENDIX
105
All notes are my own, excepting numbers 1,17, and 21 which
were added
by the editors of Bataille's Euvres Completes. I have however
made an obvious
to note 1. The revised text of this talk, delivered at the `College
addition
Philosophique' on Monday 12 May 1947, was published as `Sade et la morale' in
La profondeur
the third volume of the Cahiers du College
et le rhythme,
Philosophique. It is reprinted in Bataille's (Euvres Completes VII pp. 445-52.
The principal
for
including
reason
this piece rather than the later article is
tightens or clarifies some of his formulations, it
that whilst in the latter Bataille
lacks the instructive discussion session that follows the present lecture which falls
French
for
Sade criticism, that is the appearance of
a
within
modern
crucial period
debate
Sade's
the
to
a cluster of questions which solidified around
as
responsibility
for Nazism.
On this issue, Deleuze has described Bataille's
Eroticism as "a text
Sade to Nazism, Georges Bataille
that ought to invalidate
all theories relating
language
it
is
is
because
Sade
that
the
paradoxical
essentially that of a
of
explains
Maurice
ideas.
lecture
This
those
the
(Deleuze
1989
17).
germ of
contains
victim"
Lever, in his recent biography of Sade, Sade: A Biography, locates the beginnings of
Lectures pour un front, published in his
Batons, chiffres et lettres (Paris: Gallimard, 1965), in which the latter writes that
"the world imagined by Sade and willed by his characters (and why not by Sade
this "debate"
in Raymond
Queneau's
by
Gestapo
[...
]
the
the
with
world ruled
precursor of
by
but
head
thousands
longer
horrors
of
their
practised
a
man's
within
confined
no
fanatics. Disagreeable as it may be, philosophies end in charnel houses. " Lever
Allies
the
Six
3,1945.
"November
earlier
months
notes that this text appeared on
had liberated Buchenwald. " In the present article, as in his prescient and then
himself? ) was a hallucinatory
disengagement
Nietzsche
of
from Nazism in `Nietzsche and the
took a position diametrically opposed
almost singular
Fascists' (Acephale 2, January 1937). Bataille
to that of the bulk of his censorious contemporaries.
References
Bataille's reading of politically
262
"dangerous"
texts and authors represents a serious challenge and a
or ethically
to the vacuities of the procedures associated with
powerful alternative
deconstruction and its subdisciplines in this respect. Starting
out from Bataille's
approach here, it is apparent that there is substance to be extracted from an
examination of the panoply of responses generated by the three most prominent
affaires in twentieth century French thought (those focused around Sade, Nietzsche,
later
Heidegger)
that would allow for a more sophisticated, and infinitely more
and
productively political approach to the immanence of violence to what is called
has
hitherto
been
by
deconstructive
dominance
than
the
culture
allowed
of
concerns
in these areas. That Bataille played a crucial role in, and took a revolutionary and
far
astonishingly
sighted position on, the first two of these affaires, is worth noting
here, but is, unfortunately, beyond further comment. We can simply note that the
by
both
Bataille
Nietzsche
Sade
taken
positions
on
and
were stigmatised and
when
by
beyond
Nazism
the
as
virtually the
complicit,
grave, with
anathematised
depth
intelligentsia
French
is
to
the
testimony
the
and untimeliness of
entirety of
his reading, to his absolute disregard for the conventions of intellectual good taste,
directions
in
directions
his
that
in
thought
to
ran
and
pursuing
courage
and
by
intellectual
the
those
to
authorities of
and
moral
sanctioned
absolutely counter
bourgeois France. True to his intentions to live by Nietzsche, Bataille is almost
Nietzsche's
he
in
that
castigation of academic philosophy as
escape
would
alone
having disturbed noone (see the third section of `Schopenhauer as Educator'). It is
for the maintenance of a disturbing Bataille that I have translated this piece. The
Guattari
Felix
Deleuze
by
Gilles
be
and
what
asked are crystallised
questions to
by
Heidegger
Nazism
have called that reterritorialisation of philosophy on
effected
"constitutive
the
is
it
of
geophilosophy,
they
a
of
a
question
write,
of which
Guattari
1990/94
(Deleuze
and
nonphilosophy"
with
philosophy
relationship of
but
the
I
take
full
for
here
only
can
104). There is not the space
exposition
"strangest
the
be
that
commentaries
taken,
to
of
the
to
not
path
note
opportunity
dark"
in
"still
leave
the
us
[... ] complicated and convoluted arguments" that only
Spirit:
Of
Derrida's
Jacques
(ibid. ), this is the interlocking set of texts comprising
Philippe
`the
jews',
Heidegger
Lyotard's
and
and
Heidegger and the Question, J-F
is
that,
I
What
on
Politics.
suggest
Art
would
Heidegger,
Lacoue-Labarthe's
and
by
inaugurated
Bataille,
that
`official',
issues
the
current
this and so many other
domesticated
least,
version.
Derrida, is a severely inadequate, and at the very
References
263
107
See Nietzsche, Will to Power (1968) § 676, "We
are in the phase of modesty
of consciousness."
107
A critical
Boa
Bataille
review
article
confrontation here would be with Plotinus, principally his
The
in
Enneads I. 8 `The Nature and Source of Evil', that "the cause of
statement
evil is matter. "
had begun this characterisation
figure
the
of
of Platonism in a
of Simone Petrement's book Le dualisme dans l'histoire de la
philosophie et des religions entitled `Du rapport entre le divin et le mal' (XI
198-207). Here he had outlined two of the themes of the current lecture: first the
lies
for
Plato
in "the subordination of reason to the unchaining of
that
notion
evil
the passions" (Bataille XI 208); his contention that contrary to Platonism it is not
but
divine.
basis
is
This
is
that
to
the
the
reason,
passion
allied
of Bataille's
delirious
location
horror"
"ungraspable
(Bataille
XI
207) in
the
materialism,
of an
the heart of the sacred. One could also trace this theme through Enlightenment
founding
An
the
assumptions
of
anthropology.
and
subsequent
progressivism
be
Kant's
in
important
to
this
critique of the
regard would
moment
examine
"despotism of desires" at Critique of Judgement § 83.
See Sade's various arguments that it is imperative to "get rid forever of the
life
is
law
because
the
which attempts a man's
atrocity of capital punishment,
109
the
(Sade
493/310),
1966/91
of
a
principle
as
unjust,
"Sade
Lyotard
Economy
that
his
Libidinal
In
Republican, atheist state.
notes
law,
is
because
it
is
to
that
infamy
death
is
a
say
that
the
a
an
penalty
clearly says
be
it
is
if
more
a
intensities,
no
would
passionate,
murder
whereas
of
regulation
is
Bataille
Sade
The
that
182).
(Lyotard
1993
concerned
is
than
orgasm"
crime
Sade
Lucretius,
the
Spinoza
"Sade
is
lecture
is
of
the
and
this
throughout
who
with
libidinal
the
one
etre
materialist,
`Francais, encore un effort pour
republicains', a
64).
1993
(Lyotard
desire
desire
here
to
sustain"
and
we
impractical,
inadmissible"
law,
"since
the
law
cold
murder
110
Sade argues that the the
commit
cannot
in
justify
to
man
the
able
to
are
is
total
which
passions
impersonal,
stranger
a
and
is
to
Nature,
from
able
his
impressions
who
the cruel act of murder. Man receives
Nature
is
it
to
and
law,
as
opposed
the
him
the
always
forgive
this act;
contrary,
on
herself
the
be
to
same
her,
permit
from
authorised
cannot
receiving nothing
have
the
law
rights"
same
the
having
cannot
the
same motives,
extravagances: not
(Sade 1966/91 493/310).
References
264
111
This recalls in many ways Nietzsche's
coruscating attack on the "weakness
of the outlines and the dullness of the colours in the picture of modern life"
(Nietzsche 1983 149). Artaud's looking back to the
medieval days of mysticism
where, as Agamben says, the everyday was not so horribly banal as it is now, but
"the
was
speck of impurity around which experience accrued its authority, like a
pearl" (Agamben 1993,14). Thanks to Catherine Mary Dale for this reference.
112
There is a discussion of this strange phrase in the question
session
following the lecture, that is, on p. 377 of the French edition.
113
See Pierre Klossowski's critique of the concept of the general will on the
basis that "logic then commands that we take the right to exist
away from him who
remains outside the species and is thus necessarily a monster, " in (Klossowski
1991 125). Sade again "now, would it not be to carry your injustice beyond all
limits were you to send the law to strike the man incapable of bowing to the law? "
(Sade 1966/91 493/310).
114
The phrase used by Bataille here is "une espece de culbute de lui-meme"; it
is worth noting that "culbuter quelqu'un" means to "fuck somebody over."
115
For earlier elements of Bataille's understanding of the relationships
between immanence and transcendence see Bataille 1992, especially pp. 157-60.
116
See Bataille,
`Attraction
and Repulsion
and Tears, ' in (Hollier 1988 103-12),
I: Tropisms,
Sexuality,
Laughter
109-12.
pp.
especially
See Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari 1980/87 229/187, and Deleuze
1968/94 55/37 on this leap. One should also bear in mind the consistent
On
Nietzsche.
figure
in
Bataille's
this
appearance of
117
his
Bataille
VII
448)
'
(Bataille
la
118
In `Sade et
point more
makes
morale,
from
distinctly
is
hand
is
separated
"This
table
as
resting
my
which
upon
clearly:
between
is
There
be:
proximity
much
as
the
nothing.
changes
proximity
as
could
me
"
if
table
the
this table and me as
were on another planet.
in
Kojeve,
Alexandre
is
Hegel',
that
X,
Lecturer
119
See also the `Letter to
on
)
90.
1988
(Hollier
in
life,
"
is
"open
that
Bataille
the
my
wound
of
writes
which
table
the
initially
in
on
two
play
a
as
Bataille is using this reference
120
ways,
in
pointer
a
had
been
interested
as
he
second
and
earlier,
whose physical existence
law.
table
transcendental
of
towards the concept of a
References
265
121
The phrase used by Bataille is "sortir de
ses gonds," the expression "sortir
(hors) de ses gonds" means "to lose one's temper, to fly
handle.
the
"
off
122
In `Sade et la Morale' (Bataille VII 450), Bataille
writes "If one loses the
control that reason had over violence (the sacred), human possibility fades away."
123
The audience, of course, would have heard the
second sense of "sauter, "
that is fucking.
124
The context of this line of argumentation lies in Bataille's reintegration
of
horror
(more broadly, perhaps crudely, the transgressive) within the
experiences of
human
remit of
experience. One of Bataille's most powerful formulations of this
follows:
"Auschwitz, like the Pyramids or the Acropolis is the
position runs as
achievement, the sign of man. Man's image is henceforth inseparable from a gas
XI 226). A further
lies
in Bataille's
this
chamber..., " (Bataille
aspect of
does
but
in a way that completely
with
not yet exist",
dialectic,
doctrines
truck
teleology,
escapes any
any
with
with project orientated
of
his and our time: his reading of Sade is conditioned by the impossibility of his being
the "what
preoccupation
by
those whose
a pretentious
read without
in
Sade
"resembles
that
relation to their
relationship
of primitive subjects
with
king, whom they adore and loathe, and whom they cover with honors and narrowly
a "vulgar
impotence...
hypocrisy"
11154). The figure of Sade is central in these two respects to the
Use
'The
heterology.
For
Bataille's
these
theory
questions see
of
of
(Bataille
"
confine,
development
Value of D. A. F. de Sade', (Bataille
II 54-69).
The complexity of this paragraph lies within Bataille's extended use of the
125
leap, le saut, here the suggestion is that contemplation of the moral leaps that
Sade's characters make puts one into a contagious communication with the
hauteur,
lies
introduction
in
the
The
this
a
of
impossible.
the
of
strength
unknown,
knowledge
by
The
in
high
jump
a
is
offered
hauteur
possibilities
athletics.
a
saut en
by
the
overbearing
doubly
inscribed
is
representation
Sade's
of
a
plane
on
work
of
final
deictic
in
the
phrase.
the
of
weight
XI
172-87),
(Bataille
d'Hiroshima'
review
a
d'habitants
de
126
`A propos
recits
1990).
Penguin,
(London:
Hiroshima
book
Hersey's
John
article of
that
Bataille
de
Sade'
posta
F.
D.
A.
suggests
Value
Use
`The
In
127
of
the
political
to
in
and
economic
addition
require,
would
society
revolutionary
its
having
orgiastic
goal
as
"antireligious
organisation
asocial
and
an
organisation,
"this
that
to
he
"
destruction,
argue
on
forms
goes
different
in
of
participation
the
than
scandalously
one
have
morality
of
conception
other
no
can
organisation
11
69).
(Bataille
"
de
Sade,
by the Marquis
first
for
time
the
affirmed
References
g
128
On this involution in Kant consider Deleuze's claim that "this is what Kant
Critique
least
in
Pure
Reason,
the
saw so profoundly
of
at
at one point: the manner
in which the speculative death of God entails the fracture of the I, the simultaneous
disappearance
of rational
theology
and rational
(Deleuze
"
1968/94
psychology.
117/86).
129
Bataille concludes `Sade et la morale' with a suggestion that might be
derived from this brief exchange. "In order for words to correspond to my passion, I
`discourse'
from
have
have
I
to
indeed
to
the
pass
renounce
enchaining, would
would
to poetry. It is in this sense that Kant's judgment was sound when he made art the
identical
is
domain
in
the
is
the
end
which
only
model of the moral act, since art
level
is
the
discourse
to
insufficient:
Bu
is
of
this
the
raised
not
still
means.
with
VII
452).
lucidity.
(Bataille
'
by
abandoning
poetry simply
References
267
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