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Breeding Demons
A critical enquiry into the relationship between Kant and
Deleuzewith specific reference to women
Diane J. Beddoes
A thesis submitted for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
at the
University of Warwick
Department of Philosophy
16th May 1996
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
iii
Summary
iv
Abbreviations
v
Introduction
: Side-Communication
I
Revolution
1
1
II
Critique
9
III
Demons
22
Chapter 1:
`a book on an enemy... '
System:FacultiesinTheory and Practice
I
11
System-A Gap
III
Deleuze'sEscapeRoute
IV
ProblemI
30
31
38
45
48
Chapter 2:
Losing Face
53
I
II
III
55
63
74
Recognition
Sense
ProblemII
Chapter 3:
Forces and Deductions
Attraction and Repulsion
I
Repulsion
Attraction
II
Lagoon Dynamics
III
DeductionI: Kant
1V
Deduction11:Deleuze
V
Demon1
89
92
93
99
103
110
113
119
Chapter 4:
PassiveSynthesis
125
I
Synthesis
130
11
Passive
141
Chapter 5:
A Row of Doors
Soul
I
II
Imagination
Continuity
III
146
146
155
162
Chapter 6:
Becoming-woman
171
I
Receptacle, which is now called space
171
II
III
Turn of the screw
A Kind of Schizophrenia
176
186
IV
VA
Out of the middle
HesitantDiscipless
188
192
Chapter 7:
Breeding Demons
I
Changingthe Object
II
Making Femininity
III
Market Making
IV
Becoming-imperceptible
V
BreedingDemons
201
201
208
212
218
222
Conclusion:
No Tribunal
227
Endnotes
231
Bibliography
271
ii
Acknowledgements
I ,would like to thank Andrew Benjamin for always being encouraging, Keith AnsellPearsonfor reading this at short notice and Nick Land for not interfering at all.
Specialthanks are for Adrian Haldane, for his coffee, his design senseand his
supremecalm, and my mum, for too many things to list.
111
Summary
This thesis addressesthe relation between Immanuel Kant and Gilles Deleuze, with
referenceto women. It argues that Deleuze's "methods" reveal an intensive dyanamic
in Kant obscuredby readings which concentrateon the molar structuresin his thought
and that this dynamic is implicated with the deployment by Deleuze (and Guattari) of
becoming-womanas a middle line which escapesthe rational tribunal. It insists that a
philosophy of difference function as a positive elimination of relations to unity, to the
subject and to other figures of power in philosophical thought and that Deleuze's
oeuvre is a critical and creative engagementwith the transformation of philosophical
problems and the relation of thinking to history which emergefrom this.
The other theme, that of women, is addressedthrough Luce Irigaray's reading
of Kant and Rosi Braidotti's reading of becoming-woman. I argue that whilst the
former's critique of an uncritically assumedsymmetry in Kant's work is effective and
well-directed, shebecomescaught in her own methodologyof jamming, but that there
are nonethelessstrong and productive directions in her thought, many of which are
parallel and/or connected to those of Deleuze and Guattari's becoming-woman.
Against Braidotti's interpretation of becoming-woman, I argue that it adopts a molar
political strategy and as such does not connectwith the force behind this thought.
Lastly, this thesis is an argument against bilateral sexual difference, in favour
of distributive or `n-sexes': the title, Breeding Demons connectsthe theme of demons
in Deleuze's writing to the cycleswhich effect such distributions.
Iv
Abbreviations
B, 1949
Boyer, C. B., The History of the Calculus and Its Conceptual
Development (New York, Dover Publications)
B, 1989
Battersby,C., Genderand Genius:Towards a FeministAesthetics
(Landon,The Women'sPressLtd.,)
B, 1991
Braidoäi, R, Patterns of Dissonance:a study of women in
(Cambridge,Polity Press)
contemporaiyphilosophy.
B, 1994
Braidotti, K, Nomadic Subjects,(New York: ColumbiaUniversity
Press)
B, 1985[1]
Braudel, F., Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Ce tury.
Volume 1: The Structures of Everyday Life, tr. Miriam Kochan,
revised by Sian Reynolds, (London: Fontana Press)
B, 1985[21
Civilization and Capitalism.15th-18thCentury.Volume 2:
The Wheelsof Commercetr., Miriam Kochar, revisedby
,
SianReynolds,(London:FontanaPress)
D, 1963,1984 Deleuze,Gilles, La philosophiecritiquede Kant (Paris:PUF),trans.
Kanes Critical Philosophy, Tr. Hugh Tomlinsai and Barbara
Habberjam(London:The AthlonePress)
D, 1968,1994
Difference et Repetition (Paris: PUF), trans. Difference and
etition tr. Paul Patton, (London: The Athlone Press)
D, 1969
'Zola et la felure, prefaceto Zola, La BeteHumaine,(Paris:
Gallimard)
D, 1969,1990
L,ogique du seas (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit), trans. The
Logic of Sense,tr. Mark Lester with Charles Stivale, (New
York: Columbia University Press)
D, 1988
Bergsonism. (New York, Zone Books)
D, 1993[1]
Critique et Clinigue, (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit)
V
D, 1993[2]
The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, tr. Tom Conley,
(London:Athlone)
DB, 1979
Deleuze, G., and Bene, C., Superpositions, (Paris: Les Editions de
Minuit)
DG, 1972,1984 Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F., L'Anti-Oedipe: Capitalisme et
Schizophr6nie(Paris,Les Editionsde Minuit), trans. Anti
us:
Capitalismand Schizophrenia,
tr. RobertHurley, Mark Seem,Helen
R. Lane,(Landan:lhe AthlonePress)
DG, 1980,1988
Mille Plateaux: Capitalisme et Schizophrenie 2 (Paris, Les
Editions de Minuit), trans. A Thousand Plateaus:
Capitalism
(Und:
DG, 1994
and Schizophrenia, tr.
The Athlone Press)
Brian
Massumi,
What is Phdosoahy?(London, Verso)
DP, 1977,1987 Deleuze, G. and Pamet, C., Dialogues, (Paris: Aux Editions
Flammarion),trans. Dialogues,tr. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara
Habberjam(London:The AthlonePress)
F,1992
Friedman,M., Kant and the Exact Sciences,(Cambridge:Harvard
UniversityPress)
G, 1987
Gleick,J., Chaos:Making a New Science,(London:Abacus)
I, 1974,1985
Irigaray,Luce, Speculumde I'Autre Femme,(Paris:Les Editionsde
Minuit), trans. Speculumof the Other Woman, tr. G. C. Gill
(Ithaca:CornellUniversityPress)
1,1977,1985
Ce Sexe Oui Men Est Pas Un. (Paris: Les Editions de
Minuit), trans. This sex which is not one. tr. Catherine
Porter (Ithaca: Cornell University Press),
K, vol no
Kant, Immanuel, Kants gesammelteSchriften. Herausgegebenvon
der Königlich PreußischenAkademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin
(Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co)
M, 1992
Massumi, B., A User's Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia:
Deviations from Deleuze and Guattari (Cambridge: The MiT Press)
Ili
L, 1973
Leibniz, G. W., Philosophical Writings, (London:J.M. Iknt & Sons.
Ltd. )
L, 1994
Lazreg, M., Women's Experienceand Feminist Epistemology,a
critical new-rationalist approach' in Knowing the Difference:
Feminist Perspectivesin Epistemology ed. Kathleen Lumen
(Landon:Routledge)
PS, 1985
Prigogine, I., and Stengers, I., Order out of Chaos (London,
Flamingo)
S,1991
Stone,S., mie empirestrikesback:a posttranssexual
manifesto),in
Epstein,J. and Straub,K. (ed) Bodyguards:the cultural politics of
genderambiguem(Landon:Routledge)
S,1992
Sagan,D., 'Metametazoa:Biology and Multiplicity,, in J. Crary and
S. Kwinter (ed.), IncorporationsZone6 (New York Urzone)
Iv1I
Introduction
Side-Communication
`Philosophie, rien que de la philosophic, au sens traditionnel du
'
mot'.
Two primary themes inform the direction of this thesis. The first is the
relation of Immanuel Kant and Gilles Deleuze and the second,the position of women
in philosophy, both as philosophers and as creatureswith a philosophical design which
women themselves have had no part in creating. The two problems connect in the
concept of becoming-woman, found in Mille Plateaux (1980), the second of the two
volumes of Capitalisme et Schizophrenie,which Deleuze co-wrote with Felix Guattari.
I
Revolution
Each element - Kant, Deleuze and women - is attached in its own way to
revolution. The French revolution `fords in the hearts of all spectators(who are not
engaged in this game themselves) a wishful participation that borders closely on
enthusiasm', Kant wrote, sounding close to enthusiasm himself, from the safe, if by
that time censorial Prussian State under the rule of Frederick William 11 Under his
.2
uncle, Frederick the Great, Prussia had been shapedby a thirst for power and glory,
rationalized through the medium of Enlightenment ideas. Unlike his mystically
inclined nephew, Frederick was religiously indifferent, believing his authority restedin
the State itself; and he set about shaping it in a way which would reflect this status.He
instigated massive land-reclamation and colonization projects; he established a huge
bureaucratic administration; his codification and uniformization of the law resulted in
a new political character, the citizen; and he quieted the Prussian aristocracy, enlisting
their servicesfor the State with privileges and rewards. For Frederick, the idea of the
1
Introduction
State as servant to the people was anathema:to Voltaire, he wrote: `I view my subjects
like a herd of stagson some noble's estate[;] their only function is to reproduceand fill
the Space' Kant flourished on Frederick's estate, and could observe from its safe
.3
less
in
less
the
order
with
revolutions
areas
of
world,
stable
pasturesevents unfolding
than that of Frederick.
Deleuze's pre-1968 writing has the appearance of conservatism, in both
language and tone. But the appearance is misleading, and to sustain it requires
deliberate effort. His collaboration with Felix Guattari in the two volumes of
Capitalisme et Schizophrenie effected a transformation in thought, taking it out of the
academyand restoring it to life and desire, energizing language with fresh air. It sides
l'Urstaat
fascisme
lequel
hante
'Democratie,
ou
socialisme,
n'est
par
politics;
no
with
comme modele inegalable (democracy, fascism, or socialism, which of these is not
haunted by the Urstaat as a model without equal)?'4 Attacking, with joy, the oedipal,
the familial, the statist, the fascistic, the ideological, the patrimonial and the repressive,
L'anti-oedipe, the first volume, is thought as exterminating angel. To the extent that
thought returns to the subject and to subjection, `L'anti-oedine a ete un echec
5
complet'.
Yet there are continuities which run throughout his work, consistent themes;
an initial list might include intensities, the problem of critique as production, the body,
the strangulation of thought by consciousnessand conscience.And consistent names:
Spinoza, Artaud, Freud, Nietzsche, Marx, Leibniz, Kant, Simondon, Canetti, Geoffroy
St. Hilaire - again naming only a selection. May `68 and the collaboration with
Guattari catalysedthe assemblageof these charactersand themes, together with many
others, into an up and running machine of thought without image or single origin,
which proliferates potential directions with each reading. There is
2
treachery in
Introduction
choosing to follow the continuities, as this thesis does, rather than emphasizing the
break But:
`Etre traitre ä son propre regne, titre traltre ä son sexe, ä sa classe,ä
sa majorite - quelle autre raison d'ocrire?
(What other reasonis there for writing than to be traitor to one's own
reign, traitor to one's sex, to one's class, to one's majority?)' (DP,
1977:56; 1987:44)
In an attack on the re-domesticationof thought in France in the `70's, Deleuze
points to the convergenceof disparate and apparently contrary positions on one agreed
point: hatred of May `68, and the declared impossibility of revolution, either explicit or
tacit, in the enthusiasm for the principle of election. For this, one must first place
oneself as a subject,a citizen -a Staatsbürger;for this man, Deleuze argues,revolution
becomes`1'actepur du penseurqui la pense impossible (the pure act of a thinker who
thinks it [revolution] impossible)'6A similar convergencecan be seentoday also, this
time in relation to the reception of Deleuze's work, and this time the point of unity is
possession.Those who do not live up to the revolutionary potential are castigatedfor
their `craven submissionto the Academy', whilst those less craven are charged with a
range of crimes from mis-reading, philosophical inadequacy, outright lunacy, and
desiring the impossible.' Each side has its orthodoxies and its enemies, its image of
revolution and of thought. A running theme throughout Deleuze's writing is that of the
image of thought, and the stultifying effect it has on the potentials for thinking. This
thesis claims neither right or wrong, truth or falsity. It is an idea, a problem which does
not here pretend to a solution. Indeed, whether writing solvesanything is doubtful.
Introduction
This brings me to the third theme, that of women. At the time of both
revolutions, the Kantian and Deleuzian, the role of women was in transformation.
What characterizedfemale nature becameuncertain towards the end of the eighteenth
century, many qualities previously attributed to women became associated with
maleness- the sublime and genius both attribute a femininity to men, and a relation
with nature and imagination which had previously been associatedwith the wildness
and unrestrained immorality of women. Christine Battersby writes: `there was no
longer a consensusabout which features of the psyche doomed females to perpetual
inferiority', and traces their re-definition as culturally refined, self-controlled (when
virtuous), and generally domesticated!
Kant solves the problem of apparently contrary qualities of sexual wildness
and cultural refinement by distinguishing between an anthropological and a cultural
perspective on women. In an uncivilized state, superiority belongs to man, and the
proper nature of women is as unrecognizable in a crude state of nature as `that of the
crab apple and the wild pear, which reveal their diversity only when they are grafted or
inoculated'! It is only through culture - the end of a reasonwhich women do not have that properly female qualities develop, a beautiful understanding and sensible virtue
fitting her for marriage and legal reception of nature's true gift, the foetus.
Concomitant with the culturally driven emergenceof qualities which, in a natural state
remain indiscernible, women appear to achieve a lind of activity, or power, which is
exercised against or over men. However, the range of this power is limited to
domesticity and expressesa desire for domination which is revealed through tears,
nagging, manipulation and a shrewdness in the exercise of her charms, as a
1°
is
`imperceptibly
fettered
by
consequenceof which man
a child'. Whilst she `should
11,
[herrschen]'
Queen of the domestic arena, `supreme command in the
reign
household' is the prerogative of `only one person who co-ordinates all occupations in
4
Introduction
is
his.
i12
is
The
thus gifted
of
women
power
apparent
accordancewith one end, which
by men through a cultural and socio-political order which is extrinsic to women's own
desires; moreover, women's power is permitted within the framework of a space
dominion
limiting
to the
into
divided
women's
private
spheres,
public
and
already
latter and tolerating it only within the co-ordinated ends of man.
That the gifted power ends on the doorstep is made clear by Kant in Der
Metaphysik der Sitten, where he differentiates betweenactive and passivecitizens: the
latter includes journeymen, household servants, juveniles, and all women. Passive
State,
included
the
those
are
as
members
of
quantitatively
are
who,
whilst
citizens
qualitatively differentiated from the legislating active members. Disenfranchised and
playing no part in its constitution, they are nonethelesssubject to its law. Whilst Kant
holds out the possibility of transition from passiveto active citizenship, this is clearly
not an alternative for women: to become an actively legislative and vote-holding
Staatsbürger, a woman would have to be able to becomea man."
Women's truth, Kant says, comes from the world: what it says is true and
what it does is good. They can as well learn theoretical principles as they can grow
beards, he mutters; as for girls, they `must be got used to smiling in an easy,
unconstrainedway when they are still very young' for smiling `gradually moulds them
14
disposition
joy,
friendliness
to
within as well and establishes a
and sociability'.
Moulding, growing, pruning, cultivating, women become problems of the landscape,
country gardens created as a resource and for relaxation from the real life of public
affairs. By encouraging smiling in girls, Kant seemsto envisagethe prospect of selfpruning women. Whilst his comment on smiling applies to children in general, it is
`especiallygirls"5 at which it aims.
5
Introduction
In the 1960's and '70s, Western women's lives were affected in radically
different ways: the Pill removed sexuality from reproduction; women began to work in
greater numbers (though still for the most part in menial "female" occupations);
lesbian separatism developed; women began to attack their assimilation into class
structuresbasedon the social status of men; to question the exclusion of home labour
from economics; to play with the images assignedto them on their own terms; they
began to write and to be published; to uncover a richer and more diverse view of
women's roles in history, and to move into territories previously defined as male, either
positively so, or on the grounds that women's biology/minds/ hormones etc., naturally
excluded them from large areas of life. Most importantly, women ceased to prune
themselvesin line with male expectations.Men began to concern themselveswith the
movementsof women, and many could find no more original responseto the changes
than ridicule or tired appeals to the proper and natural function of women as
reproduction animals.
The most important argument is economic. In the West, the decline of
industrial capital and the emergenceof information technology has transformed the
labour market: physical strength and brute force have lost their value, to be replacedby
manoeuvrability, flexibility, easeof transition betweendifferent areasof life, interactive
skills. One in four women in Britain choosesnot to bear children, and many women
who do have children prefer to bring them up without men. Fewer and fewer women
are choosing to confine themselveswithin the legal bondageof marriage. The Internet
has openedup spacefor playing with gender assignations,whilst cyberfeminism drives
home historical connectionsbetween women and technology, messing up its image as
toys for the boys. Oedipus collapses all around, as women begin (slowly) to gain the
economic control over their lives which releasesthem from their historical dependency
on men.
6
Introduction
What, however doesthis have to do with the debateover Deleuze, from where
this discussion of women began? The issue is treachery. The academic debate over
Deleuze divides him into two parts, one revolutionary, of the streets, and the other
institutional, of the university, but it can be paraphrasedas an argument over which
side is the most treacherous?Is there more treachery in throwing aside the constraints
of the academy, rejecting its theory, descrying the ascription of labels, or in
assimilating Deleuze with, for example, problems coming out of deconstruction. In the
context of economic viability, there is no difference, since these debatesoccur for the
most part amongst well-paid men. It is therefore not a debate into which women fit
easily, anymore than they fit easily into philosophy, or into class structures. Rage
against the academyis less clearly a revolutionary position for those who have been
fighting against restrictions on their entry into it, and the rejection of theoretical
approachesto Deleuze's work sits differently when history has spent much effort
persuadingwomen of their theoretical inadequacies.This is why remarks such as those
of Rosi Braidotti's are problematic. Shewrites:
`Philosophy creates itself through what it excludes as much as
through what it asserts.High theory, especially philosophy, posits its
values through the exclusion of many - non-men, non-whites, nonlearned, etc.. The structural necessityof these perjorative figurations
of otherness makes me doubt the capacity, let alone the moral and
political willingness, of theoretical discourse to act in a nonhegemonic,non-exclusionary manner'.16
History has createditself through similar exclusions: science,economics,law,
engineering, politics, - the list can be continued at will - all have exercised either
7
Introduction
theoretical or practical restraints against women. Philosophical theory provides an
abstractstructural account of theseexclusions and is, as Braidotti says,createdthrough
them. However, unless one subscribes to the view that thought, as opposed to
institutional philosophy, is generatedby exclusion and the exercise of the negative on
difference, the case against infiltrating theory as well as practice seems slight.
Moreover, the theory/practice distinction is, once more, an artifice of the exclusionary
mind. As will be discussedin the thesis, Deleuze's understanding of the theory/practice
relation is not one which divides down a central line; it is instead one of mutual and
reciprocal interaction, theory opening space where practices are blocked, and so
transforming the potentials of practice, and practice mobilizing theory, breaking down
walls and moving through crevices, and in so doing transforming what is understood
by both theory and practice.
Bedtime stories for children need not of necessitybe peopled by fairies, and
uncut minds understandpower with ease,since it is exercisedupon them without the
possibility of escape. Children are pragmatists too: generating variations without
regard for rule, in responseto the situations they discover, transforming language into
a toy, a game which changeswhilst it is played, a field of edible words. Leaving girls to
think so they can smile for themselves,rather than re-furbishing historical tales of their
necessaryexclusion from certain women's, whilst at the same time leaving boys to do
the same, rather than imposing the burden of history of their backs; these seem most
profitable for the future becoming-woman.It is for thesereasons,amongstothers, that I
am uninterested in the attribution of reactionary/revolutionary labels and the fight for
possessionover Deleuze (or Kant). Revolution belongs to the young. Cold indifference
to opinion is something one learns.
8
Introduction
II
Critique
`Copernicussaid:
"When you have once seen the chaos, you must
make some thing to set between yourself and that
terrible sight: and so you make a mirror, thinking
that in it shall be reflected the reality of the world;
but then you understand that the mirror reflects
only appearances,and that reality is somewhere
else, off behind the mirror, and then you remember
that behind the mirror there is only the chaos."
Dark dark dark'"
Kant effecteda revolution in philosophy, through the introduction of time into
the subject, effecting its disjunction into two elements,the `I think' and the `I am', the
relation of which is neither logical or empirical, but transcendental. This means real
logical
is
for
transcendental
the
than
conditioning,
materially
rather
merely
conditions,
is,
it
impose
does
that
simply
epistemological restrictions on the possibility of
not
understanding the world, but is implicated in its material order. The relation of
indeterminate existence- "I am" - to determining thought - "I think" - is determined in
or as time; that is, the existenceof the subject is determined in time and consciousness
of this existence is representedas time - that is, as the subjective and psychological
experienceof succession.The condition of this determination is transcendental,rather
than either logical, through the medium of a "therefore", or theological, through the
medium of pre-establishedharmony. The introduction of time as a transcendentalform
is, to use an anachronistic term, part of Kant's anti-logicist project, and the movement
9
Introduction
away from a rationalist epistemology devolved from concepts. Leibniz, for example,
in
`would
in
living
(and
they
time
the
that,
exist
creatures
of
space),
absence
saysof
ideas only, as mere possibilities'18whose truth is grounded in God. The difference to
the Kantian conception of time as a form of intuition whose ideality is immanent to the
constitution of human knowledge, and a condition of its real possibility - that is, a
transcendentalcondition - is quite clear. For Leibniz, the essenceof time is continuous
succession,this being generatedby the aggregation of monads,the ultimate and simple
elements of reality. One might go on to inquire about a successionof perceptions
within a monad. The complexities implied by this question are too great to pursue in
depth, for two reasons. Firstly, the matter is tangential to the thesis, and secondly,
Leibniz himself has little of an explicit nature to say about time, and nothing which
supportsthe claim that it can be discussedin terms of what happenswithin a monad
which does not also include the world. However, the direction in which this question
might be explored can be suggestedby the following. Each monad includes the entire
world: `in every particle of the universe there is contained a world of infinite
19
creatures'. Separation of the temporality of a point of view or perspective within a
monad from that of the aggregatewhich it includes it thus illegitimate, in Leibniz's
own terms. As he writes, it is impossible `to conceive of the possibility of any internal
motion being started, directed, increased, or diminished within it, [a monad] as can
occur in compounds, where change among the parts takes place.'20 Although the
principle of change comes from within a monad - necessarily, since they have no
windows - each monad is a universe and time (and space) are nothing `other than
certain orders of things. s21That is, they cannot be thought in the absence of the
physical relations amongstbodily organs, which the soul or monad represents.22
Through abstraction from phenomenal relations, or appearancesgenerated
through the monadic activity of appetition, Leibniz draws his mathematical conception
10
Introduction
of time, which, whilst well-founded, is nonethelessan useful intellectual fiction - that
is, it cannot be intuited, or perceived phenomenally, but can, nonetheless, be
understood. This intellectual fiction is non-contradictory - that is, it's truths are
necessary - and distinguishes mathematical time, as a possible fiction, from the
impossible fiction of supposing that time is other than certain orders of things.23 A
physico-mathematicalview of the world, from a Leibnizian perspective,is thus a view
imposed on an already given world of determinate extension and change, the "already
given" being an ideal consequenceof the co-ordinated activity of the only real elements
in Leibniz's system, the monads. Mathematical consistency thus occupies a different
order of ideality than phenomenal coherence.The universality of both, however, is a
function of the mirroring by every monad of all the activity of all others, in a network
of interconnections: if this mirroring were only partial, no universal systematic
physico-mathematicsor public phenomenalworld would be possible, since there would
be different orders of temporal and spatial co-ordination amongst different groups of
monads. What guarantees the interconnectednessof all monadic activity is preestablishedharmony, or God.
There are interesting directions in which to take this formulation: the idea of
an infinitely interacting network, so important to Deleuze's understanding of Kant, is
already plain from this brief discussionand such a system,as will becomeclear in the
thesis, is integral to Deleuze's understanding of the Kantian faculties. However, the
function of this brief excursion into Leibniz is to mark his difference from Kant with
relation to time. Kant turns the Leibnizian view upside down and re-formulates the
situation and value of its terms: the well-founded and useful fiction (in the sensethat it
does not refer to any real properties of the world) of Leibnizian mathematical time
becomesin Kant a presuppositionalform of experience,a condition of the possibility of
knowledge of the object. In this way the separation of phenomenal and mathematical
11
Introduction
time is closed, mathematics becomes immanent to the production of phenomenal
knowledge, rather than abstracted from it and the empirical world is immediately
physico-mathematical.This allows Kant to say that time is empirically real, whilst for
Leibniz it is only ever ideal. Moreover, for Kant, the universal status of mathematics,
and the claim of a single time of which all different times are parts, is no longer
guaranteed by pre-established harmony gifted by God, nor does it `remain when
"'
its
intuition.
is
made of all subjective conditions of
abstraction
Not even as a
possibility in the ideas of God. Independently of these subjective conditions, `time is
25
nothing'.
A last point is that for Kant, the pure form of time as such must be
distinguished from time as succession.`Time has only one dimension',26 and that
dimension is experiencedboth subjectively and objectively as succession.However, if
the pure form of time is confusedwith the experienceof time as succession,which is a
mode of time, the transcendentalimport of the Aesthetic is lost; time is conflated either
with its conceptual formulation in terms of causally determined motion, or with a
psychologistic, and (apparently) arbitrary sequenceof subjective states in inner sense.
'Motion, as an act of the subject first producesthe concept of succession'; succession
...
is part of a temporal language, as are co-existenceand duration, but as pure form, it is
a condition of the possibility of that language, so whilst successioncan be describedas
21
form
itself
described
be
time,
the
this
time
a mode of
of
mode as successive.
- cannot
If successionis ascribed `to time itself, we must think yet another time, in which the
28
be
Successionpertains to the parts of time - that is, to the
sequencewould
possible'
experienceof determinate quanta of intuition in inner sense- and thus to a limitation
of the pure form of time; `different times are but parts of one and the sametime', but
29
that one and the sametime is not itself successive.
12
Introduction
In one of the four metaphysical expositions of time in the Transcendental
Aesthetic of the Critique of Pure ReasonKant writes:
`Only on the presuppositionof time can we representto ourselves
a number of things as existing at one and the same time
(simultaneously)or at different times (successively).'30
Different times, or as Kant says `parts of time', are successive31:
however, different
times - points or instants - are limitations which presupposethe transcendentaland
pure form of time. But once more it must be emphasizedthat this does not imply that
the pure form of time can be collapsedinto succession:for whilst the parts of time are
successive,the pure form of time is a continuum not comprised of points or instants.
Whilst it can be divided into parts, which exists only as a function of this division, it is
not equivalent to these parts or to their successiveaddition. To think thus would be to
lead Kant back towards a Leibnizian perspective on the problem. This is a critical
difference, not only for a rigorous reading of Kant, but also for understanding the
32
Deleuze
form
to
the
time.
attention
pays
pure
of
It is time which opens up the problem of the transcendental, and the
differences which flow from it, between phenomena and noumena, appearancesand
things-in-themselves.Kant's criticisms of Leibniz for intellectualizing sensibility, for
not thinking forms of intuition outside the relations of things and for conceiving of
`time as the dynamical sequence'of the statesof substance,leading to its formulation
as something akin to confused concepts, may not be drawn from direct contact with
Leibniz's writings: nonetheless,the latter offer no support for any reconciliation of the
Kantian and Leibnizian positions on time. The Copernican revolution evicts God from
theory and removesthe form of time from reason,logic, meaning and psychology.
13
Introduction
Kant's work covers a huge range; science - including physics, biology and
chemistry, the latter two first emerging as sciences at the close of the eighteenth
century -, aesthetics, history, politics, morality, anthropology, logic, mathematics,
geography and pedagogy and more. Despite this vast spread of interests, however, a
its
his
drive
both
direction
be
thought
to
the
and
of
said
single problem might
immediate reception -the problem of critique, as a demand for immanence of criteria.
`Our age is, in especial degree, the age of critique, and to critique everything must
33
he
in
Critique
first
Pure
Reason,
the
of the three critical works.
submit',
writes the
of
A critical tribunal, in which reason functions as both subject and judge, was to
legitimate all claims to knowledge, and its necessityfor Kant was paramount: in the
absenceof such a legitimation, he argues,reason lapsesinto its natural state, a state of
war.
Responseto the critical challenge was swift: why must everything so submit,
from where doesthe authority of reasoncome?On what doesit basethe privilege of its
first principles? That it was no longer God was recognized immediately: indeed, there
was an injunction against the teaching of Kant's work at Marburg, pending a report on
the dangers of its scepticism - epistemological as well as theological. It was lifted,
however, on the basis that even if his work was sceptical, `undermin[ing] the certainty
of human knowledge' it was so obscureas to be largely unintelligible, and thus of no
danger.34But the responseto the implications of critique were swift. As Beiser writes
in The Fate of Reason.post-Kantian philosophy begins with the meta-critical question
35
itself
`looked
the
the
of
authority of reason,and
possibility of criticism
critically at
Schopenhauer,a philosopher who titles himself the first Kantian, dismisses
the post-Kantians, (mostly through polemic, seldom with argument): 'serious
14
Introduction
departure
declares,
`I
left
it',
he
take
Kant
therefore
my
philosophy still standswhere
from him' 36 Schopenhauersets off in a direction very different to that of the metacritical challenge. He is uninterested in the argumentsover reasonand respondsto the
practical philosophy with the comment:
`[W]hen Kant demolished old and revered errors, and knew the
danger of the business, he had only wanted to substitute here and
there through moral theology a few weak props, so that the ruin
37
have
him,
he
fall
time to get away'
and would
would not
on top of
Instead, Schopenhauerprivileges the TranscendentalAesthetic, calling it the
diamond in Kant's crown; the thing-in-itself, which he calls will; and Ideas, which he
calls Platonic, but which are more Kantian than this suggestsand than Schopenhauer
himself will allow. He is critical of Kantian Ideas for their remotenessfrom perception,
and of Kantian perception for being pure, in the senseof divorced from empirical data:
for Schopenhauer, Ideas are inseparable from
perception,
and `perception is
throughout the source of all knowledge.'38 It is this insistence on a perceptual and
objective element to the transcendental,which is both impersonal and pre-individual,
(prior to the pnncipium individuationis and the subject-objectdivision) that Deleuze
shares with Schopenhauer. Nonetheless, despite their relation with perception,
Schopenhauerian Ideas retain the Kantian characteristic of not being objects of
representation, or phenomenasubjectto the forms of space,time and causality.
Schopenhauereliminates the possibility of conceiving of the thing-in-itself
either as an object somehow `behind' representation, or as the implicit cause of
sensation, this latter being a purely subjective component of perception, - under the
sldn, as he puts it; he also rejects the association of Ideas with the theological-
15
Introduction
is
in
Kant
them,
essential to
retaining
what
places
whilst
metaphysical register which
the Kantian notion of the transcendental, which is that it expressesimmanence of
criteria and real
logical.
For
those
to
are
purely
which
conditions as opposed
Schopenhauer,however, Ideas are not immanent to reason, but are immediate and
direct expressionsof relations of variance of the will. In effect, he is opening up a
thought of relation (the transcendental being concerned with relations, not objects)
which is neither conceptualor psychologistic; a rigorous thought of the transcendental.
A SchopenhauerianIdea is defined as an adequateobjectification of the will.
By adequateobjectification, Schopenhauerunderstandsthe material manifestation of
the will, its corporealization, not as mediate knowledge, worked through the secondary
functions of the brain, or intellect, but as a condition of experience,as material, nonconceptualand impersonal, expressingthe activity of the will in-itself outside the laws
of experience.In this sense,Ideas and their adequateobjectification function as real
conditions of empirical experience rather than, as for Kant, regulative tools for the
delimitation of speculativereasonand place-holdersfor its practical legislation.
Schopenhauer's
formulation,
criticism
of
Kantian
in terms of the focus imaginarius,
Ideas
aims
at
their
subjective
and is thus in line with his more
general criticism of Kant's failure to consider the objective, or physiological aspects of
knowledge.
empirical
This leads him towards consideration
perception,
in the direction
of the material
of the thing-in-itself,
or will.
conditions
of
Part of his
attachment to the term Platonic as a qualification of Ideas is to highlight their relation
with perception and emphasize the borrowed reality of the phenomenal world; Plato's
Ideas, unlike Kant's, are empirically manifest in copies. He writes:
16
Introduction
`To the brook which rolls downwards over the stones,the eddies,
waves, and the foam-forms exhibited by it are indifferent and
inessential;but that it follows gravity, and behavesas an inelastic,
perfectly mobile, formless, and transparent fluid, this is its
essentialnature, this, if known through perception, is the Idea.s39
(original italics)
The inessential aspects of natural phenomena belong to borrowed reality, to the
unfolding of the Idea through the functions of the brain, whilst Ideas are `the whole
40
form
the
thing-in-itself, only under
of representation'. Under this form, and at the
lower grades of objectification, Ideas are representedunder the title of laws of nature
which allow for their recognition in particular cases:gravity, electricity, crystallization,
magnetism, fluidity, elasticity, chemical properties, sexual desires.However, the nature
for
is
forces
laws
`something
that
these
the
entirely
strange
and
unknown';
of
express
Schopenhauer,force is thought on an intensive register, as a qualitas occulta emerging
from immanent relations of the will, a residuum of which always remains exterior to
the formal description of law.4' The will or thing-in-itself is antecedentto these laws,
not causally so, but as the blind quantitative drive of the will, outside measurability and
formal description. Ideas are the direct objectivity of this drive, standing between the
representationof particulars referred to by laws of nature and the `variance with itself
42
to
the
essential
will' .
Effected through the incessant immanent self-variance of the will, the world
as representation is manifest with ever-increasing complexity - from blind forces of
nature to inorganic structuresto organic entities such as plants, and then on to animals
and man. Variance of the will is expressed also in conflicts of Ideas, the resolution of
this conflict involving the analogical assimilation of the conflicting orders into higher
17
Introduction
Ideas. (This is not to say that this complexity can be read back into the will. ) Each Idea
is thus both the resolution of problematic relations of the will at lower grades of
is
is
itself
`Each
at the same time the
end
attained
a
problem.
objectification, and
beginning of a new course,and so on ad infinitum. s43Each Idea is abstract,eternal, and
by
just
`gains
taking up
character
entirely
new
each
an
unchanging, yet nonetheless,
into itself from each of the subduedIdeas an analogue of higher power', expressing a
different set of abstractrelations.44
So whilst Schopenhauer describes Ideas both as archetypes, and as Platonic,
the facility for analogically
assimilating prior grades of adequate objectification
in
such a way that their character is transformed also marks a definite difference from
Plato's theory of forms. Moreover, Ideas and the adequate objectification of the will are
differentiated not in kind, but by degree: as has been said already, they are intensive,
and exterior to the forms through which the ideal world of representation is ordered.
Secondary qualifications
of the intensive gradations of the will introduced from this
ideal perspective are thus not pertinent to exploring the real constructions of the thingin-itself. 45 It is in this sense that they are problematic, in a Kantian sense, since they
cannot be referred to a universal law. Rather, they express the resolution of a conflict of
the will
at a certain degree, and the emergence of a qualitative
representation ('a very complicated physiological
force, which
occurrence in an animal's brain'46)
universalizes with the term "law of nature", but whose real conditions
can be referred
to only as qualitas occulta. It is in this sense that Ideas are abstract and diagrammatic,
since they articulate the essential aspects of a real problem which cannot be expressed
in terms of representation, but which is nonetheless only manifest empirically.
Ideas
are thus abstract, problematic and diagrammatic expressions of the will, whose solution
is materialized through blind and non-cognitive striving.
18
Introduction
Schopenhaueralso collapsesthe elaboratearchitecture of the Analytic through
the Aesthetic, the conjunction emerging as a single principle of sufficient reason
comprising time, space and causality, the three formal elements of the world as
representation. The material element of the will or thing-in-itself, at the adequatelevel
of objectification of which the animal is the phenomenon, is the brain, and its
intellectual functions, which structure the world as representationare secondarycontrol
and guidance mechanisms, which he refers to as parasitic upon the will. It is this
physiological aspect of the will which, as has been remarked above, Schopenhauer
chides Kant for neglecting, and which Nietzsche, first as student then as critic of
Schopenhauer,developsmore fully, taking it further from its Kantian source, and reformulating critique in terms of the will to power. Its importance, both for reading
Kant, and for reading the relation of Deleuze and Kant is to emphasizethe difference
betweena psychologistic rendition of the transcendental,in terms of subjectively, and a
rigorously critical formulation, in terms of material conditions. Schopenhauer's
philosophy drives in the direction of the transcendental empiricism which Deleuze
refines.
Deleuze's second book, written in 1962, nine years after a slim volume on
Hume, is Nietzsche et la Philosophie. In this book critique is addressedas a problem
concerning the quality and relations of forces: `tout le reste est Symptome(everything
47
is
else symptom)' The will gives, Deleuze writes: `eile n'aspire pas, elle ne recherche
pas, eile ne desire pas, surtout eile ne desire pas la puissance.Elle donne (it does not
aspire, it does not seek, it does not desire, above all it does not desire power. It
48
gives)' The genetic or critical principle
of the will gives senseand value - quality - to
the relations of forces immanent to the will.
That is, the qualitative expressionsof
quantitatively differentiated relations are not qualified by anything extrinsic to those
relations: senseand value emergefrom real relations, manifest, as Schopenhauermade
19
Introduction
being
forces,
than
the
rather
cognition,
of
conceptual
clear, as
and outside
scope
qualified according to the requirements of a philosophy of representation - the most
basic of which are identity and the subject-objectdivision.
Sense and value are thus no longer functions of a systematic disjunction
between theory and practice, which legitimates the separation of
(scientifically
objective) fact and (morally objective) value, but become immanent to the
determinations of relations of the will, or thing-in-itself. The subject becomes
integrated into the network of relations generatedthrough the determination of force
relations immanent to the will, and has no values separablefrom its empirical effects.
There is no longer a single territory under two contrary sets of principles, those of
speculativereason and those of practical reason, and a vertical and hierarchical series
of conduits leading to and from a rational subject, but a horizontal plane of relations of
which the subject is a late and peripheral effect. Since the relations immanent to the
will are understoodas differential and conjunctive, rather than contrary and disjunctive
(as is the casewhen the noumenon/phenomonaxis in Kant is taken to be the critical
one), and these relations become generative of the transcendental, rather than the
consequenceof its conditioning, the transcendental becomes entirely vacuous until
empirically constructed,but is not to be confusedwith that empirical construction.
Hence Deleuze's attraction to the pure form of time and his demand for a
`properly transcendental empiricism' 49 And hence, also, his criticism of Kant for
being overly psychologistic in his formulation of synthesis; it is not that Kant is too
empirical, according to Deleuze, but that he is insufficiently empirical, since he
hypostatizesthe sensesand values of human (male) experienceand universalizesthem,
as conditions for the possibility of knowledge of the object, and a unified experience,
and then reducesthe empirical to representation. The empirical is constructedthrough
20
Introduction
the lens of
a set of conditions which are specific to a subject defined as active,
spontaneous, rational,
morally
legislative
and
scientifically
objective:
all
characteristics,as will be seenlater in the thesis, specific to white males.
The transcendental,taken from this perspective,is traced from the values and
sensesof a specific and psychologically coloured empiricism. Deleuze insists that the
transcendental is impersonal, pre-individual,
a field of singularities and a problem
which cannot be solved through the instancesof its solutions; that is, it is produced as
the relation of the empirical with something which is not empirical, and which cannot
be defined as either the negative limit of the empirical,
a conditioning principle
extrinsic to experience or as a priori. Instead, it becomesa relation with the will, or
thing-in-itself, understood as pure exteriority, the immanent threshold of sensible
experience.(A fuller discussion of this will be found in a later chapter.) In this way,
rather than critique being legitimated through an image of thought as rational and
legislative, it becomesa positive principle of genesis.
It also destroys. Critique becomes something new in Nietzsche, and something
which, in conjunction with the typology of forces, turns back on the questions raised by
the post-Kantians, with results which would confirm their misgivings about its implicit
atheism. The division of the world into the real and the apparent is attacked, the
subject becomes an effect of the will, and critique becomes immanent, not to reason,
but to the will, a genetic principle which thinks against reason, against itself, against
conditioning and against the image of thought; against truth, error and method.
The problem of the critical relations of forces, as quantitative degreesof the
will to power which effect a particular quality, that quality which is willed, is one
which remains with Deleuze throughout his writing, and which finds its consummate
21
Introduction
destructive force in L'anti-oedine, the first volume of Capitalisme et Schizophrenie,as
the machinic or desiring unconscious,and its most positive and creative expressionin
the secondvolume, as the machinic phylum. It is this latter book that Deleuze describes
as philosophy, in the traditional senseof the word, as the creation of concepts;which
does not interpret, nor call for interpretation, and which works, without labour, and
plays, with all seriousness.
III
Demons
This thesis addressesthe relation of Deleuze and Kant in terms of these
problems: forces, the image of thought, the principle of recognition, the question of
production, the materiality of the thing-in-itself,
the genesis of sense and immanence of
criteria. An additional element, which comes from Deleuze's book La philosophie
critique de Kant, is that of a network. The network of faculties, Deleuze says, is the
true transcendental method, and the Kant book (1963) is structured around their
changing relations in each of the three Critiques.
Systematic variations
in these
relations correspond to different methods of realizing an interest of reason. This notion
of system runs throughout Deleuze's work He understands systems as open, nested and
interconnected: everything connects to everything else, everything is implicated in the
genesis of everything else, not as a universal principle
through the rhizomatic
or conditioning
element, but
interaction of forces. The concept of an assemblage, which
emerges through his collaboration with Felix Guattari, molecularizes the notion of a
faculty system, of body as a complex and articulated construction of interconnected
components whose operations shift depending on the bodies into which they plug and
the nature of relations into which they enter.
22
Introduction
However, theseare not simply images,for Deleuze sharesKant's insistenceon
the importance of science for philosophy. His theory of forces emergesfrom work on
Guattari
in
biology,
the
technology;
covered
with
range
amongst
vast
embryology,
Mille Plateaux are genetics, geology, the movement of populations - both molecular
and animal, evolution. Whilst these themes are not explored in this thesis, Deleuze's
insistence that his own work, and that with Guattari, is empirical, must be kept in
mind. `[E]n verite, l'inconscient est de la physique (in reality, the unconsciousbelongs
50
the
to
realm of physics)' There are no metaphors;if something works, it is becauseit
is real.
So what of becoming-woman? This too must be real. Philosophy has
associatedwomen with nature, matter, spaceand babies, ever since Plato spoke in the
Timaeus of the receptacle or womb whose neutral plasticity accepted without
discrimination the impress of eternal forms. The receptacle nurses becoming, but is
itself immutable. It is this supposedpermanenceof function attendant on women which
becoming-woman seeks to break away from; from women as reproductive and
essentially sexual creatures to women as self-organizing systems which are effected
only through their interactions with other machines in their environment, which is no
longer defined as nature, indeed, which has no definition until it is generated.
Deleuze has been criticized for neglecting feminist projects directed towards
the constitution of a specifically female subjectivity. Rosi Braidotti describesherself as
a Deleuzian, but nonethelessaccuseshis position on women on the grounds that it
comes from a male embodied subject. Yet criticisms such as these have limited
purchaseon the impulse infecting Deleuze's work, which is to exposethe mechanisms
by which transcendenceis produced,as a real rather than imaginary or ideal repressive
mechanism. Deleuze does not deploy becoming-woman as a feminist theory, as a
23
Introduction
theory of woman, but as an element in the critical arsenal of pragmatics, or autocritique. Essential to the diagnosis of limitations imposed on desiring or machinic
production through the negative real generated by
transcendent, or illegitimate
syntheses,to the destruction of the forms which perpetuatetheselimitations, and to the
formation of a radical and positive critique, becoming-woman has no organic location
or social image, aestheticnorm or political motivation.
`It ya un devenir-fenunequi ne se confond pas avec les femmes, leur
passe et leur avenir, et ce devenir, il faut bien que les femmes y
entrent pour sortir de leur passeet de leur avenir, de leur histoire.
(There is a becoming-womanwhich is not the same as women, their
past and their future, and it is essential that women enter this
becoming to get out of their past and their future, their history)' -51
.
It is comments such as this which have, unsurprisingly, led to women
questioning the use of becoming-woman, especially at a time when women are
uncovering the extent of their historical involvement, and the degree to which it has
been obliterated by the macro-histories of the subject.Yet Deleuze's comments always
function in two directions at once. Women's history, on a macro-level, has been
couchedin terms of their relations with the subject: getting out of this history and the
future it projects means at the very least changing the elements in relation to which
women are understood, and it is this transformation of the assemblagesinto which
women move, and through which they are createdwhich becoming-womaneffects.
The other question, of course, might be; what right has a man to tell us what
and what is not essential for us? And there are occasions on which Deleuze (and
Guattari's) philosophy takes on a prescriptive air, look out for the fascist within you,
they say, suggestingeveryonehas a hidden policeman. Moreover, distinctions such as
24
Introduction
that in L'anti-oedipe, between legitimate and illegitimate synthesis suggesta bilateral
disjunction and a potential re-vitalization of dialectics, against which the whole tenor
of their work drives. However, this thesis doesnot challenge or addresstheseproblems,
for three reasons. Firstly, becauseone of the most important and fruitful effects of
Deleuze's writing lies in its generosity towards those thinkers he admires. If the
conflictual approachof dialectics, and the operation of the negative as a mechanism of
movement is to be dissolved, such generosity is necessaryas a strategy of reading.
Secondly, because to address the molar sexuality of an author as a reason for
discounting elementsof his or her writing seemsprecisely what feminism must not do,
and cannot, without reproducing precisely that against which it has argued What a
book does,and what movementsit effects, are more important than the specifics of the
physical bodies which wrote it. And lastly, to quote a friend: 'The problem is one of
thinking the included disjunction of the legitimate and the illegitimate; of thinking the
transcendentsuch that its relation to the immanent is itself one of immanence.'SZIf this
is misunderstood,the movement of becoming-women,as Deleuze and Guattari use it,
is also misunderstood,becauseit is this problem which underlies the AND logics of
Deleuze's empiricism, and which mobilizes the movement of desire outside the
conditions of its production without generating transcendence.
This perspective demands a new understanding of the body. Nature, matter,
affection, passion, etc. are not static terms, and as technology drives the perpetual
reformulation of their scientific conceptualization, so too must the understanding of
their relations and interconnectionswith woman change. One aspectof the problem of
a philosophical feminism is the generation of a responseto these transformations:
beginning from the perspective of "real women" as fully formed socio-political,
cultural, ethical or aesthetic entities does not constitute a response,becauseit cannot
negotiatechangeswhich impact on the machinic production of bodies.
25
Introduction
As they are philosophically formed, women, like God, are always around,
53
Schopenhauer
of
great
consolation.
and
sometimes
creative
and
usefully,
not usefully,
for
`the
dramatist,
Jouy,
Byron,
the
correct
viewpoint
a
and
poet,
with
attributes
estimating the value of women'. The former writes: `Without women, the beginning of
our life would be deprived of help, the middle of pleasure, and the end of
consolation.954The latter omits the middle pleasure zone, concentrating instead on
for
breeder
the
patient
ears
role
as
and
educator
of
and
as
nurse
with
women's
young,
the dying sighs of men. Women are cast as altruists, essential componentsin framing
the construction space within which humans live and die, whilst they themselves
appearto be neither born nor to die.
Observationof actual women is mediatedby a litany of exclusive disjunctions,
each specialty or discipline incorporating its own version: if you don't have a penis,
you must be castrated; you may have facial hair, or you shouldn't; you don't have
testes,you must have ovaries; you have no y chromosome,you must have two x's; you
have a flat chest or you have breasts; you desire men or you don't; you raise your
consciousnessor produce an argument; you are either a woman or a man. Variations
on the endless series of alternates which sift uniformity over bodies like a caul are
considered accidents, the result of systematic errors in the interpretation and
implementation of codes given in advance. Integrations of the body with non-organic
matters are tolerable only to the extent that it is curative of these aberrations. You can
get a pace-makeror have your penis involuted into the cavity of your body only if you
arejudged sufficiently sick first.
Deleuze calls the gods operating these exclusive disjunction the forms of
recognition and their statementis 'C'est done moi, le roil c'est done ä moi que revient
26
Introduction
le royaume (so I am the king! So the kingdom belongs to me)1'55There is something
remaining of this statementin the argument over possessionof Deleuze's thought. The
lineage of the gods is one of repetition of identity, the occurrenceand recurrenceof the
same analogies, myths and fears, whereas becoming-woman is a line of material
invention, of `connexions qui sautent d'arbre et arbre, et lui deracinent (connections
that jump from tree to tree and uproot them)'
The problem is not how to distribute
the fruits on an equal basis with men, but how to destroythe trees on which they grow.
Deleuze calls the jumping signals flashing betweenthe trees demons: demons
are `puissancesdu saut, de l'intervalle, de l'intensif ou de l'instant et qui ne comblent
la difference qu'avec du different (powersof the leap, the interval, the intensive and the
instant; powers which cover difference with more difference)'.57 With no identifiability
or function separablefrom their productive synthesis, demons become signs only on
assemblage, in the formation of matters into intensive patterns, communication
structures. Immanent to its function, nothing other than what it does, and it does and
thus is nothing except through interaction, a demon is a pure information point, a
pixel.
De Landa expands the theme of demons in his book War in the Age of
Intelligent Machines. Demons create a spacecalled a Pandemonium,where `control is
never passedfrom a higher authority to a lesser authority. There are no hierarchical
levels, but only a heterarchy of demons capturing control whenever they are invoked
into action.'5" What invokes them into action are data patterns: indeed, they are
themselvesno more than data patterns, or packets of information, which function as
both messagesand addresses.The survival of a demon is a function of its interaction
with other demonsin its locality, where locality is not a geographicalposition given in
advance,but the consequenceof connectionsgeneratedamongst demons in the process
27
Introduction
of developing problem-solving strategies,whose duration is a function of the patterns
they form, rather than imposed by external criteria, or a function of the life-span of a
single demon (indeed there are no such things). It is from here, from Deleuze and
DeLanda, that the title of this thesis comes.It seeksto uncover the demon potential of
Kant, the play of forces immanent to an actual continuum, an intensive and tactile
space, which, if Kant is read "appropriately" - by which I mean, in line with the
formulation of problems in Kant as they are articulated from the perspective of a
subject,remain imperceptible.
***
The range of the thesis is kept deliberately close: there are few other players
than Kant and Deleuze.This is undoubtedly a betrayal of both Kant and Deleuze, since
both can be addressedfrom a myriad other perspectives.There is no Marx and little
Freud, no Fichte or Hegel, no Lacan or Lyotard, all of whom connect with both or
either of Kant and Deleuze. However, there are reasonsfor this, which arise from the
theme of feminism, or perhaps more accurately, the situation of women in and by
philosophy, which is not of necessityequivalent to feminism. For women, the problem
is not that of the subject: it once was, when feminism positioned itself as the victim of
the power of a subject which it was not. Women have been situated by this subject
alongside the object, as more or less its equivalent, in terms of being exchangeable
commodities, and alongside nature, defined in terms of material reproduction rather
than conceptual production. My intention is not to argue with this, but to utilize
Deleuze's method of eliminative deduction: to eliminate the subject and its perspective
and discover the movementsthrough which the object is formed, and to diagram the
intensive field which the construction of a subjective spacecovers up (and which, as
will be seen,makesKant nauseous):to suggesta breeding ground for demons.
28
Chapter 1
`a book on an enemy...'
Le discredit dans Icquel est tombee aujourd'hui la doctrine des
facultes, pigce pourtant tout ä fait necessairedans le systemede la
philosophie, s'explique par la meconnaissancede cet empirisme
proprement transcendental, auquel on substituait vainement un
decalquedu transcendentalsur 1'empirique.
(Despite the fact that it has become discredited today, the doctrine of
the faculties is an entirely necessary component of the system of
philosophy. Its discredit may be explained by the misrecognition of
this properly transcendental empiricism, for which was substituted in
1
from
the
tracing
the
transcendental
empirical).
of
vain a
The slendernessof Deleuze's book on Kant - his book on an enemy, he saysde
its
La
belie
immensity
implied
by
title,
to
the
the
task
critique
philosophie
of
seems
Kant: Doctrine des facultes. Yet in little over a hundred pages, Deleuze produces an
elegant and efficient map of the three Critiques which is far from a simple commentary
or introductory text.
`[L]a betise...
estla facultedesfaux problemes,temoignantd'une inaptitudeä
constituer, ä apprehenderet determiner un probleme en tant que tel' (stupidity...is the
faculty for false problems; it is evidence of an inability to constitute, comprehend or
determine a problem as such').2 The intelligence in Deleuze's reading of Kant lies in
his constitution of critique as a real problem, on his selection of elements and in his
concentration on its systematics.Focusing on the network of the faculties, on the two
sensesof this word in Kant's own writing, on their disjunction into higher and lower
forms, and on their illegitimate and legitimate employment, he deducesa consistent
30
Chapter 1
geography of Kant and takes up the keen edge of critique. This first chapter looks
briefly at La philosophie critique de Kant and then more broadly at themes in Kant of
importance to Deleuze's philosophy.
I
System: Faculties in Theory and Practice
Two sensesof the word faculty are always in play, faculty as source and faculty as
relation. Each faculty is understoodboth as a type of relation between a representation
and something else (an object or subject), and as a source of representations.To each
relation correspondsan interest (or disinterest, in the caseof aesthetics)of reason and
each source legislates a means of realizing this interest, since `rien ne nous garantit
que la raison se charge elle-meme de realiser son propre interet (there is no guarantee
3
itself
interest)'
Where reasonis disinterested,
that reason
undertakesto realize its own
it is becauseit has no affective relation with the world, nothing to either gain or lose;
this allows feeling to achieve its higher and culturally dignified form, as a pure
operation of judging of which pleasure is a consequence,independently of desire and
knowledge. Faculties in the first sense, as relation, are knowledge, desire and the
feeling of pleasure and pain, whilst faculties in the second sense, as source, are
sensibility, understanding and reason.
It is immediately clear that the correspondencebetween the two sensesof
faculty is not straightforward. Establishing a relation of correspondencebetween
knowledge and an object involves input through sensibility, the accord of sensibility
and understanding relies on the schema of imagination; systematizing knowledge
requires the aid of reason.So two problems emerge.Taking the faculty of knowledge as
an example, there must first be a convergenceof sources,each contributing a unique
component to
the production of objective knowledge - intuition, in the case of
31
Chapter1
in
(according
to
in
the
schemata),
caseof understanding, synthesis
sensibility, concept,
the caseof imagination, and Idea in the caseof reason.There is a further difference, in
that three of the faculties are active, whilst sensibility is passive.So the common accord
is
it
formal
involves
dynamic
knowledge
a
element;
the
as
a
as well
a
of
elements of
4
This
form,
forces
to
the
activity.
of
passivity
of
relation
as
as
of
of
well
problem
relation cannot be thought through the conceptsof substanceor cause,since this throws
the problem into the domain of understanding, rather than understanding it in terms of
relations amongst faculties as powers which must be thought antecedentto the specific
constitutional order of any of them individually. It is clear that both sensibility and
imagination operate, in the first Critique, under the management of understanding Kant writes, for example, of a `synthesis which does not belong to the senses' by
5
`understanding
determines
the
sensibility'. But passivity here is constrained,in
which
that it is constituted through the relation of sensibility to the activity of understanding,
from the perspectiveof understanding, and thus not transcendentally,as Kant writes, it
is `a matter of fact' that the unity apparently belonging to sensibility, through which
the forms of intuition become formalized and conceptual, is determined by
6
understanding. A matter of fact, rather than a problem of the real conditions of the
possibility of facts. This meansthat this determining synthesisis not transcendental.
As the Introduction made clear, the transcendental as a problem must be
thought in relation to the Aesthetic rather than the Analytic, in order to preclude a
psychologistic interpretation thought in terms of the subject.In order to understandthis
dynamic relation of the faculties, therefore, a thought of passivity not delimited in
advanceby understanding needsto be formulated: this is the topic of a later chapter,
however, so will not be pursued here. A further point is that the type of activity
associatedwith understanding differs from that attaching to imagination: the former is
described by Kant as spontaneous,the latter as productive. In order to preclude the
32
Chapter 1
collapse of the Kantian architecture into the dry zones of conceptsand understanding,
these differences need to be articulated; if they are not, the dynamic relation amongst
the faculties is subsumed under formal constraints imposed by the operations of
judgement and the functional unity of the categories,and the problematic aspectsof the
system of faculties, together with the manner in which Deleuze understands this as
integral to critique, to critical method, are lost.
The second problem addressesthe first, that of convergencein a common
form. The achievement of common sense - whether logical, moral or aesthetic - is
dependenton an attitude of reason - interest in logical and moral common sense,and
disinterest in aesthetic common sense.Common senseis a managed convergenceof
faculties on a shared task of recognizing an object as the Same. In the first Critique.
Kant refers to a `common function of the mind (gemeinschaftliche Funktion des
Gemfits]' by which the disparate components of knowledge are combined into one
representation.In the Critique of Judgement,the idea of common sense[Gemeinsinn]
provides the criteria by which subjective judgements of taste can be presented as
objective, removing taste from the private domain of the individual, legitimating the
demand for universal assent to aestheticjudgements on the beautiful and attributing
them with the modality of necessity.' Common senseis the meansby which the quality
of sensation can be conceived of as uniformly and universally communicable; taste,
Kant writes, `could be called a sensus communis aestheticus, and common
understanding a sensus communis logicus.'8
Under the idea of common sense,
therefore, a subjectivequality of feeling, different to sensation,becomesthe ground for
an objective statementof aestheticvalue.
Common understanding `is regarded as the very least that we are entitled to
expect from anyone who lays claim to the name of human being'9; it functions both
33
Chapter 1
vertically, as a meansof differentiating man from the animals, as a creature who rises
`truth,
horizontally,
the
of
propagation
ensuring
a
means
of
as
above sensation,and
propriety, beauty,or justice', as sharedhuman ideals which define a community of man
1°
`higher
as a creature with
cognitive powers'. Membership of this community is thus
predicated on assent to its cultural values, its epistemological norms and its moral
laws: as will be seen,all theseare problematic in relation to women.
Common sense,a uniform accord amongst the faculties such that knowledge,
taste and morality become public zones, rather than personal and private, becomesa
question not only of establishing relations, but also of ensuring that they reflect (for a
naturalized common sense) or realize (a priori
common sense) an interest (or
disinterest) of reason. `L'idee d'une pluralite (et d'une hierarchie) systematiquedes
interets...domine la methode kantienne (The idea of a systematic plurality (and a
hierarchy) of interests...dominates the Kantian method')': this community of interests
is the `principe d'un systemedes fins (the principle of a systemof ends)' unrealizable
by nature.12 Immanent critique, as the method of transcendental philosophy in a
Kantian sense,setsout the nature and realization of theseends.
The balancing of interests of reason does not form common sense,but good
sense: privileging speculative interests threatens practical interests, and Kant's
statementof good sense,of limiting knowledge to make room for faith, indicates two
things. Firstly, that achieving equilibrium of interests requires both limitation and
negation, which, as will be seen later in this chapter, are two of the functions which
Deleuze arguescorrupt the critical method and lead to a degenerateformulation of the
transcendental. And secondly that good sense and common sense complement each
other, in the formation of a single Image of thought, another line in Deleuze's relation
with Kant which is addressedin chapter two.
34
Chapter 1
To ensure the balance of interest and systemof ends, one faculty (in the first
sense,as relation) must play two roles: it must contribute, on a horizontal plane of
integration, to common sense,and also, through the discovery of an autonomy from
natural common senseand an internal legislative capacity, determine the relation of
common senseto its objects,legislating vertically, from above,for the realization of an
interest of reason. That is, one faculty provides the a priori conditions of natural
common sense,colouring it as logical, aestheticor moral. In the case of knowledge, it
is understanding that legislates: it determinesimagination to synthesizeschematically,
according to the concepts,and generalizes over intuition. In a `synthesiswhich does
not belong to the senses'but to an imagination constrained to schematizeby universal
rule `the understanding determinesthe sensibility', defining it as a receptive channel,
and as contributing to the delimitation of differences,betweenobjective and subjective
knowledge, and between legitimate and illegitimate theoretical claims.13To contribute
to theoretical or logical common sense,sensibility must be free of subjectivesensationpleasure and pain - but nonetheless have a form of immediacy with the real in
experience which legitimates the claim of objective knowledge, confirming or
contributing towards a speculativeinterest of reason.
Determination of sensibility by understanding also producesa limiting device,
the noumenon, the representation of an object in a purely intelligible, non-sensible
world. At the same time as understanding `entitles an object in a relation mere
phenomenon...[it] ...forms, apart from that relation, a representation of an object in
itself (Gegenstandein sich selbst)', on which the conceptshave no legitimate purchase,
but which, nonetheless,the understanding `must think'. 14Thinking in the absenceof
sensibility - and so in the absence not only of intuition, but also of intensive
magnitudes, the real in experience, understanding thinks of a negative object which
35
Chapter1
forms a conceptuallimit of the objectivevalidity of sensibleknowledge, preventing the
intellectualization of sensibility, (an Aristotelian failing which Kant accusesLocke of
perpetuating).
Although Kant appears to assimilate the thing-in-itself and the
noumenon,the function of the two is quite different. The noumenon concerns limits,
and the negotiation of a single territory under the forms of two different laws, and is
not unknowable in principle, only in relation to the limitations of human cognition.
Articulated in relation to phenomena which are objects constituted according to the
unity of rule of categories, the noumenon is a gap which can be filled and made
positive only by practical reason.The thing-in-itself, however, attachesto problems of
thresholds, to matter and sensation,and so to intensities. Deleuze does not discussthe
thing-in-itself explicitly. However, as has been seen in the Introduction this Kantian
problem feedsthrough the Schopenhauerianwill and on into Nietzsche's will to power.
Whilst there are clearly differencesto be arguedbetweenthe thing-in-itself, the will-tolife and the will-to-power, the fundamental problem is that of an impersonal, nontransitive and unconscious process inseparable from but not identical with, force.
Deleuze will call this process machinic or desiring-production. Having declared this
thread as common throughout the different formulations provided by these three
thinkers, a lengthier discussionwill be left for chapter two.
The noumenon, as the negative doctrine of sensibility, is an object produced
by understanding when it claims determinate knowledge of something in general,
extending its legislation beyond the aggregation of particulars in experience and
seeking knowledge independently of sense. Since the accord of the faculties in
knowledge is not free, as it is in aesthetics,the production of common sense must
involve not only mechanismsfor convergenceamongstthe various sourcesbut also the
exclusion of differenceswhich are either not commensuratewith realizing a speculative
36
Chapter 1
interest of reason, or which trample on other interests of reason. The noumenon is a
solution to the co-ordination of speculativeand practical interests.
The transcendental use of understanding, its claim to know something in
general, or the negative noumenon,convergeswith the transcendentuse of reason,and
reason's claim of knowledge of an object corresponding to an Idea. Under what
conditions of possibility? It is this latter uncritical `supposition qui entrain
1'entendementlui-meme Bans son usage transcendantal illegitime (supposition that
draws the understanding itself into its illegitimate transcendentalemployment)''S. Or
as Kant puts it, speculativereasonis `compelledto assume' the noumenon,pressedby
law to provide the negative space for the transfer of one kind of causality into
16
another. The Critique of Pure Reason militates against the confusion of these two
zones. Whilst different legislative powers are involved, they occupy a single territory,
and only by acting negatively against the passivity of senseis the negotiation of this
spacebetweenreasonand understandingsuccessfulin realizing an end of reason.
Understanding utilizes the noumenon negatively, limiting
sensibility by
providing a foundation for appearances,only if it does not also supposeitself to have
legislative authority over this object: it must, at the same time as limiting sensibility
`set["1 limits to itself. " Reason allows understanding to operate in its speculative
interest only if, whilst legislating over experience it also recognizes the limits of its
jurisdiction: so understanding legislates in two senses, both in relation to the
convergenceof faculties in common sense,and in relation to itself. In relinquishing the
claim to know an object in general independentlyof sense,understanding leavesfree a
space which, in its positive sense is filled by morality: understanding projects a
negative surfaceon which practical reasoninscribes its positive face, the pure form of
Law.
37
Chapter 1
II
System -A Gap
In exploring relations amongst the faculties in his book on Kant, Deleuze makes
marks: that is to say, certain problems are flagged or differences made precise, spaces
made clear, which are taken up, in radically different form, in his later work For
instance,he writes:
`chaque foil que nous'nous placons ainsi du point de vue d'un
rapport ou d'un accorddejä determine, dejä spccifie, il est fatal que le
senscommun nous paraisseune sorte de fait a priori au-delä duquel
nous ne pouvonspas remonter.
(each time we assume the perspective of a relationship or an accord
which is already determined, it is inevitable that common sense
should seem to us a kind of a priori fact beyond which we cannot
'8
go),
In other words, common sensecannot answer the question of its own genesis,
of an a priori subjectiveaccord, a balanceof difference not predicatedon unity and not
determinedby experience.Deleuze's criticism of Kant is, at its most naked, that whilst
he provides an account of the production of representation, he fails to provide an
account of the production of production, and in the book on Kant, the question of the
genesis of the faculties and of their accord is opened. What produces the effect of
formal laws extrinsic to experience, which determine universally its nature, shape,
pattern and order through the various determinate relations amongst faculties? Kant
rejects a Leibnizian solution through pre-establishedharmony and indeed, the first
38
Chapter 1
Criitique provides no solution at all. The problem is deferred until the Critique of
Judy,ement, where it can be seen that the common sense relations of differentiated
faculties brought about by the legislation of one faculty over others are dependenton
their prior free and indeterminate accord. The universal, necessaryand public spaceof
cognition has its genesisnot in law, but in a proportionally differentiated `attunement
[Stimmung] of the cognitive powers', the differences being conditioned by `what
difference there is among the objects that are given.'19 From the free accord of
imagination and understanding in judgements of taste in the beautiful, and from that
which arises out of the discordant and unregulated relation of imagination and reason
in the sublime, a public spaceof communicability is formed, 'the necessarycondition
of the universal communicability of our cognition, which must be presupposedin any
logic' 20 In judgements of the sublime and of the beautiful, reason is disinterested.
However, the possibility of disinterest itself testifies to their security. Judgementsof
taste on the beautiful have a logical form commensuratewith understanding and the
idea of a norm or standard of beauty is achievedthrough an averaging processwhich,
whilst not conscious,is nonethelessmechanically repeatable.And judgements on the
sublime require culture.
The problems of the genesis of the faculties is one amongst others which will
find, through labyrinthine routes, a solution in machinic production, and the relation of
21
body
is
in
to
the
machinic assemblages
chapter two.
without organs, and
addressed
The beginnings of this solution follow on in chapter two, but it is not fully explored
until a later one, when more of its elements have been provided.
Another mark made on the Kantian systemin La philosophie critique de Kant
pertains to Deleuze's empiricism, and the spacethat Kant opensup for a pre-legislative
dynamic - the dynamic which Schopenhauer will take up and call the ai11.
39
Chapter 1
Theoretically, this is not possible: objects of knowledge constructedin contradiction of
natural law are impossible, outside the limits of understanding, this latter being
defined as giving the law to nature. It is illegitimate for understandingto make a claim
over the empty spaceof the noumenon on behalf of knowledge, a claim to know the
object in general. It treads on the feet of practical reason and breaks the systematic
unity of the ends of reason apart: `nous perdons seulementla condition sous laquelle
[notre existenceintelligible] fait partie d'une nature et composeavec les autres un tout
systematique(we lose the condition under which [our intelligible existence]forms part
22
the
of a nature and composes,with
others, a systematicwhole)' Practically it is not
possible either. Practical reason gives the law to freedom as absolute and categorical,
and pure practical reason has no choice but to act legitimately - that is to say, within
the realm of law. Practical reasonis meant to realize its Law in action. But the space
that Deleuze opens up is against Law
not through intent or choice, but through
referenceto a pre-legislative economy- that economyof the will which Schopenhauer
will draw from Kant and which seedsone of the directions which feedsinto Deleuze's
thought.
Whilst the previous mark was concerned with the production of harmony
amongstthe faculties, here it is a question of what conditions the good senseunion of
sensibility and intelligibility and the coherenceof theory and practice. What ensures
that good sense is good in itself, rather than merely a means to some other, not
necessarilygood, end? What ensuresthat restriction of one legislative domain by the
affairs of another is limited to their territorial effects, whilst the domains themselves
remain separate?Only insofar as a creature is both legislator and obedient subject of
the Law, in its pure form, doesthere arise `a systematicunion of rational beings under
common objective laws - that is, a kingdom [ein Reich]'23and this end is possible only
insofar as good senseis categorically defined as `necessary,in virtue of its principle,
40
Chapter 1
for a will which of itself accords with reason'. 4 What conditions the union of
sensibility and intelligibility as good senseis Law, the positive side of Kantian theory.
Where good senseis absent,or there is a positive failure to recognizethe ideal
of the Reich, we `cessonsd'etre sujets, mais d'abord parce que nous cessonsd'etre
legislateurs (ceaseto be subjects,but primarily becausewe ceaseto be legislators)', so
transforming our relation with both senseand desire. 5 It is this transformation of sense
and desire outside the framework of both the subject and law which points towards a
pre-legislative domain, for which Kant opensa space.Making a point which is integral
to a later theme in his work, regarding the impossibility of a completed system - he
saysoften that something always escapes- Deleuze arguesagainst the identification of
practical reason,as pure form of Law, and freedom, as a problematic idea. This is not a
point about Kant's moral theory. It is indeed the casethat the spacebetweenfreedom
and legislation openedup by Kant is immediately closed, and that it must be assumed
that obedience to maxims contrary to the categorical imperative nonetheless still
constitutes a choice. What is important in Deleuze's use of Kant is the selection of
gaps and breaks within the construction of the critical system; that is, he does not
produce a reading or interpretation of Kant but rather constructs a machine which
utilizes those breaks and gaps, putting critique to work beyond the limits of reason,
speculativeor practical.
In his reading of Kant and his movement of critique beyond the threshold of
reason, these smallest differences generateglobal effects on the system, becausethey
are mobilized intensively, acrossthe actual continuum and not extensively,through the
lines scoredon spaceby its theoretical demarcation. In this caseas in others the issue
concerns the real nature of problems, or the nature of real problems. Not: what
41
Chapter 1
conditions experience,or our knowledge of objects,but what principles are inunanent
to the genesisof a concreteworld?
In an interview with Foucault, Deleuze talks of the relation of theory and
practice; instead of a defined and immovable limit demarcating the two, he refers to a
mobile connection. Under the conditions of representation, practice is at times the
application of theory, its technical consequence, a theory applied to matter, whilst at
others, theory is a consequenceof practice, drawn out of the empirical or through the
subjectivemaxims of the pure form of Law. However, Deleuze wants to fragment their
relation, and to reformulate theory as local, relative only to the domain it describesand
exhaustedby its practice, rather than universal and legislating beyond the concrete
exhaustion of its terms. It may have application to other domains, but the theory itself
does not involve the necessityof this. In other words, it is contingent, encountering
obstacles, problems which necessitate side-ways moves, the incorporation of new
elements,which do not function as buttressesto the theory, additional hypothesesin
support of a major claim, but whose addition feedsback into the theory to transform its
nature. It is in this sensethat Deleuze's work might be called theoretical: rather than
providing a single set of rules which encompassall concretemachines,and in terms of
which all empirical contingencies can be hypothesized,he provides radically abstract
rules, whose functioning is not pre-inscribed in their articulation, but contingent and
differentiated according to the domain of practice. Practice is described as an
assemblageof relays, which mobilize a theory, moving it across domains, through
walls, whilst theory allows for the relay of practices. The relation is one of mutual
reciprocation and interaction, rather than of fixed rule and principle. There is an action
of theory and a passion of practice, a series of transformations by which theory
becomes practice and practice becomes theory.
'Mn
systeme de relais dans un
ensemble, dans une multiplicite de pieces et de morceaux ä la fois theoriques et
42
Chapter 1
pratiques (a systemof relays in an assemblage, a multiplicity of parts and fragments
26
both
theoretical and practical)' As is often the case with Deleuze's
simultaneously
reformulation of philosophical orthodoxies, such as the separation of theory and
practice, the distinction becomes untenable once it is reconfigured; instead of a
distinction one is left with an assemblage,a machine which constructsboth theory and
practice, but which is definable in terms of neither.
This digression on theory/practice relations explain Deleuze's attention to the
gap which maintains their separationin Kant, and the utilization of the tiniest interval
teasedopen betweenfreedom and law as an interzone of autonomy, where desire is not
constrained by law to produce objects, nor sense similarly
constrained by
understanding. The idea (here, of freedom) remains problematic, as it is in the
theoretical philosophy, but practical Law provides no solution to it, becauseit is no
longer an idea produced under compulsion, familiar and repeated,and governed by
duty, obligation and pain, but one which mobilizes the potential for departurefrom this
particular territory.
Kant writes of the occupation of the `vacant place' of the noumenon by the
moral law:
`Speculative reason does not herewith grow in insight but only in
respect to the certitude of its problematic concept of freedom, to
which objective, though only practical, reality is now indubitably
21
'
given.
The `zone de libre-arbitre (zone of arbitrium liberum)', however, is unknown,
uncertain, and the nature of its reality is not indubitably given:
43
that is, it is
Chapter 1
contingent, its conditions are unknown and its effectsare not played out on the territory
where the laws of theory and practice operatemutually restrictive devicesagainst each
other. It is neither a negative theoretical device limiting sensibility nor a positive
practical device.
The logical test of practical reasonis madeby analogy with theoretical laws:
`the maxim which I adopt in respectto freely disposing of my life is
at once determined when I inquire what it would be in order that a
system of nature could maintain itself in accordancewith such a
law. 29
A theoretical model of a form of law is a test for pure practical reason; the
subject judges the truth or validity of the law he applies to himself by an analogy
betweenthe two domains of theory and practice: a correlation of the two confirms the
unity of natural causality and freedom under the law, and the noumenon is the name
for this correlation. As Kant says, `the concept of freedom is meant [der
Freiheitsbegriff soll] to actualize in the sensibleworld the end proposedby its laws'. 0
This meaning would translate into theoretical nonsense,if the laws of the sensible
world were incommensuratewith those of the practical. If the two domains of theory
and practice did not resolve into - at least in principle - an unconditioned unity, the
territory which they share would crack apart: this is what Kant recognizes when he
calls for a critique of reasonas a meansof preventing a lapse into a state of nature as
warfare, and what he is underlining in his referencesto nomads and barbarians who
crossthe terrain of thought without having first securedpossessionof a ground.
44
Chapter 1
In the Prolegomena, Kant says that discovery of the a priori concepts of
understanding demands no greater insight than detection of grammatical laws: in no
case is it possible to say `why each language has just this and no other formal
31
constitution' Theoretically, one must assumeit is contingent. However, that it is not
contingent but bearsa necessitypredicatedon moral law is made clear by the statement
above: the meaning of freedom, and the fact that it makes theoretical sense - that
analogiesbetweenmoral maxim and theoretical law are possible - is a function of the
Law.
The autonomous interzone in freedom on which Deleuze picks up escapes this
analogy and the meaning of law: it is intelligible
(which means no more than it
expresses sense) and sensible (which means that it is intensive and that it is not
legislative - sensibility does not legislate, being immanently passive, where passivity is
not understood in relation to activity, but as passional and generative of affects). It thus
cuts a transverse line across Kant's system which escapes the systematics of reason, its
cultural, moral, political
and theoretical ends, and describes a different diagram of
critique, one of practice and pragmatics, and a contingent autonomy. It is sensible;
relative in the sense that it is attached to the concrete, but not relative in a liberal sense
whereby one is necessitated to respect alternative opinions, alternative approaches;
intelligible,
but not rational, problematic but not subjective, effective but not caused
and patterned but not meaningful. Falling on the side of neither theory nor practice,
having unhinged sensibility from its reliance on various forms of imposed activity and
disassociated autonomy from the freedom to impose Law on oneself, something escapes
reason but not critique, nor indeed the problem of the transcendental.
45
Chapter 1
III
Deleuze's Escape Route
The interconnections amongst the faculties and across the three Critiques produce a
`veritable systeme de permutations (complete system of permutations',
at once both
static and creative, which distributes amongst itself the immanent problem of its own
32 This latter
construction.
point is of importance: Deleuze's reading of Kant is not
comparative - his interest is not in whether Kant produces a more theoretically
consistent epistemology than another philosopher, or in how apposite his practical
philosophy is to the late twentieth century, but in what is immanent to the production
of Kantian
philosophy.
So there are no (or very few) accusations of unjustified
assumptions, Scholastic hangovers or claims that some other thinker has generated
more satisfying solutions to problems with which Kant deals: nor does Deleuze engage
in corrective analyses, suggesting "improvements"
to Kant's thought in order to rectify
apparent inconsistencies. There are `pas d'idees justes, juste des idees (no correct ideas,
just ideas)', some of which are illusions, but none of which are wrong. 33The little Kant
book begins with Kant's own definition of philosophy, as `the science of the relation of
34
knowledge
human
And Deleuze reads the system
to
the
all
essential ends of
reason'
of faculties within these terms; but through the additive effect of the marks he makes
and the selection and connection of elements which, unhinged, elude these ends, he
removes the thought of a faculty system from its contained place within a subject, and
opens it up to the world. This is the beginnings of an assemblage, or desiring-machine.
Whilst he calls the
book a book on an enemy, Deleuze is neither destructive nor
aggressive, but camouflaged, disengaging the Kantian machine from common sense in
the process of analyzing its production as such.
The problems of critique are production and the real, synthesisand sense,and
the transcendentalmethod concernshow, rather than what, or in which direction, to
46
Chapter 1
think not how one must, or how it is possible to think, but what are the conditions of a
genealogy of thinking, how does practice mobilize theory, through walls, outside
departments, beyond institutions and into the streets? How does theory diagram
practice, transforming its potential directions? Because Deleuze understands the
transcendentalin a rigorously critical manner, it does not function as a conditioning
presupposition; as will be seen more clearly in a later chapter, it becomesan abstract
machine, evacuatedof structure and immanent to the production of the concrete, a
genetic rather than conditioning element. This is the route that Deleuze takes,
connecting the marks and gaps in Kant and using the machine he constructsto undo
common senseand depart from the direction of good sense,his language changing as
the systemproducesits own escapelines, becoming less academic,faster, more dense
as it picks up speed,until in L'Anti-Oedipe his practice escapesphilosophical theory
and builds a different, strangemachine. But I am running aheadof the problem of this
chapter.
`[I11'y a des Ides qui parcourent toutes les facultes, n'etant l'objet d'aucune
en particulier (there are Ideaswhich traverseall the faculties, but are the object of none
in particular)'; Ideas which `vont de la sensibilite ä la pensee,et de la penseeA la
sensibilite (go from sensibility to thought and from thought to sensibility)' 35 But pass
not through theory, practice, or their completion in an Image of thought. It is this
problem, of thought as the superior or transcendentalexerciseof sense, the practice of
sense,rather than its theoretical description, which Deleuzepursues,and the remainder
of this chapter explores further aspectsof Kant's writing which support his claim that
senseis the real discoveryof transcendentalphilosophy.
The system of faculties, Deleuze argues, points towards a transcendental
empiricism implicit in Kant, the discovery of senseas a transcendentalfaculty being
47
Chapter 1
radically incommensuratewith the general logic of the understanding. Kant betrays
this discovery on three counts at least. Firstly, through the convergenceof knowledge
into a form of common sense; secondly, by directing thought teleologically,
complementing common sense with good sense; and lastly by installing a form of
conditioning which dictates that problems are understoodin terms of the possibility of
their solution. These components- an emphasison the network or systemof faculties,
the problem of the vector of thought, and the discovery of sense as the properly
transcendentalelement - are at the basis of Deleuze's relation with Kant.
IV
Problem I
In Difference et Repetition, Deleuzewrites that what is essentialto any problem is 'the
genesisof the act of thought, the operation of the faculties'.35A problem, or Idea, is
defined not through the possibility of its solution, through a need to provide a correct,
or true response to a question, but transcendentally. Understood in terms of the
Critique of Pure Reason,this remark suggeststhat the transcendentalas a problem
cannot be characterizedin terms of the Analytic, since this instancesonly a solution,
the functions of judgement providing a conceptualframework for a set of propositions
true within a given and limited field. The transcendentalproblem, or Idea is one for
'which there is no solution' in advance,no common senseanswer, and, according to
the limits of knowledge establishedby Kant, no solution in principle. 37 Each solution
is complete, but problems are abstract Deleuze is critical of Kant for naming the
Ideas, a move which defines an area or possibility of solution. How else, for example
could God, freedom and immortality be solved other than by religion or morality?
48
Chapter 1
Yet whilst a problem cannot be defined in terms of its solutions, just as the
itself,
the
theory
theory
nonethelessa problem
never
resembles
concrete practice of
determinesand is inseparablefrom its solutions; there is thus a paradox. Tracing the
outlines of a problem from the instancesof its solution and trying to solve paradoxes
illusions,
logic
foul
falls
or
philosophical
of
natural
a
reversible
and
symmetrical
with
leading to a misunderstandingnot only of the senseof an Idea, but also of the nature of
the transcendental. One ends up oscillating between two domains, without the two
every meeting or interacting. Deleuze takes the transcendentalas a serious problem,
and is rigorous about the need to understand it in terms of immanence. However,
unlike Kant, it is not immanent to reason,but to critique; it becomesthe principle of
critical practice, the abstract thought of zero presuppositions.This is one reasonwhy,
as theory, it is not traceable from its solutions, since solutions are empirical,
contextual, temporary, and their discovery feedsback into their conditions and
transforms them, as different.
Deleuze's problems are sense and thought, Ideas inseparable from their
solutions, yet not traceable from the instances of these. Problems are given as produced,
as empirical
and produced as given,
immanently,
this
relation
being
neither
symmetrical nor bilateral, each element being continually displaced and destabilized in
a becoming which is not anchored to being. A solution is unilaterally
from its problem:
distinguer,
`Ic distingue
differentiated
s'oppose ä quelque chose qui ne peut pas s'en
et qui continue d'epouser cc qui divorce avec lui (something which
distinguishes itself - and yet that from which it distinguishes itself does not distinguish
itself from it)' 38 The paradox of this relation, of a surface rising from itself, folding
within itself and involuting, is inseparable from Deleuze's thought.
49
Chapter 1
Deleuze marries Kant's insistence on immanence with a Leibnizian system,
which he plugs into the crack within the Kantian subject effected through the
introduction of time, a sense which fractures general logic.39 The Transcendental
Aesthetic becomesa problem whose genesis is connected with the unfolding of an
infinite plane of immanence, and with material relations which produce rather than
presupposetime and space.From Kant, there is the illegitimation of a transcendent
determining form and from Leibniz a systemwhose elementsare nested; `Each portion
of matter may be conceivedas a garden full of plants, and as a pond full of fish. But
every branch of each plant, every member of each animal, and every drop of their
liquid parts is itself likewise a similar garden or pond.i40 This opens out a radically
different Kant, and begins to characterize Deleuze's critique as a microanalysis of
power: of the mechanismsby which signs are inverted, positive to negative or negative
to positive: of the slightest deviations from the systematicsof reason, which, when
connected, escapethe damage of law. By marrying systems against reason, and by
cutting across Kantian territory, rather than following the lines of its structural
organization and the rules of his thought, Deleuze begins to uncover the genesisof the
transcendentalin sense,imperceptible to the conceptual generalizations to which it is
reduced in the Analytic in the first Cr taue. Rather than functioning as a set of
conditioning principles, the transcendental becomes a part added alongside the
concretemachine, not as a whole in terms of which the machine can be explained, but
as another working element immanent to the empirical, but not definable in its terms.
By connecting critique and the network of the faculties with an open
systematicsof nestedand differential elementsnot co-ordinatedby or subordinatedto a
centralized subject, the whole assemblage functioning instead as an intensive
magnitude modulated through the pure form of time, Deleuze flips Kant onto an
intensive synthetic axis, connecting time with the discussion of intensity in the
50
Chapter 1
Anticipations of Perception, using only the smallest intervals and differences in Kant's
him
intact,
but
leave
Kant
does
in
opens
the
not
creation of an effect which
writings
up, as a surface of variation and change. It is important not to understanding nesting
by
in
inside
"nest"
is
that,
the
analysis, one could
sense
another,
each
not
extensively:
discover and lay out a coherent and total system.Becausethe systemis intensive, each
movement changesthe relations of all parts, the distributions and densities of space.
Deleuze follows a critical vector which is neither mechanically nor organically
structured- that is, it is neither a systemof understanding or an architectonic of reason
forced to
be
Kant
himself
but
`an
in
finite
that
will
unconscious
understanding...
discover when he will hollow out the difference between a determinant and a
determinable self 41:the problem of time, senseand the thing-in-itself.
Because Deleuze does not argue relations between the three Critiques, or
internal to any one Critique in terms of contradictions or resemblancesbetweenthem,
critique becomesan open systemwhich is `merely transformed by the different foldings
it receives', a plastic and mobile space42 The transcendental becomes an abstract
distributed surfaceof flows and assemblagesrather than a hierarchical edifice enclosed
within the bounds of reason,and each Critique becomesan engagementwith a reason
whose senseconstitutes a responseor solution to transformations in the abstract space
of the transcendental:a machine.
This move is of crucial importance, since it implies infinite variations
generated immanently to a finite open system by intensive elements: a system in
continuous displacement. By bringing what is imperceptible and analytically
intractable within Kant's philosophy to its surface and allowing it to function
synthetically, by connecting and interweaving lines and elements from philosophies
and philosophers, stealing something from here, something else from there, Deleuze
51
Chapter 1
assemblesa nuanced, fluid Kant, no longer the stolid moralist and oppressor of
difference but unknowing inventor of a problem.
The critical treason in Deleuze's reading of Kant is double, in two senses.
One, chronologically, because although the potential of the transformation is
implicated in the early work, it is only in Deleuze's later writings that the components
selectedand connections effected interact without reference to their source, critique
becoming an impersonal and abstract machinic force, auto-critique, or as it comesto be
called in Anti-Oedipus, schizoanalysis.By which time it is as legitimate to claim that
Kant has nothing to do with Deleuze as it is to claim that Deleuze has produced a
Kant-becoming. And secondly, becauseDeleuze splits Kant across an unfamiliar axis
which connectsintensities with differential relations, so drawing the problem of force
into the dialectic, and Ideas with individuals, so the latter become solutions to the
former.
Again, a paradox, Deleuze's critique being both immanent to the system of
faculties, as an intensive depth, whilst at the sametime differentiated from Kant, not as
a single line of departure, but through the selection of
tiny intervals, and their
connection in a movement which transforms the nature of the conditions, and opens
out the potential for a Kant whose problems are not locked into a subject. His concern
is not to establish a doctrine of faculties, but to determine its presuppositions and
discover its machinery. In the next chapter, the image of recognition which blocks this
move will be circumnavigated.
52
Chapter 2
Losing Face
`La noologie, qui ne se confond pas avec l'ideologie, est
precisement 1'etude des images de la pensee,et de leur historicite.
D'une certaine maniere, on pourrait dire que cela n'a guere
d'importance, et que la penseen'a jamais eu qu'une gravite pour rire.
Mais elle ne demande que ca: qu'on ne la prenne pas au serieux,
puisqu'elle peut d'autant mieux penser pour nous, et toujours
engendrer ses nouveaux fonctionnaires, et que, moins les gens
prennent la penseeau serieux, plus ils pensent conformement ä ce
qu'un Etat veut.
(`Noology, which is distinct from ideology, is precisely the study of
images of thought, and their historicity. In a sense,it could be said
that all this has no importance, that thought has never had anything
but laughable gravity. But that is all it requires: for us not to take it
seriously. Becausethat makes it all the easier for it to think for us,
and to be forever engendering new functionaries. Becausethe less
peopletake thought seriously, the more they think in conformity with
'
State
the
what
wants)'.
In its broadest senseand throughout, Deleuze's writing constitutes a critique
of images which have protected the assumption that everyone knows what thinking
means. In the early book, Nietzsche et la Philosophie, he summarizes three theses
essential to the dogmatic image of thought: truth is the formal possessionof sincere
thought; error is in opposition to truth, the effect of forces alien to thought; method is
the meansby which the formal possessionof truth is protected from the distractions of
2
interests)'
Truth
`corps,
intdrets
(body,
error passions,
sensibles
passions,sensuous
is abstract and universal, method is independent of context, and always remote from
the errors of the senses.
53
Chapter 2
Deleuze writes that it is disturbing that thought understoodin this way `n'ont
jamais fait de mal ä personne. Le fait est que l'ordre etabli et les valeurs en cours y
trouvent constamment leur meilleur soutien (has never hurt anyone. In fact the
established order and current values constantly find their best support in truth
3
in
this
conceived
way)' By not taking seriouslythe professedinnocenceof thought, by
not exploring the prejudicial nature of an image which protects itself by negating the
body, the senses,the passions,desire and the potential cruelties of thinking, philosophy
embracesstupidity, and even this is misunderstood,as bestiality or laziness or error.
Stupidity is not these,however but the condition under which misadventuresin thought
are categorizedas either truth or error: leading to thought as quiz-show, Deleuze says.
Stupidity is a structure of thought as such: henceDeleuze's question: why has stupidity
never beenconsideredas `l'objet d'une question proprement transcendentale(the object
4
transcendental
question)' Whilst the legitimacy of thought as a juridical
of a properly
and image-bound process is deduced, the intelligence of this process, of this sort of
deduction as a legitimation of the real nature of thought, is never made the object of
critique.
Deleuze targets several prejudices: that thought has a natural rectitude; that
amongst the undeniable elements of thought are included subjectivity, representation,
and discourse;that a common senseproper to the nature of thought distributes a form
of the Same, an identity continuous throughout the diversity of empirical fields: that
good sense determines a principle of direction which forces choice and eliminates
alternative routes and patterns of thought: that thought has a form of interiority
modelled on the Statewhich, once given, is universalized: and finally, that the value of
thought is established - that it is, indeed, we who think, who know who we are and
what we think. The first person plural indicates not modestyor reticence in the face of
54
Chapter2
saying `I think', but illustrates that thought has been consigned to regurgitating the
particular in the light of what is generally thought, of what thought holds in common.
Deleuze's reading of Kant is twofold, however: the critique of the dogmatic image
simultaneouslyengageselementsof critique which are not under the regulation of good
sense,nor constituted by common sense,and so not under the grammar of the "we".
This minor treatment of Kant strips out the power structures,culture, doctrine, dogma,
the ends of reason, senseand thought, so efficiently and elegantly mapped out in the
little Kant book, to exposecritique's potential becomings.s
I
Recognition
The principle presupposed by the image of thought, Deleuze argues, is that of
recognition. Recognition implies a transcendental model which orients thought
according to rules of distribution which function specifically to limit and control its
relation with senseby requiring thought to be thought of an object, of something,
something in general, something = x. The element of generality, of both scope and
direction, is essential to the dogmatic image of thought, since it allows for the
substitution of particulars on a horizontal plane, each and every object being
exchangeablefor any other object, and the subsumption of particulars on a vertical
plane, each relation being contained under emptier but more general laws. There is no
need for caution, thinking on this plane, because it is a general space organized
identically throughout. No danger, no surprise. Extrinsic to sense,the form of the
object in general lays claim to the empirical in advance of experience, and prejudices
the potential force, direction and distribution of synthesis by explicating it along
generally familiar lines.
55
Chapter 2
Recognition of the particular dependson the field of sensebecoming an object
in general for the understanding. As Kant says, `the combination (conjunctio) of a
manifold in general can never come to us through the senses'and produce recognition,
6
is
intuition
is
is
the
since sensibility
passive,
singular and
real
a posteriori The
conjunction of heterogeneoussensible presentations into a field of generality must
therefore be an act of understanding, the faculty of representation. However, by
generalizing the manifold diversity of sense under the form of an object, the real
elements of sensible relations are inverted and hidden, and the transcendental
problematic is lost. Conceptual determination according to the unity of rule special to
understanding generalizes over difference in order to lock it into a relation with
identity: sensiblerelations are thus formalized according to the categoriesof substance,
causality and community, and the material interactions of bodiesare coveredover, each
relation being a particular instance of a formal and general rule.
In the Aesthetic, Kant says that the parts of time and space,which are pure
intuitions, presupposethe whole: time is not composedof times nor spaceof spaces.
Howm-er, according to the axioms of intuition
`All
intuitions are extensive
magnitudes'7, which is to say `the representation of the parts makes possible, and
therefore necessarilyprecedes,the representationof the whole'!
When predicated of
the object in general, as empirically real, intuitions - which `rest on affections'becomefixed quantities, discrete quanta with particular values which are a function of
neither sensible nor real relations but of the formal concept of magnitude, and their
affective genesis formalized, generalized and brought into relation with unity. 9
According to the concept of magnitude, space and time are divided into metric
intervals, quanta. As the experience of space is rendered axiomatically extensive, all
real data becomes subject to cardinal measurability, the former indirectly, through
56
Chapter 2
referenceto extensity, and the latter directly, and can thus be summedaccording to an
additive (+1) principle.
Matter, in this context, is condensedinto a point, and the qualities of forces
are evaluated independently of real differences in the intensities from which they
'°
emerge. Since the judgement of which the concept of quantity is a function is
universal, this segmentedEuclidean spatio-temporality becomesthe field of thought to
which understanding is limited, the surfaceon which the image is organized and across
which a single subject expressesitself in an object in general. In this way a nestedand
intensive system,which is ordinal without the order of the sequencebeing determined
by anything extrinsic to the system, becomes subject to a principle of succession
which dictates that each element counts as a unit of the same magnitude. Ordinal does
not mean first, second,third... etc., but first, ninth, twenty-third, second, seventeenth:
not as arbitrary leaps, but as expressionsof relations structuring a problem, of qualities
"
force
than
quantities of substance.
rather
of
Only by unhinging
the Aesthetic, together with
imagination, from
understanding and its empty conceptual boxes can the empty form of time becomea
carrier of intensive distances and depths of a space without uniformity, which is
produced as it is crossed, rather than being there before you arrive. This is what
Deleuze meanswhen he calls the pure line of time a labyrinth: it is spatially intensive,
just as space is temporally differentiated, and there is no single and uniform time
which comprehendsall space.But one must be careful to differentiate - as Kant does between intensity and intensive magnitude. Intensity is correlated with the material
qualities of the real:
57
Chapter 2
`Appearancescontain in addition to intuition the matter [Materien]
for some object in general...they contain, that is to say, the real [das
Reale] of sensationas merely subjective representation,which gives
us only the consciousnessthat the subject is affected and which we
"2
in
relate to an object general.
Kant is referring to the real here, and not to the concept of reality: the real in
sensation, or matter of perception, is that qualitative aspect of empirical experience
which, unlike conceptual reality, cannot be known or anticipated a priori, but without
which the form of the object in general remains empty and logical. A posteriori and
intensive, the singular qualities of real relations are, as remarked above, masked,
diverted and distributed according to conceptualrules extrinsic to their production; the
qualities of forces are qualified under the general conditions of possibility, making
them commensurate with subjective unity through their relation to
the object in
general, or transcendentalobject, correlate of the transcendentalsubject.
Throughthis relation,degreesof intensitybecomere-describable
as intensive
magnitudes.Intensities effect (but are not equivalent to) sensation,or affects and Kant
thus ascribes them (not their genesis, but their effect) to the subject; intensive
magnitude, `a degreeof influence on the sense',is ascribedto `all objectsof perception,
in so far as the perception contains sensation.913The problem of the generation of
intensities, as singular and instantaneouseffects which testify to relations of bodies
and of real forces, is lost in this move, which follows that same split describedat the
opening to the TranscendentalAesthetic, which isolates an objective and subjective
element of sensibility. The intensive and real continuum of which all quanta are
composedis rationalized through the form of the object, which is folded back over
intensities, splitting them into sensationson the one hand - subjective, unmeasurable,
58
Chapter 2
private experiencesof a closed body, and degreesof intensive magnitude on the other objective, measurable,public experiencesof qualitative motions by cognitive subjects.
Kant can only then make the claim that though it may
`seemsurprising that we should forestall experience,precisely in that
which concerns what is only to be obtained through it, namely, its
"4
less,
is
the
the
matter-none
such actually
case.
Intensities experiencedas sensationare instantaneous.If succession,a concept
first produced by `[m]otion, an act of the subject [Bewegung, als Handlung des
Subjekts]' 15isnot taken into account, then intensities have no extensive magnitude,
becausetheir apprehension `does not involve a successivesynthesis proceeding from
16
to
the
whole representation. That is, they are real qualities, but are not
parts
commensurablewith the axioms of intuition; instead they are discreteand singular, yet
complex, since the real is infinitely divisible. In the move from intensities understood
thus to intensive magnitudes as general and anticipatable qualities corresponding to a
degree of influence on the sense,infinite divisibility is formulated on the extensive
axis, the pure form of time becomesthe form of succession,the act of a subject,and the
intensive continuum becomes correlated with the successive continuity of time,
determinableeither subjectively, in terms of inner sense,and thus as directional, or in
terms of the body, and thus without relevance to cognition, or objectively,
epistemologically, in terms of quanta, and thus as rational and extensive. In all three
casesthe real problem of intensities - of an infinitely divisible, impersonal and preindividual heterogeneousmanifold of real qualities - is lost.
Deleuze is critical of Kant's use of recognition in the Analytic of the first
Criti
e not only for its specific employment in that context, but for its wider function,
59
Chapter 2
which is to provide thought with a model of the `concordancedes facultes fondee dans
le sujet pensantcomme universel, et s'exercant sur l'objet quelconque(harmony of the
faculties grounded in the supposedlyuniversal thinking subject and exercisedupon the
"
unspecified object)'. Common sense,the collaboration and convergenceof faculties
on the shared task of recognizing an object as the Same, limits thought by requiring
that, to be legitimate, it adhere to this model. Recognition of the object thus becomes
the means by which the real relations of sense are differentiated from the formal
relations of judgement and understanding. That is, recognition is the mechanism by
which the truth of image and the errors of the body are distinguished.
But: `11ya dans le monde quelque chosequi forceä penser' (Something in the
18.
forces
[us]
The limitations imposed on thought by the principle of
to
think'
world
recognition and on senseby its generalization under the form of an object imply a
paralogism at the heart of Kantian epistemology: senseis separatedfrom what it can
become by a regime of relations which reduce the real to a condition of general
possibility, and negate its genetic We in thought. In the first Critique, sense's only
logic is conceptually conditioned What forces thinking is discountedby this condition,
which separatesa content of thought from a form, and then determinesthe former on
the basis of the latter, endorsing hylomorphism.
***
The abovegives a negative aspectof Deleuze's Kant, and as such is derivative
of the positive aspectof critique. "[D]evant un tel genie, il ne peut We question de dire
qu'on n'est pas d'accord. It faut d'abord savoir admirer, it faut retrouver les probl8mes
qu'il pose, sa "machinerie ä lui" (in front of such genius, perhaps it is not only a
question of sa3ing that one does not agree. First of all, you have to know how to
60
Chapter 2
19
It
in
itself")'.
he
"machinery
have
the
to rediscover the problems poses,
admire; you
is this positive and generous consideration of the machinery, of the network of
faculties, which gives Deleuze's critique of Kant its force: he operateswith courtesy
towards his enemy, camouflaging the movements which effect the turn of the result
against its origin, forging a strange alliance and producing a monstrous offspring. Of
his practicesin the history of philosophy at the time of writing the Kant book he writes
2°
he
looked
it
(enculage)
that
on as a processof screwing
His reading of Kant is, once more, double, a Kant of recognition and the
image of thought, bureaucratic and moralizing, counterposedwith a Kant of synthesis,
insistence on real conditions and sense as the problem and discovery of the
transcendental.Unless the network of faculties is simplified, and the critical machinery
collapsed back into understanding, (in which case the real problem of the
transcendentalis also lost) it is quite plain that imagination is the productive engine of
synthesis, and that it is only in its epistemological operation that it is legislated by
understanding, and annexed to recognition. Understanding does have a facility for
synthesis:however, this is an empty and merely formal combination in the absenceof
data provided through the synthesisof imagination. This latter brings `the manifold of
intuition into the form of an image' by taking `impressionsup into its activity'? ' The
manifold of intuition, even if pure, is not empty, but nor is it uniform or necessarily
commensuratewith the possibility for recognition: that this is the caseis clear from the
third Critique, where concepts have no purchase, on either aesthetic or
natural
production.
As Buchdahl writes, this synthesis of imagination is a 'pre-categorised
u
process' If recognition is allowed to infect synthesis at the level of transcendental
imagination, the import of the schematism for the relation of sensibility and
61
Chapter 2
understanding is lost. Kant writes that the `application of categories to appearances
becomespossible by means of transcendentaldetermination of time' (italics added)."
Recognition works at the level of the image, whilst the schema, `a product and, as it
were, a monogram of pure a priori imagination' is a mediating function, a "third
thing" clearly distinguished from the image, which allows for the application of
is
in
In
the
to
as
other
appearances
synthesized
apprehension.
words,
categories
indicated by the words `becomespossible', the relation of the conceptsto appearances
is transcendentally conditioned by the determination of time through imagination;
understanding has no immediate relation with the manifold of intuition, and only
because,in the epistemological task of the first Critique, imagination is functioning
under the managementof understanding, is the determination of time consistent with
the concepts. Were time only and necessarily determinable according to the pure
categoriesof understanding, all experience would be exhaustedby the architecture of
the first Critique. Synthesis does not require recognition; recognition presupposes
synthesis.The combination of representationsby understanding and the spontaneous
addition of a formal rule to material data presupposesthe synthesisof imagination. If
this important role of imagination is missed, then the real problem of synthesisis also
missed.
Mapping the Kant of real problems and sense involves both an abstract
problem, that `does not explain, but must itself be explained', and an empirical
problem, of `analyzing the states of things, in such a way that non-pre-existent
4
be
from
Abstract and empirical together and at once, a
them'.
conceptscan extracted
singularity, and not a particular. Explanation in Deleuze's sense is not, however,
discursive clarification or interpretation. Analysis of a substantial multiplicity, of the
state of a "thing" made up of `a set of lines or dimensions which are irreducible to one
another' is neither exhaustivenor definitive, becausethe lines tangled in a multiplicity
62
Chapter 2
are becomings, material solutions or explanations to real problems of matter and
25
flows
There is, for an empirical logic of multiplicities, no "thing", only setsof
energy
.
inseparableand continuously varying relations, and analysis is at once synthesis,since
plugging into a multiplicity effects its reconfiguration, and any change in relation is,
for an intensive, nested and real system, also a change in nature. There is always an
escape:indeed, if critique were not immanently creative, Kant would be a dull enemy
and a feebleally.
11
Sense
In Difference et Repetition. Deleuze differentiates between the given (le
donne) and 'ce par quoi le donne est donne (that by which the given is given)' 26
Difference is `ce par quoi le donnd est donne comme divers (that by which the given is
27,
diverse)'
the virtual and real condition of concrete appearance,substantial
given as
multiplicities. Senseis thus both abstract and concrete simultaneously,perceptible and
imperceptible; it neither explains nor hides itself by forced conduction along pre-given
co-ordinatesbut is self-organizing, actualizing the differential relations of the problem
as a distribution of multiplicities, or diversity-, and whilst space is always to varying
degreessegmentedand partitioned, ordered and structured, there is at the same time
something that always escapes.
Deleuze's formulation of the relation of difference and diversity addressesthe
paralogism mentioned above; senseis not separatedfrom what it can become by the
form of possibility, nor channelled by a r6gime into providing the content for logical
meanings and forms imposed from outside sense. Instead, it individuates a body,
making solutions to problems perceptible whilst
simultaneously adding the
imperceptible alongside, not as a unifying or unified element, or as causally related to
63
Chapter 2
what is perceived,but as an additional component,which differentiates this assemblage
from that, not extensively, according to properties or charactersattaching to identical
units, such as organisms or persons, nor through comparisons of differences on the
basis of a prior commonality, but as the immanent condition of a body as a singularity,
or haecceity, the term used in Mille Plateaux
Deleuze distinguishes two sensesof difference; differentiation, which belongs
to a problem, and differenciation, as the concretization of the differential relations of
the problem. Where these are confused, and the processof actualization is taken to
instantiate the relations of the problem, the problem discussedearlier, of confusing
solutions with problems, and attempting to trace the nature of the problem from the
instancesof its solutions arises.
This early formulation in Difference et Repetition of two communicating
orders of difference which cannot be referred to a single unifying principle carries
through, though in different terminology, into the later work. In Mille Plateaus. for
example, the concrete individual is named an assemblage,whilst differential problems
becomeabstract machines: in both cases,what is important is the relation betweenthe
two. The variables negotiatedby the assemblageeffectuatethe machine, and the latter
does not exist independently of the former, whilst the former does not function
independently of the latter. There are passagesof communication between the two,
variations in the variables selectedwhich in turn change in nature of the variables. It
was said above that there is no time uniform for all space,and no spacedistributed in
advance of its occupation: each assemblageor body effectuates a singular machine,
realizing a spaceand time without comparison. (The system, needlessto say, does not
wear democracywith ease.)
64
Chapter 2
Kant is criticized, as has been seen,for isolating his abstractcomponentsfrom
the empirical, his practice from his theory, disallowing their communication and the
transformation of the problem, or abstract machine, as it interacts with its solutions.
The Kantian transcendental is folded back over the empirical, appearing as a
miraculous condition of its order, independently originated and establishing a set of
invariant constants.Deleuze, however, sets the constantsin motion, so that a problem
becomes a set of variables, the difference amongst things which have nothing in
common, and itself varying in relation to the concrete. He describesphilosophy as the
creation of concepts,but conceptswhich remain contingent
That by which the given is given is not time or space,but their genesis,a set
of intensive syntheses immanent to the formation of a pure straight line and a
rhizomatic distribution -a labyrinthine, ant-like line, the effect of time unhinged from
28
cardinality, of passive syntheses. These latter are the imperceptible and contingent
cycles of the sufficient reason of sense,the molecular patternings of perception whose
emergent effect is the concrete world, not as a theatre of representation, but as a
shifting and mobile field of directions and tendencies. In unhinging time from
cardinality, logic and the order of succession,Kant is also disconnecting it from
generality, making it autonomous of understanding and of consciousness - of
movement, succession,co-existence, etc., - which are modes, or consciousnessesof
time. As has already been remarked in the Introduction, to confuse the pure form of
time with one of its modesis to reduceit to a psychologistic notion. It might be argued,
with reference to the SecondAnalogy, that subjective successionis definitive of the
form of time. However, successionis merely subjective consciousnessof time, tied up
with the apprehensionof perceptionsrather than with their materiality; the function of
the SecondAnalogy is to demonstratethat objective relations amongst appearances,as
65
Chapter 2
opposed to the arbitrary successionsin inner sense, are governed by the concept of
causality. Kant writes:
`The objective successionwill therefore consist in that order of the
manifold of appearanceaccording to which, in conformity with a
rule, the apprehension of that which happens follows upon the
apprehensionof that which precedes.Thus only can I be justified in
asserting, not merely of my apprehension, but of appearanceitself,
that a successionis to be met with in it. '29
The distinction being made is not that between the pure form of time and a ruledetermined causal and objective order, but between a subjective, conscious experience
of time-relations as successiveand arbitrarily ordered and an objective conscious
experienceof time-relations as causally determined To confuse the pure form of time
with successionis to commit the critical error of formulating conditions in terms of the
conditioned.
Kant's insight, Deleuze argues,demands`une nouvelle definition du temps (et
de 1'espace),(a new definition of time [and of space])', which considers it within its
own terms, as aesthetic and as singular, rather than in terms of understanding, as
conceptual and general30 This in turn necessitates a different theorization of
imagination in relation to time, and sensibility, in which it is no longer rigidified by its
common sensefunction of schematizing along channelsof conceptualunity. This break
up of common sense is one amongst other problems that Deleuze works out in
Difference et Repetition. beginning to seed the apparatus of Anti-Oedipus, where the
sense of a faculty has been melded onto that of real distributions, and becomes a
function of the relations of a substantial multiplicity, or assemblage,which is not
66
Chapter 2
definable as a unity or as in relation to a unity. The assemblageis the basic unit of
machinic critique, composednot of an aggregateof extensiveunits, a sort of clutter of
randomly collected bits and pieces, but as a series of inter-related affects, continuously
mobile and in variation; rather than existing in time, an assemblageis chronogenetic,
generating a temporal and temporary metastability as an effect of the infinite firings of
intensive difference which comprise its substance.
There are `des facultes non encore soupconnees,ä decouvrir. Car on ne peut
rien dire d'avance, on ne peut pas prejuger de la recherche' (faculties yet to be
discovered,whose existenceis not yet suspected.For nothing can be said in advance,
one cannot prejudge the outcome of research'), or of relations amongst senseswith
31
in
nothing
common. In Difference et Repetition, Deleuze's productive interest in
Kant focuses on what forces sensibility to sense, on the relation of sense, as both
sensationand intuition, to the thing-in-itself, which Deleuze re-namesa dark precursor
and disconnectsfrom the unity which Kant allows himself to postulate in relation to it.
What is important for the dark precursor, or `1'en-soi, c'est que, petite ou grande, la
difference soit interne (the in-itself, is that the difference, whether large or small, be
internal)'. 32 Difference is not a function of the relation of an identity to its external
environment; indeed the determination and definition of something as a boundary or
limit becomes increasingly problematic. Without moving outside the terms of the
problem, components whose sense is purely extensive cannot be introduced as
mechanismsfor its solution. As remarked above,two sensesof difference are in play,
that of the problem - differentiation, and that of its concretion or actualization differenciation. Where the difference of the in-itself, or dark precursor, is confused
with the concrete order of differences, the critical move of the transcendental is lost:
subjectively experiencedfeatures of experienceare mistaken for real relations, which
67
Chapter 2
in turns suggeststhat representation is understood not as a mode of construction or
production, but as production of the real.
Deleuze does not refer specifically to the thing-in-itself or to its formulation
within the Kantian system.Similarly, remarks concerning the thing-in-itself made here
do not constitute an interpretation of the term or of its particular functioning within the
first Criitigue. It is under any circumstances important not to present a crude
formulation of the thing-in-itself as an object, as the concept of an object, or as
synonymouswith the noumenon; it is crucial that it is not understood in such terms in
order to track the manner in which Deleuze takes up this problematic. Whilst
Deleuze's formulation of the "in-itself'of difference appears much transformed from
the few and inconsistent references to it in Kant's own work,
it is nonetheless
implicated with the same problem, which as discussed in the Introduction,
are
addressedfirst by Schopenhauerin his deployment of the thing-in-itself as the will.
That is, the problem of a blind (in the sense of non-teleological, non-directed,
unconscious,non-intentional) dynamic force or drive antecedentto law.
As such a drive, the thing-in-itself is immanent to the empirical, since without
it the empirical is no more than a logical form devoid of objective (material) reality,
that is, it does not function as a limit to the empirical. Nonetheless, it cannot be
thought through or in terms of the empirical without this leading to a transcendent
formulation. It is against such uncritical tendenciesthat this reading of the thing-initself operates.There are only two elements to be considered - firstly, a continuum of
intensities, a full spaceof varying degreesof density and compressionand secondly,the
empty form of time. It is in this context that the dark precursor needsto be understood.
In Kant's own terms, this is not a problem for consciousness,since from the position of
consciousnessthere are no relations other than those which appear, and those which
68
Chapter 2
appear are, for consciousness,axiomatically extensive; so whilst it may be true to say
that consciousnessis also intensively differentiated, the qualities of intensity are
extensively qualified. Nor is it a problem equivalent to that of the noumenon. The
noumenon is `something in general' distinguished from sensibility and leaving as
form
logical
by
determining
`a
the
thought
alone
merely
object
residue mode of
-a
law
for
firms
the
the
natural
analogical
conversion
of
ground
without content' which
33
law.
But the thing-in-itself as precursor is a differenciator,
and maxims of moral
34
leap.
Deleuze
demon,
difference,
`in-itself
however,the
also calls
signal or
which
of
A majoritarian reading of Kant boxes the thing-in-itself into a single problem:
this is how it becomesassimilated with the noumenon and conceived in causal terms,
as both a principle of the convertibility and exchange of subjective terms - moral
maxims into general laws of science and back again - and in relation to the strange
causality of freedom under the Law. It characterizesit negatively, too, as a concept of
in
The
in
far
it
is
leap
time.
thing
space
and
so
as
perceived
not
perceived
a sensuously
is thus no longer a flash-flow but a labour. Not an autonomousinterval but freedom
and equality under Law. Deleuze precision engineerscritique, stripping it down whilst
remaining rigorously transcendental (in the sense of immanence of criteria) by
deploying senseagainst conversion and exchange,by not pre-supposing unity, and by
illegitimating the resignation of thought to illusion, philosophical or physical. The
thing-in-itself ceasesto be a single problem with a single solution, but becomes a
singular matter immanent to and indistinguishable from its collective solution in a
concrete assemblage,but imperceptible, and not explicable through reference to that
assemblage.It cannot be thought in terms of (Kantian) substance-a concept, and thus
not in terms of permanence either. It is through the interrogation of this relation
between an intensively differentiated continuum, the in-itself of difference, and the
69
Chapter 2
pure form of time that Deleuze teasescritique from reasonand the transcendentalfrom
the subject.
Illusions are to be dismembered,not resisted. As the processof shifting the
ground and uncovering elements inverted by negation and constrained by limitation
continues, the nature of the transcendental and of the thing-in-itself become
transformed,as each is divorced from the structuresof unity, recognition and the image
of thought. The transcendental- by which Deleuze means the pure empty line of time
unhinged from cardinality - becomesincreasingly abstract, whilst the thing-in-itself
becomesan intensive problem, synthesizedas the variables of the transcendental are
selected in the formation of a body, or assemblage; the thing-in-itself becomes
produced as the imperceptible, or inaccessible,produced through the given, as the
difference of the given, rather than as its cause. It remains unknown, since it is by
definition imperceptible.
Kant introduces the problem of the thing-in-itself in the Transcendental
Aesthetic, in an argument pitched at Leibniz, against the confusion of the forms of
spaceand time with properties of objectsof representationor things-in-themselves.
`The true correlate of sensibility, the thing-in-itself
selbst]
is not
known,
and
cannot
be known,
[Ding an sich
through
these
representations; and in experience no question is ever asked in regard
to it. '35
There are some clues here as to the direction in which to explore the thing-in-itself.
Firstly, the apparently trivial remark that the thing-in-itself cannot be known through
the representationsof spaceand time servesas a reminder that the problem attaching to
70
Chapter 2
the thing-in-itself, unlike the noumenon, is not primarily epistemological. When Kant
36
the
appearanceof matter, refers to the thing-in-itself as underlying
which, as
Chapter Three discusses,is composedof forces - this substratecannot be thought in
terms of substance,since the thing-in-itself is definitionally not within the possibility of
it
be
in
forces
Nor
knowledge.
human
the
can
which
compose
understood
conscious
terms of causality, for this again would be to give it an illegitimate attachment to the
categoriesand once more to formalize it as an intelligible but non-sensibleobject, and
eject the material problematic of the thing-in-itself out into the practical zone of the
noumenon. It is not known through space and time since they are aesthetic forms
rather than cognitive formalisms, but it also cannot be known; that is, whilst Kant
postulatesa non-human form of intuition which could provide accessto the noumenon,
no such intuition is postulated for the thing-in-itself. This moves one away from any
in
Secondly,
by
terms.
thing-in-itself
the
conceptual
calling it
of
consideration
serious
the correlate of sensibility, but distinguishing it from the forms of spaceand time, Kant
is implicating the thing-in-itself with sensation, and thus with intensity and with
37
matter. In other words, the thing-in-itself attachesto the problem of real possibility that is, to the unique problem addressedby the transcendental - rather than to that of
logical possibility. Thirdly, the thing-in-itself is not a problem which arises in
experience; experience is its solution. This means it is not a problem which can be
formulated in terms of consciousness,either, since Kant understandsexperiencesolely
in terms of consciousness.These three points suggest,then, that it is in the areas of
intensity, matter (not understoodin terms of the logical conceptof substance,but rather
as the unspecified and undefined "given") and the unconsciousthat solutions to this
problem might be discovered
Sensation, as Kant explains in the Prolegomena, does not contain space or
38
It neither has time or space,nor is it
`occupy
time'
time, nor
any part of space or of
71
Chapter 2
inside time or space. And as an intensity, sensation is not a quantity, in any
The
is
degree,
but
the
concept
of
quantity
quantity
of
quality.
a
straightforward sense,
intuitions
in
it
is
the
spaceand time of
appearances
as
Subsumption
non-relational intensity,
is
the singular real of any
degree
the
of
a
relation
of
expression
whilst
but
be
differential,
that
anticipated
cannot
which
element
which
and
perception, a
becomesthe content of the form of intuition when expressedthrough the axiom of
extension. Only insofar as it is correlated with sensibility, and the forms of intuition
can degreebe estimated quantitatively - that is, only when brought into relation with
possible experience in
general can the qualitative intensity be formulated
proportionately with any other qualitative intensity.
It was said in the Introduction that Schopenhauereliminates the possibility of
formulating
"behind"
it
the
thing-in-itself
representation,
an
object
as
of
conceiving
instead as antecedentto the formal and secondaryaspectsof the world which are added
by the intellectual functions of the brain - that is, those functions which generatethe
world as representation.This is moving in the direction of the perspectiveof the object
from
Introduction,
from
it
be
the
the
perspective
was
which this
will
recalled
- which,
thesis addressesKant, the perspectiveof women - and towards a positive formulation of
the thing-in-itself, since it directs attention towards intensities, (for example, qualitas
occulta) and away from the borrowed reality of the conscious representationsof the
subject. The thing-in-itself is no longer explained negatively - that is, as the concept of
a sensuouslyperceived thing insofar as it is not perceived in space and time, but
becomesimplicated with a positive and unconsciousdynamic which is imperceptible that is, not part of the visible world of representation,which is structured through the
secondaryfunctions of the intellect - but which is nonethelessimmanent to perception,
in that it is connected with sensation. The thing-in-itself becomesproduced as the
imperceptible, or inaccessible,produced through the given, as the difference of the
72
Chapter 2
given, rather than as its cause. It remains unknown, since it is by definition
imperceptible.
This does not mean in any sensethat it is outside representation; indeed, the
problem escapesthe limited theatre of that doctrine. The thing-in-itself or demon
becomesimmanent to perception as the imperceptible, though not for empirical reasons
such as might be overcome by more sophisticated microscopic instruments, or more
powerful telescopic devices. This reducesthe problem back to extension. It has rather
to do with movement, not as the motion of an object in extension, but as a stationary
process or principle of composition, which is at once both secret and transparent,
continually escapingperception, but nonethelesseffecting it. It is in this sensealways
in advanceof perception, a sourceof time rather than a movement in time. It has thus
lessto do with an economyof vision than one of affective or intensive differences, with
variations in heat, in pressure, in density, in the tone of a voice, in
clandestine
changeswhich escapeperception, which go unrecognized but whose effects are, of a
sudden,there.
The difference of diversity from that which gives diversity is intensity, the
`raison du sensible (reason of the sensible)' 39 which forces thought, which is not
caused nor causal in any simple sense, nor outside the world, but immanent to its
production: an abstract vector which distributes a surface, rather than an origin and
sourceof knowledge. Rather than the faculties being independently defined, they are
measuredempirically, according to 'ce qui revient ä chacune sous la forme de leur
collaboration (to that which pertains to each, given the form of their collaboration)' 40
This meansthat faculties emerge, flash and die, as inconstant variables, rather than as
the constantsin terms of which variations can be defined. Faculties becomethe effects
of relations into which a body enters, and thought becomes a game whose rules
73
Chapter 2
change in the playing, where the pieces come and go, where anything can move in any
direction and the point is less to win than to maintain a line and to keep a spaceopen,
play by play, rather than according to a single over-arching strategy. The demon, or
dark precursor operatesin the intervals, a practice which leaps theoretical boundaries,
confounding recognition,
relating disparate systems, determining `ä 1'avance le
41
in
but
in
(a
advance
reverse)'. It is a form given but not a
chemin renversd path
priori: which is to say, it is a signal of material-forces given immanently to the
formation of a path or line of flight, to the labyrinthine line of the pure form of time.
The form of the dark precursor is not, as was the noumenon, a logical form
without content, a shadow compelled from without, nor, like the thing-in-itself is
theorized, a causal problem, or something outside the system, but an immanence of
field, a critical and material provocation, a demon,
incitement to alliances and
distributions of difference. Deleuze is diagramming a keen critical unconscious of
Kant: not The Unconscious, which is a theatre for the staging of conscious
representation,but a principle of sufficient reasonfor sense,the genesisof thought.
III
Problem II
For Kant, the principle of sufficient reason is a logical relation of grounds to
consequences;`it is quite customary', he writes to Reinhold, `for the conjurors of
metaphysics to make sleights of hand, and before one realizes it, to leap from the
logical principle of sufficient reason to the transcendental principle of causality,
assuming the latter to be already contained in the former. '42 So whilst it may serve
understanding as a formal justification of synthetic connections amongst concepts,this
principle says nothing about the effective genesis of real conditions and relations
amongstthings - the objective problem of transcendentalphilosophy. `That every thing
74
Chapter 2
must have its reason is the transcendental (material [materielle]) principle', and to
move from the logical principle of sufficient reason to the material or transcendental
principle as if they occupied the samedomain is a critically illegitimate step, confusing
43
logic
for
things
the
the
the reason
governing propositions.
genesisof
with
The principle of sufficient reason rests on the principle of contradiction, a
negativecondition of analytic judgements, and governsjudgements;
Mat
every proposition must have a reason is the logical (formal)
principle of knowledge, which is subordinatedto, and not set beside,
the principle of contradiction.'44
The principle of sufficient reason as Kant understands it is a logical principle
governing propositions about experience, rather than a material or transcendental
principle implicated in the construction of experience. No one has, or ever will prove,
Kant continues, the transcendental (material) principles of things from the logic
governing propositions, or judgements or in `general from mere concepts without
relation to sensibleintuition. i45As has been said previously, it is in Aesthetic that the
real problems of critique, and of transcendentalphilosophy lie.
Transcendentalprinciples, expressthe real, rather than merely hypothetical or
possible conditions of things, and involve both a formal and a material component, to
which correspond, subjectively, intuition and sensation.
Kant writes, again to
Reinhold, (in a letter which elaborates on the manifold errors in Eberhard's
understanding of critical philosophy):
75
Chapter 2
`the real ground [i. e., not the logical principle of sufficient reason] is
formal
the
twofold:
ground (of the intuition of the
either
again
object), e.g., as the sides of the triangle contain the ground of the
angle - or the material ground of the existenceof the thing. The latter
determinesthat whatever contains it will be called cause.' 46
Deleuze's argument with Kant is directed less at the distinction betweentranscendental
and hypothetical conditions, than towards the latter's differentiation of sensibility
belongs
disjunction
to
properly to understanding rather than to
which
a
according
sensibility. That is, Kant compromisesthe radicality of the distinction between real, or
transcendental conditions, and hypothetical, or logical conditions. He divides
sensibility into an objective component, intuition, which is necessaryfor mathematics,
and provides content for concepts, and a subjective element, of sensation. In strictly
aesthetic terms, in terms of the pure line of time, however, this distinction plays no
role. Difference cannot be articulated according to an exclusive disjunction in this
manner, Deleuze argues,without subjecting it to transcendentoperations. Nor can the
transcendental, as an abstract material principle, be articulated in relation to
understanding: it must rather be immanent to the production of sensibility, perception,
into
heart
He
bodies
takes
the
transcendental
the
passions.
of the thingand
sensation,
in-itsel& as matter, and in doing so, dissolves its structural containment within the a
priori.
The problem to which sensation and intuition correspond is intensity, not as
an empirical matter, - that is, not couched in terms of sensation,which tends to leads
towards its formulation in terms of a subject - but as a transcendentalprinciple, and its
sufficient reasonis a logic of sense-a diagrammatic and material aesthetic. Within the
conceptualor formal understanding of time and space,which generalizesover intuition
76
Chapter 2
in order to render it commensurate with rational or cardinal divisibility, intensive
forms
because
be
the
of
extension
affects
not
only
of
axiom
anticipated,
magnitudescan
intuition, but also matter and the dynamics of the real in space; as has been said,
intensive magnitude is a constructed category, whilst intensities are qualities of force,
and Kant does not understand force as constructed. It is not that the perception of
be
be
but
be
to
that
of
matter
can
anticipated
any
perception
anticipated,
matter can
obedient to the axioms of intuition and the laws of phoronomy. Forces, for Kant, move
acrossthe straight lines of extension. With time and spacelogical constantsintegral to
the form of generality which rationalizes sensein terms of uniformity, the quality of
material forcesbecomesopen to the claim that it too can be anticipated, and moreover,
that what is anticipated can in principle not fail to arrive.
In the Schematism,Kant says:
`that in the objects which corresponds to sensation is the
transcendental matter of all objects as things in themselves
(thinghood, reality) [alle Gegenstände als Dinge an sich (die
Sachheit,Realität)]'. 47
Kant defines matter in the following terms: quantitatively, as motion in
extended space, along lines between points; qualitatively, as the filling of space
through intensive forces - attraction and repulsion -which have a determinate degree
(force limited by an a priori point-line system)and, beyond that determinate degree,as
infinitely divisible.48The infinite divisibility of this "beyond" is where the problem of
the real filling spaceis evacuatedto: that which cannot be analyzed to exhaustion or
made determinate extension. Theoretically, matter appearsas either randomly chaotic
(beyond), or dead (determinate). Whilst the spaceand time of determinate degreesof
77
Chapter 2
force and motion is conceptual, the problem of infinite divisibility, as an intensive
matter, is transcendental.The line or limit is only theoretical, a beyond of determinacy,
of matter already dead, and only theoretically do the two sides of the system,
determinate here and infinitely divisible there, sum to unity. The line is conceptually
extensive,a limit, but intensively it is a threshold and changesin nature as it changes
in degree,rather than delineating a rational successionof states,a modulation and not
a mould. '[U]ne pure ligne droit (a pure straight line)' of time is not a successively
constructed extension, but a vector tracking the autonomous involutions of a surface
49
without extrinsic given condition. Any limit is thus only relative, and not definitive,
marking a penultimate beyond which is not chaos and disorder, but which necessitates
modifications in the structureswhich populate the spacewithin the limit.
The pure form of time is not defined in terms of motion or point, nor spaceas
line or organized plane. Kant saysthat `extensionand figure belong to pure intuition',
...
but without common sense there is no conceptual definition of either, no image
5°
figure
to
are recognizable. In the Aesthetic, intuition
according which extension and
is given, not constructed so unhinged from common sense, there is no necessity
immanent to time which dictates its functional convergencewith Euclidean axioms,
nor to forces which
dictate their
functional
convergence with
gravity
or
thermodynamics, nor to material production which forces its functional convergence
with mechanism.These are purely contingent solutions, historical answersto questions
from consciousness.
In L'anti-oedine, Deleuze (and Guattari, here) write: 'cc qui met si longtemps
ä arrive ä la conscience,c'est la nouvelle que la mort de Dieu n'a aucune importance
pour ! 'inconscient' (what takes so long in coming to consciousnessis the news that the
death of God makes no difference to the unconscious')51
78
It is understanding this
Chapter 2
which allows him to travel so efficiently through Kant's network of faculties, and
discard elements which make no difference to the transcendental as an abstract and
naked surfaceon which the diagrammatic solutions of problems immanent to relations
of force are recorded, but merely impede its potential solutions by intervening with
demandsfor recognition, with a prior format for recording, an image of thought. In
Difference et Repetition, Deleuze begins to diagram an impersonal and unconscious
consistency of sense, mapping the forces of thought, the sufficient reason of the
sensible:the death of God is as irrelevant here as is his life. The line beyond which is
the beyond of representation - and thus +1, the inverse image of representation,
stupidity face to face - is dissolved in a threshold or surface which folds into itself,
continuously changing in nature and form. What is so intelligent in Deleuze's reading
of Kant is his selection of the elements which expressthis indifference, even though
many do so only negatively: for Deleuze, `la negation, c'est l'image renverseede la
difference' (the negative is difference inverted, seenfrom below)'. 52The in-between, or
middle, or AND logics of machinic or rhizomatic sense which function in the two
volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia are assembledthrough the inversion of the
negative through difference, rather than through an identity which would restore it to
unity, as the single positive term. Demons string variables and sequenceconnections,
and are nothing other than those variables and connections, functioning only through
relations and never as the terms related, not recognizing or recognized, exploring a
pure straight line of time, a line of flight, without monogram, profile or name.
Within the general field of understanding, the intensive real in experience, `is
viewed as a cause...[and]...the degree of the reality as cause is then entitled...the
5.3
moment of gravity' Viewed as a causemeansviewed hypothetically: that is, intensity
as an issue for the principles of understanding is not problematic, and any absenceof
information which could confirm an hypothesis and determine causality is merely a
79
Chapter 2
subjective insufficiency in knowledge, and correctible. `[N]o misunderstanding
is...possiblewhich cannot easily be removed', since the dynamic or quality of intensive
magnitudes presupposesthe axioms of extension conducting force potentials and
qualities acrossthe striated, linear and punctuated metric of a general and extensively
54
just
is
from
is
differentiated
What
the
recognized
enough to
general
quantified space.
it
internalized
has
it
is
that
the control
time:
that
given
enough
self-cancelling,
confirm
systemsappropriate to it, and will apply them, given sufficient time. Aberrations are
only ever temporary.
`Et ce qui est en jeu dann cette difference, c'est toute la repartition,
toute la determination, toute la destination, tout l'exercice des
facultes Bansune doctrine en general.
(At issue in this difference is the whole distribution, the whole
determination, destination and exercise of the faculties within a
55
doctrine'
general
Rational science systematizesconnections amongst empirically gathered data
according to a coherenceof grounds and consequents.The aggregateunities distributed
by understanding, in its legitimate use immanent to experience,would not unite into a
ideal
focus outside experience
if
Ideas
did
not
reason
provide
an
of
systematicwhole,
for the convergenceof conceptsof understanding. But this perspective on distribution
is subjective: the focus imaginarius regulates for formalism, which is to say, for
syllogistic relations, maxims of theoretical reasonwhich havejudgements for relations
and conceptualrepresentationsfor their content. For a formal system,it is `not the idea
in itself, but its use only, that can be either transcendent or immanent'. 56 It is
judgement as a tool of the subject - the application of logical principles - that errs.
80
Chapter 2
Transcendentally - which is now immanent to senseand objective problems - there is
no error, becausethere are no facts, but there are still illusions.
One illusion is that there is an analog between the way understanding
functions in the production of the object in general as correlate to subjective unity,
unifying diversity within the form of the Same - (common senserecognition, in other
words), and the way in which reason
`unifies the manifold of conceptsby meansof ideas, positing a certain
collective unity as the goal of the activities of the understanding,
57
distributive
which otherwise are concernedsolely with
unity'.
This analog is logical, rather than transcendental, but the transition from
theoretical constitution to regulation is void of real relations, since its base is in
conceptsand generality rather than in singularity and sense.Firstly, real relations need
to be distinguished from relations of reality, the real (das Reale) and the concept of
reality (Realität) are not equivalent or interchangeableterms. This is important, firstly,
becauseto understand the difference between real and formal grounds in terms of a
concept(a formal and empty function, in the absenceof intuition) is clearly to miss the
force of this distinction. Real relations, those which engage with the problem of the
transcendental,involve intuitions and existence,rather than conceptsand cognition, as
has already been remarked, and are associatedby Kant with perception, actuality,
matter and existence;in short, with issuessurrounding the problem of intensities. `It is
sensation.-that indicates actuality [Wirklichkeit] in space or time'; it is perception
through which `the material [Stop] required to enable us to think objects of sensible
intuition must first be given'm; it is the real [das Reale] `which constitutes the thing
81
Chapter 2
itself [das Ding selbst]' and which `must be given - otherwise the thing could not be
59
conceivedat all'.
These elementsof experience are given through or in relation with the pure
form of time. In the Logic, Kant writes of the difference between concepts and
intuitions, calling the former general [allgemeine) or reflected presentations, and the
latter singular [einzelne] presentations.60 (Singular here must not be confused with
singular judgements.) In order to supposethat regulative judgements have a purchase
on the material necessaryfor thinking empirical objects, it must be supposed that
reason has accessto the thing-in-itself, and to the real which constitutes it. Kant
eliminates this as an answer, however, in experience,which for Kant means conscious
61
in
it'
is
Even if one choosesto suppose,
`no
to
question ever asked regard
experience,
in a theological mode, that this is God - clearly not an intellectual response- Kant
illegitimates rational accessto such an entity. Moreover, existenceis not a matter to be
resolvedby appealto figures of belief.
Hypothetically, reasoncan move from comparative resemblancesamongst particular
casesin relation to a rule, in order to discover whether these casesfollow from the
rule; it can then generalize over `all particular instances, even to those which are not
62
themselvesgiven' But problematically, it can't: there is no way of finding an Idea on
the grounds of its general solution, amongst particular cases,since objectively, Ideas
interact with sense and the singular logics
of bodies, outside the possibility of
constituting general conformity. Problematically, there is no universal account of the
particular through which to protect its objective status or serve as a general rule for
what is not given: there is, in other words, no substitution for a problem, the object of
an Idea, whereasthere are substitutionsfor representations,the objectsof concepts.The
analogy between understanding and reason illegitimately carries substitutability into
82
Chapter 2
the Ideas.God, Freedomor Immortality: in Kant, if you pick one, you get all three. But
Ideas are singular, and it is as singularities that Deleuze plugs sense into Kantian
ideas.
`Les Idees sont les problemes, mais les problemes apportent
seulement les conditions sous lesquelles les facultes accedent i leur
exercicesuperieur.
(Ideas are problems, but problems only furnish the conditions under
63
faculties
attain their superior exercise)'
which the
Problems are the abstract grid through which that which forces sense difference in diversity, a demon or dark precursor - becomesconcrete, not in terms of a
faculties,
by
becoming
but
of
or
configuration
unhinged from
model
previously settled
all models. It is only so that they produce their own superior exercise, or immanent
autonomy in relation to intensity, rather than in relation to common sense or the
image.
Deleuze's diagram of Kant draws problems of sense - of intuition and
intensity - together with Ideas, but in the process the whole surface of critique is rewired. In Difference et Repetition he defines transcendentaland transcendent:
`La forme transcendentaled'une facultd sc confond avec son exercice
disjoint, superieur ou transcendant.Transcendant ne signifie pas du
tout que la facultd s'adresse ä des objets hors du monde, mais an
contraire qu'elle saisit dans le monde ce qui la concern
exclusivement,et qui la fait naitre au monde.
83
Chapter 2
(The transcendental form of a faculty is indistinguishable from its
disjointed, superior or transcendentexercise.Transcendentin no way
means that the faculty addressesitself to objects outside the world
but, on the contrary, that is graspsthat in the world which concernsit
64
into
it
brings
the world)'.
exclusively and
Disjointed, or unhinged from common sense, nothing legislating their
in
formulation,
into
the
or,
good
sense
equilibrium,
analogical
convergence
thermodynamic equilibrium, the faculties give no hypothetical solution, only real ones.
A faculty becomes the formation of a pipe, a connection in an assemblage or
multiplicity, or a leap which snapsthe order of Kantian sense,changing its nature and
degree, and an Idea a system of connections between these differential genetic
elements, a multiplicity or assemblage.A machine which grasps that in the world
which concernsit exclusively, without substitution, singular and real.
This is not to say, however, that the transcendentand the transcendentalare
the same: being indistinguishable from each other does not necessitatetheir identity.
Kant is quite clear that they are not interchangeableterms. A principle which removes
limits, `or even commands us actually to transgress them, is called transcendent'.65
They are actual, rather than transcendental principles, and incite the possessionof
in
illegitimacy
domains,
their use of empirical, or actual
their
rests
and
unlimited
principles to describe spacesoutside the conditions of their generation: that is, they
encouragethe transfer of a solution from one problem to another, without regard for
differences in the variables. This is why, for example, Ideas of reason have no
in
being
for
theory,
relation to the empirical.
only
regulative
constitutive value
The transcendent is counterposed to immanence, which describes the
legitimacy of the transcendental. The transcendental has two senses:there is the
84
Chapter 2
transcendentaluse of the concepts, under the compulsion of reason, as described in
chapter one, which producesthe concept of an object in general and limits sensibility.
This is illegitimate, Kant agrees, but since there are no actual principles informing
such errors of judgement `not duly curbed by criticism', becauseunderstanding is in
this case disconnectedfrom sense,the transcendentaluse of understanding does not
threaten the security of the system.66 Because there is no empirical incitement to
transgression- and it is thus not pathologically or affectively motivated - there is no
danger from the transcendentaluse of understanding. Indeed, as has been seen, it is
compelled by reason. The transcendent use of a faculty unhinged from its common
senserelations, however, is precisely what the noumenon is designed to preclude: it
limits sensibility. It is in this sensethat Deleuze understandsit, as transcendent with
regard to established relations, exacerbatedby a problem for which these relations
cannot articulate a solution. He calls it indistinguishable from the transcendental
becauseit is a movement incited by a singular abstract machine; it is transcendentin
relation to extant empirical orders, in that it aggravatesthe limits of that order. In this
sense it is related to practice, as a mechanism for moving through walls.
It only
remains transcendentif it carries the principle of possession- for example - specific to
a particular configuration of the faculties across the threshold and over the wall.
Becauseit does not then grasp what is exclusive to both its operation, bringing it into
the world, but remains bound by principle outside the operation. It is in this sensethat
it is transcendental,immanent to the concretegenesisof a solution.
***
`Plutot qu'ä ce qui se passe avant et apres Kant (et qui revient au
meme), nous devonsnous interesserA un moment precis du kantisme,
moment furtif eclatant...
85
Chapter 2
(Rather than being concerned with what happens before and after
Kant (which amounts to the same thing), we should be concerned
with a precise moment within Kantianism, a furtive and explosive
67
)'
moment...
Deleuze calls this brief flash of thought without image `schizophrene du droit
(schizophrenia in principle)' which leads directly to Anti-Oedipus, the first volume of
Capital and Schizophreniawhere critique has becomeschizoanalysis." In Difference et
titio
he complains that Kant does not follow this moment: moreover, he implies
that Kant was aware of it, but chose good sense and a philosophy compliant with
common sense.`[Q]uitte ä compromettre 1'appareil conceptuel des trois Critiques (at
the risk of compromising the conceptualapparatusof the three Critiques)', he redeems
69
its
image
in
Law.
it,
and stabilizes civilizing thought and recognizing
The critical project of L'anti-oedine is explicit: Deleuze and Guattari,
referring to Kant, denounce 'Z'usagetranscendant des syntheses(transcendent use of
70
by
today's
cogitatio universalis. Auto-critique, or
psychoanalysis,
syntheses)'
schizoanalysis,plays in relation to psychoanalytic Law and myth a role parallel to that
played by reason in the first Critique in relation to metaphysical dogmas and mystic
enthusiasms:both critiques distinguish illegitimate and legitimate syntheses,extract
thought from myth and ideology and above all emphasizeimmanence. Their essential
tendency is eliminative and materialist. But one of the factors that differentiates
Kantian critique, stilled by the hand of redemption, from auto-critique, is that whilst
each invents its own destructionsand invests in its own decline, the former does so for
the sakeof - what it is in the processof destroying -a metaphysicsbasedon theological
premises:God is not alive, for Kant, but nonethelessan unconditioned unity continues
to operate as a limit, endlessly displaced and internal to the engine of critique, as an
86
Chapter 2
axiom of productive synthesis.The system gives to itself with one hand what it takes
back with the other. Auto-critique invents in destruction and invests in decline, but not
for the sake of - anything.
Kant's care is evident in his stabilization of the systemof faculties at the risk
of compromising the machine he has built, and it is the stability disciplined into a
system which presents an image, not what escapesit. Deleuze's positive and sober
critique of Kant addressesits instabilities, and it is from these that Anti-Oedipus takes
its critical sense (though there are other sensestoo) fuelled by their refinement in
Difference and Repetition. The method is one of the undisciplined micro-analysis of
the disciplined microphysics of power.
Noology, as a science of cognition whose principles derive from the Mind
rather than from the richness and multiplicity of concrete experience, is a common
target of both Kant and Deleuze. At the end of the Critique of Pure ReasonKant cites
Plato as `the chief of the noologists', his philosophical error being to intellectualize
knowledge and collapse intuition into cognitive functions.'' Kant's cure to the
intellectualization of knowledge is well known: intuition and cognition become twin
stemsof knowledge, giving rise to an industry attempting to resolve this disjunction, in
intellectual or aesthetic intuition, in God or the State. As has been seen, however,
Kant's cure itself comes under criticism from Deleuze, the force of the explosive
moment, of the introduction of time into the subject, being vitiated by its restriction
within extension. As has been argued, it is this aspect of Kant from which Deleuze
forges the force of his critique, taking the senseof synthesistogether with the problem
of Ideas and dissolving with consequentresolution the image of thought. Moving the
aesthetic away from extension, refusing the division of sensibility into objective and
subjectiveelements,and the postulation of the unity of the thing-in-itself, Deleuze
87
Chapter 2
introduces sensibility to problems of force which cannot be reconciled with the image
of thought or the conceptualmechanicsof the understanding,and initiates a thought of
movement which does not belong to objects, but is a kinetics of packs, populations,
bodiesthat are multiplicities without relation to unity.
***
`Perds le visage (lose your face)', Deleuze writes, becauseit is scarred with
`les deut maladiesde la terre, le couple du despoteet du pretre (the two diseasesof the
'2
despot
the
the
the
earth,
pair of
and
priest)'. Losing image, becoming vague without
becoming homogeneousor unclear, speeding and slowing in continuous qualitative
transformation, Deleuze is not a destructive writer, but one of camouflage; his tactic is
to `glisser son corps comme une piece dans de pareilles machines (slip his body into
73
Philosophy as enculage. To flee,
the
such machines as one part among
others)'.
leave, evade are subjectsof movement: to flee is to trace a line, but unlike the lines
drawn explicitly by Kant, measuredextensively through the addition of discrete units,
lines of flight exceed the perspective of the image. Each line has its subtleties and
nuances, qualities of speed and slowness, and Deleuze is explicit about selecting
philosophical components to assemble machines which flee and make weapons of
flight at once, rather than thosewhich adopt a position or a stance.
Kant, he declares enemy. As this chapter has shown, Kant is a problem,
becausehe is himself in between, and becauseof this, open to diverse and contrary
deployment. He is not properly enlightened, not properly idealist, not properly
romantic, not properly Newtonian, not properly religious. Not only chronologically,
Kant is a critical juncture between Spinoza and Nietzsche, the two thinkers who,
Deleuze says,releasedhim from his debts and who without doubt (though beyond this
thesis) inform his re-writing of critique.
88
Chapter 3
Forcesand Deductions
`Un espace dynamique doit We defini du point de vue d'un
observateurlie ä cet espace,et non d'une position exterieure.
(A dynamic space must be defined from the point of view of an
'
from
tied
to
that
observer
space,not
an external position)'.
In chaptersone and two, Deleuze's identification of the network of faculties as
constitutive of the transcendentalmethod was explored, together with his attack on the
principles of recognition and the image of thought in Kant's critique. His relation with
Kant operates on (at least) two faces simultaneously. At the systematic level he
explores connections,functions and operations amongst the faculties; questioning the
repetition of the model of common senseas a mechanism for the stabilization of these
relations, and its complementary,good sense,which is the common senseof teleology,
Deleuzebegins to exposehis real relation with Kant. As the last chapter remarked, this
is firstly and foremostly positive; Deleuze does not destroy without utilizing the
componentshe has disarticulated to build new machines, and this is the secondaspect
of his employment of Kant. He occupies a space,and then redistributes it, from the
inside, not from the position of an external observer.
If one wanted to describe a method in this aspect of Deleuze's engagement
with critique, it would be one of selection and connection; intensity is connected with
ideas, and dialectics is re-distributed as a problem of real differences,of magnitude;
thought is connectedwith sense,removing the former from the rule of concepts and
identity, and relating it with the now objective problematic of ideas; the thing-in-itself
is connectedwith difference, with that through which the given is given as diversity.
89
Chapter 3
What forces thought is discovered in sense, rather than in the illusory figures of
image.
the
and
generality
possibility, recognition,
A question which emergesfrom the re-wiring of the systemof faculties is that
Critique
in
forces
in
first
Kant
the
doesn't
the
forces.
the
of
relations
explain
of
distribution of intensive magnitudes; the real moment of a cause, as has been
force
be
is
described
before,
to
allowing
conceptualized
as
gravity,
simply
mentioned
in relation to substance.Mille Plateaux, in a discussionof a difference between nomad
and royal science,opposestwo models; that of the Compars,whose primary distinction
is a hylomorphic one, between matter and form, constructed through the selection of
is
Dispars,
distinction
law,
that
the
the
relevant
of
and
of
which
and
constants
`materiau-forces(material-forces)' which composethemselvesby `mettre les variables
elles-memeen etat de variation continue (placing the variables themselvesin a state of
continuous variation)'? Each model is characterized by different distributions; the
Compars by logos, which divides `un espacelaminaire, strict, homogene et centre (a
laminar, striated, homogeneous,and centred space)93 and presupposesgravity, and
Dispars by nomos, a tactile spaceof contact and affects, which is homogeneousonly
`entre points infiniment voisins (betweeninfinitely proximate points)'4 yet which is not
differentiated by pre-formed relations and connections.
The most obvious model of science in Kant is that of the Compars: he is
famously an admirer of Newton.
However, Deleuze's relation to Kant and his
deployment of critique as essentially economic suggestthat the other model must also
be implicated in Kantian critique. In Difference et Repetition. L'anti-oediue and Mille
Plateaus. a continual emphasis is placed on the co-existence of the two models: the
material-forces distinction does not replace the matter-form distinction anymore than
the State replaces the nomads. `L'histoire ne fait que traduire en succession une
90
Chapter 3
coexistencede devenirs (all history doesis to translate a coexistenceof becomings into
a succession)'5.A purely historical perspective,leading to an evaluation of Kant's work
in terms of what camebefore and followed after him, and the division of his philosophy
as a whole into pre-critical and critical (and, in some cases,as post-critical and senile)
writings, will discover only this translation. Deleuze looks instead for consistenciesin
the system,and for the weightings and privileges attendant on certain structures which
repress or cover becomings, and translate them into chronological movements. His
interests is in critique as a singular and economic problem, rather than in the
successiveattempts at solving this problem which run throughout Kant's work and are
continued by his successors.
For Deleuze, the machinic elements of critique are in its systematics,hidden
in the theory of forces, in the problem of Ideas,and in the network of the faculties, and
it is on these that he focuses. His critique does not progress from Kant, but rather
abstractsout the various machines operating in his work, allowing forces and patterns
hidden beneathand coveredover by royal and statedivisions of spaceand operations of
power to be exposed.The regimes of molar and molecular (which for the moment can
be taken to correspond roughly with the division of Compars and Dispars) are
immanent to each other, what differs - as Kant always says - is not the ideas
themselves, but the use to which they are put. Royal science deploys ideas
reproductively: reducesomething to a unit and make more of the same.Nomad science
follows ideas, and an idea which Deleuze follows in Kant is that of repulsive and
attractive force, in order to uncover further the conditions of real production.
In the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. Kant discusses
fundamental
qualities
of
material
forces
-
repulsion
and
attraction
(Zurückstoßungslarafi/repulsiveKraft and Anziehungskraft). The latter functions in
91
Chapter 3
empty extendedspace,as action at a distance, and is constructedthrough negation and
limitation; it belongs to the Compars model. The former is a force which, like nomos,
distributes a spaceof contact, intensive magnitudes filling space without determinate
measureand belongs to the Dispars. In this chapter, Deleuze's method of deduction is
explored, which functions simultaneously with his selection of the system of faculties
as the real elementswhich constitute the problem of critique as such. But first, forces.
I
Attraction and Repulsion
According to Kant, `the only two moving forces that can be thought' 6, and which are
fundamental to matter, are repulsion and attraction. These are differentiated in a
'
variety of ways:
Force of Repulsion
Force of Attraction
Force of extension:
Force of penetration
Impenetrability = function of
(of space)
dynamic relation of repulsive
forces - degreeof compression.
Driving [triebende], diffusive
Drawing [ziehende]:
compelsapproach
Expansive: relation of repulsion &
expansionis conditionof elasticity
Basis of matter as essentially
Inferred on the basis
space-filling (substantial)
of the possibility of
matter as matter in
general; operatesacross
empty space.
Relation of repulsionlexpansionis
condition of elasticity
Not limitableby space
92
Chapter 3
Repulsion
`[B]y meansof the senseof feeling [Sinnes des Gefrihls]' repulsive forces provide `the
size and shape [Größe und Gestalt] of an extended thing's. Their magnitude is
aesthetic and intensive, and contact amongst repelling forces is physical and
immediate; there is `no actual distance of parts, which always constitute a continuum
9.
the
the
spaceof
whole' That empty space could not be
as regards all expansion of
proved through experiencewas made clear in the first Critique. in relation to both the
Anticipations of Perception and the infinite divisibility of intensive magnitudes, and at
length in relation to regulative judgement, which is governed subjectively by three
logical maxims assertingthe continuity of nature; the absenceof a vacuum - non datur
vacuum formarum; the impossibility of leaps in nature, transitions between species
Odegrees
difference
`all
between
the
that
them"
smaller
of
mediate
comprehending
datur continuum formarum: and the law of their conjunction, continuum specierum,
which `recognise[s]a relationship of the different branches, as all springing from the
11.
Homogeneity and specification are thus joined in an arborescentform,
same stem'
leading to a problem of roots, and what grounds them. This logics of continuity
presupposesa transcendentallaw, Vex continui in natura'12. Kant is at pains to avoid
the suggestion that attraction at a distance is across a real empty space, or that
variations amongst speciescorrespondto real gaps.
In the MFNS. Kant's concern is with an intensive continuum of force, and
with the possibilities of constructing a concept of full spacewhich will give material
weight to the law of continuity in nature and support his claim that nature knows no
vacuums. The distributions of bodies considered as expressing intensive qualities are
not determinate, in relation either to themselvesor to a geometric boundary, prior to
93
Chapter 3
the construction of the concept of quantity the most one can say is that there are
regions of density and patterns of flows. This follows quite clearly from the description
in the first Criitiaue of intensive qualities as flowing, and from Kant's assertion that
there is no legitimacy in the assumptionthat the real [das Reale] is uniform in degree.
To understandthis, it is necessaryto differentiate between a body - `a matter between
determinate boundaries', assumedto be intensively homogeneous,and density, which
is a function of the relation between attractive and repulsive - that is, intensive forces." Density is unsuitable as a means of
thinking relations amongst matters,
precisely because of its heterogeneity and the difficulty, if not impossibility, of
establishing proportionality amongst intensively differentiated regions of space
without introducing a principle of determination - such as extension - which segments,
orders and determinesmatter in spacein such a manner that it is analytically tractable
is
homogeneous
its
to
to
say,
which
with
regard
units of composition. `[N]o
comparison can properly be permitted between heterogeneousmatters with regard to
their
density'14; the determination of
intensive qualities, and the relative
proportionality of attractive and repulsive forces is a function of their relation with
extensive quanta, their characterization as qualities of bodies confined within
determinate boundaries,or, as Kant expressesit, their `represent[ation] as specifically
homogeneousamong one another'.
In the Aesthetic Kant says that removal from the representation of a body of
those aspectsbelonging to sensation leaves extension and figure; however, there is
nothing in this remark that determines the nature and configuration of such figures,
since determination is a function of understanding, and mathematical objects exist
through construction in pure intuition, which requires productive imagination. There is
thus no weight to the claim that Kant can be refuted by the existenceof non-Euclidean
geometries, or by forms of non-rational mathematics, since there is no formal
94
Chapter 3
grammar, as it were, to the pure forms of spaceand time. They underlie the possibility
of geometryand mathematics,but the processof numbering is prior to the concept of a
Kant's
bodies
is
figuration
just
to
the
geometric
axioms.
prior
of
spatial
as
number,
elucidation of intuition is confined to a three-dimensional space and the onedimensional line of time is axiomatically extensive and produced through the
successiveaddition of units. But the forms of intuition themselvesare empty. This is a
complex issue and outside the scopeof this thesis, so will not be pursued in any depth.
It must be kept in mind, however, that pure intuition is vacuous and that the
construction of spatio-temporal figures concerns the relation of imagination to
intuition, so is implicated with the functioning of the former, a topic for the next
chapter, and that intuition itself does not contain pre-given restraints on the potential
for such constructions. As has already been seen,the pure forms of spaceand time are
for
is
feeding
lines
Euclidean
the
of
example
along
space
empty, what configures
axioms into the process of construction, and not any characteristic of intuition. As
Buchdahl points out, it is necessaryto differentiate betweenthe principle of the axioms
and the axioms themselves;the
'latter do indeed presupposethe former, as providing a "proof" that
extensional axioms have a synthetic a priori status in general. But
this does not tell us what axioms there are, nor whether there is a
"
single and unique set of such axioms.
At the level of principle - that is, transcendentally - there is no legitimacy in the
assumption that space or time have any formal grammar or any specific axioms Euclidean or otherwise - constraining the nature of the empirical. `[T]here is no
contradiction in the concept of a figure which is enclosed within two straight lines';
however, given space - that is, the extended space of experience as experience of
95
Chapter 3
objects - operates against the possibility of non-Euclidean, synthetic geometries,
becauseit is already configured as three-dimensionaland linearly co-ordinated.16 The
logical grammar of understandingand the principles of judgement construct one space,
for
is
it
there
thus,
no
space
alternative
as
were,
are
parts;
all
spaces
of which
geometries. But from the perspective of the pure forms of space and time, thought
outside the constructions governedby definitions and axioms of understanding, there
Deleuze
their
configuration.
exploits this to the
on
potential
restraints
no
pre-given
are
full.
As the abovelist notes, repulsive forces are not limited by space;they have no
exhaustive extension, but become infinitely diffuse, until `no assignable quantity of
matter would be found in any assignable space.'" Repulsive force alone, therefore,
gives no concept of the dynamic magnitude of a body, no concept of quantity is
constructible from the diffuse indeterminacy of intensive magnitude; space is full but
not denumerable, occupied without measure. It is not the case that repulsive force
in
impossibility
for
Kant:
he
is
time
the Metaphysical
spends
considerable
an
alone
Foundationsof Natural Sciencediscussing the qualities of repulsion, defining physical
contact in its terms, as a problem of infinitely small distances,and characterizing it in
terms of feeling. What is impossible is any determinate quantification of repulsive
forces, in the absence of their relation to attractive forces and the mathematical
punctuation of space.That is, any workable (in a scientific or epistemological sense)
definition of matter depends on the construction of repulsive forces according to a
metric which is not immanent to those forces themselves,but arrived at through the
postulation of attractive forces acting at a distance acrossempty spaceaccording to the
principles of phoronomy.
96
Chapter 3
In Kant, this distribution of repulsive forces is subjected to negation; the
multiplicitous difference of degreeis `represented..through approximation to negation
= 0'18, and intensity becomesthought of as a unit, representableas a point, the real
moment of cause. The actual intensive continuum filling
mathematically conceived as a uniformly
space can then be
homogeneous field
of points, all
interconnected with each other, no part more distant than any other, becausetheir
relation is intensive, rather than extensive.Through the medium of the point, repulsive
force can conceived of in relation to a uniform and undifferentiated mathematical
continuum, extending to infinity.
If, as Kant desires,repulsion is to becomethe basis of the movable, the topic
of mechanics,then it cannot itself be thought of as mobile, just as, for time to be the
form of everything which changes,it cannot itself change. The immanent dynamics of
repulsive force have to be distributed uniformly, which meansthey have to be recorded
in a manner different to their production, becausethe mechanical field into which they
are to be folded is based on a principle of a unity of force, whilst intensity is
immanently differentiated. The homogenization of force is the first move in this
recording process,and forms the conceptof substance.
In relation to substance,force is determinately defined, as a state of matter,
rather than as an intensive vector. In the latter case,the given as diversity and that by
which the given is given as diverse are immanently entangled, rather than subordinated
to the principle of an `ultimate subject of existence' and there is neither assignable
'
9
to
the
origin nor end
vector. Empirical time and space are constructed through the
movementof forces,rather than through referenceto axiomatized quanta. Difference is
thus virtual, or immanent to the actual continuum, and rather than being subjectedto
limitation, changesin nature as it changesin degree.It has been said that spacecannot
97
Chapter 3
limit repulsive force. Nor, however, is the filling of space self-limiting: immanently
20
is
'compelled-to
its
continuously expand'
occupation of space. In
repulsive, matter
relation to substance,this expansion is necessarilya relation with unity, and thus of
determinateand measurableextension. In relation only to itself, intensive expansion is
not defined or conceivable,and hencebecomesa problematic, rather than a theoretical
issue. Deleuze, by critiquing the formation and assumptions of common sense and
setting a different model of scienceagainst that of universal gravitation, opens up this
space,and focuseson the problem of how repulsion is first set up (a matter addressed
later in this chapter).
Repulsive force is a force of surfaces:every part touchesevery part, and there
is no empty space: `physical contact is the reciprocal action of repulsive forces at the
21.
boundary
But the boundary is only common in the sense
of two matters'
common
that two matters are infinitely proximate, for it is immanent to the field of each. It is
not common in the sensethat both matters share a law which their relation instantiates
nor is it formed through the subordination by one matter of another. The boundary or
limit is not governeda priori by any element implicated in its formation, but produced
as an effect of the relation of forces at different intensive degrees:it is common only in
the sensethat it is a difference common to all distributions. Contact, Kant says, is
differential, a problem of `infinitely small distances' u.
The model here is not hylomorphic, since the dynamic filling of space by
repulsive forces is materially distributive, but there is as yet no differentiation of matter
and form. For this, contact has to be referred to a limit, a point: it is the sameproblem
as that of sensation, noted above, where the subjective indeterminacy of sensation
appeared to void the possibility of objectively measuring intensive magnitude. `La
geometrie et 1'arithmetique prennent la puissance d'un scalpel (Geometry and
98
Chapter 3
arithmetic take on the power of the scalpel)'23,Deleuze and Guattari say in Mille
Plateaux, and it is this function which orders the homogeneousand dead spaceacross
which the true force of attraction drops bodiesand draws lines.
Attraction
Unlike repulsive forces,which fill spaceby meansof the senseof feeling [Gefiihl], (and
thus are in the sphere of aesthetic, rather than speculative or practical judgement)
attractive force is characterized as ambivalent in relation to sensation [Empfrndungl:
either there is `no sensationat all' or there is sensation,but no determinate object, and
it is this that makes it appear at first problematic as a fundamental force, since no
determinate quanta of intuition can be correlated with the spread or absence of
sensation. There is either zero sensation of intensity, which as Kant says `would
involve the representationof the instant as empty, therefore = 0', and repulsive forces
24
impossibility
Or there is sensationbut no determinate intensive
the
this.
necessitate
of
magnitude, or `degreeof influence on the sense'which would validate the objectivity of
'
it
to
sensation,attributing
an objective cause. So attractive force becomesopen to the
accusationof having only subjectivevalidity, and of functioning in a spacewith no real
dynamic qualities.
No positive concept of real attractive force can be constructed: it is inferred,
Kant says,but not derived, and on the basis of the possibility of a general concept of
matter, so its positivity is not real but conceived. Independently of repulsion, attraction
becomespurely mathematical: if there were only attractive forces, the parts of matter
26
in
`coalesce
in
would
a mathematical point'
empty space As Kant says,mathematics
`presentsthe most splendid example of the successfulextension of pure reason,without
the help of experience', and it is through mathematics that the heterogeneous
99
Chapter 3
involution and division of repulsive forces becomes tied to points of attraction,
becoming uniform and inert Z' Synthetic, and thus productive, but a priori and thus
merely possible in relation to the real, Kant's mathematics grounds the royal
description of space,as `strib par la chute descorps, les verticales de pesanteur(striated
by the fall of bodies,the verticals of gravity)'. 28
Spaceis inverted through the negation of dynamic intensities, and the real is
sucked through an impenetrable point, its sign inverted. Its depth becomes empty,
voided of continuously differentiated degrees of intensity and re-distributed as
homogeneous,parallel, Euclidean, inertly receptive to the mechanical principles of
order. the shift is from feeling to sight, from an intensive distribution to a determinate
vision, from a real spaceunobservablefrom outside to an ideal spaceonly observable
from outside. There is a cancellation of indeterminate sensationsin favour of a split
sensibility according to a difference imposed from outside, by understanding, rather
than one which emergesfrom intensive magnitudes.
The force of attraction is defined in terms of the action of points at a distance,
`through every spaceas an empty space'29,but only two bodies at a time defining, as
Deleuze and Guattari say, `la forme d'interiorite de toute science (the form of
interiority of all science)'.30 In the construction of this form real magnitudes are
assigneda negative value, and space is covered over with extensive lines, pillars of
force, giving rise to a third form of compression, resulting from the relation of
repulsive and attractive forces, which establishes a direction to flows of force,
distributing a before and an after of time in relation to which a before and an after of
intensive distribution can be determined. The point becomesa present, but a vacant
one, which defines a direction of time `du passe au futur, comme du particulier au
general (from past to future as though from particular to general)', from the
100
Chapter 3
determinatepoint or state of matter, the moment of gravity, to the homogeneouschaos
31
intensity.
dispersed
Kant's dynamics are thus commensuratenot only
of uniformly
with mechanics, but will support too a thermodynamics of good sense.The `themes
d'une reduction de la difference, d'une uniformisation du diverse, d'une egalisation de
l'inegal (themes of a reduction of difference, a uniformisation of diversity, and an
equalisation of inequality)', fused in thermodynamics, established basic definitions
satisfying, Deleuzewrites, `tout le monde,y compris ä un certain kantisme (everybody,
including a certain Kantianism)' 32 Deleuze, however, finds a third relation, generated
through the conjunction of the purpose-drivendirectionality of force proper to teleology
and thermodynamics(the force of good sense)and the determinateconceptualization of
force as the moment of gravity (the force of common sense).This conjunction drives
critique acrossthe thresholds of rational ends and towards machinic or auto-critique,
which is not principled by unity but according to a principle of difference: given
nothing but difference there is nothing in common but there is still difference.
Extension is the cancellation and covering up of intensities, their
incorporation into an mechanical common senseand eschatologicalgood sense,which
organizes things `dann les conditions de 1'etendueet dann l'ordre du temps (in the
order of time and under the conditions of extensity)' so that difference is encouragedto
cancel itself, as time becomes subject to logic and material forces become
hylomorphically arranged.33In order to understandthis one must recall a remark made
in the Introduction, pointing out that this thesis is not written from the perspective of
the consciousKantian subject whose capacity to intuit intensity is restricted to within
extendedhomogeneousspaceand time. Rather, it takes a route driven by the position
in which Kant has placed woman - that is, a position aligned with the object, with
nature, with imagination and sensation, on the thresholds of the system of
consciousness,neither wholly outside nor completely incorporated within it. From this
101
Chapter 3
perspective, as Chapter Six makes more explicit, the mechanisms which construct
extended homogeneousspace - negation and limitation, the axiomatization of all
magnitudes as extensive, the reference of all events (or accidents) to a permanent
subject/substance- are mechanisms which cancel out and cover up the immanent
movements of nature, sensation and imagination with the demands of order and
uniformity, in order to produce a nature of regularity whose laws are given by the
subject.
From the perspectiveof the subjectintensity is thought only within the bounds
of extension. However, it is preciselybecauseKant doesnot completely eliminate those
figures associatedwith intensity - the thing-in-itself, imagination, senseand sensationwith the logical demandsof the concept that he presentsthe occasion for a different
reading, one which doesnot require a woman reader to becomea Kantian by becoming
first an honorary man. If the theoretical writings are read in conjunction with Kant's
writings on history and politics such a position is not, from the perspective of
"orthodox" Kantianism, a tenable one, since women remain always the passive
componentsin any theoretical, social or political space.
The final moment in constructing a dynamic concept of matter, a substance
commensuratewith mechanical expression, is limitation, which defines and confirms
the degree of negation necessaryto generate a universal and permanently uniform
containment of repulsion by a point of attraction, and form a general conceptof matter.
Attractive force splits into true and apparent. Attraction is apparent when the
combined force of two bodies is not biunivocal, and their approach is not intensively
symmetrical: one body `has been driven Lgetriebenl toward the first body from
'''
impact'.
by
But impact is an empirical and derivative concept of force,
elsewhere
102
Chapter 3
rather than a fundamental property, and so includes an admixture of elements, both
empirical and a priori. Yet although it results from physical contact rather than being
a function of the relation across empty space of the bodies involved, the effects of
impact can, given a generalized concept of matter and a science of forces, be
anticipated a priori. Apparent attraction is the negative of repulsive force and `proper
object of our external perception'35;in order to discover the true attraction at its basis,
the massof a body must be understoodin terms of a point at its centre, and the relation
of forces understood as constant for all variables. True attraction, Kant says, is
estimated without the intervention of repulsive force or the need to accommodate
intensive variations, and it is in this, its true and mathematical sense,that attraction is
the ground of possibility of matter as matter in general.
11
Lagoon Dynamics
Kant gives two fine illustrations of the effects of disequilibrated forces, where the
dynamics of full space do not slide unproblematically into points and striations and
mechanical relations, and in both cases,imagination is involved as an exacerbatory
processof the destabilizedrelations of repulsion and attraction. In the first chapter, the
schematizing function of imagination under the determination of understanding was
mentioned briefly, as was the focus imaginarius, a subjective focus mediating the
transition from the distributive unity of understandingto the collective unity of reason.
When the faculties are unhinged, and their relations not ordered by common sense,
imagination comesto play a different role.
In the sublime, the inadequacy of imagination to fulfil its two theoretically
assigned functions of apprehensionand comprehension, and thus provide a qualified
quantumof intuition to understanding,is felt as pain and resolvedby the superior
103
Chapter 3
might of reasoninto negativepleasure. In its attempt to use nature as a schemafor the
presentationof the sublime, imagination becomesalternately attracted and repelled by
natural might [1facht], and disengagedfrom sensibility and understanding, it moves
vertically into a realm of incomparablequantity, the magnitude of the supersensible,
where reasonassertsits dominance [Gewalt] over the exertions of imagination. This is
36
however,
in
different
looked
be
this
much written about
so
chapter a
example will
at.
The sublime recurs, however, in the context of a discussion of imagination in the next
chapter.
Crossing water, `[o]n a trip from Pillau to Königsberg, if this can be called a
37
Immanuel
Kant,
Professor
from
Königsberg,
voyage',
grows seasick. Diagnosing his
condition, he pins the nauseadown to 'antiperistaltic movement of the intestines by the
abdominal muscles' reversing the cycle of ingestion and evacuation through the
38
organism. Swelling waters on the lagoon interfere with the successiveand automatic
compressionof the tubular pathways in the body, `repeatedrising and falling' of the
field of appearance, felt first as a disturbance in sight is, when `provoked, by
imagination', exacerbated and thrown into reverse.39 If this reversal is not
countermanded,the organism exports matter, the processof which through the body
has beenunbalancedby dynamic distortions in its environment. Regulated and directed
wave-like contractions in the vermicular canals through which the organism ingests
and dispels waste are unable to negotiate an equilibrium with wavering uncertain
waters, and excited to confusion. The proper organization, contents, and connectionsof
the input/output channels running through the closed volume of a whole body become
disordered. The irregular and unregulated flows of the waters play havoc with the
regulated structure of the organism and under the provocation of imagination, sight
turns back in on the organism and the outside world darkens. Kant's analysis of this
problem is instructive, since it is one of the few occasionson which he can indeed be
104
Chapter 3
said to occupy a dynamic space,not as an observer,but as an body interacting with the
forceswith which it connects.
`Sight is the noblest of the senses'Kant writes, and `comesclosest to a pure
intuition' 40; the purity of the light medium being imperceptible except through its
special organ, the eye, the object seems independent of sensation. As said above,
sensation was initially problematic in relation to attractive forces, either lacking a
determinate object, or not felt at all, and Kant solved this difficulty
of an intensive
distribution without determinate form or relation by negating the forces implicated
with feeling and physical contact and collapsing matter into a point, a limit. On the
water, however, such a resolution is precluded. The homogeneousspace of universal
attraction, the world organized as a laboratory in which sight is privileged, gives way
to a turbulent and fluid heterogeneousfield in continuous variation, to which none of
the corporeal sensesare adequate,and which effectstheir recoil back into the body in a
refusal of their tentacular role on behalf of the empirical subject. The response is
similar to that of the sublime; in both cases,what is looked for is a place of safety, from
where the disturbance can be estimated as fearful, but the subject can be unafraid. In
the caseof the sublime, this is culture. Kant writes:
`[T]he vast oceanheavedup by storms cannot be called sublime. The
sight of it is horrible; and one must already have filled one's mind
with all sorts of ideas if such an intuition is to attune it to a feeling
that is itself sublime, inasmuch as the mind is induced to abandon
sensibility and occupy itself with ideas containing a higher
"
purposiveness'.
105
Chapter3
Out on the lagoon, does Kant experience the sublime? Certainly, his
description suggestshe is induced to abandonsensibility. Whether cultural ideas are
sufficient to sublimatehis nausea?- this is unclear.
Light, the medium of sight, `unlike sound,is not merely a wave-like motion of
a fluid element that spreads through space in all directions, but a radiation that
determines a point in space for the object'42 And in the MFNS: `nothing prevents
one's thinking of light-matter as originally and indeed thoroughly fluid, without being
divided into fixed particles'.43 Whilst not composedof discrete quanta, illumination
nonethelessdeterminesa unit or quantum of intensity. In his discussionof forces, Kant
contrasts a model of the diffusion of light provided by optics, `by means of rays
diverging in a circle from a central point' with one depicting the diffusion of repulsive
forces acrossa spherical surface.44
The optical model returns a problem of empty space,not as proposed by the
conceptof action at a distance,but betweenthe real elementsfilling space.If diffusion
is represented in terms of lines, the actual continuum of intensive force becomes
segmented,broken into discrete elements, repulsion as the filling of space becomes
confusedwith the enclosureof space,and the only light is that of the lines, `as if there
45
be
found
devoid
light
between
to
the
always
were
places
of
rays'. Kant is of course
anxious to prevent an account of material force in terms of monads, or atomic
elements, or suggest the possibility of real empty spacesincreasing as the rays are
further extended. In his preferred model `light diffuses itself everywhere from an
illuminating point in spherical surfaces', from one point to all distances, not as rays,
but in divergent circular waves. The degreeof intensity then becomesa function of the
extension of the diffusion surface across which it is distributed; the greater the
extension, the less the illumination, the illuminating point remaining constant. Space
106
Chapter 3
by
its
in
but
full,
a
the
terms,
are
given
organization
conditions
of
actual
remains
it
back
folds
itself
to
this
and records movement
over
space,
which
principle extrinsic
on its surfacein terms different to thosewhich producedit.
***
Deleuze's argument with Kant - that he provides possible conditions for the
is
for
the
of
production
production
of
and
not
real
conditions
production representation,
focused on this folded back surface, on the stratified space it generates,and on the
condition or idea implicated in the disjunction which elevates law above the real. In
effect, his criticism is that Kant provides no real account of the conditions for the
tactile and full spaceof the actual continuum, only ideal and possible conditions for the
visual and empty space of continuous attraction in which these forces are enclosed.
There is no transcendentalaccount of the construction of the enclosure.Alex continuii
in natura underpins an arborescent model of the species, in terms of which it is
possible to `recognize a relationship of the different branches, as all spring from the
same stem' and a linear model of forces, in terms of which each is a function of
46
the
radical of power, underpins a striated model of space.
substance,as
The point is a centre of resonance,`un point d'accumulation, comme un point
de croisementquelquepart derriere tous les yeux (a single point of accumulation that is
like a point of intersection somewherebetween the eyes)'47;sight and the coalesced
intensive force figured as a mathematical point in the interests of theorizing action at a
distance acrossempty spaceconverge on the same model, the eyes of the subject, all
implicated in the direction of the systematic ends of reason. In the case of sight,
radiation determinesa point in spacefor the object. In the caseof action at a distance,
force is represented `as converging at the attracting point from all points of the
107
Chapter 3
be
determination
both
for
direction
to
in
the
of
cases,
surrounding spherical surface'48;
determined
it
be
function
`all
the
not
and
surface'
of
points
of
objectively valid, must a
by the illuminating centre.49Only thus can intensity be quantified as equal in all space,
it
If
directions
its
its
density,
were
or
speed.
connections,
regardlessof
compressionor
a function of the illuminating centre, it would need to be understood as increasingly
diffuse and, as mentioned above,would result in the absenceof assignablequantity or
does
but
it
be
intensive
Besides,
eschatological,
good sensemay
position of
magnitudes.
not take its end as real: there is no real force of attraction, as seenabove :true attraction
is a mathematical construct, a point, and a basic point of Kantian philosophy is that
in
`the
knowledge
is
As
Kant
in
the
writes,
real
real
not
constructible.
existencespace' is a distribution of repulsive force and `the proper object of our external
perception'; its `negative, namely, attractive force' is not described as real, however,
but as necessaryfor the `possibility of the conceptof matter'. In order for a conceptualthat is, logically and mathematically tractable - formulation of matter, the real must be
subject to negation and limitation. Attraction belongs to the possibility of matter as
matter in general - that is, its possibility is formally rather than really configured.
To describethe relations of horizontally diffuse and differential intensities in
terms of a point, and `indicate the rectilinear direction, straight lines must be drawn
from the surface and all its points to the illuminating point' S0 These are the lines
describedby falling bodies, the pillars which striate space,pegging difference to points;
the central illuminating point does not determine direction, merely organizes a
resonanceamongst all points on the sphere, effecting their communication within the
interior spacebehind the eyes.
***
108
Chapter 3
Kant's nausea is the outcome of unanticipated alterations in the vectors of
forces which preclude the smooth transformation from dynamics to mechanics or
thermodynamics; there are aleatory lines departing from the rectilinear, directions
outside anticipated variations, not forestalled by a rule or law, and the dynamics of the
oceando not translate into the substancesand forms of the land. On Kant's lagoon, the
regularity of the body begins to breakdown; no more pure logical movement,
continuous quality of medium. Instead of completing an indeterminate aestheticspace,
ein vorgriff, and driving objective production to the benefit and purposes of the
ultimate substance of existence, intensities explode into the noise of the waves.
Undirected and turbulent, they return on the body, also incomplete, only to be further
exacerbatedby an imagination unhinged, synthesizing without schemaor rule. Kant's
desire for symmetry becomes ridiculous as the incompleteness of the imaginative
circuit is mimicked or mirrored by a similarly incomplete organic circuit.
The
geometric completenessof sight is unhinged, vision becomeswaveform, and the body
becomesa complex of channelsand disorderedreversals.
Its anticipatory systemsfailing it, an organism becomes`more consciousof the
organ's being affected than of the referenceto an external object'51;
`In other words, the intensity of the sensation, in both cases, prevents
us from arriving
at a concept of the object and fixes our attention
merely on the subjective representation, namely the alteration of the
52
organ'.
In an organism `just as each part exists only as a result of all the rest, so we
also think of each part as existing for the sake of the others and of the whole, i. e., as an
instrument or organ.03 Its turbulence connecting with a zone of the body, fomenting
109
Chapter 3
sudden, violent or unanticipated alterations of a single organ, here the eye, intense
sensationdisequilibrates the careful structure of the whole. Indeed, there is no whole,
for the systematicinterconnection of the parts of the body according to a principle of
wholenesshas broken down. Organs no longer exist for the sake of the others and of
the whole, imagination no longer makes space for objects, and unity mutates into a
chaos of traffic on a circuit, a congealed transformational zone, a direction and
intensity of flows acrossan indeterminate non-organic body. The object is the constant
of subjectivity, its fetish. With its point gone, what could a subjectbe?
III
Deduction I: Kant
`[T]hat laborious deduction of the categorieswas neededfor theology
54
how
'
fruitful
it
for
them.
and morals and
was
Dieter Henrich argues that the model for the deductions in Kant's critical
writings comes not from logic but law. Whilst the steps in the proof may function
"
its
deduction
is
defined
by
this. Deduktionsschriften
syllogistically,
status as a
not
(deduction writings), used in Germany since the late fourteenth century, were
widespreadby the beginning of the eighteenth century, and for the most part sought to
justify claims of the successionof reigns or of territorial inheritance. Henrich points out
that Putter, coauthor of the text Kant used in teaching natural law and defender of the
imperial ideal of the Reich, was `the most admired deduction writer of Kant's time'
and that its widespreadpractice gave Kant reasonto think that the transferenceof `the
term "deduction" from its juridical usage to a new, philosophical one' would be
56
understood. Henrich argues for a structural similarity too; Kant's deductions follow
the requirement for brevity and solidity and the custom of appending a brief summary
of the salient points of the case at the close of the argument - Henrich points to the
110
Chapter 3
Brief Outline of this Deduction which closes the B edition of the first Critique as an
example.
Deleuze saysof Kantian critique that it amounts `ä donner des etats civils A la
penseeconsidereedu point de vue de sa loi naturelle (to giving civil rights to thought
considered from the point of view of its natural law)'S' and Henrich also argues that
Kant uses `Natural Right... as a paradigm'. 58Beneath the regional specificities of civil
rights lies a generic concept of natural right, a reference to an `original acquisition'
which cannot be legitimated becauseno objective account of its possessioncan be
59
provided. No physiology could warrant the supremesituation of man in relation to the
law, even if Kant thought such a physiology possible. Nonetheless,this natural right,
whilst not being instrumental in the deduction of civil rights both grounds and is
supportedby them. The relation of natural right to civil law is analogous, in Kant, to
that of the sublime to culture. Neither culture nor natural right ground either the
sublime or civil rights. Nonethess, just as the sublime requires culture, civil law
requires natural right. As has been seen,Law is meant to be exercisedempirically, but
this requires the natural capacity to do so: in talking of women, Kant refers to their
physical weaknessand to the superior strengths of men. Here is a direction in which
the natural rights required by civil law might be found
Natural right functions much as repulsive forces do in the discussion above,
when brought into relation with attraction. The channelsand conduits of the law define
the civil rights of a body, but these have no real power in the absenceof the natural
right which underpins them, just as the striations of empty space have no real force
independently of the tactile full space of the actual continuum. What counts as a
legitimate and quantifiable action is in both casesdefined in terms of its difference
from a mobile diversity of intensive distributions on the one hand, and from a centre of
III
Chapter 3
resonanceon the other, and what is diverse in relation to action so defined is rendered
uniformly exterior to the problem of law, as legally and substantially inert. The centre
of resonancebecomesthe sourceof all form, of the power in its application and the end
towards which true actions lead: possession.
Extended corporeal space is established in the relation of repulsive and
attractive forces, and compressedbetween true and apparent attraction. Whilst the
court of reason constitutes its territory in the spacebetweenthe two parallel series of
natural and original right, the ground of the court, the substratumof so-called natural
right, is formulated reductively through the evacuation of bodies, passions and
sensuousinterests: there is no feeling implicated in the proper exercise of law, for
either subject or legislator, and just as feeling, or the physical contact of repulsion
needed to be weeded out in the construction of royal science, so too must it be
eliminated here. For nature to carry right a law extrinsic to it must govern its
application. And it is through the critique of practical reason, for which as Kant says,
the deduction was so necessary, that `the obligation to prevent the empirically
conditioned reasonfrom presuming to be the only ground of determination of the will'
is legitimated.60
Henrich points out that deduction means `to carry something forth to
61:
it is thus implicated with a channel
something else'
or duct, the dimensions and
directions of which are defined according to principles of law which in turn define the
legitimacy of empirical objectsbrought before the law, and the conditions of possibility
under which actions are recognized in the court of reason.The deduction is thus also a
reduction, compressing actions into legal form and eliminating intensities not
commensuratewith a juridical concept of action. The real possessionof an original
acquisition cannot be justified independently of factual data, but the data must be
112
Chapter 3
formulated in a manner that 'suffice(s) to justify the claims attached to our
knowledge.'62 And again, a principle of continuity is implicated, this time of
possession.
Parallel and complementaryto the reductive formulation of substanceas that
in relation to which actions havejuridical weight, and count as justification towards a
claim - the subject has a defacto case -are interests of reason.As affective constituents
are defined out, an empty space opens into which interests of reason are defined,
transferring the ground of law from nature to reason, shifting right from nature to law
and defining what is outside the law, in the senseof not being a recognized action,
negatively. The same series of moves which constitute a body as a mechanically
movable inert substancein space,define the subject as similarly movable, no longer in
relation to a theory defined in teens of force, but in terms of a practice defined in terms
of power.
IV
Deduction H: Deleuze
`ce qui est soustrait, ampute ou neutralise, ce sont les elements du
Pouvoir, les e16mentsqui font ou represententun systemedu Pouvoir'
(what is substracted,amputatedor neutralized are elementsof power,
the elementswhich make or representa systemof power)' 63
Deleuzeunderstands
deductioneliminatively.Real critique and real creation
are not differentiated, and the destruction of the image of thought and the elements
constitutive of its power are immanent to the real genesisof thought. There are always
two things occurring simultaneously, and the negative is always an effect of the
113
Chapter3
positive, but there is no determination of signs in advance of the formation of the
division: creation is not of necessitypositive, anymore than destruction is of necessity
negative. It is important not to confuse Deleuze's method as prescriptive of a better
future, or as claiming more truth than any other: uncovering the real conditions of the
production of production is not an exercisein curing the world of its ills, but rather of
describing the mechanismsimplicated in its construction, and it is in this sensethat
Deleuze's is a rigorously critical project.
This method of eliminative deduction complements that of selection, by
stripping out the signs of power in a writer or system or order, so allowing for a
description of the development of virtual elements disguised or covered over by
constructions submitting to the requirements of law and systematicunity. 'Soustraire
l'unique de la multiplicitd ä constituer, ecrire A n-1 (subtract the unique from the
multiplicity to be constitute; write at n -1 dimensions).'64 The method is positive, in
that it is not simply a caseof removing arbitrary components,but of selecting elements
which collapsethe necessitiesattaching to functions of power, unity, law, the State: the
negative elimination is thus a function of a positive operation. He calls the method
minoritarian and it differs from majoritarian thought, which operateson a principle of
recognition and law, in the following ways: majoritarian law makes doctrine from
thought, facts from eventsand normalizes by admiration; a minor literature disengages
life from culture, becoming from history, thought from doctrine, and bodies from
society. Minorities are defined not in terms of their denumerable quantity - which
would, for example, exclude women from minoritarian status - but `par l'ecart qui les
separent de tel ou tel axiome constituant une majoritd redondante (by the gap that
separatesthem from this or that axiom constituting a redundant majority)'65 As
minoritarian in method, Deleuze's deduction focuses on exposing the differential
intensive elements and problematic sensations which
114
attraction cancels by
Chapter 3
condensationinto a point, an axiomatic quantum immanent to real distributions, and
tracking the tactile connections of the actual continuum, generating simultaneously a
radical new description of space.
In Mille
Plateaux, Deleuze and Guattari describe the coexistence of
mechanisms in primitive and nomadic societies, which anticipate the State in two
senses,both warding off or repulsing centres of resonance,and incorporating vectors
moving in their direction. Before appearing,the State
`agit dejä sous forme de l'onde
s'annule
precisement
au point
convergente ou centrip&e... qui
de convergence
Vinversion des signs ou 1apparition
qui marquerait
d'Etat.
(already acts in the form of a convergent or centripetal wave...that
cancels itself out precisely at the point of convergencemarking the
inversion of signs or the appearanceof the State)' "6
The model fits neatly with Kant's description of attraction as a wave-like
convergencefrom all points on the surface of a spheretowards a point. The point made
in Mille Plateauxis that this movement is anticipatory of the State, rather than effected
by it, responding to it as something which does not yet exist, but which nonetheless
`agit dejä sous une autre forme que Celle de son existence (is already in action, in a
different form than that of its existence)'67 The point of attraction is thus doubled,
functioning both virtually, as a real potential to be anticipated and warded off, and
actually, as concrete,effectuated.The inverse movement of a diffusive, divergent wave
testifies to this actual operation, to the concretestriation of spaceand division of forces
in terms of an order folded back over the surface of the flows, imposed from one point
on all distances.
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Chapter 3
Rather than searching for the origins of the resonant central point, the State,
or giving a chronological account of its emergence from pre-State societies, Mille
Plateaux divides the existence of both - state and nomadic societies - into virtual and
actual potentials, arguing that both have always existed, and that virtual potentials coexist alongside concretemachines,but cannot be describedin their terms. The move is
familiarly Kantian: the transcendentalcannot be describedfrom the empirical, but is its
condition. Where it departs from Kant is in its refusal to generalize over the virtual,
and reduce it to a possibility recognizable in its concrete instantiations, and in the
positive feedback from the concrete which functions as a selective mechanism,
potentiating the actualization of virtual elements. There is no Law, no lex continut in
natura, no Master, no Slave and no Rebel, and the economy is not visual, but tactile,
affective, a matter of sensation and intensity rather than sight and extension. Every
assemblageis individuated simultaneously as both singular and collective, virtual and
concrete, and only by empirical exploration of the branchings, proximities, contacts
and connectionsinto which an assemblageenters is its mode of functioning disclosed.
Thus, for example, when addressing the situation of women in relation to capital, no
general statement is possible which comprehends the complexities and degrees of
attachment to this system,and attributes a position of women as a whole. Instead, the
actual situation of individual women has to be explored, and the micro-physics of
power organizing and blocking lines of becoming followed at the local level, rather
than from a global perspective.
Kant defines points of contact, tactile proximities in full space in terms of
relative degreesof compression, and Deleuze and Guattari focus in on this problem.
Rather than uniformizing their distributions, a move which proposes both an initial
and eventual equilibrium, initially that of unity, or the present, and eventually that of
116
Chapter3
homogeneousentropy, or the future, each is taken as singular. So a different conceptof
chaos emerges,one which is not unformed and uniformly homogeneous,but which is
patterned, populated by haecceities,or `des modes d'individuation qui ne procedent ni
par la forme ni par le sujet (modesof individuation proceeding neither by form nor by
the subject', and which is immanent to the content and expressionof bodies and their
languages`8 Each plateau describesa singularity, a concrete date which effectuatesa
set of virtual elementsin a configuration without precedentor model, a region of chaos
sufficiently massive for exploration by human methods. Unformed matter is no longer
the future generality of good sense, heat death or the kingdom of ends, but `une
matiere-mouvement qui comporte des singularites (a matter-movement bearing
singularities)', the stuff of bodies, or content; and a nonformal functions diagramming
a plane of consistency or abstract machine, is 'une expressivitt-mouvement qui
comporte toujours une langue etrangere (an expressivity-movementalways bearing a
foreign tongue)', the stuff of language,or expression.69
An abstractmachine is defined in terms of concreteflows on its surface,flows
of air, breath, heat, food, sperm, shit, sex, words, sunbeams, money, stones, etc.:
`continuums of intensity, blocs of becoming, emissions of particles, combinations of
fluxes'. "' The theory of assemblagesor multiplicities arises from theseflows, from nonformal functions, tendencies to the limit,
unformed matters and the atypical
expressionsof minoritarian sciencesand literatures, philosophies and arts, which no
longer refer to disciplines or faculties, but to the relative mix of elementscomposing a
machine. The State is an abstract machine, and there has always been a State, Deleuze
and Guattari argue, and nomadic societies,far from being precursors of the State, are
always in some relation to them. Instead of separating the waves of attraction and
repulsion, convergence and divergence into two separate tendencies Mille Plateaux
seeksto theorize them as simultaneously concretizing different virtual tendencies, or
117
Chapter 3
abstractmachines, so that any assemblageor multiplicity is both attachedto the strata,
which are State apparatusof capture, and so interior to its territory and as transversed
by a vector of escape,which eludes and evades that order. Applied to Kant, this
exposesa third kind of line, which is neither that of convergenceor divergence, nor
that which biunivocalizes relations between two bodies, which Deleuze and Guattari
call a line of flight.
The surface on which forces are distributed is no longer made uniform by
rectilinear lines striating space, and organized by a superstratum elevated vertically
above it and functioning as a central resonator for all points on the sphere, but is
instead a differential field of thresholds and gradients of intensities. This intensive
space, or spatium connects with discussions in chapter one - with the given as
intensive, the sufficient reason of sense which forces thought: with Deleuze's
definition of the transcendentform of a faculty as grasping that in the world which
concerns it exclusively, differentiating the transcendental: with Kant's definition of
transcendentalmatter as that which correspondsto sensation:with the thing-in-itself;
or in-itself of difference. Deducting the assumption of unity which covers over the real
problematic involved in these elements, and attaches them to a subject-based
epistemology and an ontology of being, Deleuze opens up the problem of
diagrammatization of this differential field, populated by spatio-temporal dynamisms,
torsions, drifts and larval subjects.Rather than, as with Kant, attempting to construct a
concept of quantity which could contain magnitudes of intensity, and allow for their
mechanical distribution through the medium of a subject,Deleuze concentratesinstead
on the nature of lines, flows, connections and distributions immanent to materialforces.
118
Chapter 3
V
Demon I
In Difference et Repetition, difference of intensity, infinitely doubled differences
potentiating infinities is called disparity, dispars, the dark precursor or demon: this
function was met with in an earlier chapter, where the importance of difference as
internal was noted, together with its röle as differenciator. The model of science as
Dispars, as demonic rather than divine in nature, is thus never concretely completed: it
does not present, like Compars, a finished world, but a cosmosin continual involution,
perpetually variable, dividing into itself and with each division changing in nature. The
demon is implicated with the causality specific to nomadic science,a reversecausality
that testifies `d'une action du futur sur le present, ou du present sur le passe (to an
action of the future on the present, or of the present on the past)'". Again, however,
this is not a generalizablefunction, but is specific to each system; its connection with
the concrete actualization of any distribution is always an effect, rather than a
condition of its operation. The demon, or dark precursor `determine ä l'avance le
chemin renverse, (determines their path in advancebut in reverse)', functioning as a
72
is
in
discernible
the
nature of which
virtual attractor,
only
retrospect. It is not
something always already there, however, but generated in the process of its
concretization, like the convergentwave or the anticipated potential.
It is important not to confuse reverse causality with teleology, however: as
mentioned before, machinic production expressesthe conjunction of mechanism and
teleology through difference, taking synthesis across the threshold of antinomic
division, changing the assemblage and re-wiring the transcendental network,
unhinging the faculties and differentiating the process of production from its source
conditions. Reverse cauality is without finality: the future is not somehow there in
advance,pre-determinedand fated, rather it is virtual to the formations of the actual.
119
Chapter 3
The demon is not a point or principle in advanceof individuation, or a form
governing beforehand the material constitution of a machine, body or system: it is
instead a radically local function, an element in a scienceof intensities which invents
orders of communication amongst differences for which no prior order exists, using of
necessity the elements of a majoritarian form but speaking of necessity a foreign
language. Whereas Kant reconciles differences in intensive magnitude by referring
them to an extensivespacewhich equalizesthem out into a uniform field, Deleuze uses
such differences as communicating principles amongst disparate series, which are
themselves composed of intensive differences, and it is the complications of the
relations generatedin this manner which demand the invention of new concepts, new
terms, new functions and new distributions and the creation of a foreign philosophical
language.
The re-formulation of the thing-in-itself in terms of a plane of consistency,an
intensive magnitude immanent to and simultaneouswith the given does not cancel its
statusin Kant as an objective problematic; it continues to demand a solution. However,
it transforms what counts as such. Jacobi said:
`I need the assumption of things-in-themselves
to enter the Kantian
system; but with this assumption it is not possible for me to remain
73
inside lt'
Jacobi was responding to the thing-in-itself in the context of representation,
as something which, in some undefined manner, is the cause of the content of
representations,but is itself
unrepresentable.Deleuze's method of deduction, and
critique of representation changes the nature of the problem, however, because it
120
Chapter 3
in
Deleuze:
is
Firstly,
field
its
as
there
the
access
problem
of
no
changes
solution.
of
has been said, any machine is already integrated on the strata, as well as facing away
from it, on a plane of consistency, and thus potentiated by both actual elements
it.
No
State,
the
and
repel
anticipate
and
elements
virtual
which
comprising
assumption of a content aboveand beyond that distributed on the strata, or composing
lines of flight is necessary.Deleuze reminds continually that critique is immanent: a
be
do
State
itself
its
to
to
the
would
and
so
situate
outside
object,
critique of
cannot
repeat identically old errors. Besides,Deleuze's understanding of systemis in terms of
openness;there is no outside to open systems. `Elles ne repondent pas ä la condition
visuelle de pouvoir titre observeesdun point de 1'espaceexterieur ä elles (they do not
meet the visual condition of being observable from a point in space external to
them)' 74
Secondly, Deleuze can be said to read Jacobi's claim that the assumption of
the thing-in-itself ejects one from the Kantian system as positive. From within Kant,
Deleuze subjects representationto a rigorous critique and deducts the componentsof
power, generality, recognition and unity of image which restrict its operation, undoing
common senseand good sense.The thing-in-itself can no longer be defined, following
that critique, in relation to representation,as the unrepresentable,however, but must be
re-formulated in terms of the production of production. It is in the processof deducting
the power structuresfrom Kant that the movement of feedbackis released,and it is this
which allows for the re-formulation of the thing-in-itself in terms of difference and
intensities. Instead of being a general problem, it becomesone of singular distributions
of intensity on a smooth surface, of vortices and turbulences which have no definition
outside their concreteswirlings and speeds,displacementsand divergences.An infinity
of demons, of molecular leaps, qualities, emerge from intensive magnitudes, and in
differentiating themselvesfrom that magnitude, also carry it with them, immanently.
121
Chapter 3
This is why Deleuze is a philosopher of both surface and depth, and why the thing-initself retains its paradoxical nature, but instead of paradox being cancelled out in
extension and representation, it becomes a prolific machine, an engine of the real
from
the
feedback
to
The
the
concrete
positive
without condition or presupposition.
is
being
"a
the
thing-in-itself';
perhaps a
there
singularity
of
problem
virtual precludes
more appropriate term for it, in the context of Deleuze.
###
The relation between Kant and Deleuze has become both closer and more
distant in this chapter. Deleuze's deduction of the power components in Kantian
critique and his deployment of a method remote from the juridical model force a gulf
between the two. His concentration on the explosive moment within the subject
(amongst the topics addressedin the next chapter) and his distribution of the network
of faculties as an interconnectedsurfacerather than an organic or hierarchized edifice
imply a distinctly unKantian approach. However, his subtractive deduction uncovers
directions and problems in critique which are missed when the structures erected by
Kant are taken to be constitutive of the transcendental, and when the movement of
critique is confined within the science and economics of the Enlightenment. It is
Deleuze's attention to forces and flows, limits and thresholds, and synthesis (again, a
topic for the next chapter) which re-connecthim with Kant, and with the real problems
of critique.
Deleuze's relation with Kant is, however, more complex than the above
suggests,including many elements for which this thesis does not have space. In his
paper Sur quatre formule poetiques qui pourraient resumer la philosophie kantienne,
Deleuze weaves Hamlet, Rimbaud and Kafka into the heart of Kantian problems.
122
Chapter 3
Hamlet and Kant together achieve `1'emancipation du temps (the emancipation of
time)'; Rimbaud and Kant, in their different ways, proclaim `Je est un autre (I is
another)'; Kafka and Kant alike describe the practice of law on the body. Kafka
illustrates the immediacy of Kantian law with the body, through this story, its vaulted
magnificence subsidesinto the bureaucratic pettiness of the officer delighting in the
but
known,
flesh.
is
law
directly
It
the
not
onto
perfections of a machine which writes
met with in its execution, its application through pain and violence.
In each case,when the strangenessof these alliances is pursued a problem of
forces and of systematics is uncovered. Kantian philosophizing is remote from the
spacesof force, however, a task rather than a movement, and whilst Deleuze describes
him as the analogue of a great explorer, his exploration is limited to the surface, and
doesnot travel the intricacies of its depth. He is concernedrather to prevent tunnellings
and connectionswhich do not follow the strict lines of extension or the strict rules of
law.
`The worker in the field of philosophy, especially pure philosophy
(logic and metaphysics), must hold his object hanging in midair
before him and must always describeand examine it, not merely part
by part, but within the totality of a systemas well. 75
This
Deleuze's
the
this
with
chapter,
and
opening
of
directly
contrasts
comment about the need to occupy space without measuring it: Kant's method is to
take each part and refer it, through a variety of means - analogy, resemblance,
comparison, proportionality, directionality, numerical identity, and so on - to the ends
of reason, to the totality of the system. All the seasicknessin the world could not, it
123
Chapter 3
seems,persuadehim that attraction at a distanceacrossempty spaceis inadequateas a
theory of force.
The next chapter looks at Kant's theory of synthesis,as an act of the subject,
and Deleuze's deduction of unity from synthesis,leading to its formulation as passive,
together with the changeseffectedwithin imagination as a result of thesechanges.
124
Chapter 4
PassiveSynthesis
`Profondementschizoide est la theorie kantienne d'apres laquelle les
degres
ä
des
la
intensives
remplissent
sans
vide
mauere
quantites
divers.
(The Kantian theory according to which intensive quantities fill up,
to varying degrees,matter that has no empty spaces, is profoundly
'
schizoid)'.
In L'antiýedine themes from Deleuze's earlier works are not lost, but by
virtue of its language and his alliance with Guattari, they are transformed; the
academictones of Difference et Repetition give way to a compilation vocabulary, built
from fragments stolen from a variety of sources,Artaud, Marx, Freud, Lacan and Kant
being amongst them.2 (Theft is another of Deleuze's methods.) However, the apparatus
of the book is familiar, and situatesit in the context of Kantian critique: three syntheses
as the productive machinery, a distinction betweentheir legitimate immanent use and
illegitimate transcendent use, a transcendental principle, paralogisms. To select
familiar elements is to run counter to the sentiments the book expresses(Destroy!
Destroy! being one); however, to understand why Kant's theory of intensities is called
schizoid by Deleuze and Guattari, it is necessaryto look at the way in which synthesis
works, and at the transformation of the transcendental.This will connect it with Kant,
and the previous two chapters. Women are also introduced in this chapter, but only by
identifying in passing those terms with which philosophy has associated them,
precursoryto the longer discussionsin the two following chapters.
125
Chapter 4
In his preface to the English edition of L'anti-oediue, Foucault cautions
against looking for a philosophy in the book, for `a flashy Hegel'3; no more should a
flashy Kant be looked for. Although the book expressesan explicit alliance with
Kantian critique, and with the transcendentalmethod, the networks it deploys are not
those of common sense, and the criticism is not confined by reason. The central
Kantian themes are immanence of criteria and synthesis.Immanence not to synthesis,
or machinic processes,but of machinic processes.That is, there is no containment of
syntheseswithin something which is not synthesis, and nor is there a goal. The
language of the book is not flashy either, but integral to the problems with which it
deals. In Kant, imagination synthesizes; however, the psychological overtones of
imagination cannot be killed, no matter how careful the attempt. Whilst exploring the
Kantian imagination and unhinging it from its proper speculative, aesthetic and
practical uses exposesa way of connecting Kant and Deleuze, the peculiarities and
nature of this linkage are missed if terminology particular to human machinesis used.
Deleuze and Guattari have been criticized for exploiting
the term
schizophrenia.Elizabeth Grosz writes of objectionsto their investment
`in a romantic elevation of models of psychosis, schizophrenia, and
madness,that on the one hand, ignore the very real pain and torment
of individuals, and,on the other hand, raise pathology to an unlivable,
unviable ideal for others.'4
It is indeed not difficult to see the schizo as an image or model, if one is
searching for such things. However, the vector of Deleuze's writing militates against
this; his critique of the image of thought was referred to in chapter two, and on a more
general level, the nature of his writing changes from book to book, using new
126
Chapter 4
If
holes.
different
draw
in
one
and
open
new elements
vocabularieswhich continuously
is inclined to personal sympathy rather than to making things work - which is not the
same as interpreting what Deleuze means by schizophrenia - then no doubt there are
criticisms to be made. But schizophrenia,as it is employed in L'anti-oedipus, refers to
a machinic, rather than a human operation, of inclusive disjunction. Rather than the
includes
intensity
both
differentiates
disjunction,
the
and
schizoid
either/or of exclusive
difference, in a continuous variation of variables which shucks off orders imposed from
the outside; it refers to the releaseof intensities, the emission of spores.
In Difference et Repetition, Deleuzewrites:
`11 ne s'agit pas d'opposer ä l'image dogmatique de la pens6c une autre
image, empruntöepar exempleä la schizophrene. Mais plutöt de rappeler que
la schizophrönienest pas seulementun fait humain, qu'elle est une possibilitä
de la pensee,qui ne se revöle ä ce titre que Bans1'abolition de I'image.
(It is not a question of opposing to the dogmatic image of thought
another image borrowed, for example, from schizophrenia,but rather
of remembering that schizophrenia is not only a human fact but also
a possibility for thought - one, moreover, which can only be revealed
5
image)'
through
the
as such
abolition of that
`[N]ot only a human fact' is crucial. L'anti-oedipe is neither an anti-humanist
nor post-humanist text, as some enthusiastswould claim; it is simply not interested in
this argument, in the sameway that Deleuze is uninterested in tiresome discussions
over whether philosophy is dead, whether we live in a post-philosophical age.
Machinic synthesis is impersonal, and indifferent to human divisions: it does not
differentiate man and nature,
nature and industry, industry and history, but is
immanent to the cycles it synthesizes,generating difference but not presupposingany
127
Chapter 4
pre-given and conditioning articulations of its nature, adding difference at each level of
in
Guattari
it
in
Deleuze
than
are
engaged
extension.
and
production, rather
cancelling
formulating an abstract account of production that does not isolate production from
desire, nor privatize desire within the family in order to leave a social field free for
labour. To say
that schizophrenia is not only a human fact is simply to issue a
reminder that the term is not used with reference to the social construction of the
schizophrenic,but as a potential of thought. Much as Kant saysthat the transcendental
is illegitimate if conceivedof in the image of the empirical.
Humanity is a term for a' particular mode of production,
involving the
rationalization of processeson the grounds of universal necessity,global superiority,
exclusive binaries (reason/nature, man/woman, sanetinsane, good/evil etc.
etc.);
insofar as `eile fait du luxe meme un moyen d'investissement (it makes luxury itself
into a means of investment)'6 and operates with an arsenal of rules within a
complementaryframework of cynicism and stupidity, impotence and power. However,
L'anti-oedipe is a critical book and as such not sentimental about the values that this
mode of production protects and requires. Its problem is to find out how they work,
how to undo them, and let a bit of fresh air into thinking. The schizo is not an image or
model, but an illustration, a working attempt to exposethe uncritical assumptionsin
philosophical dogmas.
Deleuzeis critical of images of thought which are basedon
`I'extrapolation de certains faits, et de faits particulierement
insignifiants, la banalite quotidienne en personne, la Recognition,
comme si la pent e ne devait pas chercher ses modeles dans des
aventuresplus etrangesou plus compromettantes.
128
Chapter 4
(extrapolation from certain facts, particularly insignificant facts such as
Recognition, everydaybanality in person; as though thought should not seek
its models among stranger and more compromising adventures)'.'
The schizo is not a metaphor, but a principle, but rather than being basedon
God;
the
it
is
facts,
their
as
the
empty
of
meaning
as
of
criticism,
principle
everyday
just
God,
does
than
as madness exists no more than reason.
exists
no
more
schizo
Everything can be banalized, and at this we are particularly adept. Both are made,
different
different
different
to
along
modes
of
production,
conditions,
according
under
lines of thought. There is not a choice betweena world modelled on the schizo and one
in
L'anti-oedine
deployed
God;
the
are past the
and
relations
on
processes
modelled
opposition between the multiple and the one. There are only markets, connections,
breaks and flows, blockages or escapes,consumptions,distributions. To the question:
do you believe in God? Deleuze and Guattari write: `bien sür, mais seulementcomme
au maitre du syllogisme disjonctif (of course,but only as the master of the disjunctive
syllogism)' .8 God, like the schizo, is a machinic operation, a production; becausethere
is no unconscious material, no theatre staging myth and fantasy, only the cycle of
production, there is no schizo in the unconscious,just as there is no God. Both are
produced as effects of machinic synthesis, which either over-code it, and direct it
towards defined ends - exclusive disjunction, in the case of God; or
differentiate it, intensifying synthesis and proliferating
displace and
identities, in inclusive
disjunctions which add difference and so shoot relations outside the terms related.
In this chapter synthesis, as the basic apparatus of L'anti-oedine will be
looked at, and drawn out of its connectionswith Kant and the activity of a subject.
129
Chapter 4
Kant takes this conclusion into a discussionof the noumenon.The noumenon,
as argued in Chapter One, is an object produced by understanding when it claims
determinate knowledge of something in general, in its search for knowledge
independent of sense. The claim to determinate knowledge of a substantial
transcendental subject is just such a move on the part of understanding; the
transcendental,rather than immanent employment of the conceptscompels speculative
reason to assumethe noumenon, limiting sensibility and initiating the transfer from
epistemological to moral law. Yet following on from his clarification of the error
which leads to the psychological paralogism, Kant remarks on the legitimacy, in the
practical field, of assuming the substantiality and freedom of the subject, as logical
functions of ground and consequence.In a different legislative domain, a non-sensible
but intelligible rational principality, theoretical illegitimacies find a practical utility.
Yet this move is not necessitatedby Kant's conclusion as expressedin the
comment quoted above, for as has been argued, the noumenon and the thing-in-itself
are not synonymous, nor do they fulfil the same function. The conflation of the
noumenon and the thing-in-itself relates to the collapse of the important difference
between productive imagination and synthesis as thought without identity on the one
hand, and understanding and the unity of synthesiseffected through the formal logic
of the concepts on the other. It is this latter formulation of synthesis which leads
towards the noumenon. The former is implicated with intensity and thus with the
material qualities of the real rather than its formal values. This allows a different
direction to be drawn from the quote aboveregarding the heterogeneityor otherwise of
the thing-in-itself as a substratum to the materiality of appearances.For it cannot be
confusedwith either substanceor causality and thus taken towards the epistemological
limit of the noumenon,the realm of practical reasonand a moral subject.Rather one is
133
Chapter 4
I
Synthesis
`It is to synthesis...that we must first direct our attention, if we would
determine the first origin of our knowledge.i9
In chapter two, Deleuze's eliminative deduction was discussed,as a positive
selectivemethod which collapsesthe power operatorsin a writer, exposing problematic
undercurrents, and bringing to the surface of his writing patterns which, under the
covers of law, appearas an undifferentiated or chaotic depth. (It is worth remembering
this before attempting to read the schizo as such an operator.) Part of the difficulty of
reading L'anti-oedine within a strictly philosophical register is that its language and
relations are assembled from philosophy, science, economics, literature, psychoanalysis, politics and art, so reading it solely terms of its connections with Kant is
undoubtedly a limited exercise. However, Deleuze's work feeds back onto Kant, and
exposesnot a firm ground and a certain unity, but a dynamic, mobile and immanently
differentiated space.
This doesnot mean a spacethat is unable to function as a basis for a theory of
mechanism. However, Kant's claims for mechanism have to be re-sited: it no longer
presents a universally comprehensive theory encompassing the totality of objective
movementsin space,but becomesa limited description of a motions acrossempty space
according to ideal principles, following predictable and pre-determined channels. In
mechanism, the process of individuation, or differenciation, is constrained and
governed from an external position. That Kant is aware of this is clear from his
discussion of teleology in the third Critique, where he distinguishes the formation of
natural bodies from mechanical bodies on precisely the difference between something
set into operation from the outside, and something which is formed through the
130
Chapter 4
10
it.
Deleuze and Guattari formulate a third theory of
immanently
forces
to
relations of
production, or synthesis,which is neither purposive, as is the Kantian understanding of
a natural body, nor mechanistic,but machinic.
There are severalways in which the relation of passive synthesisto Kant can
be addressed.For example, there are three synthesesin both L'anti-oedine and the first
Critique. the former mapping loosely onto the three categoriesof relation: the synthesis
of connection/selectionwith cause and effect, the synthesis of disjunction/recording
with
substance and accident, the synthesis of conjunction/consumption with
community/reciprocity. These relations can also be connectedwith the problem of the
modes of time specific to each relation - succession,permanence and co-existence
respectively,as discussedby Kant in the Analogies of Experience. Another possibility
is looking at the qualities of force which correlate with each synthesis, libido with
connection, numen with disjunction and voluptas with conjunction. However, because
the underlying question in this thesis is where women are situated in the theoretical
structures of philosophy, or more precisely in Kant and Deleuze, the axis privileged is
that of passivity, women having been situated in relation to this by philosophy, and the
problem of how passivesynthesisrelatesto Kantian synthesis.
Kant defines synthesisas an act of combining difference under unity, in which
elementsof knowledge are gathered,whether of pure or empirical origin, and united to
form the content of a representation.' l Although he refers to it as a connection `thought
12,
identity'
amplifying rather than analyzing or explicating the content of
without
concepts, he also say that `all combination or separation that constitutes thought
relates' to a simple "r".
It is, in other words, a limited amplification. Thinking turns a
circle through these two statements on synthesis, from synthesis as relation of
difference not constrained by the logical formalism
131
of a concept to a relation of
Chapter 4
difference anchoredto identity; this latter understanding of synthesisthen servesas the
model of the possibility of synthesisin general. Synthesisis drawn into the subject,and
differences in the flow of imagination and variations in qualitative intensities - in
degreeof intensity - are equalizedthrough the conceptof magnitude.
The formulation of synthesis as a process anchored to identity, rather than
thought without referenceto it, is bound up with Kant's argument against confusing
the apparent heterogeneityof objects of inner and outer sensewith a real difference, a
confusion which leads to the attribution of a separateand substantial existenceto the
purely formal unity of thought. From the thought of a subject abstracted from the
empirical experienceof an existing body an illegitimate epistemological claim is made
to the effect that `I have knowledge that what is substantial in me is the transcendental
subject.914This implies the attribution of conceptualcharacteristics- such as substance
or causality - to a subject assumedto exist independently of the body - in other words,
to the transcendentalemployment of understanding. One can see the same tendencies
at work here as were argued against in Chapter Two, with reference to the thing-initself.
Kant traces the source of this error to the mistaken assumption that the
difference between inner and outer objects is something other than the result of the
sensible limitation of human knowledge, an error which generatesthe thought of a
subject with no object as a real, rather than merely logical form. His responseis to
point out that the heterogeneity of body and thinking is a function of the forms of
intuition - spaceand time - rather than of any real underlying difference, and that
`what, as thing-in-itself [Ding an sich], underlies the appearanceof
matter, perhapsafter all may not be so heterogeneousin character.'"
132
Chapter 4
lead - as Schopenhauersaw - towards a problem of forces which has no conceptual
formulation, which cannot be thought through the subject, but which is immanent to
the production of the world as representation.
Whilst one cannot argue with Kant's point concerning the error of assuming
that thinking and the body are composed of different "stuff', his solution remains
formal, in the sensethat it ignores the materiality of the body in favour of the identity
of the subject; it is only in this way that the final solution to the problem can be
discovered in the form of practical law. When SchopenhaueraccusesKant's view of
the intellect for being one-sidedand ignoring the physiological functions of the brain
in favour of its formal intellectual functions16 he is moving towards an objective
consideration of the intellect, not as an object of representation - which is to say, in
terms of the epistemological structuresfollowing from the princip1um individuationis but as thing-in-itself, or will: `In itself-and outside the representation,the brain, too,
like everything else, is wi11.'11 In Kant's terms this would mean that rather than
synthesisbeing subordinatedto identity and thus attached to the subject, it is thought
without identity; his point still holds concerning the error of assuming body and
thinking to be other than externally differentiated, in accordancewith the forms of
intuition, but the direction in which this points leads is no longer towards the moral
philosophy, but towards a deeper exploration of the material substrate underlying
appearance.
Kant distinguishes two types of synthesis,figurative synthesesof imagination
and intellectual synthesesof understanding. The former are `the mere result of the
power of imagination, a blind but indispensable function of the soul",
whilst
intellectual synthesis is a spontaneousact of the faculty of representation, an act of
19
be
`the
"synthesis"
title
understanding to which
general
may assigned'. The former is
134
Chapter 4
synthesisproper, and combinesintensive qualities, whilst the latter is a function of the
unity of the `I think' and combines axiomatized quanta of intuition. The former is
implicated with the production of an actual continuum, with the dynamic commercium
of machinic synthesis, whilst the latter is associatedwith an ideal continuity, with the
conceptual community of human labour. As seen above, the difference is between
synthesisthought without identity, and synthesisbrought in relation with identity, and
a different direction may be followed from each, one leading towards the problematic
thing-in-itself and the other towards the noumenon. In the first Critique, imagination
is annexedto understanding; it schematizesin accordancewith the categoriesand the
continuous flowing quantities of productive imagination - degrees of intensity - are
given discrete and extensive formulation through the axioms of intuition. In the
production of objectsof knowledge, the two synthesesoperatein conjunction. However,
imagination is a separatefaculty, not merely an adjunct to understanding, as is clear
from the third Critique in the discussionof the mathematical sublime.20
A synthesis of imagination produces continously flowing
degrees of
intensity21,but sightlessly, without prior referenceto recognition or concepts:that is to
say, the production of degreesof intensity is not governed a priori by the formal logics
of the concepts.Intensity attaches to that element in experiencewhich `can never be
known a priori, and which therefore constitutes the distinctive difference between
empirical and a priori knowledge'u and there is no concept of degreesof intensity as
such for Kant, since sensationis not a concept.In respectof the sightlessproduction of
continuous degrees of intensity, imagination is connected with intuition rather than
understanding; `intuitions without conceptsare blind'23. A degree of intensity is not a
quantity in intuition, but the quantity of the quality of sensation,a degree of influence
24
the
on
senses. It thus has no connection with conceptsas such; the spatial extension
of the object to which such a degree of influence is attributed can remain constant,
135
Chapter 4
whilst the degree of quality of influence on the senses- the sensationitself - can vary
without this difference registering conceptually. Deleuze's thought of synthesisresults
from this unhinging of imagination from unity and understanding, and of intuition
from its modes, and theorizes productive synthesis as a positive intensive difference
from the empty form of time.
***
In L'anti-oedine, synthesisis passive:
U
desir est cet ensemblede synthesespassives qui machinent les
objet partiels, les flux et les corps, et qui fonetionnent comme des
unit6s de production.
(Desire is the set of passive synthesesthat engineer partial objects,
flows, and bodies,and that function as units of production)'. I
The problem of synthesis is taken back to the question of a relation thought
without identity, deducted from the act of understanding which relates it to identity.
The starting point from which to explore Deleuze's formulation of synthesis is the
subject. In the second of the four poetic formulae summarizing Kant, introduced by
Rimbaud's phrase `Je est un autre', Deleuze begins by asking under what form
indeterminate existence-je suis, I am
determinable
by
je
I
the
think. And the
pense,
-is
answer Kant gives to this problem arising out of Cartesian subject, is that it is
determinable in the form of time; "therefore" is not sufficient as a theory of relations
between the I and its other. Existence is determinable only in the pure form of time,
`comme1'existenced'un moi passif, receptif et changeant.(as the existenceof a passive,
136
Chapter 4
26,
)'
receptive and changing ego.
and it is the production of this mobile and passive I
am, rather than the activity of the fixed but spontaneousI think which is, for Deleuze,
where the real problem of the subjectin Kant lies.
The aesthetic is Kant's most important contribution to philosophy and the
insinuation of time into the heart of the subject the explosive moment referred to in
chapter one, so Deleuzeaddressesthis as the critical relation in regard to the subjectin
Kant, rather than the logical vehicle that accompanies representations. The
epistemological problem becomessubordinateto one of affects and intensities, bodies
and desires, and ontology gives way to blocs of becoming, or cycles of synthetic
production.
The I am is an affect, but passively, rather than actively synthesized,and is
characterized intensively: Kant himself says that `consciousnessitself always has a
degree, which
diminution'27, so putting the problem on an intensive
allows
of
...
register. Deleuzefocuseson the relation of the degreeof intensity to pure empty time,
rather than to inner sense,the formal appropriation of time into the subject.That is, he
does not theorize it in relation to modes of time which are analogous to conceptual
relations. Set into variation through the deduction of the I think, the recognized
principle of thought, the I am becomesa problem of becoming, in formation but never
a form, becausethere is a continuous modulation of intensities through time and a
continuous transformation in the quantitative degree which composesconsciousness.
This move is immediately of interest in relation to the question of women's location in
philosophy, since the passivelactiveand receptivelspontaneousaxeshave been amongst
those used to articulate their difference from men, women being attributed with the
first arm of each of the two disjunctions. Women are also associatedwith imagination
in Kant. Deleuze's shift of synthesis from an active mode of production to a passive
137
Chapter 4
imagination
from
to
as
unity
as
agent
of
understanding
producing process, and
synthetizing continuous flows is implicated with the philosophical positioning of
28
is
follows
in
But
fuller
discussion
this
two
this
the
remark
chapters;
next
of
a
women.
merely to begin weaving women into the discussion-to createan undertow, as it were.
The relation of passivesynthesisto the distinction in Kant betweenproductive
or figurative synthesisand the intellectual synthesiswhich subordinatesthe former to
unity is not one of opposition, and nor doespassivesynthesiscorrelate directly with the
synthesis of imagination. Firstly, passive synthesis describesa transverse line across
the oppositional axis, so is not directly associable with Kant's activelpassive
distinction. As has been said before, Deleuze's subtractive method does not remove
through exclusion, but is instead a positive privation which removes the belts and
blockagesof limitation and negation.
In Kant's table of the conceptsof nothing, the negation of reality results in 'a
concept of the absenceof an object, such as shadow, cold (nihil privativum)''ý a trace
of what was real remaining as a negative imprint. Deleuze's use of privation is
positive, and rather than leaving a shadow of what has been removed, brings to the
surface what was covered over by the concept. 'Soustraire et mettre en variation,
retrancher et mettre en variation, c'est une seule et meme operation (subtract and place
in variation, remove and place in variation: a single operation).'30 Subtraction effects
the release of variations which do not fall onto either side of the disjunction, but
include both as potentials, not in the form of binaries, but as elementsof a multiplicity
which cannot be scored down the middle, or reduced to the sum of its parts. Rather
than the removal of a quality of reality - an intensive magnitude - leaving the shadow
of itself:, it opensup the quality of distributions which the asiomatization of quantities
suppressed.The deduction of activity from synthesis does not therefore leave the
138
Chapter 4
for
but
the rein
Kantian
a
space
opens
register,
a
problem of passive synthesis
formulation of passivity stripped of psychological overtonesand cultural constructions
of women as the "passive(= weaker) sex."
It is not that there is a movementbetweenactive and passivewhich cannot be
exposed,an undecidable median which is neither simply one or the other, and which
distributes this difference but is not determined by it. What effects a division in a
break.
divided
distance
between
does
a
clean
make
states
nor
not straddlea
multiplicity
In Dialote,
Deleuzewrites:
`On ne sort effectivement des dualismes qu'en les deplacant ä la
maniere dune charge, et lorsqu'on trouve entre les termes, qu'ils
soient deux ou davantage,un defile etroit comme une bordure ou une
frontiere
qui
va
faire
de
1'ensemble wie
multiplicite,
independamment du nombre des parties. Cc que nous appelons
agencement,c'est precisementune multiplicite.
(You can only escapedualisms effectively by shifting them like a load, and
when you find betweenthe two terms, whether they are two or more, a narrow
gorge like a border or a frontier which will turn the set into a multiplicity,
independently of the number of parts. What we call an assemblage is,
31
precisely, a multiplicity)'
The border or gorge does not institute a relation between intensity and
extensity, or active and passivesyntheses;to formulate it thus turns the transversal line
into a diagonal which can be plotted on a plane graph. Intensity becomessubordinated
to the qualities filling extensity - force becomesrelative to distance, for example, or
pressure to volume. The multiplicity, or in-between, or frontier, however, neither
distributes dualisms, nor reducesto them, becauseit is effected by asymmetrical and
139
Chapter 4
differential conjunctions which, by including both arms of a disjunction construct an
assemblagewhich is not commensurate with the conditions of its production, but
32
A very simple illustration might be
direction.
them,
escapes
giving relations another
that of transsexuals:whilst the desireprofessedby a man might be to becomea woman,
or by a woman to become a man, becoming-transsexualdoes not result in a simple
switch - this is an extensiveappearance,effectedby surgery - but the inclusion of both
terms, and the creation of a new sex contained by neither.33What appearsare n-sexes,
not two sexes; n-qualities, distributed not as the result of the qualification or
axiomatization of quanta necessitatedby the attachment of production to identity, but
through the connections and relations into which a body enters, and of which it is
assembled
This is the logic of empiricism, and of rhizomatics, the principle of which has
been quoted in relation to deduction in chapter two: subtract the unique from the
multiplicity to be constituted. Deduction works at the level of principles; it is not
merely a matter of taking a bit off as if one were removing part of an argument which
did not contribute to the proof. Every qualification of force resulting from unity and the
monopolization of power by substanceremoved shifts the nature of the problem: each
movement changes space, each change in space effects the direction and speed of
movement. Evacuation of the principles which structure transcendental matter, or
intensities, according to unity, and of the principles which regulate the stability, purity
and upkeep of unity, shifts Deleuze's logic away from one of being, and the
`subordinationdes conjonctions au verbe titre (subordination of conjunctions to the verb
'34tobe).
His operator is the AND,
140
Chapter 4
`qui fait filer Ies relations hors de leurs termes et hors de l'ensemble
de leurs termes, et hors de tout cc qui pourrait eire determind comme
Etre, Un ou Tout.
(which makes relations shoot outside their terms and outside the set
of their terms, and outside everything which could be determined as
Being, One, or Whole)' 35
Consciousnessloses unitary senseand is no longer a priori but a posteriori,
the real effect of a singularity already in action, but in a different form than that of its
36
existence Transversality is not a diagonal on a co-ordinate system,but a movement
which generates new co-ordinates and a different system. Synthesis becomes an
additive function, rather than a relation with identity. Not, however, the addition of
equal units, but the addition of difference. Where God is the master of disjunctive
syllogism, unity is added to differential relations of empirical and heterogeneous
sequences,and difference is articulated according to the either/or: either production is
social or it is desiring - either it is public or it is private, familial, secret.The inclusive
disjunction of machinic production affirms diversity and adds difference, adds value
without siphoning off profit, breeding flows from flows, breaking and detaching
elementsand setting them into motion in other directions.
II
Passive
Deleuze fuses the problem of consciousnessdefined as a degree of intensity,
and thus as a multiplicity, or assemblage,with the real which forces thought, the
imperceptible and contingent cycles of the sufficient reasonof sense.He does not focus
on either the I think or the I am, however, but on the `position passive (cc que Kant
appelle la receptivite d'intuition (passive position [what Kant calls the receptivity of
141
Chapter 4
intuition])' which is implicated with the pure form of time, a nonformal intuition, and
with the passive synthesesof perception and individuation. 37 This is the vector of
passivity which does not resolve back into the system of binaries, but brings the
underlying differenceson which it is founded to the surface, so introducing variations
which cannot be comprehendedin biunivocal relations.
`Une faille ou une felure dans le Je, une passivite dans le moi, voila
ce que signifie le temps; et la correlation du moi passif et du Je feie
constitue la decouverte du transcendental ou l'element de la
revolution copernicienne.
(Time signifies a fault or a fracture in the 1 and a passivity in the self,
and the correlation between the passive self "and the fractured I
constitutes the discovery of the transcendental, the element of the
CopernicanRevolution)'.(Ibid. )
Deleuze does not find a self in Kant's Deduction: it is this, he argues, that
betrays the death of God signified by the pure form of time, as condition of a finite
empirical animal. Starting from a passionateand receptive self, a "me", rather than an
"r, which is always an effect not an origin, a peripheral residue rather than a source,
and defined in terms of affects, as a substantial multiplicity replete with faculties, not
as functions of common sensebut of multiplicities it plugs into, Deleuze then asks:
what are the real conditions of its production? One no longer starts from one, but from
zero, the pure and empty form of time.
The problem becomesone of the difference of thresholds and limits and the
passive becomesa transient limit, a skin immanent to a threshold, rather than an
existencecontained within an I think, or a border distinguishing an inside from an
142
Chapter 4
outside. Mobile and ambulatory, the passive"me" is a variable affect, and rather than
being located behind the eyes, travels a body, changing its qualities as it engages
different connectionsand transforms functions, each movement of different order, of
different relations, different synthesesand times; every change in degreeis a changein
quality. If the passivehas an apparentobjective constancyor identity, this is a function
of its empirical circumstances,of the social orders and codes which define it, rather
than of the real conditions of its production; it is always corporeal, corporealizing, a
thought of sensenot of understanding or reason. Constantsare temporary and mobile,
rather than fixing parameters;relations are explosive and escapist,rather than placid
and imprisoned.
The passive is a crack which transmits only itself, and transmission is not
more or less than this crack: the cracked or fractured subject is its negative inversion,
its dead consequence,an old transmission from Kant 38Rather than the crack being
encasedbetweenthe I and its other, it is infiltrated by Ideas,abstract material problems
`emergentconstammentsur les bords de cette felure, sortant et rentrant sans cesse,se
composant de mille manWres diverses (constantly emerging on its edges, ceaseless
coming out and going back, being composedin a thousanddifferent manners)', which
do not form a unified totality, but inform the processof individuation which constitutes
39
but
a self, not as a subject,
as a mobile affect. However, the passive is not to be
mistaken for a subject nor the self mistaken for a body; a body is teeming assemblage
of larval selves, bacterial, chemical, electrical, social, sexual affects composing a
surface;Deleuze's argument against the image of thought is that it inscribes an image
on that surface, and so precludes exploration of the complexities of the interactions
amongst all thesedifferent orders of selves.Unlike the subject,the assemblagedoes not
say "mine": the possibility of possessionis bound up with identity, with law, with the
deduction of right and to say "mine" presupposesI own myself as an object, contain
143
Chapter 4
another. The passive without possession is composed of affects, is a crowd, a
population, units of production, larvae, intensive degreesof imagination at a positive
distancefrom the zero of the pure form of time.
Saying "mine", and expressing possessionof a space, is an effect of the
illegitimate or paralogical use of the third machinic synthesis,conjunction. This has
alreadybeen referred to in its legitimate formulation, as the AND logics of empiricism.
In its paralogical employment, the actual dynamics of the commercium, the infinite
proximities of the elements of repulsive force filling space,are contained within the
boundaries of a subject, and conceptualizedindependently of real interaction. So the
subjectbecomesprior to the lived state, and possessesits body as an object, owning its
behaviour, rather than being a peripheral effect of the mobile affects which cross its
surface. An assemblageof larval and swarming selves becomestotalized under the
name of the agent, as the principle of its definition, in relation to which the dynamics
of intensive spacebecome passive; not in the senseof passive synthesis as the blind
generation of real affects, but as inert in relation to the spontaneity of the acting
subject.
Kant refers to this difference in the third Analogy, noting that a local spatial
community has for its real condition the dynamic commercium of real interactions,
which are co-existing and co-ordinated, but not according to any extrinsic rule.
However, he turns this relation inside out, by making an ideal community the condition
of the possibility of knowledge of the commercium, so situating the subject outside, in
an elevated position; the subject does not then co-exist with the dynamic space,as a
continuously mobile variant, but becomesthe principle of its subordination to unity.
Whilst the first synthesis, connection, is indicative of the escape of abstract flows
144
Chapter 4
which have neither code or territory, and which effect the deterritorialization of space
and the decoding of flows, conjunction in its illegitimate formulation
`indique...leur arret relatif, comme un point d'accumulation qui
bouche ou colmate maintenant les lignes de fuite, opere une
reterritorialisation generale, et fait passerles flux sous la dominance
de l'un d'eux capablede les surcoder.
(indicates their relative stoppage, like a point of accumulation that
plugs or seal the lines of flight, performs a general
reterritorialization, and brings the flows under the dominance of a
40
flow
them)'.
single
capableof overcoding
It is in the context of the relation of connection and conjunction that Deleuze
and Guattari come closest to admitting to history: they distinguish between a history
which takes for its elements classes and segments, and follows the major line
overcoding the vectors of escapeand a microhistory which traces massesand flows -a
history of populations and packs, flows of money, of sperm, of blood, milk, rivers,
bodies; history as market, rather than as capital. The former, macrohistory, attachesto
the conjunction specific to subject as agent of synthesis: it is the acts of men which
constitute this history, allowing for the claim of this illegitimate use of conjunction Vest donc moi, le roil c'est donc ä moi, que revient le royaume! (so 1 am the king! So
the kingdom belongs to me)' 41 The subject becomesthe single flow overcoding all
flows, the consumerof time and of history from which both appearto emanate.
145
Chapter 5
A Row of Doors
`Le plan de consistance (grille) est le dehors de touter les
multiplicites.
(The plane of consistency(grid) is the outside of all multiplicities). "
In the previous chapter Deleuze's use of passive synthesis was discussed,
together with the transformations in subjectivity when synthesis is not related to
identity, nor understoodas a spontaneousact of synthetic unity, nor confined within an
image of thought. The passive "me" is not "other" to an acting I, but a mobile and
variable affect, impersonal and intensive. In this chapter, changes effected in
imagination by theseshifts in the nature of the subjectand synthesis will be looked at.
This shift has implications for Kant's associationof the imagination with a soul, the
latter being essential to the constitution of the category of the Person, defining a
cultural body subject to law and capable of faith. Imagination is also involved in
aestheticjudgements on the sublime, and the effects of the reconfiguration of synthesis
as passivein relation to suchjudgements will also be explored. Lastly, the nature of a
machinic continuum is addressed,in terms of the continuous exportation of the model
of death, or zero, as the immanent condition of production.
I
Soul
`C'est l'imagination qui traverse les domains, les ordres et les
niveaux, abattant les cloisons, coextensive au monde...conscience
larvaire allant sanscessede la scienceau reve et inversement.
146
Chapter 5
(It is imagination which crosses domains, orders and levels,
knocking down the partitions coextensivewith the world... a larval
consciousnesswhich movesendlesslyfrom scienceto dream and back
again).'2
In Mille Plateaux Deleuze and Guattari remark on the complementarity of
impotence and power and their mutual reinforcement `dann une sorte de satisfaction
fascinante (in a kind of fascinating satisfaction)s3 particular to mediocrity and
definitive of the glory of men of the State. In terms of its relations, this dynamic,
incorporating impotenceand dominant authority as reciprocal correspondants,operates
very much like the Kantian sublime, in which imagination and reasonpush each other
to their limit, the inadequacyof the former resulting from the superior might of the
latter. In the sublime, the relation of production to reproduction essential to
recognizing unity is disturbed: imagination apprehends,or producesintensive quanta,
but there is no general rule appropriate to the comprehension,or reproduction of their
degree in a determinate objective form. As it was out on the lagoon, the subject
becomesturned in on itself, disconnectedfrom sensibility.
Whilst Kant emphasizesthat there is neither an interest or liking of reasonin
the sublime, and that it is a purely aestheticjudgement, it is only in the context of a
cultured mind that the fine line between enthusiasm and fanaticism and the sublime
can be negotiated successfully.But as was remarked in a previous chapter, that the
sublime requires culture, `in no way implies that it was initially producedby culture94:
its foundation belongs to the human predisposition for `(practical) ideas, i. e., to moral
feeling' S Thus, whilst imagination and reasonare discordant and the play of faculties
unregulated in the sublime, `imagination is...really part of moral common sense'6and
only under the condition of a moral common sense,as a place of safety, are the violent
agitation and 'sacred thrill '7 of the sublime commensuratewith rational faith. The
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fascinations
its
into
the
pleasure,
subsiding
negative
reconciliation of
sublime, of pain
becoming satisfying rather than threatening to reason,and its impotence giving way to
authority is made possibleby the movement out of nature, away from the sensible,and
into the supersensiblestrata of Reasonand Law.
It is indeed imagination that crossesdomains and demolishesthe orders and
structuresof the world; however, for Kant the movement from the world of objects,the
world of science,to that of dreams is achieved through a relation of inadequacyand
authority. Imagination in its cognitive role, schematizing relations of production to
reproduction, or apprehensionto comprehension,according to a rule of understanding,
is inadequate in the face of the superior and incomparable supersensibledreams of
reason; in the sublime, imagination apprehendsor produces quanta which can neither
be reduced to determinacy through analogy, nor reproduced or comprehended
according to the axiomatics of extension. But this disordered relation between
production and reproduction is legitimate only in the context of culture. As Kant says
in the first Critique. before venturing onto the ocean, one must first be securein the
possessionof the land. The case is very similar in the sublime: before the natural
disorder and indeterminacy of faculties can be countenancedas within the ends of
reason, and the fortitude of imagination, or the soul `raised above its usual middle
8
first
have
the
prepared
range', culture must
ground.
Authority and impotence are hand in hand, but the latter is rationally
legitimate only if the former is first made certain. This is becausethe sublime in its
dynamic, rather than mathematical formulation, testifies to the physical impotence of
man in the face of nature - not external nature, but the nature of the faculties; the
chaotic and overwhelming forces of the sublime are expressedin the vastnessof nature,
but the feeling of the sublime itself testifies to the containment of this vastness;man
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has within him a disorder of immense magnitude, but reason in its cultured form is
always adequateto this. Reasonhas `a different and nonsensiblestandard that has this
infinity itself under it as a unit' and it is this that prevents the sublime from being a
degradation of humanity, and evidencesinstead its superiority over nature.9 Reason
contains chaos, but chaosis no match, it seems,for reason.
In Mille Plateaux the interiorization of intensive natural forces is discussed
in relation to the war machine and its containment by the State. A war machine is `une
pure forme d'exteriorite (a pure form of exteriority)' , associatedwith the science of
Dispars and with nomos, as full intensive and tactile space distributed without
1°
law.
A war machine has no necessaryrelation with violence: it is
to
reference
characterizedrather by its relation to speedand intensity, and by its irreducibility to the
mechanismsof capture specific to the State. In this respect, it is situated similarly to
the position in which women have been established - or rather, not established - by
philosophy, as necessaryto the State,but not reducible to its forms and orders. The war
machine is a pack, a gang of street children, a diffuse and mobile composition which
cannot be understoodin terms of class relations, age groups, sexual proclivities, or skin
colours. In Brazil, the children are murdered by the State, in Borneo the women are
prostituted by the State, in all States, the aim is to incorporate the war machine, by
whatever meansand in whatever form, whilst eliminating those elementswhich cannot
be reducedto its monopoly. Mockery, murder, prostitution, criminality, the police, the
army, the church, the academy,the school, the youth club, the hospital, the prison: all
theseways of producing the war machine as a suicide line inside the State, rather than
as a
pure exteriority. It is noology, the image of thought, which serves as the
mechanismof interiorization.
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The war machine is counter-statistical: it is of `une autre justice, un autre
mouvement,un autre espace-temps(anotherjustice, another movement, another spacetime)'" which testifies to an exteriority, but not an exteriority which is an outside to
the State, in the sensethat one might think of an outside to representation. As has
been explained, the thing-in-itself is immanent to sense,produced in relation to it as
the imperceptible, that which escapesthought but is not beyond it. It is not the
"unrepresentable", but the imperceptible; not outside the limits of knowledge, but
immanent to the threshold of sense.It is in this sensethat the space-time of the war
machine is outside the State,as a force which destroysthe image, the rule, the law and
order of the State, not through the exerciseof violence, which is a State function, even
when it appears to act against the State, even when it appears criminal, but by
shattering and scattering the consistencyof the image and forming alliances which run
counter to the arranged systems.The form of exteriority testified to by the war machine
is `le devenir-femme du penseur, le devenir-penseede la femme qui ne se laisse plus
...
contröler (the becoming-woman of the thinker, the becoming-thought of the
12
be
to
controlled)'.
woman-that refuses
Of the aestheticin the third Critique, Deleuze says `le sensiblevaut pour luimeme et se deploie dans un pathos audelä de toute logique (the sensible is valid in
itself and unfolds in a pathos beyond all logic)' 13 With this remark, he is forging an
associationbetweenthe sublime and thought as war machine, where thought operates
solely through unregulated relations, charged with intensities foreign to the grammars
of its language. Once more, Deleuze is drawing lines which ally the schizo with the
explosive moment in Kant, and focusing on the primacy of sensibility and imagination,
and on thought as potentiated on the basis of `un effondrement central, qu'elle ne peut
vivre que de sa propre impossibilite de faire forme (a central breakdown, that it lives
14
by
its
incapacity
form).
If, as said in the previous chapter, this
to
take
solely
own
on
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Chapter 5
breakdown is given image - Artaud is the one which crops up most frequently in
Deleuze and Guattari's writing - and the image becomesa model, the senseof the war
is
The
is
is
lost.
the
treachery
treachery:
never that of a
of
a
man
point
machine
woman, the treachery of a child never that of a mother, the treachery of a philosopher
is
it
language
becoming
foreign
is
This
to
means:
one's own
what
never that of a poet.
not a matter of rebellion, of suicidal daring and a struggle to introduce shock-value
into an otherwise pedestrianthought. This is why Deleuzeand Guattari are so effective,
and why, for example, to dismiss Difference et Repetition as a work of
regular
academicproportions is to miss the degreeof its deviance.
When the war machine is interiorized by the State, as the sublime is
interiorized by Reason, the relation becomes that of impotence and authority, the
inadequacy of imagination and the superior magnitude of the supersensible.The
central breakdown which potentiates thought is interiorized, made whole, contained
and controlled within the image, and the pathos of the schizophrenic explosion
becomesmerely pathetic.
***
In practical reason, imagination receives the sentenceof the law.
Kant's
identification of imagination with the soul has already been noted in the previous
chapter, and the schematism is described as `an art concealed in the depths of the
human soul'15.In the first Critique the conditions for deducing the objective possibility
of an immortal soul - and thus of an unbounded imagination - are absent, or at least,
not immediately involved in speculation, and there is an admixture of sensible
information in the construction of cognition. But practical freedom is antithetical to the
functioning of imagination on behalf of understanding, at its middle range, where the
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Chapter 5
The
is
determinate.
soul as
and
stable
and
reproduction
relation of production
immortal substanceis an insoluble problem for finite entities, and speculationson its
nature lead to paralogisms and claims of a rational psychology (which, despite its
theoretical illegitimacy, Kant remarks, has a disciplinary use)16 The relation of
substance(permanence)to force (intensity) is axiomatically extensive, and irreducible
to a radical unity, matter appears heterogeneousand force diverse. Nonetheless,the
idea of a fundamental power [Grundkraft] `is the problem involved in a systematic
representationof the multiplicity of powers'" and imagination is no exceptionto this.
With practical reason, the possibility of the soul becomes a legitimate
postulate of reason,on the basis of the determination of freedom by the Law. Only on
this basis can immortality be framed without referenceto modes of time, imagination
removed from the framework of permanenceand substance,and intensity reconfigured
in relation to the will, as a drive [Trieb], rather than as a force [Kraft]. This takes the
problem out of physics and into practical reason. Much as the understanding was
compelled by practical reason to assume the noumenon in the interests of reason's
systematicgrowth's, practical reason commands the assumption of an immortal soul,
on the basisof the fact of a free will, in the interestsof reason'smoral growth.
The practical postulate of an immortal soul is `an inseparable corollary of an a
priori
unconditionally
imaginarius
valid
practical
is no longer imaginarius,
subjective idea regulating
formal
law'19.
Under
practical
law,
the focus
as it was in the case of speculative reason, a
20
implicated
systematic unity,
with the negative
noumenon, but real. The unity of law must be enacted, objectively, not merely posited,
subjectively. Deleuze emphasizes that `un seul contresens est dangereux, concernant
I'ensemble de la Raison pratique (a single dangerous misunderstanding regarding the
whole ofpractical
Reason)' is failure to realize that `l'abime entre le monde sensible et
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Chapter 5
Ie monde suprasensiblen'existe que pour titre comble (the abyssbetweenthe sensible
world and the suprasensibleworld exists only in order to be filled)This
was seenin
an earlier chapter one, in Kant's insistencethat practical reasonwas meant to influence
the sensible configuration of phenomena.The negative noumenon is the medium for
the conversion of permanencefrom its sensibleand conceptual relation with time and
causality to its practical configuration as immortality through which the concept of
substancebecomescomplete, and physical force discovers its impotence in relation to
the drives of the will. As remarked above, however, this impotence is permissible and
indeed predicated upon the a priori magnificence of reason, and the containment of
immanence, as pure exteriority, within reason. Disassociatedfrom time, through the
`marks of permanence'22which reveal its real nature, the imagination fades into the
immortality of the soul.
Elevated above sense, man discovers the root of his duty to the Law in
personality, and (according to the principle of exclusive disjunction and the necessity
for practical law to be realized) at the same time its empirical counterpart is formed,
The Person. The subject understanding objects in the first Criitique was for the most
part a merely logical function; The Scientist. But under practical law, the growth of the
architectonic is no longer a methodical theorization of a subjective idea but the real
practice of its objective construction. Kant's three Critiques build a law house for an
organism with soul. With art on its walls too, for the characteristics of intensive
permanenceand substantive imagination are attached to exemplary works of art and
their production by genius.
Speculativereasonconcerneditself with the plan for the court house- with the
erection of a structure `just sufficiently commodious for our business on the level of
experience,and just sufficiently high to allow of our overlooking it''3 This vantage
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Chapter 5
sight has no objective substance independently of the fact of freedom, however,
remaining merely hypothetical. But postulatesof practical reason `give objective reality
to the Ideas of speculativereason in general'24; all the aggregateunities, the random
data, the technical methods,the particular schemes,all the loose change of knowledge
contributes to the supply of the creaturewhich occupiesthat theoretical house,which is
the Person.Personsare the objectiveends of reason,of absolutevalue, and do not serve
`simply as means'25 Reason is its own end, and everything contributes towards it:
which legitimates the use of bodies as means,on the grounds that reasonis not a body,
and it legitimates the use of imagination as a means, on the grounds that imagination
is not a soul, merely its empirical relative. Imagination is objectively legitimated in the
form of a Person, relinquishing its role as medium between sensibility and
understanding to take its proper place in the holy trinity of God, Freedom and
Immortality. The (human) organism becomesa Person,imagination becomessoul and
their empirical and relative forms becomelegitimately describableas means.
Independently of the objective value of an immortal substantial soul, and not
confined by personhood, imagination does not lose its infinity, instead, it loses its
reasonand good sense.But it is not for that evil. The devil, Kant says, `has reason,but
not infinity. '26 The simplistic divisions of moral Law require that goodnesshave its
devils just as white men need their women and their blacks to retain the vantage point
of their situation over the businessof experience,and Kant's devil without infinity is
unimaginative and powerless,but nonethelessnecessary.The State, as Deleuze and
Guattari say, needsits impotence, and Personsneed to be sinners too, to forget their
immortality, in order that they might be reminded of it, under the Law.
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II
Imagination
Imagination is not a faculty of the `I think', constrained to schematizeon its behalf;
like judgement, it is annexed to reason or understanding, in recognition of the
particular interests of reasoninvolved, but cannot be defined in terms of either. It is in
between, but not produced by the poles it relates, or reducible to them. When
imagination is unhinged from law and rule, and synthesis is not bound in a relation
with identity, it becomes passive, passionate: this bears on the arbitrary freedom
describedin chapter one, since the passions,for Kant, involve the abolition of freedom,
and the de-restriction of desire from principles of reason. Thus, whilst arbitrary
freedom provided a space through which to choose against Law, it was only in the
context of the network of faculties as constituted by Kant. The interzone does not
remain open, however, the moment was passing and transitory, the door opens and
passingthrough it dissolvesits conditions.
Imagination `belongs to sensibility'27, only to sensibility, the conditions of
which `carry with them their own differences'28;not the difference between subjective
and objective elements,which sets the separation of sensationin subjective - pleasure
and pain, and objective - sensibility as the forms of a priori intuition, but indeterminate
quantities of infinity not accountedfor by reason,not contained by its standard unit of
chaos, which do not substantiate a soul, but a `multiplicit6 de fusion qui deborde
effectivement toute opposition de l'un et du multiple (fusional multiplicity that
effectively goes beyond any opposition between the one and the multiple)' 2`' When
imagination is annexedto understanding, operating at middle range and contained by
the generalizations of conceptual cognition, its productive capacities are constrained
by the condition that anything it generates is reproducible. Contrary to what may
appear to be the case in the first Critique, the condition of reproducibility is not
155
Chapter 5
immanent to the operation of imagination,
but rather a function it performs when
deployed in conjunction with understanding, under its rule, in a theoretical domain.
What makes reproduction possible, Kant says, is a rule to which appearances are
subject; in other words understanding, as the faculty of rules, grounds reproduction.
The difference
between the two operations of imagination
comprehension is not articulated clearly
are separable, and that
imagination
in the first Criti
does indeed
- apprehension and
e. That the two functions
have an operative
capacity
independent of understanding and the rule which makes reproduction possible is clear,
however, in the discussion of the mathematical sublime in the third Critique, where
Kant argues that for imagination
to function within an epistemological framework, it
must perform both acts - that of apprehension
apprehend what is given in intuition
and of comprehension. It must both
and provide a schema for understanding. The
formal comprehension of what is apprehended sensibly allows for the application of
concepts to intuition
reproducibility
and thus for the reproducibility
is a condition
for the claim
of what is given, where
of objective knowledge:
a scientific
experiment which cannot be reproduced, either mathematically or in practice, cannot
count as objective knowledge, for Kant. In the sublime, however, understanding is of
no relevance to the functioning
of
imagination,
which is brought into a conflictual
relation with reason. The logical comprehension of
basis for the reproducibility
apprehension which forms the
gives way to an aesthetic comprehension in a singular
judgement without concepts. So, whilst it may appear as though reproducibility
required
by
imagination,
this
is
only
insofar
as imagination
is annexed
is
to
understanding, and functioning epistemologically. This does not, however, exhaust the
power of imagination.
In the first Critique imagination is a labourer on the assembly line of
knowledge, making things which could as well have been made by another, under
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Chapter 5
different empirical circumstances.When annexed to reason, its generative capacities
are necessarily understood as impotent in relation to the supersensibledominion of
is
imagination
is
however,
In
to
rule
nor
under
neither
reason. relation
sensibility,
there a standard according to which it may be judged as inadequate. It is a positive
intensive distancefrom zero, the pure and empty form of time.
The subjectiveand objective division of sensibility, as has been remarked, are
functions of understanding, not of imagination, just as the productive and reproduction
relations of imagination are functions of recognition, not of intensities; when
understood immanently,
imagination has neither image nor schema, destiny nor
vocation, limit or condition, outside its relation with sensibility. Sensibility is not split
into subjective and objective elements, but becomesa surface, a plane of consistency
composedthrough the descriptions of imagination, populations of intensities, infinities
has
been
is
local
Intuition
different
as
singular,
orders,
absolutes
standard.
of
without
seen,and it is in relation to singularities that Deleuze understandsimagination, as the
processthrough which an idea is actualized, becoming concrete. It draws difference,
contracting a point, a singularity, not as a unit, but as a complex articulation, which
doesnot cancel difference but coversit with more difference, extracting the elementsof
speedfrom the differencesit contracts and releasing them onto the surfaceof time, like
sporesfrom a pod..
In a sense, imagination
objectively
indeterminate
might be said to be always sublime; it is intensive,
in relation
to identity,
comparison, but nonetheless differentiated,
infinite
and without
empirical
patterned. A process with no relation to
identity, it becomes divorced from the idea of production. But it is more accurate to say
there is no longer any sense to the sublime (and it does have sense for Kant, as a
cultural item), because without understanding to set extensive limits on synthesis, or
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Chapter 5
reason to impose intensive penalities and feelings of respect for the law on
imagination, convincing personsof their soul, the conditions of the feelings of negative
pleasureand pain characteristic of the sublime are no longer operative. `Moral law...by
thwarting all our inclinations, must produce a feeling which can be called pain' 30and
pain can be connectedwith `all presentationsin us, no matter whether their object is
31.
instead
intellectual'
Different qualities emerge, however,
merely sensibleor
wholly
from an imagination not pressedby religious or moral ideals, nor rationalized from a
position of safety through the superior magnitudes monopolized by supersensible
reason, becoming divorced utterly from the edification of nature into a cultural
property.
`[C]omment se prolongent les continuums d'intensite? dans quel
ordre les series de transformations Sc font-Blies? quels sont ces
enchainements alogiques qui se font toujours au milieu, et par
lesquels le plan se construit morceau par morceau suivant un ordre
fractionnaire croissant ou decroissant? Le plan est comme une
enfilade de portes. Et les r6gles concretesde construction du plan ne
valent que pour autant qu'elles exercentun role selectif.
(How are the continuums of intensity extended?What is the order of
the transformational series?What are these alogical linkages always
effected in the middle, through which the plane is constructed piece
by piece in ascending or descending fractional order? The plane is
like a row of doors. And the concrete rules for the construction of the
plane obtain to the extent that they exercisea selectiverole)' 32
Thesequestionsalways have an answerfor Kant. In the end, all the doors lead
to the same ends, to the standardized infinity of reason, becausethere is no longer
imagination, only a soul, no longer a body, only an organism with personality, no
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Chapter 5
longer time, only immortality, no real patterns, only a schemaborrowed from an idea
of reason. Imagination and time do not, for Kant distribute a surface, but describe a
corridor for the delivery of intensities to reason. This is why the sublime appears
ejaculatory: an accumulation of heterogeneousforce vectors constrained to be, whole,
at the end, channelled along a single route. The critical path is `the only one that has
33
Kant
remained unexplored',
writes. But Kant mistakes its nature and its intellect with
man's existenceand desire, and wraps the route around in a circle, forming nothing,
as the ground from which nothing escapes.Through the doors, relations fly outside the
terms related, outsidethe set which contains them, past One and the totality of being.
###
In the Kantian sublime, imagination `strains to treat nature as a schema' for
Ideas.34That is, it attempts to produce a material determination of time which realizes
the indeterminate object of the Idea, making the standard infinite real. It is necessarily
the casethat it can only fail in this task, however, since to succeedwould suggestthat
reason itself was reproducible, and that the infinite could be externalized as a
perceivable quantity; this is not a possibility of aesthetics,only of Law. To Deleuze's
comment that the abyssexists only to be filled, must be added the rider: but only by
moral practices. Filling the abyss is legitimate only under the condition of Law. This
is why Kant is so careful to insist that it is not nature itself that is sublime, and why
nature is limited to the function of mirroring the unregulated discord of the faculties.
There is always, for Kant, a relation of symmetry between nature and the relations
amongst faculties: in the caseof understanding, which gives the law to the relations of
faculties in cognition, nature mirrors this relation by appearing IawfW; in the case of
reason, there is no law to the relation amongst the faculties - their accord has to be
produced,and so nature reflects this, appearing indeterminate, overwhelming, fearful.
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Were imagination able to schematizeideas in nature, it would mean that the soul itself
appearedin nature, or god did, or freedom. But this would render faith irrational, the
soul material, and freedom a natural cause,undermining the theoretical operationsof
reasonand allowing ideas a constitutive rather than merely regulative role. Again, this
is legitimate only in the context of practical reason..
In the sublime, a `rapid alternation of repulsion from, and attraction to, one
35
breath
forces,
the
the
threatens
the
and
and
sameobject' checks
vital
producing pain.
But this stammering and stuttering of intensities only resolves into the quality of
respectassociatedwith the sublime when imagination is qualified as inadequate;where
there is no standard set, no image according to which the infinite is measuredand no
unit which contains it as an interior form, the stuttering and stammering does not
resolveinwardly, into the interiority of reason,but outwardly, as the pure exteriority of
the war machine, of anotherjustice, another space-time,another origin, simultaneously
making and passing through a door, an arbitrary freedom which is unrepeatable,
unreproducible,image-free. The place of safety which assuresthe proper resolve of the
conflict in the sublime is the Person, the consummatecultured man of State, rather
than a physical location - though it is that too, since it is only men, for Kant, who are
capableof the sublime.
The traits which distinguish women from men are those which `chiefly result
in making her known by the mark of the beautiful'36 whilst the `noble sex [edlen
Geschlechtsl', man, has `a deep understanding, an expression that signifies identity
37
Even if women are in principle capable of the sublime, it is
the
with
sublime'
neither to be encouragedin them, and nor do they possessthe inclination to cultivate it:
their association is with beauty, a sensation which `proclaims itself through shining
38
in
features,
through
the
through
cheerfulness
eyes,
smiling
and often
audible mirth'
160
Chapter 5
This relation of beauty to visible characteristics of the body suggesting a sunny
disposition, together with the associationof women with beauty, helps to explain why,
as was remarked in the Intrsoduction,it is girls especially who should be encouragedto
smile; it functions as a steering mechanism, an element in the training of women (for,
as Kant says, women are not educated, but trained) towards their proper cultural
function, and away from the "masculine" pursuit of learning. Women, he says, carry
books as they carry a watch, `so that people will see that she has one, though it is
usually not running or not setby the sun.'39
The cultured man has nothing to fear from the sublime, since culture is
erected on the interiorization of its unregulated forces and then turns these forces
against nature, in the specific form under which the State understandsforce - that is,
in terms of violence.
But from the blind play of imagination consequenton the
sensible affection of a body emerges a persistence of passion, an intensive unit of
production positively differentiated from the zero-dimensionality of time, an opening, a
field of openings, a holey space. At this juncture there is no sense any more in
psychologizing force with the term imagination.
Deleuzeis not a philosopher of enthusiasm,of affects accompaniedby the idea
of the good, nor, in any simple terms, is his philosophy aesthetics-basedThe circuitous
manner in which his deductions operate obviate the distinctions which have isolated
sciencefrom art, history from nature, industry from nature and nature from society,
and his theory of synthesis is not concerned simply with formulating a science of
human perception, as Kant defines aesthetics in the first Critique. It is not, in
Irigaray's words, a specular economy and nor can it be charted on the axis of
impotenceand power. Deleuzetakes the machinery of the sublime the oscillation of
forces,the chaosof an unregulated network of faculties, the indeterminacy of nature
161
-
Chapter5
but instead of consolidating thesewithin culture and according to the ends of reason,
allows it to function like a electrical charge, a shock which communicates itself
through all the faculties. So instead of the sublime being a momentary dischargewhich
does not effect changes in the formations of common sense and good sense,it is a
disturbance which trauels through the faculties, in between, operating by relays, a
weapon of thought rather than a tool of culture, which catches its breath at the
thresholds of breathlessness,rather than sinking back into contemplation of its own
magnificence.
III
Continuity
`Voila cc que sont les machines desirantes: machines formatives,
dont ics ratts memessont fonctionnels, et dont le fonctionnement est
indiscernable de la formation; machines chronogenes confondues
avec leer propre montage.
(Desiring-machines are the following: formative machines, whose
very misfirings are functional, and whose functioning is indiscernible
from their formation; chronogeneousmachines engagedin their own
4°
assembly)'.
The continuity of the processof desiring-production is an immanent cycle of
production, distribution and consumption, three syntheseswhich produce a model of
death, a body without organs". Everyone has one, everyone is one and makes one,
Dcleuze and Guattari write in Mille Plateaux death doesnot lodge with God any more,
everyone has death, is death, makes death, continuously evacuating the infinite into
finitude, making a local absolute,an atheistic infinite. If this processis traced back to
the sublime, and the discussionof the war machine, it can be seenthat it is precisely
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this that Kant could not allow. Becausehe named his ideas, giving death images which
of necessitycould not be realized, it necessarilyremained contained within reason,an
infinite virile secrecywhich could not be evacuated;the Kantian system disallows the
possibility of exporting chaos, and thus of differentiating its order, its levels, its
patterns and its functionings.
The model of death is converted by desiring-machines, or machinic
assemblagesinto an experience of death, conversion being a synthetic cycle, the
production of production or bloc of becoming through which the model movesup from
the depths of a body to its surface, simultaneously making and finding a door, and
exteriorizing the interiority of a body, breaking down its orders and thus beginning
once again from a different order, repeating infinity according to an infinite pattern of
into
death
is
Death:
This
the
the
to
exportation
of
model
of
a
reference
not
variation.
experienceof death doesnot mean that "one dies" - though it can mean that: nor is it a
matter of an authentic death, the ownmost death of one's self. It is only by breakingdown the model of death, evicting the interiority of the body that a body functions:
breaking-down is the functioning of desiring-machines, a million little demises
constructing the operationsof a body.
In a thermodynamic model of this process,breaking-down would consist in an
increasingly homogeneousfield, where differences are reducedinto unity, as the end of
the possibility of labour, of the conversion of heat into work. This is not the model to
which L'anti-oedioe appeals,however. In Mille Plateaux and Logique du SensDeleuze
(and Guattari) refer to the emission of singularities, bursting like sporesfrom a pod:
this is the movement outwards of a model of interiority, an export process which
conditions the functioning of a body, beginning always from the zero intensity of the
model as principle of production, but rather than merely exhausting the model, as if it
163
Chapter 5
constituted a finite resource,the experiencereturns to the model, as difference, and the
circuit repeats,but beginning from somewhereelse, with a different model. Death and
life becomemutually immanent and a body is transalivedead,always in the middle, a
conjunction which destroys the exclusivity of the two terms, together with an
is
infinite.
limit,
beyond
finitude
the
a
which
as
of
understanding
If the cliche "death of the subject" means anything, it is this: the subject is a
model continuously exportedfrom the body, the experienceof a solution to the problem
of death, not as a suddenafflux of power, an exorbitant expenditure,but a continuously
leaky process,a smooth plane of consistencyrather than a pipe and an outflow into the
kingdom of ends. The subject is the residue, rather than the source of this process,
however, the creature which turns back and reflects on the circuit, identifies,
recognizes,catalogues.In effect, the subject is death, whilst the processis life, for the
processis always in advanceof the subject,a future potential, an attractor. Becausethe
cycle repeatsdifferently, however, and difference repeatsdifferently on each cycle, the
subject , as the effect of this process,also appears differently, only if the attractor is
death
hole
does
it
black
to
the
appear
retain an
model
of
as
a
zero-dimensional identity, becauseit is then determined according to a single direction. What sensethere
is to the term subject becomeslost, however, when the only principle common to all
selves is difference, and there is no model of unity - when the attractor is strange,
chaotic, and thus unpredictable.
A body is a plane alive and teeming, populated with intensities, a substantial
multiplicity, full of holes, not a determinate object. But Deleuze and Guattari advise
caution: it is better, they say, to remain stuck on the strata than to evacuatethe model
too fast, at the wrong time, without sobriety.
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Chapter 5
`Liberez-le d'un gelte trop violent, faites sauter les strates sans
prudence,vous vous sereztue vous-meme,enfonce dans un trou noir,
ou meme entraine dans un catastrophe,au lieu de tracer le plan.
(If you free it with too violent an action, if you blow apart the strata
without taking precautions, then instead of drawing the plane you
will be killed, plunged into a black hole, or even dragged towards
42
catastrophe)'.
If
the model becomesexperience at speedsnot practiced, if distances are
corneredat too much speedthat they are not bearable by the finitude of a body, they
exhaust its capacity at once, in a sudden movement. It is, they say, a matter of the
careful disarticulation of an organization, rather than a wild and mad leap into an
unknown. The problem is not how to make the movement,but rather how to continue
it, to describe a smooth plane. This caution is evident in Deleuze's philosohy: by
understanding how a philosopher works, how to mimic him (they are always him), and
by being meticulously and rigorously involved in his operations,he succeedsin freeing
w hat is blocked up within them, bringing their depthsup to the surface.
The Freudian colouring of this movement is evident: the circuitous routes
taken by the organism towards death are, Freud says,misunderstoodif characterizedas
self-preservative. Instead, their function is to ensure that `any possible ways of
returning to inorganic existenceother than those which are immanent in the organism
itself' are warded of: " For Freud, however, the organism seeksto return to an earlier
stage,the inorganic. The inorganic servesas a model of death retained internally to the
body, which in turn dictatesan organic body be understoodas a container, a box for the
model, and what the organism seeksis to perfect a copy of this model. The route each
organism takes is individual to it, but the principle governing the route is universal.
165
Chapter5
The movement from depth to surface is also evident in Kant; reason is the
immense,
from
death
conflictual,
as
massive,
a
model
of
nature
exported
of
experience
in
is
But
the
through
one model
resolved
might.
afflux
chaos
as
overwhelming
and of
faculties
doctrine
inter-connected
that
the
of
elements
non-conflictual
composedof
constitutes the real transcendentalmethod - which contribute to one end, that of the
systematicunity of reason.
There is mechanism, or more generally, extensively empty and interiorized
space,logical common sense:aesthetics,or more generally, harmonic reflection on the
form of an object, resulting in a conceptof an aestheticcommon sensesharedamongst
men, which servesas the basis of other forms of common sense;teleology, or more
generally, the reflection of nature as objectively and systematicallypurposive and of the
body as an organism, nature's good sense;and, as the instigator of their contributions
being directed towards a
systematic unity, or kingdom of ends, reason - more
generally, a juridical system based on the exclusion of intensities, which proposes a
theory of desire as production of an object according to a model representedin advance
by the law. Once it is established,the return of experienceto the model as an intensive
in
its functioning is precluded. As Kant says,
transformation
effects
a
quantity which
the model is produced out of the depths of reason,and by reason,and the completeness
of this production leaves`no task to our successorssavethat of adapting it in a didactic
44
manner'.
***
The Kantian transcendental functions as a splitting device, which separates
the problem of experience into two elements, the model which conditions it and the
166
Chapter 5
real content which materializes those conditions - the effect of this on sensation has
been remarked above, its division into objective and subjective elements disallowing
any reciprocal communication between the empty form of time and the intensive
magnitudes of sensation. The model expressesits content, but both expression and
content are themselves divided into form and substance,allowing for two different
understandingsof difference. But becauseof the master of exclusive disjunction, which
is the principle of division betweencontent and expression,the two arms of difference
do not communicate.Reasonis borne from chaos once only and then communications
are cut, and reasonconstructsits own order, according to its own principles.
Kant
writes:
`the causality of an alteration in general, presupposing, as it does,
empirical principles, lies altogether outside the limits
of a
transcendentalphilosophy, 45
For Kant, there is no real interaction of the heterogeneousand diverse
distributions of experience and the homogeneous and unified divisions of the
transcendental;the potential of experience is limited within the terms of the model,
which, as an earlier chapter has shown, has for its ground permanent substance.And
the model of death is contained within reason, by its monopoly over the legitimate
application of pain.
Although for Kant, transcendentalphilosophy cannot answer some questions,
such as that of the causality of alteration, or the particularity of its contents, it is
founded on the elimination of the possibility of de facto evidence collapsing the
structural order it imposeson the empirical, so whilst it cannot explain the particular,
167
Chapter 5
it can reducethe relations into which it enters to formally legitimated functions of the
understanding. Kant knows about the doors; he just thinks they open on to known
routes, or that passagethrough them is regulated. A substantial unity, ultimate subject
of existence and ground of activity, whose genesis is not comprehended by the
transcendental,but presupposedby it, defines the empirical subject within a limited
intensive range, and this model of death doesnot rise.
The continuity of the process of desiring-production and the continuous
exportation of the model of death constitute a responseto this universe, and to Kant.
Intensities are implemented as intrinsic genetic elements of the real, differentiated
immanently and asymmetrically, rather than split according to principles of either/or:
either phenomena or noumena, either empirical or transcendental, either man or
nature, either reasonor death. L'anti-oedine removesthe problem of critique from the
court-house and transcendental analysis becomes the problem of determining the
criteria for escape,for production of a line of flight of the smallest interval and the
sequencingof connectionswhich do not return to the conditions of their origin. Nature
is no longer massivebut molecular.
`Elles [machinesdesirantes]fonctionnent suivant des regimes de synthesesqui
n'ont pas d'equivalent dans les grands ensembles(desiring-machines work according
to regimes of synthesesthat have no equivalent in the large aggregate'46;the relations
into which they enter are not betweenobjects,but connect partial objects,the elements
of which desiring-machines are composed.Not as parts which go to make a whole,
since desiring-machines are also partial objects, the elements of another machine.
`Each portion of matter may be conceivedas a garden full of plants, and as a pond full
of fish. But every branch of each plant, every member of each animal, and every drop
"
itself
liquid
is
likewise
their
a similar garden or pond'.
of
parts
168
Chapter 5
There are no simples, or ultimate elements,only a nestedsystemof involuting
differences: partial objects are desiring-machines are BwO's are partial objects. The
most quoted eimple Deleuzeand Guattari give of the relation of partial objects is that
of the wasp and orchid: the wasp is a liberated element of the orchid's reproductive
system,whilst the orchid `devient l'objet d'un orgasme de la guepe elle-meme liberee
de sa propre reproduction (becomesthe object of an orgasm in the wasp, also liberated
from its own reproduction)' 48 The connection is not a link between the wasp and the
orchid, but a conjugation of the two asymmetrical relations effecting a line of flight, a
relation not confined by its terms, a bloc of becoming.
The model of the transcendental is not evacuated in a single output, but
through an infinitely diffuse repulsion, the tiny intervals or demons leaps of the actual
continuum, from the depths of a body, which is individuated or corporealized through
that processbut does not pre-exist it, in either principle or fact. A body does not exist
as an individual, but as a series of variable affects, effected by the connections into
which it enters, as a process,or bloc of becoming. To define a body is thus to discover
what machines it plugs into, rather than, in the Kantian manner, as a product in
isolation of its environment. `Un corps ne se reduit pas ä un organisme (a body is not
49
to
reducible an organism' And in the absenceof the organism, there is no soul, no
housefor the person.
Subtracting the unique from Kant's theory of forces, Deleuze and Guattari set
about the construction of a machine in which form and formation and functioning are
not separable.A body is not defined socially, or biologically, or mechanically, but as an
individuated band of schizoid intensities, none of which function as structural
elements,but u hich are continually evacuatedand replaced,as part of the processof its
169
Chapter 5
formation. There is never The Schizo, only schizoid quanta, break-flows, connections,
intersectionsand interactions, transmissionsand transformations. Related to unity, the
systembreaks down in a way that is not produced by the system itself. As a positive
distance from zero, absent of presupposition (which is of course, impossible; a
completedcritique is not possible),a body is only what it does.
170
Chapter 6
Becoming-woman
In the last chapter, the relation of passivity, as Deleuze and Guattari formulate
it, to the activelpassivedifference in Kant's philosophy was teasedapart. A question
arising from this is what instigates the leap? Is there an initiating function which
drives a systemover from the side of mechanismvs. teleology to machinic production,
c ecting the conjunction of
an inclusive disjunction and the generation of
multiplicities without referenceto unity, full of exits, cracks, tiny intervals of difference
leeching through the strict limits of possibility, and incommensurate with the
antimonic progressof dialectical thought. There is such a function, which Deleuze and
Guattari call becoming-woman.Becoming-woman, they say, has a special introductory
power, as the key or first quantum in all becomings, on the way to becoming-animal,
rushing towards becoming-imperceptible. In this chapter, becoming-woman will be
introduced, but largely in the context of readings by those few feminists who have
engaged with Deleuze. Irigaray's reading of Kant will also be looked at. It will be
argued that her project is not successfulfor reasonssimilar to the limited effectiveness
of feminist criticisms, in that both adopt an uncritical position with respect to sexual
difference, in their different ways. A fuller discussion of becoming-woman is found in
the next chapter, pulling out the relations of this line to themes which have arisen in
previous chapters.
I
Receptacle, which is now called space'
Betweenthe two layers of skin, the lower dermis and the upper epidermis are colonies
of touch receptors.Merkel's disks respond to sustained pressure; Pacinian corpuscles
respond to changes in pressure, converting mechanical into electrical energy-,
171
Chapter 6
Meissner's corpuscles record low-frequency vibrations. On a hand there are flexure
lines, tension lines, papillary ridges. A tongue is replete with sensorytalents, a nose
is
dusty.
Irigaray's
one of touch.
economy
and
collects moistures, sweet
`Quand eile y revient, c'est pour repartir d'ailleurs.
(When she returns, it is to set off again from elsewhere)'?
As do Deleuze and Guattari, Irigaray explores difference through the middle;
intensive
but
distributing
between
tactile
terms,
two
space.
and
a
as
not as a medium
Multiple and interconnected,immediately autoerotic with her body, Irigaray's woman
is before the possibility of distinguishing activity and passivity. `L'homme...a besoin
d'un instrument pour se toucher, sa main, le sexede la femme, le langage (man needs
deux
dejä
''),
but
`est
body,
language...
his
hand,
instrument:
woman
a
woman's
an
into
divisible
(is
divisibles
two
not
already
qui
s'affectent
en
un(e)s
mais non
-but
"
The
from
different
Everything
begins
that
a
place.
other).
caress
each
one(s) in
in
by
the point of
three,
to
remarked
chapter
philosophy
was
sight
privilege given
intersection behind the eyes functioning as the centre of resonance,and principle of
recognition. Irigaray privileges touch: `La femmejouit plus du toucher que du regard
(woman takes pleasure more from touching than from looking)', she takes pleasure
`justement de cette incompletude de forme de son sexe qui fait qu'il se re-touche
inddfiniment lui-meme (precisely from (an] incompletenessof form which allows her
organ to touch itself over and over again).'S However, her theorization of touch does
not describe a simple oscillation between two terms, but a positive feedback which
continually dissolves the middle, precluding it from functioning as a dividing term
which would articulate the two lips as different in relation to unity, which could
172
Chapter 6
privilege a right over a left side, a one over the two. She keeps herself as a secret,
nithout knowing it.
In the contest of a discussion of Freud, Irigaray calls the laws of the
conservationof energy and of the fundamental dissymmetry of nature, (the move from
the present to the future, as if from the particular to the general and the first two laws
6
`isomorphs
feminine
thermodynamics),
than
of
of masculine rather
sexuality' This
criticism is coincident with Deleuze's characterization of thermodynamics in terms of
good sense.Shecontinues:
`Feminine sexuality would perhaps harmonize better, if you need to
invoke a scientific model, with what Prigogine calls "dissipative"
structureswhich function by means of an exchangewith the exterior
world, which proceed by energy levels and whose order is not one
that seeks balance but one that seeks passage over thresholds
correspondingto a movementbeyond disorder or entropy without any
discharge.0
In the last chapter, the sublime was characterizedin terms of discharge, as an
accumulation of heterogeneousforce vectors channelled along a single route, and
contrastedwith the plane of consistency,as a plane of doors where relations fly outside
the terms related Irigaray's use of dissipative structures as a model suggest a
coincident direction, (and Deleuze does refer to Prigogine): in far-from-equilibrium
conditions, the behaviour of a system becomes highly specific, and there are no
universal laws from which its overall behaviour, or future, can be deduced.It is in that
sense a model which is not a model, since to make any further claims about a
dissipative system, its particular behaviour must be explored The system itself
173
Chapter6
determines its own intrinsic size and distribution, since its future is undetermined,
which means that although associatedwith chaotic attractors, it can also return to a
zero-dimensional or limit attractor, however, it is the implication of chaotic attractors
and symmetry-breakingpropertiesof dissipative systemsto which Irigaray and Deleuze
alike are drawn.
Of the tactile economy that she formulates, Irigaray writes that not only can
the distinction between touching and touched not be upheld, but also that it is mobile
and ubiquitous: 'la femme a des sexesun peu partout (woman has sex organs more or
less everywhere)' There is no gap or room for intrusion, and no possibility of
.8
logically distinguishing what is seeing from what is seen,for the difference between
them is not extensivewith the co-ordinated intersections of spacewhich meet behind
the eyes. Nor is there a possibility of female sexuality according privilege to genitalia:
the body becomessexualized,not through a single privileged term, but as a surface of
mobile passions.
For Irigaray and Deleuze alike positive feedback emerges through similar
moves.Irigaray writes:
`[S]on sere, qui nest pas un sexe, est compte comme pas de sexe.
Negatify envers, re%,
ers, du seul sexe visible et morphologiquement
designable (meme si cela pose quelques problemes de passage de
l'Crection ä la detumescence):le penis.
([H]her sexual organ, which is not one organ, is counted as none.
The negative, the underside, the reverse of the only visible and
morphologically designableorgan (even if the passagefrom erection
to dctumescencedoesposesomeproblems): the penis).'9
174
Chapter 6
The comment echoesthat of Deleuze, when he calls the negative difference
10
from
below,
inverted.
By removing the one from the multiple, she seeks to
seen
describe a specifically female space, which both engages with the philosophical
tradition, whilst at the same time subverting its directions, by exposing the logical
tricks, reductions, negations and limitations by which it securesthe privilege of the
subject.She explores the mystification of women, in systemsof supposedtransparency,
their positioning as passive"other" to reason,and the primacy accordedto that faculty.
Her abstract machine, or problem, is the gap, or hole in the systemof representation,a
crack: `son sere repnsente 1horreur du rieh ä voir (her sexual organ representsthe
horror of nothing to see.)"
By opening up this space and materializing it, she
introduces it to Kant, to the tactility of the actual continuum, and the problem of
fluidity, but in the processit losesits function as a receptacle.
Irigaray's early writings in Speculumand This Sex Which Is Not One opened
up a rich field of problems for feminism. Her method is one of mimesis: through
detailed re-workings of writers, including Plato, Freud, Marx, Hegel, Kant, Aristotle...,
she works at jamming their systemsand exposing their inconsistencies,incoherences
and uncritical assumptions:
`[LJ'enjeu n'cst pas d'elaborer une nouvelle theorie dont la femme
serait le sujet ou l'objet, mais d'enrayer la machinerie theorique ellememe,de suspendresa pretention a la production d'une verite et d'un
sens par trop univoques. Cc qui suppose que les femmes ne se
veuillent pas simplement les egalesdes hommesdannle savoir.
(The issue is not one of elaborating a new theory of which woman
would be the subject or the object, but of jamming the theoretical
machinery itself, of suspending its pretension to the production of a
truth and a meaning that are excessively univocal. Which
175
Chapter 6
presupposesthat women do not aspire simply to be men's equals in
knowledge)."z
The extent to which her method is successfulhas been argued, and will be
touchedon below, but of primary interest here is her reading of Kant.
II
Turn of the screw
There are, as has been seen,connectionsbetweenDeleuze (and Guattari) and Irigaray:
if there were not, the claims of the previous chapter about the rhizomatic nature of
machinic production, and of a system in which everything connects with everything
both
Both
draw
dissipative
be
demolished.
the
on
model
of
structures;
else, would
addressthe problem of third things whose effects are crushed betweenthe terms they
imagination;
hold
the
the
the
the
of
on
production;
regulation
of
subject
rigid
relate;
role of the copula in a systemwhich has no place for the copulation, exceptthrough the
language of law which belongs only to one member. Both look at the function of pain
in the constitution of representation, and at the formation of bodies as necessarily
into
its
in
their
entry
system.
advance
of
mutilated
In Speculum,in a piece on Kant called Paradox a priori, Irigaray focuseson
gaps within Kant coveredover by vague mechanismswhich have no proper location in
relation to the two stems of knowledge, or fall on one side or the other of the divide
betweena sensibleand supersensibleworld, or are excluded altogether: schemataand
transcendental objects. These are the third things that Kant deploys as means of
moving betweendomains, without considering the nature and effects of that movement
except in relation to the two connectedterms - in other words, on the confinement of
relations within the terms related.
176
Chapter6
She identifies the function of the schema,third thing between sensibility and
understanding, as that of negation: the multiplicity of sensations, of indeterminate
matters, all the heterogeneousvariations of nature, are negated in the formation of the
passagethrough which understanding/l think draws on material nature and determines
it as objective. Her case is illustrated with the example of enantiomorphic bodies, - of
`differences that are internal as the sensesteachi13- which are affective, rather than
conceptual,and which Kant relates to intuition. The opening quotes of her paper refer
to Kant's theory of incongruent counterparts.'4 `I shall call a body which is exactly
limits
but
be
in
the
to
as that
same
cannot
enclosed
another,
which
and
similar
equal
other, its incongruent counterpart.i15 Amongst Kant's examples are left and right
hands and ears, hair whorls, twining plants and the spiral curvatures of shells, but his
argument extends to asserting a privilege of the right over the left hand, of the right
over the left side of the body in terms of skill and strength, and an advantageof power
that the right side of the body has over the sensitivity of the left.
So in terms of affective asymmetry, a body is constructed according to
differences weighted with significances.16Kant's solution to enantiomorphic bodies,
alike in all properties, },et with unmistakable sensible differences, is to refer the
problem to extensity, as a whole, in the form of an extensive magnitude, externalizing
the affective differencesin a world of constituted objects.Irigaray calls this mechanism
of externalization a passage,and the function which she identifies as structuring the reappearanceof sensible differences in extensive space is the transcendental object,
"
introduces
into
the
a
symmetry
world. Through this object, the paradox of
which
sensiblyperceivedand affective differences enter into the symmetriesof a spacewhose
planes intersect in the transcendentalsubject,the correlate of the transcendentalobject.
Whereas the schema is integral to the determination of objects, however, the
transcendentalobject functions regulatively:
177
Chapter6
`[T]his transcendental thing [Ding] is only the schema of the
regulative principle by which reason, so far as lies in its power,
"s
field
the
of experience.
whole
extendssystematicunity over
In the first Critique Kant wavers, sometimeseliding differences between the
transcendentalobject and the noumenon and sometimes upholding their separation,
sometimes referring it to the thing-in-itself, and sometimes isolating it from the
material problems implicated by this association.Its positioning is very similar to that
of the schema, both describing an ambivalent and vague distribution between
sensibility and intelligibility, one of which is incorporated into the construction of
representation,the other of which functions from the outside, as an Idea. Like the
noumenon,it is Janus-faced:`regardedas the causality of a thing in itself, [Dinges an
is
intelligible
in
its action; regarded as the causality of an
this
object
selbst]
sich
appearancein the world of sense,it is sensiblein its effects.'19
There is thus an admixture of data compactedin the transcendentalobject, and
it is this that leads to its tendency to collapse into either the thing-in-itself or the
noumenon, the former pointing it outside the system of representation,and the latter
internalizing it within the subject, as marker of its divided nature. However, it must
retain its two-fold function, because, like the schema, it indicates a gap between
sensibility and intelligibility that `can never be filled', only gestured at, 'through the
ascription of outer appearancesto that transcendental object [Gegenstande]which is
the causeof this speciesof representations'but `of which we shall never acquire any
concept.i20 In its relation to appearance, the transcendental object connects with
intuition, and with the framework of limitation time and spacebecomewhen instituted
as axiomatically extensive.
178
Chapter 6
On the side of sensibility, from which it cannot be separated,it tends towards
the thing-in-itself, and to the problem of material causality: `what matter may be as a
thing in itself (transcendentalobject [Objekt]) is completely unknown to us'21. This
problem of matter as thing-in-itself, the transcendental matter referred to in earlier
chapters, suggestsa link betweenthe transcendentalobject, the concept of reality and
intensive magnitudes, since it is the latter, as has been said, which indicate the real in
appearances.And Kant writes that transcendentalobjects `in our present state appear
as bodies.'22Irigaray's point addressesprecisely the problem of what is negated in the
movement from transcendental matter, as the intensive stuff of affects, to the
transcendentalobject, whose `permanenceas appearancecan indeed be observed.'23
What happensto bodies in the movement from intensive matter to appearanceswhose
relations are a function not of the materiality involved but of the `present state' of a
subject? The word permanence signals a relation of the transcendental object to
substance;to the negation of intensive differenceswithin the substratumof appearances
in general; to subjectivity, to the delimitation of sensible intuition as a complex of
mobile and differentiated intensive magnitudes to logical time; to causality as a
referenceto determinateintensive quanta and to matter re-castempirically, as a state.
Implicated with matter but not apparent, apparently but not cognitively causal,
it must therefore be intelligible, although it is not known as an object: the
transcendentalobject is `the purely intelligible causeof appearances',and `can alone
confer upon all our empirical concepts in general relation to an object, [Gegenstand]
that is, objective reality. 'Z° In this respectit is related to the principle of convertibility,
and Kant allows then it may be called noumenon `for the reasonthat its representation
is not sensible.'25 Its intelligible function is to `leave open a spacewhich we can fill
neither through possible experience nor through pure understanding.'26 In its
179
Chapter 6
intelligible form it is the terminus of contingency, a thought-entity without reason
which we `have not the leastjustification for assuming.%27
Irigaray's argument is that the schema is a mechanism for disguising the
transition from intensive, affective differences to extensive, geometric differences, and
that the transcendentalobject performs a similar function, but this time the transition is
between the limits of human knowledge and an intellectual intuition that must be
assumedbut cannot - like the transcendental object - be known or presumed to be
constitutive of experience..
"Comme si" toute cette diversite trouvait sa finalite en une unitd
superieure...ä laquelle il importe qu'il se conforme aussi, du moins
qu'il tente, sansla/le connaitre.
("As if' all that diversity were directed toward a higher unity which
...
it/he also should strive to conform to, even without any knowledge of
it)' 28
As the schemaallows for the reconciliation of sensibility and understanding,
so the transcendentalobject allows for the reconciliation of understanding and reason,
since in its intelligible form it servesas the object of a transcendentidea, and can thus
be utilized regulatively, thought not constitutively. And Kant does indeed refer to
analogies as the `only resource' for making the movement between concepts of
29
`some
intelligible
things'
experienceand
sort of conceptof
.
Irigaray's problem is with the nature of time involved in this process,of whose
time Kant is referring to, and her question is: what is the time of the mirror? `What can
be more similar in every respectand in every part more alike to my hand and to my ear
180
Chapter 6
that their images in a mirror? ' Kant asks.30Irigaray turns the question back on him,
however, asking why asymmetry, rather than symmetry should be problematic, and
concludesthat `Un miroir, donc, ici s'avoue comme supportant dejä 1'apprehensiondes
3'
(already
a mirror turns out to support the apprehensionof objects)' This was
objets
seenin the previous chapter, in the changing faces of nature according to the change
relations amongst the faculties, nature always reflecting the order or chaos of the
subject. Why should it be more strange that differences rather than identities are
reflected? And does it make senseto speakof differences as reflected, in the absenceof
a unifying function which could testify to the fact that yes, indeed, those differences
reflect these? Irigaray's argument drives towards the inevitable conclusion that
reflection and difference are incompatible, the former belonging to the specular
economy of rational insight and the latter to the empirical zones of touch, and that
attempts at their reconciliation results only in the negation of difference by the cycle of
the sameparticular to reflection.
Kant was concerned, in his argument with Leibniz, not to conceptualize
spatial relations, and thus referred the sensible differences amongst enantiomorphs to
intuition: Irigaray's question runs beneath this, and addressesthe constitution of
symmetry itself, the paradox of a world reflecting the identity of a subject, when it is,
as Kant reflects, full of differences. How does the left side becomescollapsed into the
right, sensibility into power? In her very different way, she is questioning the relation
to identity
referred to in the previous chapter, and the representationof its
of synthesis
products as a reflection of the legislative power of the subject.
Irigaray exploreswomen's position in Kant in terms of this gap, or mirror, as
a surface of reflection presupposed,uncritically, in order to address the problem of
enantiomorphs.The time is of the subject, the subject is man, and the mirror a refusal
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of the blindness which, as the last chapter showed, attaches to imagination and
intuition. 'Aveuglee dans le refus de son aeuglementpar tout savoir qui, en son esprit,
ne trouverait pas sa cause(In its own refusal of blindness, consciousnessis blinded by
all knowledge that does not find its causein the mind itself). 932Each third thing, each
movement from sensibility to understanding, in the schema,or from the sensibleto the
intelligible cause, through the transcendental object, reflects a new facet of a single
point of convergence, and a different blindness, each of which finds its cure in a
different configuration of light, a new image of 'un Pere qui n'existe que dannun desir
de tout legiferer librement (a Father who exists solely in a desire to exerciselaw freely
over everything).933One blindness is given up for the sake of another, or one blindness
is constructedin order to prove the necessityof another.34
Irigaray addressesthe sameaspectsof Kant as does Deleuze, but for strategic
reasonsconcentrateson the internalization of the world within a subject: `la scenese
passetoujours dans sa maison, son esprit (the action is always inside his house, his
mind). i35 She understandsthe indispensable nature in Kant of a detour through the
world, but attends to the re-formulation of that passage in terms of subjective
reflection, the obliteration of a tacit symmetry with a spuriously problematic asymmetry
36
laws
the
the
the
that
and
representationof
world as mirror which reflects
of
subject.
She becomesthe matter inside the system, but speaking with a foreign tonge, she
subvertsits order. Women becomethe carriers of vagueness,of the gap and the mirror,
being situated both inside and outside, the material gathered in the detour through the
world, a smoked and blackened mirror veiling perception, and the surface inverted in
the mirror, a kind of difference which remains unanalyzed. The paradox a priori of
Irigaray's heading is this difference, incongruent and incommensurate with the
representationor reflection of objects.
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Chapter 6
'Cc qui ne se fait pas sanspeine. Ni sansreste. Mais que 1'espaces'y
resorbe en temps, et 1'espoir subsiste toujours pour 1'esprit de
parachevercette operation dans un avenir ä perte de vue.
(This is not achieved without pain. Or without a remainder. But
provided that spaceis resorted into time, there is still hope that the
mind can perfect this operation at some point in the boundless
future), 37
Irigaray draws her analysis through Kant's theoretical writing and into the
aestheticand the collapseof imagination under the weight of its own inadequacyin the
face of reasonparticular to the sublime, noting that it is the soul to which Kant appeals
as a solution to appearanceof the infinite and which paves the way to pleasure and to
culture. She identifies the over-whelming nature of the sublime with the mother, and
the culture which confines the legitimacy of the sublime with a site of learned
resistanceto and independenceof its basis in that nature. Kant becomescaught in a
bind, both searching for the presuppositions on which man bases his culture,
knowledge, science and art, and simultaneously enclosing himself within a cycle of
reflection which obviatesthe possibility of any real solution to his search.
`The thread of a screw which winds round its pin from left to right
will never fit a nut of which the thread runs from right to left. i38
Irigaray's claim is that it is precisely this that Kant does allow; whichever way
that subject turns, the nut will take the screw, nature will take the laws of the subject.
This is the paradox of symmetry, the possibility of a space,or gap, sufficiently plastic
to be moulded to the demandsof representation,providing its real nature is not taken
into account,providing the one difference which cannot be analyzed does not enter the
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house of the subject on its own terms, unmoulded, rather than as one of the building
blocks of its erection. Providing it remains a means to the achievement of a value
outside itself. It is the cruelty of this operation she challenges.
`Et, dans la souffrance que necessite son plaisir, mettrons-nous lä
Kant avec Sade?Ou, un quart de tour supplementaire- en plus ou en
moms -r tant donn8 ä la subtilit6 de son esprit, avec Masoch?
(And, in the suffering made necessaryby his pleasure, shall we place
Kant ne-d to Sade?Or, if the subtlety of his mind is given one quarter
39
in
Masoch?
)'
to
the
turn of
screw more, or out - next
***
Irigaray is a very difficult writer; her language resists the subtractive moves
that Deleuze makes on Kant, and in this senseshe is entirely successfulin producing
structuresirreducible to their parts. She runs very swiftly over an immense field, racing
in the space of thirteen pages through the three Critiques, collecting as she passes
snippets from the Observations on the Beautiful and the Sublime, and from Kant's
writings on the family, and the rights of its members.This kind of overflight is another
feature she shareswith Deleuze; rather than picking over the bones of an argument,
they catch what is integral to the machines they are building and incorporate it in the
mechanismsof her escape.Her "method" - and as with Deleuze,this is a difficult word
to use in relation to Irigaray - is to deploy the abstract machine, two lips which are not
one, by operating both inside and outside the system simultaneously. However,
Irigaray's escape is less effective than that of Deleuze; her critique does not quite
succeedin escaping its negative function of jamming theoretical machinery, and as a
result its positive consequencestend towards a valorization of the mysterious and a
184
Chapter 6
definition of women in terms of motherhood, or in relation to a female divine and a
feminine ethic.
Rosi Braidotti characterizesIrigaray's ethics of sexual difference as
`the recognition that differences among women need not lead to the
state of disaggregation and hostility that has always played into the
hands of patriarchy' 40
This is extremely problematic at an empirical level. Algerian women are shot
in front of the classes they teach, but in Rwanda women have been implicated in
massacres:women leave the Philippines for work in Saudi Arabia, but are not paid and
beaten,by both men and women, whilst in the U. S. and in England, girl gangs thump
their "sisters", sometimes to death. The dream of women united through their
differences is a white liberal construct, and does not take account of the real and
extreme range of differences amongst women, deploying, if only implicitly, an appeal
to a unified thought of "woman". I prefer to retain a potential hostility. An image of
sex replacesthe image of thought and becomesequally restrictive. The only way out of
this problem is to characterizethose behaviours which do not coincide with the idea of
universal sisterhoodas produced by men: however, this returns women to the status of
victims. Deleuze and Guattari's characterization of a body in terms of the machines it
plugs into does not appeal to a base identity in terms of which all relations are
understood,and so doesnot meet with theseproblems.
Where Irigaray's critique of Kant is most problematic is in its adoption of his
formulation of nature in the sublime as massive, all-powerful and over-whelming, her
associationof this with the figure of the mother, and of imagination with women. Her
185
Chapter6
mimetic jamming method necessitatesthis, since it operatesby keeping very close to
the problems thrown up by a writer, as if both in parallel to him whilst at the sametime
She
follows
logical
incoherencies
the
trickery.
and
exposing
cutting acrossand over,
detour of the Kantian subjectthrough the outside, but her method doesnot allow her to
build from the outside and away from the structures she criticizes, and so their ground
does not lose its security. It is in this respectthat Deleuze's solution is more effective;
by attending to the micro-deviations and molecular disturbances in the ground, and
piecing together elements which in turn exacerbatethose disturbances whilst at the
builds
Irigaray
Deleuze
the
constructs
time
structures,
a
machine,
whilst
escaping
same
but
does
image
the
not
subject,
nonetheless remains
mirror
of
which
women,
an
biunivocally related to it, in that it retains precisely that mystery which philosophy and
history have long attachedto the fairer sex. Moreover, by reading relations in terms of
by
is
for
difference,
the
attacked
problems
philosophy
very
which
she repeats
sexual
feminism.
III
A Kind of Schizophrenia
One writer exploring the philosophical and scientific habits of attributing sexualvalues
to everything around it is Evelyn Fox-Keller. She points to a `kind of schizophrenia'
between
science
and
gender,
causing
polarized
oscillations
of
understandings
plaguing
`fixed natural categories in one moment, and constructed, perhaps even indefinitely
plastic, categoriesin another.' The solution to this impasse,she argues, is 'learning to
1A
first result of this is that matter becomesunderstood in terms of
two'.
count past
interacting forces, rather than as the content of form. Keller argues that this has been
scientifically problematic becauseit seemedto sentimentalize nature; immanently cooperative matter self-organizing coherent systemswithout external direction implied a
natural altruism of form on the part of individuals, their willingness to 'die' for the
186
Chapter 6
42
system. A similar problem of balance concerns all trade-offs between group benefit
and individual cost. The critical question concerns the maximum degree of cost to
themselves individuals will
tolerate before any socially desirable character is
disinvested.This situation is clearly that of the multiple +1, and so does not correspond
to the spaceoccupiedby Deleuzeand Guattari.
Counting past two, but not by using another one, argues Keller, involves
paying scientific attention to the middle ground ignored by zero-sum cost benefit
analysis. She cites Lynn Margulis' work on bacterial sex as doing this; that it has been
describedas `introducing feminism to Darwinismi43 rather than as a piece of "proper"
science indicates a resistanceto the radical differences implied by the breakdown of
basic taxonomies in her work. It is problematic for feminism becausethe body as a
whole object, complete with vagina or penis, womb or testes,is no longer the site for
discussionsof sexuality and reproduction: bacterial sex problematizessexual difference
beyond the possibility of its redemption by two bio-socially defined terms, male and
female. Patternsconceivedof as socially constructed,teleologically directed or divinely
imprinted become understood as self-organizing material functions, and the body is
merely one amongst many solutions to problems of matter and force. Initial
explorations of these functions often drag anthropomorphic hangovers with them altruism, for example,or zero sum games.
But thinking past two involves understanding that `Nature is oblivious of all
our romances, and knows nothing of our gender roles and distinctions.'44 The
implication of all this is that feminist categories can only reach so far: a feminist
epistemologycan no more reach back into matter than can a male intellect. A further
implication of Keller's paper is this: since the impulse towards sexing and gendering
parts male or female, masculine or feminine is an old scientific habit, an imposition of
187
Chapter 6
romanceonto nature, its continuation by feminists is a subscription to that romance. At
bottom her paper addressesthe legitimacy of the thought of sexual difference which
emergesas a question out of the middle.
IV
Out of the middle
'Bref, une ligne de fuite, dejä complexe, avec ses singularites;
mais
aussi une ligne molaire ou coutumiere avec ses segments; et entre les
deux (T), une ligne moleculaire, avec ses quanta qui la font pencher
d'un cöte ou de I'autre.
(In short, a line of flight, already complex, with singularities; but
also a molar or customary line with segments;and betweenthe two
(?), a molecular line with quanta which cause it to tip to one side or
the other) . 'S
In Mille Plateauxthe middle line, the line which causesthe collapse back into
an empty spaceof attraction and common sense,good senseand order, or becomesthe
subject of escape and effects a singular diffusion of intensive quanta and the
distribution of full space is called becoming-woman. Becoming-woman is the inbetween of the two systems, machining communications between orders of
incommensuratepotentials, that of the State and that of the nomad, of Compars and
Dispars, logos and nomos, an itinerant vector. `[D]iffusion procede au milieu, par le
milieu, comme tout ce qui "pousse", du type rhizome (diffusion happens in the inbetween,goes between, like everything that "grows" of the rhizome type)'. 6 There is
thus an explicit connection between tactile, full space, and becoming-woman, the
transverseline discussedin the previous chapter and the logic of conjunction, of the
And, not as blockage and accumulation, but as an additive function. However, as seen,
188
Chapter 6
the middle is not enclosed within its terms, and so becoming-woman becomes
associatedwith the formation of substantial multiplicities with no relation to unity.
Delcuze and Guattari make no claim about "real women," and what their
47
be.
There is no image of women, nor determined direction to
experience might
becoming-woman as line: the plane of doors, as has been said, does not representthe
outside behind it, but is constituted by moving through the openings. Indeed, Guattari
writes of becoming-womanin the context of queer politics: `in order to understandthe
homosexual, we tell ourselves that it is sort of "like a woman"'. (G, 1981, p87)
Women's proximity to but absenceof identification with or recognition in terms of the
biunivocal relations of Law, empty striated space, etc., and the strangenessof their
sexuality, from the perspectiveof an economyof desire basedon a lacked object and an
ejaculatory satisfaction, have marked them as dissident, deviant. Caught by the
mechanisms designed to neutralize this deviance - marriage, domesticity, public
invisibility, and sexual debt (in this economy, Guattari says, `the woman owes her
orgasm to the man' [Ibid. ]), women becomedebtors to a systemwhich usestheir body
to survive. The point is very similar to those made by Irigaray, regarding the position
of women as necessarilyinside and outside the spaceof representation.
Guattari argues that by detaching themselves from the profits promised to
masculinity - power, control, monopolization of violence, etc. - men too become
`directly linked to a becoming-feminine body, as an escaperoute from the repressive
socius' (Ibid. ). (It is claims such as thesewhich have worried feminism and led to the
accusation of appropriation: a queer man is still a man, it is said.) In more general
terms, he argues for the destruction of categories -woman, man, black, white, queer,
straight, deviant - and for a distributed sexuality, n-sexes,without definition or border,
temporal enduranceor specificity. For a full space,of infinitely proximate and singular
189
Chapter 6
sexes. Again, this has been the focus of feminist objections. Rosi Braidotti, for
example, one of the first women to respond positively to Deleuze and Guattari's work,
calls it one of `sexual neutrality which does not allow for the fundamental lack of
48
between
the
sexes'. This criticism reflects Irigaray's concern with the
symmetry
unexamined paradox of symmetry; but whilst de-stabilizing the rigid structures which
form spaceas a three-dimensional domain of co-ordinating planes intersecting at the
point of the subject,who provides the fourth dimension in the form of a time constant,
Braidotti's insistence on sexual difference as an articulation between male and female
remains co-optable by that space. Difference is not, in her view, an immanently
differential processwhich escapesthe confines of the binary terms which it relates,
howeverasymmetrical that relation might be.
Becoming-woman, as Deleuze and Guattari use it, is not biologically,
hormonally, or chromosomally defined. Nor is it a gender theory, gender is a term
whose field is composedby specific trajectories in the formation of socio-political and
cultural spaces,which may or may not be attached to biological femaleness,which
itself is not a transparent or determinate concept. For Deleuze and Guattari, becomingwoman is not a necessary condition of the possibility of biocultural concepts of
femalenessor the feminine, but rather an immanent condition of becomings, and a
positive element in an economics of desire, rather than in its socialization through
codesand blockages.They refer to it as `le premier quantum, ou segment moleculaire
(the first quantum, or molecular segment)' 49of becomings, and the key to a smooth
itinerant line whose motion can be described neither in terms of convergence or
rectilinearity, but through the smallest intervals, demon leaps effecting communication
betweenthe two orders of force, attraction and repulsion, in a patois which belongs to
neither.
***
190
Chapter 6
Unlike Derrida, whose work was embraced enthusiastically by feminists,
Deleuzeand Guattari have for the most part been treated with suspicion. Yet Deleuze's
critique of common senseand good sense, his attack on the image of thought, his
empiricism and the privileging of materiality and force all suggest connections
between the direction of his thought and arguments in feminism. A major strand of
feminisms' criticisms of philosophy is that it has no body; its exclusion, together with
passions and sensuousinterests - all identified by philosophy as "other" to the real
problem of thought, and as the source of the apparent peculiarity and atheoretical
nature of `women's' thought processes - has limited and restricted its relevanceto the
approximately fifty per cent of the human population who are male, since it is precisely
on the basis of this exclusion that the (male) subject has beentheorized. So its claims to
universal and necessarytruths are unwarranted.
Deleuze has been criticized for neglecting feminist projects directed towards
the constitution of a specifically female subjectivity. Rosi Braidotti describesherself as
a Deleuzian, but nonethelessaccuseshis position on woman on the grounds that it
comes from a male embodied subject. Criticisms such as these have limited purchase
on the impulse infecting Deleuze's work, which is to exposethe mechanismsby which
transcendence is produced, as a real rather than imaginary or ideal repressive
mechanism. Deleuze does not deploy becoming-woman as a feminist theory or as a
theory of woman, but as an element in the critical arsenal of pragmatics, or autocritique.
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Chapter6
VA
Hesitant Discipless
In Patternsof DissonanceRosi Braidotti saysof Deleuze:
`He seversthe thread which links the puppets to the master and lets
them circulate freely in space,that is to say no longer activated by a
central power but through the multiple effects of attraction and
'0
intersecting
bodies
with each other'. -'
repulsion of spatial entities,
Braidotti understandsbecoming-woman as a term operating outside bilateral
oppositions, and as a departure from "the feminine" in its Derridean construction as
s'
derivative
difference.
Heideggerian
of a more primary ontological
and
essentially
Locating the starting point of Deleuze's work as the death of the subject52,and noting
the difference of a philosophy of intensities from one of representation,Braidotti goes
on to explicate this difference through the body. The puppet body `as the other of a
divinely-ordained mind' is contrasted with a Deleuzian body defined as a `material
surface where the codes of language interact...the pure product of cultural and social
53
is
"natural"
interaction,
them'
there nothing
about
modesof
Braidotti's formulation of Deleuze is essentially political, and this means her
analysis of becoming-woman is informed less by its functional operation in the
transformation of a systemof forces, and more by an appeal to "real women"54,where
this "real" is neither explored or explained This collapsesthe generation of machinic
difference and the breaking symmetries of the line implicated in becoming-woman
onto the side of a politics organized in terms of binary sexual difference, limiting it to
socio-cultural field, and so contracting the sense of becoming-woman. She is not
incorrect, but her reading is incomplete, since it tends to operate as a restriction on
192
Chapter 6
what she understandsby `body'; material bodies - desiring-machines - becomewritten
and defined in relation to a socio-political space,and it is in terms of this alone that she
understands becoming-woman. This is a retrograde step in relation to Irigaray.
Irigaray's force arises from her interrogation and consequent jamming of the
theoretical basesof the relations into which Western philosophy has slotted women,
and her simultaneousdisengagementof a different woman from the structural orders of
its systems and so problematizes across different axes, both inside and out. By
confining her debateto the political, Braidotti is unable to utilize this force.
Braidotti is critical of Deleuze's `mechanized vision of desire'55 on the
grounds that it results in a genderless amalgam of sexuality, a `dispersed
polysexuality'56which is uninformed by feminism, and she argues that he is caught in
the paradox of a philosophy of difference which does not take into account the very
difference that his use of becoming-woman suggests -that is, sexual difference. Her
claim about dispersedpolysexuality is not incorrect, since, as seen above, for Deleuze
and Guattari sexuality does become a distribution rather than a bilateral disjunction.
But their project is neither feminist nor prescriptive: `we do not mean to say that a
57
is
kind
the
this
the
prerogative of
creation of
man', and has broader implications than
Braidotti's reading suggests.
However, becoming-woman includes, but is not exhausted by the political
trajectory of "real women", and machinic process are not limited to sexuality or
definable in its terms.
`Noun ne croyons pas en general que la sexualite ait Ic role d'une
infrastructure dans les agencementsde desir, ni qu'elle forme une
energie capable de transformation, ou bien de neutralisation et
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sublimation. La sexualite ne peut titre pensee clue comme un flux
parmi d'autres, entrant en conjonction avec d'autres flux, emettant
dans particules qui entrent elles-memes sous tel ou tel rapport de
vitesseet dc lenteur dans le voisinage de telles autres particules.
(We do not believe in general that sexuality has the role of an
infrastructure in the assemblagesof desire, nor that it constitutes an
energy capable of transformation or of neutralization and
sublimation. Sexuality can only be thought of as one flux among
others, entering into conjunction with other fluxes, emitting particles
which themselves enter into particular relationships of speed and
58
in
the
vicinity of certain other particles)'.
slowness
Sexuality is not equivalent to or a basis of desire, and a body is a geography
and population of fluxes, a bloc of becoming, defined not in terms of its molar
components - this one has breasts, this one a penis, this one is black and this one
scarred,this one beautiful, this one plain - but by its affects and the linkages it effects
with other bodies, by contiguous intensities which release sexualities as qualities of
their difference. Deleuze suggests relinquishing the term desiring-machine, which
comesfrom Guattari, in order to prevent the confusion of desire and sexuality.
Amongst the criticisms directed at Deleuze and Guattari is that they
perpetuatehistorically entrenchedassociationsof women - with madness,for example.
History has also devotedmuch time to reducing women to sexual objects,however, and
for feminism to perpetuate this attachment and use sexuality as the major defining
factor of women seems not only to mitigate against their criticism of Deleuze and
Guattari, but also to privilege one type of flow, rather than addressing the vast
complexities of `women's' lives and the myriad qualities of the force lines with which
they connect.
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Braidotti counteractsher positive responseto connections between Deleuze's
work and feminist interrogations of traditional philosophical tales, both of which are
engagedin `developing forms of subjectivity and modesof desire at the furthest remove
from the Phallic model': he is, she writes, `normative by omission' and
`[Alt no point in his thought does he take into account the specific
history of women's own attempts to redefine their subjectivity'. $9
Her position is no doubt strategic, borne out of a reaction against the
proliferating philosophical use of "woman" as a newly privileged term through which
to negotiate problems coming out of the "death of the subject." However, it remains
within the reach of negative operations connectedwith a traditional metaphysic of the
subject, becauseit continues to search, however disguised that search might be, for
something essential to women, an exclusive definition which characterizesthem as a
unified group, as "real women". As has been remarked, above, Deleuze and Guattari
are not claiming either to be feminists, or to be providing a theory of women; as for
appropriation, the phantom of the victim is buried in this term. Braidotti's criticisms
might be filled out by examining the economic systems which produce women as
consumers/subjects;by exploring the different empirical relations which generatetheir
various and diverse situations. However, it is, as it stands,unsatisfying as a responseto
becoming-woman.
Becoming-woman does not, for Braidotti, result in the upheaval of exchange
between men of women, and nor does she engage with desiring-machines outside the
realm of metaphor: she quotes Irigaray - `isn't it a sort of metaphor for her/it, that men
can use?'60 Rather than leading to problems of material self-organization, undoing the
possibility of implementing the schemaof subjectivity by dissolving its parametersas it
195
Chapter 6
passes through, becoming-woman remains within a representational frame-work,
where women's bodiesare still whole objects,defined sexually, with no critical account
of this sexuality being provided outside the realm of social, symbolic and cultural
images; this implies that despite her recognition of the intensivextensive disjunction,
she continues to conceive of this as exclusive, in order to retain a bilateral distinction
between man and woman which is as a consequenceonly extensively legitimate which is to say, illegitimate in Deleuze's terms. Matter remains outside.
Inside (representation)she is quite correct to say:
`The `becoming-womanof... 'is a force which appropriates women's
bodies, an exchangeamong the master-thinkers of the feminine body:
it perpetuatesan ancestral habit of domination as the trait of the
masculine discourse on women. It is still a misogynist mode of
thought.'(B, 1991: 123)
***
Returning to Deleuze's work in a later book, Nomad Subjects, Braidotti's
hesitance is reduced. Nomadic becoming is seen as expressing Deleuze's `quest for
postmetaphysical figurations of the subject'61, which is no longer centralized and
productive, nor even dead, but 'a term in a process of intersecting forces'. The later
reading is more incisive, in that rather than being concernedwith what she seesas the
starting point - "the death of the subject" -her attention has shifted to the periphery, to
the point of exit from death, and the question of the exportation and return of the model
of death, as the immanence of experience, the zero added to each body as an
assemblage.However, despite being more materialist, characterizing becoming in
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Chapter 6
terms of `sensitive matter, independently of the subjectsinvolved and their determined
forms'62 her understanding of force as `highly constructed social and symbolic'63
continuesto restrict it to a molar regime.
For Braidotti, sexualdifference
`cannot be consideredas one difference among many but rather as a
founding, fundamental structural difference on which all others rest
and that cannot be dissolved easily.'64
This contrastsdirectly with Deleuze's remark above,about sexuality being one
flux amongst others. She is critical of Deleuze for privileging one becoming amongst
others, that of becoming-women,but seemsto want to privilege one difference amongst
others, that of sexuality. Yet the idea of a fundamental structural difference is
anathema to materialism: structures are generated, not original, plastic not fixed.
Appeals to a founding structural difference which grounds all others and which is
close-to immune from dissolution pushes Braidotti back towards basic bilateral
disjunctions and a transcendentmetaphysic.
Braidotti closesher chapter on Deleuze's becoming-woman as follows:
`Speaking as a Deleuzian who believes that desire is the effective
motor of political change, as opposed to wailful transformation, I
experience that "I know, but..." mode as a genuine, positive
contradiction in Deleuze's thinking. '65
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Chapter 6
"I know, but..." expressesher hesitancy in calling herself a Deleuzian because
he's
hesitancy
"but"
A
like
is
Deleuze
man.
well-placed,
since,
a
sexuality,
one flux
amongst others, and besides,disciplehood is not a condition one associateswith his
writing. Moreover, her understanding of this as a positive contradiction makes it a
fertile move rather than one which closes down her relation with Deleuze. Whilst he
(like Kant) privileges following over imitation, to attribute him with mastery of the
lines he himself follows is in the end to approach his machines with cynicism, the
capitalist disease.Some strange innocence is needed, 'd'une autre espece,d'une autre
66
d'une
(another
species,another nature, another origin)'
autre origin
nature,
Her remark above obviates in a senseany need to critique the particulars of
her argument: it is engaged less with what he writes, than with the difficulties
feminists discover, when open to engagements with `male' philosophies whose
direction is not - unusually -antagonistic towards women, either openly or, like the
work of Derrida, sycophantic - he'd love to write like a woman, he says,even though
he finds feminism castratingl67And Braidotti is not as naive in her reading of Deleuze
as the above criticisms imply: she understands that what is useful for feminism in
Deleuze's writing is not what is said `about women 68- which is very little, but in its
interdisciplinarity, in the abstract nature of the tools it offers.
In Patternsof Dissonance,Braidotti asks:
`What is the point of using the term "becoming-woman" in the
analysis of masculine texts when it is clear that the study bearson the
vicissitudes and the internal evolution of a system closed -and
foreclosed- to women, that is, philosophy?'69
198
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Several questionscould be asked. Since Braidotti speaks as a Deleuzian, but
claims philosophy is closed to women, where does this mean she locates Deleuze?Or,
has her understandingof philosophy changed in the three years betweenthe two books,
betweenDeleuze as essentially misogynist and herself as hesitantly Deleuzian? Or, has
she decidedthat whether or not Deleuze is a philosopher, he is at least a socio-political
thinker who engageswith feminism? Attempting to answer these questions maps one
into an implied agreementwith the basic claim that philosophy is systematicallyclosed
to women. This reducesphilosophy to the canon of its history, to its secondarytexts
and academicinstitutions. Making it a discipline rather than an exploration.
###
Limiting its attention to "female/feminine" centred problems and building
systems and epistemologies on unexamined concepts of experience, based on
metaphysically unquestioned assumptions, feminism will be doomed to intellectual
ghettoization, and close down a potential market for its subversions. If it limits its
attentions to scienceto pointing out the intrusion of social theory into scientific claims
about women, and fails to deploy positively the technological transformations
immanent to the new models science is producing, whose trajectory suggests the
collapse of precisely those concepts against which feminism has in the past argued objectivity, identity, idealism and dead matter, - feminism will be a side-line, of interest
only to women fuelled by the political fluxes of desire. If it is the casethat philosophy
has misconstrued women, positioned them in places they would rather not be, and
made claims about their intelligence, their bodies, their capabilities, etc., which are
both disagreedwith and are looking increasingly ridiculous, then there is little point
attachedto a continuing argument with reasondesignedfrom the position of its victim.
For if women are not its victim, reason is either empty and impotent, or its function
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Chapter 6
must be understood differently. Feminism becomes normative when it becomes
incapable of engaging with philosophy beyond the limits of theorizations of gender and
suggeststhat such an engagementis anathemato women. Kant saysthe same: women
may as well grow beardsas learn how to think.
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Chapter 7
Breeding Demons
`we will call them "demons," becausethey are not controlled by a
'
masterprogram.
I
Changing the Object
`Warton was held down by wardressesas the doctor inserted a fourfoot-long tube down her throat. A few seconds after the tube was
down, she vomited all over her hair, her clothes and the wall, yet the
task continued until all the liquid had been emptied into her
stomach.'2
It is easyto lose sight of the violence to which women have been subjectedin
their struggles to transform their situation, and to which they are still subjected.Jane
Warton's treatment in prison was a consequenceof her protestation against this same
treatment, which she had seeninflicted on women who, like her, had been imprisoned
for engaging in suffragist activities. Shewas in reality Lady ConstanceLytton, and had
disguised her identity in order to illustrate the different treatments meted out to women
in prison on the basis of their class status; on their visibility as appendagesto men. On
a previous occasion,under her family name, she had been treated more leniently, and
released after a couple of days. This simple example illustrates that analyses of
connectionsamongst women is not comprehendedby class determined as a relation to
modesof production. Warton was on the women's side.
Yet class relations are only one example of the different orders across which
women move, at odds with the major directions, passing through them but never at
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home. This difference is also inscribed in the theoretical operations of philosophy, and
meansthat finding where women are distributed within philosophical theories, such as
Kant's, is problematic: the elementsprivileged by commentators are for the most part
those which are explicitly associated with men - spontaneity, superior strength,
activity, reason,genius, abstract logical thought, firmness and accuracy of judgement,
moral fortitude, duty, respect, honesty...the list could be longer, but the idea is clear.
And it is not only that women are conceptually disconnectedfrom the major concerns
of philosophy, where those themes with which they have been associatedare discussed
imagination,
beauty,
madness,
nature,
passion,
receptivity, lying, sensibility, etc. - the
relations according to which they are constructed do not emerge from those themes,
nor indeed distribute them, but are imposed upon them from outside. Understanding is,
after all, the lawgiver of nature.
This is why a systemsuch as Kant's appearsso different when addressedfrom
a perspective whose interest is in the theoretical underpinnings of philosophical
misogyny, and looks to discover how deeply ingrained they are. Deleuze's philosophy
is not feminist, but it doesnot claim to be so: what it does, however, is build a machine
which doesnot follow orthodox patterns, which is creatively destructive and rigorously
and acutely composed, and which, by exploring the structures which support the
spontaneouslyacting and judging subject, or man of State, crosseslines with feminist
thought and provides meansof accelerating the collapse of philosophical preciousness
regarding what is appropriate to it. Deleuze does not provide a model: unlike Braidotti,
I do not think one can "be a Deleuzian". However, it is an exemplary machine of
thought, and it is in this that its value for feminism rests, rather than in its explicit
remarks on becoming-woman.
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Chapter7
The isolated remarks which Kant makes about women in discussions of
anthropology and aestheticsare the effects of more deeply ingrained structural and
systematicmisogynies, and it is to these that violence refers for its justifications and
validations. Fernand Braudel writes:
`The role of women is always a structural element in any civilisation
it
is
long-lived
test:
reality, resistant to external pressure, and
a
-a
hard to change overnight. A civilisation generally refusesto accept a
cultural innovation that calls in question one of its own structural
elements.*3
Transformations in the visible images and operations of women, the collapse
of the orders of their historical containment, such as the family, together with their
accelerating infiltration into disciplines and cultures erectedon the exclusion of women
(and blacks, and anyone else who does not fit the model of recognition and image of
thought) are changing the long-lived reality. In tracking the forces and flows of
woman independently of the subject, in connection with natural technologies and
material flows, one seeksto diagnoseand generatelegitimate descriptions of the future
tenseof women. This is the line of becoming-woman.
Women cannot simply be identified with objects, although they have been
objectsin part. Irigaray, reading Marx, writes:
`Merchandises, les femmes sont deux chores ä la fois: objets
..
d'utilite et porte-valeur.
(As commodities, women are thus two things at once: utilitarian
objects and bearers of value).v4
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In terms of its utility, a woman's body is material, but this is of secondary
importance to its exchangevalue, Irigaray argues, which rests in abstraction and in the
resulting cancellation of material difference. But this abstraction from utility generates
lacks
location:
do
have
it
that
the visible
a
women
not
value
produces
since
problems,
in
reflective economies, and thus the
necessary
are
which
of
power,
she
writes,
signs
abstraction can be realised only through exchange, only by measurementin relation to
a third term, to which neither of them correspond. However, for this to take place,
horizontal relations amongst women need to be cancelled, or overcoded,the materiality
of their bodies re-configured, for, in terms of their own affinities, the qualities which
support abstractionare lacking.
This move is clear in Kant. Whilst he allows that individual men will have
brunettes,
blondes
for
different
or
slim or curvaceous,vivacious or
women
preferences
coy - when it comesto evaluations of beauty, as the quality of women which bears the
value of abstraction, these differences, since they are based on physical attractions,
must be discounted All the `other merits of a woman should unite solely to enhance
the character of the beautiful, which is the proper reference point'. ' However,
judgements of the beautiful do not locate it as a quality of a body sojudged, but refer it
to a subject, and his feelings of pleasure or displeasure; only thus can a judgement be
universal, since it is devoid of any specific attraction or agreeability. In such
circumstances,Kant writes, one
`must believe that he is justified in requiring a similar liking from
everyone because he cannot discover, underlying this liking, any
private conditions, on which only he might be dependent,so that he
204
Chapter7
must regard it as basedon what he can presupposein everyone else
as well. s6
In the caseof judgements of the beautiful on bodies public taste is appendedto
a moral concept, presupposing an idea of what that body is supposedto be, what its
function or purpose is. And for women, it is reproduction; in terms of this value,
women's materiality is re-configured, in order to becomethe repository of an abstract
exchangevalue, that attachedto the capacity to produce a child. As the practical value
of women, reproduction is visible, has form and beauty; the image is the Madonna.
However, as a material and bodily function, it is fearsomeand gives rise to disgust: to
prevent this, which would suggestthe tangling of sensible elements in the form of the
object (the body) and so degradethe judgement both aesthetically and morally, women
need to develop a senseof shame, which `servesto draw a curtain of mystery before
'
the
most appropriate and necessarypurposes of nature'. Women must thus
even
contribute to their production as exchangeableobjects, whose abstract value is rests in
their reproductive capacity. They must, as was remarked in the Introduction, be selfbodies
is
intensive
The
their
thus made relative to extension, to
materiality
of
pruning.
a public and universally agreed upon quality of form which excites the contemplation
of a community of subjects whilst simultaneously confirming the function of
reproduction, which is no longer a messymaterial process,but a moral duty. Only then
can this object becomerelated on a plane of equality to other objects of the same type,
through the medium of a third party, the judging subject.
Donna Haraway problematizes theorisations of women as objects, by
complicating the idea objects are inert and passive in the face of judgement. Her
challenge is directed at Irigaray's critique of specular economiesand the privilege of
touch. As a scientist and primatologist, observation is essential to her work; but her
205
Chapter 7
theorisation of vision removes it from the mirrored economy of reflection, so that it
does not operate as a principle of identification or recognition. Observation ceasesto
be, necessarily,a power move codedin advancethrough structures specific to a subject,
but becomesa manoeuvrableand manoeuvring direction, which neither takes charge
of, nor submits to, an object; it becomesa movement between, echoing Deleuze's AND
logics, a relation which effectuates both sides as both observer and observed, in a
manner which carries the logic of Irigaray's two lips, as a positive feedback process.
The object is no longer the result of formal impositions pressedonto intensive matter,
but a formation generatedthrough material interactivity which does not arrive at the
logic of subjectivity, since the conditions of its production are technically incompatible
with the closed systemsprotective of a unified (or even fractured) identity.
`The body, the object of biological discourse, itself becomesa most
engaging being. Claims of biological determinism can never be the
sameagain. When female "seal' has been so thoroughly re-theorised
and revisualisedthat it emergesas practically indistinguishable from
"mind", somethingbasic has happenedto the category of biology. '$
is strong. Theories of female `sex' no longer run directly (or
claim
Haraway's
even indirectly) through the womb; desire connects instead with the intellect, and this
circuit has effects which bleed beyond the limits of feminism, to the very category of
biology itself. Feminist discoursefeedsback into science,not as an addendum,but as a
challenge to its basic categories and methodologies. Haraway's demon, the cyborg,
draws technologically enhanced sensibilities together with female desire, in the
production of a body whose boundaries are no longer definable through a linear and
maternal nature, and for whom reproduction is no longer a privileged term. Intensities
are no longer confined within extensive form, nor re-structured according to moral
206
Chapter 7
purposes,and, most importantly, the cyborg dissolvesthe veil of shamewhich lingered
in feminism in its depiction of women as victims.
Remembering the violence remarked at the opening of this chapter does not
necessitatean identification with the position of its victims (and certainly not with its
perpetrators: who wants equality with this?). This is based on sentiment and turns
women, once more, into objects of pity, as well as perpetuating an image of nature as
violence and conflict. The cyborg is not based on identifications between women and
`nature in the Western sense',Haraway writes, but moves towards an anorganic nature,
a techno-naturewhich debunks the privileges of the organism and the human, and the
mechanistic technologies specific to this latter. Since Haraway's work on primatology
connectswith the cyborg too; the latter does not describe a relation of humanity with
technology, but a much broader concept, which upsets the easy separation of
teleological and mechanical orders and human and "other" primates. It is in this
respectthat it connectswith Deleuze and Guattari's machinic phylum.9
Haraway attacks both the production of women (by women as well as men) as
victims, and the prescriptive voices which call for a unity amongst women, in the
interests of some political aim, on the grounds that it attributes a shared identity
amongst them, which effects the same cancellation of differences which women have
argued against. `There is nothing about being "female" that naturally binds women.'1°
This has already been questionedin the last chapter, with respectto referencesto "real
women"; Haraway's cyborg dissolves the possibility of such categories having any
purchaseon bodies, by dispersing sexuality, by dislocating it from discussionsof lack,
and relating it to the positive operationsof the intellect.
207
Chapter 7
II
Making Femininity
The association of women, or the feminine, or femaleness with passivity and
man/masculinity/malenesswith activity has never been a simple one. The disjunction is
unstable; as a reproductive animal, woman is conceived of as passive and receptive in
relation to the activity and spontaneityof the man. Yet sexually she exerts an attractive
force, although even this is not coherent, being intermixed with repulsion (the man
feels repulsion, not the woman). The feminine has no necessarytheoretical relation
with women at all, but is rather attached to notions of genius. Christine Battersby, in
an extendedexploration of the relations of genius and gender, exposesthe twists and
turns in the value of the feminine, which are not limited to philosophy. `The medical
texts imply (without ever making the implication explicit) that the human being who
possessesgenius will have the sexual organs of a male, but will also have feminine
"
characteristics'. Genius feminizes, but females have neither the mental or physical
stamina for genius; feminine is not the root of feminism, nor attached to the female.
The parenthetical remark about implication is also important, for it is these
undercurrents which carry themes whose force is made redundant by the explicit
structures erected on their ground. Part of the task of feminism in relation to
philosophy is dissolving the certainty of theseerections. Kant gives graphic expression
to the contraries and contradictions and implications of philosophy's women in a quote
from Horace appended, inexplicably and unexplained, to a footnote in the
Anthropology `A beautiful woman aboveends foully in a black fish'. 12
Reconciliation
of
the
wide
distribution
of
functions
designated
female/feminine/womanlywith passivity has generatedacrobatic thought processesand
incredible claims. Freud has becomea classic example. In his lecture Femininity, he is
cautious, advising against the decision to make `"active" coincide with "masculine"
208
Chapter 7
and "passive" with "feminine" c13,citing the relation betweenmother and child as one
in which femalesare active, and the restriction of activity in male spiders to `the single
act of sexual unions14 as problematic cases. Yet whilst Freud is prepared to
accommodate `the influence of social customs, which-force
women into passive
situations"5 he undercuts himself by attributing a preference for passivity to women,
`on the basis of her share in the sexual function'16 (without questioning to what extent
this is also socially inscribed), and by making woman's activity relative to `passive
aims'. His opening summation of the puzzle of femininity reaches its height in his
description of what is truly feminine as masochistic in nature. Social pressuresserving
only to develop thesedestructive trends, so making truly feminine passivity that of the
victim.
Yet Freud's advice against easy acceptance of the established mapping
between the woman/man and passivelactive oppositions comes to nothing: however
complicated the distribution of activity and passivity become in the female - for
example, the relation of little girls to their mothers is `completely ambivalent, both
affectionate and of a hostile and aggressive nature'" - nonethelessthe `turn towards
femininity' is signalled by a `wave of passivitys18.The girl turns to her father and,
`with the help of passive instinctual impulses...which clear phallic activity out of the
19
`turn
be
to
out
normal'. Phew.
way', may perhaps
In both volumes of Capitalisme et Schizophrenie,Deleuze and Guattari talk of
the theft of little girls bodies, and its necessityas preparatory to the theft of little boys
bodies. `[C]esse dc to tenir comme ca, tu n'es plus une petite fille, tu n'es pas un
garcon manque, etc. (stop behaving like that, you're not a little girl anymore, you're
not a tomboy, etc.)i20.The creation of female femininity appearsdirectly counter to that
of male femininity. The former is a process of restriction, limitation, repression and
209
Chapter 7
prohibition, which serveto introduce the female body to its proper desires, the location
feminine
its
being,
its
truly
passivity. The latter, however, attachesto
sexual
of
proper
expressionsof release,to the outpourings of genius and is close to madness.
But the point of this is not to engage in a debate with Freud concerning the
developmentof female sexuality. His words ring bizarre in much the same way as, for
example, Aristotle's, when he proposes his flower-pot theory of reproduction, which
also places women as both powerful and active, the potent materiality from which the
logos grows, and as weak and passive, since women themselves lack the power of the
logos growing inside her. What these discussions illustrate are the confusions and
contortions which grow from attempts to reconcile the passive/active opposition with
sexual or gender distinctions, and the mobility of characteristics attaching to each arm
of the disjunction, as historical contingencies shift privileges and values. The easyleap
from passivity to masochism; the assumption that, in children's play, passivity is
it,
the degree to which this is successful
annuls
which
against
activity,
reacted
with
serving as a basis for `conclusions as to the relative strength of the masculinity and
femininity that it will exhibit in its sexuality'21; the characterisation of the libido as
constrained `when it is pressed into the service of the feminine function'22; the
physiological equivalenceof this constraint evidencedby the `small penis', or clitoris23.
Freud offers these and many more examples of the problems generated by the
developmentof girls and women into proper passivefeminine persons.
Kant is no less happy with the equation of woman with passivity. `Her
24
is
[Weltweisheit]
but
[Empfinden]
to
The critical
to
not
reason,
philosophy
sense
.
implications of this are not that women lack understanding, but rather that they lack
the methodological capacity with which to systematiseknowledge.25The architectonic
ordering of transcendentalrelations is absent in the female, so whilst `the fair sex has
210
Chapter 7
just as much understanding as the male...it is a beautiful understanding', rather than a
in
thus
can
she
not
contain
a unit, as reason was seen
only
chaos
not
rational one, and
to do in the discussionof the sublime, but her knowledge remains at the aggregateand
26
lacking
level,
pattern and systematicity. She can neither build a house with
random
an overlook, nor does she have the reason to make the marks of permanence on her
imagination and confirm the immortality of a soul. There is no rational compulsion
attendant upon women's understanding which condemns them to formulate objects in
general or morality, no diktak commanding the conversion of their intellects into Law.
However, the problem is irresolvable by further interrogation of the intricacies and
confusions of Kant's comments directly bearing on either the beautiful or woman.
What is at stake is a break in the understanding of production, which is the focus of
Deleuzian critique. To return to the flower-pot, there is no account of the production of
the all-powerful soil from which logos emergesas a secondarymode of production. In
Deleuze's terms, there is no account of the production of the unconscious- of how, for
example, Kantian reason came to contain a unit of chaos, and it is this uncritical
assumptionof a power possessedby a subject, still functioning illegitimately in Kant,
that passivesynthesisforces into operation, with rigour and unKantian consequences.
III
Market Making
6I1est devenu le temps de la ville et rien d'autre, le pur ordre du
temps.
(It has becomethe time of the town and nothing else, the pure order
'
time)'?
of
211
Chapter 7
Deleuze saysthis of Kantian time. It is not meteorological, rural, governed by
the seasons,the climate, growing patterns, the reproductive cycles of the animals; nor
is it cosmic, celestial, referring to the movementsof the stars, the turning of the world.
It is the time of the town. But what doesDeleuze mean by this, and how is it related to
the problem of becoming-woman?
The problem of the town is one of circulation, of entries and exits, flows and
polarisation's, frequencies,horizontal integrations and co-ordinations. The town is a
`point remarquablesur des circuits qui la creent ou qu'elle crde (remarkable point on
the circuits that createit, and which it creates)', which makes no sensein isolation, but
exists only as a point in a cycle of flows, a node in a network of transfers and
transmissions,interactions and associationswith other towns.'
In Mille PlateauxDeleuzeand Guattari draw on the work of Fernand Braudel,
who writes of towns as `electric transformers', accelerating tensions and rhythms of
29
interaction.
Braudel charts a history of the town (and writes that
social and economic
history was introduced with the town, with the appearanceof the written word); he
talks of its creating and conquering the countryside and of their mutual reciprocity; of
thresholds of urbanisation at which self-generated transformations occur, beyond
which a town achievesa minimum of efficiency; of the divisions of labour implied by
the town; of rings of stone marking the effort for independence and desire for
expansion in the middle ages, offering both protection against enemies and
contributing to the control of the population inside the walls; of the complicated
networks of Western towns and the regimented order of Roman towns; of the
emergence of town-planning in the Renaissance; of vertical as well as horizontal
growth; of taxation, credit, customs and excise. And of much more. But for
understanding why Deleuze calls Kantian time the time of the town there is one
212
Chapter 7
remark which standsout: `everytown, wherever it may be, must primarily be a market.
Without a market, a town is inconceivable'30
Braudel differentiates between markets and capital. The former can be
associatedwith Deleuze and Guattari's notion of the production of production, the
three synthesesof connection, distribution and consumption as a single cycle; market
hinge',
but
`is
both
turning
the
circle
and
a
co-ordinated,
not
enclosing
an
exchange
sub-ordinated, effect of a myriad connections, at fairs, shops, at cross-roads,on the
corner, where prices are mobile but the emergenteffect is one of a meta-stableand self"
regulating system. From the chaos of the market emerges `the first computer
mankind ever had'32;but rather than the program being fixed (e.g., as in a price list or
through subsidies),and functioning as a control mechanism on the relation of input to
it
itself
is
by
subject to transformations as a
extrinsic
conditions
output, or governed
result of the concrete flows which pass through it. The cycle itself adds difference to
the potential of its own functioning: more simply, it learns and learning potentiates
material changesin the routes and connections, distributions and conjunctions of the
cycle. The spaceof the market is not striated and segmentedby extrinsic operations; it
has no image, no central memory or general rule, and is an actual continuum,
presupposing nothing other that its immanent operations, a circulation of states, a33
central, non-hierarchical, surface
This contributes to understanding why Deleuze and Guattari call synthesis
passive.The cycles of a market are not effected through the operation of an external
agent, an identity to which synthesis is related, but through indirect interactions,
productive connectionswhich are not trades or exchanges(Braudel differentiates trade
from the self-regulating mechanismsof markets) but break-flows.
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Chapter 7
`[r]oute machine est coupure de flux par rapport A celle ä laquelle
eile est connectee,mais flux ehe-meme ou production dc flux par
rapport A celle qui lui est connectee.Teile est la loi de production de
production.
([E]very machine functions as a break in the flow in relation to the
machine to which it is connected,but at the sametime is also a flow
itself, or the production of a flow, in relation to the machine
connectedto it. This is the law of the production of production). 934
The continuity of the actual continuum, of a materially intensive full space,is
conditioned by the breaks or interruptions of the machines. The break constitutes a
partial object, partial not in the sense of incompleteness, which would return the
processto an economy of lack specific to capital, and direct desire towards a whole
object, a complete thing, once more framing the problem in extension (for how could
an intensity be incomplete?). But partial (partiaux) in the senseof biased, evaluative,
`comme les intensites souslesquellesune matiere remplit toujours 1'espaceA des degres
divers (like the intensities under which a unit of matter always fills space in varying
degrees')35Objects become pieces of a journey, directions, tendencies, selective
principles, elementsin a sequenceor chain, molecular, rather than molar. In a trade
and exchange system, each object is complete - in the sense that an object of
representation is complete - its value determined in advance of the process of
exchange, through the system of pricing. Exchange serves not only to confirm this
value which pre-occupiesthe object but also removes it from circulation, since it's
value then restsin its utility - that is, it belongs to the consumptive subject,that subject
to whom the kingdom belongs. In the market, however, each interaction is only partial,
objects are partial and rather than dropping out of circulation to be consumed, each
214
Chapter 7
different
different
them
circuit,
and
principle of selection, a
a
with
connects
movement
different sequenceor chain.36
Since the continuum is intensive, and so too are partial objects,the distinction
between flow and objects -which might be understood as that between money and
becomes
difference
The
dissolved.
one of relative compressions,
commodity -becomes
break
does
intensities;
a
not mean a separation, a removal of a
of
or contractions
but
is
itself
flow,
line
hole
behind,
different
leaves
a
a
of
escape,
a
a
which
sequence
bias or directionality, which connectswith another flow, effects a break or interruption
else' here.
Capital, on the other hand, through States as `modeles dc rdalisation
37
immanents (immanent models of realization)', imposes external controls, ostensibly
"fair"
"equal".
The
things
the
the
consumer
of
or
making
of
protecting
purpose
with
State corporatizes, industrializes, massifies, introduces regulative mechanisms,
taxation, credit control, tariffs, damaging the autonomous balance of markets, and,
more importantly, divorcing economic from social life through the medium of politics:
capital, Braudel says,is a political word. In effect, Braudel argues, capital functions as
an anti-market, as an inhibitor, or as Deleuze and Guattari express it, as
God,
State
Unlike
transcendent
the Despot the
extrinsic
unity
as
an
antiproduction.
however, in a capitalist regime, the State as the agent of anti-production becomes
immanent to all flows, `une gigantesqueentreprise d'anti-production, mais au sein de
la production meme, et la conditionnant (a gigantic enterprise of antiproduction, but at
38
itself,
'.
The cycle is thus
heart
this
the
and conditioning
production)
of production
attached to an extrinsic determined image, from which its power and its movement
its
in
terms
to
all
relations are understood.
and
of
which
appear emanate,
215
Chapter 7
In Passive Synthesis, the difference beween conjunction as a blockage, or
flows
flow,
to
that
all
a
single
subjugates
and conjunction as
accumulation
of
point
AND logic was mentioned - the difference between a macro-history of great men, with
the subject as agent of synthesis, and a micro-history of populations and flows. The
former, Deleuze and Guattari argue, is the conjunction specific to capital, to the
formation of an abstract attraction-machine, from which all flows seem to emanate.
Like the Kantian transcendental,like the subject, capital appears as an unengendered
presuppositionof production, as the father of surplus value, folding back over markets
its
the
abstract axiomatic.
of
concretization
and regulating
The complexities of the relations between capital and the State, capital and
the market, the difference between the social economics of a market and the political
its
to
social
relations
according
own needs,
re-describes
capital,
which
economicsof
are too intricate to explore here: another thesis would be needed.What is important for
Deleuze's
Kantian
is
double
town
time
the
the
about
of
comment
above
understanding
both
in
faces
direction,
it
faces
State,
implies.
The
it
town
the
ways;
one
and
aspect
it
faces
Deleuze
in
the
the
market.
other
and Guattari call
and
capitalist axiomatics
39
du
'la
(capitalism's
true
capitalisme
vrai police
police)';
money and the market
however, Irigaray's question concerning what would happen if commodities learned to
in
be
re-asked
relation to money and markets. What
and
sideways,
shifted
can
speak
happens if money learns to speak, not with the voice of capital, as an expression of
purchasing power, of hedonistic potential, of luxury and excessand of the expansion of
power, but of its own behaviour, as a flow which resists accumulation, which always
escapes,which effects movements, rather than buying things, potentiates mobilities
and interactions which crossthrough capital zones,but never remain inside.
216
Chapter 7
Community or commercium. From one perspectivethe town and the flows of
trade appear organized by the capital and the State, and the town and its markets
appear to depend for the flows that circulate through it on the resourcesthese supply.
In the other direction, the town is fundamentally a market in contact with other
markets, from which emerges a world-economy different to the capital economy
between States; indeed, Deleuze and Guattari write that not only did the towns not
create capitalism, but that they anticipated it and warded it off. They point to the
in
Deductions,
inhibition
in
Forces
to
of
anticipation
and
referred
and
mechanisms
relation to the warding off of the State by primitive and nomadic States; these
mechanisms `jouent dans les villes "contre" l'Etat et "contre" le capitalisme (are at
play in the conflict of towns "against" the State and "against" capitalism'). Whilst
capitalism won, however, the horizontal networks of the towns were not demolished as
a result of this; for capitalism requires the markets, requires the release of flows it
effects and the cycles it turns, just as reason needs time, in order not to be god, and
men needwomen, in order not to die. But something always escapes.
Like the town time faces both ways: in one direction it is the chronological
line of succession,defined by the unit, the corporeal present measuring actions and
causes,to which past and future are relative, indicating only the relation between two
presents.Here is formal time, the concept of time, physical and cyclical, concrete: time
as money. In another direction, however, it is the pure empty form of time, the
labyrinthine line which divides into itself, incorporeal, imperceptible, autonomous,
divested of matter, and the time with which Deleuze credits Kant, in the first of the
four poetic formulae; time unhinged from the cardinality of capitalism, which adds its
coins one by one by one by one and keeps them in the bank, measuring its wealth
relative to its history and the dreamedprospectsof its future. The market is the turning
hinge of the cycle; unhinged from the Stateand from capital, the market becomes.
217
Chapter 7
IV
Becoming-imperceptible
`Bref, une ligne de fuite, dejä complexe, avec ses singularites; mais
aussi une ligne molaire ou coutumiere avec sessegments;et entre les
deux (?), une ligne moleculaire, avec ses quanta qui la font pencher
d'un cote ou de I 'autre.
already complex, with singularities; but
also a molar or customary line with segments; and between the two
(?), a molecular line with quanta which cause it to tip to one side or
the other)' (DG, 1980: 249; 1988: 203 - translation amended).
(In short, a line of fight,
Deleuze and Guattari position becoming-womanas the first quantum, the first
demon flash which tips the balance of becoming away from the strata, from customary
orders and patterns and towards the molecular line. It is in this respectthat becomingwoman relates to the town, and to time, as an itinerant movement which is in-between
the State and the market, simultaneously facing onto and away from the strata.
Precisely, it seems,as philosophy has always positioned women, as neither inside or
outside, not properly one thing or another.
It is the potential for positioning women in relation to the town, rather than to
nature, and for becoming-woman as a movement towards the market which effects the
releaseof monetary flows from the accumulativetendenciesof capital; it is this relation
of women to the economy, as a bias of escape,rather than as an object exchanged
between subjectsin state capitalism, which includes socialism as well - that is missed
by a purely politico-sexual analysis. For in the movement the balance tips from the
molar to molecular, and women ceaseto be commodities, or even, as Irigaray says,
commodities which speak, and instead begin to function as partial objects, biases,
218
Chapter 7
evaluations. Whilst their interactions are not regulated from any external position, the
combined effect - to those who remain outside, in the rare air of the State, capital, the
subject - the movement appears purposeful, directed, the biases appear correlated,
caused.If it is this latter, it is in the sensespokenof before, of reversecausality without
finality, testifying to an action of the future on the present. Becoming-woman is this
movement,a future not yet synthesized,but whose effectsare becoming concretetoday.
Both Rosi Braidotti and Elizabeth Grosz, in their readings of becomingwoman refer to a Cartesianmodel of the subject,which has no relation with either time
nor town. Not only does this make life much easier, for the Cartesian subject is
something of a straw-dog against which to pitch an argument, but it also misses the
philosophical forces on which Deleuze draws. The labyrinthine lines of the pure form
of time feed throughout his work, and philosophy becomes a market-place without
rules, with no historical pre-conditions determining the directions one can take, the
associationsand alliances one can make. Kant argues against Leibniz? Deleuze makes
them bargain for space. Against Spinoza? He draws a Spinozist substancetogether
with the critical demand for immanence. There is no truth, only ideas, no profit, only
surplus flows to return to the horizontal integrations and latitudes of the market.
Deleuze
and
Guattari
call
this
`communication
d'ä-cote
(side-
40
communication)';
side-communication is surplus but not profit, composed of
transferable fragments, `supplementsdann l'ordre d'une multiplicite, plusvalues dans
l'ordre d'un rhizome (supplementsin the order of a multiplicity, surplus values in the
41
order of a rhizome) which transfer information from one order to another, from one
speciesto another, in an aparallel evolution - like the wasp and the orchid mentioned
in an earlier chapter. It is perhaps becausethere is no grandeur or magnificence in
these tiny connectionsthat they have been overlooked, and so little thought has gone
219
Chapter 7
into the patterns they follow and the systemsthey effect. Where nature is conceivedof
as red in tooth and claw, or a subjectof rape rather than of passiveexploration, its real
patterns remain imperceptible. It is these movementswhich this thesis has showedare
necessary to the construction of the extensive theatre of representation; singular
asymmetrical connections,horizontal side-communications,intensities escapingpoints,
money escaping the banks, sexuality escaping biology, desire escaping sexuality,
everywherea shifting drifting flow of mobile distributions on the body of the earth.
Side-communication relates also to Deleuze's method of theft; becausethe
market is not driven by ideology - as are state capitalism/socialism - the history of
philosophy itself becomesa market, the tendencies and directions of which are not
fixed, but which can be broken into, pieces and fragments stolen, taken elsewhere,
connectedwith other machines. What counts is only if something works, which is to
say, only if something releasesflows, rather than containers, accountsin which to keep
them. Because women have been characterised as both inside and outside, their
movement - as Irigaray saw - is double; inside, on the strata, which correspondsto
Irigaray's occupation of the philosophical body, to her careful and elegant tracings of
its magic geographiesand logics - inside, women move in perceptible, and sometimes
42
apparently recognisableways. But through their relations with the outside, they are
also and simultaneously imperceptible, their movements disappearing, becoming
secret,only to re-appearelsewhere,different, re-configured, transformed. This is what
deterritorialization means: the connection of leaps, tiny intervals, demons breeding
demons,in a smooth continuous line of escapewhich re-territorializes somewhereelse,
differently - as Irigaray says,when she returns, it is to set off again from elsewhere.
`Mais que signifie devenir-imperceptible, ä la fin de toes les devenirs
moleculaires qui commencaientpar le devenir-femme?
220
Chapter 7
(But what doesbecoming-imperceptiblesignify, coming at the end of
all the molecular becomingsthat begin with becoming-woman)?'43
Elizabeth Grosz's responseto becoming-imperceptible, or an-organic, is to
situate it within a molar political context and refer it to the potential `obliteration or
marginalization of women's struggles.'44 She argues that, by the `uncritical
internalization of perspectivesand interests devised and developedby men', women
fail to notice the pit-falls of a movement which suggests, once more, that women
function as a means towards the ends of men.45Not only does becoming-woman not
have any intrinsic or essentialrelation to women (that is, it is not an empirical concept,
in the sensethat it has the apparent stability of the concrete present - it does not "look
like" a woman), but moreover, Deleuze and Guattari are explicit in saying that women
must become-womanin order for men to be able to become-woman,and that sexuality
goesby way of this latter becoming - `par le devenir-femmede 1'homme(by way of the
becoming-woman of the man)'. 46 Grosz equates becoming-imperceptible with the
invisibility of women in a molar domain, and with the annexation of their desire to
systemswhose interestsare elsewhere- in other words, with a failure of recognition.
However, that is to mistake the nature of becoming: it is not women who
becomeimperceptible, or anorganic. Imperceptibility refers to the nature of movement,
rather than to something that moves. To Irigaray's secret movements, to intensive
distributions, connections amongst women and men, women and women, men and
men, and all with machines, which have shattered the categories, broken the codes,
dissolved the restrictions and emptied the bodies of meaning, effecting a release of
sexuality from binary distinctions, effecting n-sexes, a million tiny sexes, and have
released women from sexuality, by making it a quality of desire, rather than the
221
Chapter 7
defining characteristic of their bodies. Becausethe problem is one of relations which
escapetheir terms, and relation which effect biases, partial objects, not of how fully
constituted whole objects are related. Becoming-imperceptible is sliding a body into
machines, camouflaging movements and appearing, as if from nowhere, in the
middle.
Deleuze notes that biologists have often questioned why life is
effected
through carbon, rather than through silicon, and goes on to say that `la vie des
machines modernespassepar le silicium (the life of modern machines runs through
47
silicon)'. This is where becoming-women moves,where money releasedfrom capital
moves,where life becomesnon-organic, nature becomesa thinking machine, infinities
of tiny demons leap, effecting a co-ordinated and fluid movement, eroding the statues
of power, the historical . Becoming-woman moves towards becoming-imperceptible,
but women do not dissolve or disappear in that movement: it is rather than life itself
becomesmobile, becauseit is not longer in the womb nor arranged in the organisms
which emerge from them, but instead becomesa movement, a cycle that turns on its
hinges. Humans are no longer the privileged class, but the surrogate reproductive
machinery of a machinic phylum which is passing across into a different base, in a
movement which effects the conjunction of teleology and mechanism, and
transforming the nature of intelligence.
V
Breeding Demons
'... when demons are allowed to barter, bid and compete among
themselves for resources, they begin to form "computational
societies" which resemblenatural ecologies(like an insect colony) or
222
Chapter7
Philosophy and two thousand years of society built on the principles with
which it has covered thought like a caul, has designed women as weak, passive,
sensitive, mad, imaginary, material, natural, disgusting, prudish, whorish, virginal,
Amazonian, foolish, untrustworthy, ammoral, childish and incapable of learning (Kant
saysthat educating women is `a malicious strategemof men'49,and done only in the
interests of male vanity). But, despite all this, men have still wanted to possessthese
peculiar, confusing and contrary animals they have been both fearful of and attracted
towards. At times, philosophers have displayed apparent generosity towards women one might use Plato's suggestion in the Republic that women too might be guardians
in the ideal State,despitetheir natural weaknessin relation to men. However, the move
is duplicitous on two counts. Firstly, it is designedto introduce women as contributing
membersof a Statewhose orders and laws are establishedin the absenceof women; the
participants in the dialogue are men, and the functions and potentials of women are
articulated from the perspectiveof men. The case is similar to that of passivity, as it
functions in Kant in relation to activity: its characteristics are determined through the
lens of an active, spontaneousand legislative subject - which, as the Introduction has
shown, women are not. Secondly, the move is incorporative: that is, it does not
envisageany transformation in the State effected by women through their introduction
within it.
Looking elsewhere, one finds the same problem. Spinoza, for example,
argues that `women have not by nature equal rights with men'. -50His argument
functions similarly to those more recently proposed, which exhort women to avoid
dark places and "provocative" clothing on the grounds that they open themselvesup to
attack from men; women's spaces are limited and defined not through their own
desires,but by those of men. Moira Gatens says of Spinoza's remarks on women that
223
Chapter 7
`women's political exclusion not on the basis of the qualities or predispositions of
women, but rather on the basis of men's predispositions', calling them a `"scar" on the
body of his work. '51 There are historical nuances and variations in the qualities
attaching to women; as a philosophical entity, woman is designed to be fluid, and to
operatein the problematic intersticeswhich escapethe ordered and segmentedworld of
the subject. However, it is less the qualities themselves than their relative value in
regard to the subject which is important: as has been remarked earlier, femininity
attachedto a man has associationsof genius, whilst in relation to women, it attachesto
passivity, defined through the lens of the active subject. So tracing transformations in
the historical trajectory of
philosophy's women exposes not only the fluidity of
movementand qualities through which she is designed,but also the shifting values in
those qualities, effected by historical changes in the subject. Nonetheless, their
situation remains defined by and through the privilege of the subject: philosophy's
woman is never so dangerousnor so mobile as to be able to either destroy or escapethe
defining perspective of the (male) subject. Kant says that even in a state of nature,
women are domestic animals - already tamed, and useful if only to carry the bags. The
wilder aspectsof designedwomen are- like the sublime - always situated in a context,
in the socio-cultural context of women, that of domesticity and reproduction.
A demon is a figure in the process of generating independencefrom design
principles - in other words for an element in a learning system, a bias towards
concretizing real solutions, like a market, which operatesnot through the accumulation
of information, as goods, but through interactions with other demons, in a
heterarchical space(a Pandemonium), which is continuously mobile, and perceptible,
although the principles of its mobility are imperceptible, escaping recognition. The
survival of a demon is a function of its interaction with other demons in its locality,
where locality is not a geographical position given in advance,but the consequenceof
224
Chapter 7
connections generatedamongst demons in the processof developing problem-solving
strategies. The problem-solving strategies depend in part on what Manuel DeLanda,
from whom this information on demonscomes,calls "trust. "
Words such as this are dangerous, implying moral sensibilities dictating
material interactions. Evelyn Fox-Keller has already been quoted in regard to this
problem, of imposing human romances on nature. Fox-Keller located the critical
question behind the apparent altruism of natural systems(their willingness to `die' for
the system) as a problem of quantifying the maximum degree of cost to themselves
individuals will tolerate before any socially compliant character is disinvested - social
in a bacterial, rather than human, sense. However, this is not sufficient, since it
suggeststhere is an option for disinvestment through which the individual is retained,
but in an isolated state. In systemswhere function and formation are inseparable,and
where interaction generatesa partial object, as an intensification of a movement or
direction, disinvestment is equal to death, or more accurately, the complete eradication
of the parametersin terms of which the inital problem was understood. So absenceof
toleranceto a systemon the part of any element generatedby it results in the extinction
of that element, which in turn transforms the nature of the system.
The movement is that of the actual continuum, the basis of Kant's dynamics,
the material force of synthesis,the resourceon which the subject draws, the detour he
takes into the outside. What is missed when the position of women in philosophy is
read solely in terms of their exclusion is precisely this movement, right at its heart. For
philosophy has not simply been an abstract theoretical discipline, but has been
instrumental in the organization of social, political, cultural, sexual, economic, legal,
educationaletc., etc, orders. In order to function as a real description of space- as Kant
demandsof transcendentalphilosophy - it has to have some account of real relations;
225
Chapter 7
in order for him to declare with confidence that from the court of reason `nothing can
52
it
lie.
However, this is
the
possibilities of escape
escapeus', must understandwhere
an impossible demand; something must always escape,unless the system is dead in
advance, becauselife is an escapeart, an art of destruction and creation, which is
theorized under the name critique.
226
Conclusion
No Tribunal
`You think my gait "spasmodic." I am in danger, Sir.
You think me "uncontrolled." I have no Tribunal.... "
Bacteria borrow genesfrom plants, animals & fungi: bacterial fungi find their way
into animals and plants; animals and plants pass genes to each other. A body does not
recognize itself from something not itself. There is only side-communication. Kant's
arborescentschema,the law of continuum specierum, which `recognise[s] a relationship of
the different branches, as all springing from the same stem' is unnatural? Transposons,as
thesejumping genesare called, come in different types: there is the P element, which invades
fruit flies, the mariner, spread amongst species as diverse as earwigs and beetles.
Molecularity.
Meanwhile:
'Over the past twenty-five years, a stack of laws has transformed Britain
from a country that welcomed people to one that it is virtually impossible to
get into. i3
Molarity
The difference in regime illustrated by thesetwo examplesis stark. On the one hand,
an order built on the myth of nationhood, or heritage, on memory and history, on xenophobia
and fear, a molar regime of regulation, dreams of sovereignty and independent agency. On
the other, fluid communication, migrations without regard for the clumsy geographiesof the
227
Conclusion
political world, a market of tendenciesand directions rather than objects and exchanges.A
capitalist economy feeds through the State, which imposes its dogmas and fears, its racism
and hatreds on the movements of people and money; a market is open; its principles
immanent to its operation. Money doesn't recognize boundariesany more than bacteria do; it
is this difference which Deleuze and Guattari are pointing up in their distinction between
rhizomatic and arborescentregimes,betweenmolecular flows and molar structures.
The indifference of nomadic distributions to concepts and ideals is not wise and
paternalistic, equal and fair, racist or misogynistic, but naive and cruel, with a strange
innocence. This is not to say that royal science does not have vicious observational habits
amongstthe tools of its wisdom:
`pure cultures...in Petri-dish concentration camps, are just bacteria whose
social and community behaviour has been reduced to the level that we
investigators can manage.'4
There are gaps through which things escape,solving problems without recognition,
unless they are trapped on the Strata, deadenedby a society with a hypertrophied conscience
and little imagination. Breeding Demons has shown a relationship betweenKant and Deleuze
which is folded in
gaps in Kant over which the tracks of third things - schema,
transcendentalobjects,noumena- run, without thought that the intensive depth beneaththem
involves differently to the straight lines and segmentedspace of the subject. The degree to
which it might be called a feminist thesis is the degree to which it indicates a potential for
escaping the history of philosophy as an institutionalized and exclusively male domain, and
making it work across different dimensions, according to different privileges. Woman the
Object is an effect of the subject;but becoming-woman as the processof moving in-between,
with AND logics and eliminative deductions suggestsa different way out of the problem than
228
Conclusion
seeking to constitute one more theory of subjectivity. Schopenhauer(a misogynist but not to
the core, for like Fox-Keller he does not supposenature sharesour romances), and the first
Kantian, speaksof a direction towards the imperceptible. Representation,he says, offers no
route, for it places the thing-in-itself, or will, outside itself, and constructs its reality through
ideal forms, the secondaryfunctions of the brain which large and feeble organisms such as
man require in order to negotiate the complexities of their world. He suggests, however,
another way:
`It is, so to speak,a subterraneanpassage,a secretalliance, which, as if by
treachery, places us all at once in the fortress that could not be taken by
attack from without. '5
This is very similar to a remark Irigaray makes about science, about the need to
appearwithin it, in the middle; rather than adopting once more the external perspectiveand
critiquing the surface structures she suggestsfinding the subterraneanpassages.Kant knew
also of thesetunnellings, or Mauhvurfsgangeas he calls them. His critical response,however,
was to block them off, since they threatened the ground and the `security of the
superstructures'.6 However, as his trip on the lagoon shows, and his theorization of repulsive
forces, he too can be in the middle, without recognition.
`Il arrivait ä des penseurs, dit-on, d'expliquer clue le mouvement etait
impossible, et cela n'empechait pas le mouvementde se faire.
(It is said that there were thinkers who explained that movement was
impossible,but that this did not prevent movement from occurring)'. '
It is said that there were thinkers who explained that women thinking was
impossible:but this did not prevent the thinking from occurring.
229
Notes to Introduction
21. Leibniz's Fourth Paper (Correspondencewith Clarke), in Leibniz Philosophical Writings, p218
22. cf. MonadologV,para. 25
23. cf. Leibniz Philosophical Writings, pp. 218 & 235
24. K, III: A33B49
25. K, III: A36B52
26. K, III: A31B46
27. K, III: B 154-5
28. K, IV: A183B226
29. K, III: A31-2/B47
30. K, 11I:A30B46
31. K, III: A33B50.
32. cf. Gerd Buchdahl, Metaphysicsand the Philosophy of Science:The Classical Origins Descartes
to Kant, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1969: `In his psychologising account, Kant frequently
characterisesthe form of time also by the remark that all our sense-contentsare "apprehended"
always "as successive"(cf.K, III: B224B234), something that reminds us of Locke's attempt to
define time in terms of the successiveorder of our ideas.But this would be a misunderstanding
[italics added]. Both successionand simultaneity can only be expressedas happeningsin time,
characterisedthrough time, which is -whatever it may be - still presupposed.' (Buchdahl,p642n2)
The point of this discussionof time in the Introduction is precisely in order to precludeboth a
psychologistic rendering of time in terms of succession,and the introduction of meaning into the
pure form of time through its referenceto the relational grammar of empirical experience.
Buchdahl goeson to say: `[I]t is only in the context of an empirical language i. e., when regardedas
forms in which perceptions(actual or potential) occur, that the expressions"space", "time", have a
meaning; and this holds even in the caseof intuitions that are "pure", i. e., where we abstractfrom
any sensorydeterminationsor presence.' (Buchdahl, p647) Independentlyof this empirical
meaning, the pure forms of spaceand time have neither meaning nor definition: this radical
232
Notes to Introduction
indeterminacy is, as will be seenlater in the thesis, what is important in Deleuze's encounterwith
Kant.
33. K, IV: Axiin
34. Correspondence,fn. p122/Apr.7/1786 to J Bering,266.vol. x p441. and. Werke, XIII, 182f
35. B, 1987:7
36. S,1969(I):416
37. S,1969(I):511
38. S,1969(II):41. In On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason,Schopenhauer
elaboratesa theory of empirical intuition as intellectual: this is a consequenceof his collapse of the
elaborateKantian conceptualarchitecture and might seemto eliminate the critical difference of
understandingand sensibility - the transcendentaldifference. What it does,however, is displace it,
referring it to the relation betweenthe world as representationand the world as will, situating it on
the level of Ideasand their adequateobjectification, so rendering it an objective rather than
subjectiveproblematic, prior to the possibility of psychologistic interpretations. Perceptionis
generatedthrough understanding,a subjectivefunction operating in accordancewith the principle
of sufficient reason;however, its explanation is physiological, and specific to animals, rather than
merely to man: betweenthe understanding of animals and that of man `the difference is only one of
degree.'(Fourfold Root, p111)
39. S, 1969(1): 182
40. S, 1969(I): 175
41. S, 1969(I): 97
42. S, 1969(I): 146
43. S, 1969(I): 164
44. S, 1969(1): 145
233
Notes to Introduction
45. This thesis employsthe word "real" in a similar sense:that is, not as a conceptualterm (e.g.,
Realität), but as a referenceto uncausedactuality, or the effective qualities of the thing-in-itself or
will, and, in a Deleuzian register, to the desiring or machinic unconscious.
46. S,1969(1I);191
47. D, 1962:89; 1983:79
48. D, 1969:97; 1983:85
49. D, 1968:186; 1994:143
50. DG, 1972:336; 1984:283
51. DP, 1977:8; 1987:2
52. Welchman, On the Matter of Chaos,p153
53. The dangers of replacing a patriarchal God with a feminine divinity are pointed out by Teresa
Brennan, «ho points to Kristev a's appeal to the Virgin
Mary and Irigaray's
feminine Godhead.
Arguing against conclusions which focus on these appeals as strategic ploys, she asks: `strategy for
whom? If we know that God does not exist but they need to believe that She does, what precisely are
we saying? ' Brennan's comment on the difficulty of taking such appeals seriously is succinct: `The
difficulty with these writings is less with the writings as such than with the commentators' attempts
to deal with the embarrassment of having an otherwise admired thinker apparently endorsing
God. 'Brennan, 1993, p172, n6
54. Schopenhauer,Parerga& Paralipomena,Werke vol 4
55. DG, 1972:106:1984;88
56. DG, 1980:632; 1988;506
57. D, 1968:189; 1994;145
58. DL, 1991:164
234
Notes to Chapter 1
1.D, 1968:186; 1994:143
2.D, 1968:207; 1994:159
3.D, 1963:16; 1984:9
4.The question of the production of the a priori accord of faculties in common senseis not addressedby
Kant until the third Critique and his solution will not be explored this thesis.
5.K, IV: B161n
6.1bid.
7.cf.K, V: §§20-22
8.K, V: 295n
9.K, V: 293
10.1bid.
11.D, 1963:13; 1984:7
12.Ibid
13.K, Ill: B161n
14.K, I11:B307
15.D, 1963:40; 1984: 26
16.K, V: 48
17.K, III: B312/A257
18.D, 1963:36; 1984:23
19.K, V: 239
235
Notes to Chapter 1
20. K, V: 239
21. Machine assemblages,at this early stageof the thesis, can be read as Deleuze's re-formulation of a
faculty system,and the BvO as the transcendental:however, this correlation must be read in scarequotes,
since, as yet, how it is arrived at has not been explained. It will becomeclearer as the thesis continues.
22.D, 1963:48; 1984:32
23.K, IV: 433
24.K, IV: 414
25.D, 1968:48; 1984: 32-3
26 L'Arc. 1980,4
27.K, V: 50
28.D, 1968:48; 1984:32
29.K, V: 44
30.K, V: 176
31.K, IV: 323
32.D, 1963:97; 1984:68
33.DP 1977:15; 1987:9
34.K, III: A839B867
Ralf Meerbote's paper, `Deleuzeon the SystematicUnity of the Critical Philosophy' remarks on
both the attention to systemand the immanent nature of Deleuze's book on Kant, leading to a presentation
of `those leading ideas of Kant's which shapethe content and direction of the entire Critical enterprise'
(Meerbote,347); this helps to elucidate `a number of rather more fragmentary discussionsin the literature
of parts of the Critical enterprise, often supporting those discussionsand deriving support from them in
turn' (Meerbote, 354). This last remark highlights the positive nature of Deleuze's interaction with Kant,
with producesfrom within the system,rather than acting on it from the outside.
35.D, 1968:190; 1994:146
236
Notes to Chapter 1
6
36.D, 1968:204; 1994:157
37.K, III: A328/B385
38.D, 1968:43; 1994:28
39.cf Deleuze's preface to Variations, Jean-Clet Martin: `Je crois ä la philosophie comme Systeme.C'est
la notion dc systemequi me deplait quand on la rapporte aux coordoneesde 1'Identique, du Semblableet
de 1'Analogue.C'est Leibniz, je crois, qui le premier identifie systemeet philosophie. Au sensoü il le fait,
j'y adhere.'(p7)
401,1973: 190, para.67
41.D, 1993[21:89
42.L, 1993:120
237
Notes to Chapter2
1.DG 1980:466; 1933:376
2 D, 1962:118; 1983:103
3 D, 1962:119; 1983:104
4.D, 1968:197: 1994:151
S.cf. Un Manifeste de Moins, in Superpositions.Here, Deleuze explores Carmelo Bene's `Richard HP as
an illustration of the minor treatmentof theatre. This is not anti-theatre,just as his reading of Kant is not
antiphilosophy. It is rather a more preciseoperation, of sulutraction and deduction. However: `Vous ne
pouvezmeine pas dire que c'est une operation negative,tant eile engageet enclanchedejä des processus
positifs (you can't even say that it is a negative operation, since it already engagesand mesheswith
' (D, 1979:103) Stableelements,constants,and the indicators of power are stripped out,
positive processes.
to expose 'le role des operateurs,rtpondant ä 1'idee d'intervalle «plus petit.
(the role of operators,
responding to the idea of the smallest interval).' (D, 1979:106) Negation is thus a consequenceof
affirmation. Cf. Differance et Rjpetition, esp.Chapter 1 for discussionof this Nietzsche-informedsenseof
affirmation and negation.
6.K, 11I:B129
7.K, I11:B202
8.K, JI: A162/B203
9. K, III: A68/B93
10 The elimination of sensible differences in favour of distinctions which can be mapped in extensive
spaceconnectswith the problem of enantiomorphic bodies, and with Irigaray's critique of Kant, and is
addressedin chapter six. In `Kant on the Impossibility of the "Soft Sciences",Nayak and Sotnak argue for
the measurabilityof intensive magnitudes,and for someother way of differentiating betweenintensive and
extensivemagnitudesthan through a difference betweenordinal and cardinal measurability. They argue
that `the filling of spaceby matter is ultimately groundedin quality (force) [so] forcesare not constructible
in terms of quantity, for quantity would then be more basic than quality'. This latter is precisely what
Deleuzeand Guattari argue for quantify writing. they say, in Mille Plateaux. Seealso `Construction and
Mathematical Schcmatism:Kant on the Exhibition of a Conceptin Intuition' (Alfredo Ferrarin), where a
difference is madebetweennumbersand numbering; this is also a working difference in Mille Plateaux,in
238
Notes to Chapter 2
relation to the distinction bctwccn scienceas war machine, or Dispars and scienceas royal state thought,
or Compars.SeeChapterThree for discussionof this.
11.i. e., problem as a differential Idea, as discussedin the text.
12. K, Ill: B207
13. K, III: Al66IB208
13. K, III: A167B209
15. K, ll l: B 154
16. K, III: A167B209
17. D, 1968:176; 1994:134
18. D, 1968:182; 1994:139
19. L'Arc, p41
20 S,1977:112
21. K, III: A120
22. Gerd Buchdahl, Metaphysicsand the Philosophyof Science:The ClassicalOrigins. Descartesto Kant,
Blackwell (Oxford), 1969,p670. Another remark of Buchdahl's clarifies the formalist function of
understanding:'To saysthat it [the act of combination by understanding]is `logical' and `spontaneous'is to
saythat it is not a material detail, but only a manner of characterisingthe nature of objectivecognition, and of
the logical intentions of the cognitivejudgement.' Ibid.p632n. Logically spontaneouscombination provides
nothing that goesbeyondthe conceptof the subject,which is the problem of synthetica priori judgement.
23. K, III: A139/B178
24. DP, 1986vii
25. DP, 1986:vii
26. D, 1968:182: 1994:140
27. D, 1968:286: 1994:222
28.
`Lcs gonds, c'cst laxe autout duquel la pone tourne. Le gond, Cardo, indique la
subordination du temps our points pn5cisement cardinaur par oü passent les
239
Notesto Chapter 2
motn-cmcnisppriodiqucs qu'il mcsurc. Tant que le temps reste dans ses gonds, il est
subordonnnau mouv-emcntextensive:il en est la mesure,intervalle ou nombre.
(The hinges arc the aids around which the door turns. Cardo designates the
subordination of time to the cardinal points through which the periodical movements
that it measurespass. As long as time remains on its hinges, it is subordinate to
movement: it is the measure of movement, interval or number)'. (D, 1993[11:40;
1963:Nii)
That Kantian time is not logical time, but unhinged from the conceptual order of the
understanding,and determinedcardinally only in relation to understandingand epistemologicalcommon
senseis a resourcewhich Deleuze uses to the full. This empty form of time feeds right through his
philosophy, into the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia, as the zero intensity of the body
without organs: this will becomemore clear as the thesis continues. Passive synthesesare the topic of
chapterfour.
29. K, HI:A193/B238
30. D, 1993111:
42
31. D, 1968:187; 1994:143
32. D, 1968:158; 1994:121
33. K, III. B345/A289
34. Allison differentiatesbetweena causal and a semanticaccount of the thing-in-itself, dismissing the
first on the groundsthat if things-in-themsehesare taken to be causes,then `it is presupposedthat we can
refer to them, and this is the very point at issue.' The seconddifferentiates between the concept of an
appearancesand the conceptof a thing as it is in itself; he challengesthis, on the basisthat it suggeststhat
appearancesand thing-in-itself `refer to two distinct entities, the claim being that referenceto entities of
the former sort presupposesthe possibility of referencesto thoseof the latter sort' and thus does not allow
for the `transcendentaldistinction bets%-ecn
two way'sof considering one and the same thing' (Allison,
p240) His solution is to differentiate betweenmodesof consideration,one which is empirical and sensible,
the other speculativeand reflective. It is this interpretation which leads him to the assimilation of the
thing-in-itself and the noumenon:'To consideran object as it is in itself is just to treat it as a noumenon'.
(Allison p243) However,the collapse of the noumenoninto the thing-in-itself, given the function of the
noumcnon as described in this chapter, pushes the compulsion to assume the object in general, or
transcendentalobject,exercisedby practical reasonon understanding,back into transcendentalmatter and
thus into sensation.This tendencyto lock Kant down by the assimilation of differences into unities is
240
Notesto Chapter 2
counterto Dclcurcc'sinsistencethat the smallestdifferencescan generatethe greatesteffects:there is more
butterfly effect in Dclcuzc than in Allison.
A30/B43
35. K, 111:
36. K, 111:B427 Seealso discussionof this issuein Chapter Four
37. CCp32ff.
38.K, IV;309
39. D, 1968:287: 1994:222
40. D, 1968:186; 1994:143
41. D, 1968:156; 1994:119
42. K, Xl :pp33-40
43. K, V11I:194
44. K, VIII: 193-4
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid.
47.K, IV: A143/8183. Kemp Smith's translation of this passagereads it with a negative: `that in the
objects which corresponds to sensation is not the transcendental matter...';
This reading supports
Allison's casefor drawing an equivalencebetweenthe thing-in-itself and the noumenonwhich collapses
their difference.As said above(note 24), it is preciselythesedifferenceswhich Deleuzeteasesout.
48. cf. MetaphysicalFoundationsof Natural Science,
41; 1984:ir
49. D, 1993111:
50. K. III: A211B35
5 1. DG, 1972:127; 1984:106
52. D, 1968:303; 1994:235
53. K, IlI: B2IO/A169
241
Notes to Chapter 3
1.D, 1968:39; 1994:26
2.DG, 1980:458; 1988:369
3.DG, 1980:458; 1988:370
4.DG, 1980:459; 1988:371
5.DG, 1980:537; 1988:430
6.K, IV: 498
7. For a fuller discussionof the propertiesattributed to attractive and repulsive forces, and for the
sourceof the information containedin the table, cf. K, IV: 496ff
8.K,rv:510
The matter of differences which are felt, but not conceptual connects with the problem of
bodies,and is discussed
in chaptersix, with referenceto Irigaray'swork on this.
enantiomorphic
9. K, IV: 505
IO.K, III: A659B687
11.K, III: A661B688
12.K, III: A660B688
13.K,IV: 525
14.K, IV: 526
15. Buchdahl, Metanhvsics and the Philosophy of Science: The Classical Origins
Blackwell, 1969 (Oxford), p609
16 KIII: A220B268
17.K, IV: 508
18.K, III: A168B210
19.K, IV: 503
243
Descartes to Kant,
Notes to Chapter3
20.K, IV: 508
21.K, IV: 512
22.K, IV: 520
23.DG, 1980:258; 1988:212
24.K, III: A168B210
25.K, III: A166B208
26.K, IV: 511
27.K, III: A712B740
28.DG, 1980:458; 1988:370
Deleuze and Guattari take full advantageof the fact that Kantian intuition is not of necessity
attached to Euclidean spacenor to cardinality. From the four poetic formulae summarizing the Kantian
philosophy, through Difference et Repetition and L'anti-oedimeand on into Mille Plateaux. the difference
betweencardinality and ordinality is a continuing theme. In Mille Plateaux there is a discussion of the
differencebetweenState and nomadic numbers.The former `gain masteryover matter...control its
variations and movements', and refer only to a single base. Numbering numbers do not presuppose
number, but `appear as soon as one distributes something in space, instead of dividing up space or
distributing spaceitself They are `ciphered, rhythmic, directional, autonomous,movable' and articulated,
as opposedto metric, punctuated. (cf. DG, 1980: 483ff: 1988:387f1)The complexities of this, however, are
outside the current range of my knowledge; this remark indicates, but does not explain, the difference
betweenthe numberednumbersof the Stateand the numbering numbersof the nomos.
29.K, IV: 517
30.DG, 1980:459; 1988:370
31.D, 1968:290; 1994:225
32.D, 1968:288; 1994:223
33.D, 1968:290; 1994:224
244
Notes to Chapter 3
55.Borrowing methods or principles from other disciplines and deploying them philosophically was not
something new for Kant: in his paper Versuch den Begrif der negativen Großen in die Weltweisheit
borrows
from
he
of
quantifying
negative
a
method
magnitudes
mathematics.
einzuführen,
56.F, 1989:33
57.D, 1968:178; 1994:136
58.F, 1989:36
59.Ibid.
60.K, V: 16
61.F, 1989:31
62.F, 1989:37
63.D, 1979: 93
64.D, 1980:13;1988:6
65.DG, 1980:586; 1988:469
66.DG, 1980:538; 1988:431
67.DG, 1980:537; 1988:431
68.DG, 1980:632; 1988:507
69.DG, 1980:638; 1988:512
70.D, 1977:127 1987:105
71.DG, 1980:537; 1988:431
72.D, 1968:156; 1994:119
Attractors are of different types. Zero-dimensional attractors draw whatever falls within their
basin to a fixed point of rest. A pendulum without a driving motor is drawn to a rest midway in its period,
slowed by friction. Its phase diagram spirals inwards to a central static point. The State in Deleuze and
246
Notes to Chapter 3
Guattari's work functions as a zero-dimensionalattractor. A limit cycle or periodic attractor describesan
orbit; a pendulum driven at a constant rate circles continuously, any fluctuations being temporary
deviationsfrom equilibrium, being returned within a short time to the orbit. In other words, no fluctuation
is sufficiently deviant to escapethe basin of the attractor. A strangeor chaotic attractor, which aroseout of
problems in fluid dynamics, refers to systemswith no periodicity, which describe orbits which never
itself,
is
infinite
depth
finite
is
because
intersects
This
to
the
and
of
within
space.
point,
never
same
return
of what Gleich calls a `mille-feuille' effect, and he quotes Lorenz: `We seethat each surface is really a
pair of surfaces, so that, where they appear to merge, there are really four surfaces. Continuing this
processfor another circuit, we see that there are really eight surfaces,etc., and we finally conclude that
there is an infinite complex of surfaces,each extremely close to one or the other of two merging surfaces.'
(G, 1987:141) This has clear connectionswith the paradox of surfaceand depth in Deleuze's writing, and
intensities.
See
involuting
differenciation
DG,
infinitely
1991: 1994:206; and Prigogine
the
of
also:
with
and Stengers,Order out of Chaos.
73.B, 1987;124
74.D, 1980:460; 1988:371
75 K, VII: 113
247
Notes to Chapter 4
1.DG, 1972:26; 1984:19
2. DP, 1977:13; 1987:7
`Rencontrer,c'cst trouver, c'est capturer, c'est voler, mais il n'y a pas de methode pour
le
de
de
Voler,
longue
contraire
plagier,
copier,
c'est
preparation.
trouver, rien qu'une
d'imiter ou de faire comme. La capture est toujours une double-capture, le vol, un
double-vol, et c'est cela qui fait, non pas quelque chose de mutuel, mais un bloc
des
evolution
noces,toujours «hors» et «entre».
a-parallele,
asymetrique,une
(To encounter is to find, to capture, to steal, but there is no method for finding other
imitating,
is
Stealing
long
the
or
of
plagiarizing,
copying,
opposite
than a
preparation.
doing like. Capture is always a double-capture,theft a double-theft, and it is that which
creates not something mutual, but an asymmetrical block, an a-parallel evolution,
'
"between").
"outside"
and
always
nuptials,
3.DG, 1984:xii
4.G, 1994:190
5.D, 1968:192; 1994:148
6.DG, 1972:266; 1984:224
7.D, 1968:176; 1994:135
8.DG, 1972:19; 1984:13
9.K, III: A78B 103
10.
'[Al machine has only motive force [bewegendeKraft]. But an organized being has
within it formative force (bildende Kraft) that this being imparts to the kinds of matter
that lack it (thereby organizing it). This force is therefore a formative force that
propagates itself -a force that a mere ability to move (Bewegungsvermögen) (i. e.,
mechanism)cannot explain.' (K, V: 374)
Kant's third Critique was influential not only on the naturphilosophische movement emerging
foundations
helped
Jena,
broadly,
but,
to
the
theoretical
shape
of nineteenth century German
more
around
biology; Blumenbach, an anthropologist and comparative anatomist, provided empirical confirmation of
248
Notes to Chapter 4
problemson which Kant had beenworking, and Kant in turn influenced the courseof Blumenbach's own
work.
In the third Critique Kant eliminates analogs for the formative force of natural bodies. To call
organismsanalogsof art is, for Kant, to suggestan external design agency, a rational power which can in
principle be isolated from matter. Natural self-organization is implicated with a force which, whilst
strictly unknown, is inseparable from matter and `preformed virtualiter in the intrinsic purposive
predispositions imparted to the stock (Stamm).' (K, V: 423) Influenced by Blumenbach, Kant calls the
force Bildungstrieb. Unlike mechanical or aestheticrelations, where the form of possibility is extrinsic to
their sensible configuration, the reciprocal relations of force in a natural product are not formalized in
advanceof their dynamic distribution, and their qualities cannot be qualified and equalized in extension.
The direction in which this force develops, the nature of the material filling of space, is not
determinedmathematically, as is the space-filling force in mechanistic dynamics, but is, Kant argues, the
function of a purpose - at least for the purposesof judgement. A natural purpose (Zweck) is an order
manifest in a particular arrangement of the parts, from whose interrelation a result eventually emerges.
Each part not only exists for the sakeof every other part, but each part also standsin a mutually reciprocal
productive relation to every other part.
Variations in the result can become hereditary, as mechanical feedback from the concrete
situation of a body potentiates different aspects of the pattern of virtual preformation. However, the
concept of intrinsic purposivenessrequires that localized changes are conceived of as no more than the
capacitationof `undevelopedoriginal predispositions' (K, V: 420) in the virtual pattern. If this were not the
case, the separation of mechanism and teleology would be compromised, if mechanical action were
understood as a primary function in the material organization of the body, rather than simply a
consequenceof local selective pressures,or as Kant puts it, `a subordinate cause of intentional effects'
(K, V: 414), then the door would be held open to suggestionsof animism, to mystical internal forms, or the
`alien principle (a soul)' (K, V: 375) as explanatory principles for the workings of a body which has been
reducedback to mechanism.
The concept of a natural purpose holds teleology and mechanism, and the distribution of forces
each implies, apart: understandinga maggot as a natural purpose gives no reasonto `count on there being
a mechanical way of producing it' (K, V: 412). But once a maggot is understood mechanistically, and
disassembledthrough putrefaction, the idea of a purposive causality will not put the elements back
together, and reproduce the same product. The forces of mechanism and teleology - gravity and
Bildungstreib - are materially incompatible, non-communicating distributions.
249
Notes to Chapter 4
When discussing the character of natural organization, Kant differentiates the causality
implicated in it from that which determines mechanical relations. In the latter, causal connectivity is
progressive,`constituting a descendingseries' (K, V: 372) of efficient causes;a causeconditions an effect
and the necessityof the relation is enclosedwithin them, as betweentwo points or states.When the will is
implicated, dependency is both progressive and regressive, and any connection is both caused and
effected.The general idea of reasoncovering the systematicand collective unity of this doubled causality
is purpose. It is tempting to see a connection between Kant's theory of self-organization and purposive
causality and the immanent distribution and reverse causality referred to by Deleuze and Guattari.
However,they emphasizethat reversecausality is without finality, and equateteleology with good sense.
Whilst Kant's concept of teleology introduces the problem of self-organization, his solution is reconciled
with the universality and necessityof mechanism,through the supersensibleprinciple of convertibility, it
is this collapse into unity which Deleuze and Guattari argue against, together with the exclusive
disjunction which separatesthe zones of teleology and mechanism. In L'anti-oedipe they gloss the
problem in the following terms: in both systems `the machine and desire...remain in an extrinsic
relationship, either becausedesire appearsas an effect determined by a system of mechanical causes,or
becausethe machine is itself a systemof meansin terms of the aims of desire.'(DG, 1972,1980: 284)
An additional incidental point is that Kant's relation with Blumenbach illustrates his ongoing
referenceto empirical data.
11.There are clearly argumentsto be had concerning what Kant meansby the content of a concept: if it is
taken to mean partial conceptsconjoined under one more general concept,the definition is purely logical.
it is to be understood as the heterogeneousmanifold of intuition (empirical
In this discussion, howeNeer,
and/or a priori) combined according to a rule of synthesis given by understanding. It thus involves
referencesto matter and to time and space. A real definition of concepts involves `descending to the
conditions of sensibility, and so to the form of appearances'(K, III: A240-41B300) which separateslogical
content from real content, and contributesto the objectivevalidity of a pure concept.
12. K, III: A71B11
13. K, III: B420
14. K, III: B427
15. K, III: B428
16. S,WWVII: Chp.XXII
17. S,WWVII: p273
250
Notes to Chapter 4
18. K, III: A78B103
In the B edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. in Refutation of Mendelssohn's Proof of the
Permanence of the Soul' (K, III: B 142), Kant argues against the possibility of proving a continuity of
existenceof a soul by any of the following means: negative arguments to the effect that since it cannot
disappear or vanish, or be annihilated, it must be permanent; rational arguments seeking to prove the
inexplicability of the I think based on a heterogeneous ground, logical arguments appealing to
dynamical
based
division of intensive quantities. His own case
the
on
arguments
materialist
contradiction;
is basedon a difference betweenintensive magnitudes of existence and the real. The real, 'the supposed
substance- the thing [das Ding]', he argues `may be changed into nothing, not indeed by dissolution, but
by gradual loss (remissio) of its powers, and so, if I may be permitted use of the term, by
'(K, III: B414). However, the real is no less real for this remission of powers. This is
elanguescence.
important in relation to Deleuze's argument against possibility, as a logical intervention which produces
paralogismsby separating the real from what it can do. In Difference et Repetition, he writes: `Le virtuel
ä
! 'actual. Le virtue! possedeune plein realfite, en Cantque virtue!
au
mais
seulement
pas
reel,
s'oppose
ne
(the virtual is not opposed to the real but to the actual. The virtual is fully real in so far as it is
virtual)'. (D, 1968:269; 1994:208) (Also cf. Deleuze's Bergsonism, where the relation of the virtual to
memory is explored)
Elanguescence,or the remission of intensities, is a relaxation or diminution in the the density of
intensive magnitude, a difformation of qualities, and comesout of early work on the problem of calculus.
(The term "difformation" rather than the more obvious "deformation" is used here, and below, in order to
avoid the privative implications of the prefix "de-" and the generally negative sense of deformation.
"Difform" carries the sense of diversity, asymmetry, non-uniformity and irregularity of form which
deform does not and it is this positive dimension of intensity which is important for Deleuze.) In a brief
discussion in Superpositions,Deleuze refers to attempts by physicists in the middle ages to theorize the
multiplicity of types of qualitative variations in intensive forms, calling the geometry arising from this
`une gesometriedes vitesses et des intensites, des affects'(D, 1979:115); he mentions Nicholas Oresme
(c. 1323-1382), who investigated the latitude of forms. Boyer's The History of the Calculus and its
con
l Development,refers to the use of the word `form' here in the following terms: `There seemsto
be no scientific term which correctly expressesthe equivalent of the word form as here used. It refers in
general to any quality which admits of variation and which involves the intuitive idea of intensity - that is,
to such notions as velocity, acceleration,density...In general the latitude of a form was the degreeto which
the latter possesseda certain quality, and the discussioncentred about the intensio and the remissio of the
form, or the alterations by which this quality is acquired or lost.'(B, 1949:73) The connection with
Deleuze's theory of intensive magnitudesis quite clear: in Mille Plateaux, it is mentioned explicitly:
251
Notes to Chapter 4
`Noun distinguons: 1) les CsO, qui different comme des types, des genres, des attributs
du
CsO
le
du
CsO
drogue,
Dolorifere
le
Froid
masochiste:
substantiels,par exemple
la
2)
de
(c'est
0
degre
ce qui se
production
remissio);
principe
comme
son
a
chacun
intensites
les
les
les
CsO,
de
produites,
modes,
ondes
type
c'est-ä-dire
passesur chaque
les
CsO,
le
de
eventuel
de
1'ensemble
latitudo);
3)
toes
(la
plan
qui
passent
et vibrations
le
CsO).
(1'Omnitudo,
appelle
parfois
qu'on
consistance
(We distinguish between: (1) BwO's, which are different types, genuses,or substantial
BwO.
BwO,
Pain
drugged
Cold
For
the
the
the
the
masochist
of
of
example,
attributes.
Each has its degree0 as its principle of production (remissio). (2) What happenson each
type of BaO, in other words, the modes,the intensities that are produced, the waves that
BO's,
The
the plane of consistency
(3)
totality
(latitudo).
of
all
potential
pass
(Omnitudo, sometimescalled the BwO))'. (DG, 1980:195; 1988:159)
Other references include discussions of. intensive latitudes as `diformement difformes
(diffonnedly difformed)' - Oresme's latitudo difformiter difformis, (DG, 1980:310; 1988:253); Spinoza's
is
defined
'faite
de
intensives
latitude
do,
body
as
parties
sous une capacitd
can
where
a
question of what
(made up of intensive parts falling under a capacity)' (Ibid. 314/256) - which draws connections between
the Omnitudo or "ailness" of the plane of consistencyand Spinoza's substance,central to Deleuze (and
Guattari's) work; Ou'est-ce aue la Philosophie?.p35ff, where Omnitudo is associatedwith fractals and
immanence.
19.K, III: B 130
20.cf.K, V: paras.25,26,27. Here, Kant explains the two functions of imagination - apprehensionand
by
is
in
function
together
means
of
estimating
number
as
necessary
magnitudes
which
comprehensionfor knowledge claims: `imagination performs the combination that is required to present a
functions
differential
two
these
In
the
[Ibid.
of
exceedsthe
the
sublime
mathematical
p254]
magnitude'.
be
formulated,
intensive
difference
the
extensively
no
cannot
possibility of numerical quantification be
is,
be
that
can
reproducedsuccessivelyas a measurableunitnone
which
presented
magnitude can
imagination
inflicts
inner
Instead,
`makes
be
the
violence
on
sense
and
numbered.
can
which
none
simultaneity intuitable'. [Ibid259] The principle of progressionwhich underlies the psychologistic
imagination
in
instant
to
comprehend
time
and
attempts
an
collapses,
as
succession
what
of
understanding
is, in the theoretical framework, apprehendedsuccessively.This suffices to illustrate the independenceof
imagination in relation to understanding,an independencewhich is implicated, at the very least, in the
first Critique, most notably in commentssuch as:
`Now, since every appearancecontains a manifold, and since different perceptionstherefore occur in the
in
have
itself,
is
demanded.
they
them,
as
cannot
sense
such
of
a
combination
and
singly,
mind separately
252
Notes to Chapter 4
There must therefore exist in us an active faculty for the synthesisof this manifold To this faculty I give
the title, imagination. Its action, when immediately directed upon perceptions,I entitle
apprehension.'[K, llI: A1211 The importanceof this separationof the powers of understanding and
imagination is great when one is considering Kant not from the perspectiveof the rational subject,but
from the position of thoseassociationsattaching to women - which include nature, imagination and the
object.
21.cf.K, III: A170B212
22.K, III: A167B209
23.K, III: A51B75
24.cf.K, IV: 309n
25.DG, 1972:34; 1984:26
26.D, 1993:43
27.K, III: B414
28.An essayby Irigaray focusesspecifically on matters of fluidity. In This Sex Which is Not One, in The
"Mechanics of Fluids" she points out `a complicity of long standing betweenrationality and a mechanics
dynamics
fluids,
having
leaves
107),
1985E:
the
specific
of
various
unconsidered
which
of solids alone'(I,
"tricks" with which to side-step the problems it generatesfor a mechanics of solids. The theoretical
engagementwith fluid dynamics has, she argues,detachedthem from the reality of bodies. Her argument
including
Guattari)
Delcuzc
(and
the non-denumerability of fluid diffusions, on
points,
on
several
crosses
its greater sensitivity to pressure,on the infinite nearnessof its elements, and on its instability. It must
thus also have closenessesto Kant's theory of intensities. Irigaray correlatesthe exclusion of fluidity with
that of women: `what she emits is flowing, fluctuating. Blurring. '(Ibid. 112) Like fluidity, she argues,
women lack definite identification, and are irreducible to the symmetry consecratedbetween the subject
and its world in the theatre of representation.
There is also a connection between Irigaray's questions regarding mathematical analyses of
fluids and the problem of instantaneousvelocity implied by the quantitative study of variation addressedin
the theory of the latitude of forms (cf.Note 16). Irigaray argues that fluid currents are considered in
leaves
`Up
to infinite: the centre of these
to
some
remainder:
which
a
point,
a
privileged
axis,
relation
"movements" corresponding to zero supposes in them an infinite
speed, which is physically
briefly,
it
involves
is
insistence
Deleuze's
the
(Ibidp109)
to
this
complex
very
response
unacceptable'.
253
Notes to Chapter 4
that absolute or infinite speedproceedsby way of relative speeds;in other words, it is immanent to the
creation of a plane of consistency,rather than transcendent,produced rather than discovered. Absolute
speedis associatedwith nomos, or nomadic distributions; `seul le nomade a un mouvement absolu, c'estä-0ire une vitesse ; le mouvementtourbillonnaire ou tournant appartient essentiellementä sa machine de
in
have
(only
other words, speed;vortical or swirling movement is an
movement,
absolute
nomads
guerre
is
local
`dann
feature
(in a local absolute)'. (DG,
their
a
nomad
un
absolu
of
war
machine)';
essential
1980:473-4; 1988:381-2)
29.K, III: A291B347
30.DG, 1980:132; 1988:104
31.DP, 1977:160; 1987:132
32. The simplest example is that of convection. Take a cell of fluid which can be heatedon the bottom and
cooled from the top. The difference in temperature (an intensive quantity) controls the flow, heat being
heat
increases
fluid
the
the
towards
the
top
the
cell;
expands,becoming less dense,lighter,
of
as
conducted
and the molecules move more rapidly, colliding as they push towards the surface. The system becomes
chaotic. However, further increasesin heat give rise to behaviour which is counter to assumptionspossible
from the point of view of the two constraints on the system, gravity and the second law of
thermodynamics.A cylindrical role develops,heatedfluid rising and cooling fluid falling in a continuous
cycle, and the systemdisplays a consistencyand activity beyond the thresholds of behavioural possibility
defined by the two constraints on the system,gravity and the secondlaw of thermodynamics.cf. Massumi,
A User's guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia:Deviations from Deleuze and Guattari p58ff.
,
33.Sandy Stonenotesthe ultra-femininity of both pre- and post-operativemale to female transsexuals.The
imperative which defines them is that of passing: they must passas women both in order to be considered
suitable candidatesfor the medical procedure and to minimize the difficulty of settling into the socially
defined ways of a woman once they have beenphysically reconfigured. In the `60's, when theseoperations
became economically and medically interesting, a single book outlined the criteria according to which
suitability was determined. Strangely, all applicants fulfilled thesecriteria: they had the book too.
Stone's point is that the fixation on medical proceduresand defined psychological criteria, and
the willingness of medical institutions and their clients to satisfy them, is socially produced along with
binary sexual difference and neither have any necessaryrelevance to the processesimplicated in the
continual invention of a body, processeswhich the theft of a child's body channel along a pre-determined
course. Male? Fourteen?Time to be a social nuisance, smash a window, get a gun. Female? Forty? Time
254
Notes to Chapter 4
to go grey and wear sensible shoes.A molar body is fixed across a set of interconnected criteria whose
most basic resolution is in terms of a sexualbiology and a psychological and intellectual make-up which
"fits" that sex and which has appropriate phenomenaattached to it at any given age and in any given
in
half
bracket.
Paul
Broca,
the
second
of the nineteenth century, laboured hard
working
socio-economic
to prove that brain size was correlated with intelligence. Since it was common knowledge that European
lesser
human
Broca's
intelligent
task was to generate
types,
than
and
other
women
more
males were
fact
`[h]e
between
To
do
data
this
truth.
traversed
the
confirm
gap
a
prior!
so,
which
would
quantitative
be
by
the usual route - predominantly in reverse'(G,1992:85). Broca wanted to
may
what
conclusion
and
fix a brain which would correlate with the body in which he found it, rather than research the brain as
implicitly
insistence
Stone's
thwarting
this
at
on the permitted band of deviation
argument
aims
such, and
dictated by the demand for unity, both historically and of the body. (Cuvier's brain, - which `reflects a
Euclidean space'(DG,1980:63; 1988:47) - was, incidentally, discovered by Broca to be the largest in
France.)
When expressionsof desire becomeincommensuratewith the codesapplied to the body, the gulf
is corrected by pro-tiding the body with a new set of sexual characteristics, making the content fit the
it
first.
desire
The
is,
if
That
this
with
cannot
cure
problem
produced
misfit
of
psycho-analysis
expression.
the socially coded body is clearly associatedwith the sex/gender distinction: the proper alignment of
biological
in
the organization of a whole system, a
results
and
or
coding,
coding
sex,
or
social
gender,
distinction
is
by
Stone,
for
in
The
bodies
this
made
clear
of
who
argues
or
paucity
man
woman.
whole
it
body
becomings,
invention,
that
the
the
than
medical
re-invention
of
occasional
so
rather
continual
might properly contain the psychological make-up analysis has exposed.She calls these post-transsexual
becausethere are no longer gulfs and gaps and sexual lines to be crossedbut n-sexes,bodies machined by
desire. Not the institutionalized re-arrangementof an object so that its gender and it's sex might once
more meet, and the facts fit the advanceconclusion.
Stone's desire for post-transsexualismis caught up with discussionsin Difference and Repetition
St.
Hilaire's
Geoffroy
A
Plateaus
Thousand
abstract Animal, because both refuse conditions
of
and
extrinsic to the material processesthrough which bodies are formed as organs of a machinic assemblage,
and repel the positions and places,imagesand instincts allotted to them, the fixation of desire on an object
imaginary
Real
bodies
by
the
values.
engineering does not make objects, but
of
pre-occupation
and
assemblesbits and pieces, partial-objects, transposableelements which, depending on their location and
their movements transform the timing and control of development. The basic unit is the assemblage,a
body composedthrough its own functioning, not organized from on high, and the human body is but a
part of this, not its controller.
255
Notes to Chapter 4
cf. Stone, S (S, 1991) `The empire strikes back: A posttranssexualmanifesto' in J. Epstein and K
Straub (ed) Body guards: the cultural politics of genderambiguity (London: Routledge)
34.DP, 1977:71; 1987:57
35.Ibid.
36.cf. Chp.2, fn. 67 on attractors.
37.D, 1968:117; 1994:86
38.In his Introduction to La Bete Humaine. Deleuzetalks of the paradox of heredity, and the confusion of
itself;
he
itself,
is
transmission,
transmits
transmission
the
transmitted
suggests,
only
not as a
with
what
message,but as transmission, a processnot an object. Zola, cinematographic novelist, is caught up in a
singular process of transformation which cuts through the novel as it does through philosophy and
difference
fundamental
is
[la
felure],
itself: the pure form of time, `le
Transmission
the
or
crack
cinema.
installing
linearity
Wrecking
1969:
11)
aide
(D,
interieur'.
and
an abstract core of sterility into
grand
is
from
logical
is
the
than
a
residue,
paradox
removed
realm
of
no
more
a
subject
processesof which
force
become
to
and
of machinic production. The term term used by Deleuze
a
mobile,
perpetuum
problem
(and Guattari) for this problem of transmissionin Mille Plateauxis machinic phylum.
39.D, 1968:220; 1994:169
40.D, 1980:269; 1988:220
41.DG, 1972:106; 1984:88
256
Notes to Chapter 5
1.DG, 1980:16; 1988:9
2 D, 1968:284; 1980:220
3.DG, 1980:275; 1988:225
4.K, V: 266
5.K, V: 266
6.D, 1968: 1984:43
7.K, V: 269
8K, V: 261
9 Ibid.
10 DG, 1980:438; 1988:354
11 DG, 1980:437; 1988:353
12 DG, 1980:469; 1988:378
13 D, 1993:48; 1984:xii
14 DG, 1980:468; 1988:378
15.K, III: A141B 180
16.cf. Paralogisms of Pure Reason, B edition, K, III: B421fi
17.K, III: A649B677
18.Architectonically, reasongrows `from within (per intussceptionem),but not by external addition (per
is
by
like
body,
It
is
the
the addition of a new member,
thus
growth
of
animal
which
not
an
appositionem).
but by the rendering of each member, without change of proportion, stronger and more effective for its
delivery
form
faculties
'(K,
III:
The
Kantian
833B861)
systemswhich remains unchanged by the
purposes.
delivery, since their products are absorbedinto the ends of reason and fuel the growth of its strength,
which in turn allows the strengthening of the delivery.
257
Notes to Chapter 5
40.DG, 1972:341; 1984:286
41.For the moment, this can be read as a transcendentalfunction: however, the distance Deleuze and
Guattari have moved this from its function in Kant as a condition of possibility for knowledge of the
object will become clear in the explication of the body without organs, and its relation with desiringmachines (seealso note 2).
42.DG, 1980:199; 1988:161
43.F, 1984:311
44.K, IV: A.,cd
45.K, III: A171/B213
46.DG, 1972:342; 1984:288
47.1,1993: 190, pata.67
48.DG, 1980:36Q; 1988: 293
49.DG, 1980:453; 1988:366
259
Notes to Chapter 6
1.Plato, Timaeus, 52 (para.20)
2.1,1977: 28; 1985:29
3.1,1977: 24; 1985:24
4.1,1977: 24; 1985:24
5.1,1977: 26; 1985;26
6.Irigaray, Is the Subjectof ScienceSexed?p.75
7.Ibid, p.76
`During the nineteenth century the final state of thermodynamic evolution was at the
centre of scientific research. This was equilibrium thermodynamics. Irreversible
processeswere looked down on as nuisances,as disturbances,as subjectsnot worthy of
study. Today this situation has completely changed We now know that far from
equilibrium, new types of structures may originate spontaneously. In far-fromequilibrium conditions we may have transformation from disorder, from thermal chaos,
into order. New dynamic statesof matter may originate, statesthat reflect the interaction
of a given systemwith its surroundings. We have called these new structures dissipative
structures to emphasize the constructive role of dissipative processes in their
formation. 'PS, 1985:12
8 1,1977:28; 1985:28
9 1,1977:26; 1985:26
IO.cf. Difference and Repetition. Chapter two, Image of Thought.
11.1,1977:26; 1985:
12.1,1977:75: 1985;78
13.K, IV: 286
14.The context of Kant's argument is a debate with Leibniz; for Leibniz, space is an abstract and
mathematical description of relations that hold between objects. Kant's claim is that he is providing the
260
Notesto Chapter 6
philosophical grounds of the possibility of Leibniz's mathematical determinations. His solution in
Directions of Space is later revised. Using the same example as that in Directions in the Inaugural
Dissertation, in the later work he reachesa different conclusion, which heralds the so-called critical turn.
In the Prole ogmenahe writes: `What is the solution? These objects are not representations of things as
they are in themselves,and as somepure understandingwould cognize them, but sensuousintuitions, that
is, appearances,whose possibility rests upon the relation of certain things unknown in themselves to
something else, viz., to our sensibility.'(K, IV: 286) The Newtonian solution of an actual absolute spaceis
abandoned for one arising out of the Copernican revolution, and the reference of sensibility to the pure
form of intuition.
15.K, II: 382
16.And it was from Adam's left rib, the myth goes,that God createdEve.
17. SeeChapter 2, Note 24..
18.K, III: A682/B710
19.K, III: A538/B566
20.K, III: A394
21.K, III: A366
22.K, III: A394
23. Ibid.
24.K, III: A109
25. K, III: B345
26. K, III: B345/A289
27.K, IH: A566B594
28.1,1974: 256; 1985:206
29. K, III: A566B594
261
Notes to Chapter 6
30.K, IV: 286
31.1,1974:256; 1985:205
32.1,1974:264: 1985:211
331,1975: 265; 1985: 212
34.The word pupil comesfrom the Latin pupil/a, meaning `a little doll'; the Hebrew expressionfor pupil
is similar, eshon a.0n meaning `little man of the eye'. When looking in the eye of your fellow man, you
arc supposedto seea doll-like reflection of yourself, a sort of visual homunculus.
351,1974: 265; 1985:213
36.The problem is spuriousbecausein the caseof a spacecontaining nothing but a single hand, the hand
itself may be asymmetric,but it is meaninglessto speakof it as either a left or a right hand in the absence
of any other structure; it is not merely, as Kant says `completely indeterminate in respect of such a
property'(K, II: 383) but completely senselessto question whether such an object is a right or left hand,
because left and right mean, in a Humpty Dumpty way, whatever we want them to mean. Only when a
body missing a hand is introduced, the sides of which have already been decided in relation to left and
does
),
Eve,
(power
Adam
the question of which hand it is
and
etc.,
and
sensibility,
good
evil,
right
and
hand
in
by
be
the
turn the side of the
then
the
and
right
sense:
naming
and
resolved
make
problem can
body on which it fits can be called right. Only when there are two asymmetric objects present in the same
spacedo the labels applied to each ceaseto be arbitrary.
37.1,1974:262; 1985:210
38.K, II: 381
39.1,1974: 265; 1985:212
40. B, 1991:261
41. Inventing Women:Science.Technologyand Gender.p. 50.
42. Cell suicide, or apoptosis,is vital at all stagesof an organism's life: during the embryonic development
of mammals, about half of all nerve cells self-destruct, and a failure to do so results in the build up of
surpluses; cancer, for example, and the proliferation of cells which cause it can continue only when cells
fail to self-destruct.One would be hesitant to describethis as `altruistic'; it is to account for processessuch
2 62
Notes to Chapter 6
as these without qualification by human values that Deleuze and Guattari use the term machinic. cf. The
Economist, May 4th 1996, p. 103-4.
43. Inventing Women: Science.Technologyand Gender,p.56.
44.Ibid.
45.DG, 1980:249; 1988:203 - translation amended
46.DG, 1980:543; 1988:435
47. `To claim that women's experience is a source of true knowledge as well as the substance of the world
to be known (the "female world")
classical
empiricists. '[iiomen's
constitutes the same "epistemic fallacy" as the one encountered by
Experience
and Feminist
Epistemology,
a critical
new-rationalist
approach in Knowing the Difference: Feminist Perspectives in Epistemology.
48. B, 1991:122
49. DG, 1980:342; 1988:279
50.B, 1991:111
51. For Derrida's relation to Heidegger with regard to sexuality, cf. `Geschlecht: sexual difference,
ontological difference' in Researchinto Phenomenology.)(111,1983
Derrida's own perspective on sexuality is distributed through his work, but see especially
Enerons:Les Stylesde Nietzscheand `Women in the Beehive' in Men in Feminism.
52. Braidotti is not the only thinker to describeDeleuze in theseterms: Alison Assister, for example, in a
brief comment on Deleuze suggeststhe same. It seemsan inappropriate description. Deleuze does not
begin with the death of the subject,but rather aith a desire to generatean account of its real conditions.
Both Difference et Repetition and L'anti-oedine contain accountsof the production of subjectivity, both as
a fixed and actively synthesizing agent and as a passive and larval entity of ectuated by the sensible
conditions forcing thought. This is referred to in an earlier chapter. C.f. Assiter, Alison, The Enlight
Woman: ModernistFeminismin a PostmodernAge.
53. B, 1991:114
263
Notes to Chapter6
54.Marnia Lazreg highlights some of the philosophical difficulties implicit in the appeal to "women's
experiences" as a basis for a feminist epistemology, noting the tendency of such positions to fall into
problems attachedto empiricism more generally.
`In so far as experienceis central to the empiricist philosophy and theory of knowledge,
one might think that feminists' use of this concept is grounded in a discernible
intellectual tradition. Yet feminists generally do not explicitly seek any grounding for
experienceand often act as if they hadjust discoveredits import. It seemsas thought any
relationship between feminists' use of experienceand that of acknowledged empiricists
is either fortuitous or the result of the unexamined(and therefore unsuspected)effect of
an intellectual tradition steepedin pragmatism and positivism.'p51
`As far as feminist theorizing is concerned...the concept of experienceas it is currently
used is insufficient since it includes men as a reference rather than as a constitutive
component. Men are usually seen as having constructed women's reality instead of
being engaged in a continuous process of interaction with women that is equally
constructive of their reality. 'p5112
`In sum, contemporary feminists' use of experience as the foundation of a theory of
knowledge fits into the tradition of the empiricist school of philosophy and encounters
many of the sameepistemologicalproblems.'p55
Her objection seemsto spring from critical instincts, and ask for a more rigorous formulation of
the empirical: in this, she sharestendenciesu ith Deleuze.
Quotes from `Women's Experienceand Feminist Epistemology, a critical new-rationalistapproach'
in Epistemology.
in Knowing the Difference:FeministPerspectinves
55. B, 1991:119
56. B, 1991:120
57. DG, 1980:351: 1988: 275
58. DP, 1977:121; 1987:101
59. B, 1991:122
60. B, 1991:120 (the quote is from This Sex Which is Not One)
264
Notes to Chapter7
22.Freud, Femininity, p. 131
23.Ibid, p. 118
24.K, II: 230
25. Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime was written in 1764, seventeenyears
before the Critique of Pure Reason. In her paper `The "Charming Distinction": Ur-teil as the En'Kant's
have
Olga
Lucia
Valbuena
in
Kant's
Thought',
Reason
commentators
writes:
not
of
gendering
in
Anthropology
Kant's
"Observations"
their
the
to
the
or
assessment
of
either
much
space
afforded
but
dispensable
find
devvelopment.
Critics
texts
these
tend
to
curiosities
ultimately
suggestive
philosophical
favors
Such
late
though
the
Kant's
critical
writings
as
a
reading
position
and
period,
respectively.
early
of
from
influences
late
disconnected
ideas
the
there
and
early
affirmations of
were
somehow
generated
the
his thinking. However, there does east a continuity betweenthe empirical and the critical dimensions of
Kant's writings that is worth exploring. 'From: Genders, Number 4, Spring 1989, Copyright 1989,
University of Texas Press.
This is the case not only in relation to women, but also with regard to intensity: from the early
force are a continuous
intensity
forces
Opus
Postum
living
through
to
the
of
and
problems
um,
on
paper
theme in Kant's writings.
26. K, II: 229
27. D, 1993a:42
28. DG, 1980:539; 1988:433
29. B, 1985(1):479
30. B, 1985(1):501
g 1.B, 1985(2):224
32. B, 1985(2):224
33 One might Nish to suggestthat the thought of market, as described,implies idealism, and to argue that
features
distort
its
to
`free"
or
persuade
governing
apparently
extrinsic
an
market, with no
such
itself.
impossibility,
is
in
favour
direction,
a
capital
pipe-dream
of
an
development
of any particular
Briefly,
there are two directions from which to begin a responseto this. Firstly, that the dichotomy
267
Notes to Chapter 7
betweenfree trade or exchangeon the one hand and constrained or planned or determined trade on the
other belongs to capital. Markets are "headless", acephalous, rather than free and their growth or
development is effected through the partialities or biases of the elements of which they are composed.
Secondly, the accusation of idealism illustrates a failure to comprehendimmanence and the relation of
immanence to its own abstraction,which is real; that is, it functions as a virtual machine added alongside
the actual, rather than as an ideal abstracted from the concrete or describing a set of conditioning
delimiting
its
form.
Spinoza
is
in
It
is
this
that
the
at
perhaps
most
sorely
point
missed
structures
discussion, for it is towards a Spinozist conception of substanceand the unity of composition of common
notions that this thought of market drives. However,that discussionis for another time and place.
34.DG, 1972:44; 1984:36
35.DG, 1972:368; 1984:309
36. This is particularly pertinent to women: in an exchangesystem,the value of women is determined in
image
is
their
they
an
which
confirmed through the
of
with
exchange
amongst
are
objects
men;
advance
bodies
here,
however,
discussed
briefly
In
no
of
external
agents.
a
system,
as
market
- those of
actions
function
its
has
in
of
any
other
of
within a particular machinic
or
assemblage
advance
value
women
distribution. They are not priced - which is not to saythey are priceless,merely that value ceasesto be
transcendent. cf. 1,1977; 1985 for a discussionof the treatmentof women as commodities.
37. DG, 1980:568; 1988:455
38. DG, 1972:280; 1984:235
39. D, 1972:284; 1984:239
40. DG, 1980:70; 1988:53
41. DG, 1980:70; 1988:53
42. This relates to two problems already discussed. The first is that of the thing-in-itself, as the
erenciator or the demon of difference. A molecularized thing-in-itself and the empty form of time were
domain
the
theatre
the
against
as
of the subject and molar state thought, in
of
representation,
mobilized
filling
fluid
forces
is
interests
of
exposing
an
empirical
space
continuum
of
which
and
contained and
the
by
The
is
in
the
the previous
second
a
conceptualization
as
mechanical.
reference
of
motion
punctuated
her
to
Irigaray,
the
positive
a
secret
movements
of
continuously
abstract
associated
and
with
with
chapter
dividing
intervention
lips
hich
term
two
the
of
a
middle
as
of
a
escape
which
are
and
m
not
one
machine;
268
Notes to Chapter 7
binary
articulate
a
relation, whilst at the sametime mobilizing a movement of escape(it is
would
which
this which Irigaray does not quite manageto effect,becomingjammed by her own machinery).
43.DG, 1980:342; 1988:279
44.G, 1994:209
45. G, 1994:209
46.DG, 1980:341; 1988:278
47.1: Arc, p101
48. DL, 1991:177
49. K, II: 230
50. Spinoza, A Political Treatise, in The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza,vol. 1, ed RH. M. Elwes,
New York, Dover, 1951,p386
51. Gatens, Imaginary Bodies: Ethics. Power and Corporeality, Routledge,London & New York, 1996,
p134
52. K, IU: Axx
269
Notesto Conclusion
1.Emily Dickinson, letter to Higginson, June 7,1862, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Ed.
Thomas H. Johnson, Little Brown & Company(Canada)Ltd., 1951,vii
2. K, III: A6611B688
3. The Economist, May 4,1996, p34
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