The Deleuze Reader

The Deleuze Reader

Edited
with· an Introduction by

Constantin V. Boundas

tOC
Columbia University Press
New Turk
Tire edilor ofthis volume wishes to dedicate it
to Li'1fia Carol Corrway.

Col11rnbia U11illflrsil.J Press

New :Kirk OeforJ
Editor's Introduction and its notes and English translations lor
essays 15, 22, 23, and 25 copyright© 1993 Columbia
University Press
All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dclcuzc, Gilles.
[Selections. English. 1993]
The Dclcuzc reader I edited with an introduction by
Cunstantin V. Boundas.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-23 I •Oj268·6

1. Philosophy. 2. Aesthetics. 3. Psychoanalysis and

philosophy.
I. Boundas, Constantin V. II. Title .
a2430.D452E54 1993
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CIP

®
Cascbound editions of
Columbia University Press books
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c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
 Contents

Ad:nuwledgments ,;;

Editor's lntroducJiun I

PART I Rhizome

I Rhizome �rsus Trees 27

PART II Difference and Repetition

2 What Is Becoming? 39
3 What Is an Event? 42

4 What Is Multiplicity? 49
5 Individuation 54
6 A Theory ofthe Other 59
7 Ethics Without Morality 6g
8 Ethics and the Event 78
9 The Selective Ttst 83
10 Eternal &cu"ence fJD
11 Man and Overman 95
 vi Conlenls

PART I I I Desire and Schizoanalysis

12 Psychoanalysis and Desire 105

13 Delirium: World-Historical, Not Familial 115
14 Becoming-Animal 122
15 The Signs efMadness: Proust 127
16 What Is Desire? 136

PART IV Minor Languages and Nomad Art

17 Language: Major and Minor 1 45

18 Minor Literature: Kefka 152
19 Nomad Art: Space 165
20 Cinema and Space: The Frame 173
21 Cinema and Time 18o
22 Painting and Sensation 187
23 The Diagram 193
24 Music and Ritornello 201
25 One Manifesto Less 204

PARTV Politics

26 On the Line 225

27 Capitalism 235
28 The Three Aspects ef Culture 245
29 Toward Freedom 253

Notes 257

Works by Gilles Deleuze 28 5

Index 297
 A cknowledgments

Essays 1 , 4, 5, 1 4, 1 7, 1 9, 24, and 27 reprinted from A Thousand Plateaus:

Capitalism and Schi?.ophrenia by permission of the University of Minnesota
Press; copyright 1 98 7 by the University of Minnesota Press. Essays 2, 3, 6,
and 8 reprinted from The Logic ofSense by permission of Columbia Univer­
sity Press; copyright 1 990 by Columbia University Press.. Essay 7 reprinted
from Spino?,a: Practical Philosophy by permission of City Lights Books;
copyright 1 988 by Robert Hurley. Essay 9 reprinted from Difference and Repe­
tition by permission of The Athlone Press; copyright forthcoming by The
Athlone Press. Essays ro and 28 reprinted from Niet?,sche and Philosophy by
permission of Columbia University Press; copyright 1 983 by Columbia
University Press. Essay 1 1 reprinted from Foucault by p ermission of the Uni­
versity of Minnesot a Press; copyright 1 988 by the University of Minnesota
Press. Essays 1 2 , 1 6, 26, and 29 reprinted from Dialogues by permission of
Columbia U niversity Press; copyright 1987 by The Athlone Press. Essay 13
reprinted from Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schi?,ophrenia by permission of
The Viking Press; copyright 1 977 by Viking Penguin, Inc. Essay 1 5 trans­
lated from Proust et les signes by permission of Presses Universitaires de
France: copyright 1 975 (fifth edition) by Presses Universitaires de France.
Essay 1 8 reprinted from Kcifka: For a Minor Literature by permission of the
University of Minnesota Press; copyright 1 986 by the University of Min-
 vm Adcnowl1dgm1nls

nesota Press. Essay 20 reprinted from Cinema 1: The Movtment-Image by per­

mission of the University of Minnesota Press; copyright 1 986 by The Ath­
lone Press. Essay 2 1 reprinted from Cinema 2: The Time Image by permission
ofThe Athlone Press; copyright 1 989 by The Athlone Press. Essays 2 2 and
23 translated from Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation by permission ofEdi­
tions de la Difference; copyright 1 98 1 by Editions de la Difference. Essay 2 5
translated from Superpositions by permission of Les Editions d e Minuit;
copyright 1 979 by Les Editions de Minuit.
 Editor's Introduction
Constantin V. Boundas

Gilles Deleuze will be remembered as a philosopher, that is, as a creator of

concepts. This has been his way of imposing a bit of order upon the menac­
ing chaos. But he will also be remembered as a "stutterer," as someone who
stutters as he speaks and writes, in his effort to make speech and, even more
important, language, begin to stutter. Finally, he will be remembered as the
th i nker of "the outside . " His moving references to those he reads and loves
can easily be returned and attributed to him: "a little fresh air," "a gust of
air," "a thinker of an outside." Philosopher, stutterer, thinker ofan outside. How
do these link?
Closed upon itself, and holding the lid down on its own discipline, phi­
.losophy has often mistaken vacuity and ineptness for wisdom and rigor and
the foul odors of inbreeding for signs of intellectual and moral integrity. To
open the lid, so that a gust of fresh air may come in from the outside, is not to
waste time deciphering the signs of an upcoming end of philosophy. Al­
though the problems of philosophy are problems of the outside, the outside
is not a space for the preserve of disciplines differentfrom philosophy; it is the
space where philosophy begins to differ in itself.
In laboratories of research adj acent to the philosopher's, the scientist,
the painter, the cinematographer experiment with their own materials.
 2 Editor's /nJroduetion

Sometimes the porousness of the vessels' walls permits us to see that we have
all been working with the same problems. But more often, an outside, which
is the outside of all these laboratories and all these vessels, asserts itself and
allows an unstable resonant "communication," which does not wipe out the
differences or the discordance of the "regional" concerns. I will come back
to this "absolute" outside later and stress again the role it plays in Deleuze's
work. But a provisional characterization of it may already be possible. De­
leuze does not mean to say that problems and issues outside the philoso­
pher's laboratory are what cause the philosopher or her philosophy to de­
velop as she or it does. Philosophy does not reflect or represent an outside
that is merely relative to it. Rather, the philosopher creates concepts­
nobody else can create concepts in her stead. But to create a powerfol con­
cept is to trace and to follow the line that makes the various regions com­
municate at the same time that these regions diverge and retain their differ­
ences. To trace such a line, say, between philosophy and music, is not to
orchestrate a philosophical theme or to talk with philosophical expertise
about the form and the content of a piece of music. It is to find a third term,
in between the two, which would facilitate the " becoming-music" of phi­
losophy and the " becoming-philosophy" of music.
It is this "becoming-x" that offers a possibility of explaining Deleuze's
predilection for the stuttering philosopher. The concepts that Deleuze
creates are the result of three interrelated imperatives that motivate and in­
form his philosophical experimentations with difference, repetition, and
productive desire: to reverse Platonism without trading one structure of
domination for another; to dismantle foundationalism without permitting
the consensus ofour Northwestern ethnicity to become the new foundation;
and to deconstruct affirmatively, not for the sake of the Other-in-general,
but rather for the sake of the "minoritarian" Other. But a moment's reflec­
tion shows that any creator of concepts who experiments with such opera­
tional rules in mind will be placing herselfin a vulnerable position: her own
concepts, along with the narratives within which they are embedded, will
·be problematic, both in the sense of problem-raising and in the sense of
being essentially contestable and controversial. And problems and opposi­
tion will multiply because of the resistance of those who already occupy the
regions and the territories that the philosopher-experimenter wishes to
transform. It may be true that a powerful concept can be created only as
regions begin to vibrate and to resonate together. It may also be true that
vibrating and resonating occur along "nomadic" itineraries which cause
those who travel to "become-other" than themselves. But sedentarism,
being the law of the regions, along with its rules of identity, resemblance,
 Edllor's fnlrodud�on J

and analogy, create a formidable "majority," armed with the kind of moral
uprightness which is ready to pounce at, and crush, the stutterer who dares
them. Becoming or transformation here is possible only when the stuttering
of the philosopher "hooks up" with the stuttering of the "majority" and be­
gins to dissolve stubborn resistances and to clear up existing blockages (af­
ter all, every "majority" has a st uttering impediment of its own).
Philosopher, stutterer, thinker ofan outside-but never marginal or parasitic.
His philosophical apprenticeship and, later on, his career as a "public pro­
fessor" have been in .accordance with France's best and time-honored ways:
La Sorbonne, Projesseur de Lycie, Projesseur de l'Universiti en Provence, researcher
at the Centre national des recherches scientifiques, Professeur de l'Universite de Paris
VIII, first at Vincennes and, later on, at Saint Denis. But this rather ortho­
dox French academic career-this molar, segmented line, as he would call
it-never managed to conceal a certain taste for the outside, a desire for
nomadic displacements, an openness to encounters which could cause the
molar line to deviate and the rhizome to grow by the middle, or a kind of
humor with which to displace the philosopher's old irony.
Frarn;ois Chatelet, for example, has retained, from his student days at
Sorbonne, the memory of an oral presentation that Deleuze made on Mal­
ebranche's theory in a seminar led by a scholarly and meticulous historian
ofphilosophy. Cha telet recalls how the erudite professor first paled, then got
hold of himself, and finally expressed his respect and admiration as he sat
listening to Deleuze's argument, backed by impeccable textual references
and premised squarely on . . . the "principle of the irreducibility of Adam's
rib . " 1 As for Deleuze's own references to the postwar period in France,
which coincides with his student days, they show the same early preference
for the outside. He tells us how the new scholasticism that descended upon
the Sorbonne after the liberation was made somewhat bearable thanks to
the presence of Sartre. "Sartre was our Outside," he writes in his Dialogues
with C laire Parnet. "He was really the breath of fresh air from the back­
yard . . . . Among all the Sorbonne's probabilities, it was his unique com­
�
bination which gave us the strength to tolerate the new restoration of or-
der. ''2 In 1 964 Deleuze will praise Sartre, private thinker and never public
professor, for having introduced philosophy to new themes, for choosing a
new sty le and for preferring a new, polemic and aggressive way of raising
problems. In a way that speaks as much about himself as he does about
Sartre, Deleuze goes on to remind us that, like every other private thinker,
Sartre demonstrated how much thought needs a world with a grain of disor­
der in it, a bit of agitation and a dash of solitude. Stressing, with admiration,
Sartre's opposition to all modes of representation and his love for speaking
 4 Edilor's lnlrodwdor1

in his own name, Deleuze, in 1964, hailed Sartre as his own teacher-a
teacher of the outside. 3

Historico-Philosophical Stutterings
Deleuze's love for the outside is also evident in his historico-philosophical
work. Nobody can accuse him of not having labored hard and long in the
fields of the history of philosophy before he came to write books in his own
name. ( " How can you think without having read Plato, Descartes, Kant
and Heidegger, and so-and-so's book about them?" Deleuze mused with
irony in Dialogues.)" His impressive monographs on Hume, Nietzsche,
Bergson, Kant, Spinoza, and Leibniz, his discussions of Plato, the Stoics,
and the Epicureans, betray his partiality for those fellow stutterers " who
seemed to be part of the history of philosophy, but who escaped from it in
one respect, or altogether. "5 His way of reading �hem is not a search for
hidden signifieds. Rather, Deleuze tries to get hold of their texts "by the
middle, " refusing to follow them step after step according to the order
of their argumentation or according to "the order of reasons. " He forces
arguments and reasons, he precipitates them toward their vanishing point,
he accelerates and decelerates them the way that we accelerate or decel­
erate a liquid in an experimental vessel, until he gets hold of the machine
that generates the problems and the questions-the stuttering-of the
thinker.
Deleuze's thought cannot be contained within the problematics of the
now fashionable textual allegory. The main thrust of his theoretical inter­
vention is in the articulation of a theory of transformation and change or, as
he likes to say, of a theory of pure becoming which, together with a language
adequate to it, would be suOiciently strong to resist all identitarian pres­
sures. It is this relentless effort to articulate a theory of transformation and
change (and not the obsession with the diacritic nature of the linguistic
sign) that motivates Deleuze to replace Being with difference, and linear
time with a difference-making repetition.
It is precisely for the sake of a theory of transformation that Deleuze will
reOect, throughout his work, on the nature of the event (see this volume,
part II, essays 2 and 3 ) , the structure of mul tiplicity ( part II, essay 4), the
requirements of individuation ( part II, essay 5), the lure of the other ( part
II, essay 6), the ethics of the event ( part II, essays 7 and 8), and the en­
abling and selecting force of repetition in the eternal return ( part II, essays
9 and 1 o). To his theory of transformation, he will subordinate the results of
his investigation of the agonistic relations between major and minor lan­
guages ( part IV) and, later on, his elucidation of mobile nomadic differ-
ences, situated halfway between migrant and sedentary political strategies
( part V).

Hume
Hume gives Deleuze a method, the method of transcendental empiricism, which
allows him to dissolve the organic compounds ofidealism and to reach for
the anorganic subsoil of the atomic and the distinct. Empiricism and Subjec·
livi�: An Essay on Hume's Theory of Human Nature, is among Deleuze's earlier
writings.6 True to his own reading "by the middle," Deleuze refuses to de­
fine empiricism on the basis of the postulate that the validity ofideas de­
pends strictly on corresponding impressions of sensation or reflection. He
rather believes that the principle of empiricism rests with Hume's doctrine
of the externality of all relations: relations are always external to the terms
they relate (even in the case of analytic relations). The principle of empiri­
cism, therefore-Deleuze will argue-is a principle of differentiation and of
difference: ideas are different because they are external to, and separable
from one another; and they are separable, that is, external to one another,
because they are different. It is easy to understand, therefore, why the ques­
tion "how to relate or associate entities which are different" finds in Hume,
and in Deleuze, an urgency that it never had before. Hume's associationism
leads Deleuze, in the final analysis, to a theory ofinclusive disjunctions and
a theory of paratactic discourse, that is, to the triumph of the conjunction
AND (el) over the predicative IS (est).

Spinoza
Deleuze wrote two books on Spinoza: Expressionism in PhiJ.osophy: Spinoza1
and Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. 8 In them, he expressed his admiration for
Spinoza's way of addressing the old problem of the One and the many. I t
was the Platonic paradigm that bequeathed u s the problem embedded in
the metaphor of participation, and that, in its effort to preserve the identity
of the One, hardened the ontological difference between Being and �cwn­
ing. Later on, the neoPlatonic shift of metaphors, from participation to em­
anatiQD and gift, did little to decrease the cost of the moral and political
choice involved. In either paradigm, a vertical axis of power relations was
instituted, and whether the Despot was the self-identical Form or the One
beyond Being and knowledge, the suitors had to rally around the center or
face excommunication from the Republic of man or from the City of God.
But as Deleuze reads Spinoza, all this changes. To read Spinoza "by the
middle" is to make the notion of expression the "vanishing point" of his
 6 Editor's Introduction

text. The One (which here is not a number) has the coherence of an open­
ended differentiated whole, and expresses its essence by means of an infinity
of attributes. Or again, the One expresses itself by means of an infinity of
attributes in modes. The essence and the modes are the "explications" or
"unfoldings" of all that which is "implicated" or enveloped inside the One.
Deleuze suggests that we must learn to admire in this implicatio/ explicatio the
total absence of hierarchical powers and the freedom from vertical axes of
descending grace. Being is univocal, equal to itself, and offers itself equally
to all beings.
There is more, of course, in Spinoza's "minor" philosophy that attracts
Deleuze's attention: there are bodies and affects specified in terms of their
active and reactive forces; there is desire linked up withjoy; there is opposi­
tion to representationalism, critique of negation, deconstruction of analogy
and identity; there is opposition to teleological deferral, an entire phe­
nomenology of joyful modes of life, and a discipline aimed at preventing
sadness, loss of energy, and ressentiment; but, above all, there is isonomia
among beings and com possible yet divergin� lines inside the One, universal
Being.

Bergson
Bergson is Deleuze's ally in his displacement of phenomenology and of the
privilege that phenomenology assigns to natural perception. In Bergsonism,9
Difference and Repetition,1 o and Cinema 1: the Movement-Image, 11 Deleuze argues
that to be serious about the notion of the "worlding of the world , " the mind
must strive to sense a world behind appearances, a world in perpetual mo­
tion and change, without anchorage, without assignable points ofreference,
and without solid bodies or rigid lines. For empiricism to become transcen:
dental, and for Spinozism to overcome the last vestiges of the One, the mind
must transcend the sensible in the direction of the sentiendum ( that which
=

ought to be sensed), in search of lines of (f)light traveling without re­

sistance, an eye situated inside things, and consciousness understood as
epiphenomena! opacity. What Deleuze admires in Bergson is his resolve to
speak about the "originary" world ofintensive magnitudes and forces-or,
more accurately, about this originary world being in the process of"explica­
ting" itself in extended surfaces.

Nietzsche
Bergson's theory of intensive time carries profound implications for memo­
ry and repetition. Memory as repetition of the past inside the interval of the
present presupposes the irreducible icart ( interval) between past and pre­
sent and foregrounds the "originary delay" upon which Derrida already
fastened the dissemination ofthegramma. And yet Deleuze is not convinced.
Bergson's memory/ repetition, without the time of the eternal return, would
tend to immobilize past and present and to disempower the intuition of the
irreducible multiplicity that, nevertheless, animates Bergson's texts. Isn't
Plato's recollection, after all, a sufficient warning against putting our trust
in mnemo�)'nt and letting it chase after the shadow of the One?
As a result, Deleuze shifts his attention to Nietzsche's eternal return, and
asks it to carry the weight of the move from Being and Time to Differenct and
&petition (see this volume, part I I , essays 9, 10 and 11 ) . But for this move to
be convincing, Deleuze must distinguish between the repetition/recycling
of the tradition and the repetition which makes the difference. He pursues
the project in Nitt(.scht and Philosopky12 and Nitt(.sche.13 Traditional repeti­
tion works with identical entities forming the extension of the same concept,
with only their numerical difference to separate them from one another. De­
leuze calls this difference a difference extcinsic to the concept.
The repetition that "makes the difference" is intensive, whereas the recy­
cling repetitions of the present and the past are extensive. The concept is the
shadow of the Idea-problem, because a concept has extension, that is, a
range of particulars that instantiate it. But an Idea, being a structure, is an
intensive magnitude whose nature changes as the Idea is divided or sub­
divided. The Idea-problem circulates in repetition and differentiates itself
in concepts-solutions. But, as Deleuze has argued, no concept is ever ade­
quate to the Idea, recycling repetitions can never exhaust or represent the
nature of the difference that is intrinsic to the Idea. It is the Idea, with no
intuition adequate to it, that generates problems and offers provisional so­
lutions; the· latter crystallize for a while around concepts and their exten­
sions, only to be overthrown again by new intensities and new problems.
The conclusion that Deleuze draws from these examples, and from his
reflection on Nietzsche's eternal return, is that to repeat is to behave in a
certain way, but always in relation to something unique, without likeness or
equivalence. Repetition, in Nietzsche's sense, is exception, transgression,
difference. Like Kant's aesthetic Idea, repetition is a singular intuit!!?"•
without a concept adequate to it. It was Nietzsche's privilege and fate to get
a glimpse at this unique, transgressive, and a-centered center; he named it
"wilf to power. "
The will to power, as Nietzsche understands it, is not an intentional pur­
suit ofpower by forces deprived of it, but rather the expression of the kind of
power that the force itself is. "Will ojpCN1er," in the sense that power itself
wills, is the correct reading of the will to power. The traditional, intentional
 8 Editor's lnlrotluellfm

reading makes power the object of a representation, a wanting to acquire

that which a force lacks, and therefore something incompatible with Nietz·
sche's theory of forces. According to Deleuze, it is a falsification of Nietz·
sche's views on the subject to expect values to come to light as a result of the
struggle for recognition or the power-grab bing that such a representational­
ist reading of the will to power would necessitate . ' 4

The Stoics

The articulation of a theory of pure becoming presupposes the overthrow of

Platonism and the repudiation of the ethical choice that such difference
supports. But a theory of pure becoming and transformation can only be a
theory of paradoxes and of series-formation. "It is at the same moment that
one becomes larger than one was and smaller than one becomes. " 1 5 Predi­
cative logic is not equipped to handle pure becoming. Deleuze needs a logic
of the event, a sense-generating logic, and he sets out in earnest to give him­
self one in The Logic ofSense.
In this work, Deleuze discusses the Stoics extensively. With the Stoics, as
Deleuze reads them, the overthrow of Platonism is undertaken seriously:
philosophy thinks the event and gives itself the right tools for the discussion
of change, transformation, and becoming. Since Zeno of Elea, philosophy
had known that becoming cannot be thought of as a mere j uxtaposition of
immobile slices of extension and time. It was the Stoics, Deleuze argues,
who made the first, correct move: to think of becoming is to think of the
event (this volume, part I I, essay 3).
Events are caused b y bodies, but they are not states of affairs or Aristo­
telian accidents, which also affect substances or are caused by substances.
Deleuze stresses the importance of the Stoic ontological difference traced
between bodies, their qualities, mixtures, and "incorporeal events." Bodies
and their mixtures are actual; they exist in the present, and they causally
affect other bodies and bring about new mixtures. But bodies also cause
events that are virtual and that, in tum, take toward bodies a kind of"quasi­
causal efficacy. " Events, as the Stoics and Deleuze understand them, elude
the present: an event is never what is happening in the present, but always
what has just happened or what is about to happen. It is best, Deleuze �n­
cludes, to denote them by means of infinitives: to green, to cut, to grow, to
die. Without being subjective or objective, infinitives are determinate and
specific and guarantee reversibility between future and past. And this is im­
portant for the designation of events, because the latter, by eluding the pre­
sent, affirm simultaneously foture and past, becoming thereby responsible
for the passing of the present. Events, rather than denoting substances or
qualities, stand for forces, intensities, and actions. They do not preexist
bodies; they rather inhere, insist, and subsist in them.
A central chapter in the Stoic overthrow of Platonism-a chapter that
Deleuze discusses extensively in The logic ofSense-is the ethics ofthe event.•6
No longer do the Stoics attempt to articulate an ethical system on the basis
of imitation of, and participation in, an ideal model. The ethical question is
how individuals can be worthy of what is happening to them. Deleuze's
reading of the Stoics, in the context of Spinoza ( part I I , essay 7) and N ietz­
sche ( part I I, essay 1 o) makes it clear that the quietist overtones of this ethi­
cal question are, in fact, deceptive. The ethics of the event is not the ethics o(
the accident. No one is suggesting that to acquiesce, without demurring, to
whatever happens is the right thing to do. Moreover, events do not happen
to a subject; they are presubjective and preindividual. Events decenter
subjects-they are never responsible for the formation of the subject. To the
extent that events are still future and always past, the ethics of the event
presupposes a will that seeks in the state ofaffairs the eternal truth of events.
Real amorfati is not in the acceptance of the actual state of affairs but in the
"counteractualization" of the actual, so that the virtual event that inheres in
it may be, for the first time, thought and willed.
To be worthy of what is happening to us, Deleuze concludes, means to
will what is always both different and the same in each moment ofour lives,
to raise the banal and mundane into the remarkable and singular, the
wound into a wound that heals, war against war, death against death. This
is what it takes to will repetition as the task of freedom.

Ltibni;:,
From his reading of Leibniz (Le Pli. Leibni{ et le baroque;11 Expressionism in
Philosophy: Spino{a) Deleuze forges a powerful concept-the fold-and uses
it extensively and as a fulcrum to make the questions of Leibniz resonate,
but also to define the baroque as a style and as a period and to elaborate the
theory of power and subjectivity that he shares with the late Foucault.
Leibniz's world resembles a building with two floors: on the upper floor,
windowless monads, distinct from one another and without interaction, ex­
press the world, each one of them from a singular point ofview. On the lower
floor, organic and inorganic matter becomes subject to forces of the world
that govern, and account for, its movement. The two floors communicate
through the world, which is virtual, albeit actualized, in the monads and
realized in matter. The world is thefold that separates the floors as it links
them together. The concept of the fold and the power of the virtual link up
with each other in Leibniz, and make him diverge sharply from the expres-
 10 Edstor'J lntroductfon

sionism of Spinoza where everything is subj ected to an uninterrupted

causal "explication . " As for the centrality that the concept.fold acquires in
Deleuze's thought, its constant recurrence in his works, under different
names and masks, establishes it beyond any doubt: it is the "somber precur­
sor" of Difference and Repetition,18 the "esoteric word" of The Logic of Sense,19
the "outside" of Foucault,20 the "line of death" of the Dialogues21 and A Thou­
sand Plateaus.22 It is the entity or agent that holds diverging series together
and makes possible a theory of inclusive disj unctions: Deleuze is fond of
calling it "the differentiator of the differends."
Leibniz, of course, is not Deleuze; he remains the uncompromising theo­
rist of convergence-not of divergence. But a more labyrinthine world than
his, with an infinity of floors, can still be imagined-a world of incompos­
sible strata. Of course, Leibniz thinks of his world ofconverging series as the
best possible. But the reason this world is the best possible is no longer its
optimal participation in the ideal model of the Good. The "best possible"
presupposes and witnesses the erosion of Platonism. The world is the best
possible as a result ofa divine selection and play. 23 But then one more dar­
ing step is still possible: God can be "replaced by Baphomet, the 'prince of
all modifications,' and himself modific ation of all modifications . . . .
Rather than signifying that a certain number of predicates are excluded
from a thing in virtue of the identity of the corresponding concept, the dis­
junction now signifies that each thing is opened up to the infinity of predi­
cates through which it passes, on the condition that it lose its identity as
concept and as self. "24 And Deleuze does take this step.

Kant
In 1 963 Deleuze published a book on Kant, Kant's Critical Philosophy: The
Doctrine of the Faculties,25 whose brevity and clarity have proven to be decep­
tive. Very few noticed this important " minor" deconstructive reading of
Kant. And yet the most fruitful way to receive Deleuze's Difference and Repeti­
tion is in its aspiration to be the critique of the Critique ofPure Reason. ( I often
wondered whether Capitalism and Schi�ophrenia is most profitably read as the
critique of the Critique ofPractical Reason-a critique clearly motivated by the
aporias of Kant's third critique.)
Kant's love for all-rounded architectonic structures is well known: his
theory of rationality based on the consensual harmony of all mental fac­
ulties and his attempt to coordinate cognitive praxiological and ludic inter­
ests belong here. Deleuze decides to pry open these structures by dislodging
the cornerstone: the presumed harmony and cooperation among mental
faculties. He states, before Lyotard made this point popular among us, that
 Edilor'J lnlroduelion 11

for this cooperation to become possible, imagination must be assigned the

task of training sensibility, memory, and understanding. Therefore, the lift­
ing of the barriers that Kant placed between cognitive, practical, and aes­
thetic interests is what Deleuze will advocate, along with the coordination
of the aisthesis ( = sensation) of the first C ritique and the aisthesis ( artistic,
=

aesthetic sense) of the third.

We are now in a better position to advance a global characterization of

Deleuze's theory ofdifference and repetition, the best source for which is his
I 968 book bearing this very title. The idle mire of this theory is that fusion
and fission are the external limits of all functioning assemblages, natural or
man-made.26 Despite the difference in degrees of contraction or dilation,
the final result offusion and fission is the same: the apparent numerical dif­
ference between the one (fusion) and the many (fission) disappears, since
time, qualitative di fference, an ? c.ha,e n � longer exist in . either state. As­
semblages, however, that are still m operational order av01d these absolute
external limits through the preventive mechanism of a controlled repeti­
tion: they repeat the very conditions the extremes of which would have
brought about their entropic stasis and death. Contraction and dilation con­
stitute therefore the inclusive, disjunctive law of all systems. This does not
mean, Deleuze will argue, that contraction and dilation are opposite forces
in the service ofhomeostatic sy stems. Nor is dilation (extension) the found­
ing stratum of systems. The world of extended things, in extended space
and time, is the result of the dilation ofintensive quanta ofenergy, captured
in the process of slowing down and becoming cooler. And this process is
"always already" reversible through new irruptions of intensity.
Now, to say that transformation, change, and motion implicate at least
two differential, intensive forces or magnitudes is no longer surprising or
new. But what is not so obvious is Deleuze's definition of an intensive mag­
nitude in terms of incommensurability, inequality, and indivisibility. For,
although intensive forces seem to be divisible into par ts, the parts obtained
through division differ in nature from one another. In an important sense,
therefore, intensive forces are indivisible, because, unlike extended magni­
tudes, no one of their parts preexists the division or retains the nature that it
used to have before its division.27
Thus, Deleuze concludes, the sufficient reason for transformation and
becoming is the interaction of differential intensities, incommensurable
with respect to each other, indivisible in themselves, but not at all for these
reasons, indeterminate. Intensive forces are perfectly determinable and
determinate in relation to each other. Distance, inequality, and difference
are positive characteristics of the intensive manifold. Negation has no pri-
rnacy. Only in the process ofits deployment, difference tends to cancel itself
out in extension, and distance, to transform itself into length. But the can­
cellation ofdifference in extension and length does not make it any less the
sentiendum of sensibility: difference/intensity is that which constitutes the
sensible.
Without understanding, however, sensibility is blind, and understand­
ing without sensibility is empty. This cornerstone ofthe Kantian idealism is
due for a radical revision in the texts of Deleuze. The revision will attempt
to establish the primacy of the Idea over the concept, with the understand­
ing that, if this move succeeds, the traditional image of a recognitive and
representative understanding will have to surrender its constitutive func­
tion to the differentiating role of the cogitandum-to that which ought to be
thought.

Desire and I ts Politics

Poised against the totalizing ambitions o f the modern and the ineffectual
celebration/lament of the postmodern, Deleuze orchestrated an untimely
project for desire. The two volumes of Capitalism and Schi<;'.ophrtnia28 and his
Dia/,ogues29 are the repositories ofthis project. Rather than being a generator
of phantasms, desire, according to Deleuze, produces connections and ar­
rangements that are real in their function and revolutionary in their sprawl­
ing multiplicity. A process without telos, intensity without intention, desire
(like the Aristotelian pleasure) has its "specific perfection" within itself at
each moment ofits duration. Desire is energeia-not kinesis. The fault ofthe
modern and the postmodern alike is to have overlooked the energetic model
of Aristotle, Spinoza, and Nietzsche and to have appropriated instead the
kinetic and mimetic model of Plato (see part III, essay 16).
An energetic, constructivist, productive, and revolutionary model ofde­
sire such as Deleuze's is inevitably on a collision course with the psychoana­
lytic version of the unconscious and its subjection to Oedipus ( part I II, es­
say 1 2) . Indeed, the twin volumes of Capitalism and Schi(.ophrtnia deploy a
critique of psychoanalysis that is no longer a mere revisionism, like Mar­
cuse's, Ricoeur's, or Habermas's .30 Oedipus is no longer the phantasm that
haunts the child; he is the paranoid obsession that torments the adult. The
child must not expect her becoming-adult from her forced participation in
the order of the father; the adult must build her becoming-child with the
blocks ofchildhood she carries along with her. Deleuze (and coauthor Felix
Guattari) denounce the Freudian Oedipus for having captured and con­
fined desire. But the Anti-Oedipus, the first volume of Capitalism and Schi<:".o­
phrtnia, published in 1 972, is not exactly placated by the Lacanian recast�ng
of the Freudian drama either; nor does it conceal its opposition to the
ominous transformation of psychoanalysis that the Ecolt Freudinml brought
about.31 When the signifier is substituted for the signified, Deleuze and
Guattari argue, psychoanalysis turns its back to any experimental scientific
aspiration that it might have entertained 'and opts for the invincibility of
axiomatic systems. As a result of this shift, it articulates a daunting official
language and places it at the service of the established order.
Instead of the Oedipus-dominated psychoanalysis, Deleuze and Guat­
tari have been advocating schizoanalytic theory and practice.32 Schiz­
oanalysis takes psychoanalysis to task for insulating the libido and its in­
vestments against the flights of masses and the marauding of packs. It
suggests that all desiring investments are social and have necessary rela­
tions to concrete historical conj unctures (see part II I , essay 13). The un­
conscious, for Deleuze and Guattari, is a social and political space to
conquer-not a prodigious memory to nurture and protect.
As for death, Deleuze and Guattari argue, it is the limit of extreme, op­
posite investments of desire, but the fact is that schizoanalysis and psycho­
analysis do not invoke the same death. One does not need the postulate of a
death drive to account for catatonic states. The "black hole" ofthe paranoid
fusion, being the outcome of the collapse of desiring arrangements, has
nothing in common with -�he active schizoid desire of becoming-Other,
which shatters the "sphere ofownness" and ushers in the death of the sub­
ject. 33 They have nothing in common except the "body without organs," the
unextended, zero-intensity body of Deleuze and Guattari's schizoanalysis.
Neither an organism nor a "lived body, " the body without organs is a series
without organs, with indeterminate organs, or with temporary, transitory
-
organs. Being the site of anarchy (its political function), of a Nirvan�� �_!te
_ -
release from excitements and irritations (its schizoanalytic function), and
the surface for the inscription ofinclusive disj unctions (its ontological func­
tion), it appropriates organs in order to function, makes use of them, but
also repudiates and takes its revenge upon them whenever it has eno1,1g)iof
their aggression. It is clear that "body without organs" is a portmanteau
word, the sign of an originary disjunction, the "somber precursor" that
gives rise to two distinct series, organic and anorganic, and brings them to­
gether in a resonant association--::-nonsense generating senl!«;.34

Deleuze and Guattari's political theory and strategy loathe models­

models for the revolution-and work instead with "localized" principles of
intelligibility, allowing concrete social conj unctures to be assessed in terms
of their molar and molecular tendencies.35 Once again, the ritornello of
their minor deconstruction coordinates the manifesto of their radical plu-
 14 Editor's lnlrodru:tfon

ralism: fusion and fission are the absolute external limits of society.
Centralizing hyperorganizations and political atomism are the two poles
that tend toward, without ever reaching, the state of political immobility.
They are the exclusive disjunctions of the body politic marking the para­
noid and clinically schizophrenic poles of the social investment of desire.
But the emphasis on local principles of intelligibility does not always pre­
vent Deleuze and Guattari from advancing bold hypotheses. Take, for ex­
ample, their nomadology and the way it centers on the Urstaat hypothesis:
the State, they argue, is not the result of a long and laborious evolution. I t
comes about, ready-made and all o f a sudden, a s the prototype of all seden­
tary arrangements.36 The State always already exists, but it exists only in
relation to an outside and cannot be conceived apart from this relation. The
outside of the State are nomads and their constant struggle to fend off the
sedentarism that the State threatens to impose upo� them. But once again,
this outside is not a relation of externality. Sedentaries and nomads are si­
multaneously present within the State. The State, with its appropriative
powers, incorporates lines of flight that were not made for it. Once cap­
tured, these "alien to the State lines" may mobilize forces of transformation
and change that cannot be overlooked by any political analyst and strate­
gist.
I n the nomads' capacity for transformation and flight, Deleuze and
Guattari situate their difference from Foucault: "for him," they say, "a so­
cial field is run through by strategics; for us it flees from all its edges. "37
I ndeed, this difference may well be the basis for the guarded optimism that
permeates the following passage: "The choice is not between the State and
its other-the nomad- . . . . We should dream no more about the disap­
pearance of the State; we should rather choose . . . between blocking be­
comings or endowing ourselves with a war machine and making ourselves
nomad"38 (see part V, essay 25). In the last analysis, Deleuze and Guattari's
wager on the nomads is due to their conviction that the outside is ultimately
an irrecuperable and inexhaustible source of neg-entropic energy and
capture-resisting subjectivity.
This point was recently made by one subtle reader ofDeleuze, Monique
Scheepers. According to her, the correct reception of Deleuze's politics de­
pends on our ability to coordinate skillfolly his political theory with his the­
ory of subjectivity. In fact, as Scheepers goes on to argue, subjectivity, for
Deleuze, is essentially a political dimension, to the extent that it folds and
unfolds in an ever-renewed contact with the "outside"; thanks to this con­
tact, subjectivity is able to resist standardization and harnessing.39 When
the traditional subject ofinteriority is bracketed, subjectivity is not lost. On
the contrary, it is then that it reveals itself for the first time as a process and
 Editor's Introduction ''

as a special operation on the outside. But what is this "outside," and what is
this special operation that merits the name "subjectivity"? Moreover, what
is the political significance of subjectivity linked to this "outside"?
The outside is not another site, but rather an out-of-site that erodes and
dissolves all other sites. I ts logic, therefore, is like the logic of difference,
provided that the latter is understood in its transcendental and not in its
empirical dimension: instead of difference between x andy, we must now
conceive the difference ofx from itself. Like the structure ofsupplementarity
whose logic it follows, the outside is never exhausted; every attempt to cap­
ture it generates an excess or a supplement that in turn feeds anew the flows
of deterritorialization, and releases new lines of flight. As P. Levoyer and
P. Encrenaz have recently argued, the outside is Deleuze-Leibniz's virtual
that is always more than the actual; it is the virtual that haunts the actual
and, as it haunts it, makes it flow and change.40 A Heideggerian "es gibt"
bestows upon forces the role of the subject and the object of forming and
unforming processes. This same "es gibt" permits Deleuze to endorse
Foucault's claim about the primacy of resistances: "There will always be a
relation to oneself which resists codes and powers; the relation to oneself is
even one of the origins of their points ofresistance."4 1 To the extent that the
subject, for Deleuze, is the result of the folding of the outside, that is,
of the bending of forces and making them relate to one another, the subject
is the individual who, through practice and discipline, has become the site
of a bent force, that is, the folded inside of an outside. Foucault's position
could not have been any closer.
This move seals the priority and inexhaustibility of resistances, but, as
far as I can see, it paints resistances as resistances to form and as objections
to stratification. A politics of transgression can certainly find its place and
justification here, but a differentiation between smart, progressive re­
sistances and mere conservative, resentfol, or even fascist oppositions can­
not. Must we then conclude that the theoretical usefulness of the coordina­
tion between Deleuze's theory of subj ectivity and his politics has run its
course? I do not think so. The question is this: Once the Kantian categorical
imperative is no longer available, how can the compossibility of diverging
wills chart a passage between the politics offusion and the politics offission?
Such questions invite us to take a more serious look at Deleuze's studies of
Hume, Spinoza, and Nietzsche (this volume, part V, essay 28) and at the
discussions of subj ectivity and its politics found in them: Hume­
subj ectivity and politics as an artifice, that is, as the result and the agent of
experimentation; Spinoza-subj ectivity and politics as the artifice of desire
that dissipates sad passions and restores the healing power ofjoyous affects;
Nietzsche-subj ectivity and politics as the bent and folded forces of the out-
 16 F.dilor's lnlroduclion

side that create an inside already always deeper than any other kind ofinte­
riority.42

Minor Languages and Nomad Arts

Derrida's theory of the deconstructive efficacy of language and the practice
that this theory entails are by now fairly well-known moves in our fin de
siecle manic depression. But, on the other hand, Deleuze and Guattari's
"minor deconstructive" approaches to language are more timidly invoked
in the context of our local discussions, and the timidity begins to lose its
initial innocence. The truth of the matter is that Deleuze (and Guattari)
have written extensively on the subject: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, 43 Kefka:
Tbward a Minor Literature,44 and Superpositions,45 are the main sources.
Minor deconstruction does not propose to determine majorities and mi­
norities statistically. On the contrary, the dominant linguistic model that
postulates that the intelligibility of minor languages depends on the epis­
temic priority of standard languages is in collusion with the political model
for a homogeneous, centralized, and dominant language of power (see part
I V, essays 17 and 1 8 ) . Minor languages have their own internal homoge­
neity and consistency. I n fact, as minor languages strive for recognition,
they tend to become locally major. On the other hand, the more major a
language becomes, the more it is evident that its innermost lines of flight
transform it from within and deterritorialize it toward a minor position. I t
follows that "major" and "minor" languages or literatures enter into com­
plex disjunctive syntheses that disallow the simplistic oppositional distribu­
tion of them into "high" and "low. " It is preferable, therefore, to read "ma­
jor" and "minor" as the qualifiers of two different tendencies or functions of
every language. Major is the tendency toward standardization and fixed
identity by means of homogenization, overcoding, and centralization: the
langue/parole distinction, the pragmatic presuppositions of the dominant
theory of the speech acts, the differentiation between ideal speech situation
and distorted communication, the pre-predicative founding stratum of op­
erating intentionality, are some of the many different strategies for the pro­
duction of such an identity. " Minor," on the other hand, is not the mark of
the quantitative or qualitative marginality ofa dialect, but rather the index
of transformative forces inherent in language and literature (semiotic, se­
mantic, stylistic, pragmatic, etc.), and especially of the transformative
forces that facilitate "transversal" alliances of equivalence. "Major" and
"minor," in this sense, qualify different experiences of language, distribute
in different ways the space of politics, and give rise to different linguistic
theories. In the last analysis, it may be argued that they are anchored in
different experiences of the body.
 Editor's Introduction 17

With Derridean deconstruction, minor deconstruction shares the initial

premise that language is anarchic, provided, of course, that "anarchic" is
heard in a very special way: it is not from the "lived" or the "sensed" that
one reaches the "sai d," but rather one "said" always engenders another.
Deconstructive minorities, in holding language to be "anarchic," intend in­
deed to denounce all attempts to fasten language onto referents whose iden­
tity is guaranteed by "good" and "common" sense, reliable hard science,
required competences, or entrenched conventions. But at the same time
they are uneasy with the defensive Derridean strategies that reproduce in
the space of language the Freudian dream of an interminable analysis. I f
emancipation from t h e reproductive proliferation o ft h e dominant signifier
is to become possible, if deconstruction is to intervene, not for the sake of the
Other-in-general, but rather for the sake of the Other for whom la prise de la
parole is an urgent task, then the circulation of the signifier-whether athe­
ist, parodic, performative or whether devout, somber, and assertive-must
be circumscribed by a purposiveness without purpose, even if one is con­
vinced that the final hour of the Other and of the pure emancipatory utter­
ance will never come. Against, therefore, defensive strategies aimed at pre­
venting the conservative foreclosure of language through anaphoric
identities and against the endless relay ofsignifiers through metaphoric dif­
ferences, Deleuze and Guattari opt for the stuttering intervention of the mi­
noritarian.
Order-words and passwords, for Deleuze and Guattari, are the contrac­
tions and dilations of language. 46 Order-words and passwords, without
being coextensive with imperatives or commands, are the staging orders of
discourse, without which no utterance can fonction. Radicalizing the work
of Austin, Searle, and Apel, Deleuze and Guattari show that order-words
and passwords are regulatory and verdictive. They are the implicit presup­
positions of discursive practices, distinct from presuppositions that become
explicit when utterances are interpreted by other utterances, and also dis­
tinct from actions that are extrinsic to them. Without these regulatory pre­
suppositions, the articulation of the semiotic, semantic, pragmatic, and
procedural features of language-games would not account for " pragmatic
contradictions" or for the materiality of language. Deleuze insists that
order-words and passwords depend upon concrete political spaces. To ar­
gue, therefore, as is often done, that politics is external to language is to turn
a blind eye to the way language functions. Not only vocabulary but also
syntax and semantics are transformed as order-words change and shift.
Deleuze and Guattari know of course that order-words and passwords do
not have the same function. Order-words attempt to fuse language and to
eliminate the space or the interval between types in order to bring the flight
of signifiers to an abrupt halt. Consequently, they are techno-political de-
 18 F.tlilor's lnlrodudiOll

vices that bring about conjunctive syntheses, exclusive disjunctions, hypo­

tactic formations, and molar or subjugated groups. But at the other end of
the linguistic continuum, the password "names the flight" and "speaks the
things." The password functions as it breaks the blocks of identity, as it
creates intervals, and as it makes language move (see part I V, essay 25). I ts
performativeness is reminiscent of the "estrangement-effect" that Russian
formalists used to talk about.47
Order-words and passwords alike annex Being, and the annexation of
Being is, in the Kantian project, the trace of politico-libidinal desires. But
they do not annex Being in the same way. Order-words annex Being
through identity-formation and subjection. Passwords annex Being
through the repetition of differences. The fact is, though, that language is
simultaneously crisscrossed by order-words and passwords without this
fact disabling the evaluation ofsemiotic systems according to the prepon­
derance ofeither order-words or passwords in them.

In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari gave us a lengthy characteriz­

ation of "nomad" (as opposed to "royal") sciences, and I find in this char­
acterization a helpfol access to the problematic of"nomad" arts as well.48
Nomad arts mobilize material and forces instead ofmatter and form. Royal
arts, being law oriented, strive to establish constants and, by means of an
unchanging form, to discipline and control a supposedly reticent and un­
ruly matter.Nomad arts, on the contrary, strive to put variables in a state of
constant variation. The model for royal arts is hylomorphic, imposing form
on secondary matter, that is, on matter that is already prepared to accept
form. But in the case of nomad arts, matter is never prepared in advance,
nor is it homogenized I t is rather "a vehicle of singularities which con­
stitutes the form of the content. As for the expression, instead of being for­
mal, it is inseparable from the pertinent characteristics, which constitute
the matter of the expression."
I n Difference and Repetition, Deleuze argued that the I dea-problem (or the
cogitandum), in order to be grasped, requires a chain reaction oflevels ofin­
tensity that must begin with sensible encounters.49 Only the violence ofthe
sentiendum would stand a chance of bringing about the resonance and the
com possibility of all I deas-problems. In 198 I Deleuze decided to face this
violence seriously, choosing this time as his laboratory the paintings of the
Irish artist Francis Bacon5° (see part I V, essays 2 2 and 23). Struck by the
powerful tensions that run through these paintings (tensions between figur­
ation and defiguration; between disequilibrating, convulsive forces and an
emerging balance; between motion and rest; contraction and expansion;
destruction and creation) Deleuze concluded that their function is "to pro-
 Editor's lntroduelitlh 19

duce resemblances with non-resembling means . " The violence o fsensation

tormenting Bacon's canvases trades off representation for the exploration of
a world never before seen, yet strangely familiar and near. In his effort to
escape the figurative and representative modes of narration and illustration
and also the abstractness of pure form, Bacon aims at the liberation of the
figure through iconic isolation. Through iconic isolation, that is, the neu­
tralization of the background and the enclosure of figures in well-defined
spaces, it prevents the figure from telling a story or from representing forms
external to the canvas. Deleuze, faithful to his principle of transcendental
empiricism, applauds the techniques of iconic isolation that turn figures
into "matters of fact" and prevent their becoming situated inside a network
of intelligible relations. Iconic isolation is the best training possible for
those who look for an alternative to the phenomenology of natural percep­
tion in order to raise sensibility to its suprasensible destiny. It is also the best
training possible for all those who, in Klee's happy phrase, want "not to
render the visible, but to render visible. " 5 1
Instead of many sensations of different orders, Deleuze credits Bacon's
painting with the ability to display different orders ofone and the same sen­
sation. Sensation, in his painting, is what happens between orders and lev­
els. I ndeed, Deleuze finds it more appropriate to talk of sensation and not of
sensations, because sensations are extensive and contiguous, whereas sen­
sation is intensive. Sensation is the figure, understood as the difference efthe
canvas.
None of this would be possible if sensation were to be thought of as a
mere representation of the interaction ofan eye and an object. But sensation
is not the response to a form any more than Bacon's painting is a form­
giving gesture. Sensation, contends Deleuze, is intimately related, not to
forms but to forces, just as Bacon's painting aims at the capturing of force.
And since a force must exert itself on a body for sensation to exist, force is
the necessary condition ofsensation, provided ofcourse that sensation is not
supposed to represent the force. I t is "form . . . that subj ugates force to a
function, turns it against itself and transforms it into an energy ofreproduc­
tion and conservation of forms."52 Sensation, like force, brings things to­
gether in the very process of separating them. Now we understand what al­
lows Deleuze to think ofsensation in terms ofdifferent orders and levels: it is
the fact that forces are intensities and therefore qualified as either high or
low. I ntensity permits us to talk about the multiplicity of sensation without
having to appeal to many sensations. "Sensation," says Deleuze following
Cezanne, "has one face turned toward the subject . . . and another, turned
toward the object ('the fact,' the place, the event). Or rather, it does not have
faces at all, it is both things at once; it is the being-in-the-world of the phe-
 20 Editor's lntroduetlon

nomenologists: I become in sensation, and at the same time something happens

because ofit. I n the last analysis, the same body gives it and receives it, and
this body is both object and subject."53
Painting, to be sure, is not the only fine art. Deleuze and Guattari find in
music additional confirmation for their nomadic choice (see part IV, 24).
I ndeed, A Thousand Plateaus devotes some very intriguing pages to music
and to the place that music has within the cosmos:54 an entire chapter on
"rhizomusicosmology"55 defends a nontraditional approach to music, con­
necting it with molecular becomings, studying it for the sake of its "ametri­
cal rhythms of the incommensurable and the unequal," and gleaning from
it a method of experimentation with "the floating time ofhaecceities. "
I t i s not the expression o r the content of a work of art that capture the
attention of Deleuze and Guattari. It is th� form of the expression and the
form of the content, 56 the parallelism established between the two, and their
resonant association. A brief look at Deleuze's impressive work on
cinema- Ci nema r : The Movement-Image and Cinema 2 : The Time-lmage57-
makes this very clear. In these two volumes, Deleuze invites Bergson, the
philosopher, to the movies in order to show him that his dismissal of the
"cinematographic illusion, " that is, of the reconstitution of movement on
the basis of immobile slices or cuts, was in fact all too hasty. Cinema today,
argues Deleuze, successfully meets Bergson's challenge, because the age of
the camera verifies the system of universal variation that Bergson tried to
articulate. Moreover, the eye of the camera transcends human perception
toward another perception, which is the genetic element of every possible
perception.
As they sample a wide variety of films-from silent to experimental­
Deleuze and Bergson stop to savor the new image of thought that the film­
maker, experimenting with her new material, has also begun to articulate:
the need for a nonhuman eye, an eye between and inside things, that only
montage can satisfy in its quest for the "originary" world; the organic ar­
rangement of movement-images of the American cinema, with D. W.
Griffith setting the parts in binary oppositions and, through alternating or
parallel montage, making the image of one part succeed the image of an­
other according to a certain rhythm; the oppositional montage of the Rus­
sian Eisenstein under the dialectical law of the one divided into two in order
to form a higher unity; the mathematical sublime of the classic French
cinema, interested primarily in the quantity of movement and in the metric
relations that would allow its determination; the dynamic sublime of Ger­
man expressi onism, which substit ut es light for movement and ush ers in in­
tensity as the tremendous force that annihilates organic being, strikes it
 &alor'I /rd'°"9lelioJ1 21

with terror, but also gives birth t o a thinking faculty that makes u s feel supe­
rior to the forces that annihilate us. The cinema is replete with movement­
images, representing mobile "slices" of duration, with time-images,
change-images, relation-images, action-images, and affect-images. There is
framing and deframing (see part 41 essay 20), intervals operating with the
force ofintensive time ( part 4, essay 2 1 ), spatial singularities and, above all,
the Whole that is the Open-not the frame of all frames, but the unseen and
the unrepresented that links frames together at the same time that it sepa­
rates and differentiates them.

One word now about this R.tadtr: it is the child of a frustration and the re­
sponse to a challenge. Judging by recent publications and conferences, our
Anglo-American discussions on "poststructuralism," "postmodernism,"
and "deconstruction" seem to be running out of steam. But t he curious
thing is that epitaphs and eulogies alike tend to bypass Gilles Deleuze, one
of the most fertile minds of the last forty years. The name is mentioned­
often with admiration-but Deleuze's texts are seldom used. This embar­
rassing silence is the source of the frustration from which this R.tader was
born.
Perhaps the silence is overdetermined. In the 1 970s and 1 980s the center
of gravity of theoretical encounters of the " minor" kind shifted toward liter­
ary theory, feminist theory, and "dissident" sociology. But the space within
which these encounters took place was already striated with exclusive dis­
junctions of North American vintage: pagan pluralism or hermeneutic
pietas, phallogocentricism o r being woman, positivist superficiality or gene­
alogical investigations. On the other hand, the long and intimidating philo­
sophical lineage of Deleuze's project, the long-standing reticence of the
North American Freudo-Marxism even to entertain the suspicion that its
war machine may have bred a "capture apparatus," the inoculation of our
analysts w ith the Marc use vacci ne, and, last but not least, the fear of being
identified with the "marginals" of the 1 960s, have all contributed to the si­
lence.
But to overlook Deleuze's theory of difference and repetition is to sur­
render the deconstructive space to the jejune logophobia of the epigoni: to
refose to name the Other on whose body power is inscribed in figures of
cruelty, subjection, and forced reterritorialization is to silence the agent
constantly mobilized in all deconstructive practices. To ignore Deleuze's
theory of productive desire is to allow the Foucauldian emancipatory inter­
est to fritter away in positivist investigations without ever revealing the
"body without organs" that supports and sustains it. Finally, not to heed
 22 Editor's lnlroduedon

minor languages and minor deconstructive practices is to think wishfully

that catachresic transgressions suffice by themselves to produce the event of
speech and the prise de la parole.
With the selections included in this Reader, I have tried to trace a diagram
zigzagging from one concept of Deleuze's to another, without obliterating
the outline ofhis own canvas. In order to counterbalance, as much as possi­
ble, the arborescent (orderly and organic) tendencies of the Reader, or, at
least, in order to remind the reader of the precautions s/he must take as
s/he goes through this collection, I chose as my prefatory text long excerpts
from Deleuze and Guattari's "Rhizome," the well-known introduction to A
Thousand Plateaus (see part I, essay 1 ). Rather than "book-trees" and the ar­
borescent reading that helps them grow taller, Deleuze and Guattari prefer
book-rhizomes, rhizomatic writing, and schizoanalytic reading. Rhizomes
may be broken at any point of their growth, without being prevented from
spreading through a multitude of alternate lines. Rhizomatic writing and
reading are therefore preferable for turning a text into a problem and for
tracing its active lines of transformation, stuttering, and fl i ght, or for pre­
venting its canonization. Lines of flight help transform a text and de­
construct the primacy of its signifi ers or signifieds. This Reader grows
around the textual lines of flight marked "intensity," "desire," "power,"
"becoming-minoritarian," and "becoming-nomad ." It counts on these
lines to bring the anthologized texts to their decline, and writing with its
authorial responsibility, to its demise or, at least, face to face with the kind of
alterity that would no longer circulate and exchange or inspire and enshrine
meanmg.
The choice of the "Rhizome" as the opening statement of this Reader is
also governed by another consideration. In 1968, when nomadic desire took
its affirmation to the streets, Deleuze met Guattari. From 1970 to 1980 they
wrote and grew together, giving us samples of writing that are convincingly
rhizomatic. After eleven years of separate growth, with the publication of
Qu 'est-ce que la philosophie?5B with both their names on the jacket, their active
cooperation has been renewed. This Reader includes many texts. from the
earlier period of the icriture a deux and makes any attempt to draw lines of
demarcation between the rhizome "Deleuze" and the rhizome "Guattari"
pointless. Here is how Deleuze talks about his work with Guattari:

My encounter with Felix Guattari changed a lot of things. Felix already

had a long history of political involvement and of psychiatric work. . . .
In my earlier books, I tried to describe a certain exercise of thought; but
describing it was not yet exercising thought in that way. . . . With Felix,
all that became possible, even ifwe failed. We were only two, but what was
 EtMtor's l11troduelion 2.J

important for us was less our working together than this strange fact of
working between tre two of us. And these "between-the-twos" referred
back to other people, who were different on one side from m the other.
The desert expanded , but in so doing became more populous. 59

This &ader assumes a number of challenges: to bring to the center of our

critical discussions Deleuze's philosophical references to the nomadic itin­
erary of Ideas, always already at war with the sedentary "image of
thought"; to highlight texts that could prevent misreadings of rhizomatic
desire from becoming canonic; to distinguish the minor deconstructive
practices ofDeleuze from the dominant "restrained" deconstruction ofDer­
rida; to offer a sample of Deleuze's writings on nomad arts in search of the
aesthetic Idea that has no intuition adequate to it; and to sketch the dia­
gram of the polit ical dilations and contractions of the body without organs.
Whether accepting this challenge was a successfol throw of the dice is not
for me to say. I nstead, it will be determined by the reader's desire to go be­
yond this volume, to the rhizome named "Deleuze," outside of the solarium
that I, the editor, prepared for it. My only solace is that this selection was
made as a labor of love and with the humiliating awareness that a Reader
may not easily cast out its own arborescent tendencies.
Pa rt One

Rhizome
 1
Rhizome fer sus Trees

A first type of book is the root-book. The tree is already the image of the
world , or the root the image of the world-tree. This is the classical book, as
noble, signifying, and subjective organic interiority (the strata of the book).
The book imitates the world, as art imitates nature: by procedures specific
to it that accomplish what nature cannot or can no longer do. The law of the
book is the law of reflection, the One that becomes two. How could the law
of the book reside in nature, when it is what presides over the very division
between world and book, nature and art? One becomes two: whenever we
encounter this formula, even stated strategically by Mao or understood in
the most "dialectical" way possible, what we have before us is the most
classical and well reflected, oldest, and weariest kind of thought. Nature
doesn't work that way: in nat ure, roots are taproots with a more multiple,
lateral, and circular system oframification, rather than a dichotomous one.
Thought lags behind nature. Even the book as a natural reality is a taproot,
with its pivotal spine and surrounding leaves. But the book as a spirit ual
reality, the Tree or Root as an image, endlessly develops the law of the One
that becomes two, then of the two that become four . . . Binary logic is the
spiritual reality of the root-tree. Even a discipline as "advanced" as lin­
guistics retains the root-tree as its fundamental image, and thus remains
wedded to classical reflection (for example, Chomsky and his grammatical
 28 RHIZ O M E

trees, which begin a t a point S and proceed by dichotomy). This is as much

as to say that this system of thought has never reached an understanding of
multiplicity: in order to arrive at two following a spiritual method it must
assume a strong principal unity. On the side of the object, it is no doubt
possible, following the natural method, to go directly from One to three,
four, or five, but only ifthere is a strong p rincipal unity available, that of the
pivotal taproot supporting the secondary roots. That doesn't get us very far.
The binary logic of dichotomy has simply been replaced by bi univocal rela­
tionships between successive circles. The pivotal ta p root provides no better
understanding of multiplicity than the dichotomous root. One operates in
the object, the other in the subject. Binary logic and biunivocal relation­
ships still dominate psychoanalysis (the tree of delusion in the Freudian in­
terpretation of Schreber's case), linguistics, struct uralism, and even infor­
mation science.
The radicle-system, or fascicular root, is the second figure of the book, to
which our modernity p ays willing allegiance. This time, the princip al root
has aborted, or its tip has been destroyed; an immediate, indefinite multi­
plicity ofsecondary roots grafts onto it and undergoes a flourishing develop­
ment. This time, natural reality is what aborts the p rincipal root, but the
root's unity subsists, as past or yet to come, as possible. We must ask if re­
fl e xive, spiritual reality does not compensate for this state of things by de­
manding an even more comprehensive secret unity, or a more extensive to­
tality. Take William Burroughs's cut-up method: the folding of one text onto
another, which constitutes multiple and even adventitious roots (like a cut­
ting), implies a su pp lementary dimension to that of the texts under consid­
eration. In this supplementary dimension of folding, unity continues its
spiritual labor. That is why the most resolutely fragmented work can also be
presented as the Total Work or Magnum Opus. Most modern methods for
making series proliferate or a multiplicity grow are perfectly valid in one
direction, for example, a linear direction, whereas a unity oftotalization as­
serts itself even more firmly in another, circular or cyclic, dimension. When­
ever a multiplicity is taken up in a structure, its growth is offset by a reduc­
tion in its laws of combination. The abortionists of unity are indeed angel
makers, doctores angelici, because they affirm a properly angelic and superior
unity. Joyce's words, accurately described as having "multiple roots," shat­
ter the linear unity of the word, even oflanguage, only to posit a cyclic unity
of the sentence, text, or knowledge. Nietzsche's aphorisms shatter the linear
unity ofknowledge, only to invoke the cyclic unity of the eternal return, p re­
sent as the nonknown in thought. This is as much as to say that the fascicu­
lar system does not really break with dualism, with the complementarity
between a subject and an object, a natural reality and a spiritual reality:
unity is consistently thwarted and obstructed in the object, while a new type
of unity triumphs in the subject. The world has lost its pivot; the subject can
no longer even dichotomize, but accedes to a higher unity, of ambivalence or
overdetermination, in an always supplementary dimension to that ofits ob­
ject. The world has become chaos, but the book remains the image of the
world: radicle-chaosmos rather than root-cosmos. A strange mystification:
a book all the more total for being fragmented. At any rate, what a vapid
idea, the book as the image of the world. In truth, it is not enough to say,
"Long live the multiple," difficult as it is to raise that cry. No typographical,
lexical, or even syntactical cleverness is enough to make it heard . The multi­
ple must be made, not by always adding a higher dimension, but rather in the
simplest of ways, by dint of sobriety, with the number of dimensions one
already has available-always n 1 (the only way the one belongs to the
-

multiple: always subtracted). Subtract the unique from the multiplicity to

be constituted; write at n 1 dimensions. A system of this kind could be
-

called a rhizome. A rhizome as subterranean stem is absolutely different

from roots and radicles. Bulbs and tubers are rhizomes. Plants with roots or
radicles may be rhizomorphic in other respects altogether: the question is
whether plant life in its specificity is not entirely rhizomatic. Even some ani­
mals are, in their pack form. Rats are rhizomes. Burrows are too, in all of
their functions of shelter, supply, movement, evasion, and breakout. The
rhizome itself assumes very diverse forms, from ramified surface extension
in all directions to concretion into bulbs and tubers. When rats swarm over
each other. The rhizome includes the best and the worst: potato and
couchgrass, or the weed. Animal and plant, couchgrass is crabgrass. We get
the distinct feeling that we will convince no one unless we enumerate certain
approximate characteristics of the rhizome.
1 and 2. Principles of connection and heterogeneity: any point of a
rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be. This is very
different from the tree or root, which plots a point, fixes an order. The
linguistic tree on the Chomsky model still begins at a point S and pro­
ceeds by dichotomy. On the contrary, not every trait in a rhizome is nec­
essarily linked to a linguistic feature: semiotic chains of every nature are
connected to very diverse modes of coding (biological, political, econom­
ic, etc.) that bring into play not only different regimes of signs but also
states of things of differing status. Collective assemblages efenunciation func­
tion directly within machinic assemblages; it is not impossible to make a
radical break between regimes of signs and their objects. Even when lin­
guistics claims to confine itself to what is explicit and to make no presup­
positions about language, it is still in the sphere of a discourse implying
 JO RHrZOMK

particular modes o f assemblage and types o f social power. Chomsky's

grammaticality, the categorical S symbol that dominates every sentence,
is more fondamentally a marker of power than a syntactic marker: you
will construct grammatically correct sentences, you will divide each
statement into a noun phrase and a verb phrase (first dichotomy. . . ) .
O u r criticism o f these linguistic models i s n o t that they are too abstract
but, on the contrary, that they are not abstract enough, that they do not
reach the abstra,ct ma,chine that connects a language to the semantic and
pragmatic contents of statements, to collective assemblages of enuncia­
tion, to a whole micropolitics of the social field. A rhizome ceaselessly
establishes connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power,
and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles. A
semiotic chain is like a tuber agglomerating very diverse acts, not only
linguistic, but also perceptive, mimetic, gestural, and cognitive: there is
no language in itself, nor are there any linguistic universals, only a
throng of dialects, patois, slangs, and specialized languages. There is no
ideal speaker-listener, any more than there is a homogeneous linguistic
community. Language is, in Weinreich's words, "an essentially hetero­
geneous reality. "1 There is no mother tongue, only a power takeover by a
dominant language within a political multiplicity. Language stabilizes
around a parish, a bishopric, a capital. It forms a bulb. It evolves by sub­
terranean stems and flows, along river valleys or train tracks; it spreads
like a patch of oil.2 It is always possible to break a language down into
internal structural elements, an undertaking not fundamentally different
from a search for roots. There is always something genealogical about a
tree. It is not a method for the people. A method of the rhizome type, on
the contrary, can analyze language only by decentering it onto other di­
mensions and other registers. A language is never closed upon itself, ex­
cept as a fonction of impotence.
3. Principle of multiplicity: it is only when the multiple is effectively
treated as a substantive, "multiplicity," that it ceases to have any relation
to the One as subject or object, natural or spiritual reality, image and
world. Multiplicities are rhizomatic, and expose arborescent pseu­
domultiplicities for what they are. There is no unity to serve as a pivot in
the object, or to divide in the subject. There is not even the unity to abort
in the object or "return" in the subject. A multiplicity has neither subject
nor object, only determinations, magnit udes, and dimensions that can­
not increase in number without the multiplicity changing in nature ( th e
laws of combination therefore increase in number a s t h e multiplicity
grows). Puppet strings, as a rhizome or multiplicity, are tied not to the
supposed will of an artist or puppeteer but to a multiplicity of nerve fi-
 Rllil:.oml 1tr111s 'nus J1

bers, which form another puppet in other dimensions connected to the

first: "Call the strings or rods that move the puppet the weave. It might
be obj ected that its multiplici�y resides in the person of the actor, who
proj ects it into the text. Granted; but the actor's nerve fibers in turn form
a weave . And they fall through the gray matter, the grid, into the un­
differentiated. . . . The interplay approximates the pure activity of
weavers attributed in myth to the Fates or Norns."3 An assemblage is
precisely this increase in the dimensions ofa multiplicity that necessarily
changes in nature as it expands its connections. There are no points or
positions in a rhizome, such as those found in a structure, tree, or root.
There are only lines. When Glenn Gould speeds up the performance ofa
piece, he is not just displaying virtuosity, he is transforming the musical
points into lines, he is making the whole piece proliferate. The number is
no longer a universal concept measuring elements according to their em­
placement in a given dimension, but has itself become a multiplicity that
varies according to the dimensions considered (the primacy of the do­
main over a complex of numbers attached to that domain). We do not
have units [uni tis] of measure, only multiplicities or varieties of measure­
ment. The notion of unity [unite1 appears only when there is a power
takeover in the multiplicity by the signifier or a corresponding subjec­
tification proceeding: This is the case for a pivot-unity forming the basis
for a set ofbiunivocal relationships between objective elements or points,
or for the One that divides following the law of a binary logic of differ­
entiation in the subject. Unity always operates in an empty dimension
supplementary to that of the system considered (overcoding). The point
is that a rhizome or multiplicity never allows itself to be overcoded, never
has available a supplementary dimension over and above its number of
lines, that is, over and above the multiplicity of numbers attached to
those lines. All multiplicities are flat, in the sense that they fill or occupy
all of their dimensions: we will therefore speak of a plane of consistency of
multiplicities, even though the dimensions of this "plane" increase with
the number of connections that are made on it. Multiplicities are defined
by the outside: by the abstract line, the line of flight or deterritorializa­
tion according to which they change in nature and connect with other
multiplicities. The plane of consistency (grid) is the outside of all multi­
plicities. The line offlight marks: the reality of a finite number of dimen­
sions that the multiplicity effectively fills; the impossibility of a supple­
mentary dimension, unless the multiplicity is transformed by the line of
flight; the possibility and necessity offlattening all of the multiplicities on
a single plane of consistency or exteriority, regardless of their number of
dimensions. The ideal for a book would be to lay everything out on a
 J2 RHIZOME

plane o f exteriority o f this kind, o n a single page, the same sheet: lived
events, historical determinations, concepts, individuals, groups, social
formations. Kleist invented a writing of this type, a broken chain of af­
fects and variable speeds, with accelerations and transformations, al­
ways in a relation with the outside. Open rings. His texts, therefore, are
opposed in every way to the classical or romantic book constituted by the
interiority of a substance or subject. The war machine-book against the
State apparatus-book. Flat multiplicities ofn dimensions are asignifying and
asubjective. They are designated by indefinite articles, or rather by par­
titives (some couchgrass, some ofa rhizome . . . ).
4. Principle of asignifying rupture: against the oversignifying breaks
separating structures or cutting across a single structure. A rhizome may
be broken, shattered at a given spot, but it will start up again on one ofits
old lines, or on new lines. You can never get rid of ants because they form
an animal rhizome that can rebound time and again after most of it has
been destroyed. Every rhizome contains lines of segmentarity according
to which it is stratified, territorialized, organized, signified, attributed,
etc., as well as lines of deterritorialization down which it constantly flees.
There is a rupt ure in the rhizome whenever segmentary lines explode
into a line offlight, but the line offlight is part of the rhizome. These lines
always tie back to one another. That is why one can never posit a dualism
or a dichotomy, even in the rudimentary form of the good and the bad.
You may make a rupture, draw a line of flight, yet there is still a danger
that you will reencounter organizations that restratify everything, for­
mations that restore power to a signifier, attributions that reconstitute a
subj ect-anything you like, from Oedipal resurgences to fascist concre­
tions. Groups and individuals. contain microfascisms j ust waiting to
crystallize. Yes, couchgrass is also a rhizome. Good and bad are only the
products of an active and temporary selection, which must be renewed .
How could movements of deterritorialization and proce�s of reter­
ritorialization not be relative, always connected, caught up in one an­
other? The orchid deterritorializes by forming an image, a tracing of a
wasp; but the wasp reterritorializes on that image. The wasp is neverthe­
less deterritorialized, becoming a piece in the orchid's reproductive ap­
paratus. But it reterritorializes the orchid by transporting its pollen.
Wasp and orchid, as heterogeneous elements, form a rhizome. It could
be said that the orchid imitates the wasp, reproducing its image in a sig­
nifying fashion (mimesis, mimicry, lure, etc . ) . But this is true only on the
level of the strata-a parallelism between two strata such that a plant
organization on one imitates an animal organization on the other. At the
same time, something else entirely is going on: not imitation at all but a
 Rhl(omt �r111s Trm JJ

capture of code, surplus value of code, an increase in valence, a veritable

becoming, a becoming-wasp of the orchid and a becoming-orchid of the
wasp. Each of these becomings brings about the deterritorialization of
one term and the reterritorialization of the other; the two becomings in­
terlink and form relays in a circulation of intensities pushing t he deter­
ritorialization ever further. There is neither imitation nor resemblance,
only an exploding of two heterogeneous series on the line of flight com­
posed by a common rhizome that can no longer be attributed to or subju­
gated b y anything signifying. Remy Chauvin expresses it well: "the ap­
arallel evolution of two beings that have absolutely nothing to do with each
other."4- More generally, evolutionary schemas may be forced to aban­
don the old model of the tree and descent. Under certain conditions, a
virus can connect to germ cells and transmit itself as the cellular gene of a
complex species; moreover, it can take flight, move into the cells of an
entirely different species, but not without bringing with it "genetic infor­
mation" from the first host (for example, Benveniste and Todaro's cur­
rent research on a type C virus, with its double connection to baboon
DNA and the DNA of certain kinds of domestic cats). Evolutionary sche­
mas would no longer follow models of arborescent descent going from the
least to the most differentiated, but instead a rhizome operating imme­
diately in the heterogeneous and j umping from one already differenti­
ated line to another.5 Once again, there is aparallel evolution, of the baboon
and the cat; it is obvious t hat they are not models or copies of each other
(a becoming-baboon in the cat does not mean that the cat "plays" ba­
boon) . We form a rhizome with our viruses, or rather our viruses cause us
to form a rhizome with other animals. As Fran�ois jacob says, transfers
of genetic material by viruses or th rough other procedures, fusions of
.
cells originating in different species, have results analogous to those of
"the abominable couplings dear to antiquity and the Middle Ages."6
Transversal communications between different lines scramble the gene­
alogical trees. Always look for the molecular, or even submolecular, par­
ticle with which we are allied. We evolve and die more from our poly­
morphous and rhizomatic flus than from hereditary diseases, or diseases
that have their own line of descent. The rhizome is an antigenealogy.
The same applies to the book and the world: contrary to a deeply
rooted belief, the book is not an image of the world. It forms a rhizome
with the world, there is an aparallel evolution of the book and the world;
the book assures the deterritorialization of the world, but the world
effects a reterritorialization of the book, which in turn deterritorializes
itself in the world (if it is capa,ble, i f it can ). Mimicry is a very bad con­
cept, since it relies on binary logic to describe phenomena of an entirely
 J4 RHfZOMI

different nature. The crocodile does not reproduce a tree trunk, any more
than the chameleon reproduces the colors of its surroundings. The Pink
Panther imitates nothing, it reproduces nothing, it paints the world its
color, pink on pink; this is its becoming-world, carried out in such a way
that it becomes imperceptible itself, asignifying, makes its rupture, its
own line of flight, follows its "aparallel evolution" through to the end.
The wisdom of the plants: even when they have roots, there is always an
outside where they form a rhizome with something else-with the wind,
an animal, human beings (and there is also an aspect under which ani­
mals themselves form rhizomes, as do people, etc . ) . "Drunkenness as a
triumphant irruption of the plant in us." Always follow the rhizome by
ru pture; lengthen, prolong, and relay the line of flight; make it vary, until
you have produced the most abstract and tortuous of lines of n dimen­
sions and broken directions. Conjugate deterritorialized flows. Follow
the plants: you start by delimiting a first line consisting of circles of con­
vergence around successive singularities; then you see whether inside
that line new circles of convergence establish themselves, with new
points located outside the limits and in other directions. Write, form a
rhizome, increase your territory by deterritorialization, extend the line of
flight to the point where it becomes an abstract machine covering the en­
tire plane of consistency. "Go first to your old plant and watch carefully
the watercourse made by the rain. By now the rain must have carried the
seeds far away. Watch the crevices made by the runoff, and from them
determine the direction of the flow. Then find the plant that is growing at
the farthest point from your plant. All the devil's weed plants that are
growing in between are yours. Later . . . you can extend the size of your
territory by following the watercourse from each point along the way. " 7
Music has always sent o u t lines o f flight, like so many " transformational
multiplicities," even overturning the very codes that structure or ar­
borify i t; that is why musical form, right down to its ruptures and pro­
liferations, is comparable to a weed, a rhizome.8
5 and 6. Principle of cartography and decalcomania: a rhizome is not
amenable to any structural or generative model. It is a stranger to any
idea of genetic axis or deep structure. A genetic axis is like an objective
pivotal unity upon which successive stages are organized; a deep struc­
ture is more like a base sequence that can be broken down into immedi­
ate constituents, while the unity of the product passes into another,
transformational and subjective, dimensions. This does not constitute a
departure from the representative model of the tree, or root-pivotal
ta p root or fascicles (for example, Chomsky's "tree" is associated with a
base sequence and represents the process of its own generation in terms
 Rlti(.om1 Krnu 1l-H.r J'

of binary logic). A variation on the oldest form of thought. It i s our view

that genetic axis and profound structure are above all infinitely re­
producible principles of tracing. All of tree logic is a logic of tracing and
reproduction. In linguistics as in psychoanalysis, its object is an uncon­
scious that is itself representative, crystallized into codified complexes ,
laid o u t along a genetic axis and distributed within a syntagmatic struc­
ture. Its goal is to describe a de facto state, to maintain balance in inter­
subj ective relations, or to explore an unconscious that is already there
from the start, lurking in the dark recesses of memory and language. It
consists of tracing, on the basis of an overcoding structure or supporting
axis, something that comes ready-made. The tree articulates and hier­
archizes tracings; tracings are like the leaves of a tree.
The rhizome is altogether different, a map and not a tracing. Make a
map, not a tracing. The orchid does not reproduce the tracing of the
wasp; it forms a map with the wasp, in a rhizome. What distinguishes the
map from the tracing is that it is entirely oriented toward an experi­
mentation in contact with the real. The map does not reproduce an un­
conscious closed in upon itself; it constructs the unconscious. It fosters
connections between fields, the removal of blockages on bodies without
organs, the maximum opening of bodies without organs onto a plane of
consistency. It is itself a part of the rhizome. The map is open and con­
nectable in all of its dimensions; it is detachable, reversible, susceptible
to constant modification. It can be torn, reversed, adapted to any kind of
mounting, reworked by an individual, group, or social formation. It can
be drawn on a wall, conceived of as a work of art, constructed as a politi­
cal action or as a meditation. Perhaps one of the most important charac­
teristics of the rhizome is that it always has multiple entryways; in this
sense, the burrow is an animal rhizome, and sometimes maintains a clear
distinction between the line of fl i ght as passageway and storage or living
strata (cf. the muskrat). A map has multiple entryways, as opposed to
the tracing, which always comes back "to the same." The map has to do
with performance, whereas the tracing always involves an alleged "com­
petence. " . . .

Let us summarize the principal characteristics of a rhizome: unlike trees or

their roots, the rhizome connects any point to any other point, and its traits
are not necessarily linked to traits of the same nature; it brings into play
very different regimes of signs, and even nonsign s tates. The rhizome is re­
ducible neither to the On"e nor the multiple. It is not the One that becomes
Two or even directly three, four, five, etc. It is not a multiple derived from
the One, or to which One is added ( n + I ). It is composed not ofunits but of
 J6 RHIZOME

dimensions, o r rather directions in motion. I t has neither beginning nor

end, but always a middle [ milieu] from which it grows and which it over­
spills. I t constitutes linear multiplicities with n dimensions having neither
subject nor obje ct, which can be laid out on a plane of consistency, and from
which the One is always subtracted (n 1 ). When a multiplicity of this kind
-

changes dimensions, it necessarily changes in nature as well, undergoes a

metamorphosis. Unlike a structure, which is defined by a set of points and
positions, with binary relations between the points and biunivocal relation­
ships between the positions, the rhizome is made only oflines: lines of seg­
mentarity and stratification as its dimensions, and the line offl ight or deter­
ritorialization as the maximum dimension after which the mult iplicity
undergoes metamorphosis, changes in nature. These lines, or lineaments,
should not be confosed with lineages of the arborescent type, which are
merely localizable linkages between points and positions. Unlike the tree,
the rhizome is not the object ofreproduction: neither external reproduction
as image-tree nor internal reproduction as tree-structure. The rhizome is an
antigenealogy. It is a short-term memory, or antimemory. The rhizome op­
erates by variation, expansion, conquest, capture, offshoots. Unlike the
graphic arts, drawing, or photography, unlike tracings, the rhizome per­
tains to a map that must be produced, constructed, a map that is always
detachable, connectable, reversible, modifiable, and has multiple en­
tryways and exits and its own lines of tlight. It is tracings that must be put
on the map, not the opposite. In contrast to centered (even polycentric) sys­
tems with hierarchical modes of communication and preestablished paths,
the rhizome is an acentered, nonhierarchical, nonsignifying system without
a General and without an organizing memory or central automaton, de­
fined solely by a circulation of states. W hat is at question in the rhizome is a
relation to sexuality-but also to the animal, the vegetal, the world, poli­
tics, the book, things natural and artifi cial-that is totally different from
the arborescent relation: all manner o f"becomings . "
 Pa rt Two

Diffe rence
and Repetition
 2
What Is Becoming?

Alice and Through the Looking- Glass involve a category of very special things:
events, pure events. When I say "Alice becomes larger," I mean that she
becomes larger than she was. By the same token, however, she becomes
smaller than she is now. Certainly, she is not bigger and smaller at the same
time. She is larger now; she was smaller before. But it is at the same moment
that one becomes larger than one was and smaller than one becomes. Th is
is the simultaneity of a becoming whose characteristic is to elude the pre­
sent. I nsofar as it eludes the present, becoming does not tolerate the separa­
tion or the distinction ofbefore and after, or of past and foture. It pertains to
the essence of becoming to move and to pull in both directions at once: Alice
does not grow without shrinking, and vice versa. Good sense aflirms that in
all things there is a determinable sense or direction [sens ]; but paradox is the
aflirmation of both senses or directions at the same time.
Plato invites us to distinguish between two dimensions: ( 1 ) that oflimit­
ed and measured things, of fixed qualities, permanent or temporary which
always presuppose pauses and rests, the fi x ing of presents, and the assigna­
tion of subj ects (for example, a particular subject having a particular large­
ness or a particular smallness at a particular moment) ; and ( 2 ) a pure be­
coming without measure, a veritable becoming-mad, which never rests. I t
moves in both directions a t once. I t always eludes the present, causing fu-
 40 D I F F E R E N C E A N D R I PI T I T I O N

ture and past, more and less, too much and not enough to coincide i n the
simultaneity of a rebellious matter. " ' Hotter' never stops where it is but is
always going a point forther, and the same applies to 'colder,' where as defi­
nite quality is something that has stopped going on and is fixed "; " . . . the
younger becoming older than the older, the older becoming younger than
the younger-but they can never finally become so; if they did they would
no longer be becoming, but would be so. " 1
We recognize this Platonic dualism. It is not a t all the dualism of the in­
telligible and the sensible, of Idea and matter, or of ldeas and bodies. It is a
more profound and secret dualism hidden in sensible and material bodies
themselves. It is a subterranean dualism between that which receives the
action of the Idea and that which eludes this action. It is not the distinction
between the Model and the copy, but rather between copies and simulacra.
Pure becoming, the unlimited, is the matter of the simulacrum insofar as it
eludes the action of the Idea and insofar as it contests both model and copy at
once. Limited things lie beneath the Ideas; but even beneath things, is there
not still this mad element which subsists and occurs on the other side of the
order that Ideas impose and things receive? Sometimes Plato wonders
whether this pure becoming might not have a very peculiar relation to lan­
guage. This seems to be one of the principal meanings of the Cratylus. Could
this relation be, perhaps, essential to language, as in the case of a "flow" of
speech, or a wild discourse which would incessantly slide over its referent,
without ever stopping? Or might there not be two languages and two sorts
of "names," one designating the pauses and rests which receive the action
of the Idea, the other expressing the movements or rebel becomings?2 Or
forther still, is it not possible that there are two distinct dimensions internal
to language in general-one always concealed by the other, yet con­
tinuously coming to the aid of, or subsisting under, the other?
The paradox of this pure becoming, with its capacity to elude the pre­
sent, is the paradox of infinite identity (the infinite identity of both direc­
tions or senses at the same time-offuture and past, of the day before and
the day after, of more and less, of too much and not enough, of active and
passive, and of cause and effect). It is language which fixes the limits (the
moment, for example, at which the excess begins), but it is language as well
which transcends the limits and restores them to the infinite equivalence of
an unlimited becoming ( "A red-hot poker will burn you if you hold it too
long; and . . . if you cut your finger very deeply with a knife, it usually
bleeds"). Hence the reversals which constit ute Alice's adventures: the re­
versal of becoming larger and becoming smaller-"which way, which
way?" asks Alice, sensing that it is always in both directions at the same
time, so that for once she stays the same, through an optical illusion; the
 Whal I s B1coming? 41

reversal of the day before and the day after, the present always being
eluded-"jam tomorrow andjam yesterday-but never jam to-day"; the re­
versal of more and less: five nights are five times hotter than a single one,
"but they must be five times as cold for the same reason"; the reversal of
active and passive: "do cats eat bats?" is as good as "do bats eat cats?"; the I
reversal of cause and effect: to be punished before having committed a fault,
to cry before having pricked oneself, to serve before having divided up the
servings.
All these reversals as they appear in infinite identity have one conse­
quence: the contesting of Alice's personal identity and the loss of her proper
name. The loss of the proper name is the adventure which is repeated
throughout all Alice's adventures. For the proper or singular name is guar­
anteed by the permanence ofsavoir. The latter is embodied in general names
designating pauses and rests, in substantives and adjectives, with which the
proper name maintains a constant connection. Thus the personal self re­
quires God and the world in general. But when substantives and adjectives
begin to dissolve, when the names of pause and rest are carried away by the
verbs of pure becoming and slide into the language of events, all identity
disappears from the self, the world, and God. This is the test of savoir and
recitation which strips Alice of her identity. In it words may go awry, being
obliquely swept away by the verbs. It is as if events enjoyed an irreality
which is communicated through language to the savoir and to persons. For
personal uncertainty is not a doubt foreign to what is happening, but rather
an objective structure of the event itself, insofar as it moves in two directions
at once, and insofar as it fragments the subject following this double direc­
tion. Paradox is initially that which destroys good sense as the only direc­
tion, but it is also that which destroys common sense as the assignation of
fi xed identities.
 3
What Is an Event?

The Stoics also distinguish between two kinds of things. First, there are
bodies with their tensions, physical qualities, actions and passions, and the
corresponding "states of affairs . " These states of affairs, actions and pas­
sions, are determined by the mixtures of bodies. At the limit, there is a unity
of all bodies in virtue of a primordial Fire into which they become absorbed
and from which they develop according to their resp ective tensions. The
only time of bodies and states of affairs is the present. For the living present
is the temporal extension which accompanies the act, expresses and mea­
sures the action of the agent and the passion of the patient. But to the degr.ee
that there is a unity ofbodies among themselves, to the degree that there is a
unity of active and passive principles, a cosmic present embraces the entire
universe: only bodies exist in space, and only the present exists in time.
There are no causes and effects among bodies. Rather, all bodies are
causes-causes in relation to each other and for each other. In the scop e of
the cosmic present, the unity is called Destiny.
Second, all bodies are causes in relation to each other, and causes for each
other-but causes of what? They are causes of certain things of an entirely
different nature. These effects are not bodies, but, properly speaking, "incor­
poreal" entities. They are not physical qualities and pro p erties, but rather
logical or dialectical attributes. They are not things or facts, but events. We
can not say that they exist, but rather that they subsist or insist (having this
minimum ofbeing which is appropriate to that which is not a thing, a nonex­
isting entity ). They are not substantives or adj ectives but verbs. They are
neither agents nor patients, but results of actions and passions. They are
"impassive" entities-impassive results. They are not living presents, but
infinities: the unlimited Aeon, the becoming which divides itselfinfinitely in
past and future and always eludes the present. Thus time must be grasped
twice, in two complementary though mutually exclusive fashions. First, it
must be grasped entirely as t he living present in bodies which act a n d are
acted upon. Second, it must be grasped entirely as an entity infinitely divis­
ible into past and foture, and into the incorporeal effects which result from
bodies, their actions and their passions. Only the present exists in time and
gathers together or absorbs the past and future. But only the past and future
insist in time and d ivide each present infinitely. These are not three successive
dimensions, but two simultaneous readings of time.
In his fine reconstruction of Stoic thought, Emile Brehier says:

When the scalpel cuts through the flesh, the first body produces upon the
second not a new property but a new attribute, that of being cut. The at­
tribute does not designate any-real quali�., . . , it is, to the contrary, always
.

expressed by the verb, which means that it is not a being, but a way of
being . . . . This way of being finds itself somehow at the limit, at the sur­
face of being, the nature of which it is not able to change : it is, in fact,
neither active nor passive , for passivity would presuppose a corporeal na­
ture which undergoes an action. It is purely and simply a result, or an
effect which is not to be classified among beings . . . . [The Stoics distin­
guished] radically two planes of being, something that no one had done
before them: on the one hand, real and profound being, force; on the oth­
er, the plane of facts, which frolic on the surface ofbeing, and constitute an
endless multiplicity of incorporeal beings.1

Yet, what is more intimate o r essential to bodies than events such as

growing, becoming smaller, or being cut? What do the Stoics mean when
they. contrast the thickness of bodies with these incorporeal events which
would play only on the surface, like a mist over the prairie (even less than a
mist, since a mist i� after all a body ) ? Mixtures are in bodies, and in the
depth of bodies: a body penetrates another and coexists with it in all of its
parts, like a drop of wine in the ocean, or fire in iron. One body withdraws
from another, like liquid from a vase. Mixtures in general determine the
quantitative and qualitative states of affairs: the dimensions of an
ensemble-the red of iron, the green of a tree. But what we mean by "to
grow, " "to diminish," "to become red ," "to become gree n," "to cut," and
 44 DIFFERENCE A N D RE PETI TION

"to be c ut," etc., i s something entirely different. These are n o longer states
of affairs-mixtures deep inside bodies-but incorporeal events at the sur­
face which are the results of these mixtures. The tree "greens. " . . . 2 The
genius of a philosophy must first be measured by the new distribution
which it imposes on beings and concepts. The Stoics are in the process of
tracing out and offorming a frontier where there had not been one before. In
this sense they displace all refle ction.
They are in the process of bringing about, first, an entirely new cleavage
of the causal relation. They dismember this relation, even at the risk of re­
creating a unity on each side. They refer causes to causes and place a bond
of causes between them (destiny) . They refer effects to effects and pose cer­
tain bonds of effects between them. But these two operations are not accom­
plished in the same manner. I ncorporeal effects are never themselves causes
in relation to each other; rather, they are only " q uasi-causes" following laws
which perhaps express in each case the relative unity or mixture of bodies
on which they depend for their real causes. Thus freedom is preserved in
two complementary manners: once in the interiority of destiny as a connec­
tion between causes, and once more in the exteriority of events as a bond of
effects. For this reason the Stoics can oppose destiny and necessity.3 The
Epicureans formulated another cleavage of causality, which also grounds
freedom. They conserve the homogeneity of cause and effect, but cut up
causality according to atomic series whose respective independence is guar­
anteed by the clinamen-no longer destiny without necessity, but causality
without destiny.4- In either case, one begins by splitting the causal relation,
instead of distinguishing types of causality as Aristotle had done and Kant
would do. And this split always refers us back to language, either to the exis­
tence of a declension of causes or, as we shall see, to the existence of a conjuga­
tion of effects.
This new dualism of bodies or states of affairs and effects or incorpore��
events entails an upheaval in philosophy. In Aristotle, for example, all
categories are said of Being; and difference is present in Being, between sub­
stance as the primary sense and the other categories which are related to it
as accidents." F or the Stoics, on the other hand, states of affairs, q uantities,
and q ualities are no less beings (or bodies) than substance is; they are a part
of substance, and in this sense they are contrasted with an extra-Being wh ich
constitutes the incorporeal as a nonexisting entity. The highest term there­
fore is not Being, but Something (aliquid) , insofar as it subsumes being and
nonbeing, existence and inherence. 5 Moreover, the Stoics are the first to re­
verse Platonism and to bring about a radical inversion. For if bodies with
their states, qualities, and quantities, assume all the characteristics of sub­
stance and cause, conversely, the characteristics of the Idea are relegated to
 What Is an Ewnt? "'

the other side, that is to this impassive extra-Being which is sterile, inef­
ficacious, and on the s urface of things: the ideational or the incorporeal can no
longer be anything other than an "effect. "
These consequences are extremely important. In Plato, an obscure de­
bate was raging in the depth of things, in the depth of the earth, between
that which undergoes the action of the Idea and that which eludes this ac­
tion (copies and simulacra). An echo of this debate resonates when Socrates
asks: is there an Idea of everything, even ofhair, dirt, and mud-or rather is
there something which always and obstinately escapes the Idea? In Plato,
however, this something is never sufficiently hidden, driven back, pushed
deeply into the depth of the body, or drowned in the ocean. Everything now
returns to the surface. This is the result of the Stoic operation: the unlimited
returns. Becoming-mad, becoming unlimited is no longer a ground which
rumbles. It climbs to the surface of things and becomes impassive. It is n_o
longer a question of simulacra which elude the ground and insinuate them­
selves everywhere, but rather a question of effects which manifest them­
selves and act in their place. These are effects in the causal sense, but also
sonorous, optical, or linguistic "effects" -and even less, or much more, since
they are no longer corporeal entities, but rather form the entire Idea. What
was eluding the Idea climbed up to the s urface, that is, the incorporeal limit,
and represents now all possible idealily, the latter being stripped ofits causal
and spiritual efficacy. The Stoics discovered surface effects. Simulacra cease
to be subterranean rebels and make the most of their effects (that is, what
might be called "phantasms," independently of the Stoic terminology). The
most concealed becomes the most manifest. All the old paradoxes of becom­
ing must again take shape in a new youthfolness-transmutation.
Becoming unlimited comes to be the ideational and incorporeal event,
with all of its characteristic reversals between foture and past, active and
passive, cause and effect, more and less, too much and not enough, already
and not yet. The infinitely divisible event i11 always both at once. It is eternally
that which has j ust happened and that which is about to happen, but never
that which is happening (to cut too deeply and not enough ). The event,
being itself impassive, allows the active and the passive to be interchanged
more easily, since it is neither the one nor the other, but rather their common
result ( to cut-to be cut). Concerning the cause and the effect, events, being
always only effects, are better able to form among themselves functions of
quasi-causes or relations of quasi-causality which are always reversible ( the
wound and the scar).
The Stoics are amateurs and inventors of paradoxes. It is necessary tL
reread the astonishing portrait ofChrysippus given in several pages written
by Diogenes Laertius. Perhaps the Stoics used the paradox in a completely
 46 DIFFE R E N C E A N D R E P E TITION

new manner-both a s a n instrument fo r the analysis of language and a s a

means of synthesizing events. Dialectics is precisely this science of incor­
poreal events as they are expressed in propositions, and of the connections
between events as they are expressed in relations between propositions. Di­
alectics is, indeed, the art of co,Yugation (see the cotifatalia or series of events
which depend on one another). But it is the task of language both to estab­
lish limits and to go beyond them. Therefore language includes terms which
do not cease to displace their extension and which make possible a reversal
of the connection in a given series (thus too much and not enough, few and
many). The event is coextensive with becoming, and becoming is itself coex­
tensive with language; the paradox is thus essentially a "sorites," that is, a
series of interrogative propositions which, following becoming, proceed
through successive additions and retrenchments. Everything happens at
the boundary between things and propositions. Chrysippus taught: "If you
say something, it passes through your lips; so, if you say 'chariot,' a chariot
passes through your lips. " Here is a use of paradox the only equivalents of
which are to be found in Zen Buddhism, on one hand, and in English or
American nonsense, on t he other. In one case, that which is most profound is
the immediate, in the other, the immediate is found in language. Paradox
appears as a dismissal of depth, a display of events at the surface, and a
deployment of language along this limit. H umor is the art of the surface,
which is opposed to the old irony, the art of depths and heights. The So­
phists and Cynics had already made humor a philosophical weapon against
Socratic irony; but with the Stoics, humor found its dialectics, its dialectical
principle or its natural place and its pure philosophical concept.
Lewis Carroll carries out this operation, inaugurated by the Stoics, or
rather, he takes it up again. In all his works, Carroll examines the difference
between events, t hings, and states of affairs. But the entire first half ofA lice
still seeks the secret of events and of the becoming unlimited which they
imply, in the depths of the earth, in dug out shafts and holes which plunge
beneath, and in the mixture of bodies which interpenetrate and coexist. As
one advances in the story, however, the digging and hiding gives way to a
lateral sliding from right to left and left to right. The animals below ground
become secondary, giving way to card.figures which have no thickness. One
could say that the old depth having been spread out became width. The
becoming unlimited is maintained entirely within this inverted width.
"Depth" is no longer a complement. Only animals are deep, and they are
not the noblest for t hat; t he noblest are the flat animals. Events are like crys­
tals, they become and grow only out of the edges, or on the edge. This is,
indeed, the first secret of the stammerer or of the left-handed person: no
longer to sink, but to slide the whole length in such a way that the old depth
 Mat Is an E""" J 47

no longer exists at all, having been reduced to the opposite side of the sur­
face .I By sliding, one passes to the other side, since t he other side is nothing
but the opposite direction. If there is nothing to see behind the curtain, it is
because everything is visible, or rather all possible science is along the
length of t he curtain. It suffices to follow it far enough, precisely enough,
and superficially enough, in order to reverse sides and to make the right side
become the left or vice versa. It is not therefore a question of t he adventures of
Alice, but of Alice's adventure: her climb to the surface, her disavowal of false
depth and her discovery that everything happens at the border. This is why
Carroll abandons the original title of the book: Alice 's Adventures Underground.
This is the case-even more so-in Through the Looking-Glass. Here
events, differing radically from things, are no longer sought in the depths,
but at the surface, in the faint incorporeal mist which escapes from bodies, a
film without volume which envelops them, a mirror which reflects them, a
chessboard on which they are organized according to-plan. Alice is no long­
er able to make her way through to the depths. Instead, she releases her
incorporeal double. It i..r by fallowing the border, by skirting the surface, that one
passes.from bodies to the incorporeal. Paul Valery had a profound idea: what is
most deep is the skin. This is a Stoic discovery, which presupposes a great
deal of wisdom and entails an entire ethic. It is t he discovery of the little girl,
who grows and diminishes only from the edges-a surface which reddens
and becomes green. She knows that the more the events traverse the entire,
depthless extension, the more they affect bodies which they cut and bruise.
Later, the adults are snapped up by the ground, fall again, and, being too
deep, they no longer understand. Why do the same Stoic examples continue
to inspire Lewis Carroll?-the tree greens, the scalpel cuts, the battle will or
will not take place . . . . It is in front of the trees that Alice loses her name. It
is a tree which Humpty Dumpty addresses without looking at Alice. Recita­
tions announce battles, and everywhere there are inj u ries and cuts. But are
these examples? Or rather, js it the case that every event is of this type­
forest, battle, and wound-all the more profound since it occurs at the sur­
face? The more it skirts bodies, the more incorporeal it is . History teaches us
that sound roads have no foundation, and geography that only a thin layer
of the earth is fertile.
This rediscovery of the Stoic sage is not reserved to the little girl. Indeed,
it is true that Lewis Carroll detests boys in general. They have too much
depth, and false depth at that, false wisdom, and animality. The male baby
in Alice is transformed into a pig. As a general rule, only little girls under­
stand Stoicism; they have the sense of the event and release an incorporeal
double. But it happens sometimes that a little boy is a stutterer and left­
handed, and thus conquers sense as the double sense or direction of the sur-
 tf8 D I FFEREN C E AN D RIPITITION

face. Carroll's hatred o f boys i s not attributable t o a deep ambivalence, but

rather to a superficial inversion, a properly Carrollian concept. In Sylvie and
Bruno, it is the little boy who has the inventive role, learning his lessons in all
manners, inside-out, outside-in, above and below, but never "in depth . "
This important novel pushes to the extreme the evolution which had begun
in A lice, and which continued in Through the looking-Glass. The admirable
conclusion of the first part is to the glory of the East, from which comes all
that is good, "the substance of things hoped for, and the existence of things
not seen." 1 H ere even the barometer neither rises nor falls, but goes length­
wise, sideways, and gives a horizontal weather. A stretching machine even
lengthens songs. And Fortunatus' purse, presented as a Mobius strip, is
made of handkerchiefs sewn in the wrong wa� in such a manner that its outer
surface is continuous with its inner surface: it envelops the entire world, and
makes that which is inside be on the outside and vice versa.6 In Sylvie and
Bruno, the technique of passing from reality to dream, and from bodies to
the incorporeal, is multiplied, completely renewed, and carried out to per­
fection. It is, however, still by skirting the surface, or the border, that one
passes to the other side, by virtue of the strip. The continuity between re­
verse and right side replaces all the levels of depth; and the surface effects in
one and the same Event, which would hold for all events, bring to language
becoming and its paradoxes. 7 As Carroll says in an article entitled "The
Dynamics of a Parti-cl e": "Plain Superficiality is the character of a
speech . . . .
"
 4
What Is a Multiplicity?

Let us summarize the principal characteristics of a punctual system: ( r )

Systems of this kind comprise two base lines, horizontal and vertical: they
serve as coordinates for assigning points. ( 2) The horizontal line can be su­
perposed vertically and the vertical line can be moved horizontally, in such
a way that new points are produced or reproduced, under conditions ofhor­
izontal frequency and vertical resonance. ( 3 ) From one point to another, a
line can (or cannot) be drawn, but ifit can it takes the form ofa localizable
connection; diagonals thus play the role of connectors between points of dif­
ferent levels or moments, instituting in their turn frequencies and reso­
nances on the basis of these points of variable horizon or verticon, con­
tiguous or distant. 1 These systems are arborescent, mnemonic, molar,
structural : they are systems of territorialization or reterritorialization. The
line and the diagonal remain totally subordinated to the point because they
serve as coordinates for a point or as localizable connections for two points,
running from one point to another.
Opposed to the punctual system are linear, or rather multilinear, sys­
tems. Free the line, free the diagonal: every musician or painter has this
intention. One elaborates a punctual system or a didactic representation,
but with the aim of making it snap, of sending a tremor through it. A punc­
tual system is most interesting when there is a musician, painter, writer,
 ,0 D I P P E R E N C E A N D R l. Pl. T I T I O N

philosopher to oppose i t , who even fabricates i t i n order to oppose it, like a

springboard to jump from. His tory is made only by those who oppose histo­
ry (not by those who insert themselves into it, or even reshape it ). This is not
done for provocation but happens because the punctual system they found
ready-made, or themselves invented, must have allowed this operation: free
the line and the diagonal, draw the line instead of plotting a point, produce
an imperceptible diagonal instead of clinging to an even elaborated or re­
formed vertical or horizontal. When this is done it always goes down in his­
tory but never comes from it. History may try to break its ties to memory; it
may make the schemas of memory more elaborate, superpose and shift
coordinates, emphasize connections, or deepen breaks. The dividing line,
however, is not there. The dividing line passes not between history and
memory but between punctual "history-memory" systems and diagonal or
multilinear assemblages, which are in no way eternal: they have to do with
becoming; they are a bit of becoming in the pure state; they are transhistori­
cal. There is no �ct of creation that is not transhistorical and does not come
up from behind or proceed by way of a liberated line. Nietzsche opposes
history not to the eternal but to the subhistorical or superhistorical: the Un­
timely, which is another name for haecceity, becoming, the innocence of be­
coming (in other words, forgetting as opposed to memory, geography as op­
posed to history, the map as opposed to the tracing, the rhizome as opposed
to arborescence ) . "The unhistorical is like an atmosphere within which
alone life can germinate and with the destruction of which it m ust van­
ish . . . . What deed would man be capable of if he had not first entered into
that vaporous region of the unh istorical?"2 C reations are like mutant ab­
stract lines that have detached themselves from the task of representing a
world, precisely because they assemble a new type of reality that history can
only recontain or relocate in punctual systems.
When Boulez casts himself in the role of historian of music, he does so in
order to show how a great musician, in a very different manner in each case,
invents a kind of diagonal running between the harmonic vertical and the
melodic horizon. And in each case it is a different diagonal, a different tech­
nique, a creation. Moving along this transversal line, which is really a line of
deterritorialization, there is a sound block that no longer has a point of origin,
since it is always and already in the middle of the line; and no longer has
horizontal and vertical coordinates, since it creates its own coord inates; and
no longer forms a localizable connection from one point to another, since it
is in "nonpulsed time" : a deterritorialized rhythmic block that has aban­
doned points, coordi nates, and measure, like a drunken boat that melds
with the line or draws a plane of consistency. Speeds and slownesses inject
 themselves into musical form, sometimes impelling it t o proliferation, lin­
ear microproliferations, and sometimes to extinction, sonorous abolition,
involution, or both at once. The musician is in the best position to say: " I
hate the faculty o f memory, I hate memories. " And that i s because h eo r she
affirms the power of becoming. The Viennese school is exemplary of this
kind of diagonal, this kind of line-block. But it can equally be said t hat t he
Viennese school found a new system of territorialization, of points, verti­
cals, and horizontals that position it in history. Another attempt, another
creative act, came after it. The important thing is that all musicians have
always proceeded in this way: drawing their own diagonal, however fragile,
outside points, outside coordinates and localizable connections, in order to
float a sound block down a created, liberated line, in order to unleash in
space this mobile and mutant sound bloc,, a haecceity (for example,
chromaticism, aggregates, and complex notes, but already the resources
and possibilities of polyphony, etc.).3 Some have spoken of "oblique vec­
tors" with respect to the organ. The diagonal is often composed of ex­
tremely complex lir:ies and spaces of sound. Is that the secret of a little
phrase or a rhythmic block? Undoubtedly, the point now assumes a new
and essential creative fonction. It is no longer simply a question of an inevi­
table destiny reconstituting a punctual system; on the contrary, it is now the
point that is subordinated to the line, the point now marks the proliferation
of the line, or its sudden deviation, its acceleration, its slowdown, its furor or
agony. Mozart's "microblocks." The block may even be reduced to a point,
as though to a single note ( point-block) : Berg's B in 1%zzeck, Schumann's
A. Homage to Schumann, the madness of Schumann: the cello wanders
across the grid of the orchestration, drawing its diagonal, along which the
deterritorialized so und block moves; or an extremely sober kind ofrefrain is
"treated" by a very elaborate melodic line and polyphonic architecture.
In a multilinear system, everything happens at once: the line breaks free
of the point as origin; the diagonal breaks free of the vertical and the hori­
zontal as coordinates; and the transversal breaks free of the diagonal as a
localizable connection between two points. I n short, a block-line passes
amid [au milieu des] sounds and propels itself by its own nonlocalizable mid­
dle [milieu] . The sound block is the intermezzo. It is a body without organs,
an antimemory pervading musical organization, and is all the more
sonorous:

The Schumannian body does not stay in place. . . . The intermezzo [isJ
consubstantial with the entire Schumannian oeuvre . . . . At the limit,
there are only intermezzi . . . . The Schumannian body knows only bifur-
 ,2 D I F F E R E N C E A N D R l. P I T I T I O N

cations; i t does not construct itself, it keeps diverging according to a n ac­

cumulation of interludes . . . . Schumannian beating is panic, but it is also
coded . . . and it is because the panic of the blows apparently keeps with­
in the limits of a docile language that it is ordinarily not perceived . . . .
Let us imagine for tonality two contradictory (and yet concomitant) sta­
tuses. On the one hand . . . a screen, a language intended to articulate
the body . . . according to a known organization. . . . On the other hand,
contradictorily . . . tonality becomes the ready servant of the beats with­
in another level it claims to domesticate. 4

Does the same thing, strictly the same thing, apply to painting? In effect,
the point does not make the line; the line sweeps away the deterritorialized
point, carries it off under its outside influence; the line does not go from one
point to another, but runs between points in a different direction that renders
them indiscernible. The line has become the diagonal, which has broken
free from the vertical and the horizontal. But the diagonal has already be­
come the transversal, the semidiagonal or free straight line, the broken or
angular line, or the curve-always in the midst of themselves. Between the
white vertical and the black horizontal lie Klee's gray, Kandinsky's red,
Monet's purple; each forms a block of color. This line is without origin,
since it always begins off the painting, which only holds it by the middle; it
is without coordinates, because it melds with a plane of consistency upon
which it floats and that it creates; it is without localizable connection, be­
cause it has lost not only its representative fonction but any function of out­
lining a form ofany kind-by this token, the line has become abstract, truly
abs tract and mutant, a visual block; and under these conditions the point
assumes creative fonctions again, as a color-point or line-point. s The line is
between points, in their midst, and no longer goes from one point to an­
other. It does not outline a shape. "He did not paint things, he painted be­
tween things . " There is no falser problem in painting than depth and, in
particular, perspective. For perspective is only a historical manner of occupy­
ing diagonals or transversals, lines offlight [lignes defaite: here, the lines in a
painting moving toward the vanishing point, or point defaite-Trans . ) , in
other words, of reterritorializing the moving visual block. We use the word
"occupy" in the sense of "giving an occupation to," fixing a memory and a
code, assigning a fonction. But the lines offlight, the transversals, are suita­
ble for many other fonctions besides this molar function. Lines of flight as
perspective lines, far from being made to represent depth, themselves in­
vent the possibility of such a representation, which occupies them only for
an instant, at a given moment. Perspective, and even depth, are the reter­
ritorialization oflines of flight, which alone created painting by carrying it
 Wliat Is a Multiplinty' jJ

farther. What is called central perspective in particular plunged the multi­

plicity of escapes and the dynamism of lines into a punctual black hole.
Conversely, it is true that problems of perspective triggered a whole profo­
sion of creative lines, a mass release of visual blocks, at the very moment
they claimed to have gained mastery over them. Is painting, in each of its
acts of creation, engaged in a becoming as intense as that of music?
 5
Individuation

There is a mode of individuation very different from that o f a person, sub­

ject, thing, or substance. We reserve the name luucceity fo r it. 1 A season, a
winter, a summer, an hour, a date have a perfect individuality lacking noth­
ing, even though this individuality is different from that of a thing or a sub­
ject. They are haecceities in the sense that they consist entirely of relations
of movement and rest between molecules or particles, capacities to a ffect
and be a ffected . When demonology expounds upon the diabolical art of lo­
cal movements and trans p orts of affect, it also notes the importance of rain,
hail, wind, pestilential air, or air polluted by noxious particles, favorable
conditions for these transports. Tales must contain haecceities that are not
simply emplacements, but concrete individuations that have a status of
their own and direct the metamorphosis of things and subjects. Among
types of civilizations, the Orient has many more individuations by haec­
ceity than by subjectivity or substantiality: the haiku, fo r example, must
inc lude indicators as so many floating lines constituting a complex individ­
ual. In Charlotte Bronte, everything is in terms of wind, things, people,
faces, loves, words. Lorca's "five in the evening," when love falls and fascism
rises. That awfol five in the evening! We say, "What a story ! " "What heat!"
"What a life!" to designate a very singular individuation. The hours of the
day i n Lawrence, in Faulkner. A degree of heat, an intensity of white, are
 ldirndullon "

perfect individualities; and a degree of heat can combine in latitude with

another degree to form a new individual, as in a body that is cold here and
hot there depending on its longitude. Norwegian omelette. A degree ofheat
can combine with an intensity of white, as in certain white skies of a hot
summer. This is in no way an individuality of the instant, as opposed to the
individuality of permane nces or d ura ti ons A tear-off calendar has just as
.

much time as a perpetual calendar, although the time in question is not the
same. There are animals that live no longer than a day or an hour; converse­
ly, a group of years can be as long as the most durable subject or object. We
can conceive of an abstract time that is e q ual for haecceities and for subjects
or things. Between the extreme slownesses and vertiginous speeds of geol­
ogy and astronomy, Michel Tournier places meteorology, where meteors
live at our pace: "A cloud forms in the sky lik e an image in my brain, the
wind blows like I breathe, a rainbow spans the horizon for as long as my
heart needs to reconcile itself to life, the summer passes like vacation drifts
by. " But is it by chance that in Tournier's novel this certitude can come only
to a twin hero who is deformed and desubjectified, and has acquired a cer­
tain ubiquity?2 Even when times are abstractly equal, the individuation ofa
life is not the same as the individuation of the subject that leads it or serves
as its support. I t is not the same Plane: in the first case, it is the plane of
consistency or of composition of haecceities, which knows only speeds and
affects; and in the second case, it is the altogether different plane of forms,
substances, and subjects. And it is not in the same time, the same tem­
porality. Aeon: the indefinite time of the event, the floating line that knows
only speeds and continually divides that which transpires into an already­
there that is at the same time not-yet-here, a simultaneous too-late and too­
early, a something that is both going to happen and has just happened.
Chronos: the time of measure that situates things and persons, develops a
form, and determines a subject. 3 Boulez distinguishes tempo and nontem P.�
in music: the "pulsed time" of a formal and functional music based on val­
ues versus the "nonpulsed time" of a floating music, both floating and ma­
chinic, which has nothing but speeds or differences in dynamic.4 In short,
the difference is not at a ll between the epheme.cal and the durable, nor even
between the regular and the irregular, but between two modes ofindividua­
tion, two modes of temporality.
We must avoid an oversimplified conciliation, as though there were on
the one hand formed subjects, of the thing or person type, and on the other
hand spatiotemporal coordinates of the haecceity type. For you will yield
nothing to haecceities unless you realize that that is what you are, and that
you are nothing but that. When the face becomes a haecceity: " I t seemed a
curious mixture that simply made do with time, weather and these peo-
 ,6 D I F F E R E N C E A N D l. E P l. T I T I O N

pie. '"� You are longitude and latitude, a set o f speeds and slownesses be­
tween un fo r med particles, a set ofnonsubjectified affects. You have the indi­
viduality of a day, a season, a year, a life (regardless of its duration) -a
climate, a wind, a fog, a swarm, a pack (regardless ofits regularity). Or at
least you can have it, you can reach it. A cloud of locusts carried in by the
wind at five in the evening; a vampire who goes out at night, a werewolf at
full moon. I t should not be thought that a haecceity consists simply of a
decor or backdrop that situates subjects, or of appendages that hold things
and people to the ground. I t is the entire assemblage in its individuated ag­
greg ate that is a haecceity; it is this assemblage that is defined by a longi­
tude and a la titude, by speeds and affects, independently of for ms and su b­
j ects, which belong to another plane. It is the wolf itself, and the horse, and
the child, that cease to b e subjects to become eve n ts, in assemblages that are
inseparable from an hour, a season, an atmosphere, an air, a life. The street
enters into composition with the horse, j ust as the dying rat enters into com­
position with the air, and the beast and the full moon enter into composition
with each other. At most, we may distinguish assemblage haecceities (a
body considered only as longitude and latitude) and interassemblage haec­
ceities, which also mark the potentialities of becoming within each assem­
blage (the milieu of intersection of the longitudes and latitudes). But the
two are strictly inseparable. Climate, wind, season, hour are not of another
nature than the things, animals, or people that populate them, follow them,
sleep and awaken within them. This should be read without a pause: the
animal-s ta l ks-at-five-o' clock. The becoming-evening, becoming-night of
an an i ma l, blood nuptials. Five o'clock is this animal! This animal is this
place! "The thin dog is running in the road, this dog is the road, " cries Vir­
ginia Woolf. That is how we need to feel. Spatiotemporal relations, deter­
minations, are not predicates of the thing but dimensions of multiplicities.
The street is as much a part of the omnibus-horse assemblage as the Hans
assemblage the becoming-horse of which it initiates. We are all five o'clock
in the evening, or another hour, or rather two hours simultaneously, the op­
timal and the pessimal, noon-midnight, but distributed in a variable fash­
ion. The plane of consistency contains only haecceities, along in tersecting
lines. Forms and subjects are not of that world . Virginia Woolf's walk
through the crowd, among the taxis. Taking a walk is a haecceity; never
again will Mrs. Dalloway say to herself, "I am this, I am that, he is this, he is
that. " And "She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She
sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking
on . . . . She always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live
even one day. "6 Haecceity, fog, glare. A haecceity has neither beginning nor
end, origin nor destination; it is always in the middle. I t is not mad e of
points, only oflines. I t is a rhizome.
 lntlir1'dualion '1

And i t i s not the same language, a t least not the same usage oflanguage.
For ifthe plane of consistency only has haecceities for content, it also has j_ts
own particular semiotic to serve as expression. A plane of content and a
plane of expression. This semi otic is composed above all of proper names,
verbs in the infinitive and indefinite articles or pronouns. Indefinite article +
proper name + irifinitive verb constitutes the basic chain of expression, correla­
tive to the least formalized contents, from the standpoint of a semiotic that
has freed itself from both formal significances and personal subjectifica­
tions. In the first place, the verb in the infinitive is in no way indeterminate
with respect to time; it expresses the floating, nonpulsed time proper to
Aeon, in other words, the time of the pure event or ofbecoming, which artic­
ulates relative speeds and slownesses independently of the chronometric or
chronological values that time assumes in the other modes. There is good
reason to oppose the infinitive as mode and tense of becoming to all of the
other modes and tenses, which pertain to Chronos since they form pulsa­
tions or values ofbeing (the verb "to be" is precisely the only one that has no
infinitive, or rather the infinitive of which is only an indeterminate, empty
expression, taken abstractly to designate the sum total of definite modes
and tenses) . 7 Second, the proper name is no way the indicator of a subject;
thus it seems useless to ask whether its operation resembles the nomination
of a species, according to whether the subject is considered to be of another
nature than that of the Form under which it is classified, or only the ulti­
mate act of that Form, the limit of classification. 8 The proper name does not
indicate a subject; nor does a noun take on the value of a proper name as a
function of a form or a species. The pro per name fundamentally designates
something that is of the order of the event, ofbecomingor of the haecceity. I t
is the military men and meteorologists who hold the secret o fproper names,
when they give them to a strategic operation or a hurricane. The proper
name is not the subject of a tense but the agent of an infinitive. It marks a
longitude and a latitude. I f Tick, Wolf, Horse, etc., are true proper names,
they are so not by virtue of the specific and generic denominators that
characterize them but of the speeds that compose them and the affects that
fill them; it is by virtue of the event they are in themselves and in the
assemblages-the becoming-horse of Little Hans, the becoming-wolfof the
Were [which etymologically means "man" -Trans . ] , the becoming-tick of
the Stoic (other proper names) .
Third, the indefinite article and the indefinite pronoun are n o more inde­
terminate than the infinitive. Or rather they are lacking a determination
only insofar as they are applied to a form that is itselfindeterminate, or to a
determinable subject. On the other hand, they lack nothing when they in­
troduce haecceities, events, the individuation of which does not p ass into a
form and is not effected by a subj ect. The indefinite then has maximum de-
 ,a D I P P E R E N C E A N D R l. P I T I T I O N

termination: once upon a time; a child is being beaten; a horse is fall­

ing . . . Here, the elements in play find their individuation in the assem­
blage of which they are a part, independent of the form of their concept and
the subjectivity of their person. We have remarked several times the extent
to which children use the indefinite not as something indeterminate but, on
the contrary, as an individuating function within a collectivity. That is why
we are dumbfounded by the efforts of psychoanalysis, which desperately
wants there to be something definite hidden behind the indefinite, a posses­
" "
sive, a person. When the child says a belly," a horse," "how do people grow
up?" "someone is beating a child," the psychoanalyst hears "my belly," "the
father," "will I grow up to be like daddy?" The psychoanalyst asks: who is
being beaten, and by whom?9Even linguistics is not immune from the same
prejudice, inasmuch as it is inseparable from a personology; according to
linguistics, in addition to the indefinite article and the pronoun, the third­
person pronoun also lacks the determination ofsubjectivity that is proper to
the first two persons and is supposedly the necessary condition for all enun­
ciation .Jo
We believe on the contrary that the third-person indefinite, HE, THEY,
implies no indetermination from this point of view; it ties the statement to a
collective assemblage, as i ts necessary condition, rather than to a subject of
the enu nciation. Blanchot is correct in saying that ONE and HE-one is
dying, k t is unhappy-in no way take the place of a subject, but instead do
away with any subject in favor of an assemblage of the haecceity type that
carries or brings out the event insofar as it is unformed and incapable of
being effectuated by persons ("something happens to them that they can
only get a grip on again by letting go oftheir ability to say l"). 1 1 The HE does
not represent a subject but rather makes a diagram of an assemblage. I t
does not overcode statements, i t does not transcend them as d o the first two
persons: on the contrary, it prevents them from falling under the tyranny of
subjective or signifying constellations, under the regime of empty redun­
dancies. The contents of the chains ofexpression it articulates are those that
can be assembled for a maximum number of occurrences and becomings.
"They arrive like fate . . . where do they come from, how have they pushed
this far?" l 2 He or one, indefinite article, proper name, infinitive verb: A
HANS TO BECOME HORSE, A PACK NAMED WOLF TO LOOK AT HE, ONE TO DIE,
WASP TO MEET ORCHID, THEY ARRIVE HUNS. Classified ads, telegraphic ma­
chines on the plane of consistency (once again, we are reminded of the pro­
cedures of Chinese poetry and the rules for translation suggested by the best
commentators) . 13
 6
A Theory of the Other

By comparing the primary effects o f the Other's presence and those of his
absence, we are in a position to say what the Other is. The error of philo­
sophical theories is to reduce the Other sometimes to a particular object,
and sometimes to another subjec t. (Even a conception like Sartre's, in Being
and Nothingness, was satisfied with the union of the two determinations, mak­
ing of the Other an object of my gaze, even if he in turn gazes at me and
transforms me into an object . ) But the Other is neither an object in the field
of my perception nor a subject who perceives me: the Other is initially a
structure of the perceptual field, without which the entire field could not
function as it does. That this structure may be actualized by real characters,
by variable subjects-me for you and you for me-does not prevent its pre­
existence, as the condition of organization in general, to the terms which
actualize it in each organized perceptual field-yours and mine. Thus the a
priori Other, as the absolute structure, establishes the relativity of others as
terms actualizing the structure within each field. But what is this structure?
I t is the structure of the possible. A frightened countenance is the expres­
sion of a frightening possible world, or of something frightening in the
world-something I do not yet see. Let it be understood that the possible is
not here an abstract category designating something which does not exist:
the expressed possible world certainly exists, but it does not exist (actually )
 60 D I F F I R I N C I A. N D R I P I T I T I O N

outside of that which expresses i t . The terrified countenance bears n o re­

semblance to the terrifying thing. It implicates it, it envelops it as some­
thing else, in a kind of torsion which situates what is expressed in the ex­
pressing. When I, in turn, and for my part, grasp the reality of what the
Other was expressing, I do nothing but explicate the Other, as I develop
and realize the corresponding possible world. It is true that the Other al­
ready bestows a certain reality on the possibilities which he encompasses­
especially by speaking. The Other is the existence of the encompassed pos­
sible. Language is the reality of the possible as such. The self is the develop­
ment and the explication of what is possible, the process of its realization in
the actual. Proust says of the perceived Albertine that she encompasses or
expresses the beach and the breaking of the waves: " I f she had seen me,
what could I have represented for her? At the heart of what universe was she
perceiving me?" Love and j ealousy will be the attempt to develop and to
unfold this possible world named "Albertin e . " In short, the Other, as struc­
ture, is the expression ofa possible world: it is the expressed, grasped as not yet
existing outside of that which expresses it.

Each of these men was a possible world, having its own coherence, its val­
ues, its sources of attraction and repulsion, its center of gravity. And with
all the differences between them, each of these possible \mrlds at that mo­
ment shared a vision, casual and superficial, of the island of Speranza,
which caused them to act in common, and which incidentally contained a
shipwrecked man called Robinson and his half-caste servant. For the
present this picture occupied their minds, but for each of them it was
purely temporary, destined very soon to be returned to the limbo from
which it had been brieO.y plucked by the accident ofthe Whitebird's getting
off course. And each of these possible \mrlds naively proclaimed itself the
reality. That was what other people were: the possible obstinately passing
for the real . 1

And w e can g o even further i n our understanding of the effects of the

presence of Others. Modern psychology has elaborated a rich series of
categories to account for the functioning of the perceptual field and the vari­
ations of the object wit hin t his field: form-background; depth-length;
theme-potentiality; profiles-unity of the object; fringe-center; text-context;
thetic-nonthetic; transitive states-substantive parts; etc. But the corre­
sponding philosophical problem is perhaps not very well raised : one asks
whether these categories belong to the perceptual field itself being imma­
nent to it (monism), or whether they refe r to subj ective syntheses operating
on the subject matter of perception (dualism). It would be wrong to take
exception to the dualist interpretation on the pretext that perception does
 A 1Lory of tJu Otlur 61

not occur through a j udgmental intellectual synthesis; one can certainly

conceive of passive sensible syntheses of an entirely different sort operating
on this material (in this sense, Husserl never renounced a certain dualism).
Even so, we doubt that dualism is correctly defined as long as it is estab­
lished between the matter of the perceptual field and the prereflective syn­
theses of the ego. The true dualism lies elsewhere; it lies between the effects
of the "structure-Other" of the perceptual field and the effects of its absence
(what perception would be were there no Others). We must understand that
the Other is not one structure among others in the field ofperception (in the
sense, for example, that one would recognize in it a difference of nature from
objects). It is the structure which conditions the entirefield and its functioning, by
rendering possible the constitution and application of the preceding catego­
ries. It is not the ego b ut the Other as structure which renders perception
possible. Thus, the authors who interpret dualism poorly are also the au­
thors who cannot extricate themselves from the alternative according to
which the Other would be either a particular object in the field or another
subject of the field. In defining the Other, together with Tournier, as the
expression of a possible world, we make of it, on the contrary, the a priori
principle of the organization of every perceptual fi.eld in accordance with
the categories; we make of it the structure which allows this functioning as
the "categorization" of this field. Real dualism then appears with the ab­
sence of the Other . . . .
Let us return to the effects of the presence of Others, such as they follow
from the definition "Other = an expression ofa possible world. " The funda­
mental effect is the distinction of my consciousness and its object. This dis­
tinction is in fact the result of the structure-Other. Filling the world with
possibilities, backgrounds, fringes, and transitions; inscribing the possibil­
ity of a frightening world when I am not yet afraid, or, on the contrary, the
possibility of a reassuring world when I am really frightened by the world;
encompassing in different respects the world which presents itself before me
developed otherwise; constituting inside the world so many blisters which
contain so many possible worlds-this is the Other.2 Henceforth, the Other
causes my consciousness to tip necessarily into an "I was," into a past
which no longer coincides with the object. Before the appearance of the
Other, there was, for example, a reassuring world from which my con­
sciousness could not be distinguished. The Other then makes its appear­
ance, expressing the possibility of a frightening world which cannot be de­
veloped without t he one preceding it passing away. For my part, I am
nothing other than my past obj ects, and my self is made up of a past world,
the passing away of which was brought about precisely by the Other. Ifthe
Other is a possible world, I am a past world. The mistake of theories of
 62 D I F F E R E N C E A N D R I P IT I T IO N

knowledge is that they postulate the contemporaneity o f subject and object,

whereas one is constituted only through the annihilation of the other.

Then suddenly there is a click. The subject breaks away from the object,
divesting it of a part of its color and substance. There is a rift in the
scheme of things, and a whole range of objects crumbles in becoming me,
each object transferring its quality to an appropriate subject. The light
becomes the eye and as such no longer exists: it is simply the stimulation
of the retina. The smell becomes the nostril-and the world declares itself
odorless . The song of the wind in the trees is disavowed : it was nothing but
a quivering of the timpani . . . . The subject is the disq ualified object. My
eye is the corpse of light and color. My nose is all that remains of odors
when their unreality has been demonstrated . My hand refutes the thing it
hold s. Thus the problem of awareness is born of anachronism. It implies
the simultaneous existence of the subject with the object, whose myste­
rious relationship to himself he seeks to define. But subject and object
cannot exist apart from one another since they are one and the same
thing, at first integrated into the real world and then cast out by it.3

The Other thus assures the distinction of consciousness and its object as a
temporal distinction. The fi.rst effect of its presence concerned space and the
distribution of categories; but the second effect, which is perhaps the more
profound, concerns time and the distribution of its dimensions-what
comes before and what comes after in time. How could there still be a past
when the Other no longer functions?
In the Other's absence, consciousness and its object are one. There is no
longer any possibility of error, not only because the Other is no longer there
to be the tribunal of all reality-to debate, falsify, or verify that which I
think I see; but also because, lacking in its structure, it allows consciousness
to cling to, and to coincide with, the object in an eternal present. "And it is
as though, in consequence, my days had rearranged themselves. No longer
do they jostle on each other's heels. Each stands separate and upright,
proudly affirming its own worth. And since they are no longer to be distin­
guished as the stages of a plan in process ofexecution, they so resemble each
other as to be superimposed in my memory, so that I seem to be ceaselessly
reliving the same day. "4 Consciousness ceases to be a light cast upon objects
in order to become a pure phosphorescence of things in themselves . . . .
Consciousness has become not only a phosphorescence internal to things
but a fire in their heads, a light over each one, and a "soaring /." In this
light, something else appears, an ethereal double of each thing. "I seemed to
glimpse another island. . . . Now I have been transported to that other Sper­
anza, I live perpetually in a moment ofinnocence."5 It is this extraordinary
birth of the erect double that the novel excels in describing. But what exact­
ly is the difference between the thing such as it appears in the presence of
Others and the double which tends to detach itself in their absence? The
Other presides over the organization of the world into objects and over
the transitive relations of these objects. These objects exist only through the
possibilities with which Others filled up the world; each one was closed onto
itself, or opened onto other objects, only in relation to possible worlds ex­
pressed by Others. In short, it is the Other who has imprisoned the ele­
ments within t he limits of bodies and, further still, within t he limits of the
earth. For the earth itselfis but a great body which retains the elements; it is
earth only to the extent that it is peopled by Others. The Other fabricates
bodies out of the elements and objects out of bodies, just as it fabricates its
own countenance out of the worlds it expresses. Thus, the liberated double,
when the Other collapses, is not a replica of things. It is, on the contrary, the
new upright image in which the elements are released and renewed, having
become celestial and forming a thousand capricious elemental figures . . . .
In short, the Other, as it encompasses t he possible worlds, prevents the
doubles from standing erect. The Other is the grand leveler, and conse­
quently the destructuration of the Other is not a disorganization of the
world, but an upright organization as opposed to the recumbent organiza­
tion; it is t he new uprightness, and the detachment of an image which is
vertical at last and without thickness; it is the detachment of a pure element
which at last is liberated . . . .
When we desire Others, are not our desires brought to bear upon this
expressed small possible world which the Other wrongly envelops, instead
of allowing it to float and fly above the world, developed onto a glorious
double? And when we observe a butterfly pillaging a flower that exactly re­
sembles the abdomen of the female of the species and then leaving the flower
carrying on its head two horns of pollen, we are tempted to conclude that
bodies are but detours to the attainment of images, and that sexuality
reaches its goal much better and much more promptly to the extent that it
economizes t his detour and addresses itself directly to images and to t he
elements freed from bodies.6 . . .
Neurosis and psychosis-this is the adventure of depth. The structure­
Other organizes and pacifies depth . .Jt renders it livable. This is why the
agitations of this structure imply a disorder, a disturbance of depth, as an
aggressive return of the bottomless abyss that can no longer be conj ured
away. Everything has lost its sense, everything becomes simul acru m and
ves t ige-even the object of work, the loved one, the world in itself or the self
in the world . . . ; that is, unless there be some sort of salvation for Robin­
son; unless he invents a new dimension or a third sense for the expression
 64 DIFFERENCE AND R EPETITION

"loss of Others"; unless the absence of the Other and the dissolution of its
structure do not simply disorganize the world but, on the contrary, open up
a possibility of salvation. Robinson must return to the surface and discover
surfaces. The pure surface is perhaps what Others were hiding from us. I t is
perhaps at the surface, like a mist, that an unknown image of things i s de­
tached and, from the earth, a new surface energy without possible others.
For the sky does not at all signify a height which would merely be the inverse
image of depth. In opposition to the deep earth, air and sky describe a pure
surface, and the surveying of the fi eld of this surface. The solipsist sky has no
depth: " I t is a strange prejudice which sets a higher value on depth than on
breadth, and which accepts 'superficial' as meaning not 'of wide extent' but
'oflittle depth,' whereas 'deep,' on the other hand, signifies 'of great depth'
and not 'of small surface.' Yet it seems to me that a feeling such as love is
better measured, ifit can be measured at all, by the extent ofits surface than
by its degree ofdepth. "7 It is at the surface that doubles and ethereal images
first rise up; then the pure and free elements arise in the celestial surveying
of the fi eld. The generalized erection is the erection of surfaces, their
rectification-the disappearance of the Others. At the surface of the isle
and the overarching sky, siniulacra ascend and become phantasms. Doubles
without resemblance and elements without constraint-these are the two
aspects of the phantasm. This restructuring of the world is Robinson's great
health-the conq uest of the great health, or the third sense of the "loss of
Others.'' . . .
What is essential, however, is that Friday does not fonction at all like a
rediscovered Other. I t is too late for that, the structure has disappeared.
Sometimes he functions as a bizarre object, sometimes as a strange accom­
plice. Robinson treats him sometimes as a slave and tries to integrate him
into the economic order of the island-that is, as a poor sim ulacrum-and
sometimes as the keeper of a new secret which threatens that order-that is,
as a mysterious phantasm. Sometimes he treats him almost like an object or
an animal, sometimes as if Friday were a "beyond" with respect to himself,
a "beyond" Friday, his own double or image. Sometimes he treats him as if
he were falling short of the Other, sometimes as ifhe were transcending the
Other. The difference is essential. For the Other, in its normal functioning,
expresses a possible world. But this possible world exists in our world and, if
it is not developed or realized without changing the quality of our world, it is
at least developed in accordance with laws which constitute the order of the
real in general and the succession of time. But Friday functions in an en­
tirely different way-he indicates arwther, supposedly true world, an irre­
ducible double which alone is genuine, and in this other world, a double of
the Other who no longer is and cannot be. Not an Other, but something
 A Theory of the Other 65

wholly other (un tout-autre) than the Other; not a replica, but a double: one
who reveals pure elements and dissolves objects, bodies, and the earth. " I t
seemed, indeed, that ( Friday) belonged t o an entirely different realm,
wholly opposed to his master's order of earth and husbandry, on which he
could have only a disruptive effect if anyone tried to imprison him within
it."8 It is for this reason t hat he is not even an object of desire for Robinson.
Though Robinson embraces his knees and looks into his eyes, it is only in
order to grasp the luminous double which now barely retains the free ele­
ments which have escaped from his body. "As to my sexuality, I may note
that at no time has Friday inspired me with any sodomite desire. For one
thing, he came too late, when my sexuality had already become elemental
and was directed toward Speranza . . . . It was not a matter of turning me
back to human loves but, while leaving me still an elemental, of causing me
to change my element. "9 The Other pulls down [rabat} : it draws the elements
into the earth, the earth into bodies, and bodies into objects. But Friday
innocently makes objects and bodies stand up again. He carries the earth
into the sky. He frees the elements. But to straighten up or to rectify is also to
shorten. The Other is a strange detour-it brings my desires down to ob­
jects, and my love to worlds. Sexuality is linked to generation only in a de­
tour which first channels the difference of sexes through t he Other. It is ini­
tially in the Other and through the Other that the difference of the sexes is
founded. To establish the world without Others, to lift the world up (as Fri­
day does, or rather as Robinson perceives that Friday does) is to avoid the
detour. It is to separate desire from its object, from its detour through the
body, in order to relate it to a pure cause: t he element s. " . . . So also has
perished the framework of instit utions and myths that permits desire to be­
come embodied, in the twofold sense of the word-that is to say, to assume a
positive form and to expend itself in the body ofa woman." 1 0 • • •

Everything here is fictitious (romanesque), including theory, which merges

with a necessary fiction-namely, a certain theory of the Other. First, we
must attach a great importance to the notion of the Other as structure: not
at all a particular "form" inside a perceptual field (distinct from the form
"object" or the form "animal "), but rather a system which conditions t he
fonctioning of t he entire perceptual field in general. We must therefore dis­
tinguish the a priori Other, which designates this structure, and the concrete
Other, which designates real terms actualizing the structure in concrete
fields. If this concrete Other is always someone-I for you and you for me­
that is, in each perceptual field t he subject of another field-the a priori
Other, on the ot her hand, is no one since structure is transcendent with re­
spect to the terms which actualize i t . How then is it to be defined? The ex­
pressiveness which defines the structure-Other is constituted by the catego·
 66 DIFFERENCE AND REPETITION

ry of the p ossible. The a priori Other i s the existence o fthe possible i n general,
insofar as the p ossible exists only as expressed-that is, in something ex­
pressing it which does not resemble what is expressed (a torsion of the ex­
pressed in that which expresses it). When Kierkegaard's hero demands "the
possible, the possible or I shall suffocate," when James longs for the "oxy­
gen of p ossibility," they are only invoking the a priori Other. We have tried
to show in this sense how the Other conditions the entire perceptual field,
the application to this field of the categories of the perceived object and the
dimensions of the perceiving subject, and fin ally, the distribution of con­
crete Others in each field. In fact, perceptual laws affecting the constitution
of objects (form-background, etc. ), the temporal determination of the sub­
ject, and the successive development of w orlds, seemed to us to depend on
the p ossible as the structure-Other. Even desire, whether it be desire for the
object or desire for Others, depends on this structure. I desire an object only
as expressed by the Other in the mode of the possible; I desire in the Other
only the p ossible worlds the Other expresses. The Other appears as that
which organizes elements into earth, and earth into bodies, bodies into ob­
jects, and which regulates and measures object, perception, and desire all at
once . . . .
A world without Others. Tournier assumes that Robinson, through
much suffering, discovers and conquers a great health, to the extent that
things end up being organized in a manner quite different than their organi­
zation in the presence of the Others. They liberate an image without re­
semblance, or their own double which is normally repressed. This d ouble in
turn liberates pure elements which are ordinarily held prisoner. The world
is not dist urbed by the absence of the Other; on the contrary, it is the glori­
ous double of the world which is found to be hidden by its presence. This is
Robinson's discovery: the discovery of the surface, of the elemental beyond,
of the "otherwise-Other" [de 1�4.utre qu 'autrui] . Why then do we have the im­
pression that this great health is perverse, and that this "rectification" of the
world and of desire is also a deviation and a perversion? Robinson exhibits
no perverse behavior. But every study or every novel of perversion strives to
manifest the existence ofa "perverse structure" as the principle from which
perverse behavior eventually proceeds. In this sense, the perverse structure
may be specified as that which is opposed to the structure-Other and takes
its place. And j ust as concrete Others are actual and variable terms actu­
alizing this structure-Other, the pervert's behaviors, always presupposing a
fondamental absence of the Others, are but variable terms actualizing the
perverse structure.
Why does the pervert have the tendency to imagine himself as a radiant
angel, an angel of helium and fir e? Why does he have-against the earth,
 A Theory of the Other 6'}

fertilization, and the obj ects of desire-the kind of hatred which is already
found systematized in Sade? Tournier's novel does not intend to explain-it
shows. In this manner, it rejoins, by very different ways, recent psychoana­
lytic studies which may renew the status of the concept of perversion and
disentangle it from t he moralizing uncertainty in which it was maintained
by the combined forces of psychiatry and t he law. Lacan and his school in­
sist profoundly on t he necessity of understanding perverse behavior on the
basis of a structure, and of defining this structure which conditions behavior.
They also insist on the manner in which desire undergoes a sort of displat:e­
ment in this structure, and the manner by which the cause of desire is thus
detached from the object,· on the way in which the difforenee of sexes is dis­
avowed by the pervert, in the interest ofan androgynous world of doubles; on
the annulment of the Other inside perversion, on the position ofa "beyond
the Other" [un au-dela de l �utre] or of an "otherwise Other" [un Autre
qu 'autrui) , as if the Other disengaged in the eyes of the pervert his own meta­
phor; finally, they insist on perverse "desubj ectivation"-for it is certain
that neither the victim nor the accomplice fonction as Others. I I For exam­
ple, it is not because he has a need or a desire to make the Other suffer that
the sadist strips him of his quality of being an Other. The converse is rather
the case: it is because he is lacking the structure-Other and lives within a
completely different structure, as a condition for his living world, that he
apprehends Others sometimes as victims and sometimes as accomplices,
but in neither case does he apprehend them as Others. On the contrary, he
always apprehends them as "otherwise Others" [ Autres qu 'autrui). It is strik­
ing to see in Sade's work to what extent victims and accomplices, with their
necessary reversibility, are not at all grasped as Others. Rather, they are
grasped sometimes as detestable bodies and sometimes as doubles, or allied
elements (certainly not as doubles of the hero, but as their own doubles,
always outside of their bodies in the pursuit ofatomic elements). 1 2
The fundamental misinterpretation of perversion, based on a hasty phe­
nomenology of perverse behavior and on certain legal exigencies, consists in
bringing perversion to bear upon certain offenses committed against Oth­
ers. Everything persuades u s, from the point of view of behavior, that per­
version is nothing without the presence of the Other: voyeurism, exhibition­
ism, etc. But from the point of view of the structure, the contrary must be
asserted: it is because the structure-Other is missing, and is replaced by a
completely different structure, that the real "Others" are no longer able to
play the role of terms actualizing the lost primary structure. Real "Others"
can only play now, in the second structure, the role ofbodies-victims (in the
very particular sense that the pervert attributes to bodies), or t he role of
accomplices-doubles, and accomplices-elements (again, in the very partic-
 68 DIFF ERENCE A N D R EP ETITION

ular sense of the pervert}. The world o f the pervert i s a world without Oth­
ers, and thus a world without the possible. The Other is that which renders
possible. The perverse world is a world in which the category of the neces­
sary has completely replaced that of the possible. This is a strange Spinoz­
ism from which "oxygen" is lacking, to the benefit of a more elementary
energy and a more rarefied air ( Sky-Necessity). All perversion is an "Other­
cide," and an "altrucide," and therefore a murder of the possible. But al­
trucide is not committed through perverse behavior, it is presupposed in the
perverse structure. This does not keep the pervert from being a pervert, not
constitu tionally, but at the end of an adventure which surely has passed
through neurosis and brushed up against psychosis. This is what Toumier
suggests in this extraordinary novel: we must imagine Robinson as per­
verse; the only Robinsonade possible is perversion itself.
 7
Ethics Withou t Morality

No philosopher was ever more worthy, but neither was any philosopher
more maligned and hated. To grasp the reason for this it is not enough to
recall the great theoretical thesis ofSpinozism: a single substance having an
infinity of attributes, Deus sive Natum, all "creatures" being only modes of
these attributes or modifications of this substance. It is not enough to show
how pantheism and atheism are combined in this thesis, which denies the
existence ofa moral, transcendent, creator God. We must start rather from
the practical theses that made Spinozism an object of scandal. These theses
imply a triple denunciation: of "consciousness," of "values, " and of "sad
passions." These are the three major resemblances with Nietzsche. And al­
ready in Spinoza's lifetime, they are the reasons for his being accused of ma­
terialism, immoralism, and atheism.

I . A Devaluation of Consciousness ( in Favor of Thought ) :

Spinoza the Materialist
Spinoza offers philosophers a new model: the body. H e proposes to establish
the body as a model: "We do not know what the body can do. " This declara­
tion of ignorance is a provocation. We speak of consciousness and its de­
t'.rces, of the will and its effects, of the thousand ways of moving the body, of
dominating the body and the passions-but we do not even know what a body
 70 D I F F E R E N C E A N D REPETITION

can do. 1 Lacking this knowledge, we engage i n idle talk. A s Nietzsche will
say, we stand amazed before consciousness, but "the truly surprising thing
is rather the body. "
Yet, one of the most famous theoretical theses of Spinoza is known by the
name of parallelism; it does not consist merely in denying any real causality
between the mind and the body, it disallows any primacy of the one-0ver the
other. If Spinoza rejects any superiority of the mind over the body, this is not
in order to establish a superiority of the body over the mind, which would be
no more intelligible than the converse. The practical significance of paral­
lelism is manifested in the reversal of the traditional principle on which mo­
rality was founded as an enterprise of domination of the passions by con­
sciousness. It was said that when the body acted, the mind was acted upon,
and the mind did not act without the body being acted upon in turn (the
rule of the inverse relation, cf. Descartes, The Passions <if the Soul, articles 1
and 2 ) . According to the Ethics, on the contrary, what is an action in the
mind is necessarily an action in the body as well, and what is a passion in the
body is necessarily a passion in the mind. 2 There is no primacy of one series
over the other.
What does Spinoza mean when he invites us to take the body as a model?
It is a matter of showing that the body surpasses the knowledge that we have
ofit, and that thought likewise surpasses the consciousness that we have efit. There are
no fewer things in the mind that exceed our consciousness than there are
things in the body that exceed our knowledge. So it is by one and the same
movement that we shall manage, if possible, to capture the power of the
body beyond the given conditions of our knowledge, and to capture the
power of the mind beyond the given conditions of our consciousness. One
seeks to acquire a knowledge of the powers of the body in order to discover,
in a parallel fashion, the powers of the mind that elude consciousness, and
thus to be able to compare the powers. In short, the model of the body, accord­
ing to Spinoza, does not imply any devaluation of thought in relation to ex­
tension, but much more important, a devaluation of consciousness in rela­
tion to thought: a discovery of the unconscious, ofan unconscious efthoughtjust
as profound as the unknown efthe body.
The fact is that consciousness is by nature the locus of an illusion. I ts
nature is such that it registers effects, but it knows nothing of causes. The
order of causes is defined by this: each body in extension, each idea or each
mind in thought are constituted by the characteristic relations that sub­
sume the parts of that body, the parts of that idea. When a body "encoun­
ters" another body, or an idea another idea, it happens that the two rela­
tions sometimes combine to form a more powerful whole, and sometimes
one decomposes the other, destroying the cohesion of its parts. And this is
what is prodigious in the body and the mind alike, these sets ofliving parts
 Ethics Without Morality 7I

that enter into composition with and decompose one another according to
complex laws .3 The order of causes is therefore an order of composition and
decomposition ofrelations, which infinitely affects all of nature. But as con-.
scious beings, we never apprehend anything but the �cts of these composi­
tions and decompositions: we experiencejtry when a body encounters ours
and enters into composition with it, and sadness when, on the contrary, a
body or an idea threaten our own coherence. We are in a condition such that
we only take in "what happens" to our body, "what happens" to our mind,
that is, the effect of a body on our body, the effect of an idea on our idea. But
this is only our body in its own relation, and our mind in its own relation,
and the other bodies and other minds or ideas in their respective relations,
and the rules according to which all these relations compound with and de­
compose one another; we know nothing of all this in the given order of our
knowledge and our consciousness. In short, the conditions under which we
know things and are conscious of ourselves condemn us to have only inadequate
ideas, ideas that are confosed and mutilated, effects separated from their
real causes.4 That is why it is scarcely possible to think that little children
are happy, or that the first man was perfect: ignorant of causes and natures,
reduced to the consciousness of events, condemned to undergo effects, they
are slaves of everything, anxious and unhappy, in proportion to their imper­
fection. (No one has been more forceful than Spinoza in opposing the theo­
logical tradition ofa perfect and happy Adam.)
How does consciousness calm its anguish? How can Adam imagine him­
self happy and perfect? Through the operation of a triple illusion. Since it
only takes in effects, consciousness will satisfy its ignorance by reversing the
order of things, by taking effects for causes ( the illusion of.final causes) : it will
construe the effect of a body on our body as the final cause ofits own actions.
In this way it will take itselffor the first cause, and w ill invoke its powe r over
the body (the illusion effree decrees) . And where consciousness can no longer
imagine itself to be the first cause, nor the organizer of ends, it invokes a
God endowed with understanding and volition, operating by means of final
causes or free decrees in order to prepare for man a world commensurate
with His glory and His punishments ( the theological illusion).5 Nor does it suf­
fice to say that consciousness deludes itself: consciousness is inseparable
from the triple illusion that constitutes it, the illusion offinality, the illusion of
freedom, and the theological illusion . Consciousness is only a dream with
one's eyes open: "The infant believes he freely wants the milk; the angry
child that he freely wants vengeance; and the timid, flight. So the drunk
believes that it is from a free decision of the mind that he speaks the things
he later, when sober, wishes he had not said."6
It is still necessary for consciousness itself to have a cause. Spinoza some­
times defines desire as "appetite together with consciousness of the ap-
 72 DIFFERENCE AND REPETITION

petite." But h e specifies that this i s only a nominal definition of desire, and
that consciousness adds nothing to appetite ( "we neither strive for, nor will,
neither want, nor desire anything because we judge i t to be good; on the
contrary, we judge something to be good because we strive for it, will it,
want it, and desire it"). 7 We need, then, to arrive at a real definition of de­
sire, one that at the same time shows the "cause" by which consciousness is
hollowed out, as it were, in the appetitive process. Now, the appetite is noth­
ing else but the effort by which each thing strives to persevere in its being,
each body in extension, each mind or each idea in thought (conatus). But
because this effort prompts us to act d ifferently according to the objects en­
countered, we should say that it is, at every moment, determined by the
affections that come from the objects. These determinative ciffections are neces­
sarily the cause ofthe consciousness ofthe conatus.8 And since the affections are not
separable from a movement by which they cause us to go to a greater or
lesser perfection (joy and sadness), depending on whether the thing en­
countered enters into composition with us, or on the contrary tends to de­
compose us, consciousness appears as the continual awareness of this pas­
sage from greater to lesser, or from lesser to greater, as a witness of the
variations and determinations of the conatus functioning in relation to other
bodies or other ideas. The object that agrees with my nature determines me
to form a superior totality that includes us, the object and myself. The ob­
ject that does not agree with me j eopardizes my cohesion, and tends to di­
vide me into subsets. which, in the extreme case, enter into relations that
are incompatible with my com;titutive relation (death). Consciousness is the
passage, or rather the awareness of the passage from these less potent total­
ities to more potent ones, and vice versa. It is purely transitive. But it is not a
property of the Whole or of any specifi c whole; it has only an informational
value, and what is more, the information is necessarily confused and dis­
torted. Here again, Nietzsche is strictly Spinozan when he writes: "The
greater activity is unconscious; consciousness usually only appears when a
whole wants to subordinate itself to a superior whole. It is primarily the
consciousness of this superior whole, of reality external to the ego. Con­
sciousness is born in relation to a being of which we could be a function; it is
the means by which we incorporate into that being."

II. A Devaluation of All Values, and of Good and Evil

in Particular (in Favor of " Good" and " Bad" ) :
S pinoza the I m moralist
"Thou shalt not eat of the fruit . . . ": the anxious, ignorant Adam under·
stands these words as the expression of a prohibition. And yet, what do they
 Ethics Without Moraliry 7J

refer to? To a fruit that, as such, will poison Adam if he eats it. This is an
instance of an encounter between two bodies whose characteristic relations
are not compatible: the fruit will act as a poison; that is, it will detnmine the
parts ofAdam 's body (and paralleling this, the idea of the fruit will determine
the parts of his mind) to enter into new relations that no longer accord with his own
essence. But because Adam is ignorant of causes, he thinks t hat God morally
forbids him something, whereas God only reveals the natural consequence
ofingesting the fruit. Spinoza is categori cal on this point: all the phenomenal
that we group under the heading of Evil, illness, and death, are of this type:
bad encounters, poisoning, intoxication, relational decomposition. 9
I n any case, there are always relations that enter into composition in
their particular order, according to the eternal laws of nature. There is no
Good or Evil, but there is good and bad. " Beyond Good and Evil, at least
this does not mean: beyond good and bad . " 1 0 The good is when a body di­
rectly compounds its relation with ours, and, with all or part of its power,
increases ours. A food, for example. For us, the bad is when a body decom­
poses our body's relation, although it still combines with our parts, but in
ways that do not correspond to our essence, as when a poison breaks down
the blood. Hence good and bad have a p rimary, objective meaning, but one
that is relative and partial: that which agrees with our nature or does not
agree with it. And consequently, good and bad have a secondary meaning,
which is subj ective and modal, qualifying two types, two modes of man's
existence. That individual will be called good (or free, or rational, or strong)
who strives, insofar as he is capable, to organize his encounters, to join with
whatever agrees with his nature, to combine h is relation with relations that
are compatible with his, and there by to increase his power. For goodness is a
matter of dynamism, power, and the composition of powers. That individu­
al will be called bad, or servile, or weak, or foolish, who lives haphazardly,
who is content to undergo the effects of his encounters, but wails and ac­
cuses every time the effect undergone does not agree with him and reveals
his own impotence. For, by lending oneself in this way to whatever encoun­
ter in whatever circumstance, believing that with a lot of violence or a little
guile, one will always extricate oneself, how can one fail to have more bad
encounters than good? How can one keep from destroying oneself through
guilt, and others through resentment, spreading one's own powerlessness
and enslavement everywhere, one's own sickness, indigestions, and poi­
Mons? In the end, one is unable even to encounter oneself. I I
In this way, ethics, which is to say, a typology of immanent modes of exis­
tence , re p laces morality, which always refers existence to transcendent val­
ues. Morality is the judgment of God, the system ofjudgment. But ethics over­
l hrows the system of judgment. The opposition of values ( Good-Evil) is
 74 DIFFERENCE AND REPETITION

supplanted by the qualitative difference of modes of existence (good-bad) .

The illusion of values i s indistinguishable from the illusion of conscious­
ness. Because it is content to wait for and take in effects, consciousness mis­
apprehends all of nature. Now, all that one needs in order to moralize is to
fail to understand . It is clear that we have only to misunderstand a law for it
to appear to us in the form ofa moral " You must." Ifwe do not understand
the rule of three, we will apply it, we will adhere to it, as a duty. Adam does
not understand the rule of the relation of his body with the fruit, so he inter­
prets God's word as a prohibition. Moreover, the confused form of moral
law has so compromised the law of nature that the philosopher must not
speak of natural laws, but only of eternal truths: "The application of the
word 'law' to natural things seems to be metaphorical, and the ordinary
meaning of law is simply a command . " 1 2 As Nietzsche says concerning
chemistry, i.e., the science of antidotes and poisons, one must be wary of the
word law, which has a moral aftertaste.
It is easy, however, to separate the two domains-that of the eternal
truths of nature and that of the moral laws of institutions-if only one con­
siders their effects. Let us take consciousness at its word: moral law is an
imperative; it has no other effect, no other finality than obedience. This obe­
dience may be absolutely necessary, and the commands may be j ustified,
but that is not the issue. Law, whether moral or social, does not provide us
_with any knowledge; it makes nothing known. At worst, it prevents the for­
mation of knowledge (the law efthe f:Yrant). At best, it prepares for knowledge
and makes it possible (the law '!.fAbraham or '![Christ). Between these two ex­
tremes, it takes the place of knowledge in those who, because of their mode
.of existence, are incapable of knowledge (the law '!.fMoses). But in any case, a
difference of nature is constantly manifested between knowledge and mo­
rality, between the relation of command and obedience and the relation of
the known and knowledge. The tragedy of theology and its harmfulness are
not j ust speculative, according to Spinoza; they are owing to the practical
confusion which theology instills in us between these two orders that differ
in nature. At the least, theology considers that Scripture lays the foundation
for knowledge, even if this knowledge must be developed in a rational man­
ner, or even transposed, translated, by reason: whence the hypothesis of a
moral, creating, and transcendent God . In this, as we shall see, there is a
confusion that compromises the whole of ontology; the history of a long error
whereby the command is mistaken for something to be understood, obe­
dience for knowledge itself, and Being for a Fiat. Law is always the transcen­
dent instance that determines the opposition of values (Good-Evil ) , but
knowledge is always the immanent power that determines the qualitative
difference of modes of existence (good-bad ) .
 Ethics Without Morality 75

I I I . A Devaluation of All the " Sad Passions,, (in Favor ofjoy) :

Spinoza the Atheist
If ethics and morality merely interpreted the same precepts in a different
way, the distinction between them would only be theoretical. This is not the
case. Throughout his work, Spinoza does not cease to denounce three kinds
of personages: the man with sad passions; the man who exploits these sad
passions, who needs them in order to establish his power; and the man who
is saddened by the human condition and by human passions in general (he
may make fon of these as much as he disdains them, but this mockery is a
bad laughter) . 1 3 The slave, the tyrant, and the priest . , the moralist trin­
. .

i1y. Since Epicurus and Lucretius, the deep implicit connection between ty­
rants and slaves has never been more clearly shown: " I n despotic statecraft,
the supreme and essential mystery is to hoodwink the subjects, and to mask
the fear, which keeps them down, with the specious garb ofreligion, so that
men may fight as bravely for slavery as for safety, and count it not shame but
highest honor to risk their blood and lives for the vainglory of a tyrant. " 1 4-
This i s possible because the sad passion i s a complex that joins desire's
boundlessness to the mind's confusion, cupidity to superstition. "Those
who most ardently embrace every sort of superstition cannot help but be
those who most immoderately desire external advantages." The tyrant
needs sad spirits in order to succeed , just as sad spirits need a tyrant in order
to be content and to multiply. In any case, what unites them is their hatred
oflife, their resentment against life. The Ethics draws the portrait of the re­
sent.fol man, for whom all happiness is an offense, and who makes wretched­
ness or impotence his only passion:

But those who know how to break men's minds rather than strengthen
them are burdensome both to themselves and to others. That is why
many, from too great an impatience of mind, and a false zeal for religion,
have preferred to live among the lower animals rather than among men.
They are like boys or young men who cannot bear calmly the scolding of
their parents, and take refuge in the army. They choose the inconve­
niences of war and the discipline of an absolute commander in preference
to the conveniences of home and the admonitions of a father; and while
they take vengeance on their parents, they allow all sorts of burdens to be
placed on them . ' �

There is, then, a philosophy of "life" i n Spinoza; i t consists precisely in

denouncing all that separates us from life, all these transcendent values that
are turned against life, these values that are tied to the conditions and illu­
sions of consciousness. Life is poisoned by the categories of Good and Evil,
 76 D I F F E R E N C E A N D R E P E TI T I O N

of blame and merit, of sin and redemption . 16 What poisons life i s hatred,
including the hatred t hat is turned back against oneselfin the form of guilt.
Spinoza traces, step by step, the dreadfol concatenation of sad passions;
first, sadness itself, then hatred, aversion, mockery, fear, despair, morsus con­
scientiae, pity, indignation, envy, humility, repentance, self-abasement,
shame, regret, anger, vengeance, cruelty. . . 1 7 His analysis goes so far t hat
.

even in hatred and securi01 he is able to find that grain of sadness that suffices
to make these the feelings of slaves. 1 8 The true city offers citizens the love of
freedom instead of the hope of rewards or even the security of possessions;
for "it is slaves, not free men, w ho are given rewards for virtue." 1 9 Spinoza is
not among those who think t hat a sad passion has something good about it.
Before Nietzsche, he denounces all the falsifications of life, all the values in
the name of which we disparage life. We do not live, we only lead a sem­
blance of life; we can only think of how to keep from dying, and our whole
lite is a death worship.
This critique of sad passions is deeply rooted in the theory of affections.
An individual is first of all a singular essence, which is to say, a degree of
power. A characteristic relation corresponds to this essence, and a certain
capacity for being affected corresponds to this degree of power. F urther­
more, this relation subsumes parts; this capacity for being affected is neces­
sarily filled by affections. Thus, animals are defined less by the abstract no­
tions of genus and species than by a capacity for being affected, by the
affections of which they are "capable, " by the excitations to which they re­
act within the limits of their capability. Consideration of genera and species
still implies a "morality," whereas the Ethics is an ethology which, with regard
to men and animals, in each case only considers their capacity for being
affected. Now, from the viewpoint of an ethology of man, one needs first to
distinguish between two sorts of affections: actions, which are explained by
the nature of the affe c ted individual, and which spring from the individual's
essence; and passions, which are explained by something else, and which
originate outside the individual. Hence the capacity for being affected is
manifested as a power of acting insofar as it is assumed to be filled by active
affections, but as a power ofbeing acted upon insofar as it is filled by passions .
For a given individual, i . e . , for a given degree of power assumed to be con­
stant within certain limits, the capacity for being affected itselfremains con­
stant within those limits, but the power of acting and the power of being
acted upon vary greatly, in inverse ratio to one another.
It is necessary to distinguish not only between actions and passions but
also between two sorts ofpassion s. The nature ofthe passions, in any case, is
to fill our capacity for being affected while separating us from our power of
acting, keeping us separated from that power. But when we encounter an
 Ethics Without Morality 77

external body that does not agree with our own (i.e., whose relation does not
enter into composition with ours), it is as ifthe power of that body opposed
our power, bringing about a subtraction or a fixation; when this occurs, it
may be said that our power of acting is diminished or blocked, and that the
corres ponding passions are t hose of sadness. In the contrary case, when we
encounter a body that agrees with our nature, one whose relation com­
pounds with ours, we may say that its power is added to ours; the passions
that affect us are those ofjoy and our power of acting is increased or en­
hanced. This joy is still a passion, since it has an external cause; we still
remain separated from our power of acting, possessing it only in a formal
sense. This power of acting is nonetheless increased proportionally; we "ap­
proach" the point of conversion, the point of transmutation that will estab­
lish our dominion, that will make us worthy of action, ofactive joys. 20
It is this theory of the affections as a whole that defines the status of the
sad passions. Whatever their j ustification, they represent the lowest degree
of our power, the moment when we are most separated from our power of
acting, when we are most alienated, delivered over to the phantoms of su­
perstition, to the mystifications of the tyrant. The Ethics is necessarily an
ethics ofjoy: only joy is worthwhile,joy remains, bringing us near to action,
and to the bliss of action. The sad passions always amount to impotence.
This will be the threefold practical problem of the Ethics: How does one arrive
at a maximum ofjoy.fol passions? proceeding from there to free and active feel­
ings ( although our place in nature seems to condemn us to bad encounters
and sadnesses). How does one manage toform adequate ideas? which are precisely
the source of active feelings ( although our natural condition seems to con­
demn us to have only inadequate ideas of our body, ofour mind, and of other
things) . How dots one become conscious of oneself, of God, and of things?-sui et Dei
et rerum aetema quadam necessitate conscius (although our consciousness seems
inseparable from illusions).
The great theories of the Ethics-the oneness of substance, t h e univocity
of the attributes, immanence, universal necessity, parallelism, etc.-cannot
be treated apart from the three practical theses concerning consciousness,
values, and the sad passions . The Ethics is a book written twice simultane­
ously: once in the continuous stream of definitions, propositions, demon­
strations, and corollaries, which develop the great speculative themes with
all the rigors of the mind; another time in the broken chain of scholia, a
discontinuous volcanic line, a second version underneath the first, express­
ing all the angers of the heart and setting forth the practical theses ofdenun­
ciation and liberation. 2 1 The entire Ethics is a voyage in immanence; but
immanence is the unconscious itself, and the conquest of the unconscious.
Ethical joy is the correlate of speculative affirmation.
 8
Ethics and the Event

We are sometimes h esitant t o call "Stoic" a concrete or poetic way oflife , as

i f the name of a doctrine were too bookish or abstract to designate the most
personal relation with a wound . But where do doctrines come from, if not
from wounds and vital aphorisms which, with their charge of exemplary
provocation, are so many speculative anecdotes? Joe Bousquet must be
called Stoic. H e apprehends the wound that he bears deep within his body
in its eternal truth as a pure event. To the extent that events are actualized
in us, they wait for us and invite us i n. They signal us: " My wound existed
before me, I was born to embody it. "I It is a ques tion of attaining this will
that the event creates in us; of becoming the quasi-cause of what is pro­
duced within us, the operator; of producing surfaces and linings in which
the event is reflected, finds itself again as incorporeal and manifests in us the
neutral splendor which it possesses i n itself in its impersonal and prein­
dividual nature, beyond the general and the particular, the collective and
the private. It is a question of becoming a citizen of the world. " Everything
was in order with the events of my life before I made them mine; to live them
is to find myself tempted to become their equal, as if they had to get from me
only that which they have that is best and most perfe ct."
Either ethics makes no sense at all, or this is what it means and has noth­
ing else to say: not to be unworthy of what happens to us. To grasp whatever
 Et/Ucs and the Event 79

happens as unjust and unwarranted (it is always someone else's fault) is, on
the contrary, what renders o u r sores repugnant- veritable ressentiment, re­
sentment of the event. There is no other ill will. What is really immoral is
the use ofmoral notions likejust or unjust, merit or fault. What does it mean
then to will the event? I s it to accept war, wounds, and death when they
occur? It is highly probable that resignation is only one more fi gure of ressen­
timent, since ressentiment has many figures. Ifwilling the event is, primarily, to
release its eternal trut h, like the fi re on which it is fed , this will would reach
the point at which war is waged against war, the wound would be the living
trace and the scar ofall wounds, and death turned on itself would be willed
against all deaths. We are faced with a volitional intuition and a transmuta­
tion. "To my inclination for death," said Bousquet, "which was a failure of
the will, I will substitute a longing for death which would be the apotheosis
of the will." From this inclination to this longing there is, in a certain re­
spect, no change except a change of the will, a sort ofleaping in place [saut
sur place] of the whole body which exchanges its organic will for a spiritual
will. It wills now not exactly what occurs, but something in that which oc­
curs, something yet to come which would be consistent with what occurs, in
accordance with the laws of an obscure, humorous conformity: the Event. I t
i s i n this sense that the amor fati i s one with the struggle of free men. My
misfortune is present in all events, but also a splendor and brightness which
dry up misfortune and which bring about that the event, once willed, is ac­
tualized on its most contracted point, on the cutting edge of an operation.
All this is the effect of the static genesis and of the immaculate conception.
The splendor and the magnifi cence of the event is sense. The event is not
what occurs (an accident), it is rather inside what occurs, the purely ex­
pressed. It signals and awaits us. In accordance with the three preceding
determinations, it is what must be understood, willed, and represented in
that which occurs. Bousquet goes on to say: " Become the man of your mis­
fortunes; learn to embody their perfection and brilliance. " Nothing more
can be said, and no more has ever been said: to become worthy of what hap­
pens to us, and thus to will and release the event, to become the offspring of
one's own events, and thereby to be reborn , to have one more birth, and to
break with one's carnal birth-to become the offspring of one's events and
not of one's actions, for the action is itself produced by the offspring of the
event.
The actor is not like a god, but is rather like an "antigod" [contre-dieu] .
God and actor are opposed in their readings of time. What men grasp as
past and future, God lives it in its eternal present. The God is C hronos: the
divine present is the circle in its entirety, whereas past and foture are dimen­
sions relative to a particular segment of the circle which leaves the rest out-
 80 DIFFERENCE AND REPETITION

side. The actor's present, on the contrary, i s the most narrow, the most con­
tracted, the most instantaneous, and the most punctual. It is the point on a
straight line which divides the line endlessly, and is itself divided into past­
foture. The actor belongs to the Aeon: instead of the most profound, the
most folly present, the present which spreads out and comprehends the fo­
ture and the past, an unlimited past-foture rises up here reflected in an
empty present which has no more thickness than the mirror. T_h e actor or
actress represents, but what he or she represents is always still in the foture
and already in the past, whereas his or her representation is impassible and
divided, unfolded without being ruptured, neither acting nor being acted
upon. It is in this sense that there is an actor's paradox; the actor maintains
himself in the instant in order to act out something perpetually anticipated
and delayed, hoped for and recalled. The role played is never that of a
character; it is a theme (the complex theme or sense) constituted by the
components of the event, that is, by the communicating singularities effec­
tively liberated from the limits of individuals and persons. The actor strains
his entire personality in a moment which is always further divisible in order
to open himself up to the impersonal and preindividual role. The actor is
always acting out other roles when acting one role. The role has the same
relation to the actor as the future and past have to the instantaneous present
which corresponds to them on the line of the Aeon. The actor thus actual­
izes the event, but in a way which is entirely different from the actualization
of the event in the depth of things. Or rather, the actor redoubles this cosmic,
or physical actualization, in his own way, which is singularly superficial­
but because ofit more distinct, trenchant and pure. Thus, the actor delimits
­
the original, disengages from it an abstract line, and keeps from the event
only its contour and its splendor, becoming thereby the actor of one's own
events-a counteractuali�ation.
The physical mixture is exact only at the level of the whole, in the full
circle of the divine present. But with respect to each part, there are many
inj ustices and ignominies, many parasitic and cannibalistic processes
which inspire our terror at what happens to us, and our resentment at what
occurs. Humor is inseparable from a selective force: in that which occurs
(an accident), it selects the pure event. In eating, it selects speaking. Bous­
quet listed the characteristics of the h umor-actor [de l'humour-acteur] : to an­
nihilate his or her tracks whenever necessary; "to hold up among men and
works their being before bitterness." "to assign to plagues, tyrannies, and the
most frightful wars the comic possibility of having reigned for nothing"; in
short, to liberate for each thing "its immaculate portion," language and
will, amorfati.2
Why is every event a kind of plague, war, wound, or death? Is this simply
 Ethics and the Event 8I

to say that there are more unfortunate than fortunate events? No, this is not
the case since the question here is about the double structure of every event.
With every event, there is indeed the present moment of its actualization,
the moment in which the event is embodied in a state of affairs, an individu­
al, or a person, the moment we designate by saying "here, the moment has
come. " The future and the past of the event are evaluated only with respect
to this definitive present, and from the point of view of that which embodies
it. But on the other hand, there is the foture and the past of the event con­
sidered in itself, sidestepping each present, being free of the limitations of a
state of affairs, impersonal and preindividual, neutral, neither general nor
particular, eventum tantum . . . It has no other present than that of the
.

mobile instant which represents it, always divided into past-future, and
forming what must be called the counteractualization. In one case, it is my
life, which seems too weak for me and slips away at a point which, in a deter­
mined relation to me, has become present. In the other case, it is I who am
too weak for life, it is life which overwhelms me, scattering its singularities
all about, in no relation to me, nor to a moment determinable as the present,
except an impersonal instant which is divided into still-future and already­
past. No one has shown better than Maurice Blanchot that this ambiguity is
essentially that of the wound and of death, of the mortal wound. Death has
an extreme and definite relation to me and my body and is grounded in me,
but it also has no relation to me at all-it is incorporeal and infinitive, im­
personal, grounded only in itself. On one side, there is the part of the event
which is realized and accomplished; on the other, there is that "part of the
event which cannot realize its accomplishment." There are thus two accom­
plishments, which are like actualization and counteractualization. It is in
this way that death and its wound are not simply events among other
events. Every event is like death, double and impersonal in its double. " I t is
the abyss of the present, the time without present with which I have no rela­
tion, toward which I am unable to project myself. For in it I do not die. I
l<>rfeit the power of dying. In this abyss one [on] dies-one never ceases to
die, and one never succeeds in dying."3
How different this "one" is from that which w e encounter in everyday
banality. It is the "one" of impersonal and preindividual singularities, the
"one" of the pure event wherein it dies in the same way that it rains. The
Mplcndor of the "one" is the splendor of the event itself or of the fourth per-
1w n . This is why there are no private or collective events, no more than there

"re individuals and universals, particularities and generalities. Everything

i11 11ingular, and thus both collective and private, particular and general,
nrither individual nor universal. Which war, for example, is not a private
11llilir? Conversely, which wound is not inflicted by war and derived from
 82 D I FFERENCE A N D REPETITION

society a s a whole? Which private event does not have all its coordinates,
that is, all its impersonal social singularities? There is, nevertheless, a good
deal ofignominy in saying that war concerns everybody, for this is not true.
It does not concern those who use it or those who serve it-creatures of res­
sentiment. And there is as much ignominy in saying that everyone has his or
her own war or particular wound, for this is not true of those who scratch at
their sores-the creatures of bitterness and ressentiment. I t is true only of the
free man, who grasps the event, and does not allow it to be actualized as
such without enacting, the actor, its counteractualization. Only the free
man, therefore, can comprehend all violence in a single act of violence, and
every mortal event in a single Event which no longer makes room for the acci­
dent, and which denounces and removes the power of ressentiment within the
individual as well as the power of oppression within society. Only by
spreading ressentiment the tyrant forms allies, namely slaves and servants.
The revolutionary alone is free from the ressentiment, by means of which one
always participates in, and profits by, an oppressive order. One and the same
Event? Mixture which extracts and purifi es, or measures everything at an
instant without mixture, instead of mixing everything together. All forms of
violence and oppression gather together in this single event which de­
nounces all by denouncing one (the nearest or final state of the question) .

The psychopathology which the poet makes his own i s not a sinister little
accident of personal destiny, or an individual, unfortunate accident. It is
not the milkman's truck which has run over him and left him disabled . It
i s the horsemen of the Hundred Blacks carrying out their pogroms against
their ancestors in the ghettos ofVilna . . . . The blows received to the head
did not happen during a street brawl, but when the police charged the
demonstrators . . . . If he cries out like a deaf genius, it is because the
bombs ofGuernica and Hanoi have deafened him.4

It is at this mobile and precise point, where all events gather together in one
that transmutation happens: this is the point at which death turns against
death; where dying is the negation of death, and the impersonality of dying
no longer indicates only the moment when I disappear outside of myself,
but rather the moment when death loses itself in itself, and also the figure
which the most singular life takes on in order to substitute itself for me.5
 9
The Selective Test

There is a force common to Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. ( Peguy would have

to be added in order to form the triptych of priest, antichrist, and catholic.
F.ach of the three in his own way makes repetition not only a power peculiar
to language and thought, a superior pathos and pathology, but also the fun­
damental category of the philosophy of the future. To each corresponds a
testament as well as a theater, a conception of the theater, and a hero of
repetition as a principal character in this theater: Job-Abraham, Dionysus­
Zarathustra, Joan of Arc-C lio). What separates them is considerable, evi­
dent and well known. But nothing can hide this prodigious encounter in
relation to a philosophy of � epetition: the_y oppost rtpttition to all thtforms of
!(tntralify. Nor do they take the word "repetition" in a metaphorical sense: on
the contrary, they have a way of taking it literally and of introducing it into
I heir style. We can, or rather must, first of all list the principal propositions
which indicate the points on which they coincide.
1 . Make something new ofrepetition itself: connect it with a test, with

a selection or selective test; make it the s upreme object of the will and of
freedom. Kierkegaard specifies: it is not a matter of drawing something
new from repetition, of extracting something new from it. Only con­
templation or the mind which contemplates from without "extracts . " I t
i s rather a matter ofacting, o fmaking repetition a s such a novelty; that is,
 84 DlFFERENCE A N D RE PETITrDN

a freedom and a task of freedom. I n the case of Nietzsche: liberate the will
from everythin g that binds it by making repetition the very object of will­
ing. No doubt it is repetition that already binds; but if we die ofrepetition
we are also saved and healed by it, healed above all by the other repeti­
tion. The whole mystical game of loss and salvation is therefore con­
tained in repetition, along with the whole theatrical game of life and
death, and the whole positive game of illness and health (cf. Zarathustra
ill and Zarathustra convalescent by virtue of one and the same power of
repetition in the eternal return).
2 . In consequence, oppose repetition to the laws of nature. Kierke­

gaard declares that he does not speak at all of repetition in nature, of

cycles and seasons, exchanges and equalities. F urthermore: if repetition
concerns the most interior element of the will, this is because everything
changes around the will in accordance with the law of nature. According
to the law of nature, repetition is impossible. For this reason, Kierke­
gaard condemns as aesthetic repetition every attempt to obtain repeti­
tion from the laws of nature by identifying with the legislative principle,
whether in the Epicurean or the Stoic manner. It will be said that the
situation is not so clear with Nietzsche. Nietzsche's declarations are nev­
ertheless explicit. I f he discovers repetition in the physis itself, this is be­
cause he discovers in the physis something superior to the reign oflaws: a
will willing itself through all change, a power against the law, an interior
of the earth opposed to the laws of its surface. Nietzsche opposes "his"
hypothesis to the cyclical hypothesis. He conceives of repetition in the
eternal return as Being, but he opposes this being to every legal form, to
the being-similar as much as to the being-equal. How could the thinker
who goes farthest in criticizing the notion of law reintroduce eternal re­
turn as a law of nature? How could such a connoisseur of the Greeks be
j ustified in regarding his own thought as prodigious and new, ifhe were
content to formulate that natural platitude, that generality regarding na­
ture well known to the ancients? On two occasions, Zarathustra corrects
wrong interpretations of the eternal return: with anger, directed at his
demon ( " Spirit of Gravity . . . do not treat this too lightly " ) ; with kind­
ness, directed at his animals ( " O buffoons and barrel-organs . . . you
have already made a refrain out of it"). The refrain is the eternal return
as cycle or circulation, as being-similar and being-equal, in short as nat­
ural animal certitude and as perceptible law of nat ure itself.
3 . Oppose repetition to moral law, to the point that it becomes the sus­
pension of ethics, a thought beyond good and evil. Repetition appears as
the logos of the solitary and the singular, the logos of the "private think­
er." Both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche develop the opposition of the pri-
 The Selective lest 85

vate thinker, the thinker-comet, bearer of repetition, and the public pro­
fessor, doctor of law, whose second-hand discourse proceeds by
mediation and finds its moralising source in the generality of concepts
(cf. Kierkegaard against Hegel, Nietzsche against Kant and Hegel; and
from this point of view, Peguy against the Sorbonne) . Job is infinite con­
testation and Abraham infinite resignation, but these are one and the
same thing. Job challenges the law in an ironic manner, refusing all sec­
ondhand explanations and dismissing the general in order to reach the
most singular as principle or as universal. Abraham submits humor­
ously to the law, but finds in that submission precisely the singularity of
his only son whom the law commanded him to sacrifice. As Kierkegaard
understands it, repetition is the transcendent correlate sh ared by the
psychical intentions of contestation and resignation. (We rediscover the
two aspects in Peguy's doubling ofJoan of Arc and Gervaise.) In Nietz­
sche's striking atheism, hatred of the law and amorfati ( love of fate), ag­
gression and acquiescence are the two faces of Zarathustra, gathered
from the Bible and turned back against it. Further, in a certain sense one
can see Zarathustra's moral test of repetition as competing with Kant.
The eternal return says: whatever you will, will it in such a manner that
you also will its eternal return. There is a "formalism" here which over­
throws Kant on his own ground, a test which goes forther since, instead
ofrelating repetition to a supposed moral law, it seems to make repetition
itself the only form of a law beyond morality. But in reality things are
even more complicated. The form ofrepetition in the eternal return is the
brutal form of the immediate, that of the universal and the singular re­
united, which dethrones every general law, dissolves the mediations and
annihilates the particulars subjected to the law. Just as irony and black
humor are combined in Zarathustra, so there is a within-the-law and a
beyond-the-law united in the eternal return.
4. Oppose repetition not only to the generalities of habit but also to
the particularities of memory. For it is perhaps habit which manages to
"extract" something new from a repetition contemplated from without.
With habit, we only act on the condition that there is a little self within us
which contemplates: it is this which extracts the new, in other words the
general, from the pseudorepetition of part icular cases. Memory, then,
perhaps recovers the particulars dissolved in generality. These psycho­
logical movements are of little consequence: for both Nietzsche and
Kierkegaard they fade away before repetition proposed as the double
condemnation of habit and memory. In this way, repetition is the
thought of the foture: it is opposed to both the ancient category ofremi­
niscence and the modern category ofhabitus. It is in repetition, by repeti-
 86 D I F F ERENCE A N D REP ETITION

tion that forgetting becomes a positive power and the unconscious a posi­
tive, superior unconscious (for example, forgetting as a force is an
integral part of the lived experience of eternal return). Everything is
summed up in power [puissance] . When Kierkegaard speaks ofrepetition
as the second power of consciousness, "second" does not mean a second
time but the infinite which belongs to a single time, the eternity which
belongs to an instant, the unconscious which belongs to consciousness,
the "nth" power. And when Nietzsche presents the eternal return as the
immediate expression of the will to power, will to power does not at all
mean "to want power," but on the contrary: whatever you will, carry it to
the "nth" power; that is, separate out the su perior form thanks to the se­
lective operation of thought in the eternal return, thanks to the sin­
gularity of repetition in the eternal return itself. Here, in the superior
form of everything that is, we find the immediate identity of the eternal
return and the overman. 1
We are not suggesting any resemblance whatsoever between Nietzsche's Di­
onysus and Kierkegaard's God. On the contrary, we suppose, we believe
that the difference is insurmountable. AU the more reason to ask: whence
the coincidence concerning this fondamental objective, on the theme ofrep­
etition, even though they understand this objective differently? Kierke­
gaard and Nietzsche are among those who bring to philosophy new means
of expression. In relation to them we speak readily of an overcoming of phi­
losophy. Furthermore, in all their work movement is at issue. Their objection
to Hegel is that he does not go beyond false movement, in other words the
abstract logical movement of "mediation . " They want to put metaphysics
in motion, in action . They want to make it act, to carry out immediate acts.
It is not enough therefore for them to propose a new representation of move­
ment; representation is already mediation. Rather, it is a question of pro­
ducing within the work a motion capable of affecting the mind outside of all
representation; it is a question of making movement itself a work, without
interposition; of substituting direct signs for mediate representations; of in­
venting vibrations, rotations, whir lings, gravitations, dances or leaps which
directly touch the mind. This is the idea of a man of the theater, the idea of a
director-before his time. In this sense, something completely new begins
with Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. They no longer reflect on the theater in
the Hegelian manner. Neither do they set up a philosophical theater. They
invent an incredible equivalent of theater within philosophy, thereby found­
ing at the same time this theater of the foture and a new philosophy. It will
be said that, at least from the point of view of theater, there was no produc­
tion: neither the profession of priest and Cop enhagan around 1840 nor the
 The Selective Test 87

break with Wagner and Bayreuth were favorable conditions. One thing,
however, is certain: when Kierkegaard speaks of ancient theater and mod­
ern drama, the environment has already changed; we are no longer in the
element of reflection. We find here a thinker who Iives the problem of masks,
who experiences the inner emptiness of masks and who seeks to fill it, to
complete it, albeit with the "absolutely different"; that is, by putting into it
all the difference between the finite and the infinite, thereby creating the
idea ofa theater ofhumor and of faith. When Kierkegaard explains that the
knight of faith so resembles a bourgeois in his Sunday best as to be capable
of being mistaken for one, this philosophical instruction must be taken as
the remark of a director showing how the knight of faith should be played.
And when he comments on Job or Abraham, when he imagines the varia­
tions of the tale Agnes and the Triton, the manner in which he does so does not
mislead: it is that of a scenario. Mozart's music resonates even in Abraham
and Job; it is a matter of "leaping" to the tune of this music. "I only look at
movements" is the language of a director who poses the highest theatrical
problem, the problem of a movement which would directly touch the soul,
which would be that of the soul.2
Even more so with Nietzsche. The Birth ef Tragedy is not a reflection on
ancient theater so much as the practical foundation of a theater of the fo­
ture, the opening up of a path along which Nietzsche still thinks it possible
to push Wagner. The break with Wagner is not a matter of theory, not of
music; it concerns the respective roles of text, history, noise, music, light,
song, dance, and decor in this theater of which Nietzsche dreams.
Zarathustra incorporates the two attempts at dramatizing Empedocles .
Moreover, i f Bizet is better than Wagner, i t is from the point of view of the­
ater and for Zarathustra's dances. Nietzsche's reproach to Wagner is that he
inverted and dis torted "movement," giving us a nautical theater in which
we must paddle and swim rather than one in which we can walk and dance.
Zarathustra is conceived entirely within philosophy, but also entirely for the
stage. Everything in it is scored and visualized, put in motion and made to
walk or dance. How can it be read without searching for the exact sound of
the cry of the higher man, how can the prologue be read without staging the
episode of the tightrope walker which opens the whole story? At certain mo­
ments, it is a comic opera about terrible things; and it is not by chance that
Nietzsche speaks of the comic character of the overman. Remember the
�ong of Ariadne from the mouth of the old Sorcerer: here, two masks are
�uperimposed-that of a young woman, almost of a Kore, which has j ust
hccn laid over t h e mask of a repugnant old man. The actor must play the
role of an old man playing the role of the Kore. And here too, for Nietzsche,
it is a matter of filling the inner emptiness of the mask within a theatrical
 88 DIFFERENCE A N D R E P ETITIO N

space: by multiplying the superimposed masks and inscribing the omnipre­

sence of Dionysus in that superimposition, by inserting the infinity of real
movement in the form of the absolute difference given in the repetition of the
eternal ret urn. When Nietzsche says that the overman resembles Borgia
rather than Parsifal, when he suggests that the overman belongs at once to
both the Jesuit order and the Prussian officer corps, we can only understand
these texts by taking them for what they are: the remarks of a director indi­
cating how the overman should be "played . "
Theater i s real movement, and i t extracts real movement from all the arts
that it employs. This is what we are told: this movement, the essence and the
interiority of movement is not opposition, not mediation but repetition. Hegel is
denounced as the one who proposes an abs tract movement of concepts in­
stead of a movement of the physis and the psyche. Hegel substitutes the ab­
stract relation of the particular to the concept in general for the true relation
of the singular and the universal in the Idea. He thus remains in the re­
flected element of"representation," within simple generality. H e represents
concepts i ns tead of dramatizing Ideas: h e creates a false theater, a false
drama, a false movement. _We must see how Hegel betrays and distorts the
immediate i n order to found his dialectic on that incomprehension, and to
introduce mediation in a movement which is no more than that of his own
thought and its generalities. When we say, on the contrary, that movement
is repetition and that this is our true theater, we are not speakingofthe effort
of the actor who " repeats" because he has not yet learned the part. We have
in mind the theatrical space, the emptiness of that space, and the manner i n
which it is filled and determined b y signs and masks through which the ac­
tor plays a role which plays other roles; we think of how repetition is woven
from one distinctive point to another, including within itself the differences.
(When Marx also criticizes the abstract false movement or mediation of the
Hegelians, he finds himself drawn to an idea, which he indicates rather than
develops, an essentially "theatrical" idea: to the extent that history is the­
ater, then repetition, along with the tragic and the comic within repetition,
forms a condition of movement under which the "actors" or the "heros"
produce something effectively new in history. ) The theater of repetition is
opposed to the theater of representation, j ust as movement is opposed to
concepts and to representation which refers it back to concepts. In the the­
ater of repetition, we experience pur e forces, dynamic lines in space which
act without intermediary upon the spirit, and which link it directly with na­
ture and history, with a language which speaks before words, with gestures
which develop before organized bodies, with masks before faces, with spec­
ters and phantoms before characters-the whole apparatus of repetition as
a "terrible power."
 The Selective Test 89

It becomes easy, then, to speak of the differences between Kierkegaard

and Nietzsche. But even this question must no longer be posed at the spec­
ulative level of the ultimate nature of the God of Abraham or the Diony�us
ofZarathustra. It is rather a matter of knowing what it means to "produce
movement," to repeat or to obtain repetition. Is it a matter of leaping, as
Kierkegaard believes? Or rather is it a matter of dancing, as Nietzsche
thinks; he does not like the confusion of dancing and leaping (only
Zarathustra's ape, his demon, his dwarf, his buffoon, leaps).3 Kierkegaard
offers us a theater of faith; he opposes spiritual movement, the movement of
faith, to logical movement. He can thus invite us to go beyond all aesthetic
repetition, to go beyond irony and even humor, all the while painfolly aware
that he offers us only the aesthetic, ironic, and humoristic image of such a
going beyond . With Nietzsche, it is a theater of unbelief, of movement as
p�ysis, already a theater ofcruelty. Here, humor and irony are indispensable
and fondamental operations of nature. And what would the eternal return
be, if we forgot that it is a vertiginous movement endowed with a force: not
one which causes the return of the Same in general, but one which selects,
one which expels as well as creates, destroys as well as produces? Nietz­
sche's leading idea is to found the repetition in the eternal return at once on
the death of God and the dissolution of the self. But it is a quite different
alliance in the theater offaith: Kierkegaard dreams ofan alliance between a
God and a self rediscovered. All sorts of differences follow: is the movement
in the sphere of the mind, or in the intestines of the earth which knows nei­
ther God nor self? Where will it be better protected against generalities,
against mediations? Is repetition supernatural, to the extent that it is over
and above the laws of nature? Or is it rather the most natural will of nature
in itself and willing itself as physis, because nature is by itself superior to its
own kingdoms and its own laws? Hasn't Kierkegaard mixed all kinds of
things together in his condemnation of "aesthetic" repetition: a pseudo­
rcpetition attributable to general laws of nature, a true repetition in nature
i tself; a repetition of the passions in a pathological mode, a repetition in art
and the work of art? We cannot now resolve any of these problems; it has
hcen enough for us to find theatrical confirmation of an irreducible differ­
rnce between generality and repetition.
 10
Eternal Recurrence

Because it is neither felt nor known, a becoming-active can only be thought

as the product of a selection. A simultaneous double selection by the activity
of force and the affirmation of the will. But what can perform the selection?
What serves as the selective principle? Nietzsche replies: the eternal return.
Formerly the object of disgust, the eternal return overcomes disgust and
turns Zarathustra into a "convalescent," someone consoled (Z I I I "The
Convalescen t"). I But in what sense is the eternal return selective? Firstly
because, as a thought, it gives the will a practical rule ( VP IV 229, 2 3 1 / WP
1 053, r n56 "The great selective thought" ).2 The eternal return gives the will
a rule as rigorous as the Kantian one. We have noted that the eternal return,
as a physical doctrine, was the new formulation of the speculative synthesis.
As an ethical thought the eternal return is the new formulation of the practi­
cal synthesis: whateveryou will, will it in such a way that you also will its ttmtal
return. " I f, in all that you will you begin by asking yourself: is it certain that I
will to do it an infinite number of times? This should be your most solid
centre of gravity ( VP IV 242). One thing in the world disheartens Nietzsche:
the little compensations, the little pleasures, the little joys and everything
that one is granted once, only once. Everything that can be done again the
next day on the condition that it be said the day before: tomorrow I will give
it up-the whole ceremonial of the obsessed. And we are like those old
 Etemal Rl"'rmu:t 91

women who permit themselves a n excess only once, w e act and think like
them. "Oh, that you would put from you all half willing, and decide upon
lethargy as you do upon action. Oh that you understood my saying: 'Always
do what you will- but first be such as ,;an will !' "3 Laziness, stupidity, base­
ness, cowardice, or spitefulness that would will its own eternal return would
no longer be the same laziness, stupidity, etc. How does the eternal return
perform the selection here? It is the thought of the eternal return that selects.
It makes willing something whole. The thought of the eternal return elimi­
nates from willing everything which falls outside the eternal return, it
makes willing a creation, it brings about the equation "willing = creating. "
I t is clear that such a selection falls short ofZarathustra's ambitions. I t is
content to eliminate certain reactive states, certain states of reactive forces
which are among the least developed. But reactive forces which go to the
limit of what they can do in their own way, and which find a powerful motor
in the nihilistic will, resist the first selection. Far from falling outside the
eternal return they enter into it and seem to return with it. We must there­
fore expect a second selection, very different from the first. But this second
selection involves the most obscure parts of Nietzsche's philosophy and
lorms an almost esoteric element on the doctrine of the eternal return. We
can therefore only summarize these Nietzschean themes, leaving a detailed

conceptual explanation until later.

1 Why is the eternal return called "the most extreme form of nihil­
•

ism" ( VP I I I 8/ WP 55) ? And if the eternal return is the most extreme

form of nihilism, nihilism itself( separated or abstracted from the eternal
return) is always an "incomplete nihilism" ( VP I I I 7/ WP 28): however
far it goes, however powerful it is . Only the eternal return makes the ni­
hilistic will whole and complete.
2. The will to nothingness, as we have investigated it up to now, has
always appeared in an alliance with reactive forces. Its essence was to
deny active force and to lead it to deny and turn against itself. But, at the
same time, it laid in this way the foundation for the conservation, tri­
umph, and contagion of reactive forces. The will to nothingness was the
universal becoming-reactive, the becoming-reactive of forces. This is the
sense in which nihilism is always incomplete of its own. Even the ascetic
ideal is the opposite of what we might think, "it is an expedient of the art
of conserving life . " Nihilism is the principle of conservation of a weak,
diminished, reactive life. The depreciation and negation oflife form the
principle in whose shadow the reactive life conserves itself, survives, tri­
umphs, and becomes contagious ( GM I I I 1 3 ).4
3- What happens when the will to nothingness is related to the eternal
 92 DIFFERENCE AND RE PETITION

return? This i s the only place where i t breaks its alliance with reactive
forces. Only the eternal return can complete nihilism because it makes nega­
tion a negation ef reactiveforces themselves. By and in the eternal return nihil­
ism no longer expresses itself as the conservation and victory of the weak
but as their destruction, their self-destruction. ''This perishing takes the
form of a self-destruction-the instinctive selection of that which must
des troy. . . . The will to destruction as the will of a s till deeper instinct,
the instinct of self-destruction, the will for nothingness" ( VP I II 8/ WP
55). This is why Zarathustra, as early as the Prologue, sings of the "one
who wills his own downfall," "for he does not want to preserve himself, "
"for he will cross the bridge without hesitation" ( Z Prologue 4 ). The Pro­
logue to Zarathustra contains the premature secret of the eternal return.
4. Turning against oneself should not be confused with this destruc­
tion of self, this self-destruction. In the reactive process of turning against
oneself active force becomes reactive. In self-destruction reactive forces
are themselves denied and led to nothingness. This is why self-destruction
is said to be an active operation an "active destruction" ( VP II I 8; EH II I
1 ). 5 I t and i t alone expresses the becoming-active offorces: forces become
active insofar as reactive forces deny and suppress themselves in the
name of a principle which, a short time ago, was still assuring their con­
servation and triumph. Active negation or active destruction is the state
of strong spirits which destroy the reactive i n themselves, submitting it to
the test of the eternal return and submitting themselves to this test even if
it entails willing their own decline; "it is the condition of strong spirits
and wills, and these do not find it possible to stop with the negative of
1udgement'; their nature demands active negation" ( VP I I I 1 02 / WP 2 4).
This is the only way in which reactive forces become active. Furthermore
this is why negation, by making itself the negation of reactive forces
themselves, is not only active but is, as it were, transmuted. It expresses
affirmation and becoming-active as the power of affirming. Nietzsche
then speaks of the "eternal joy of becoming . . . that joy which includes
even joy in destroying," "The affirmation of passing away and dtstrqying,
which is the decisive feature of a Dionysian philosophy" (EH I I I "The
Birth ofTragedy" 3; 2 7 3 ) ;
5. The second selection i n the eternal return is thus the following: t he
eternal return produces becoming-active. I t is sufficient to relate the will
to nothingness to the eternal return in order to realize that reactive forces
do not return. However far they go, however deep the becoming-reactive
of forces, reactive forces will not return. The small, petty, reactive man
will not return. In and through the eternal return negation as a quality of
the will to power transmutes itself into affirmation, it becomes an affir-
 Eternal &currenu 9J

mation of negation itself, it becomes a power of affirming, an affirmative

power. This is what Nietzsche presents as Zarathustra's cure and Di­
onysus' secret. "Nihilism vanquished by itself" thanks to the eternal re­
turn ( VP I l l ) . This second selection is very different from the first. It is
no longer a question of the simple thought of the eternal return eliminat­
ing from willing everything that falls outside this thought but rather, of
the eternal return making something come into being which cannot do so
without changing nature. It is no longer a ques tion of selective thought
but of selective being; for the eternal return is being and being is selection
(selection = hierarchy).

All this must be taken as a simple summary of t exts. These texts will
only be elucidated in terms of the following points: the relation of the two
qualities of the will to power (negation and affirmation), the relation of
the will to power itself with the eternal return, and the possibility of
transmutation as a new way offeeling, thinking, and above all being ( the
overman). In Nietzsche's terminology the reversal of values means the
active in place of the reactive (strictly speaking it is the reversal ofa rever­
sal, since the reactive began by taking the place ofaction). But transmutation
of values, or transvaluation, means affirmation instead of negation­
negation transformed into a power of affirmation, the supreme Dionysian
metamorphosis. All these as yet unanalyzed points form the summit of
the d octrine of the eternal return.
From afar we can hardly see this summit. The eternal return is the
being of becoming. But becoming is double: becoming-active and
becoming-reactive , becoming-active of reactive forces and becoming­
reactive of active forces. But only becoming-active has being; it would be
contradictory for the being of becoming to be affirmed of a becoming­
reactive, of a becoming that is itself nihilistic. The eternal return would
become contradictory ifit were the return of reactive forces. The eternal
return teaches us that becoming-reactive has no being. Indeed, it also
teaches us of the existence ofa becoming-active. It necessarily produces
becoming-active by reproducing becoming. This is why affirmation is
twofold: the being of becoming cannot be fully affirmed without also af­
firming the existence of becoming-active. The eternal return thus has a
double aspect: it is the universal being of becoming, but the universal
being of becoming ought to belong to a single becoming. Only becoming­
active has a being which is the being of the whole ofbecoming. Returning
is everything but everything is affirmed in a single moment . Insofar as
the eternal return is affirmed as the universal being ofbecoming, insofar
as becoming-active is also affirmed as the symptom and product of the
 94 D I F F E R E N C E A N D R E P ET I T I O N

universal eternal return, affirmation changes nuance and becomes more

and more profound. Eternal return, as a physical doctrine, affirms the
being of becoming. But, as selective ontology, it affirms this being ofbe·
coming as the "self·affirming" of becoming�active. We see that, at the
heart of the complicity which joins Zarathustra and his animals, a mis·
understanding arises, a problem the animals neither understand nor rec·
ognize, the problem ofZarathustra's disgust and cure. "O you buffoons
and barrel organs! answered Zarathustra and smiled again . . . you­
have already made an old song of it" (Z I I I "The Convalescent" pp.
234-35). The old song is the cycle and the whole, universal being. But
the complete formula of affirmation is: the whole, yes, universal being,
yes, but universal being ought to belong to a single becoming, the whole
ought to belong to a single moment.
 11
Man and Overman

Foucault's general principle is that every form is a compound of relations

between forces. Given these forces, our first ques tion is with what forces
from the outside they enter into a relation, and then what form is created as
a result. These may be forces within man: the force to imagine, remember,
conceive, wish, and so on. One might object that such forces already pre­
suppose man: but in terms of form this is not true. The forces within man
presuppose only places, points of industry, a region of the existent. In the
same way forces within an animal (mobility, irritability, and so on) do not
presuppose any determined form. One needs to know with what other
forces the forces within man enter in a relation, in a given historical form a­
tion, and what form is created as a result from this compound of forces. We
can already foresee that the forces within man do not necessarily contribute
to the composition of a man-form, but may be otherwise invested in another
compound or form: even over a short period of time man has not always
existed , and will not exist for ever. For a man-form to appear to be deline­
ated, the forces within man must enter into a relation with certain very spe­
cial forces from the outside.
 96 DIFFERENCE AND R E P E TITION

I . THE "C LASSICAL" HISTORICAL FORMATION

Classical thought may be recognized by the way in which it thinks of the
infi nite. In it every reality, in a force, "equals" perfection, and so can be
raised to infi nity (the infinitely perfe ct), the rest being a limitation and
nothing but a limitation. For example, the force to conceive can be raised to
infinity, such that human understanding is merely the limitation placed on
an infinite understanding. No doubt there are very different orders ofinfini­
ty, but they are formed only on the basis of the limitation weighing down a
particular force. The force to conceive can be raised to infinity directly,
while that of imagining can achieve only an infinity of an inferior or derived
order. The seventeenth century does not ignore the dis tinction between the
infinite and the indefinite, but it makes the indefinite the lowest degree of
infinity. The question of knowing whether or not the whole range can be
attributed to God depends on the separation of whatever is reality in the
range from whatever is limitation, that is to say from the order of infinity to
which the range can be raised . The most typical seventeenth-century texts
therefore concern the distinction between different orders ofinfinity: the in­
finity of grandeur and the infinity of smallness in Pascal; the infinite in itself,
the infinite in its cause, and the infinite between limits in Spinoza; all the
infinities in Leibniz, and so on. Classical thought is certainly not serene or
imperious. On the contrary, it continually loses itself in infinity: as Michel
Serres says, it loses all center and territory, agonizes over its attempts to fix
the place of the finite in the midst of all the infinities, and tries to establish an
order within infinity. 1
In brief, the forces within man enter into a relation with those forces that
raise things to infinity. The latter are indeed forces from the outside, since
man is limited and cannot himself account for this more perfect power
which passes through him. Thus the compound created from the confronta­
tion between the forces within man, on the one hand, and the forces that
raise to infinity, on the other, is not a man-form but the God-form. One
may object that God is not a compound but an absolute and unfathomable
unity. This is true, but the God-form is a compound in the eyes of every
seventeenth-century author. I t is a compound precisely of every force that
can be directly raised to infinity (sometimes understanding and will, some­
times thought and range, etc. ) . As for other forces which can be raised only
by their cause, or between limits, they still belong to the God-form, not in
essence but in consequence, to the point where we can derive from each one
of them a proof of the existence of God ( proofs that are cosmological,
physico-teleological, and so on). Thus, in the classical historical formation,
the forces within man enter into a relation with forces from the outside in
 Man and Ovtnnan 97

such a way that t h e com p o u nd i s a God-form, a n d not a t all a man-form.

This is the world of infinite representation.
In the orders derived from it we must find the element that is not infinite
in itself, but which nonetheless can be developed to a n infinite degree and
consequently enters into a s cene, or unlimited series, o r continuum that can
be prolonged. This is the s i g n of the classical forms of science still prevalent
in the eighteenth century: " cha racter" for living beings, "root" for lan­
guages, money (or land) fo r wealth.2 Such sciences are general, the general
indicating a n order of infini ty. Thus there is no biology in the seventeenth
century, but there is a natural history that does not form a system withou t
organizing itselfin series; there is no political economy, b u t there is an anal­
ysis of wealth; no philology or linguistics, but a general grammar.
Foucault will s u bject this triple aspect to a detailed analysis, and find it
the perfect place i n which t o divide up statements. In accordance with this
method, Foucault isolates an "archaeological ground" in classical thought
which reveals unexpected affinities, but also breaks relations that are too
predictable. This avoids making Lamarck into a precursor of Darwin, for
example: for it is true that Lamarck's genius lay in i nj ecting a historicity
into living beings in several d ifferent ways; this is something still done from
the viewpoint of the animal series, to save this idea of series which is threat­
ened by new factors. Therefore, Lamarck differs from Darwin in belonging
to the classical "ground . " 3 What defines this ground and constitutes this
gre at family of so-called classical statements, functionally, is this continual
development towards infinity, formulation of continuums, and unveiling of
scenes: the continual need to unfold and "explai n . " What is God, if not the
universal explanation and supreme unveiling? The uefold appears here as a
fimdameiital concept, or first aspect ofan active thought that becomes em­
bodied in the classical formation. This accounts for the frequency of the
noun unfold in Foucault. If the clinic belongs to this formation, it is because it
consists in unfolding the t i s sues covering "two-dimensional areas" and in
developing i n series t h e symptoms whose compositions are infinite.4

II . The Historical Formation of the Nineteenth Century

Mutation cons ists in this: the forces within man enter into a relation with
new forces from the outside, which are forces of finitude. These forces are
life , labor, and language-the triple root of finitude, which will give birth to
biology, political economy, and linguistics. And no doubt we are used to this
archaeological mutation: we often locate in Kant the source of such a revo­
lution where the "con stituent finitude" replaces the original infinity.5 W hat
could be more unintelligible for the classical age than that finitude should
 98 DIFFERENCE A N D R E PETITION

be constituent ? Fo ucault nonetheless introduces a completely new element

into this scheme: while we were once told only that man becomes aware of
his own finitude, under certain his torically determinabl e causes Foucault
insists on the necessity of introd ucing two distinct phases. The force within
man must begin by confron ting and s eizing hold of the forces offinitude as if
they were forces from outside: it is outside oneself that force must come up
against finitude. Then and only then, in a s econd stage, does it create from
this i t s own finitude, where its knowledge offi.nitude necessarily brings it to
its own fi nitude. All this means that when the forces within man enter into a
relation with forces offinitude from outside, then and only then does the set
of forces compose the man-form (and not the God-form). lncipit Homo.
It is here that the method for analyzing statements is shown to be a
microanalysis that offers two st ages where we had previously s een only
one.6 The fi.r st moment consists in this: something breaks the series and
fractures the contin uums, which on the s urface can no longer be developed.
It is like the advent of a new dimension, an irreducible depth that menaces
the orders of infinite representation. With J u ssieu, Vicq d'Azyr, and
Lamarck, the coordination and s ubordination of characteristics in a plant
or animal-in brief, an organizing force- imposes a division of organisms
which can no longer be aligned b ut tend to develop each on its own ( patho­
logical anatomy accentuates this tendency by discovering an organic d epth
or a "pathological vol ume"). With Jones, a force of fl uxion alters the order
ofroots. With Adam Smith, a force of work ( abstract work, any work that is
no longer evidence of a particular q uality) alters the order of wealth. Not
that organization, fluxion, and labor have b een ignored by the classical age.
But they played the role of lim itations that did not prevent the correspond­
ing qualities from being raised to i�finity, or from being deployed to infinity, if
only in law. Now, on the other hand, they disengage themselves from quality
and reveal inst ead something that cannot be qualified or represented, death
in life, p ain and fatigue in work, stammering or aphasia in language. Even
the land will discover its essential avarice, and get rid of its apparent order
of infinity. 7
Then everything is ready for the s econd stage, for a biology, a political
economy, a linguistics. Things, living creatures, and words need only fold
htuk on this depth as a new dimension, orfall /Jack on these forces offi.nitude.
There is no longer just a force of organization in life; there are also spatio­
temporal programs of organization which are irreducible in themselves,
and on the ba sis of which living b eings are disseminated (Cuvier). There is
no longer simply a force of inflection in language, but various programs on
the b asis of which affixive or inflected languages are distributed and where
the s el f-sufficiency of words and l etters gives way to verbal interrelations,
 Man and Orierman 99

language itselfno longer being defined by what it designates or signifies, but

referring back instead to "collective wills" ( Bopp, Schlegel). There is no
longer simply a force of productive work; instead there are conditions of
production on the basis of which work itself falls back on capital ( Ricardo)
before the reverse takes place, in which capital falls back on the work ex­
torted (Marx). Everywhere comparisons replace the general fact that was so
dear to the seventeenth century: comparative anatomy, comparative philol­
ogy, comparative economy. Everywhere it is the.fold which dominates now,
to follow Foucault's terminology, and this fold is the second aspect of the
active thought that becomes incarnated in nineteenth-century develop­
ment. The forces within man fall or fold back on this new dimension of
in-depth fin itude, which then becomes the finitude of man himself. The fold,
as Foucault constantly says, is what constitutes a " thickness" as well as a
"hollow. "
In order to reach a better understanding ofhow the fold becomes t he fun­
damental category, we need only examine the birth of biology. Everything
we find proves Foucault's case (and could equally be found in any other dis­
cipline). When Cuvier outlines four great branches he does not define any
generality larger than genre or class, but on the contrary concentrates on
fractures that prevent any continuum of species from grouping in increas­
ingly general terms. The branches oforganizing elements set in motion cer­
tain axes, orientations, or dynamisms on the basis of which the living ele­
ment is folded in a particular way. This is why the work of Cuvier extends
into the comparative embryology ofBaer, based on the foldings of germinal
layers. And when Geoffroy Saint -Hilaire contrasts Cuvier's organizational
program with a single composition or structure, he still invokes a method
of folding: we pass from the vertebrate to the cephalopoid, if we bring to­
gether the two parts of the vertebrate's spine, its head towards its feet, its
frame up to its neck, and so on.8 If Geoffroy belongs to the same 'archae­
ological ground' as Cuvier (in accordance with Foucault's method for anal­
ysing statements), this is because both invoke the fold, one seeing it as a
third dimension that brings about this move under the surface. What
Cuvier, Geoffroy and Baer also have in common is that they resist evolution­
ism. But Darwin will found natural selection on the advantage which the
living creature has, in a given environment, if it makes characteristics di­
verge and opens up differences. It is because they fold in different ways ( the
tendency to diverge) that a maximum ofliving creatures will be able to sur­
vive in the same place. As a result, Darwin still belongs to the same ground
as Cuvier, as opposed to Lamarck, to the extent that he bases his evolution­
ism on the impossibility of convergence and the failure to achieve a serial
continuum.9
 IOO D I FFERENCE A N D REPETITION

I f the fold and the unfold animate not only Foucault's ideas but even his
style, it is because they constitute an archaeology of thought . So we are per­
haps less surprised to find that Foucault encounters Heidegger precisely in
this area. It is more an encounter than an influence, to the extent that in
Fo ucault the fold and the unfold have an origin, a use, and a destination that
are very different from Heidegger's. According to Foucault they reveal a re­
lation between forces, where regional forces confront either forces that raise
to infinity (the unfold) in such a way as to constitute a God-form, or forces of
fi nitude ( t h e fold) in such a way as to constitute a man-form. I t is a Nietz­
schean rather than Heideggerean his tory, a history devoted to Nietzsche, or
to life: "Th ere is being only b ecause their is life . . . . The Experience oflife is
thus posited as the most general law of b eings . . . but t h i s ontology dis-
closes not so much what gives beings their foundation as what bears them
for an instant towards a precarious for m . " 1 0

I l l . Toward a Formation of the Future?

It is obvious that any form is p recarious, since it depends on relations be­
tween forces and their mutat ions. We d istort Nietzsche when we make him
into the thinker who wrote about the death of God. It is Feuerbach who is
the last thinker of the death of God: he shows that since God has never been
anything but the unfold of man, man must fold and refold God. But for
Nietzsche this is an old story, and as old stories tend to multip ly their vari­
ants Nietzsche multiplies the versions of the death of God, all of them comic
o r humorous, as though they w ere variations on a given fact. But what inter­
ests him is the death of man. So long as God exis ts-that is, so long as the
God -form functions-then man does not yet ex ist.
But when the man -form app ears, it does so only by already incorporat­
ing the death of man in at least three ways. First, where can man find a
guarantee of id en tity in the absence ofGod?1 1 Secondly, the man-form has
itself been constituted only within the folds offi nitude: it places death with­
in man (and has done so, as we have seen, less in the manner of Heidegger
than in the manner ofBichat, who conceived of death in terms of a "violent
death ') . 1 2 Lastly, the forces of finitude themselves mean that man exists
only through the dissemination of the various methods for organizing life,
such as the dispersion of languages or the divergence i n modes of prod uc­
tion, which imply that the only "critique of know ledge" is an "ontology of
the annihilation of beings" (not only p alaeon tology, but also ethnology ) . 1 3
What does Foucault mean when he says there is no point i n crying over
the death ofman? 1 4 In fact, has this form been a good one? Has it help ed to
enrich or even preserve the forces w ithin man, those of living, speaking, or
 Man and Or.ierman 101

working? H as it saved living men from a violent death? The q uestion that
continually returns is therefore the followi ng: if the forces within man com­
pose a form only by e ntering into a relation with forms from the o utside,
with what new forms d o they now risk entering into a relation, and what
new form will emerge t hat is neither God nor man? This is the correct place
for the problem that Nietzsche called "the superma n . "
I t i s a problem where we have t o content ourselves w i t h very tentative
indications if we are not to descend to the level of carto ons. Fou cault, like
N ietzsche, can only sketch in something embryonic and not yet function­
al. 1 5 Nietzsche said that man i mp risoned life, but the superman is what
frees life within man himself, to the be nefi t of another form, and so on.
Foucault proffers a very peculiar piece of i nformation: if it is true that
ninete ent h-cent ury humanist linguistics was base d o n the dissemination of
languages, as the condition for a "demotion of language" as an o bject, one
reperc ussi on was nonetheless that literature took on a co mpl etely different
fu nction t h a t c o nsisted, on the r:ontraty, in "regrouping" language and em­
p hasizing a "being of language" beyond whatever it designates and sig­
nifies, beyond even the sounds. 1 6 The peculiar thing i s that Fo ucault, in his
acute analysis of modern literat ure, here gives language a privilege which
he refuses to grant t o life or l abor: h e belie ves that life and labor, despite a
disp ersion concomitant with t hat oflanguage, did not lose the re grouping of
their being . ' 7 I t se ems to us, though, that when dispersed labor and life
were e ach able to unify themselves only by somehow breaking free from eco­
nomics or bio logy, j ust as language managed to regroup itself only when
li terature broke free from linguistics.
Biology had to take a leap into molecular biol ogy, or dispersed life regroup
in the genetic code. Dispersed work had to regroup in third-generat ion
machines, cy bernet ics, and information technol ogy. What would b e the
forces in play, with which the forces within man would then enter into a
relation? It would no l onger involve raising to infinity or finitude but an
unlimited finity, thereby evoking every situation of force in which a finite
number of components yields a practically unlimited diversity of combina­
tio ns. I t would be neither the fold nor the unfold t hat would constit ute the
active mechanism, but something like the superfold, as borne out by the fold­
ings proper to the chains of the genetic code, and the pot ential of sil icon in
third-ge neration machines, as well a s b y t h e contours ofa sentence i n mod­
rrn literature, when literature "merely turns back on itselfin an endl ess re­
nexivity."
Thi s modern l iterature u ncovers a "strange language within languag e "
1 m d , through a n unlimited n u m b e r of superimposed grammatical c onstruc­
tions, tends towards an aty pical form of expression that marks the e nd of
 1 02 DlFFERENCE AND R EPETITION

language a s such (here w e may cite such examples a s Mallarme's book,

Peguy's repetitions, Artaud's breaths, the agrammaticality of Cummings,
Burroughs and his cut-ups and fold-ins, as well as Roussel's proliferations,
Brisset's derivations, Dada collage, and so on). And is this unlimited fi nity
or superfold not what Nietzsche had already designated with the name of
eternal return?
The forces within man enter into a relation with forces from the outside,
those of silicon which supersedes carbon, or genetic components which su­
persede the organism, or agrammaticalities which supersede the signifier.
In each case we must study the operations of the superfold, of which the
"double helix" is the best-known example. What is the superman? It is the
formal compound of the forces within man and these new forces. It is
the form that results from a new relation between forces. Man tends to free
life, labor, and language within himself. The superman, in accordance with
Rimbaud's formula, is the man who is even in charge of the animals (a code
that can capture fragments from other codes, as in the new schemata oflat­
eral or retrograde). It is man in charge of the very rocks, or inorganic matter
(the domain of silicon). It is man in charge of the being of language (that
formless "mute, unsignifying region where language can find its freedom"
even from whatever it has to say) . • 8 As Foucault would say, the superman is
much less than the disappearance of living men, and much more than a
change of concept: it is the advent of a new form that is neither God nor man
and which, it is hoped, will not prove worse than its two previous forms.
 Pa rt Th ree

Desire and
Schizoanalysis
 12
Psychoanalysis and Desire

Assemblages-in their content-are populated by becomings and inten­

sities, by intensive circulations, by various multiplicities ( packs, masses,
species, races, populations, tribes . . ) And in their expression, assem­
. .

blages handle indefinite articles or pronouns which are not at all indetermi­
nate ( "a" tummy, "some" people, "one" hits "a" child . . . ) -verbs in the
infinitive which are not undifferentiated but which mark processes ( to walk,
to kill, to love . . . ) -proper names which are not people but events ( they
can be groups, animals, entities, singularities, collectives, everything that is
written with a capital letter, A-HANS-BECOMING-HORSE). The collec­
tive machine assemblage is a material production of desire as well as an ex­
pressive cause of utterance: a semiotic articulation of chains of expressions
whose contents are relatively the least formalized. Not representing a
subject-for there is no subject of enunciation-but programming an as­
semblage. Not overcoding u tterances but, on the contrary, preventing them
from toppling under the tyranny of supposedly significant combinations.
Now, it is curious that psychoanalysis-which boasts that it has so much
logic-understands nothing of the logic of the indefinite article, of the in­
finitive of the verb and of the proper name. The psychoanalyst wants there
to be, at all costs, a definite, a possessive, a personal, hidden behind the
indefinite. When Melanie Klein's children say "a tummy" or ask " How do
 106 DESIRE AND SCHIZOANALYSIS

people grow up?" Melanie Klein hears "my mummy's tummy" o r "Will I
be big like my daddy?" When they say "a Hitler," "a Churchill." Melanie
Klein sees here the possessive of the bad mother or of the good father. Mili­
tary men and weathermen-more than psychoanalysts-have at least got
the sense of the proper name when they use it to refer to a strategic opera­
tion or geographical process: Operation Typhoon. On one occasion Jung
tells Freud about one of his dreams: he has dreamed of an ossuary. Freud
wants Jung to have desired someone's death, doubtless that of his wife.
"Surprised, Jung pointed out to him that there were several skulls, not
just one . " 1 In the same way, Freud does not want there to be six or seven
wolves: there will only be one representative of the father. And again,
there is what Freud does with little Hans: he takes no account of the
assemblage ( building-street-nextdoor-warehouse-omnibus-horse-a-horse­
falls-a-horse-is-whipped ! ) ; he takes no account of the situation (the child
had been forbidden to go into the street, etc) ; he takes no account of little
Hans's endeavor ( horse-becoming, because every other way out has been
blocked up: the childhood bloc, the bloc of Hans's animal-becoming, the
infinitive as marker of a becoming, the line of flight or the movement of de­
territorialization ). The only important thing for Freud is that the horse be
the father-and that's the end of it. In practice, given an assemblage, ex­
tracting a segment from it, abstracting a moment from it, is suffi cient to
break up the ensemble of desire, to break up becoming in act [le devenir en
acte] , and to substitute for them overimaginary resemblances (a horse = my
daddy) or analogies ofoversymbolic relationships (to buck = to make love).
All the real-desire has already disappeared: a code is put i n its place, a
symbolic overcoding of utterances, a fictitious subject of enunciation who
doesn' t give the patients a chance.
If you go to be psychoanalyzed, you believe that you will be able to talk
and because of this belief you accept the need to pay. But you don't have the
least chance of talking. Psychoanalysis is entirely designed to prevent peo­
ple from talking and to remove from them all conditions of true enunciation.
We have formed a small working group for the following task: to read re­
ports of psychoanalysis, especially of children; to stick exclusively to these
reports and make two columns, on the left what the child said, according to
the account itself, and on the right: what the psychoanalyst heard and re­
tained (cf. always the card trick of the "forced choice"). It's horrifying. The
two central texts in this respect are Freud's little Hans and Melanie Klein's
little Richard. I t's an amazing forcing,2 like a boxing match between
categories that are too unequal. At the outset there is Richard's humor,
which makes fon of M. K. All these assemblages of desire on his part pass
through a mapping activity during the war: a distribution of proper names,
 Psychoanalysis and Desire 107

of territorialities and deterritorializing movements, thresholds and cross­

ings. I nsensitive and deaf, impervious, Mrs K. is going to break little
Richard's strength. The leitmotif of the book is in the text itself: "Mrs K.
interpreted, Mrs. K. interpreted, Mrs. K. INTERPRETED . . . " It is said
that there is no longer any of this today: significance has replaced interpre­
tation, the signifier has replaced the signified, the analyst's silence has re­
placed the commentaries, castration is revealed to be more certain than
Oedipus, structural functions have replaced parental images, the name of
the father has replaced my daddy. We see no important practical changes. A
patient cannot mutter "mouths of the Rhone' [houches du RMne] without
being corrected-" mother's mouth" [houche de I a mere); another cannot say,
"I would like to join a hippie group" [ groupe hippie] without being asked
"Why do you pronounce it big pee?" [ gros pipi] . These two examples form
part of analyses based on the highest signifier. And what could analysis con­
sist of, if not these kind of things about which the analyst no longer even
needs to talk because the person analyzed knows them as well as he does?
The person analyzed has therefore become the analyzer-a particularly
comic term. It's all very well to say to us: you understand nothing, Oedipus,
it's not daddy-mummy, it's the symbolic, the law, the arrival at culture, it's
the effect of the signifier, it's the finitude of the subject, it has the "lack-to-be
which is life . " And ifit's not Oedipus, it will be castration, and the supposed
death drives. Psychoanalysts teach infinite resignation, they are the last
priests (no, there will be others after them). It cannot be said that they are
very jolly; see the dead look they have, their stiff necks (only Lacan has kept
a certain sense of laughter, but he admits that he is forced to laugh alone).
They are right to say that they need to be "remunerated" to put up with the
burden of what they hear; they have nonetheless given up supporting the
thesis of a symbolic and disinterested role for money in psychoanalysis. We
open � chance some article � an authoritative psychoanalyst, a two-page
article: "Man's long dependence, his powerlessness to help himself . . . the
human being's congenital inferiority . . . the narcissistic wound inherent in
his existence . . . the painful reality of the human condition . . . which im­
plies incompletion, conflict . . . his intrinsic misery, which it is true leads
him to the most elevated creations. " A priest would have been long since
hounded out of his church for s u staining so insolent and obscurantist a
style.
But yes, nevertheless, many things have changed in psychoanalysis. Ei­
ther it has swamped, it is spread into all sorts, of techniques of therapy, of
adjustment or even marketing, to which it brought its particular touch in a
vast syncretism, its little line in group polyphony. Or it has hardened, in a
refinement, a very lofty "return" to Freud, a solitary harmony, a trium-
 108 D E S I R E A N D S C H I Z O A N A L YS I S

phant specifying that wants n o more pacts except with linguistics (even if
the reverse is not tru e). But whatever their considerable difference, w e be­
lieve that these two opposed directions provide evidence of the same
changes, of the same evolution, w h i ch bears on several points.

1 . First, psychoanalysis has dis placed its center-from the family t o

married life . It s e t s its elf up b etween spouses, lovers, o r friends rather
than between paren ts and children. Even children are guided b y ps y­
chologists rather than being led along by their parents -or parent-child
relations are regulated by radio consultations. The phantasm has made
child hood memory redundant. This is a practical remark, which bears
on the recruitmen t of people to be psychoanalyzed: this recruitment
takes place less and less accord ing to the genealogy of the family tree and
more and more according to the circle of friends ( " You ought to get ana­
lyzed as wel l " ) . As Serge Leclaire says, perhaps humorous ly, "there are
now analyses where the circles of allegiance of couches frequented by
friends and lovers take the place of relations ofkinship. "3 This is of some
importance to the actual form of problems: neurosis has abandoned he­
reditary models (even ifheredity moves through a family milieu) to pur­
sue patterns of contagion. Neurosis has acquired its most frightening
power, that of propagation by contagion: "I will not let go of you until
you have joined me in this condition . " We admire the discretion of the
earlier neurotics, of the hyst erics or obsessionals, who either got on w ith
their business alone or did it in the family: the modern depressive types
are, on the contrary, particularly vampiric or poisonous. They take it on
themselves to bring about Nietzsche's prophecy: they cannot bear the
existence of "a" health; they will constantly draw us into their clutches.
Yet to cure them would mean first destroying this w ill to venom in them.
But how could the psychoanalyst do this-the same man who derives
from it an excellent self-recruitment of his clientele? It might have been
thought that May '68 would have dealt a mortal blow to psychoanalysis
and would have made the style of specifically psychoanalytic utterances
seem absurd. No, so many young people have returned to psycho­
analysis. Precisely because it was a ble to abandon its discredited family
model in order to take up a still more worrying direction, a "political"
microcontagion instead of a "p rivate" macrolineage. Never has psycho­
analysis been so foll of life, whether because it has succeeded in penetrat­
ing everything, or because it has establ ished new foun dations for its tran­
scendent position, its specifi c order.
2. Historically, psychiatry does n ot seem to us to have been con­
stitu ted around the notion of madness but, on the contrary, at the point
where this notion proved difficult to apply. Psychiatry essentially ran up
 Psychoanalysis and Desire 1 09

against the problem of cases o f delirium where the intellectual faculty

was intact. On the one hand, there are people who seem to be mad, but
who are not "really" so, having kept their faculties, and first and fore­
most the faculty of properly managing their money and their possessions
( paranoid conduct, the delirium of interpretation, etc.).-i On the other
hand, there are people who are "really" mad and yet don't seem to be,
suddenly committing an outrageous act which nothing led us to foresee,
arson, murder, etc. (monomaniac conduct, the delirium of passion or re­
venge). If the psychiatrist has a bad conscience, it is because he has had
one since the outset, because he is implicated in the dissolution of the
notion of madness: he is accused of treating as insane certain people who
are not exactly so, and of not seeing in time the madness of others who
clearly are. Psychoanalysis slipped between these two poles, saying that
we were at once all insane without seeming to be, but also that we seemed
mad without being so. A whole "psychopathology of everyday life . " I n
short, it i s around t h e failure o f the notion of madness that psychiatry i s
constituted and that psychoanalysis has been able to link u p with i t . It i s
difficult t o add anything to the analyses fi rst o f Foucault, then o f Robert
Castel, when they show how psychoanalysis has grown in the soil ofpsy­
chiatry.5 By discovering between the two poles the world of neurotics,
their intellectual faculties int act, and even absence of delirium, psycho­
analysis, at its inception, succeeded in bringing off a very important ma­
neuver: getting all sorts of people to go through the liberal contractual
relationship who had until then seemed excluded from it ("madness" put
all those it afilicted outside all possible contracts). The specifically psy­
choanalytic contract, a ll ux of words for a llux of money, was going to
make the psychoanalyst someone able to insert himselfinto every pore of
the society occupied by these doubtful cases. But the more psycho­
analysis saw it was gaining ground, the more it turned towards the de­
liriums concealed behind neuroses, the less it seems to have been happy
with the contractual relationship-even if, on the face of it, it was re­
tained. Psychoanalysis had in fact achieved what was the source of
Freud's anxiety at the end of his life; it had become interminable, inter­
minable in principle. At the same time, it assumed a "mass" function.
For what defines a mass fonction is not necessarily a collective, class or
group character; it is the j uridical transition from contract to statute. I t
seems more and more that psychoanalysis i s acquiring a n untransfer­
able, inalienable, statutory fixity, rather than entering into a temporary
contractual relationship. Precisely by setting itself up between the two poles
where psychiatry came up against its limits, by enlarging the field be­
tween these two poles and exploring it, psychoanalysis was to invent a
 110 D ES I R E A N D S C H I Z OA N A L Y S I S

statute law of mental illness o r psychic difficulty which constantly re­

newed itself and spread out into a systematic network. A new ambition
was being offered to us: psychoanalysis is a lifelong affair.
The importance of the Ecole Freudienne de Paris is perhaps particu­
larly connected to the fact that it expressed for the first time the require­
ments of a new psychoanalytic order, not j ust in theory, but in its statu­
tory organization, in its founding acts. For what it clearly proposes is a
psychoanalytic statute, in opposition to the old contract: at a stroke it
envisages a bureaucratic mutation, the transition from a bureaucracy of
the eminent ( the radical-socialist type, which suited the beginnings of
psychoanalysis) to a mass bureaucracy; this time an ideal of giving out
statutory documents like certificates of citizenship, identity cards, in
contrast to limited contracts. Psychoanalysis invokes Rome, assumes a
Ciceronian air and sets up its boundary between "Honestas" and "the
rabble. "6 If the Ecole Freudienne has brought so many problems to the
psychoanalytic world, it is not simply as a resultofits theoretical hauteur
or of its practice, but because of its plan for a new explicit organization.
The other psychoanalytic bodies may have judged this project to be in­
appropriate; but they did so because it told the truth about a change
which affects the whole of psychoanalysis and which the other organiza­
tions preferred silently to leave alone, under the cover of the contractual
motif. We do not regret the passing of this contractual cover-up, which
was hypocritical from the start. Moreover, we are not saying that psycho­
analysis is now concerned with the masses, but simply that it has as­
sumed a mass fonction-whether this was phantasmal or restricted, or
for an "elite." And this is the second aspect ofits change: not only to have
moved from family to conj ugality, from kinship to match, from lineage to
contagion, but also from contract to statute. On occasion the interminable
years of psychoanalysis give social workers additional "salary incre­
ments"; psychoanalysis can be seen permeating every part of the social
sector. 7 This seems to us to be more important than the practice and the
theory which in general outline have stayed the same. Hence the reversal
of the relations between psychoanalysis and psychiatry, hence psycho­
analysis' ambition to become an official language; hence its pacts with
linguistics (we do not have a contractual relationship with language).
3. Yet the theory itself has changed, seems to have changed. The tran­
sition from the signified to the signifier: if we no longer look for a signified
for supposedly significant symptoms; if we look, on the contrary, for the
signifier for symptoms which would be no more than its effect; ifinterpre•
tation gives way to significance-then a new shift takes place. Psycho·
analysis then has, in effect, its own references and has no more use for an
 Psychoanalysis and Desiu III

external "referent." Everything that happens in psychoanalysis in the

analyst's consulting room is true. What happens elsewhere is derived or
secondary. An excellent method for encouraging trust. Psychoanalysis
has ceased to be an experimental science in order to get hold of an ax­
iomatic system. Psychoanalysis, index sui; no other truth than that which
emerges from the operation that presupposes it; the couch has become
the bottomless well, interminable in principle. Psychoanalysis has
stopped being "in search of" because it is now constitutive of truth. Once
again, it is Serge Leclaire who puts it most succinctly: "The reality of the
primitive scene tends to reveal itself more concretely by means of the an­
alytic consulting room than in the surroundings of the parental bed­
room . . . . From a fi.gurative version, we move to the version ofreference,
a structural one, revealing the reality of a literal manoeuvre . . . . The
psychoanalysts couch has become the place where the game of confront­
ing the real properly unfold s." The psychoanalyst has become like the
journalist: he creates the event. At any rate, psychoanalysis advertises its
wares. So long as it interpreted or so long as it interprets ( search for a
signified), it returns desires and utterances to a condition which is de­
viant by comparison with the established order, by comparison with
dominant meanings, but by the same token localizes them in the pores of
this dominant, established body, like something which can be translated
and exchanged by virtue of a contract. When it discovers the signifi.er, it
appeals to a specifically psychoanalytic order (the symbolic order in op­
position to the imaginary order of the signified), whose only need is itself,
because it is statutory or structural: it is it which develops a body, a cor­
pus sufficient by itself.
Once again we clearly come up against the question of power, of the ap­
paratus of psychoanalytic power-with the same inflections as before: even
if this power is narrow, localized, etc. This question can only be posed in
terms ofvery general remarks: it is true, as Foucault says, that every forma­
t ion of power needs a form ofknowledge which, while not dependent on it,
would itselflack all effectiveness without it. Now this usable knowledge may
take two shapes: either an unofficial form, so that it can set itself up in the
"pores," to seal some hole or other in the established order; or an official
form, when it itself constitutes a symbolic order which gives a generalized
11xiomatic system to the established powers. For example, the historians of
11ntiquity show the complementarity of Greek city and Euclidean geometry.
I t was not because the geometricians had power but because Euclidean ge­
n me try constituted the knowledge, or the abstract machine, that the city

nrr.ded for its organization of power, space, and time. There is no State
 II2 DESIRE AND SCHIZOANALYSIS

which doe s not need a n image of thought which will serve a s its axiomatic
system or abstract machine, and to which it gives in return the strength to
fonction: he nce the inadeq uacy of the concept of ideology, which in no way
takes into account this relationship . This was the unhappy role of classical
philosophy-as we have seen it-that of supplying, in this way, the ap para­
tuses of power, Church and State, with the knowledge which suited them.
Could we say today that the human sciences have assumed this same role,
that of provid ing by their own methods an abstract machine for modern ap­
p aratuses of power-re ceiving from them valuable endorsement in return?
So psychoanalysis has submitted its tender, to become a major official lan­
guage and knowledge in p lace of philosophy; to p rovide an axiomatic sys­
tem of man in p lace of mathematics; to invoke the Honestas and a mass
fonction. I t is doubt fol whe ther it is s ucceeding: the apparatuses of power
have more int eres t in turning to physics, biology, or informatics. But psy­
choanalysis will have done what it could: it no longer serves the established
order uno ffi cially: it offers a s pecific and s ymbolic order, an abstract ma­
chine, an offi cia l language that it tries to weld onto linguistics in gene ral, to
assume a position of invariant. It is more and more concerned with pure
"though t ." Living psychoanalysis. Dead psychoanalysis, because it has lit­
tle chance of succeeding in its ambition, because there are too many com­
petitors and because, at the present time, all the forces of minori ty, all the
forces of becoming, all the forces oflanguage, all the f orces of art, are in t he
process of f le eing from this particular ground-in the process of talking,
thinking, acting, and becoming in other ways. Everything is happening by
another route which p sychoanalysis can't e ven intercept, or which psycho­
analysis only intercepts in order to stop. And this is the very tas k which it
sets its elf: to ove rcode asse mblages in order to s u bject desires to signify ing
chains, utteran ce s to the s tatus of subj e ctive examples-all of which recon­
cile them with an established order. The four progre ssive changes that we
havej ust seen-transition from the family to the circle of contacts, substitu­
tion of st atute for contract, dis covery of a specif ically ps ychoanalytic order,
a pact with linguistics-mark this ambition to take part in the regulation of
assemblages of desire and of enunciation, or e ven to stake out a dominant
position in this regulation .
We have b e e n credited with many blunders about t h e Anti-Oedipus, about
desiring machin es, about what an assemblage of desire is, the force s that it
mobilizes, the dangers it confronts. They did not come from us. W e said that
desire is in no sense connected to the "Law" and cannot b e defined by any
fundamental lack. For that's the real idea of the priest: the constituent law at
the heart of desire, desire constituted as lack, the holy castration, the split
subject, the death drive, the strange culture ofd ea th. And it is doubtless like
 Psychoanalysis and Desire I IJ

this each time that desire is conceived as a bridge between a subject and an
object: the subject of desire cannot but be split, and the object lost in ad­
vance. What we tried to show, on the contrary, was how desire was beyond
these personological or objectal coordinates. It seemed to us that desire was
a process and that it unrolled a plane ef consistence, a field of immanence, a
"body without organs," as Artaud put it, crisscrossed by particles and
fluxes which break free from objects and subjects . . . . Desire is therefore
not internal to a subject, any more than it tends towards an object: it is
strictly immanent to a plane which it does not preexist, to a plane which
must be constructed, where particles are emitted and fluxes combine.
There is only desire insofar as there is deployment of a particular field,
propagation of particular fluxes, emission of particular particles. Far from
presupposing a subject, desire cannot be attained except at the point where
someone is deprived of the power of saying " I . " Far from directing itself to­
ward an object, desire can only be reached at the point where someone no
longer searches for or grasps an object any more than he grasps himself as
11ubject. The objection is then made that such a desire is totally indetermi­
nate, and that it is even more imbued with lack. But who has you believe
that by losing the coordinates of object and subject you lack something?
Who is pushing you into believing that indefinite articles and pronouns (a,
one), third persons (he, she). and verbs in the infinitive are in the least inde­
terminate? The plane of consistence or of immanence, the body without
organs, includes voids and deserts. But these are "fully" part of desire, far
from accentuating some kind oflack in it. What a strange confusion-that
ofvoid with lack. We really do lack in general a particle of the East, a grain of
Zen. Anorexia is perhaps the thing about which most wrong has been
11poken-particularly under the influence of psychoanalysis. The void
which is specific to the anorexic body without organs has nothing to do with
11 lack, and is part of the constitution of the field of desire crisscrossed by

particles and fluxes. We will shortly return to this example to give more de­
tail. But already the desert is a body without organs which has never been
hostile to the groups who people it; the void has never been hostile to the
particles which move about in it.
We have an image of the desert which involves the thirsty explorer, and
1m image of the void, as a ground which opens up. Images related to death

which are only valid where the plane of consistence, which is identical to
desire, is unable to establish itself and does not have the conditions to build
on. But, on the plane of consistence, even the scarcity of particles and the
1lowing down and drying up of fluxes are part of desire, and of the pure life
of desire, without indicating any lack. As Lawrence says, chastity is a flux.
h the plane of consistence something very strange? We would have to say
 I 14 D E S I R E AND S C H I Z O A N A LY SIS

simultaneously not only: "You've got it already, you do not feel desire with­
out its being already there, without its being mapped out at the same time
as your desire," but also: "You haven't got it, and you don't desire it if you
can't manage to construct it, if you don't know how to, by finding your
places, your assemblages, your particles and your fluxes." We would have to
say simultaneously not only: "It is created all alone, but know how to see
it," and also: "You have to create it, know how to create it, take the right
directions, at your risk and peril . " Desire: who, except priests, would want ·
to call it "lack"? Nietzsche called it "will to power." There are other names
for it. For example, "grace." Desiring is not at all easy, but this is precisely
because it gives, instead oflacks, "virtue which gives. " Those who link de­
sire to lack, the long column of crooners of castration, clearly indicate a long
resentment, like an interminable bad conscience. Is this to misunderstand
the misery of those who really do lack something? But apart from the fact
that psychoanalysis does not talk about these people (on the contrary, it
makes the distinction, it says pompously enough that it is not concerned
with real privations), those whose lack is real have no possible plane of con­
sistence which would allow them to desire. They are prevented from doing
this in a thousand ways. And as soon as they construct one, they lack noth­
ing on this plane, and from this starting point they set off victoriously to­
wards that which they lack ou tside. Lack refers to a positivity of desire, and
not the desire to a negativity oflack. Even in dividually, the construction of
the plane is a politics, it necessarily involves a "collective," collective assem­
blages, a set of social becoming.
 13
Delirium : World-Historical,
Not Familial

[n the third synthesis, the conjunctive synthesis of consumption, we have

seen how the body without organs was in fact an egg, crisscrossed with axes,
banded with zones, localized with areas and fields, measu red off by gra­
dients, traversed by potentials, marked by thresholds. In this sense, we be­
lieve in a biochemistry of schizophrenia (in conjunction with the biochemis­
try of drugs), that will be progressively more capable of determining the
nature of this egg and the distribution of field-gradient-threshold. It is a
matter of relationships of intensities through which the subject passes on
the body without organs, a process that engages him in becomings, rises
and falls, migrations and displacements. R. D. Laing is entirely right in
defining the schizophrenic process as a voyage of initiation, a transcenden­
tal experience of the loss of the ego, which causes a subject to remark: "I had
rxisted since the very beginning . . . from the lowest form of life [the body
without organs] to the present time, . . . I was looking . . . -not looking so
much as just .feeling-ahead of me was lying the most horrific journey. " 1
When w e speak here of a voyage, this i s n o more a metaphor than be­
fore when we spoke of an egg, and of what takes place in and on it­
morphogenetic movements, displacements of cellular groups, stretchings,
 II6 DESIRE A ND SCHIZOANALYSIS

folds, migratio ns, and local variations o f potent ials. There i s n o reason to
oppose an in terior voyage to exterior ones: Lenz's stroll, N ij ins ky's stroll,
the promenades of Beckett's creatures are effective realities, but where the
reality of matter has abandoned all ext ension, j u s t as the interior voyage has
abandoned all form and quality, henceforth causing pure intensities­
co upled together, almost unbearable-to radiate w ithin and w ithout, in­
tensities through which a nomadic subject passes. Here it is not a case of a
hallucinatory ex perience nor ofa d elirious mode of tho ught, but a feeling, a
series of emotions and feelings as a cons ummatio n and a consumption o f
intensive q uantities, t h a t form the material f o r subsequent hallucinations
and del iriums. The intensive emotion, the affect, is both the common root
and the prin ciple of differentiatio n of deliriums and hall ucinations.
We are a lso o f a mind to believe that everything commingles in these in­
t ense b ecomings, p assages, and migrations-all this drift that ascends and
descends the flows of time: countries, races, families, parental appellations,
divine appellations, geographical and historical designations, and even
mis cellaneous news items. (/feel that) I a m beco ming God, I am b ecoming
woman, I was Joan of Arc and I am Heliogabalus and the Great Mongol, I
am a Chinaman, a redskin, a Templar, I was my father and I was my son.
And all the crimi nals, the whole l i s t of criminals, the decent criminals and
the sco undrels: Szondi rather than Freud and his Oedipus. " Perhaps it's by
trying to b e Worm that I ' ll fina lly succeed in being Mahood . . . . Then all
I ' l l have to do is be Wor m . Which no doubt I shall achieve by trying to b e
Jones. T h e n a l l I ' ll have to do is be Jon e s . " But if everything commingles i n
this fashion i t does so in intens ity, w i t h no confosion of spaces and forms,
since these have indeed been undone on b ehalf of a new o rder: the intense
and inten sive order:
What is the nature of this order? The first things to be distrib uted on the
body without o rgans are races, cult ures, and their gods. The fact has often
been overlooked that the schizo indeed participates in history; he hal luci­
nates and raves universal his tory, and prol iferates the races . All d elirium is
racial, which does not necessarily mean racist. It is not a matter of the re­
gions of the body without o rgans "representing" races and cult ures. The full
body does not represent anything a t all. On the contrary, the races and cul­
tures designate regions on this body- that is, zones of intens ities, fields of
potential s. Phenomena ofindividual ization and s exualization are prod uced
within these fields. We pass from one field to another by crossing thresho lds:
we never stop migrating, we b ecome other individuals a s well as other sexes,
and departing becomes as easy as being born or dying. Along the way we
s truggle agains t other races, we d es troy civilizations, in the manner of the
great migrants in whose wake nothing is left s tanding once they have passed
 Delirium: World Historical I 17

through-although these destructions can b e brought about, as w e shall

Hee, in two very different ways.
The crossing of a threshold entails ravages elsewhere-how could it be
otherwise? The body without organs closes· round the deserted places. The
theater ofcruelty cannot be separated from the struggle against our cult ure,
from the confrontation of the "races," and from Artaud's great migration
toward Mexico, its forces, and its religions: individuations are produced
only within fields of forces expressly defined by intensive vibrations, and
that animate cruel personages only in so far as they are induced organs,
parts of desiring-machines ( mannequins) . 2 A season in hell-how could it
he separated from denunciations of European families, from the call for de­
Htructions that don't come quickly enough, from the admiration for the con­
vict, from the intense crossing of the thresholds of history, and from this pro­
digious migration, this becoming-woman, this becoming-Scandinavian or
Mongol, this "displacement of races and continents," this feeling of raw in­
tr.nsity that presides over delirium as well as over hallucinations, and espe­
cially this deliberate, stubborn, material will to be "of a race inferior for all
rternity " : "I have known every son of good birth, I have never been of this
people, I have never been Christian, . . . yes my eyes are closed to your
light. I am a beast, a Negro."3
And can Zarathustra b e separated from the "grand politics, " and from
the bringing to life of the races that leads Nietzsche to say, I'm not a Ger­
man, I ' m Polish? Here again individuations are brought about solely within
complexes of forces that determine persons as so many intensive states em­
hodied in a "criminal," ceaselessly passing beyond a threshold while de­
H troying the factitious unity ofa family and an ego: "I am Prado, I am al�o
Prado's father. I venture to say that I am also Lesseps . . . . I wanted to give
my Parisians, whom I love, a new idea-that ofa decent criminal. I am also
Chambige-also a decent criminal. . . . The unpleasant thing, and one
that nags at my modesty, is that at root eve�y name in history is l."4 Yet it was
never a question of identifying oneself with personages, as when it is er­
roneously maintained that a madman " takes himself for so-and-so . . . . " I t
i11 a question of something quite different: identifying races, cultures, and
J(Ods with fields ofintensity on the body without organs, identifying person­
llJ(eS with states that fill these fields, and with effects that fulgurate within
1md traverse these fields. Whence the role of names, with a magic all their
own: there is no ego that identifies with races, peoples, and persons in a the­
ater of representation, but proper names that identify races, peoples, and
persons with regions, thresholds, or effects in a production of intensive
quantities. The theory of proper names should not be conceived ofin terms
nf representation; it refers instead to the class of "effects ": effects that are
 118 DESIRE AND SCHIZOANALYSIS

not a mere dependence o n causes, but the occupation of a domain, and the
operation of a system of signs. This can be clearly seen in physics, where
proper names designate such effects within fields of potentials: the Joule
effect, the Seebeck effect, the Kelvin effect. History is like physics: a Joan of
Arc effect, a Heliogabalus effect-all the names of history, and not the name
of the father.
Everything has been said about the paucity of reality, the loss of reality,
the lack of contact with life, autism and athymia. Schizophrenics them­
selves have said everything there is to say about this, and have been quick to
slip into the expected clinical mold. Dark world, growing desert: a solitary
machine hums on the beach, an atomic factory installed in the desert. But if
the body without organs is indeed this desert, it is as an indivisible, non­
decomposable distance over which the schizo glides in order to be every­
where, something real is produced, everywhere something real has been
and will be produced. It is true that reality has ceased to be a principle.
According to such a principle, the reality of the real was posed as a divisible
abstract quantity, whereas the real was divided up into qualified unities,
into distinct qualitative forms. But now the real is a product that envelops
the distances within intensive quantities. The indivisible is enveloped, and
signifies that what envelops it does not divide without changing its nature
or form. The schizo has no principles: he is something only by being some­
thing else. He is Mahood only by being worm, and worm only by being
Jones. He is a girl only by being an old man who is miming or simulating the
girl. Or rather, by being someone who is simulating an old man simulating
a girl. Or rather, by simulating someone . . . , etc. This was already true of
the completely oriental art of the Roman Emperors, the twelve paranoiacs
ofSuetonius. In a great book by Jacques Besse, we encounter once again the
double stroll of the schizo, the geographic exterior voyage following non­
decomposable distances, and the interior historical voyage enveloping in­
tensities: Christopher Columbus calms his mutinous crew and becomes ad­
miral again only by simulating a (false) admiral who is simulating a whore
who is dancing.s
But simulation must be understood in the same way as we spoke ofiden­
tification. It expresses those nondecomposable distances always enveloped
in the intensities that divide into one another while changing their form. If
identification is a nomination, a designation, then simulation is the writing
corresponding to it, a writing that is strangely polyvocal, flush with the real.
It carries the real beyond its principle to the point where it is effectively pro­
duced by the desiring-machine. The point where the copy ceases to be a
copy in order to become the real and its artifice. To seize an intensive real as
produced in the coextension of nature and history, to ransack the Roman
 Delirium: World Historical I 19

Empire, the Mexican cities, the Greek gods, and the discovered continents
so as to extract from them this always-surplus reality, and to form the trea­
sure of the paranoiac tortures and the celibate glories-all the pogroms of
history, that's what I am, and all the triumphs, too, as ifa few simple univo­
cal events could be extricated from this extreme polyvocity: such is the "his·
trionism" of the schizophrenic, according to Klossowski's formula, the true
program for a theater of cruelty, the mise-en-scine ofa machine to produce the
real. Far from having lost who knows what contact with life, the schizo·
phrenic is closest to the beating heart of reality, to an intense point identical
with the production of the real, and that leads Reich to say: "What belongs
specifically to the schizophrenic patient is that . . . he experiences the vital
biology of the body. . . . With respect to their experiencing oflife, the neu­
rotic patient and the perverted individual are to the schizophrenic as the
petty thief is to the daring safecracker."6 So the question returns: what re­
duces the schizophrenic to his autistic, hospitalized profile, cut off from re­
ality? Is it the process, or is it rather the interruption of the process, its ag·
gravation, its continuation in the void? What forces the schizophrenic to
withdraw to a body without organs that has become deaf, dumb, and blind?
We often hear it said: he thinks he's Louis XV I I . Not true. In the Louis
XVII affair, or rather in the finest case, that of the pretender Richemont,
there is a desiring-machine or a celibate machine in the center: the horse
with short, jointed paws, inside which they supposedly put the Dauphin so
he could fl ee. And then, all around, there are agents of production and anti·
production, the organizers of the escape, the accomplices, and allied sov­
ereigns, the revolutionary enemies, the jealous and hostile uncles, who are
not persons but so many states ofrising and falling through which the pre­
tender passes. Moreover, the pretender Richemont's stroke of genius is not
simply that he "takes into account" Louis X V I I , or that he takes other pre­
tenders into account by denouncing them as fake. What is so ingenious is
that he takes other pretenders into account by assuming them, by authen·
ticating them-that is to say, by making them too into states through which
he passes: I am Louis X V I I , but I am also Hervagault and Mathurin Bru­
neau, who claimed to be Louis XVI I . 7 Richemont doesn't identify with
Louis X V I I , he lays claim to the premium due the person who traverses all
the singularities of the series converging around the machine for kidnap·
ping Louis X V I I . There is no ego at the center, any more than there are
persons distributed on the periphery. Nothing but a series of singularities in
the disjunctive network, or intensive states in the conjunctive tissue, and a
lranspositional subject moving foll circle, passing through all the states, tri­
umphing over some as over his enemies, relishing others as his allies, col­
lecting everywhere the fraudulent premium of his avatars. Partial object: a
 12 0 D ES I R E A N D S C H I Z O A N A L YS I S

well-situated scar-ambiguous besides-is better proof t han all the memo ­

ries of childhood that the pretender lacks. The conj unctive synthesis can
therefore be expressed: "So I am the king! So the kingdom bel ongs to me!"
But this me is me rely the residual subject that sweep s the circle and con­
cludes a self from its oscillations on the circle.
All delirium possesses a world-historical, political, and racial conten t,
mixing and sweeping along races, cultures, continents, and kingdoms; some
wonder whether this long drift merely constitutes a derivative of Oedipus.
The familial order explodes, families are chal lenged, son, father, mother,
sister- "I mean those families like my own, that owe all to the Declaration
of the Rights of M a n ! " ; "When I seek out my most profound opposite, I
always encounter my mother and my sister; to see myself related to such
German rabble is, as it were, a b lasphemy with respect to my doctrine of the
Eternal Return ! " It is a q uestion of knowing if the historico-political, the
racial, and the cultural are merely part of a manifest content and formally
depe nd on a work of elaboration, or if, on the contrary, this content should
be followed as the thread ofl atency that the order of fa milies hides fro m u s .
Should t h e rupture with families b e taken as a sort o f "familial romance"
that would indeed bring us back again to families and refer us to an event or
a structural determination inside the family itself? Or is this rather the sign
that the problem must be raised in a completely different manner, because
it is alre ady raised elsewhere for the schizo himsel f, outside the family? Are
"the names of history" derivatives of the name of the father, and are the
races, cultures, and continents substitutes for daddy-mommy, dependent
on the Oedipal genealogy? I s history's signifi.er the dead father?
O nce again let us consider Judge Schrebe r's delirium. To be sure, the use
of races and the mobilization or notion of history are developed there in a
manner totally different from that employed by the authors we have pre­
viously mentioned. The fact remains that Schre ber's memoirs are filled with
a theory of God's chosen peoples, and with the dangers that face the cur­
rently chosen people, the Germans, who are threatened by the Jews, the
Catholics, and the Slavs. In his in tense metamorphoses and passages,
Schreber becomes a pupil of theJesuits, the burgomaster ofa city where the
Germans are fighting against the Slavs, and a girl defending Alsace against
the French. At last he crosses the Aryan gradien t or threshold to become a
Mongol prince. What does this becoming-pupil, burgomaster, girl, and
Mongol sign ify? All paranoiac deliriums stir up similar his torical, geo·
graphic, and racial masses. The error would lie in conc luding, for example,
t hat fascist s are mere paranoiacs. This would be an error precisely because,
in the current state of affairs, t his would still amount to leading the his tor·
ical and political co ntent of the de lirium back to an internal familial deter-
 Delirium: World Histurical 121

mination. And what is even more disturbing to us is the fact that the entirety
of this enormous content disappears completely from Freud's analysis: not
one trace of it remains; everything is ground, squashed, triangulated into
Oedipus; everything is reduced to the father, in such a way as to reveal in
the crudest fashion the inadequacies of an Oedipal psychoanalysis.
 14
Becoming-A nimal

Becoming i s t o emit particles that take o n certain relations o f movement and

rest because they enter a particular zone of proximity. Or, it is to emit parti­
cles that enter that zone because they take on those relations. A haecceity is
inseparable from the fog and mist that depend on a molecular zone, a cor­
p uscular space. Proximity is a notion, at once topological and quanta), t hat
marks a belonging to the same mol ecule, independently of the s u bjects con­
sidered and the forms determined.
Scherer and Hocquenghem made this essent ial point in their reconsider­
ation of the problem of wolf-children. Of course, it is not a q uestion ofa real
production, as ifthe child "really" became an animal; nor is it a question of
a resemblance, as ifthe child imitated animals that reall y raised it; nor is it a
question ofa symbol ic metaphor, as ifthe autistic child that was abandoned
or lost merel y became the "analogue" of an animal. Scherer and Hoc­
quenghem are right to expose this false reasoning, which is based on a cul­
turalism or moralism upholding the irreducibility of the human order: Be­
cause the child has not been transformed into an animal, it must only have a
metaphorical relation to it, induced by the chil d's illness or rejection. For
their own part, they appeal to an object ive zone of indetermip.ation or un­
certainty, "something shared or indiscerni ble," a proximity "that makes it
impossible to say where the boundary between the human and animal l ies,"
 Becoming-Animal I 2J

not only in the case ofautistic children, but for all children; it is as though,
independent of the evolution carrying them toward adulthood, there were
room in the child for other becomings, "other contemporaneous pos­
sibilities" that are not regressions but creative involutions bearing witness
to "an inhumanity immediately experienced in the body as such," unnatural nuptials
"outside the programmed body. " There is a reality of becoming-animal,
even though one does not in reality become animal. It is useless, then, to
raise the objection that the dog-child only plays dog within the limits of his
formal constitution, and does nothing canine that another human being
could not have done if he or she had so desired. For what needs to be ex­
plained is precisely the fact that all children, and even many adults, do it to
a greater or lesser degree, and in so doing bear witness to an inhuman con­
nivance with the animal, rather than an Oedipal symbolic community. 1
Neither should it be thought that children who graze, or eat dirt or raw
flesh, are merely getting the vitamins and minerals they need It is a ques­
tion ofcomposing a body with the animal, a body without organs defined by
zones of intensity or proximity. Where does this objective indetermination
or indiscernibility of which Scherer and Hocquenghem speak come from?
An example: Do not imitate a dog, but make your organism enter into
composition with something else in such a way that the particles emitted from
the aggregate thus composed will be canine as a function of the relation of
movement and rest, or of molecular proximity, into which they enter.
Clearly, this something else can be quite varied, and be more or less directly
related to the animal in question: it can be the animal's natural food (dirt
and worm), or its exterior relations with other animals (you can become­
dog with cats, or become-monkey with a horse), or an apparatus or pros­
thesis to which a person subjects the animal (muzzle and reindeer, etc.), or
something that does not even have a localizable relation to the animal in
question. For this last case, we have seen how Slepian bases his attempt to
become-dog on the idea of tying shoes to his hands using his mouth-muzzle.
Philippe Gavi cites the performances of Lolito, an eater of bottles, earthen­
ware, porcelains, iron, and even bicycles, who declares: "I consider myself
half-animal, half-man. More animal than man. I love animals, dogs espe­
cially, I feel a bond with them. My teeth have adapted; in fact, when I don't
cat glass or iron, my jaw aches like a young dog's that craves to chew a
bone. "2 I f we interpret the word "like" as a metaphor, or propose a struc­
tural analogy ofrelations ( man-iron = dog-bone), we understand nothing
of becoming. The word "like" is one of those words that change drastically
in meaning and function when they are used in connection with haecceities,
when they are made into expressions ofbecomings instead ofsignified states
or signifying relations. A dog may exercise its j aw on iron, but when it does
 124 DESIRE A N D SCHIZOANALYSIS

i t i s using its jaw a s a molar organ. When Loli to eats iron, i t i s totally differ­
ent: he makes his j aw enter into compo sition with the iron in such a way that
he himself becomes t he jaw of a molecular dog. The actor Robert De Niro
walks "like" a crab in a certain film seq uence; but, he says, it is not a q ues­
tion of his imitating a crab; it is a question of making someth ing that has to
do with the crab enter into composition with the image, with the speed of
the image .3 That is the essential point for us: you become-animal only if, by
whatever means or elements, you emit corpuscles that enter the relation of
movement and res t of the animal particles, or what amounts to the same
t hing, t hat enter the zone of proximity of the animal mo lecule. You become­
animal only molecularly. You do not become a barking mo lar dog, but by
barking, if it is done with enough feeling, with eno ugh necessity and com­
position, you emit a molecular dog. Man does not become wolf, or vampire,
as ifhe changed molar species; the vampire and werewolfare becomings of
man, in other words, proximities between molecules in compo sition, rela­
tions of movement and rest, speed and slowness between emitted particles.
Of course there are werewolves and vampires, we say this with all our heart;
but do not look for a resemblance or analogy to the animal, for this is
becoming-animal in action, the prod uction of the molecular animal
(whereas the "real" animal is trapped in its molar form and s u bjectivity). I t
i s within us that the animal bares its teeth like Hofmannsthal's rat, o r the
flower opens its petals; but this is done by corp uscular emission, by mo lecu­
lar prox imity, and not by the imitation of a s u bject or a proportionality of
form. Albertine can always imitate a flower, but it is when she is sleeping
and enters into composition with the particles of sleep that her beauty spot
and the texture of her skin enter a relation ofrest and movement that place
her in the zone of a molecular vegetable: the becoming-plant of Albertine.
And i t is when she is held prisoner that she emits the particles of a bird . And
it is when she fl ees, launches down a line of flight, that she becomes-horse,
even if it is the horse of death.
Yes, all becomings are molecular: the animal, flower, or stone one be­
comes are mo lecular colle ctivities, haecceities, not molar s u bjects, objects,
or form that we know from the outside and recognize from experience,
through science, or by habit. If this is true, then we must say the same of
things human: there is a beco ming-woman, a becoming child, that do not
resemble the woman or the child as clearly distinct molar entities ( although
it is possible-only possib le-for the woman or child to occupy privile ged
positions in relation to these beco mings ) . What we term a molar entity is,
for example, the woman as defined by her form, endowed with organs a nd
functions and assigned as a s u bject. Becoming-woman is not imitating this
entity or even transforming oneselfinto it. We are not, however, overlooking
the imp ortance ofimitation, or moments ofimitation, amo ng certain homo-
 Becoming-Animal 125

sexual males, much less the prodigious attempt at a real transformation on

the part of certain transvestites. All we are saying is that these indissociable
aspects ofbecoming-woman must fi rst be understood as a fonction ofsome­
thing else: not imitating or assuming the female form, but emitting particles
that enter the relation of movement and rest, or the zone of proximity, of a
microfemininity, in other words, that produce in us a molecular woman,
create the molecular woman. We do not mean to say that a creation of this
kind is the prerogative of the man, but on the contrary that the woman as a
molar entity has to become-woman in order that the man also becomes- or can
become-woman. It is, of course, indispensable for women to conduct a mo­
lar politics, with a view to winning back their own organism, their own his­
tory, their own subjectivity: "we as women . . . " makes its appearance as a
subject of enunciation. But it is dangerous to confine oneself to such a sub­
ject, which does not function without drying up a spring or stopping a flow.
The song oflife is often intoned by the driest of women, moved by ressenti­
mmt, the will to power and cold mothering.Just as a desiccated child makes
a much better child, there being no childhood flow emanating from it any
longer. It is no more adequate to say that each sex contains the other and
must develop the opposite pole in itsel( Bisexuality is no better a concept
than the separateness of the sexes. It is as deplorable to miniaturize, inter­
nalize the binary machine as it is to exacerbate it; it does not extricate us
from it. It is thus necessary to conceive of a molecular women's politics that
slips into molar confrontations, and passes under or through them.
When Virginia Woolf was questioned about a specifically women's writ­
ing, she was appalled at the idea of writing "as a woman . " Rather, writing
should produce a becoming-woman as atoms of womanhood capable of
crossing and impregnating an entire social field, and ofcontaminating men,
of sweeping them up in that becoming. Very soft particles-but also very
hard and obstinate, irreducible, indomitable. The rise of women in English
novel writing has spared no man: even those who pass for the most virile,
the most phallocratic, such as Lawrence and Miller, in their turn con­
tinually tap into and emit particles that enter the proximity or zone ofindis­
cernibility of women. In writing, they become-women. The question is not,
or not only, that of the organism, history, and subject of enunciation that
oppose masculine to feminine in the great dualism machines. The question
is fondamentally that of the body-the body they steal from us in order to
fabricate opposable organisms. This body is stolen first from a girl: Stop
behaving like that, you're not a little girl anymore, you're not a tomboy, etc.
The girl's becoming is stolen first, in order to impose a history, or prehistory,
upon her. The boys's turn comes next, b u t it is by using the girl as an exam­
ple, by pointing to the girl as the object of his desire, that an opposed orga­
nism, a dominant history is fabricated for him too. The girl is the first vie-
 I26 DESIRE A N D S C H I Z O A N A LYSIS

tim, b u t she must also serve as a n example and a trap. That i s why,
conversely, the reconstruction of the body as a "body without organs," the
anorganism of the body, is inseparable from a becoming-woman, or the pro­
duction of a molecular woman. Doubtless, the girl becomes a woman in the
molar or organic sense. But conversely, becoming-woman or the molecular
woman is the girl herself. The girl is certainly not defined by virginity; she is
defined by a relation ofmovement and rest, speed and slowness, by a com­
bination of atoms, an emission of particles: haecceity. She never ceases to
roam upon a body without organs. She is an abstract line, or a line offlight.
Thus girls do not belong to an age group, sex, order, or kingdom: they slip in
everywhere, between orders, acts, ages, sexes; they produce n molecular
sexes on the line offlight in relation to the d ualism machines they cross right
through. The only way to get outside the dualisms is to be-between, to pass
between, the intermezzo-that is what Virginia Woolflived with all her en­
ergies, in all of her work, never ceasing to become. The girl is like the block
of becoming that remains contemporaneous to each opposable term, man,
woman, child, adult. It is not the girl who becomes a woman; it is becoming­
woman that produces the universal girl. Trost, a mysterious author,
painted a portrait of the girl, to whom he linked the fate of the revolution:
her speed, her freely machinic body, her intensities, her abstract line or line
of flight, her molecular production, her indifference to memory, her non­
figurative character-"the nonfigurative of desire. "4 Joan of Arc? The spe­
cial role of the girl in Russian terrorism: the girl with the bomb, guardian of
dynamite? It is certain that molecular politics proceeds via the girl and the
child. But it is also certain that girls and children draw their strength nei­
ther from the molar status that subdues them nor from the organism and
subjectivity they receive; they draw their strength from the becoming­
molecular they cause to pass between sexes and ages, the becoming-child of
the adult as well as of the child, the becoming-woman of the man as well as
of the woman. The girl and the child do not become; it is becoming itself
that is a child or a girl. The child does not become an adult any more than
the girl becomes a woman; the girl is the becoming-woman of each sex, just
as the child is the becoming-young of every age. Knowing how to age does
not mean remaining young; it means extracting from one's age the particles,
the speeds and slownesses, the flows that constitute the youth of that age.
Knowing how to love does not mean remaining a man or a woman; it means
extracting from one's sex the particles, the speeds and slownesses, the flows,
the n sexes that constitute the girl of that sexuality. It is age itself that is a
becoming-child, just as sexuality, any sexuality, is a becoming-woman, in
other words, a girl. This by way ofresponse to the stupid question, "why did
Proust make Albert Albertine?"
 15
The Signs of Madness: Proust

I n t h i s e ssay, we do n o t intend t o raise t h e problem of t h e relation between

art and madness in Proust's work. Such an approach makes little sense.
Even less do we want to raise the q uestio n of whether o r not Proust himself
was mad. This q uestion too would be utterly p ointless. The question of this
essay, rather, concerns the p re sence of madness in Proust's work, and the
distribution, the use, and the function of t his presence.
In at least two of the main c haracters of Remembrance ef Things Past,
C harlus and Albertine, madness is manifest, although it operates differ·
ently in each case. Ever since his initial appearance, Charlus' strange ex­
pression and his eyes are described as those of a spy, of a thief, a merchant, a
policeman, a madman. • Later, toward the conclusion, Morel is terrifi e d , and
with good reason, by the thought that Charlus' disposition toward him is
based on criminal madne ss . 2 Charlus is const antly under suspicion for a
madness which makes him infinitely more frightening than if he were im­
moral, perverted, wicked, o r guilty. Bad manners

scare . . . one by making one feel that that way madness l ies, far more
than by its immorality. Mme de Surgis le Due could not be said to have
highly developed moral sense, and would have tolerated in her sons any-
 128 DESIRE AND SCHIZOANALYSIS

thing, however base, that could be explained by material interest, which

is comprehensible to all mankind. But she forbade them to go on visiting
M. de Charlus when she learned that, by a sort of internal clockwork, he
was inevitably drawn upon each of their visits to pinch their chins and to
make each of them pinch his brother's . She felt that uneasy sense of a
physical mystery which makes us wonder whether the neighbour with
whom we have been on friendly terms is not tainted with cannibalism,
and to the Baron's repeated inquiry: "When am I going to see the young
men?" She would reply, conscious of the wrath she was bringing down on
herself, that they were very busy working for examinations, preparing to
go abroad, and so forth. Irresponsibility aggravates faults, and even
crimes, whatever may be said. Landru (assuming that he really did kill
his women) may be pardoned . Ifhe did so from financial motives , which it
is possi ble to resist, but not ifit was from irresistible sadis m.3

Past the responsibility of error, one finds madness as the innocence of the
crime .
In the beginning, that C harlus is mad is a mere probability; by the end,
h i s madness i s almost a certain ty. As for Albertine, her madn ess is a
posthumous eventuali ty, casting retrospectively upon her gestures, her
words , her entire life a new and troubling light in which Morel is always
held. "She felt in her heart t hat her obsession was a sort of criminal lunacy,
and I 've often wondered whether it wasn't after an in cident of that sort,
which had led to a suicide in a family, that she killed herself on p urpose. " 4'
What is this combination of mad ness, crime, irresponsibili ty, and sexuality?
Cle arly, it blends with the theme of patr icide, so dear to Proust, but it can­
not be reduced to the familiar Oedipal scheme. Could it be that a kind of
innocence exists in the crime caused by madness-the kind of innocence
that such prevenance would make even more d ifficult to bear, to the point of
s uicide?
Let us examin e first the case ofCharlus. His initial pre sence is t hat of a
strong person ality with an imperial individuality. The point is, however,
t hat his individuality i s a n empire and a constellation, concealing and hold­
ing many unknown things. But what is Chari us' secret? The conste llation i s ,
in fact, built around t w o shiny, s ingular points: t h e eyes a n d t h e voice.
Sometimes, imperious gleams emanat e from the eyes, while at other times,
p rying agitations. Sometimes they betray a kind offeverish activity, while at
other times, a doleful indifference. As for the voice, it brings about the coex­
istence ofa virile content of speech and an effeminate mannerism of expres­
sion. Charlus is presented as both an enormous, flickering sign and as a
large, o ptical , voice box. Whosoever hears him, or meets his eyes, is c on­
fronted with a secret to uncover, and a mystery to penetrate an d interpret.
 The Signs of Madness: Proust 129

One senses early o n that the secret and the mystery could go a s far a s mad­
ness. The need to interpret Charlus is grounded upon the fact that Charlus
himself interprets endlessly; it is as if endless in terpretation is already his
madness and as ifhis delirium is the deliriu m ofinterpretation.
From the constellation named "Charlus," there emerges a series of
speeches, which follow the rhythm of the shifting eyes. In fact, three long
narrated speeches fi nd their source in the signs interpreted by Charlus, the
prophet and seer; these speeches find their destination in the signs that
Charl us proposes to the narrator. The latter has by now been reduced to the
stat us of the disciple and the pupil. However, that which is essential to the
speeches is found elsewhere: in the freely organized words, in the indepen­
dently arranged sentences, and in the logos that calculates and transcends
the signs it uses. Charlus emerges as the master of logos. From this perspec­
tive, it seems that the three long speeches, despite their differences in
rhythm and intensity, share a common struct ure. First, a period of denega­
tion, when Charlus says to the narrator: "You do not interest me, don't you
believe you interest me, yet . . . "; then comes a second period, the time of
distanciation: "The distance between you and me is infinite, but we can
complement each other, I offer you a contract . . . . " There is also an unex­
pected, third period and, in it, one might say that logos suddenly begins to
skid as it is run through by something which refuses to be organized. It is
inspired by a force of a different order-anger, insult, provocation, pro­
fanity, sadic phantasm, mad gesture, irruption of madness. This is already
evident in the first speech which, despite the fact that it is made entirely of
noble tenderness, reaches nonetheless its aberrant conclusion the next day
on the beach in Charlus' coarse but prophetic remark: "But he doesn't give
a damn for his old grandmother, does he, eh? Little rascal!"5 The second
speech imparts a fantasy of Charl us, depicting a comical scene in which
Bloch has a contest with his father and gives a good thrashing to his hag of a
mother. "As he poured out these terrible, almost insane words, M. de
Charlus squeezed my arm until it hurt."6 Finally, the third speech moves
swiftly to the violent trail of the trampled and ruined hat. Actually, this time
it is not Charlus who steps on the hat; it is the narrator. But as we all see, the
narrator has at his disposal enough madness for everyone; his madness
communicates with Charlus and Albertine's madness, and can set out to
anticipate their madness or even to bring about its consequences.7
Regardless of how much Charlus appears to be the master of logos, his
speeches are agitated by involuntary signs resisting the sovereign organiza­
tion oflanguage, preventing their being mastered by words and sentences,
and causing, just the same, the flight of logos as well as our departure to
another domain.
 I JO DESIRE AND SCHIZOANALYSIS

Whatever the fine words with which he embellished all his hatreds, one
felt that, whether he was moved by offended pride or disappointed love,
whether his motivating force was rancour, sadism, teasing or obsession,
this man was capable of committing murder.8

We find signs of violence and madness that constitute an entire pathos

against and beneath the voluntary signs concocted through "logic and no­
ble language . " This pathos will b e revealed for w hat it i s in the various ap­
p earances ofCharlus, as he speaks less and l e ss from the heights of his sov­
ereign constitution, but also betrays himself more and more in the course o f
h i s physical a n d s ocial d ecomposition. N o longer are w e faced with t h e
world o f s peeches w h o s e vertical communications o n c e expressed a hier­
archy of rules and positions; we are now faced with a world of anarchic e n­
counters, violent chance-happenings that communicate among themselves
in an aberrant and transversal way. We are left with the meeting between
Charlus and Jupien, and with the l ong-awaited unveiling o f the secret of
Charlus' homosexuali ty. But i s this really the s ecret? What i s unveiled is not
so much the homosexuality that was, a t any rate, foreseeable and suspected
for a long time, but rather a general condition in view of which the homosex­
uality is a particular case of a deeper and growing universal madness, with
innocence and crime intertwined in s o many ways. What is unveiled i s the
world, where no one s peaks any longer, the silent v e getal universe and the
madness of flowers, the fragmented theme o f which gives a certain rhythm
to the e ncounter withjupien.
Logos i s a large animal whose parts are assembl e d into a whole and uni­
fied under a principle or a directing idea. Pathos, o n the o t he r hand, i s a
plant composed of separate parts; the parts communicate only indirectly
with one another and by means o f a p art w hich is itself separate, and so on
ad in finitum, to the point where there can be no forther unification of this
world; its ultimate pieces n o longer lack anything. We now face the schizoid
world of s ealed boxes, of separate parts, w here even contiguity i s distance:
the world of sex. This is what Charlus teaches us, past his speeches. Given
that every individual consists of both s exes, albeit "separated by a parti­
tion," we must b e p re pare d to admit an abstract set of eight e l ements, so
that the masculine o r feminine "aspect" of a man o r a woman could strike a
relation with the feminine and masculine "aspect" of another woman or
man: there are ten possible combinations efthe eight elements. 9 We are then lefi: with
aberrant relations between sealed vases; a bumblebee that makes flowers
communicate, while losing its own carnali ty, because in relation to them, it
is no longer anything but a separate p a r t a n d a disparate element in the
apparatus of plant reproduction.
 The Signs of Madnus; Proust IJ I

Here, perhaps, w e face the same situation that we can find everywhere in
&membrance; from an initial constellation representing an apparently cir­
cumscribed, unifi able, and totalizable whole, one or more series are being
released. These series, in turn, run into a new constellation, this time de­
centred or eccentric, made of spinning sealed boxes and mobile disparate
parts that follow transversal lines of fli ght. Charlus' situation is precisely
this: the initial constellation with the shine of his eyes and his voice; in the
sequence, the series of speeches; finally, the past, disquieting world of signs
and boxes, of signs composing Charlus, which are located inside one an­
other and then separated, allowing themselves to be opened midway and
interpreted according to the line of flight of a star aging together with its
satellites. " M . de Charlus, st eering towards us the Bulk of his huge body,
drawing unwillingly in his wake one of those ruffians or beggars who nowa­
days, when he passed, sprang out without fail from even the most apparent­
ly deserted corners. " 1 0
It is the same situation which permeates Albertine's story: the constella­
tion of the young girls from which Albertine gradually is extracted; the long
series of the two consecutive jealousies affecting Albertine; finally, the coex­
istence of all boxes wherein Albertine imprisons herself in her own lies, and
where the narrator also imprisons her. This is a new constellation, compen­
sating in a way for the initial one, because the end of love is like a return to
the indivisibility of the young girls. A comparison between the lines offlight
of Albertine and Charlus is inevitable. Notice the beautiful passage in
which Albertine is kissed. The narrator, hiding, begins with the face of
Albertine as with a mobile whole wherein her beauty spot shines as a singu­
lar point. In the sequence, as the lips of the narrator near the cheek, the
desired face moves through a succession of frames, each of which corre­
sponds to another Albertine, with the beauty spot leaping from one frame to
another. Finally, we come to the last blur, with Albertine's face distorted
and done in, where the narrator, having lost the use of his lips, eyes and
nose, recognizes in "these detestable signs" that he is in the act of embracing
the loved one.
This great law of composition and decomposition applies to both Alber­
tine and Charlus because it is the law of love and sexuality. Heterosexual
love affairs, and especially the love of the narrator for Albertine, are not
merely appearances behind which Proust would hide his homosexuality.
On the contrary, these love affairs form the initial background from which,
eventually, the two series of homosexuality represented by Albertine and
Chit rlus will be derived. "The two sexes shall die, each in a place apart. "
These series, however, extend to a transsexual world wherein the compart­
mentalized and interlocking sexes are regrouped in each series in order to
 IJ2 DESIRE AND SCHIZOANALYSIS

communicate wit h the sex e s o f another, a s they follow aberrant and trans­
v ersal ways. A kind o f superficial normalcy marks the first level o r the first
set; on the contrary, all the s ufferings, anx ieties and culpabilities o f what we
call "neurosis" mark the liberated series at the second level: the curse of
Oedipus and the prophecy of Samson. As for the third level, in the midst of
decomposition it restores a vegetal innocence b y offering an absolving fimc­
tion to madness in a world of ex ploding and later s ealed box es, of crimes
and illegal confinements which form the Proustian "human comedy. " As a
result, a new and final power develops that overthrows all othe r s . T h is
power is stark mad-the power of Remembrance itself-and it ranks together,
policeman with insane, spy with merchant, interpreter with redress-seeker.
Although the stories of Albertine and Ch arlus follow th e same gene ral
law, the fact remains that in these two s ituations, madness has very diverse
forms and functions, and it i s distributed differently. Between madness­
Charlus and madness-Albertine, there are three maj o r diffe rences. First,
Charlus has a superior individuation in the guise of an imperial ind iv idu­
ality. His d isorder is in communication: the queries, "What is Charlus h id­
ing?" "Which secret boxes does h e conceal in his individuality?" refer us to
yet undiscovered communications and to the aberrancies o f these com­
munications . Conseq uently, madness-Charlus can neither interpret itself
nor be manifested and interpreted, exc ept through accidental and vio lent
encounters, in v iew o f the new surroundings into which Charlus is thrust.
These e ncounters function as revealing points, ind uctors and communica­
tors: encounters with the narrator, encounter with] upien, encounter with
the Verdurins, encounter in the brothel.
Albertine's s ituation is different because her disorder affects ind ividua­
tion: which of the young girls is she? How can we pick her out o f the indivis­
ible group of young girls? In this case, one might say that Albertine's com­
munications are evident from the beginning, while whatever is hidden is
precisely the mystery of her individuation. The only way to pierce this mys­
tery is to have the communications interrupted and forcefully stopped, and
for Albe rtine to be imprisoned, immured and confined. A second difference
follows. Charlus i s th e master o f d iscourse; everything happens by means of
words, yet, on the other hand, nothing happens in these words. Charlus'
investments are primarily verbal, to the extent that things or objects present
themselves as involuntary s igns; as such, they turn against d iscourse, some­
times causing it to derail, and other times, forming a counterlanguage
which develops within the silence and the muteness of encounters. As for
Albertine's relation to language, i t i s a poor lie, not a m ajestic deviance. Her
inv estment i s in things or obj e c ts exp ressed in language, but only on the
condition that its vol untary signs fragment and submit to the rules of the lie
 The Signs of Madness: Proust 133

that the involuntary inserts in it: in such a case, everything, including si­
lence, can happen in language, precisely because nothing moves through
language.
Finally, there is a third difference. At the turn of the twentieth century,
psychiatry established a very interesting distinction between two kinds of
sign-delirium: the delirium of interpretation, present in paranoia, and the
delirium of redress-seeking, present in erotomania or jealousy. The former,
with an insidious beginning and a gradual development essentially depend­
ing upon endogenous forces, expands over a general network which mobi­
lizes all verbal investments. The latter has a much more abrupt beginning
and is tied to external factors that may be real or imaginary. It depends on a
kind of"postulate" regarding a specific object, and enters limited constella­
tions. It is less a delirium of ideas running through the extended system of
verbal investments, and more a delirium of acts, animated by an intensive
object-investment. Erotomania, for example, presents itself as a delirious
pursuit of the loved object rather than as the delirious illusion of being
loved . The delirium of redress-seekingforms a sequence offinite linearprocesses, white
the delirium ofinterpretationforms radiant, circular wholes. We do not content that
Proust attributed to his characters a psychiatric distinction which was
being elaborated during his time. Yet Charlus and Albertine, in &­
membrance, follow pathways that correspond accurately to this dist inction.
We tried to show this with Charlus: the early appearances of this grand par­
anoiac are insidious; the onset and development of delirium, in his case, tes­
tify to the presence offearful, endogenous forces; with his entire interpretive
dementia, he conceals the most mysterious, verbal signs of a nonlanguage
that gives him form. Such is the vast Charlus-network. We also tried to show
this with Albertine: being an object, or in pursuit of objects, she issues pos­
tulates that are familiar to her, or rather, she is trapped by the narrator in­
side a postulate with no escape, which leaves her victimized. (Albertine is
f!resented as necessari{y and a priori guil�y; she loves without being loved; she is hard,
cruel, and treacherous toward the object ofone's love.) Albertine i§ both erotomaniac
and jealous, although it is rather the narrator who reveals himself to her in
these colors. The series ofjealousies that have Albertine as their object are
in each case inseparable from an external occasion and constitute sequen­
tial processes. Finally, the signs of language and nonlanguage intertwine
and form the limited constellations of the lie. We are left with a delirium of
action and redress-seeking, different from the delirium of ideas and inter­
pretations that characterizes Chari us.
But why should we confuse Albertine with the narrator's behavior to­
ward Albertine, as if they were one and the same? It is obvious that the nar­
rator's jealousy is directed toward an Albertine who, in turn, is extremely
 1J 4 DESIRE AND SCHIZOANALYS I S

jealous of her own "objects." A s fo r the narrator's erotomania toward Alber­

tine, that is, the delirious pursuit of the loved one, without the illusion of
being loved in return, it is conveyed by the erotomania of Albertine, which
was for a long time suspected to be, and then confirmed as, the secret be­
hind the narrator's j ealousy. Again, the narrator's redress-seeking for the
imprisonment and confinement of Albertine conceals Albertine's redress­
seeking, which falls under suspicion too late. Charlus' situation is similar:
we are unable to distinguish the labor ofCharlus' interpretive delirium from
the long labor over the interpretation of C harlus' delirium, through which
the narrator suffers. But we were searching precisely for the provenance o
the necessity of these partial identifications and for their fonction in &­
membrance.
Jealous of Albertine and the interpreter of Charlus, who, really, is the
narrator himself? We do not consider it to be at all compelling to distinguish
between the narrator and the hero as subject of the utterance and subject of
the statement, respectively, because this would result in referring &­
membrance to an alien system of subjectivity ( with a double and cloven sub­
ject) . 1 1 This is not so much a question of a narrator, as it is ofa machine for
&membrance; it is less a question of a hero, and more of arrangements in the
middle of which the machine functions under certain configurations or ar­
ticulations, for the sake of certain uses or productions. Only in this sense, do
we have the right to inquire about the narrator-hero who does not behave as
subject. The reader is struck by Proust's persistent portrayal of the narrator
as one incapable of seeing, perceiving, remembering, or understanding.
This is the grand opposition to the Goncourt and the Saint-Beuve method,
and the constant theme of Remembrance, which reaches its apex in the coun­
try at the house of the Verdurins. ( " I see you like draughts . " ) 12 In fact, the
narrator has no organs, or rather, he does not have the organs that he needs
and hopes for. He himself makes this point in the scene of Albertine's first
kiss, as he complains that we are lacking adequate organs for an activity
that fills our lips, plugs our noses, and blocks our eyes. In other words, the
narrator is an enormous body without organs.
But what is a body without organs? The spider, too, does not see, per­
ceive, or remember. Only at the tip of its web does it register the smallest
vibration, which gradually spreads over its body in a wave ofintensity, mak­
ing it pounce on the precise point of agitation. Without eyes, nose, or
mouth, it responds to signs only; the smallest sign penetrates and then
waves through the spider's body, causing the spider to pounce on its prey.
Remembrance is not structured like a cathedral or a garment: it is built like a
web. The narrator-spider has Remembrance as his web, in the course of being
shaped and woven, as each of its threads is stirred by an unusual sign: the
 The Signs of Madness: Proust 135

web and the spider, the web and the body are one and the same machine.
The narrator might very well be endowed with extreme sensibility and a
prodigious memory; nevertheless, he has no organs so long as he is deprived
of all voluntary and organized use of his faculties. But, on the other hand, a
certain faculty fonctions within him whenever it is constrained and forced
to do so; the organ, corresponding to this faculty, is given to him as an inten­
sive sketch only, stirred by the waves that set off its involuntary practice. In­
voluntary sensibility, involuntary memory, and involuntary thought, are
each the global, intense reactions of the body without organs to the different
signs. It is this body-web-spider that is agitated in order to halfway open
and then quickly close again the small boxes which bump against the sticky
thread of &mem/Jrance. Strange plasticity of the narrator. This body-spider­
narrator-spy, policeman, jealous, interpreter, redress-seeker, madman,
universal schizophrenic-will pay out one thread to the paranoid Charlus
and another to the erotomaniac Albertine in order to transform them into
marionettes of its own delirium, into intensive powers of its own body with­
out organs, and into profiles of its own madness.
Trans. Constantin Boundas
 16
What Is Desire?

Do you realize how simple a desire is? Sleeping is a desire. Walking is a de­
sire. Listening to music, or making music, or writing, are desires. A spring,
a winter, are desires. Old age also is a desire. Even death. Desire never
needs interpreting, it is it which experiments. Then we run up against very
exasperating objections. They say to us that we are returning to an old cult
ofpleasure, to a pleasure principle, or to a notion of the festival (the revolu­
tion will be a festival. . . ). By way of objection they hold up those who arc
stopped from sleeping, whether for internal or external reasons, and who
have neither the means nor the time for a festival; or who have neither the
time nor the culture to listen to music; nor the ability to walk, nor to go into
a catatonic state except in hospital; or who are suddenly siruck by a horrible
old age or death, in short all those who suffer: don't they "lack" something?
And above all, it is obj ected that by releasing desire from lack and law, the
only thing we have left to refer to is a state of nature, a desire that would be
natural and spontaneous reality. We say quite the opposite: desire on{y exists
wizen assembled or machined. You cannot grasp or conceive of a desire outside a
determin ate assemblage, on a plane which is not preexistent but which
must itself be constructed. All that is important is that each group or indi­
vidual should construct the plane of immanence on which they lead their
life and carry on their business. Without these conditions you obviously do
 What Is Desire! IJ 7

lack something, but you lack precisely the conditions which make a desire
possible. Organizations of forms, formations of subjects (the other plane) ,
"incapacitate" desire: they subjugate it to law and introduce lack into it. If
you tie someone up and say to him "Express yourself, friend, " the most he
will be able to say is that he doesn't want to be tied up. The only spontaneity
in desire is doubtless of that kind: to not want to be oppressed, exploited,
enslaved, subj u ga ted . But no desire has ever be en created with nonwishes.
Not to want to be enslaved is a nonproposition. In retrospect every assem­
blage expresses and creates a desire by constructing the plane which makes
it possible and, by making it possible, brings it about. Desire is not re­
stricted to the privileged; neither is it restricted to the success ofa revolution
once it has occurred. It is in itself an immanent revolutionary process. It is
constructivist, not at all spontaneist. Since every assemblage is collective, is itself
a collective, it is indeed true that every desire is the affair of the people, or an
affair of the masses, a molecular affair.
We don't even believe in internal drives which would prompt desire. The
plane ofimmanence has nothing to do with an interiority; it is like the out­
side where all desires come from. When we hear of a thing as stupid as the
supposed death drive, it is like seeing a shadow theater. Eros and Thanatos.
We have to ask: could there be an assemblage so warped, so hideous, that
the utterance " Long live death" would be an actual part ofit and death itself
be desired in it? Or isn't this the opposite of an assemblage, its downfall, its
failure? We must describe the assemblage in which such a desire becomes
possible, gets moving and declares itself. But never will we point to drives
which would refer to structural invariants, or to genetic variables. Oral,
anal, genital, etc.: we ask each time into which assemblages these compo­
.
nents enter, not to which drives they correspond, nor to which memories or
fixations they owe their importance, nor to which incidents they refer, but
with which extrinsic elements they combine to create a desire, to create de­
sire. This is already the case with children who fabricate their desire with
the outside, with the conquest of the outside, not in internal stages or by
transcendent structures. Once again little Hans: there is the street, the
horse, the omnibus, the parents, Professor Freud himself, the "has a pee"
[fait-pipi] which is neither an organ nor a function, but a machine function,
one of the parts of the machine. There are speeds and slownesses, affects
and haecceities: a horse a day the street. There are only different politics of
assemblages, even with children: in this sense everything is political. There
are only programs, or rather diagrams or planes, not memories or even
phantasm's. There are only becomings and blocs, childhood blocs, blocs of
femininity, of animality, blocs of present becoming, and nothing of the me­
morial, the imaginary or the symbolic. Desire is no more symbolic than fig-
 13 8 DESIRE AND SCHIZOANA LYSIS

urative, n o more signified than signifier: i t i s made u p o f d iffe rent lines

which cross, articulate, or impede each other and which constitute a partic­
ular asse mblage on a plane of immanence. But the plane does not preexist
these ass emblages which comprise it, these abstract lines which map it out.
We can always call it plane of nature, in order to underl ine its immanence.
But the nat ure-artifice distinction is not at all relevant here. There i s no
desire that does not result in the coexistence of several leve l s , some of which
can be called natural in contras t to others; but this is a nature that must be
constructed with all the fabrications of the plane of immanence. The ass e m­
blage o f fe udalism includes among its e l ements "horse-stirrup-lance. " The
natural position of the knight, the natural way ofholding the lance, d epends
on a new symbiosis of man-animal which makes the stirrup the most natu­
ral thing in the world and the horse the most artificial one. The figures of
desire d o not d erive from this, but were already mapping out the assem­
blage, the set of elements, retained or created by the assemblage, the lady
no l ess than the horse, the sleeping knight no less than the wandering quest
for the grail.
We say that there is ass emblage of desire each time that there are pro­
duced, in a field of immanence, o r on a plane o f consist ence, continuums of
intensities, combinations offluxes, emissions ofparticles at variable speeds. G uat­
t ari speaks of a Schumann-as semblage. What is a musical assemb lage like
this, desi gnated by a proper name? What are the dimensi ons of such an as­
s emblage? There is the r el ationship with Clara, wo man-child-virtuoso, the
Clara line. There is the little manual machine that Schumann puts together
to hold the middle finger tight and s ecure the independ ence o f the fourth
finger. There is the ritornello, the little ritornellos that haunt Schumann
and run through all his work like so many childhood bl ocs, a whole con­
certed enterprise of involution, restraint, and exhaustion of the theme and
form. And there i s also the use of the piano, this movement of deterriorializ­
ation that carries away the ritornello ( "wings have sprouted on the child")
on a me lodic line, in an original po lyphonic assemblage capable of produc­
ing dynamic an d affective relations of speed or sl owness, of delay or antic­
ipation which are very complex, on the basis of an intrinsically simple or
simplified form. There i s the intermezzo, o r rather there are nothing but
intermezzi in Schumann, making the music pass to the middle prev enting the
sound p l ane from to ppling under a law of organization or development. 1 All
of this is articulated in the constitutive assemblage of d esire. I t is desire it­
self which passes and moves . There is no need to be Schumann. Listen to
Schu mann. Convers ely, there is what happens to make the whole assem­
blage wav er: the little manual machine leads to paralysis of the finger, and
 What ls Desire? 139

then t o Schumann's mad-becoming . . . . We simply say that desire is insep­

arable from a plane of consistence which must be constructed every time
piece by piece and from assemblages on this plane, continuums, combina­
tions, emissions. Without lack, but definitely not withou t risk or peril. De­
sire, says Felix: a ritornello. But this is already very complicated: for the
ritornello is a kind of sound territoriality, the child reassuring himself when
he is afraid of the dark, "Rockabye baby on the tree-top." . . 2 ( Psycho­
.

analysis seriously misunderstood the famous "Fort-Da" when it saw in it an

opposition ofa phonological kind instead of recognizing a ritornello. ) But it
is also the whole movement ofdeterriorialization which takes hold of a form
and a subject to extract from them variable speeds and floating affects; then
the music begins. What counts in desire is not the false alternative oflaw­
spontaneity, nature-artifice; it is the respective play of territorialities, reter­
ritorializations, and movements of deterritorialization.
In speaking of desire we were no longer thinking of pleasure and its fes­
tivals. Certainly pleasure is agreeable; certainly we move toward it with all
our might. But in it s most attractive and indispensable forms, it comes
rather as an interruption in the process of desire as constitution of a field of
immanence. There is nothing more revealing than the idea of a pleasure­
discharge; once pleasure is attained, one would have a little calm before de­
sire is rekindled: there is a lot of hatred, or fear, of desire, in the cult of plea­
sure. Pleasure is the attribution of the affect, the affection for a person or
subject, it is the only means for a person to "find himself again" in the pro­
cess of desire that overwhelms him. Pleasures, even the most artificial, or
the dizziest, can only be reterriorialization. Desire does not have pleasure as
its norm, but this is not in the name of an internal lack which could not be
filled, but on the contrary by virtue of its positivity; that is, of the plane of
consistence that it traces in the course of its process. It is the same error
which relates desire to the law of the lack and to the norm of pleasure. It is
when you keep relating desire to pleasure, to the attainment of pleasure,
that you also notice that something fundamental is missing. To the point
where, to break these preformed alliances between desire-pleasure-lack, we
are obliged to make detours through bizarre fabrications, with much ambi­
guity. Take, as an example, courtly love, which is an assemblage of desire
connected to feudalism as end. Dating an assemblage is not doing history, it
is giving the assemblage its coordinates of expression and content, proper
names, infinitive-becomings, articles, haecceities. (So that's what doing his­
tory is?) Now, it is well known that cou�tly love implies tests which postpone
pleasure, or at least postpone the ending of coitus. This is certainly not a
m ethod of deprivation. It is the constitution ofa field of immanence, where
 I 40 DESIRE AND SCHIZOANALYSIS

d esire constructs its own plane and lacks nothing, any more than i t allows
itself to be interrupted by a d ischarge which would indicate that it is too
heavy for it to bear. Courtly love has two enemie s which merge into one: a
religious trans cendence of lack and a hedonistic interrup tion which intro­
duces p l easure as d ischarge. It is the immanent process of desire which fills
itself up, the cont inuum of intensities, the combination of fluxes, which re­
place both the law-authority and the pleasure-interruption. The process of
desire is called "joy," not lack or demand. Ev erything is permitted, except
what woul d come and break up the integral process of desire, the assem­
blage. This is not something to d o with nature: o n the contrary, it requires a
great deal of artifice to exorcise the internal lack, the higher transcendent
element and the apparent e xte rior. Ascesis, why not? As cesis has always
been the condition of desire, not its disciplining or pro hibition. You will al­
ways find an ascesis if you think of desire. Now, it has been " historical l y"
necessary that a certain fi eld ofimmanence s hould be p os sible at a particu­
lar moment, at a particular place. C hivalrous love properly speaking was
not possible until the two fluxes h ad combined, the warrior flux and the
erotic flux, in the sense that valor gave the right to love. But courtly love
required a new d emarcation in which valor became it self internal to love,
and where love included the test. 3 One can say as much, in other conditions,
of the masochist assemblage: the organization of humiliations and s uffering
in it appear less as a means of exorcizing anguish and so attaining a sup­
posedly forbidden pleasure, than as a procedure, a p ar ticularly conv oluted
one, to constitute a body without o rgans and develop a continuous p rocess
of d esire which pleasure, o n the contrary, would come and interrupt.
We do not believe in general that sexuality has the role of an infrastruc­
ture in the as semblages of des ire, nor t hat it cons titutes an energy capable of
transformation o r of neutralization and subl imation. Sexuality can only be
thought of as one flux among others, entering into conjunction with other
fluxes, emitting p articles which themselves enter into p articular relation­
ships of speed and sl owness in the viciniry of certain other particles. No as­
semblage can be characterized by one flux exclusively. What a dep ressing
idea of love, to make i t a relation between two people, whose monotpny
must be vanquished as required by adding e xtra people. And it is not im­
proved by the idea o f l eaving aside people altogether by bringing sexuality
down to the cons truction of perverse or sadis tic little machines which en­
close s exualit y in a theater of p h antasms: something d irty or stale is given
off by all this, something which is too sentimental in any case, too narcissis­
tic, as when a flux begins to revolve around it self and grow stale. So Felix's
fine phrase " desiring machines" ought to be given up for these reasons. The
 What ls Desire? 14 1

question about sexuality is: into the vicinity of what else does it enter to
form such and such a haeccei ty, particular relations of movement and rest?
The more it is articulated with other fluxes, the more it will remain sex­
uality, pure and simple sexuali ty, far from all idealizing sublimation. It will
be all the more sexuality for itself, inventive, amazed, with neither phan­
tasm which turns round and round nor idealization which leaps into the air:
the masturbator is the only one who makes phantasms. Psychoanalysis is
exactly a masturbation, a generalized, organized, and coded narcissism.
Sexuality does not allow itself to be sublimated, or phantasmed, because its
concern is elsewhere, in the real vicinity of and in real combination with
other fluxes, which exhaust or precipitate it-all depends on the moment
and the assemblage. And it is not simply from one to the other of the two
"subjects" that this vicinity or combination takes place; i t is in each of the
two that several fluxes combine to form a bloc of becoming which makes
demands on them both, music-becoming of Clara, woman- or child­
becoming of Schumann. Not the man and woman as sexual entities, caught
in a binary apparatus, but a molecular becoming, birth of a molecular
woman in music, birth of molecular sonority in a woman. "The relations
between the two spouses profoundly change over the years, often without
them realizing anything; while each change is a cause of suffering, even ifit
causes a certain joy. . . . With each change a new being appears, a new
rhythm is established . . . . Sex is a changing thing, sometimes lively, some-
times resting, sometimes inflamed and sometimes dead . "4 At each moment
we are made up of lines which are variable at each instant, which may be
combined in different ways, packets oflines, longitudes and latitudes, trop­
ics and meridians, etc. There are no monolluxes. The analysis of the uncon­
scious should be a geography rather than a history. Which lines appear
blocked, moribund, closed in, dead-ended, falling to a black hole or ex­
hausted, which others are active or lively, which allow something to escape
and draw us along? Little Hans again: how was the line of the building and
of the neighbors cut offfrom him; how was the Oedipal tree developed, what
role did Professor Freud's branching-off play, why did the child seek refuge
on the line of a horse-becoming, etc.? Psychoanalysis has always haunted

parental and familial pathways, we should not reproach it for having chosen
a particular way ofbranching off rather than another, but for having made a
dead end out of this one, for having invented conditions of enunciation
which crushed in advance the new utterances that it nevertheless gave rise
to. We should get to the point of being able to say: your father, your mother,
your grandmother, everything is fine, even the name of the father, every en­
try is fine from the moment that there are multiple exits. But psychoanalysis
 142 DESIRE A N D SCJUZOA NALYSIS

has produced everything-except exits. "Anywhere the rails lead u s , any­

where at all, and if we come to an old offshoot rail line we don't know any­
thing about, what the hell, we'll just take it, go down il, to see where it goes.
And some year, by God, we'll boat down the Mississippi, always wanted to
do that. Enough to last us a lifetime. And that's just how long I want to take
to do it all. " 5
 Pa rt Fou r

Minor Languages
and Nomad A rt
 17
Language: Major and Minor

Since everybody knows that language is a heterogeneous, variable reality,

what is the meaning of the linguists' insistence on carving out a homoge­
neous system in order to make a scientific study possible? It is a question of
extracting a set of constants from the variables, or of determining constant
relations between variables (this is already evident in the phonologists' con­
cept of commutativity). But the scientific model taking language as an ob­
ject of study is one with the political model by which language is homoge­
nized, centralized, standardized, becoming a language ofpower, a major or
dominant language. Linguistics can claim all it wants to be science, nothing
but pure science-it wouldn't be the first time that the order of pure science
was used to secure the requirements of another order. What is gram­
maticality, and the sign S, the categorical symbol that dominates state­
ments? It is a power marker before it is a syntactical marker, and Chomsky's
trees establish constant relations between power variables. Forming gram­
matically correct sentences is for the normal individual the prerequisite for
any submission to social laws. No one is supposed to be ignorant of gram­
maticality; those who are belong in special institutions. The unity of lan­
guage is fundamentally political. There is no mother tongue, only a power
takeover by a dominant language that at times advances along a broad
front, and at times swoops down on diverse centers simultaneously. We can
 14 6 M I N O R LANGUAGES A N D NOMAD ART

conceive o f s everal ways for a language t o homogenize, centralize: the re­

publican way i s not necessarily the same as the royal way, and i s not the
least hars h . 1 The scient ific enterprise o f extracting constants and constant
relations is always coupled with the political enterprise o fimposing them on
s peakers and transmitt ing order-word s .

Speak white and loud

yes what a wonderfol language
for hiring
giving orders
appointing the hour of death in the works
and of the break that refreshes . . .

Must a distinction then be made between two kinds oflanguages, "high"

and "low," m ajor and minor? The first would be defined p recisely by the
p ower [pouvoir] of constants, the second by the power [puissanct] o f v aria­
tion. We d o not simply wish to make an o pposition between the unity of a
major language and the multiplicity of dialects. Rather, each dialect has a
zone of transition and variation; or better, e ach minor language has a prop­
erly dialectical zone of variation. According to Malmberg, it i s rare to find
clear boundaries on dialect maps; instead, there are transitional and lim­
itrophe zones, zones of indiscernibility. It is also said that "the Quebecois
language is so rich in modulations and v ariations of regional accents and in
games with tonic accents that it s ometimes seems, with no e xaggeration,
that it would be better preserved by musical notation than by any system of
s pelling. " 2 The very notion of dialect i s quite questionable. Moreover, it is
relative because one needs to know in relation to what maj o r language it
exercise s i t s function: for example, the Quebecois language must be evalu­
ated not only in relation to standard F rench but also in relation to major
English, from which it borrows all kinds of phonetic and s yntactical ele­
ments, in order to set them in variation. The Bantu dialects must be evalu­
ated not only in relation to the mother tongue but also in relation to Af•
rikaans as a maj o r language, and English as a counter-major language
preferred by blacks. 3 In short, the notion of dialect does not e lucidate t hat of
minor language, but the other way around; it i s the minor language that:
d efines dialects through its own p os sibilities for variation. Should we identi-.
fy m aj o r and minor language on the basis of regional sit uations of bilingual ...
ism or multilingualism including at l east one dominant language and one
dominated language, o r a world situation giving certain languages an impe•
rialist power over others (for example, the role of American English today)?
A t least two things prevent us from adopting this p oint o f view. A l
Chomsky notes, a dialect, ghetto lan guage, or minor language i s not im•
 Language: Major and Minor 14 7

mune to the kind of treatment that draws a homogeneous system from it and
extracts constants: Black English has its own grammar, which is not defined
by a sum ofmistakes or infractions against standard English; but that gram­
mar can be studied only by applying to it the same rules of study that are
applied to standard English. In this sense, the notions of major and minor
seem to have no linguistic relevance. When French lost its worldwide major
function it lost nothing ofits constancy and homogeneity, its centralization.
Conversely, Afrikaans attained homogeneity when it was a locally minor
language struggling against English. Even politically, especially politically,
it is difficult to see how the upholders ofa minor language can operate if not
by giving it (if only by writing in it) a constancy and homogeneity making it
a locally major language capable of forcing official recognition (hence the
political role of writers who assert the rights of a minor language). But the
opposite argument seems more compelling: the more a language has or ac­
quires the characteristics ofa major language, the more it is affected by con­
tinuous variations that transpose it into a "minor" language. I t is futile to
criticize the worldwide imperialism of a language by denouncing the cor­
ruptions it introduces into other languages (for example, the purists' crit­
icisms of English influences in French, the petit-bourgeois or academic de­
nunciation of " Franglais"). For if a language such as British English or
American English is major on a world scale, it is necessarily worked upon
by all the minorities of the world, using very diverse procedures of �riation.
Take the way Gaelic and Irish English set English in variation. Or the way
Black English and any number of" ghetto languages" set American English
in variation, to the point that New York i s virtually a city without a lan­
guage. ( Furthermore, American English could not have constituted itself
without this linguistic labor of the minorities . ) Or the linguistic situation in
the old Austrian empire: German was a major language in relation to the
minorities, but as such it could not avoid being treated by those minorities
in a way that made it a minor language in relation to the German of the
Germans. There is no language that does not have intralinguistic, endoge­
nous, internal minorities. So at the most general level oflinguistics, Chomsky's
and Labov's positions are constantly passing and converting into each oth­
er. Chomsky can say that even a minor, dialectical, or ghetto language can­

not be studied unless invariants are extracted from it and "extrinsic or

mixed" variables are eliminated; and Labov can respond that even a stan­
dard or major language cannot be studied independently of "inherent"
variations, which are precisely neither mixed nor extrinsic. l&u will neverfind
a homogeneous system that is not still or alread
y tiffected by a regulated, continuous,
immanent process of variation (why does Chomsky pretend not to understand
chis?).
 14 8 M I N O R L A N G U A G E S A ND N O M A D ART

There are not, there fore, two kinds of languages but two possible treat­
ments of the same language. Either the variables are treated in such a way
as to extract from them constants and constant relations o r in such a way as
t o place them in continuous variation. We were wrong to give the impres­
sion at times t hat constants existed alongside variables, linguistic constants
alongside variables of enunciation: that was only for convenience of presen­
tation. For it i s obvious that the constants are drawn from the variables
t hemselves; universals in linguistics have no more existence in t hemselves
than they do in economics and are always concluded from a universaliza­
tion or a rendering-uniform involving variables. Constant is not opposed to vari­
able; it is a treatment of the variable opposed to the other kind of treatment,
or continuous variation. So-called obligatory rules correspond to the first
kind of treatment, whereas optional rules concern the construction ofa con­
tinuum of variation. Moreover, there are a certain number of categories or
distinctions that cannot be invoked, t hat are inapplicable and useless as a
basis for o bjections because they p resuppose the first treatment and are en­
tirely s ubordinated to the quest for const ants: for example, language as op­
posed to speech; synchrony as opposed to diachrony; competence as op­
posed to performance; distinctive features as opposed to nondistinctive
(or s econdarily d i stinctive) features. For nondistinctive features, whether
prosodic, stylistic, o r pragmatic, are not only omnipresent variables, in con­
trast to the presence or absence of a constant; they are not only s uperlinear
and "suprasegmental" elements, in contrast to linear s egmental elements;
their very characteristics give them the power to place all the elements of
language in a state of continuous variat ion-fo r example, the impact of
tone on phonemes, accent on morphemes, or intonation on syntax. These
are not secondary features but another t reatment oflanguage t hat n o longer
operates according to the preceding categories.
" M aj o r " and "minor" d o not qualify two different languages but rather
two usages or functions of language. Bilingualism, of course, provides a
good example, but once again we use it simply for the sake of convenience.
Doubtless, in the Austrian empire Czech was a minor language in relation
to German; but the German of Prague already functioned as a potentially
minor language in relation to the G erman ofVienna or Berlin; and Kafka, a
Czechoslovakianjew writing in G e rman, s ubmits German to creative treat­
ment as a minor language, constructing a continuu n,i of variat ion, negotiat­
ing all of the variables both to constrkt the constants and to expand the
variables: make language stammer, o r make it "wail," stretch tensor•
through all of language, even written language, and draw from it criel1
shouts, pitches, durations, timbres, accents, intensities. Two conjoined ten­
dencies in so-called minor languages have often been noted: an impoverish·
 Language: Major and Minor I 4 9

ment, a shedding of syntactical and lexical forms; but simultaneously a

strange proliferation of shifting effects, a taste for overload and paraphrase.
This applies to the German of Prague, Black English, and Quebecois. But
with rare exceptions, the interpretation of the linguists has been rather ma­
levolent, invoking a consubstantial poverty and preciosity. The alleged pov­
erty is in fact a restriction of constants and the overload an extension of vari­
ations functioning to deploy a continuum sweeping up all components. The
poverty is not a lack but a void or ellipsis allowing one to sidestep a constant
instead of tackling it head on, or to approach it from above or below instead
ofpositioning oneself within it. And the overload is not a rhetorical figure, a
metaphor, or symbolic structure; it is a mobile paraphrase bearing witness
to the unlocalized presence of an indirect discourse at the heart of every
statement. From both sides we see a rejection of reference points a dissolu­
tion of constant form in favor of differences in dynamic. The closer a lan­
guage gets to this state, the closer it comes not only to a system of musical
notation, but also to music itself.4
Subtract and place in variation, remove and place in variation: a single
operation. Minor languages are characterized not by overload and poverty
in relation to a standard or major language, but by a sobriety and variation
that are like a minor treatment of the standard language, a becoming-minor
and the major language. The problem is not the d istinction between major
and minor language; it is one of a becoming. It is a question not of reter­
ritorializing oneself on a dialect or a patois but of deterritorializing the ma­
jor language. Black Americans do not oppose Black to English, they trans­
form the American English that is their own language into Black English.
Minor languages do not exist in themselves: they exist only in relation to a
major language and are also investments of that language for the purpose of
making it minor. One must find the minor language, the dialect or rather
idiolect, on the basis of which one can make one's own major language
minor. That is the strength of authors termed "minor," who are in fact the
greatest, the only greats: having to conquer one's own language, in other
words, to attain that sobriety in the use of a major language, in order to
place it in a state of continuous variation (the opposite ofregionalism). It is
in one's own language that one is bilingual or multilingual. Conquer ine
major language in order to delineate in it as yet unknown minor languages.
Use the minor language to send the major language racing. Minor authors are
foreigners in their own tongue. If they are bastards, if they experience them­
selves as bastards, it is due not to a mixing or intermingling oflanguages but
rather to a subtraction and variation of their own language achieved by
stretching tensors through it.
The notion ofminoriry is very complex, with musical, literary, linguistic,
 IJO MIN O R LANGUAGES AND NOMAD ART

a s well a sj uridical and political, references. The opposition between m inor­

ity and majority is not simply quantitative. Majority implies a constant, of
expression or content, serving as a standard measure by which to evaluate
it. Let us suppose that the constant or standard is the average adult-white­
heterosexual-European-male speaking a standard language (Joyce's or
Ezra Pound's Ulysses). It is obvious that "man" holds the majority, even if
he is fess numerous than mosquitoes, children, women, blacks, peasants,
homosexuals, etc. That is because he appears twice, once in the constant
and again in the variable from which the constant is extracted. Majority
assumes a state of power and domination, not the other way around. It as­
sumes the standard measure, not the other way around. Even Marxism
"has almost always translated hegemony from the point of view of the na­
tional worker, qualified, male and over thirty-five. "5 A determination differ­
ent from that of the constant will therefore be considered minoritarian, by
nature and regardless of number, in other words, a subsystem or an out­
system. This is evident in all the operations, electoral or otherwise, where
you are given a choice, but on the condition that your choice conform to the
limits of the constant ("you mustn't choose to change society. . . "). But at
this point, everything is reversed. For the majority, insofar as it is analyt­
ically included in the abstract standard, is never anybody, it is always
Nobody-Ulysses-whereas the minority is the becoming of everybody,
one's potential becoming to the extent that one deviates from the model.
There is a majoritarian "fact," but it is the analytic fact of Nobody, as op­
posed to the becoming-minoritarian of everybody. That is why we must dis­
tinguish between: the maj oritarian as a constant and homogeneous system;
minorities as subsystems; and the minoritarian as a potential, creative and
created, becoming. The problem is never to acquire the majority, even in
order to install a new constant. There is no becoming-m�joritarian; major­
ity is never becoming. All becoming is minoritarian. Women, regardless of
their numbers, are a minori ty, defi nable as a state or subset; but they create
only by making possible a becoming over which they do not have ownership,
into which they themselves must enter; this is a becoming-woman affecting
all of humankind, men and women both. The same goes for minor lan­
guages: they are not simply sublanguages, idiolects or dialects, but poten­
tial agents of the major language's entering into a becoming-minoritarian of
all of its dimensions and elements. We should distinguish between minor
languages, the major language, and the becoming-minor of the major lan­
guage. Minorities, of course, are objectively definable states, states of lan­
guage, ethnicity, or sex with their own ghetto terriorialities, but they must
also be thought of as seeds, crystals of becoming whose value is to trigger
uncontrollable movements and deterritorializations of the mean or major-
 Language: Major and Minor 151

ity. That is w h y Pasolini demonstrated that the essential thing, precisely i n

free indirect discourse, i s to b e found neither i n language A , nor in language
B, but "in language X, which is none other than language A in the actual
process of becoming language B. "6 There is a universal figure of minor­
itarian consciousness as the becoming of everybody, and that becoming is
creation. One does not attain it by acquiring the majority. The figure to
which we are referring is continuous variation, as an amplitude that con­
tinually oversteps the representative threshold of the majoritarian stan­
dard, by excess or default. In erecting the figure of a universal minoritarian
consciousness, one addresses powers [puissances] of becoming that belong to
a different realm from that of Power [Pouvoir] and Domination. Continuous
variation constitutes the becoming-minoritarian of everybody, as opposed
to the majoritarian Fact ofNobody. Becoming-minoritarian as the universal
figure of consciousness is called autonomy. It is certainly not by using a
minor language as a dialect, by regionalizing or ghettoizing, that one be­
comes revolutionary; rather, by using a number of minority elements, by
connecting, conj ugating them, one invents a specific, unforeseen, au tono­
mous becoming. 7
 18
Minor Literature: Kafka

So far we have dealt with little more than contents and their forms: bent
head-straightened head, triangles-lines ofescape. And it is true that in the
realm ofexpression, the bent head connects to the photo, and the erect head
to sound. But as long as the form and the deformation or expression are not
considered for themselves, there can be no real way out, even at the level of
contents. Only expression gives us the method. The problem of expression is
staked out b y Kafka not in an abstract and universal fashion but in relation
to those literatures that are considered minor, for example, the Jewish liter­
ature ofWarsaw and Prague. A minor literature doesn't come from a minor
language; it is rather that which a minority constructs within a major lan­
gu age. But the first characteristic of minor literature in any case is that injt
language is affected with a high coefficient of deterritorialization. In this
sense, Kafka marks the impasse that bars access to writing for the Jews of
Prague and turns their literature into something impossible-the impos­
sibility of not writing, the impossibility of writing in German, the impos­
sibility of writing otherwise. 1 The impossibility of not writing because na­
tional consciousness, uncertain or oppressed, necessarily exists by means of
literature ( "The literary struggle has its real justification at the highest pos­
sible levels"). The impossibility of writing other than in German is for the
Prague Jews the feeling of an irreducible distance from their primitive
 Minor Literature: Kqfka I 5J

territoriality. And the impossibility of writing in German is the deter­

ritorialization of the German population itself, an oppressive minority that
speaks a language cut off from the masses, like a "paper language" or an
artificial language: this is all the more true for the Jews who are simultane­
ously a part of this minority and excluded from it, like "gypsies who have
stolen a German child from its crib." In short, Prague German is a deter­
ritorialized language, appropriate for strange and minor uses. (This can be
compared in another context to what blacks in America today are able to do
with the English language.)
The second characteristic of minor literatures is that everything}11 .t_l�em
is political. In major literatures, in contrast, the indivi <l ual concern (famil­
ial, marital, and so on) joins with other no less individual concerns, the so­
cial milieu serving as a mere environment or a background; this is so much
the case that none of these Oedipal intrigues are specifically indispensable
or absolutely necessary but all become as one in a large space. Minor litera­
ture is completely different; its cramped space forces each individual in­
trigue to connect immediately to politics. The individual concern thus be­
comes all the more necessary, indispensable, magnified, because a whole
other story is vibrating within it. In this way, the family triangle connects to
other triangles-commercial, economic, bureaucratic, juridical-that
determine its values. When Kafka indicates that one of the goals of a minor
literature is the "purification of the conflict that opposes father and son and
the possibility of discussing that conflict," it isn't a question of an Oedipal
phantasm but of a political program. "Even though something is often
thought through calmly, one still does not reach the boundary where it con­
nects up with similar things, one reaches the boundary soonest in politics,
indeed, one even strives to see it before it is there, and often sees this limiting
boundary everywhere. . . . What in great literature goes on down below,
constituting a not indispensable cellar of the structure, here takes place in
the full light of day, what is there a matter of passing interest for a few, here
absorbs everyone no less than as a matter oflife and death. "2
The third characteristic of minor literature is that in it everything takes
on a collective value. Indeed, precisely because talent isn't abundant in a
minor literature, there are no possibilities for an individuated enunciation
that would belong to this or that "master" and that could be separated from
a collective enunciation. Indeed, scarcity of talent is in fact beneficial and
allows the conception ofsomething other than a literature of masters; what
each author says individually already constitutes a common action, and
what he or she says or does is necessarily political, even if others aren't in
agreement. The political domain has contaminated every statement [in­
once1 . But above all else, because collective or national consciousness is "of-
 l J4 MINOR LANGUAGES AND NOMAD ART

ten inactive i n external life and always i n the process ofbreak-down," litera­
ture finds itself positively charged with the role and function of collective,
and even revolutionary, enunciation. It is literatu re that produces an active
solidarity in spite of skepticism; and if the writer is in the margins or com­
pletely outside his or her fragile community, this situation allows the writer
all the more the possibility to express another possible community and to
forge the means for another consciousness and another sensibility; just as
the dog of " Investigations" calls out in his solitude to another science. The
literary machine thus becomes the relay for a revolutionary machine-to­
come, not at all for ideological reasons but because the literary machine
alone is determined to fill the conditions of a collective enunciation that is
lacking elsewhere in this milieu: literature is the people 's concern. 3 It is certainly
in these terms that Kafka sees the problem. The message doesn't refer back
to an enunciating subject who would be its cause, no more than to a subject
of the statement [sujet d'inonce1 who would be its effect. Undoubtedly, for a
while, Kafka thought according to these traditional categories of the two
subjects, the author and the hero, the narrator and the character, the
dreamer and the one dreamed of.4 But he will quickly reject the role of the
narrator, just as he will refose an author's or master's literature, despite his
admirat ion for Goethe. Josephine the mouse renounces the individual act of
singing in order to melt into the collective enunciation of " the immense
crowd of the heros of[her J people." A movement from the individu ated ani­
mal to the pack or to a collective multiplicity-seven canine musicians. I n
"The Investigations of a Dog, " the expressions of the soli tary researcher
tend toward the assemblage [agencement] of a collective enunciation of the
canine species even if this collectivity is no longer or not yet given. There
isn't a subject; there are on�y collective assemblages ef enunciation, and literature
expresses these acts insofar as they're not imposed from without and inso·
far as they exist only as diabolical powers to come or revolutionary forces
to be constructed. Kafka's solitude opens him up to everything going on in
history today. The letter K no longer designates a narrator or a character
but an assemblage that becomes all the more machine-like, an agent that
becomes all the more collective because an individual is locked into it in
his or her solitude (it is only in connection to a subject that something in·
dividual would be separable from the collective and would lead its own
life).
The three characteristics of minor literature are the deterritorialization
of language, the connection of the individual to a political immediacy, and
the collective assemblage of enunciation. We might as well say that minor
no longer designates specific literatures but the revolutionary conditions for
every lit erature within the heart of what is called great (or established) liter•
ature. Even he who has the misfortune of being born in the country of a
 Mirwr Literature: Ktiflca 1 55

great literature m ust write in its language, just as a Czech Jew writes in
German, or an Ouzbekian writes in Russian. Writing like a dog digging a
hole, a rat digging its burrow. And to do that, fin ding his own point ofunder­
development, his own patois, his own third world, his own desert. There has
been much discussion of the questions "What is a marginal literature?" and
"What is a popular literature, a proletarian literature?" The criteria are ob­
viously difficult to establish if one doesn't start with a more objective
concept-that of minor literature. Only the possibility ofsetting up a minor
practice of major language from within allows one to define popular litera­
t ure, marginal literature, and so on.5 Only in this way can literature really
become a collective machine of expression and really be able to treat and
develop its contents. Kafka emphatically declares that a minor literature is
much more able to work over its material. 6 Why this machine of expression,
and what is it? We know that it is in a relation of multiple deterritorializa­
tions with language; it is the situation of the Jews who have dropped the
Czech language at the same time as the rural environment, but it is also the
sit uation of the German language as a "paper language." Well, one can go
even farther; one can push this movement of deterritorialization of expres­
sion even farther. But there are only two ways to do this. One way is to ar­
tificially enrich this German, to swell it up through all the resources of sym­
bolism, of oneirism, of esoteric sense, of a hidden signifier. This is the
approach of the Prague school, Gustav Meyrink and many others, includ­
ing Max Brod. 7 But this attempt implies a desperate attempt at symbolic
reterritorilization, based in archetypes, Kabbala, and alchemy, that accen­
tuates its break from the people and will find its political result only in Zion­
ism and such things as the "dream of Zion ." Kafka will quickly choose the
other way, or, rather, he will invent another way. He will opt for the German
language of Prague as it is and in its very poverty. Go always farther in the
direction of deterritorialization, to the point of sobriety. Since the language
is arid, make it vibrate with a new intensity. Oppose a purely intensive
usage of language to all symbolic or even significant or simp ly signifying
usages of it. Arrive at a perfect and unformed expression, a materially in­
tense expression. ( For these two possible paths, couldn't we find the same
alternatives, under other conditions, in Joyce and Beckett? As I rishmen,
both of them live within the genial conditions of a minor literature. That is
the glory of this sort of minor literature-to be the revolutionary force for all
literature. The utilization of English and of every language in Joyce. The
utilization ofEnglish and French in Beckett. But the former never stops op­
rrating by exhilaration and overdetermination and brings about all sorts of
worldwide reterritorializations. The other proceeds by dryness and so­
briety, a willed poverty, pushing deterritorialization to such an extreme that
nothing remains but intensities. )
 I5 6 MINOR LANGUAGES AND NOMAD ART

How many people today live i n a language that i s not their own? O r no
longer, or not yet, even know their own and know poorly the major language
that they are forced to serve? This is the problem of immigrants, and espe­
cially of their children, the problem of minorities, the p ro blem of a minor
literature, but also a problem for all of us: how to tear a minor literature
away from its own language, allowing it to challenge the language and mak­
ing i t follow a sober revolutionary p ath? How to become a nomad and an
immigrant and a gypsy in relation to one's own l anguage? Kafka answers:
steal the baby fro m its crib, walk the tightrope.
Rich o r poor, each language always implies a d eterritorialization of the
mouth, the tongue, and the teeth. The mouth, tongue, and teeth find their
primitive te rritoriality in food. In giving themselves over to the articulation
_
of s ounds, the mouth, tongue, and teeth dete rritorialize. Thus, there is a
certain disj u nction between eating and speaking, and even more, despite all
appearances, between eating and w riting. Undo ubtedly, one can write
wh ile e ating more easily than one can speak while e ating, but writing goes
forther in transforming words into things capable of competing with food.
Disj unction between content and expression. To s p eak, and above all to
write, is to fast. Kafka manifests a permanent obsession with food, and w ith
that form of food par ex cellence, in o ther words, the animal or meat-an
obsession with the mouth and with teeth and with large, unhealthy, or gold­
capped teeth.a This is one of Kafka's main problems with Felice. F as ting is
also a constant theme in Kafka's writings. His writings are a long history of
fasts. The Hunger Artist, su rveyed by butchers, ends his career next to
beasts who eat their meat raw, p lacing the visitors before an irritating a lter­
native. The dogs try to take over the mouth of the investigating hound by
filling it with food so that he'll stop asking questions, and there too there is
an irritating alternative: "They would have done better to drive me away
and refose to listen to my quest ions. No, they did not want to do t hat; they
did not indeed want to listen to my questions, but i t was becaus e I asked
these ques tions that they d id not want to drive me away. " The investigating
hound oscillates between two s ciences, t hat of food-a science of the Earth
and of the bent head ( "Whence d oes the Earth procure this food ? " )-and
that of music which is a s cience of the air and of the s t raightened head, as
the seven musical dogs of the beginning and the singing dog of the end well
d e monstrate. But between the two there is something in common, since
food can come from high up and the science of food can only d evelop
through fasting, j us t as the music is strangely silent.
Ordinarily, in f act, language compensates for its dete rritorialization by a
rete rrito rial iz ation in sense. Ceasing to be the organ ofone of the senses, it
becomes an instrument of sense. And it is s ense, as a correct sense, that pre-
 Minor Literature: K eflr.a I5 7

sides over the designation of sounds (the thing o r the state o fthings that the
word designates) and, as figurative sense, over the affection of images and
metaphors ( those other things that words designate under certain situa­
tions or conditions). Thus, there is not only a spiritual reterritorialization of
sense, but also a physical one. Similarly, language exists only through the
distinction and the complementarity of a subject of enunciation, who is in
connection with sense, and a subject of the statement, who is in connection,
directly or metaphorically, with the designated thing. This sort ofordinary
use of language can be called extensive or representative- the reterritori­
alizing fi.tnction oflanguage ( thus, the singing dog at the end of the " I nves­
tigations" forces the hero to abandon his fast, a sort of re-Oedipalization) .
Now something happens: the situation of the German language in Czech­
oslovakia, as a fluid language intermixed with Czech and Yiddish, will al­
low Kafka the possibility ofinvention. Since things are as they are ( " it is as
it is, it is as it is," a formula dear to Kafka, marker ofa state of facts), he will
abandon sense, render it no more than implicit; he will retain only the skel­
eton of sense, or a paper cutout.
Since articulated sound was a deterritorialized noise but one that will be
reterritorialized in sense, it is now sound itself that will be deterritorialized
irrevocably, absolutely. The sound or the word that traverses this new deter­
ritorialization no longer belongs to a language of sense, even though it de­
rives from it, nor is it an organized music or song, even though it might ap­
pear to be. We noted Gregor's warbling and the ways it blurred words, the
whistling of the mouse, the cough of the ape, the pianist who doesn't play,
the singer who doesn 't sing and gives birth to her song out of her nonsing­
ing, the musical dogs who are musicians in the very depths of their bodies
�ince they don't emit any music. Everywhere, organized music is traversed
by a line of abolition-just as a language of sense is traversed by a line of
escape-in order to liberate a living and expressive material that speaks for
itself and has no need of being put into a form. 9 This language tom from
sense, conquering sense, bringing about an active neutralization of sense,
no longer finds its value in anything but an accenting of the word, an inflec-J,
tion: "I live only here or there in a small word in whose vowel. . . . I lose my
useless head for a moment. The first and last letters are the beginning and
r.nd of my fishlike emotion . " 10 Children are well skilled in the exercise of
repeating a word, the sense ofwhich is only vaguely felt, in order to make it
vibrate around itself (at the beginning of Tire Castle, the schoolchildren are
�peaking so fast that one cannot understand what they are saying). Kafka
tells how, as a child, he repeated one of his father's expressions in order to
make it take flight on a line of non-sense: "end of the month, end of the
month. " I I The proper name, which has no sense in itself, is particularly
 15 8 MINOR LANGUAGES A N D NOMAD ART

propitious for this sort of exercise. Milena, with a n accent o n the i , begins by
evoking "a Greek or a Roman gone astray in Bohemia, violated by Czech,
cheated of its accen t," and then, by a more delicate approximation, it
evokes "a woman whom one carries in one's arms out ofthe world, out of the
fire," the accent marking here an always possible fall or, on the contrary,
"the lucky leap which you yourself make with your burden. " 1 2
I t seems to us that there i s a certain difference, even i frelative and highly
nuanced, between the two evocations of the name Milena: one still attaches
itself to an extensive, figurative scene of the fantasmatic sort; the second is
already much more intensive, marking a fall or a leap as a threshold of in­
tensity contained within the name itself. In fact, we have here what happens
when sense is actively neutralized. As Wagenbach says, "The word is mas­
ter; it directly gives birth to the image . " But how can we define this. pro­
cedure? Of sense there remains only enough to direct the lines of escape.
There is no longer a destination of something by means of a proper name,
nor an assignation ofmetaphors by means of a figurative sense. But like im­
ages, the thing no longer forms anything but a sequence of intensive states,
a ladder or a circuit for intensities that one can make race around in one
sense or another, from high to low, or from low to high. The image is this
very race itself; it has become becoming-the becoming-dog of the man and
the becoming-man of the dog, the becoming-ape or the becoming-beetle of
the man and vice versa. We are no longer in the situation of an ordinary, rich
language where the word dog, for example, would directly designate an ani­
mal and would apply metaphorically to other things (so that one could say
"like a dog" ), 1 3 Diaries, I 92 1 : "Metaphors are one of the things that makes
me despair ofliterature ." Kafka deliberately kills all metaphor, all symbol­
ism, all signification, no less than all designation. Metamorphosis is the
contrary of metaphor. There is no longer any proper sense or figurative
sense, but only a distribution of states that is part of the range of the word.
The thing and other things are no longer anything but intensities overrun
by deterri torialized sound or words that are following their line of escape. It
is no longer a question of a resemblance between the comportment of an
animal and that of a man; it is even less a question of a simple wordplay.
There is no longer man or animal, since each deterritorializes the other, in a
conju nction of flu x, in a continuum of reversible intensities. Instead, it ii
now a question of a becoming that includes the maximum of difference as a
difference ofintensity, the crossing of a barrier, a rising or a falling, a bend·
ing or an erecting, an accent on the word . The animal does not speak "like"
a man but pulls from the langu age tonalities lacking in signification; the
words themselves are not "like" the animals but in their own way climb
about, bark and roam around, being properly linguistic dogs, insects, or
 M i'llDr literature: Kefka 1 59

mice . ' 4 To make the sequences vibrate, to open the word onto unexpected
internal intensities-in short, an asignifying intensive utili.(;ation oflanguage.
Furthermore, there is no longer a subject of the enunciation, nor a subject of
the statement. It is no longer the subject of the statement who is a dog, with
the subject of the enunciation remaining "like" a man; it is no longer the
subject of enunciation who is "lik e" a beetle, the subject of the statement
remaining a man. Rather, there is a circuit of states that forms a mutual
becoming in the heart of a necessarily multiple or collective assemblage.
How does the situation of the German language in Prague-a withered
vocabulary, an incorrect syntax�contribute to such a utilization? Generally,
we might call the linguistic elements, however varied they may be, that ex·
press the "internal tensions of a language" intensives or tensors. It is in this
sense that the linguist Vidal Sephiha terms intensive "any linguistic tool
that allows a move toward the limit ofa notion or a surpassing ofit," mark·
ing a movement of language toward its extremes, toward a reversible be·
yond or before. 1 5 Sephiha well shows the variety of such elements which can
be all sorts of master-words, verbs, or prepositions that assu me all sorts of
senses; prenominal or purely intensive verbs as in Hebrew; conjunctions,
exclamations, adverbs; and terms that connote pain . 1 6 One could equally cite
the accents that are interior to words, their discordant function. And it
would seem that the language of a minor literature particularly develops
these tensors or these intensives. In the lovely pages where he analyzes the
Prague German that was inll uenced by Czech, Wagenbach cites as the char·
acteristics of this form of German the incorrect use of prepositions; the
abuse of the pronominal; the employment of malleable verbs (such as Gihen,
which is used for the series "put, sit, place, take away" and which thereby
becomes intensive ) ; the multiplication and succession ofadverbs; the use of
pain-filled connotations; the importance of the accent as a tension internal
to the word; and the distribution of consonants and vowels as part of an
internal discordance. Wagenbach insists on this point: all these marks of the
poverty of a language show up in Kafka but have been taken over by a ere·
ative utilization for the purposes ofa new sobriety, a new expressivity, a new
flexibility, a new intensity. 1 7 "Almost every word I write jars up against the
next, I hear the consonants rub leadenly against each other and the vowels
sing an accompaniment like Negroes in a minstrel show. " 1 8 language stops
being representative in order to r(OW move toward its extremities ar its limits. The con·
notation of pain accompanies this metamorphosis, as in the words that be·
come a painful warbling with Gregor, or in Franz's cry "single and irrevoca­
hle . " Think about the utilization of French as a spoken language in the films
uf Godard . There too is an accumulation of stereotypical adverbs and con­
junctions that form the base of all the phrases-a strange poverty that
 1 60 M I N O R LANGUAGES A N D NOMAD ART

makes French a minor language within F rench; a creative process that

directly links the word to the image; a technique that surges up at the end of
sequences in connection with the int ensity of the limit "that's enough,
enough, he's had enough," and a generalized intensification, coinciding
with a p anning shot where the camera pivots and sweeps around without
l eaving the spot, making the image vibrate.
Perhaps the comparative study of images would be less interesting than
the study of the functions of langu age that can work in the same group
across di fferent languages-bilingualis m o r even multilingualism. Because
the study of the functions in distinct languages alone can account for s ocial
factors, relations of force, diverse centers of power, it e scapes from the "in­
formational" myth in order to evaluate the hierarchic and imperative sys·
t e rn o f language as a transmission of o rders, an exercise of power o r of re•
s i st ance to this exercise. Using the research of Ferguson and Gumperz,
H enri Gobard has proposed a tetralinguistic model: vernacular, maternal,
or territorial language, used in rural communities or rural in its o rigins; a
vehicular, urban, governmental, even worldwide language, a language of
businesses, commercial e xchange, bureaucratic transmission, and so o n, a
language of the first s ort o f d eterritorialization; refe rential language, lan­
guage of sense and o f culture, entailing a cultural reterritorialization; myth·
ic language, on the horizon of cultures, caught up in a s piritual or religious
reterritorialization. The spatiotemporal categories of these languages differ
sharply: v ernacular language is here; vehicular language i s everywhere; refer­
ential language is over there; mythic language is beyond. But abo � e all else, the
distribution of these languages varies fro m one group to the next and, in a
single group , from one epoch to the next (for a long time in E u rope, Latin
was a vehicular language before becoming referential, then mythic; English
has become the worldwide vehicular language for today's world ) . 1 9 What
can be said in one language cannot be said in ano ther, and the totality of
what can and can't be said varies necessarily wit h each language and with
the connections between these language s . 2 0 Moreover, all these factors can
have ambiguous e d ges, changing borders, that d i ffe r for this o r that mate­
rial. One language can fill a certain function for one material and another
function for another material. Each function of a language divides up in
turn and carries with it mult iple centers of power. A blur of languages, an d
not at all a system o flanguages. We can understand the indignation of inte•
grationists who cry when Mass i s said in French, since Latin is bein g
robbed of its mythic function. But the classicists are even more behind the
times and cry because Lati n has even been robbed of its referential cultura l
function. They express regret in this way for the religious or educational
forms of powers that this language exercised and that have now been re•
 Minor Literature: K�a 1 61

placed by other forms. There are even more serious examples that cross over
between groups. The revival of regionalisms, with a reterritorialization
through dialect or patois, a vernacular language-how does that serve a
\Wrldwide or transnational technocracy? How can that contribute to revo­
lutionary movements, since they are also filled with archaisms that they are
trying to impart a contemporary sense to? From Servan-Schreiber to the
Breton bard to the Canadian singer. And that's not really how the borders
divide up, since the C anadian singer can also bring about the most reaction­
ary, the most Oedipal ofreterritorializations, oh mama, oh my native land,
my cabin, ole, ole. We would call this a blur, a mixed-up history, a political
situation, but linguists don't know about this, don't want to know about
this, since, as linguists, they are "apolitical, " pure scientists. Even
Chomsky compensated for his scientific apoliticism only by his courageous
struggle against the war in Vietnam.
Let's return to the situation in the Hapsburg empire. The breakdown
and fall of the empire increases the crisis, accentuates everywhere move­
ments of deterritorialization, and invites all sorts of complex reterritoriali­
zations-archaic, mythic, or symbolist. At random, we can cite the follow­
ing among Kafka's contemporaries: Einstein and his deterritorialization of
the representation of the universe (Einstein teaches in Prague, and the
physicist Philipp Frank gives conferences there with Kafka in attendance ) ;
the Austrian dodecaphonists and their deterritorialization ofmusical repre­
sentation (the cry that is Marie's death in ™1zzeck, or Lulu's, or the echoed si
that seems to us to follow a musical path similar in certain ways to what
Kafka is doing); the expressionist cinema and its double movement ofdeter­
ritorialization and reterritorialization of the image ( Robert Wiene, who has
Czech background; Fritz Lang, born in Vienna; Paul Wegener and his utili­
zation of Prague themes) . Of course, we should mention Viennese psycho­
analysis and Prague school linguistics. 21 What is the specific situation of the
Prague Jews in relation to the "four languages"? The vernacular language
for these Jews who have come from a rural milieu is Czech, but th e Czech_
language tends to be forgotten and repressed; as for Yiddish, it is often dis­
dained or viewed with suspicion-itftighten.r, as Kafka tells us. German is
the vehicular language of the towns, a bureaucratic language of the state, a
commercial language of exchange (but English has already started to be­
come indispensable for this purpose). The German language-but this
lime, Goethe's German-has a cultural and referential function ( as does
French to a lesser degree). As a mythic language, Hebrew is connected with
lhc start of Zionism and still possesses the quality of an active dream. For
r.ach of these languages, we need to evaluate the degrees of territoriality,
dctcrritorialization, and reterritorialization. Kafka's own situation: he is
 1 62 MIN O R LANGUAGES AND NOMAD ART

one of the few Jewish writers i n Prague to understand and speak Czech (and
this language will have a great importance in his relationship with Milena).
German plays precisely the double role of vehicular and cu ltural langu'l-ge,
with Goethe always on the horizon ( Kafka also knows French, I talian, and
probably a bit of English ). He will not learn Hebrew until later. What is
complicated is Kafka's relation to Yiddish; he sees it less as a sort of lin­
guistic territoriality for the Jews than as a nomadic movement of deter­
ritorialization that reworks German language. What fascinates him in Yid­
dish is less a language of a religious community than that of a popular
theater (he will become patron and impresario for the traveling theater of
Isak Lowy).2 2 The manner in which Kafka, in a public meeting, presented
Yiddish to a rather hostilej ewish bourgeois audience is completely remark­
able: Yiddish is a language that frightens more than it invites disdain,
"dread mingled with a certain fundamental distaste"; it is a language that is
lacking a grammar and that is filled with vocables that are fleeting, mobi­
lized, emigrating, and turned into nomads that interiorize "relations of
force . " It is a language that is grafted onto Middle-High German and that
so reworks the German language from within that one cannot translate it
into German without destroying it; one can understand Yiddish only by
"feeling it" in the heart. In short, it is a language where minor utilizations
will carry you away: "Then you will come to feel the true unity of Yiddish
and so strongly that it will frighten you, yet it will no longer be fear of Yid­
dish but of yourselves. Enjoy this self-confidence as much as you can!"23
Kafka does not opt for a reterritorialization through the Czech language.
Nor toward a hypercultural usage of German with all sorts of oneiric or
symbolic or mythic flights (even Hebrew-ifying ones), as was the case with
the Prague school. Nor toward an oral, popular Yiddish. Instead, using the
path that Yiddish opens up to him, he takes it in such a way as to convert it
into a unique and solitary form of writing. Since Prague German is deter­
ritorialized to several degrees, he will always take it farther, to a greater
degree of intensity, but in the direction of a new sobriety, a new and un­
expected modification, a pitiless rectification, a straightening of the head.
Schizo politeness, a drunkenness caused by water.24 He will make the Ger­
man language take flight on a line of escape. He will feed himself on absti­
nence; he will tear out of Prague German all the qualities of underdevelop­
ment that it has tried to hide; he will make it cry with an extremely sober
and rigorous cry. He will pull from it the barking of the dog, the cough of the
ape, and the bustling of the beetle. He will turn syntax into a cry that will
embrace the rigid syntax of this dried-up German . He will push it toward a
deterritorialization that will no longer be saved by culture or by myth, that
will be an absolute deterritorialization, even ifit is slow, sticky, coagulated.
 Minor Literature: Kcifka 1 63

To bring language slowly and progressively to the desert. To use syntax in

order to cry, to give a syntax to the cry.
�here is nothing that is major or revolutionary exept the minor. To hate
all languages of masters. Kafka's fascination for servants and employees
(the same thing in Proust in relation to servants, to their language). What
interests him even more is the possibility ofmaking ofhis own language­
assuming that it is unique, that it is a major language or has been-a minor
utilization. To be a sort of stranger within his own language; this is the situa­
tion of Kafka's Great Swimmer.25 Even when it is unique, a language re­
mains a mixt ure, a schizophrenic melange, a Harlequin costume in which
very different fonctions oflanguage and distinct centers of power are played
out, blurring what can be said and what can't be said; one function will be
played off against the other, all the degrees of territoriality and relative de­
territorialization will be played out. Even when major, a language is open to
an intensive utilization that makes it take flight along creative lines of es­
cape which, no matter how slowly, no matter how cautiously, can now form
an absolute deterritorialization. All this inventiveness, not only lexically,
since the lexical matters little, but sober syntactical invention, simply to
write like a dog (but a dog can't write-exactly, exactly) . It's what Artaud
did wit h French-cries, gasps; what Celine did with French, following an­
other line, one that was exclamatory to the highest degree. Celine's syntac­
tic evolution went from Viryage to Death on the Credit Plan, then from Death on
the Credit Plan to Guignol's Band. (After that, Celine had nothing more to talk
about except his own misfortunes; in other words, he had no longer any de­
sire to write, only the need to make money. And it always ends like that,
language's lines of escape: silence, the interrupted, the interminable, or
even worse. But until that point, what a crazy creation, what a writing ma­
chine! Celine was so applauded for V�age that he went even further in Death
on the Credit Plan and then in the prodigious Guignol's Band where language is

nothing more than intensities. He spoke with a kind of"minor music. " Kaf­
ka, too, is a minor music, a different one, but always made up of deter­
ritorialized sounds, a language that moves head over heels and away. )
These are the true minor authors. An escape for language, for music, for
writing. What we call "pop" -pop music, pop philosophy, pop writing­
Vi-brtei:flucht. To make use of the polylingualism of one's own language, to
make a minor or intensive use of it, to oppose the oppressed quality of this
language to its oppressive quality, to find points of nonculture or under­
c l cvelopment, linguistic Third-World zones by which a language can es­
cape, an animal enters into things, an assemblage comes into play. How
many styles or genres or literary movements, even very small ones, have
only one single dream: to assume a major fonction in language, to offer
 1 64 MINOR LANGUAGES AND NOMAD ART

themselves a s a sort of state language, a n official language (for example,

psychoanalysis today, which would like to be a master of the signifier, of
metaphor, or wordplay). Create the opposite dream: know how to create a
becoming-minor. ( I s there a hope for philosophy, which for a long time has
been an official, referential genre? Let us profit from this moment in which
antiphilosophy is trying to be a language of power.)
 19
Nomad A rt.· Space

The Aesthetic Model: Nomad Art

Several notions, both practical and theoretical, are suitable for defining
nomad art and its successors ( barbarian, Gothic, and modern ) . First,
"close-range" vision, as distinguished from long-distance vision; second,
"tactile ," or rather "haptic" space, as distinguished from optical space.
Haptic is a better word than tactile since it does not establish an opposition
between two sense organs but rather invites the assumption that the eye
itself may folfill this nonoptical fonction. It was Alois Rieg) who, in some
marvelous pages, gave fondamental aesthetic status to the couple, close
vision-haptic space. But for the moment we should set aside the criteria pro­
posed by Rieg) ( then by Wilhelm Worringer, and more recently by Henri
Maldiney), and take some risks ourselves, making free use of these notions. 1
I t seems to us that the smooth i s both the object of a close vision pa r excel­
lence and the element of a haptic space (which may be as much visual or
auditory as tactile). The striated, on the contrary, relates to a more distant
vision, and a more optical space-although the eye in turn is not the o n ly
organ to have this capacity. Once again, as always, this analysis must be
corrected by a coefficient of transformation according to which passages be­
tween the striated and the smooth are at once necessary and uncertain, and
 I 66 M I N O R LANGUAGES A N D NOMAD ART

all the more disruptive. The law o f the painting is that i t b e done a t close
range, even ifit is viewed from relatively far away. One can back away from
a thing, but it is a bad painter who backs away from the painting he or she is
working on. Or from the "thing" for that matter. Cezanne spoke of the_ need
to no longer see the wheat field, to be too close to it, to lose oneself wit_h out
landmarks in smooth space. Afterward, striation can emerge: drawing,
strata, the earth, "st ubborn geometry," the "measure of the world,"
"geological foundations, " "everything falls straight down . " . . . The
striated itself may in turn disappear in a "catastrophe," opening the way for
a new smooth space, and another striated space . . . .
A painting is done at close range, even ifit is seen from a distance. Sim­
ilarly, it is said that composers do not hear: they have close-range hearing,
whereas listeners hear from a distance. Even writers write with short-term
memory, whereas readers are assumed to be endowed with long-term mem­
ory. The first aspect of the haptic, smooth space of close vision is that its
orientations, landmarks, and linkages are in continuous variation; it oper­
ates step by step. Examples are the desert, steppe, ice, and sea, local spaces
of pure connection. Con trary to what is sometimes said, one never sees from
a distance in a space of this kind, nor does one see it from a distance; one is
never "in front of, " any more than one is "in" (one is "on." . . ). Orientations
are not constant but change according to temporary vegetation, occupa­
tions, and precipitation. There is no visual model for points ofreference that
would make them interchangeable and unite them in an inertial class as­
signable to an immobile outside observer. On the contrary, they are tied to
any number of observers, who may be qu alifi ed as "monads" but are in­
stead nomads entertaining tactile relations among themselves. The inter­
linkages do not imply an ambient space in which the multiplicity would be
immersed a n d which would m a k e distances invariant; rather, they are con­
stituted according to ordered differences that give rise to intrinsic variations
in the division of a single distance. 2 These questions oforientation, location,
and linkage enter into play in the most famous works of nomad art: the
twisted animals have no land beneath them; the ground constantly changes
direction, as in aerial acrobatics; the paws point in the opposite direction
from the head, the hind part of the body is turned upside down; the "mo­
nadological" points of view can be interlinked only on a nomad space; the
whole and the parts give the eye that beholds them a fonction that is haptic
rather than optical. This is an animality that can be seen only by touching it
with one's mind, but without the mind becoming a fi nger, not even by way
of the eye. ( I n a much cruder fashion, the kaleidoscope has exactly the same
fonction: to give the eye a digital fonction . ) Striated space, on the contrary,
is defined by the requirements oflong-distance vision: constancy of orienta-
 Nomad A rt: Space 1 67

tion, invariance of distance through an interchange of inertial points of ref­

erence, interlinkage by immersion in an ambient milieu, constitution of a
central perspective. It is less easy to evaluate the creative potentialities of
striated space, and how it can simultaneously emerge from the smooth and
give everything a whole new impetus.
The opposition between the striated and the smooth is not simply that of
the global and the local. For in one case, the global is still relative, whereas
in the other the local is already absolute. Where there is close vision, space is
not visual, or rather the eye itself has a haptic, nonoptical function: no line
separates earth from sky, which are of the same substance; there is neither
horizon nor background nor perspective nor limit nor outline or form nor
center; there is no intermediary distance, or all distance is intermediary.
Like Eskimo space. 3 In a totally different way, in a totally different context,
Arab architecture constitutes a space that begins very near and low, placing
the light and the airy below and the solid and heavy above. This reversal of
the laws of gravity turns lack of direction and negation of volume into con­
structive forces. There exists a nomadic absolute, as a local integration
moving from part to part and constituting smooth space in an infinite suc­
cession of linkages and changes in direction. It is an absolute that is one
with becoming itself, with process. It is the absolute of passage, which in
nomad art merges with its manifestation. Here the absolute is local, pre­
cisely because place is not delimited. Ifwe now turn to the striated and opti­
cal space oflong-distance vision, we see that the relative global that charac­
terizes that space also requires the absolute, but in an entirely different way.
The absolute is now the horizon or background, in other words, the Encom­
passing Element without which nothing would be global or englobed. It is
against this background that the relative outline or form appears. The abso­
lute itself can appear in the Encompassed, but only in a privileged place
well delimited as a center, which then functions to repel beyond the limits
anything that menaces the global integration. We can see clearly here how
smooth space subsists, but only to give rise to the striated. The desert, sky,
or sea, the Ocean, the Unlimited, first plays the role of an encompassing
clement, and tends to become a horizon: the earth is thus surrounded,
globalized, "grounded" by this element, which holds it in immobile equi­
librium and makes Form possible. Then to the extent that the encompass­
ing element itself appears at the center of the earth, it assumes a second role,
that of casting into the loathesome deep, the abode of the dead, anything
smooth or nonmeasured that may have remained . 4 The striation of the
earth implies as its necessary condition this double treatment of the smooth:
on the one hand, it is carried or reduced to the absolute state of an encom­
passing horizon, and on the other it is expelled from the relative encom-
 1 68 MI N O R LANGUAGES AN D NOMAD ART

passed element. Thus the great imperial religions need a smooth space like
the d e s ert, but only in order to give it a law that i s opposed to the nomos in
every way, and converts the absolute.
This perhaps exp lains for us the amb igui ty of the exc ell ent analyses by
Rieg!, Worringer, and Maldiney. They approach haptic space under the im­
perial conditions of Egyptian art. T hey d efine it as the p resence of a
horizo n-background; the reduction of space to the plane (vertical and hori­
zontal, height and width ) ; and the rectilinear outline enclosing individu­
ality and withdrawing it from change . Like the pyramid-form, every side a
plane s u rface, agai nst the background of the immo bile desert. On the other
hand, they show how in G reek art (then in Byzantine art, and up to the
R enaissance), an optical space was differentiated from haptic space, one
merging background with form, setting up an interference between the
planes, conq uering depth, working with cubic or v o luminous extension, or­
ganizing p erspective, and p laying on relief and shadow, light and c olor.
T hus at the very be ginning they encounter the haptic at a point of mutation,
in conditions under which it already serves to s triate space. The optical
makes that striation tighter and more perfect, or rather tight and perfect in
a diffe rent way ( i t is not associated with the same "arti stic will" ). Every­
thing occurs in a s triated space that goes from empires to city-states, or
evolved empires. It is not by chance that Riegl tends to eliminate the specif­
ic factors of nomad or even barbarian art; or that Worringer, when he in tro­
duces the idea of G o thic art in the broadest sense, relates it on the one h and
to the G ermanic and Celtic migrations of the North, and o n the other to the
empires of the E a s t . But between the two were the nomads, who are reduc­
ible neither to empires they confronted nor the migrations they triggered.
The G o ths themse lves were no mads of the steppe, and with the Sarmatians
and Huns were an essential vector of communication between the East and
the North, a factor irreduci ble to either of these two dimensions.5 On one
side, Egypt had its Hyksos, Asia Minor its Hit tites, China its Turco­
Mongols; and on the other, the H ebrews had their Habiru, the Germans,
C e l t s, and Ro mans their Goths, the Arabs their Bedouins. The nomads
have a s pecificity that i s too hastily reduced to its consequences, by includ­
ing t he m in the empires o r counting them among the migrants, assimilating
them to one or the o ther, denying them their own "wil l " to art. Again, there
is a refosal to accept that the intermediary between the East and the North
h ad its own absolute specificity, that the intermed iary, the interval, played
exactly this substantial role. Moreover, it does not have that role in the guise
of a " w i l l " ; it only has a becoming, it invents a " becoming-artist."
When we invoke a primordial duality bet w een the s mooth and the
s t riated, it is in order to subordinate the differences between "haptic" and
 Nomad A rt: Space I 69

"optic," "close vision" and "distant vision" to this distinction. Hence we

will not define the haptic by the immobile background, by the plane and the
contour, because these have to do with an already mixed state in which the
haptic serves to striate, and uses its smooth components only in order to
convert them to another kind of space. The haptic function and close vision
presuppose the smooth, which has no background, plane, or contour, but
rather changes in direction and local linkages between parts. Conversely,
the developed optical fonction is not content to take striation to a new level
ofperfection, endowing it with an imaginary universal value and scope; it is
also capable of reinstating the smooth, liberating light and modulating col­
or, restoring a kind ofaerial haptic space that constitutes the unlimited site
of intersection of the planes.6 In short, the smooth and the striated must be
defined in themselves before the relative distinctions between haptic and
optical, near and distant, can be derived.
This is where a third couple enters in: "abstract line-concrete line" (in
addition to "haptic-optical," "close-distant"). It is Worringer who accorded
fondamental importance to the abstract line, seeing it as the very beginning
ofart or the first expression of an artistic will. Art as abstract machine. Once
again, it will doubtless be our inclination to voice in advance the same ob­
jections: for Worringer, the abstract line seems to make its first appearance
in the crystalline or geometrical imperial Egyptian form, the most rec­
tilinear of forms possible. It is only afterward that it assumes a particular
avatar, constituting the "Gothic or Northern line" understood very broad­
ly.7 For us, on the other hand, the abstract line is fondamentally "Gothic,"
orrather, nomadic, not rectilinear. Consequently, we do not understand the
aesthetic motivation for the abstract line in the same way, or its identity with
the beginning of art. Whereas the rectilinear (or "regularly" rounded)
Egyptian line is negatively motivated by anxiety in the face of all that pass­
es, flows, or varies, and erects the constancy and eternity of an In-Itself, the
nomad line is abstract in an entirely different sense, precisely because it has
a multiple orientation and passes between points, figures, and contours: it is
positively motivated by the smooth space it draws, not by any striation it
might perform to ward off anxiety and subordinate the smooth. The. ab­
stract line is the affect of smooth spaces, not a feeling of anxiety that calls
forth striation. Furthermore, although it is true that art begins only with the
abstract line, the reason is not, as Worringer says, that the rectilinear is the
first means of breaking with the nonaesthetic imitation of nature upon
which the prehistoric, savage, and childish supposedly depend, lacking, as
he thinks they do, a "will to art." On the contrary, if prehistoric art is fully
art it is precisely because it manipulates the abstract, though nonrec­
tilinear, line: " Primitive art begins with the abstract, and even the pre-
 I 70 MINOR LANGUAGES AND NOMAD ART

figurative . . . . Art i s abstract from the outset, and a t its origin could not
have been otherwise. "8 In effect, the line is all the more abstract when writ­
ing is absent, either because it has yet to develop or only exists outside or
alongside. When writing takes charge of abstraction, as it does in empires,
the line, already downgraded, necessarily tends to become concrete, even
fi gurative. Children forget how to draw. But in the absence of writing, or
when peoples have no need for a writing system of their own because theirs
is borrowed from more or less nearby empires (as was the case for the
nomads), the line is necessarily abstract; it is necessarily invested with all
the power of abstraction, which fi nds no other outlet. That is w hy we believe
that the different major types of imperial lines-the Egyptian rectilinear
line, the Assyrian (or Greek) organic l ine, the supraphenomenal, encom­
passing Chinese line-convert the abstract line, rend it from its smooth
space, and accord it concrete values. Still, it can be argued that these impe­
rial lines are contemporaneous with the abstract line; the abstract line is no
less at the "beginning, " inasmuch as it is a pole always presupposed by any
line capable of constituting another pole. The abstract line is at the begin­
ning as much because ofits historical abstraction as its prehistoric dating. I t
i s therefore a part of the originality o r irreducibility of nomad art, even
when there is reciprocal interaction, infl uence, and confrontation with the
imperial lines of sedentary art.
The abstract i s not directly opposed to the figurative. The figurative as
such is not inherent to any "will to art . " In fact, we may oppose a fi gurative
line in art to one that is not. The figurative, or imitation and representation,
is a consequence, a result of certain characteristics of the line when it as­
sumes a given form. We must therefore define those characteristics first.
Take a system in which transversals are subordinated to diagonals, diago­
nals to horizontals and verticals, and horizontals and verticals to points
(even when there are virtual). A system of this kind, which is rectilinear or
unilinear regardless of the number oflines, expresses the formal conditions
under which a space is striated and the line describes a contour. Such a line
is inheren tly, formally, representative in itself, even if it does not represent
anything. On the other hand,_a line that delimits nothing, that describes no contour,
that no longer goes from one point to another but instead passes bet wee n
points, that is always declining from the horizontal and the vertical and de­
viating from the diagonal, that is constantly changing direction, a mutan t
line o f this kind that is without outside o r inside, form o r background, begin­
ning or end and that is as alive as a continuous variation-such a line is
truly an abstract line, and describes a smooth space. It is not inexpressive.
Yet is true that it does not constitute a stable and symmetrical.form ofexpres­
sion grounded in a resonance of points and a conj unction ofl ines. It is nev-
 Nomad A rt: Space 171

ertheless accompanied b y material traits ofexpression, the effects o fwhich m ul­

ti ply step by step. This is what Worringer means when he says that the
Gothic line (for us, the nomadic line invested with abstraction) has the
power of expression and not of form, that it has repetition as a power, not
symmetry as form. Indeed, it is through symmetry that rectilinear systems
limit repetition, preventing infinite progression and maintaining the organic
domination of a central point with radiating lin es, as in reflected or star­
shaped figures. It is free action, however, which by its essence unleashes t he
power of repetition as a machinic force that multiplies its effect and pursues
an infinite movement. Free action proceeds by disj unction and decenlering,
or at least by peripheral movement: disjointed polythetism instead of sym­
metrical antithetism.9 Traits of expression describing a smooth space and
connecting with a matter-flow thus should not be confused with striae that
convert space and make it a form of expression that grids and organizes
matter.
Worringer's fi nest pages are those in which he contrasts the abstract with
the organic. The organic does not designate something represented, but
above all the form of representat ion, and even the feeling that unites repre­
sentation with a subject (Eirguhlung, "empathy " ) . " Formal processes occur
within the work ofart which correspond to the natural organic tendencies in
man. " 1 0 But the rectilinear, the geometrical, cannot be opposed to the
organic in this sense. The Greek organic line, which su bordinates vol ume
and spatiality, takes over from the Egyptian geometrical line, which re­
duced them to the plane. The organic, with its symmetry and contours in­
side and outside, still refers to the rectilinear coordinates ofa striated space.
The organic body is prolonged by straight lines that attach it to what lies in
the distance. Hence the primacy ofhuman beings, or of the face: We are this
form of expression itself, simultaneously the supreme organism and the re­
lation of all organisms to metric space in general. The abstract, on the con­
trary, begins only with what Worringer presents as the "Gothic" avatar. It is
this nomadic line that he says is mechanical, but in free action and swirling;
it is inorganic, yet alive, and all the more alive for being inorganic. It is
distinguished both from the geometrical and the organic. It raises "me­
chanical" relations to the level of intuition. Heads (even a human being's
when it is not a face) unravel and coil into ribbons in a continuous process;
mouths curl in spirals. Hair, clothes . . . This streaming, spiraling, zigzag­
ging, snaking, feverish line of variation liberates a power oflife that human
beings had rectified and organisms had confined, and which matter now
expresses as the trait, flow, or impulse traversing it. If everything is alive, it
is not because everything is organic or organized but, on the contrary, be­
cause the organism is a diversion of life . In short, the life in question is in-
 I 72 MINOR LANGUAGES A N D NOMAD ART

organic, germinal, and intensive, a powenul life without organs, a body that
is all the more alive for having no organs, everything that passes between or­
ganisms ("once the natural barriers of organic movement have been over..:­
thrown, there are no more limits" ). 1 1 Many authors have wished to estab­
lish a kind ofduality in nomad art between the ornamental abstract line and
animal motifs, or more subtly, between the speed with which the line inte­
grates and carries expressive traits, and the slowness or fixity of the animal
matter traversed, between a line of flight without beginning or end and an
almost immobile swirling. But in the end everyone agrees that it is a qpes­
tion of a single will, or a single becoming. •2 This is not because the abstract
engenders organic motifs, by chance or by association. Rather, it is pre­
cisely because pure animality is experienced as inorganic, or supraorganic,
that it can combine so well with abstraction, and even combine the slowness
or heaviness of a matter with the extreme speed of a line that has become
entirely spiritual. The slowness belongs to the same world as the extreme
speed: relations of speed and slowness between elements, which surpass in
every way the movement of an organic form and the determination of
organs. The line escapes geometry by a fogitive mobility at the same time as
life tears itself free from the organic by a permuta.ting, stationary whirl­
wind. This vital force specific to the abstraction is what draws smooth
space. The abstract line is the affect of smooth space, just as organic repre­
sentation was the feeling presiding over striated space. The haptic-optical,
near-distant distinctions must be subordinated to the distinction between
the abstract line and the organic line; they must find their principle in a
general confrontation of spaces. The abstract line cannot be defi n ed as geo­
metrical and rectilinear. What then should be termed abstroct in modern
art? A line of variable direction that describes no contour and delimits no
form . . . . 1 3
 20
Cinema and Space : The Frame

We will start with very simple defi nitions, even though they may have to be
corrected later. We will call the determination ofa closed s_ystem, a relatively closed
system which includes ever_ything which is present in the image sets, characters and
-

props .framing . The frame therefore forms a set which has a great num ber
-

of parts, that is of elements, which themselves form subsets. It can be

broken down. Obviously these parts are themselves in image [en image] .
This is why Jakobson calls them object-signs, and Pasolini "cinemes. "
However this terminology suggests comparisons with language ( cinemes
would be very like phonemes, and the shot would be like a moneme) which
do not seem necessary. 1 For, ifthe frame has an analogue, it is to be found in
an information system rather than a linguistic one. The elements are the
data [donnies] , which are sometimes very numerous, sometimes of limited
number. The frame is therefore inseparable from two tendencies: toward,
saturation or toward rarefaction. The big screen and depth offield in partic­
ular have allowed the multiplication of independent data, to the point
where a secondary scene appears in the foreground while the main one hap­
pens in the background (Wyler), or where you can no longer even
distinguish between the principal and the secondary (Altman). On the oth­
er hand, rarefied images are produced, either when the whole accent is
placed on a single object (in Hitchcock, the glass of milk lit from the inside,
 I 74 MINOR LANGUAGES AND NOMAD ART

i n Suspicion; the glowing cigarette end i n the black rectangle o f the window
in Rear Window) or when the set is emptied of certain subse ts ( Antonioni's
deserted landscapes; Ozu's vacant interiors ) . The highest degree ofrarefac­
tion seems to be attained with the empty set, when the screen becomes com­
pletely black or completely white. Hitchcock gives an example of this in
Spellbound, when another glass of milk invades the screen, leaving only an
empty white image. But, from either side-whether rarefaction or
saturation-the frame teaches us that the image is not j u s t given to be seen.
I t is legible as well as visible. The frame has the implicit function of record­
ing not merely sound information, but also visual information. If we s e e
very fe w things in an image, this is because w e do not know ho w t o read it
properly; we evaluate its rarefaction as badly as its satu ration. There is a
pedagogy of the image, especially with Godard, when this function is made
explicit, when the frame serves as an opaque s urface of information, some­
times blurred by saturation, sometimes reduced to the empty set, to the
white or black screen.2
I n the second place, t h e frame h a s always been geometrical or physical,
d e pending on whether it constitutes the c losed system i n relation to chosen
coordinates or in relation to selected variables. The frame is therefore some­
times conceived of as a spatial composition of parallels and diagonals, the
constitution of a receptacle such that the blocs [masses] and the lines of the
image which come to occupy it will find an e quilibrium and their move­
ments will find an invariant. It is often like this in Dreyer; Antonioni seems
to go to the limit of this geometric conception of the frame which preexists
that which is going to be inserted within it ( Eclipse).3 Sometimes the frame is
conceived as a dynamic construction in act [en acte] , which is closely l inked
to the scene, the image, the characters and the obj ects which fill it. The iris
method in Griffith, which isolates a face first of all, then opens and shows
the s urroundings; Eisenstein's researches inspired by Japanese drawing,
which adapt the frame to the theme; Gance's variable screen which opens
and closes "according to the dramatic necessities," and like a "visual
accordion"-from the very beginning attempts were made to test dynamic
variations of the frame. In any case framing is limitation.4 But, depending
on the concept itself the limits can be conceived in two ways, mathe­
matically or dynamically: either as preliminary to the existence of the
bodies whose essence they fix, or going as far as the power of-existing bodies
goes. For ancient philosophy, this was one of the principal features of the
opposition between the Platonists and the Stoics.
The frame is also geometric or physical in another way-in re lation to
the parts of the system that it both separates and brings together. In the first
case, the frame is inseparable from rigid geometric distinctions. A very fine
 Cinema and Space: The Frame 1 75

image in Griffith's /ntol,erance cuts the screen along a vertical which corre­
sponds to a wall of the ramparts of Babylon; whilst on the right one sees the
king advancing on a higher horizontal, a high walk on the ramparts; on the
left the chariots enter and leave, on a lower horizontal, through the gates of
the city. Eisenstein studied the effects of the golden section on
cinematographic imagery; Dreyer explored horizontals and verticals, sym­
metries, the high and the low, alternations of black and white; the expressio­
nists developed diagonals and counterdiagonals, pyramidal or triangular
figures which agglomerate bodies, crowds, places, the collision of these
masses, a whole paving of the frame "which takes on a form like the black
and white squares ofa chess-board" ( Lang's The Nibelungen and Metropolis).5
Even light is the subject c£ a geometrical optic, when it is organized with
shadows into two halves, or into alternating rays, as is done by one expres­
sionist tendency (Wiene, Lang). The lines separating the great elements of
nature obviously play a fundamental role, as in Ford's skies: the separation
ofearth and sky, the earth pushed down to the base of the screen. But it also
involves water and earth, or the slender line which separates air and water,
when water hides an escapee in its depths, or drowns a victim at the limit of
the surface (Le Roy's I am a Fugitive.from a Chain Gang and Newman's Some­
times a Great Notion) . As a general rule, the powers of nature are not framed in
the same way as people or things, and individuals are not framed in the
same way as crowds, and subelements are not framed in the same way as
terms, so that there are many different frames in the frame. Doors, win­
dows, box office windows, skylights, car windows, mirrors, are all frames in
frames. The great directors have particular affinities with particular sec- .
ondary, tertiary, etc. frames. And it is by this dovetailing of frames that the
parts of the set or of the closed system are separated, but also converge and
are reunited.
On the other hand, the physical or dynamic conception of the frame pro­
duces imprecise sets which are now only divided into zones or bands. The
frame is no longer the object of geometric divisions, but of physical grada­
tions. The parts of the set are now intensive parts, and the set itselfis a mix­
ture which is transmitted through all the parts, through all the degrees of
shadow and of light, through the whole light-darkness scale (Wegener,
Murnau). This was the expressionist optic's other tendency, although some
directors, both inside and outside expressionism, participate in both. It is
the hour when it is no longer possible to disting uish between sunrise and
sunset, air and water, water and earth, in the great mixture of a marsh or a
tempest.6 Here, it is by degrees of mixing that the parts become distinct or
confused in a continual transformation of values. The set cannot divide into
parts without qualita tively changing each time: it is neither divisible nor
 1 76 MlNOR LANGUAGES AND NOMAD ART

indivisible, but "dividual" [ dividuel] . Admittedly this was already the case
in the geometric conception-there the dovetailing o f fr ames indicated the
qualitative change s. The cinematographic i mage is always dividual. This is
because, in the final analysi s, the sc reen, as t h e frame of fr ames, gives a
common standard of measurement to things which do not have o ne-long
shots o f countryside and close-ups of the face, an astronomical system and a
single d rop of wat er-parts which do not have the same denominator of
distance, rel ief, or light. In all these senses the frame insures a deterritorial­
i zation of the image.
In t he fourth place, the frame i s related to an angle of framing. This is
because the closed set is itself an optical system which refers to a point of
view on the set of parts. Of course, the point of view can be-or appear to
b e-bizarre or paradoxical: the cinema s hows extraordinary points of
view-at ground level, or from high to low, from low to high, etc. But they
seem to be s u bj e c t to a pragmatic rule which is not j us t valid for the narra­
tive cinema: to avoid falling into an empty aestheticism they must be ex­
plained, they must be revealed as normal and regular-either from the
point of view of a more comprehe nsive set which includes the first, or from
the point of view ofan initially unseen, not given, element of the first set. I n
Jean M i try w e find a description o f a sequence which i s exemplary here
(Lubitsch's The Man I Killed); the camera, in a lateral midh eight traveling
shot, shows a row of spectators seen from behind and tries to glide to the
front, then stops a t a one-legged man whose missing leg provides a vista on
the scene-a passing military parade. I t thus frames the good leg, the
crutch, and, under the stump, the parade. Here we have an eminently bi­
zarre angl e of framing. But another shot shows another cripple behind the
first, one with no legs at al l, who sees the parade in precisely this way, and
who actualizes or accomplis he s the preceding point of view. 7 It can there­
fore be said that the angle of framing was j us tified. However, this p ragma tic
1 rule is not always v alid, or even w hen it is valid, it is not the whole story.

Bonitzer has constructed the interes ting concept of "de framing" (dicadrag1]
in order to desi gnate these abnormal points of view which are not the same
as an oblique perspective or a paradoxical angle, and refe r to anothet
dimension of the image.6 We find examples of this in Dreyer's cutting
frames; faces cut by the edge of the screen in The Passion efJoan efA rc. Bu t , \.'le
see it even more in empty spaces like those ofOzu, which frame a dead zone,
or in disconnected spaces as in Bresson, whose parts are not connected an d
are beyond all narrative or more generally pragmatic j us tification, perhaps
tending to confirm that the visual image has a legible function beyond its
visible f unction.
There remains the o ut-of-field [hors-champ] . This is not a negation; nei-
 Cinema and Space: The Frame 1 7 7

ther i s it sufficient t o define it by the noncoincidence between two frames,

one visual and the other sound (for example, in Bresson, when the sound
testifies to what is not seen, and "relays" the visual instead of duplicating
it).9 The out-of-field refers to what is neither seen nor understood, but is
nevertheless perfectly present. This presence is indeed a problem and itself
refers to two new conceptions of framing. If we return to Bazin's alternative
of mask or frame, we see that sometimes the frame works like a mobile mask
according to which every set is extended into a larger homogeneous set with
which it communicates, and sometimes it works as a pictorial frame which
isolates a system and neutralizes its environment. This duality is most
clearly expressed in Renoir and Hitchcock; in the former space and action
always go beyond the limits of the frame which only takes elements from an
area; in the latter the frame "confines all the components," and acts as a
frame for a tapestry rather than one for a picture or a play. But, if a partial
set only communicates formally with its ou t-of-field through the positive
characteristics of the frame and the reframing, it is nonetheless true that a
system which is closed-even one which is very closed up-only apparent­
ly suppresses the out-of-field, and in its own way gives it an even more deci­
sive importance. 1 0 All framing determines an out-of-field. There are not
two types offrame only one of which would refer to the out-of-field; there are
rather two very different aspects of the out-of-field, each of which refers to a
mode of framing.
The divisibility of content means that the parts belong to various sets,
which constantly subdivide into subsets or are themselves the subset of a
larger set, on to infinity. This is why content is defined both by the tendency
to constitute closed systems and by the fact that this tendency never reaches
completion. Every closed system also communicates. There is always a
thread to link the glass of sugared water to the solar system, and any set
whatever to a larger set. This is the first sense of what we call the out-of­
fie ld: when a set is framed, therefore seen, there is always a larger set, or
another set with which the first forms a larger one, and which can in turn be
seen, on condition that it gives rise to a new out-of-field, etc. The set of all
these sets forms a homogeneous continuity, a universe or a plane [plan) of
genuinely unlimited content. But it is certainly not a "whole," although this
plane or these larger and larger sets necessarily have an indirect relation­
ship with the whole. We know the insoluble contradictions we fall into when
we treat the set ofall sets as a whole. It is not because the notion of the whole
is devoid of sense; but it is not a set and does not have parts. It is rather that
which prevents each set, however big it is, from closing in on itself, and that
which forces it to extend itself into a larger set. The whole is therefore like
thread that traverses set and gives each one the possibility, which is neces-
 1 78 MlNOR LANGUAGES AND NOMAD ART

sarily realized, of communicating with another, to infinity. Thus the whole

is the open, and relates back to time or even to spirit rather than to content
and to space. Whatever their relationship, one should therefore not confuse
the extension of sets into each other with the opening of the whole which
passes into each one. A closed system is never absolutely closed; but on the
one hand it is connected in space to other systems by a more or less "fine"
thread, and on the other hand it is integrated or reintegrated into a whole
which transmits a duration to it along this thread . 1 1 Hence, it is perhaps not
sufficient to distinguish, with Burch, a concrete space from an imaginary
space in the out-of-field, the imaginary becomes concrete when it in turn
passes into a field, when it thus ceases to be out-of-field. In itself, or as such,
the out-of-field already has two qualitatively different aspects: a relative as­
pect by means of which a closed system refers in space to a set which is not
seen, and which can in turn be seen, even if this gives rise to a new unseen
set, on to infinity; and an absolute aspect by which the closed system opens
onto a duration which is immanent to the whole universe, which is no long­
er a set and does not belong to the order of the visible. l 2 D¢amings [di­
cadrages] which are not ''Pragmatical(y "justified refer to precise(y this second aspect as
their raison d'etre.
I n one case, the out-of-field designates that which exists elsewhere, to
one side or around; in the other case, the out-of-field testifies to a more
disturbing presence, one which cannot even be said to exist, but rather to
"insist" or "subsist," a more radical elsewhere, outside homogeneous space
and time. Undoubtedly these two aspects of the out-of-field intermingle
constantly. But, when we consider a framed image as a closed system, we
can say that one aspect prevails over the other, depending on the nature of
the " thread . " The thicker the thread which links the seen set to other un­
seen sets, the better the out-of-field fulfills its first function, which is the
adding of space to space. But, when the thread is very fine, it is not content
to reinforce the closure of the frame or to eliminate the relation with the
outside. I t certainly does not bring about a complete isolation of the rela­
tively closed system, which would be impossible. But, the finer it is-the
further duration descends into the system like a spider-the more effec­
tively the out-of-field fulfills its other function, which is that of introducing
the transspatial and the spiritual into the system which is never perfectly
closed. Dreyer made this into an ascetic method: the more the image is spa­
tially closed, even reduced to two dimensions, the greater is its capacity to
open itself on to a fourth dimension which is time, and on to a fifth which is
spirit, the spiritual decision ofJeanne or Gertrud. 1 3 When Claude Oilier
defines Antonioni's geometric frame, he not only says that the awaited
character is not yet visible (the first fonction of the out-of-field) but also that
 Cinema and Space: The Frame 1 79

he is momentarily in a zone of emptiness, "white on white which is impossi­

ble to film," and truly invisible (the second function). And, in another way,
Hitchcock's frames are not content to neutralize the environment, to push
the closed system as far as possible and to enclose the maximum number of
components in the image; at the same time they make the image into a men­
tal image, open (as we will see) on to a play of relations which are purely
thought and which weave a whole. This is why we said that there is always
out-of-field, even in the most closed image. And that there are always simul­
taneously the two aspects of the out-of-field: the actualizable relation with
other sets, and the virtual relation with the whole. But in the one case the
second relation-the most mysterious-is reached indirectly, on to infinity,
through the intermediary and the extension of the first, in the succession of
images; in the other case it is reached more directly, in the image itself, and
by limitation and neutralization of the first.
Let us summarize the results of this analysis of the frame. Framing is the
art of choosing the parts of all kinds which became part of a set. This set is a
closed system, relatively and artificially closed. The closed system deter­
mined by the frame can be considered in relation to the data that it com­
municates to the spectators: it is "informatic," and saturated or rarefied.
Considered in itself and as limitation, it is geometric or dynamic-physical.
Considered in the nature of its parts, it is still geometric or physical and
dynamic. It is an optical system when it is considered in relation to the point
of view, to the angle of framing: it is then pragmatically j ustified, or lays
claim to a higher j ustification. Finally, it determines an out-of-field, some­
times in the form of a larger set which extends it, sometimes in the form of a
whole into which it is integrated.
 21
Cinema and Time

A purely optical a n d sound situation d o e s n o t extend i n t o action, a n y more

than it is induced by an action. It makes us grasp, it is supposed to make us
grasp, something intolerable and unbearable. Not a brutality as nervous
aggression, an exaggerated violence that can always b e extracte d from the
sensory-motor relations in the action-image. Nor is it a matter of scenes of
terror, although there are· sometimes corpses and blood. It is matter of
something too powerfol , or too unjust, but sometimes also too beautiful,
and which henceforth outstrips our sensory-motor capacities. Stromboli: a
beauty which is too great for us, like too strong a pain. It can be a limit­
situation, the irruption of the v olcano, but also the most banal, a plain fac­
tory, a wasteland. In Godard's Les carabiniers the girl militant recites a few
revolutionary slogans, so many cliches; but she is so b eautiful, of a beauty
w hich is unbearable for her torturers who have to cover u p her face with a

handkerchief. And this handkerchief, lifted again by breath and w hisper

( " B rothers, brothers, brothers . . . " ) , itself becomes unbearable for us the
viewers. In any event something has become t o o strong in the image.
Romanticism had already set out this aim for itself: grasping the intolerable
or the unbearable, the empire of poverty, and thereby becoming visionary,
to produce a means ofknowledge and action out of pure vision . I
Nevertheless, are there not equal amounts of fantasy and dreaming in
 Cinema and Time r 8r

what w e claim to see as there are of objective apprehending? Moreover, do

we not have a subjective sympathy for the unbearable, an empathy which
permeates what we see? But this means that the unbearable itselfis insepa­
rable from a revelation or an illumination, as from a third eye. Fellini has
strong sympathies with decadence, only insofar as he prolongs it, extends
its range, "to the intolerable," and reveals beneath the movements, faces,
and gestures a subterranean or extraterrestrial world, "the tracking shot be­
coming a means of peeling away, proof of the unreality of movement," and
the cinema becoming, no longer an undertaking of recognition [reconnai­
sance] , but of knowledge [connaisance] , "a science of visual impressions, forc­
ing us to forget our own logic and retinal habits. "2 Ozu himself is not the
guardian of traditional or reactionary values, he is the greatest critic of daily
life. He picks out the intolerable from the insignificant itself, provided that
he can extend the force of a contemplation that is full of sympathy or pity
across daily life. The important thing is always that the character or the
viewer, and the two together, become visionaries. The purely optical and
sound situation gives rise to a seeing function, at once fantasy and report,
criticism and compassion, whilst sensory-motor situations, no matter how
violent, are directed to a pragmatic visual function which " tolerates" or
"puts up with" practically anything, from the moment it becomes involved
in a system of actions and reactions.
I nJ apan and Europe, Marxist critics have attacked these films and their
characters for being too passive and negative, in turn bourgeois, neurotic or
marginal, and for having replaced modifying action with a "confused" vi­
sion .3 And it is true that, in cinema, characters of the trip/ballad are uncon­
cerned, even by what happens to them: whether in the style of Rossellini,
the foreign woman who discovers the island, the bourgeoise woman who
discovers the factory; or in the style of Godard, the Pierrot-le-fou genera·
tion. But it is precisely the weakness of the motor-linkages, the weak con­
nections, that are capable of releasing huge forces of disintegration. These
are the characters with a strange vibrance in Rossellini, strangely well in­
formed in Godard and Rivette. In the West as in Japan, they are in the grip
of a mutation, they are themselves mutants. On the subject of Two or Three
Things . . , Godard says that to describe is to observe mutations.4 M u tation
.

of Europe after the war, mutation of an Americanized Japan, mutation of

France in r g68: it is not the cinema that turns away from politics, it becomes
completely political, but in another way. One of the two women strollers in
Rivettes's Pont du Nord has all the characteristics ofan unforeseeable mutant:
she has at first the capacity ofdetecting the Maxes, the members of the orga·
nization for enslaving the world, before going through a metamorphosis in­
side a cocoon, then being drafted into their ranks. Similarly with the ambi-
 182 M I N OR LANGUAGES AND N OM A D ART

guity o f the Petit soldat. A new type of character fo r a new cinema. I t is

because what happens to them does not belong to them and only half con­
cerns them, because they know how to extract from the event the part that
cannot be reduced to what happens: that part of inexhaustible possibility
that constitutes the unbearable, the intolerable, the visiooary's part. A new
type of actor was needed: not simply the nonprofessional actors that neo­
realism had revived at the beginning, but what might be called professional
nonactors, or, better, "actor-mediums , " capable of seeing and showing
rather than acting, and either remaining dumb or undertaking some never­
ending conversation, rather than of replying or following a dialogue (such
as, in France, Bulle Ogier or Jean-Pierre Leaud). 5
Neither everyday nor limit-sit uations are marked b y anything rare or ex­
traordinary. It is j ust a volcanic island of poor fishermen. I t is just a factory,
a school. . . . We mix with all that, even death, even accidents, in our nor­
mal life or on holidays. We see, and we more or less experience, a powerful
organization of poverty and oppression. And we are precisely not without
sensory-motor schemata for recognizing such things, for putting up with
and approving of them and for behaving ourselves subsequen tly, taking into
account our situation, our capabilities and our tastes. We have schemata for
turning away when it is too unpleasant, for prompting resignation when it is
terrible and for assimilating when it is too beautiful. It should be pointed
out here that even metaphors are sensory-motor evasions, and furnish us
with something to say when we no longer know what do to: they are specific
schemata of an affective nature. Now this is what a cliche is. A cliche is a
sensory-motor image of the thing . As Bergson says, we do not perceive the
thing or the image in its entirety, we always perceive less of it, we perceive
only what we are interested in perceiving, or rather what it is in our interest
to perceive, by virtue of our economic interests, ideological beliefs, and psy­
chological demands. We therefore normally perceive only cliches . But, if
our sensory-motor schemata jam or break, then a different type of image
can appear: a pure optical-sound image, the whole image without meta­
phor, brings out the thing in itself, literally, in its excess of horror or beauty,
in its radical or unjustifiable character, because it no longer has to be "j usti­
fied," for better or for worse . . . . The factory creature gets up, and we can
no longer say "Well, people have to work . . . " I thought I was seeing convicts:
.

the factory is a prison, school is a prison, literally, not metaphorically. You

do not have the image ofa prison following one of a school: that would sim­
ply be pointing out a resemblance, a confused relation between two clear
images. On the contrary, it is necessary to discover the separate elements
and relations that elude us at the heart of an unclear image: to show how and
in what sense school is a prison, housing estates are examples of prostitution,
 Cinema and Time ' BJ

bankers killers, photographs tricks-literally, without metaphor.6 This is

the method of Godard's Comment ,a va: not being content to enquire if
"things are OK" or if " things are not OK" between two photos, but "how
are things" [comment ,a va) for each one and for the two together. This was
the problem with which volume r ended: tearing a real image from cliches.
On the one hand, the image constantly sinks to the state of cliche: be­
cause it is introduced into sensory-motor linkages, because it itself orga­
nizes or induces these linkages, because we never perceive everything that is
in the image, because it is made for that purpose (so that we do not perceive
everything, so that the cliche hides the image from us . . . ). Civilization of
the image? In fact, it is a civilization of the cliche where all the powers have
an interest in hiding images from us, not necessarily in hiding the same
thing from us, but in hiding something in the image. On the other hand, at
the same time, the image constantly attempts to break through the cliche, to
get out of the cliche. There is no knowing how far a real image may lead: the
importance of becoming visionary or seer. A change of conscience or of
heart is not enough ( although there is some of this, as in the heroine's heart
in Europe 51, but, if there were nothing more, everything would quickly re­
turn to the state of cliche, other cliches would simply have been added on).
Sometimes it is necessary to restore the lost parts, to rediscover everything
that cannot be seen in the image, everything that has been removed to make
it "interesting." But sometimes, on the contrary, it is necessary to make
holes, to introduce voids and white spaces, to rarify the image, by suppress­
ing many things that have been added to make us believe that we are seeing
everything. It is necessary to make a division or make emptiness in order to
find the whole again .
What is difficult is to know in what respect an optical and sound image is
not itself a cliche, at best a photo. We are not thinking simply of the way in
which these images provide more cliche as soon as they are repeated by au­
thors who use them as formulas. But is it not the case that the creators them­
selves sometimes have the idea that the new image has to stand up against
the cliche on its own ground, make a higher bid than the postcard, add to it
and parody it, as a better way of getting over the problem ( Robbe-Grillet,
Daniel Schmid ) ? The creators invent obsessive framings, empty or discon­
nected spaces, even still lifes: in a certain sense they stop movement and
rediscover the power of the fixed shot, but is this not to resuscitate the cliche
that they aim to challenge? Enough, for victory, to parody the cliche, not to
make holes in it and empty it. It is not enough to dist urb the sensory-motor
connections. It is necessary to combine the optical-sound image with the
enormous forces that are not those of a simply inte.llectual consciousness,
nor of the social one, but of a profound, vital intution. 7
 1 84 M IN O R LANGUAGES A N D N O M AD ART

Pure optical and sound images, the fixed s hot and the montage-cut, do
define and imply a beyond of movement. But they do not s trictly s top i t ,
neither in the characters n o r even in t h e camera. They m e an t h a t move ment
s hould not be perceived in a sensory-motor image, but grasped and thought
in another type o f image. The movement-image has not disap peared, but
now exi sts o n l y a s the first dimension o f an image that never stops growing
in di mensions. We are not talking about dimensions of space, since the im­
age may be flat, without depth, and through this very fact assumes all the
more dimensions o r powers which go beyond space. Thre e of these growing
powers can b e briefly summarized. First, while the movement-image and its
sensory-motor signs were in a relationship only with an indirect image of
time (dependent on montage), the pure optical and sound image, its op­
signs and sonsigns, are directly connected to a time-image which has subor­
dinated movement. It is this reversal w hich means that time is no longer the
meas ure of movement but move ment is the perspective of time: it con­
s titut es a whole cinema of time, with a new conception and new forms of
montage ( Welles, Resnais), In the second p lace, at the same time as the eye
takes up a clairvoyant fonction, the sound as well as v isual elements of the
image enter into internal relations which means that the whole image has to
be "read ," no less than seen, readable as well as visible. For the eye of the
seer as of the sooths ayer, it is the "li teralness" of the p ercept ible world
which constitutes it like a book. Here again all reference of the image of de­
scription to an object assumed to b e independent does not disappear, but is
now subordinated to the inte rnal e l ements and relations which tend to re­
place the object and to delete it where it does appear, continually disp lacing
it. Godard's formula, "it i s n't blood, it's some red , " stops being only pic­
tural and takes on a sense specific to the cinema. The cinema i s going to
become an analytic o f the image, implying a new conception of cutting, a
whole "ped agogy" which will operate in different ways; for instance, in
Ozu's work, in Rossellini's late period, in Godard's middle period, or in the
Straubs. Finally, the fixity of the camera does not represent the only alterna­
tive to movement. Even when it i s mobile, the camera i s no longer content
s ometimes to follow the characters' movement, s ometimes itself to under­
take movements of which they are merely the obj ect, but in every case i t
s ubord inates description of a space t o t h e fonctions o f thought. This is not
the simple distinction between the subjective and the objective, the real
and the imaginary, it i s on the contrary their indiscernibility which will en­
dow the camera with a rich array offunctions, and entail a new c onception
of the frame and re framings. H i tchcock's premonition will come true: a
camera-c onsciousness which would no longer be defined by the movements
 Cinema and Time 1 85

it is able to follow or make, but by the mental connections it is able to enter

into. And it becomes questioning, responding, objecting, provoking, the­
orematizing, hypothesizing, experimenting, in accordance with the open
list of logical conj u nctions ( "or," "therefore," "if, " "because," "actually,"
"although , " . . . ), or in accordance with the filnctions of thought in a cinima­
virite, which, as Rouch says, means rather truth of cinema [viritidu ciniina] .
This is the triple reversal which defines a beyond of movement. The im­
age had to free itself from sensory-motor links; it had to stop being action­
image in order to become a pure optical, sound (and tactile) image. But the
latter was not enough: it had to enter into relations with yet other forces, so
that it could itself escape from a world of cliches. It had to open up to power­
fol and direct revelations, those of the time-image, of the readable image
and the thinking image. It is in this way that op signs and sonsigns refer back
to "chronosign s," "lectosigns," and "noosigns. " 8
Antonioni, considering t h e evolution ofneorealism in relation t o Outcry,
said that he was tending to do without a bicycle-De Sica's bicycle, natu­
rally. Bicycleless neorealism replaces the last quest involving movement
(the trip) with a specific weight of time operating inside characters and ex­
cavating them from within (the chronicle).9 Antonioni's art is like the inter·
twining of consequences, of temporal sequences and effects which flow from
events out-of-fie ld. Already in Story efa Love Affiir the investigation has the
result, ofitself, of provoking the outcome ofa first love affair, and the effect of
making two oaths of murder ring out in the future and in the past. I t is a
whole world of chronosigns, which would be enough to cast doubt on the
false evidence according to which the cinematographic image is necessarily
in the present. lfwe are sick with Eros, Antonioni said, it is because Eros is
himself sick; and he is sick not just because he is old and worn out in his
content, but because he is caught in the pure form of a time which is torn
between an already determined past and a deadend future. For Antonioni,
there is no other sickness than the chronic. Chronos is sickness itself. This is
why chronosigns are inseparable from lectosigns, which force us to read so
many symptoms in the image, that is, to treat the optical and sound image
like something that is also readable. N ot only the optical and the sound, but
the present and the past, and the here and the elsewhere, constitute internal
elements and relations which must be deciphered, and can be understood
only in a progression analogous to that of a reading: from Story efa Love Af­
.fair, indeterminate spaces are given a scale only later on, in which Burch
calls a " continuity grasped through discrepancy" [raccord a apprehension di­
calie] , closer to a reading than to a perception. 10 And later, Antonioni the
colorist would be able to treat variations of colors as symptoms, and mono·
 186 MINOR LANG UAGES AND NOMAD ART

chrome as the chronic sign which wins a world, thanks t o a whole play of
deliberate modifications. But Story ofa Love Affair already exhibits a "camera
autonomy" when it stops following the movement of the characters or
directing its own movement at them, to carry out constant reframings as
functions of thought, noosigns expressing the logical conjunctions of sequel,
consequence, or even intention.
 22
Painting and Sensation

There are two ways of transcending figuration (whether ill ustrative or nar­
rative ) : toward abstract form or toward figure. Cezanne alluded to the way
toward figure by the term sensation. F igure is the sensible form related to
sensation; it acts immediately on the nervous system which is of the flesh.
A bstract form on the other h and is directed to the b rain, and acts through
the brain, closer to the bone. Ce rtainly Cezanne did not invent the path of
sensation in painting, but he gave it an unprecedented st atus. Sens ation is
the opposite of the facile, the ready-made, and the cliche, but also of the
"sensational," the spontaneous, etc. One face of sensation is turned toward
the subj e c t (the nervous system, vital move ment, "instinct," " tempera­
ment," an entire vocabulary which is co mmon to both naturalism and
Cezanne ) ; the other face is t urned toward the object ( "the fac t," t he place,
the event). Or rather, sensation has no faces at all, it is indissolubly both
things, it is being-in -the-world, in the phenomenological sense. At the same
time, I become in sensation, and something happens th rough sensation, one
t hrough the other and one in the other. 1 And, in the last analysis, it is the
same body which, being both subject and object, gives and receives sensa­
t ion. As a spect ator, I experie nce sensation only by entering the paint ing
and by having access to the unity of the sensing and the sense d . This is
Cczanne's lesson that goes beyond impressioni sm: sensation is not the
 I 88 MINOR LANGUAGES AND NOMAD ART

"free" o r disembodied play of light and color (impressions), rather sensa­

tion is in the body, even if this is the body ofan apple. Color and sensation
are in the body, and not in the sky. Sensation is that which is painted. That
which is painted in the painting is the body, not insofar as it is represented
as object but insofar as it is lived as experiencing a particular sensation
(what Lawrence, in discussing Cezanne, called "the being-apple [l'itrepom ­
mesque] of the apple").2
This is the general thread that links Bacon t o Cezanne: to paint sensation
or, as Bacon says, using words that closely resemble Cezanne's, to record
the fact. " I t's a very, very close and difficult thing to know why some paint
comes across directly onto the nervous system. "3 We might say that there
are only obvious differences between these two painters: Cezanne's world as
landscape and still lives, even before the portraits that are treated as land­
scapes; and the inverse hierarchy in Bacon, which gives up still lives and
landscapes.4 The world of nature for Cezanne and the world as artifact for
Bacon. But precisely, should not these very obvious differences be ascribed
to "sensation" and "temperament," in other words, should they not be in­
scribed within that which links Bacon to Cezanne, or within that which is
common to both? When Bacon speaks of sensation, he means two things
that are very close to what Cezanne meant. Negatively, he says that form as
it relates to sensation (figure) is the opposite ofform as it relates to an object
that the form is supposed to represent (fi g uration). According to Valery's
words, sensation is that which is directly transmitted and which avoids the
detour and the boredom of a story to be told.5 And positively, Bacon con­
tinually says that sensation is that which passes from one "order" to an­
other, from one "level" to another, or from one "domain" to another. This is
why sensation is the master of deformations or rather the agent of bodily
deformations. In this respect, we can make the same criticism of figurative
and of abstract painting: they pass through the brain, they do not act
directly upon the nervous system, they do not have access to sensation, they
do not liberate the figure-all of this as a result of the fact that they remain
at one and the same level. 6 They can bring about transformations or form but:
they do not achieve bodily deformations. We will have the opportunity to
see exactly how much Cezannian Bacon is, even more so than if he were a
disciple of Cezanne.
What does Bacon mean in his interviews when he speaks of "orders of
sensation," "sensitive levels," "sensible domains," or " moving sequences"?
We might initially believe that a specified sensation corresponds to each or­
der, level, or domain: each sensation would thus be one term in a sequence
or in a series. For example, Rembrandt's series of self-portraits carries us
along into different sensible domains. 7 And it is true that painting, and es-
 Painting and Sensation 1 89

pecially Bacon's painting, proceeds through series: series of crucifixions, se­

ries of the pope, series of portraits, series of self-portraits, series of the
mouth, of the mouth which screams or smiles . . . . Moreover, the series can
be one of simultaneity, as in the case of the triptychs that make at least three
orders or levels coexist. The series can be closed when it has a contrasting
composition, but it can be open when it is continued or continuable beyond
three. a All of this is true. But the point is that it would not be true if there
were not something else as well which already applies to each painting, fig­
ure, or sensation.
Each painting or figure is a moving sequenceor a series (and not only one
term within a series). Each sensation is at diverse levels, of different orders
or in several domains. Therefore, there are not sensations ofdifferent orders
but, rather, different orders of one and the same sensation. It is characteris­
tic of sensation to encompass a constitutive difference of level and a plu­
rality of constituting domains. Every sensation and every figure is already
an "accumulated" or "coagulated" sensation like a figure in limestone.9
Hence the irreducibly synthetic character of sensation. We can ask hence­
forth where this synthetic character comes from, by virtue of which each
material sensation has several levels, orders, or domains. What are these
levels and what makes up their sensing and sensed unity?
A first response must obviously be rej ected. That which would make up
the material and synthetic unity of sensation would be the represented ob­
ject, or the thing which is figured. This is theoretically impossible since fig­
ure is opposed to figuration. But even if we observe practically, as Bacon
does, that something is nevertheless figured (for example, a screaming
pope), this secondary figuration rests on the neutralization ofevery primary
figuration. Bacon himself formulates this problem, which concerns the in­
evitable retention of a practical figuration at the moment when figure af..
firms its intention to break away from the figurative. We will see how he
resolves this problem. In any case, Bacon has always wanted to eliminate
the "sensational," that is, the primary figuration of that which provokes a
violent sensation. This is what the following expression means: "I wanted to
paint the scream more than the horror. " When he paints the screaming
pope, there is nothing that causes horror, and the curtain in front of the
pope is not only a way ofisolating and shielding him from view; it is rather
the way in which the pope himself sees nothing and screams in the presence of
the invisible. Being neutralized, the horror is multiplied because it is induced
from the scream, and not vice versa. Certainly, it is not easy to renounce the
horror, or the primary figuration. It is sometimes necessary to turn against
our own instincts and to renounce our experience. Bacon carries all the vio­
lence oflreland with him, as well as the violence ofNazism and the violence
 I 90 MINOR LANGUAGES AND NOMAD ART

of war. H e goes through the horror of the crucifixions, and especially of the
fragment of crucifixion, of the head-meat or of the bleeding suitcase. But
when he j udges his own paintings, he turns away from all those that are too
"sensational, " because the figuration that subsists in them reconstitutes, al­
beit secondarily, a scene ofhorror, and from then on reintroduces a story to
be told: even bullfights are too dramatic. As soon as horror is present, a

story is reintroduced, and we botched the scream. In the last analysis, the
maximum of violence will be in the sitting or crouching figures which are
not undergoing any torture or brutality, to whom nothing visible is happen­
ing and which realize even better the power of the painting. The reason for
this is that violence has t w o very different meanings: "When talking about
the violence of paint, it's nothing to do w ith the violence ofwar. " 1 0 lb the
violence of that which is represented (the sensational, the cliche) the vio­
lence of sensation is opposed. The latter is identical with its direct action
upon the nervous system, the levels through which it passes and the do­
mains which it traverses: being itself figure, it owes nothing to the nature of
the object which is figured It is as in A rtaud: cruelty is not what we believe,
and it depends less and less on that which is represented.
A second interpretation must also be rejected, which would confuse the
levels of sensation, that is, the valencies ofsensation, with an ambivalence of
feeling. Sylvester suggests at one moment that "since you talk about record­
ing different levels offeeling in one image . . . you may be expressing at one
and the same time a love and a hostility towards them . . . both a caress and
an assau l t . " To which, Bacon responds that this is "too logical. I don't think
that's the way things work. I think it goes to a deeper thing: how do I feel I
can make this image more immediately real to myself? That's all . " 1 1 I n fact,
the psychoanalytic hypothesis of ambivalence has not only the disadvan­
tage of localizing sensation in the spectator who looks at the painting; even
.if we presuppose an ambivalence of figure itself, it would involve feelings
that the figure would experience in relation to the represented things or in
relation to a story being told. Now there are no feelings in Bacon's work.
There is nothing but affects, that is, "sensations" and "instincts" according
to the formula of naturalism. And sensation is that which determines the
instinct at a particular moment, j ust as the instinct is the passage from one
sensation to another, the search for the "best" sensation (not the most
agreeable, but the one that fills the flesh at a particular moment of its de­
scent, contraction, or dilation ) .
There i s a third, more interesting hypothesis. This i s t h e motor hypoth­
esis. The levels of sensation would be like arrests or snapshots of motion
synthetically recomposing the movement in its continuity, speed, and vio­
lence: for example, synthetic cubism, futurism, or Duchamp's Nude. And it
 Painting and Sensation 191

i s true that Bacon is fascinated b y the decompositions o f movement i n

M u ybridge and makes u s e o f them as h i s material. I t i s also true that h e
obtains in h i s work violent movements o f great intensity, such as t h e 1 Bo
degree turn of George Dyer's head towards Lucian Freud. And more gener­
ally, Bacon's figures are often frozen in the middle of a strange stroll: for
example, Man carrying a child or the Ji&n Gogh. The insulation of the figure,
the circle and the parallelepiped, themselves become motors, and Bacon
does not renounce the project that a mobile sculpture would achieve more
easily: in this case, the contour or base can be moved along the armature so
that the figure goes for a daily "stroll . " 1 2 But it is precisely the nature of this
stroll that can inform us of the status of movement in Bacon's work. Never
have Beckett and Bacon been closer to each other, and this is a stroll after
the fashion of the strolls of Beckett's characters, who also trundle along
without departing from their circle or parallelepiped. It is the stroll of the
paralytic child and his mother clinging onto the edge of the balustrade in a
curious race for the handicapped. It is the about-face of The Turning Figure. I t
i s George Dyer's bicycle ride, which resembles closely that of Moritz's hero:
"the vision was limited to the small piece ofground that he could see around
him . . . the end of all things seemed to him to be at the end of his race to­
ward a certain point." Therefore, even when the contour is displaced, move­
ment is less this displacement than the amoebian exploration through
which fi gure surrenders itself to the contour. Movement does not explain
sensation; it is rather explained by the elasticity of sensation, by its vis elas­
tica. According to Beckett's or Kafka's law, there is immobility beyond
movemen t : beyond standing up, there is sitting down, and beyond sitting
down, lying down in order to be fi nally dissipated. The true acrobat is the
one who is immobile within the circle. The large feet of the figures often do
not lend themselves to walking; they are almost clu bfeet ( and armchairs
sometimes seem to resemble shoes for clubfeet). In short, i t is not movement
that explains the levels of sen sation; rather levels of sensation explain that
which subsists of movemen t . And, in fact, Bacon is not exactly interested in
movement, although his painting makes movement very intense and vio­
lent. But, in the last analysis, it is a movement in one place or a spasm that
reveals an entirely different problem characteristic of Bacon: the a&tion <ifin­
visibleforces on the bofl:.'Y (hence, the bodily deformations for which this more
profound cause is responsible). In the 1 973 triptych the movement of trans­
lation occurs between two spasms, between two movements of contraction
in one place.
There may still be another, " phenomenological," hypothesis. The levels
of sensation would really be sensible domains referring to different sensory
organs; but precisely each level, each domain would have a way of referring
 I 92 M I N O R L A N G U A G ES A N D N O M A D ART

t o others, independently o f their common represen ted object. Between a

color, a taste, a touch, a smell, a noise, a weight, there would be an existen­
tial communication that would constitute the ( nonrepresentative) moment
of "pathos" of the sensation. For example, in Bacon's Bul{figlds we hear the
hoofbeats of the animal; in the 1 9 76 triptych we touch the q uivering of the
bird that plunges into the place where the head should be, and each time
that meat is represented, we touch it, smell it, eat it, weigh it, just like in
Sou tine's work; and the portrait of Isabel Rawthorne causes a head to
emerge to which ovals and features are added in order to widen the eyes,
enlarge the nostrils, lengthen the mouth, and mobilize the skin in a joint
exercise of all organs at once. It is thus the painter's task to make us u e a k ind
of original unity of the senses and to make a mult isensible figure appear
visibly. But this operation is only possible if the sensation of a particular
domain (here, visual sensation) directly seizes a vital power that overflows
all domains and traverses them. This power is rhythm, which is deeper than
vision, hearing, etc. And rhythm appears as music when it invests the audi­
tory level, and as painting when it invests the visual level.
This is the "logic of the senses" as Cezanne said, which is neither ration­
al, nor cerebral. The ultimate then is the relation between rhythm and sen­
sation, which places in each sensation the levels and domains through
which it passes. And this rhythm runs through a painting as it runs through
music. It is diastole-systole: the world that captures me by closing in on me,
the "ego" that opens to the world and opens the world to itself. 1 3 It is said of
Cezanne that he placed a precisely vital rhythm in visual sensation. M ust
we say the same thing a b o u t Bacon, w i t h his coexistence of movements
when the flat tint closes on figure and when figure contracts or rather ex­
pands in order to rejoin the flat tint, to the point ofmergiDg with it? Could it
be that Bacon's artificial a n d closed world reveals t h e same vital movement
as Cezanne's nature? These are not empty words, when Bacon declares that
he is cerebrally pessimistic, but nervously optimistic, with an optimism that
only believes in life . 1 4 Is this the same temperament as Cezanne's? Bacon's
formula would then be figuratively pessimistic, y e t figurally optimistic.
Trans. Constantin Boundas andJacqueline Corh
 23
The Diagram

We do not listen enough to what painters say. They say that the painter is
already in the canvas. Here, he encounters all the figurative and probabilistic
data that occupy and preoccupy the canvas. An entire battle occurs in the
canvks between the painter and his data. There is thus preparatory work
that folly belongs to painting and that nevertheless precedes the act of
painting. This preparatory work may take the form of sketches, but not nec­
essarily, and even sketches do not replace it ( Bacon, like many contempo­
rary painters, does not make sketches) . This preparatory work is invisible
and silent, but nevertheless very intense. Therefore, the act of painting
emerges as an apres-coup (hysteresis) in relation to this work.
What is this act of painting? Bacon defines it as follows: making marks at
random (brushstrokes-lines ) ; cleaning, sweeping, or wiping places or areas
(daubs-color); throwing paint at varied angles and speeds. Now this act (or
acts) presuppose that there are already figurative data on the canvas (and
also within the painter's head) that are more or less virtual or more or less
actual. These data will be precisely demarcated, cleaned, swept, and wiped,
or covered over, by the act of painting. For example, we lengthen a mouth,
we make it go from one side of the head to the other; we clean part of a head
with a brush, a scrubbing brush, a sweeping brush, or a rag. This is what
Bacon calls a Diagram; it is as if, all ofa sudden, we introduced a Sahara, a
 I 94 MINOR LANGUAGES AND NOMAD ART

Sahara region i n the head; i t i s a s i fw e stretched over it a rhinoceros skin

seen through a microscope; it is as if we tore apart two parts of the head by
means of an ocean; it is as if we changed the unit of measurement and re­
placed fi gurative units with micrometric or even cosmic units. I A Sahara, a

rhinoceros skin, this is the diagram suddenly stretched out. It is like a

catastrophe happening unexpectedly to the canvas, inside figurative o r prob­

abilistic data.
It is like the emergence of another w orld. For these marks or brush­
strokes are irrational, involuntary, accidental, free, and random . They are
nonrepresentative, nonillustrative, and nonnarrative. No longer are they
significative or signifying: they are asignifying features. They are features of
sensation, but of confused sensations (the confosed sensations we bring
with us when we are born, as Cezanne said). And above all, they are manual
features. It is here that the painter works with a rag, brushes, scrubbing
brush, or sweeping brush: it is here that he throws paint with his hands.2 I t
i s a s i f the hand assumed an independence and passed into the servi ce of
other forces, tracing marks that no longer depend on our will or on our vi­
sion. These almost blind, manual marks reveal the intrusion of another
world into the visual world of figuration. To some extent, they remove the
painting from the optical organization that already governed it, and made it
figurative i n advance. The painter's hand is interposed i n order to shake its
own dependence and to break up the sovereign, optical organizat ion: w e
can no longer see anything, as in a catastrophe or chaos.
This is the act of painting or the turning point of the painting. There are
indeed two ways in which the painting can fail, once visually and once man­
ually. We can remain entangled in figurative data and in the optical organi­
zation of representation, but we can also fail with the diagram, spoil it, over­
load it to such an extent that it is rendered inoperative (this is another way
ofremaining within the figurative: we will have mutilated or mistreated the
cliche). 3 The diagram is thus the operative set oflines and areas, of asignify­
ing and nonrepresentative brushstrokes and daubs of color. And the opera­
tion of the diagram, its function, as Bacon says, is to "suggest . " Or, more
rigorously, it is the introduction of" possibilities of fact " : an expression that
resembles Wittgenstein's language.4 Bruslistrokes and daubs of color must
break away from figuration all the more since they are destined to give us
figure. This is why they themselves are not sufficient; they must be "uti­
lized" : they outline possibilities of fact, but do not yet constitute a fact ( pic­
torial fact ) . In order to be converted into fact, in order to evolve into figure,
they must be reinjected into the visual whole; but thus, precisely, under the
infl uence of these marks, the visual whole is no longer that of an optical or-
 The Diagram I 95

ganization; it would give the eye a different power, as well as an object which
would no longer be figurative.
The diagram is the operative set of brushstrokes and daubs of color,
lines, and areas. For example, the diagram of Van Gogh: it is the set of
straight and curved cross-h atchings that raises and lowers the ground,
twists the trees, makes the sky palpitate and that assumes a particular in­
tensity from 1 888 onward. We cannot only differentiate diagrams but also
date the diagram of a painter, because there is always a moment when the
painter confronts it more directly. The diagram is indeed a chaos, a
catastophe, but also a seed of order and of rhythm. It is a violent chaos in
relation to the figurative data, b u t it is a seed of rhythm in relation to the
new order ofpainting: as Bacon says, it "unlock[s] areas ofsensation."5 The
diagram completes the preparatory work and begins the act of painting.
There i s no painter who does not make this experiment of the chaos-seed
where she no longer sees anything and risks floundering: the breakdown of
visual coordinates. This is not a psychological experiment but a properly
pictorial experiment, although it can have a great influence on the psychic
life of a painter. Here, the painter faces the greatest dangers for her work
and for herself. It is a kind of experiment always recommended by different
painters: Cezanne's "abyss" or "catastrophe" and the possibility that this
abyss will make room for rhythm; Paul Klee's "chaos," the vanishing "gray
poi n t , " and the possibility that this gray point w ill "leap over itself" and
open u p dimensions of sensation. 6 Of all the arts, painting is undoubtedly
the only one that necessarily and "hysterically" integrates its own catas­
trophe and is constituted therefore as a flight forward. In the other arts, the
catastrophe is only associated. But the painter moves through catastrophe,
he embraces chaos and attempts to leave it behind. Where painters differ is
in their manner of embracing this nonfigurative chaos, in their evaluation of
the pictorial order to come, and of the relation of this order with this chaos.
In this respect, we could perhaps distinguish three great paths: each one
groups very different painters together but also designates a "modern"
function of painting or states what painting claims to bring to "modern
man" (why is there still painting today?).
A bstraction would be one of these paths, but a path that reduces the
abyss or chaos, as well as the manual, to a minimum: it proposes an ascet­
icism or spiritual salvation. By means of an intense spiritual effort, it is ele­
vated above figurative data, but it also makes chaos a mere stream we must
cross in order to discover the abstract and signifying forms. Mondrian's
square emerges from the figurative (landscape) and leaps over chaos. From
this leap, it retains a kind of oscillation. Such an abstraction is essentially
 r9 6 MINOR LANGUAGES A N D NOMAD ART

seen. We would like t o say, about abstract painting, the same thing that
Peguy said about Kantian morality: it has pure hands, but it does not have
hands. Abstract forms belong to a new, purely optical space that no longer
even needs to be subordinate to manual or tactile elements. They are
distinguished, in fact, from uniquely geometric forms by "tension" : tension
is that which internalizes in the visual the manual movement that describes
the form and the invisible forces that determine it. It is that which makes
form a purely visual transformation. Thus, the abstract optical space no
longer requires the tactile connotations that were still being organized by
classical representation. But then it follows that abstract painting, on the
basis ofgreat formal oppositions, develops a symbolic code rather than a dia­
gram. It replaces the diagram with a code. This code is "digital," not in the
sense of manual but in the sense ofa fi nger that cou nts. "Digits" are indeed
units that visually group together terms in opposition. For example, accord­
ing to Kandinsky, vertical-white-activity, horizontal-black-inertia, etc.
Hence, there emerges a conception ofbinary choice that is opposed to ran­
dom choice. Abstract painting has pursued extensively the development of
such a properly pictorial code ( Herbin's "plastic alphabet," where the
distribution offorms and colors can be carried out according to the letters of
a word). The code is responsible for answering the question of painting to­
day: what is it that can save man from the abyss, that is, the external tumult
and the manual chaos? This amounts to opening a spiritual state for the
man of the future without hands and to giving him a pure, internal, optical
space made up perhaps exclusively of the horizontal and the vertical.
" Modern man seeks tranquility because he is deafened by the outside."7
The hand is reduced to the finger that presses on an internal optical key­
board.
A second path, which has often been called abstract expressionism or
informal art, proposes an entirely different response in the antipodes. This
time, the abyss or chaos is deployed to a maximum degree. Being a bit like a
map that is as big as the country, the diagram merges with the entire paint­
ing, and the entire painting is the diagram. Optical geometry breaks down
in favor of a line that is exclusively manual. The eye finds it difficult to fol­
low. In fact, the incomparable discovery of this kind of painting is one of a
line (and a daub of color) that does not form a contour, which demarcates
nothing, either internal or external, either concave or convex: Pollock's line,
Morris Louis's daub of color. It is the northern daub of color, the "gothic
line": the line does not run from one point to another, but rather passes be­
tween the points, continually changes direction, and attains a power superi­
or to 1 , becoming adequate to the entire surface. We understand that, from
this point of view, abstraction remains figurative since its line still demar-
 The Diagram 1 97

cates a contour. If we seek the forerunners of this new path and of this radi­
cal way of escaping the figurative, we will find them each time that an old
great painter ceases painting things in order "to paint between things."&
Turner's last watercolors already conquer n o t only the forces ofimpression­
ism but also the power of an explosive line without contour that makes
painting itself become an unequaled catastrophe (instead of illustrating
catastrophe romantically) . Is it not also one of the most phenomenal con­
stants of painting that is isolated and selected here? For Kandinsky, there
were nomadic lines without contour next to abstract geometric lines; and
for Mondrian, the unequal thickness of the two sides of the sq uare opened
up a virtual diagonal without contour. But with Pollock, this brushstroke­
line and color-daub reach the limit of their fonction: no longer the trans­
formation of the form but rather a decomposition of the matter that yields
to us its lineaments and granulations. Thus, painting becomes a catas­
trophe-painting and a diagram-painting at the same time. This time, it
is at the closest point to catastrophe, and in absolute proximity, that mod­
ern man finds rhythm: we can easily see to what extent the response to the
question of a " modern" function of painting is different from that of
abstraction. Now internal vision no longer provides infinity but rather the
extension of an all-OlJeT manual power from one edge of the painting to
the other.
In the unity of the catastrophe and the diagram, man discovers rhythm
as matter and material. The painter no longer has as his instruments the
paintbrush and the easel, which used to translate the subordination of the
ha�d to the demands of an optical organization. The hand is liberated,
using sticks, sponges, rags, and syringes: such is action painting, the "frene­
tic dance" of the painter around the painting, or rather in the painting,
which is not stretched onto the easel but rather nailed unstretched onto the
floor. A conversion of the horizon to the ground has taken place: the optical
horizon has entirely reverted to a tactile ground. The diagram expresses all
painting at once, that is, the optical catastrophe and the manual rhythm.
And the current evolution ofabstract expressionism completes this process
by actualizing what was still only a metaphor in Pollock's work: ( I ) the ex­
tension of the diagram to the spatial and temporal totality of the painting
(displacement of the "avant-coup" and the "apris-coup" ) ; ( 2 ) the abandon­
ment of any visual sovereignty, and even of any visual control, over the
painting in the process ofbeing created (blindness ofthe painter) ; ( 3 ) devel­
opment of lines that are "more" than lines, surfaces that are "more" than
surfaces or, conversely, volumes that are "less" than volumes (Carl Andre's
plane sculptures, Ryman's fibers, Barre's laminated works, Bonnefoi's
strata).9
 1 98 M I N O R LANGUAGES AND NOMAD ART

I t i s even more curious that the American critics, who have analyzed so
extensively this abstract e x pressionism, have defined it by the creation ofa
purely and exclusively opti cal space, characteristic of "modern m a n . " It
seems that this is a quarrel <Ner words, a n ambiguity of word s . What is
meant, in fact, is that t h e pictorial space has lost all its imaginary, tactile
referents that allowed us, in classical three-dimensional representation, to
see depths and contours, forms and grounds . But these tactile referents in
classical representation expressed a relative subordination of the hand to
the eye, of the manual to the visual. In liberating a space that is taken
(wrongly) to be purely optical, the abstract expressionists, in fact, only re­
veal an exclusively manual space, defi ned by the plane su rface of the can­
vas, the "impenetrability" of the scene, the "gest urality" of the color. This
space is imposed upon the eye as a completely foreign power in which the
eye finds no peace. ID We are n o longer confronted with tactile referents of
vision, but, since it is the manual space of that which i s seen, we are faced
with a violent act upon the eye. We could almost say it is abstract painting
that produces a purely o ptical space and suppresses tactile referents in favor
of an eye of the mind: it suppresses the task of directing the hand that the eye
retained in classical representation. But action painting does something en­
tirely different: it overturns this classical subordination, it subordinates the
eye to the hand, it imposes the hand upon the eye, and it replaces the hori­
zon with a ground.
One of the most profound tendencies of modern painting is the tendency
to abandon the easel. For the easel was a decisive element not only in the
retention of a figurative a ppearance, not only in the relation of the painter
with nature (the quest for motif), but also i n the demarcation (frame and
edges) and in the internal organization of the scene (depth, perspec­
tive . . . ). Now what counts today is less the fact-does the painter still have
an easel?-than the tendency and the diverse ways in which the tendency is
realized. In the abstractions of Mondrian, the painting ceases to be an orga­
n ism or an isolated organization, in order to become a division of its own
su rface that must create relations with the divisions of the "room" where it
will be placed. It is in this sense that Mondrian's painting is by no means
decorative, but rather architechtonic, and that it abandons the easel in or­
der to become mural painting. Pollock and others explicitly impugn the
easel in an entirely different manner: this time, they create "all-over" paint­
ings by rediscovering the secret of the Gothic line (in Worringer's sense), by
restoring an entire world of equal probabilities, by tracing lines that go from
one edge of the painting to the other and that begin and continue outside the
frame, and by opposing the power of a mechanical repetition elevated to
intuition, to organic symmetry and center. The result is no longer an easel
 The Diagram z 99

painting; it is rather a ground painting ( real horses have the ground u their
only horizon ). 1 1 But in truth, there are many ways of breaking away lram
the easel: Bacon's triptych form is on� of these ways, which is very dift'erent
from the two previous ones; in his work, what is true of the triptychs is also
true for each independent painting, which is always in some sense com­
posed like a triptych . In the triptych, as we have seen, the edges of the three
scenes no longer isolate, although they continue to separate and divide:
there is a union-separation, which is Bacon's technical solution and which,
in fact, affects the totality ofhis procedures in their difference from those of
abstraction and the unformed. Are these three ways of becoming "Gothic"
again?
The importance lies, in fact, in the reason Bacon did not become involved
in either one of the previous paths. The severity of his reactions does not
pretend to be judgmental, but rather to state what does not suit Bacon; this
explains why Bacon does not take either of these paths. On one hand, he is
not attracted by a kind of painting that tends to substitute a spiritual, visual
code for the involuntary diagram (even if this is an exemplary attitude of the
artist). The code is necessarily cerebral and misses sensation, the essential
reality of the fall, that is, the direct action on the nervous system. Kandinsky
defined abstract painting by "tension," but, according to Bacon, tension is
that which is most lacking in abstract painting: by internalizing it in the
optical form, abstract painting neutralized it. And finally, by virtue ofbeing
abstract, the code risks being a simple symbolic coding of the figurative. 1 2
On the other hand, Bacon i s n o more attracted b y abstract expressionism or
by the power and the mystery of the line without contour. This is because,
he says, the diagram has taken over the entire painting, and its proliferation
creates a veritable "mess." All the violent means of action painting-stick,
brush, broom, rag, and even pastry syringe-explode in a painting­
catastrophe: this time, sensation is indeed attained, but it remains in an ir­
redeemably confused state. Bacon continually discusses the absolute neces­
sity of preventing the diagram from proliferating, the necessity ofkeeping it
in certain areas of the painting and in certain moments of the act of paint­
ing. He thinks that, in the domain of the irrational stroke and the line with­
out contour, Michaux goes further than Pollock, precisely because he main­
tains his mastery of the diagram. 1 3
There is nothing more important fo r Bacon than saving contour. A line
that demarcates nothing still has a contour. Blake at least knew this. 1 4 The
'
diagram should not, therefore, engulf the entire painting; it should remain
limited in space and time. It should remain operative and controlled. Vio­
lent means should not be unleashed, and the necessary catastrophe should
not submerge everything. The diagram is a possibility offact-it is not the
 200 MINOR LANGUAGES AND NOMAD ART

fact itself. Not all figurative data should disappear, and especially, a new
figuration, that of figure, should emerge from the diagram and carry sensa­
tion to the clear and the precise. Emerge from the catastrophe . . . . Even if
we finish with a stream of paint afterward, it is like a localized " crack of the
whip," which makes us emerge rather than sink . 1 5 Could we say that the
"'maleriscli" period at least extended the d iagram to the entire painting? Is it
not the entire surface of the painting that is lined with brushstrokes or with
variations of a somber color-daub functioning as a curtain? But even so, the
precision of sensation, the clarity of figure, and the rigor of contour con­
tinued to act upon the blob of color or beneath the strokes that d id not erase
them; it rather gave them a power of vibration and illocalization (the smil­
ing or screaming mouth). Bacon's subsequent period returns to a random
localization of strokes and cleaned areas. Thus, Bacon follows a third path,
neither optical as in abstract painting, nor manual as in action painting.
Trans. Constantin Bormdas andJacqueline Code
 24
Music and Ritomello

1 . A child in the dark, gripped with fear, comforts himself by singing

under his breath. H e walks and halts to his song. Lost, he takes shelter, or
orients himself with h i s little song as best he can. The S()ng_Js like a rough
sketch of a calming and stabilizing, calm and stable, center in the heart of
chaos. Perhaps the child skips a s he sings, hastens or slows his pace. But
the song itself is already a skip: it jumps from chaos to the beginnings of
order in chaos and is in danger of breaking apart at any moment. There
is always sonority in Ariadne's thread. Or the song of Orpheus.
2. Now we are at home. But home does not preexist: it was necessary
to draw a circle around that uncertain and fragile center, to organize a
limited space. Many, very diverse, components have a part in this, land­
marks and marks of all kinds. This was already true of the previous case.
But now the components are used for organizing a space, not for the mo­
mentary determination of a center. The forces of chaos are k ept outside
a s much a s possible, and the interior space protects the germinal forces of
a task to fulfill or a deed to do. This involves an activity of selection, elim­
ination and extraction, in order to prevent the interior forces of the earth
from being s u b m erged, to enable them to resist, or even to take some­
thing from chaos across the filter or sieve of the space that has been
drawn. Sonorous or vocal components are very important: a wall of
 2 02 MINOR LANGUAGES AND NOMAD ART

sound, o r a t least a wall with some sonic bricks i n it. A child hums to
summon the strength for the schoolwork she has to hand in. A housewife
sings to herself, or listens to the radio, as she marshals the antichaos
forces of her work. Radios and television sets are like sound walls around
every household and mark territories (the neighbor complains when it
gets too loud). For sublime deeds like the foundation of a city or the fab­
rication of a golem, one draws a circle, or better yet walks in a circle as in
a children's dance, combining rhythmic vowels and consonants that cor­
respond to the interior forces of creation as to the differentiated parts
of an organism. A mistake in speed, rhythm, or harmony would be cata­
strophic because it would bring back the forces of chaos, destroying both
creator and creation.
3. Finally, one opens the circle a crack, opens it all the way, lets some­
one in, calls someone, or else goes out oneself, launches forth . One opens
the circle not on the side where the old forces ofchaos press against it b u t
i n another region, o n e created b y t h e circle itself. As though t h e circle
tended on its own to open onto a foture, as a function of the working
forces it shelters. This time, it is in order to join with the forces of the
future, cosmic forces. One launches forth, hazards an improvisation. But
to improvise is to join with the world, or meld with it. One ventures from
home on the thread of a tune. Along sonorous, gestural, motor lines that
mark the customary path ofa child and graft themselves onto or begin to
bud "lines of drift " with different loops, knots, speeds, movements, ges­
tures, and sonorities. I
These are not three successive moments in an evolution. They are
three aspects of a single thing, the refrain (ritoumelle}. They are found in
tales (both horror stories and fairy tales}, and in lieder as well. The re­
frain has all three aspects, it makes them simultaneous or mixes them:
sometimes, sometimes, sometimes. Sometimes chaos is an immense
black hole in which one endeavors to fix a fragile point as a center. Some­
times one organizes around that point a calm and stable "pace" ( rather
than a form ) : the black hole has become a home. Sometimes one grafts
onto that pace a breakaway from the black hole. Paul Klee presented
these three aspects, and their interlinkage, in a most profound way. He
calls the black hole a "gray point" for pictorial reasons. The gray point
starts out as nonlocalizable, nondimensional chaos, the force of chaos, a
tangled bundle of aberrant lines. Then the point "j umps over itself" and
radiates a dimensional space with horizontal layers, vertical cross sec­
tions, unwritten customary lines, a whole terrestrial interior force (this
force also appears, at a more relaxed pace, in the atmosphere and in wa­
ter). The gray point ( b lack hole} has thus j u mped from one state to an-
 Music and RitOITllllo 2 03

other, and no longer represents chaos but the abode or home. Finally, the
point launches out ofitself, impelled by wandering centrifogal forces that
fan out to the sphere of the cosmos: one " tries convulsively to fly from the
earth, but at the following level one actually rises above it . . . powered
by centrifogal forces that triumph over gravity. "2
The role of the refrain h a s often been emphasized: it i s territorial, a
territorial assemblage . Bird songs: the bird sings to mark its territory.
The Greek modes and Hindu rhythms are themselves territorial, provin­
cia� regional. The refrain may assume other functions, amorous, profes­
sional or social, liturgical or cosmic: i t always carries earth with it; it has
a land (sometimes a spiritual land) as its concomitant; it has an essential
relation to a Natal, a Native. A musical "nome" is a little tune, a melodic
formula that seeks recognition and remains the bedrock or ground ofpo·
lyphony (cantus.firmus). The nomos as customary, unwritten law is insepa·
rable from a distribution of space, a distribution in space. By that token,
it is etlws, but the ethos is also the A bode. 3 Sometimes one goes from chaos
to the threshold of a territorial assemblage: directional components,
infra-assemblage. Sometimes one organizes the assemblage: dimension­
al components, intra-assemblage. Sometimes one leaves the territorial
assemblage for other assemblages, or for somewhere else entirely; inter­
assemblage, components ofpassage or even escape. And all three at once.
Forces of chaos, terrestrial forces, cosmic forces: all of these confront each
other and converge in the territorial refrain.
 25
One Manifesto Less

I . The Theater and I ts Critique

With regard to·his play Romeo andJuliet, Carmelo Bene says: " I t is a critical
essay on S�akespeare. " But the fact is that CB is not writing on Shake­
speare; his critical essay is itself a piece of theater. How are we to under­
stand this relationship between theater and its critique, between the origi­
nal play and the one derived from it? CB's theater has a critical function­
but of what?
It is not a question of "criticizing" Shakespeare, nor of a play within a
play, nor of a parody, nor of a new version of a play, etc. CB proceeds in a
more original manner. Suppose that he amputates one of the component
parts of the original play. He subtracts something from the original. To be
precise, he does not call his play on Hamlet one more Hamlet but, like
Laforgue, "one less Hamlet." He does not proceed by addition, but by sub­
traction, by amputation. How he chooses the component for amputation is
another question, as we shall see shortly. But, for example, he amputates
Romeo, he neutralizes Romeo in the original play. So the whole play, be­
cause it now lacks a part chosen nonarbitrarily, will perhaps tip over, turn
around on itself, land on another side. If you ·amputate Romeo, you will
witness an astonishing development, that of Mercutio, who was no more
 One Manifesto less 2 05

than a potentiality in Shakespeare's play. Mercutio dies quickly in Shake­

speare, but in CB he does not want to die, cannot die, does not succeed in
dying, since he will constit ute the new play.
It is a matter then, in the first place, of the very constitution ofa character
on stage. Even the objects, the props, await their destiny, that is to say, the
necessity that the caprice of the character is going to give them. The play
consists first of all in the making up of the character, his preparation, his
birth, his babblings, his changes, his developments. This critical theater is a
constituting theater, the critique is a constitution. The man of the theater is
no longer an author, actor, or director. He is an operator. By operation, one
must understand the activity of subtraction, of amputation, but already
masked by another activity which gives birth to and multiplies the unex­
pected, as in a prosthesis: amputation of Romeo and immense development
ofMercutio, the one within the other. This is a theater of surgical precision.
Consequently, if CB often has need of an original play, it is not in order to
make a fashionable parody of it, nor to add literature to literat ure. On the
contrary it is in order to subtract the literature, for example to subtract the
text, a part of the text, and to see what happens. Let the words stop making up a
"text. " . . . This is a theater-experimentation that involves more love for
Shakespeare than all the commentaries.
Tak e the case of S .A.D.E. Against the background of a frozen recitation
of texts by De Sade, it is the sadistic image of the master which finds itself
amputated, paralyzed, reduced to a masturbatory tic, at the same time that
the masochistic slave searches for his identity, develops, metamorphizes,
tests himself, constitutes himself on the stage according to the inadequacies
and impotencies of the master. The slave is not at all the reverse image of the
master, nor his replica nor his contradictory identity: he constitutes himself
piece by piece, morsel by morsel, through the neutralization of the master;
he gains his autonomy through the master's amputation.
Finally, consider Richard the Third, where CB goes perhaps furthest in his
theatrical construction. What is amputated here, what is subtracted, is the
whole royal and princely system. Only Richard I I I and the women are re­
tained. But as a result that which existed only potentially in the tragedy
appears under a new light. Richard the Third is perhaps the only Shakespeare
tragedy in which the women do battle for themselves. And as for Richard
I I I , it is not so much that he covets power as that he wants to reintroduce or
reinvent a war-machine, even if it means destroying the apparent equi­
librium or the peace of the State ( Shakespeare calls this Richard's secret,
the "secret goal"). In operating the subtraction of the characters of State
power, CB will give free rein to the constitution of the man of war on the
state, with his prostheses, his deformities, his outgrowths, his defects, his
 206 M l N O R L A N G U A G ES A N D N O M A D A R T

variations. The man of war has always been considered i n mythology a s of

another origin from that of the statesman or the king: deformed and twisted,
he always comes from somewhere else. CB makes him come to pass on the
stage: while the women at war enter and exit, worried about their whining
infants, Richard II I must make himself deformed to amuse the infants and
keep the attention of the mothers. He makes prostheses for himself of ob­
jects he takes out of drawers at random. He constitutes himself a little like
Mr. Hyde-of colors, of sounds, of things. He forms himself, or rather de�
forms himself. following a line of continuous variation. CB's play begins
with a very nice "note on the feminine" (is there not already in Kleist's
Penthesilea a similar relationship between a man of war, Achilles, and the
fem inine, the transvestite?).
CB's plays are short; no one knows better than he how to end. He detests .
every principle of constancy or eternity, of the permanence of the text: "The
spectacle starts and finishes at the moment one makes it." And the play
ends with the constitution of the character, it has no other aim but the pro­
cess of this constitution and does not extend beyond it. It ends with birth,
whereas customarily one ends with death. One should not conclude from
this that these characters have an "ego." On the contrary, they have nothing
of the sort. Richard I I I , the slave, Mercutio, only come to life in a con­
tinuous series of metamorphoses and variations. The character is nothing
more than the totality of the scenic assemblages, colors, lights, gestures,
words. It is odd that one often says of CB: he is a great actor-a compliment
mixed with reproach, an accusation of narcissism. It is rather CB's pride to
launch a process of which he is the controller, the mechanic, or the operator
(he himself says: the protagonist) rather than the actor. To give birth to a
monster or to a giant . . . .
This is neither a theater of the author, nor a critique of the author. But if
this theater is inseparably creative and critical, what is it critical of? It is not
CB criticizing Shakespeare.
At the very most one could say that, if an Englishman at the end of the
sixteenth century constructs a certain image ofl taly, an I talian of the twen­
tieth century can return an image of the England where Shakespeare is
present: the admirable, gigantic decor of Romeo and Juliet with its huge
glasses and flasks, andj uliet who falls asleep in a cake, makes us see Shake­
speare by way of Lewis Carroll, but Lewis Carroll by way ofl talian comedy
(Carroll already suggested a whole system of subtractions on Shakespeare
in order to develop unexpected potentialities). It is no longer a question of
criticizing countries or societies. One asks what the initial subtractions op­
erated by CB concern. In the three preceding cases it is the elements of
power, the elements that make up or represent a system of power, which are
 On11 Manifesto Liss 2 07

subtracted, amputated, or neutralized: Romeo as representative of the

power of families, the master as representative of sexual power, the kings
and princes as representatives of the power of the State. Now the elements of
power in the theater are those which assure at once the coherence of the
subject dealt with and the coherence of the representation on stage. It is at
the same time the power of that which is represented and the power of the·
ater itself. In this sense the traditional actor has an ancient complicity with
princes and kings-the theater, with power: thus Napoleon and Talma.
Theater's own power is not separable from the representation of power in
the theater, even ifit is a critical representation. Now CB has another con·
ception ofcritique. When he chooses to amputatt the components ofpower, it
is not only the theatrical material that he changes, it is also the form of the·
ater, which ceases to be "representation" at the same time that the actor
ceases to be an actor. He gives free rein to other theatrical material and an·
other theatrical form, which would not have been possible without this sub·
traction. One will say that CB is not the fi.rst to make a theater ofnonrepre­
sentation. One will cite at random Artaud, Bob Wilson, Grotowski, the
living theater . . . . But we do not believe in the usefulness offiliations. Al·
liances are more important than filiations. CB has very diverse degrees of
a:mance with those whom we have just cited. He belongs to a movement that
is stirring the theater profoundly today. But he belongs to this movement
only by virtue of what he himself is inventing and not the reverse.
And the originality of his approach, the ensemble of his procedures,
seems to us to consist first of all in this: the subtraction of stable components
of power, which releases a new potentiality of theater, a nonrepresentation·
al force always in disequilibrium.

I I . The Theater and I ts Minorities

CB is very interested in the notions of major and minor. He gives them a
lived content. What is a "minor" character? What is a "minor" author? CB
begins by pointing out that it is stupid to be interested in the beginning or
end of something, the points of origin and termination. What is interesting
is never the way someone starts or finishes. The interesting thing is the
middle, what happens on the way. I t is not by chance that the greatest speed
is at the halfway point. People often dream of commencing or recommenc·
ing at zero; and they are also afraid of where they are going to arrive, their
l a nding point. They think in terms offuture or of past, but the past and even
the future are history. What counts, on the contrary, is the becoming:
becoming-revolutionary, and not the future or the past of the revolution. " I
shall not arrive anywhere, I will not arrive anywhere. There are no arrivals.
 208 MINOR LA NGUAGES AND NOMAD ART

I t does not interest m e where someone ends up. A man may also end u p
mad. W hat does that mean?" I t i s i n the middle where one finds the becom·
ing, the movement, the velocity, the vortex. The middle is not the mean, but
on the contrary an excess. It is by the middle that things push. That was
Virginia Woolf's idea. Now the middle does not at all imply to be in one's
time, to be of one's time, to be historical-on the contrary. It is that by
which the most diverse times communicate. It is neither the historical nor
th e eternal, but the untimely. A minor author is just that: without future or
past, she has only a becoming, a middle, by which she communicates with
other times, other spaces. Goethe gave Kleist stern lessons, explaining that
a great author, a major author must devote himself to being ofhis time. But
Kleist was incurably minor. "Antihistoricism," says CB: do you know who
those men are who must be seen in their century? Those whom one calls the
greatest, Goethe for example (one cannot see him outside the Germany of
his time, or ifhe leaves his time it is immediately to join the eternal). But the
true great authors are the minor ones, the untimely ones. It is the minor
author who provides the true masterpieces; the minor author does not inter­
pret his time, the man does not have a determinate time, the time depends
on the man: Frarn;ois Villon, Kleist, or Laforgue. Is there not therefore
great interest in submitting authors considered major to treatment as minor
authors, in order to rediscover their potential for becoming? Shakespeare,
for example?
It is as if there are two opposing operations. On the one side one raises to
the "major": from a thought one makes a doctrine, from a way ofliving one
makes a culture, from an event one makes history. One claims in this way to
acknowledge and admire, but in fact one normalizes. As with the peasants
of Apuglia, according to CB: one can give them theater and cinema and
even television. It is not a question of regretting the old times, but of being
alarmed in the face of the operation to which one is submitting them, the
graft, the transplant which one has made in their backs to normalize them.
They have become major. So, operation for operation, surgery for surgery,
one can conceive of the reverse: how to reduce or minorizt (minorer-a term
used by mathematicians ), how to impose a minor or minimizing treatment
in order to extricate becomings from history, lives from culture, thoughts
from doctrine, grace or disgrace from dogma. When one sees what Shake.
speare is subjected to in the traditional theater, his magnification­
normalization, one clamors for another treatment that would rediscover in
him this active minoritarian force. Theologians are major, but certain Ital­
ian saints are minor. "The saints who have made it by grace: SaintJoseph of
Copertino, the imbeciles, the saintly fools, Saint Francis of Assisi dancing
before the Pope. . . . I say there is already culture from the moment we are
 One Manifesto Less 2 09

in the process of examining an idea, not living that idea. lfwe are the idea,
then we can dance the dance of Saint-Guy and we are in a state ofgrace. We
begin to be wise precisely when we are dis-graced. " We do not save our­
selves, we do not become minor, save by the constitution of a disgrace or
deformity. That is the operation of grace itself. As in the story of Lourdes:
make my hand come back like the other. . . . But God always chooses the
bad hand. How are we to understand this operation? Kleist stammering
and grinding his teeth?
"Major" and "minor" are also said oflanguages. Can one distinguish in
each epoch major common languages-international or national-and
minor vernaculars? English, American-is that a major language today?
\\buld I talian be a minor one? One distinguishes a high language and a low
one in societies that express themselves in two languages or more. But is this
not true even for unilingual societies? One could define some languages as
major, even though they have little international standing: these would be
languages with strongly homogeneous structure ( standardization), and
centered on invariants, constants, or universals ofa phonological, syntactic,
or semantic nature. CB sketches a linguistics, just for fun: thus French
seems to be a major language, even though it has lost its international reach,
because it retains a strong homogeneity and strong phonological and syn­
tactic constants. This is not without consequences for the theater: " French
theatres are museums of the everyday, a disconcerting and wearisome repe­
tition, because in the name ofa spoken and written language one goes in the
evening to see and hear that which one has heard and seen during the day.
Theatrically, between Marivaux and the stationmaster of Paris there is
really no difference, except that at the Odeon one cannot catch the train."
English bases itself on other invariants-for example, on constants that are
rather semantic; it is always by dint of constants and homogeneity that a
language is m�jor: "England is a history ofkings . . . . The Gielguds and the
Oliviers are living copies of bygone Kembles and Keans. The monarchy of
once upon a time-that is the English tradition . " In short, however different
they may be, the major languages are languages of power. To them one will
oppose the minor languages: Italian, for example ("Our country is young, it
does not yet have a language . . . "). And already one has no further choice;
one must define the minor languages as languages with continuous variabili�
whichever dimension one is considering: phonologica� syntactic, semantic,
or even stylistic. A minor language is made up of only a minimum of struc­
tural constants and homogeneities. It is not, however, a porridge, a mixture
of patois, since it fi nds its rules in the construction ofa continuum. In effect,
continuous variation applies to all the components, vocal and linguistic, in
a kind of gen e ralized chromaticism. This is theater itself, or "spectacle. "
 2IO MINOR LANGUAGES AND NOMAD ART

But, a t the same time, i t i s hard to oppose languages that are major by
nature to others that are minor. People protest, notably in France, against
the imperialism ofEnglish or American. But this imperialism has precisely
for its counterpart that English and American are worked on to the greatest
extent from within by the minorities that use them. Observe how Anglo­
Irish works on English in Synge, and imposes on it a line of flight or con ­
tinuous variation: " t h e way. . . ". No doubt this is not the same way b y the
minorities work on American, with black English and all the Americans of
the ghetto. But in any case there is no imperial language that is not tunneled
through, dragged along by these inherent and continuous lines of variation,
by these minor uses. That being the case, major and minor do not so much
q ualify different languages as different uses of the same language. Kafka, a
Czech Jew writing in German, makes a minor use of German and thereby
produces a decisive linguistic masterpiece ( more generally, the work of mi­
norities on German in the Austrian Empire). At the most, one could say
that a language is more or less endowed for these minor uses.
Linguists often have a debatable conception of their object ofstudy. They
say that each language is, assuredly, a heterogeneous mixture but that one
can only study it scientifi cally if one extracts from i t a homogeneous and
constant subsystem: a dialect, a patois, a ghetto language would thus be
submitted to the same condition as a standard language (Chomsky). From
this point of view, the variations that affect a language will be considered
either as extrinsic or extrasystemic or as bearing witness to a mixture be­
tween two systems of which each is homogeneous. But perhaps this condi­
tion of constancy and homogeneity already presupposes a certain use of the
language upon consideration: a major use that treats the language as a con­
dition of power, a marker of power. A small number of linguists (notably
William Labov) have isolated in each language the existence oflines of vari­
ation, bearing on all the components, and constituting immanent rules of a
new type. You will not arrive at a homogeneous system that is not still
worked on by immanent, continuous, and regulated variation: this is what
defi n es every language by its minor use; a broadened chromaticism, a black
English for each language. The continuous variability is not to be explained
by a bilingualism, nor by a mixture of dialects, but by the creative property
most inherent in the language when it is in the grips of a minor use. And, in
a certain way, this is the " theater" of the language.

I I I . The Theater and I ts Language

It is not a question of an antitheater, of a theater within the theater, or

which denies the theater, etc.: CB feels disgust for the pat phrases of the
 One Manifesto Less 211

avant-garde. I t i s a question of a more precise operation: you begin by sub­

tracting, taking away everything that comprises an element ofpower, in lan­
guage and in gestures, in representation and in the represented. You cannot
even say that it is a negative operation inasmuch as it already engages and
sets in motion positive processes. You will thus take away or amputate his­
tory, because history is the temporal marker of power. You will take away
structure because it is the synchronic marker, the ensemble of relations
among variants. You will subtract the constants, the stable or stabilized ele­
ments, because they belong to the major use. You will amputate the text,
because the text is like the domination of language over speech and bears
witness, too, to an invariance or homogeneity. You cut back on the d ialogue
because the dialogue transmits to speech the elements ofpower and makes
them circulate: it is your turn to speak, in such-and-such codified condi­
tions (the linguists are trying to determine the "universals of dialogue"),
etc ., etc. As Franco Quadri says, you deduct even the diction, even the ac­
tion: the play-back is, first of all, a subtraction. But what remains? Every­
thing remains, but under a new light, with new sounds, new gestures.
For example, you say "I swear it." But it is not at all the same statement
according to whether you make it before a tribunal, in a love scene, or as a
child. And this variation affects not only the external situation, not only the
physical intonation but also from within the sense, the syntax, and the
phonemes. You will thus make a statement pass by way of all the variables
that can affect it in the shortest space of time. The statement will be no more
than the sum ofits own variations, which make it escape every apparatus of
power capable affixing it and which enable it to dodge every constancy. You
will construct the continuum of I swear it. Let us suppose that Lady Anne
says to Richard I I I : "I loathe you!" In no respect is this the same statement
according to whether it is the cry of a woman at war, a child confronting a
toad, a young girl who feels an already consenting and amorous pity. . . .
Lady Anne must pass by way of all these variables, she must rise up as a
soldier, regress to infancy, come to life again as a young girl, along a line of
continuous variation and as fast as possible. CB never ceases tracing these
lines along which are strung positions, regressions, rebirths, as he puts lan­
guage and speech in continuous variation. Whence the very original use of
lip-sync ( "play-back" ) by CB, since lip-sync assures the amplitude of the
variations and gives them rules. This is odd, as if there is no dialogue in CB's
theater, for the voices, simultaneous or successive, superimposed or trans­
posed, are engaged in this spatiotemporal continuity of variation. It is a
kind of Sprechgesang. I n song it is a matter of maintaining the pitch, but in
Sprechgesang one keeps abandoning it by a rise or fall. Hence it is not the text
that counts, since it is simply material for the variation. It is even necessary
 212 MINOR LANGUAGES AND NOMAD ART

to weigh down the text with nontextual-yet internal-indications, which

are not merely stage directions, which function as operators, expressing each
time the scale of the variables by which the statement passes, exactly as in a

musical score. Now this is j ust how CB himself writes, with a writing that is
neither literary nor theatrical but really operative, and whose effect on the
reader is very strong, very strange. Look at those operators which, in Richart/
Ill, take up much more room than the text itself. CB's whole theater must
be seen but also read, even though the text properly speaking is not the es­
sential. This is not a contradiction. It is rather like sight-reading a score .
This explains C B ' s reserved attitude towards Brecht: Brecht h a s carried o u t
t h e greatest "critical operation , " b u t h e has effected this operation "on the
written word and not on stage." The complete critical operation is that
which consists in ( 1 ) deducting the stable elements, ( 2 ) putting everything
in continuous variation, and also, consequently, ( 3 ) transposing everything
into the minor (that is the role of the operators, corresponding to·the idea of
the "minimal" interval).
What is this use oflanguage according to variation? One could express it
in several ways: being bilingual, but in a single tongue. . . . Being a for­
eigner, but in one's own tongue . . . . Stammering, but as a stammerer o flan­
guage itself and not simply of speech . . . . CB adds: talking to oneself,
in one's own ear, but in the middle of the marketplace, in the public
square . . . . We might take each one of these formulas in itself to define the
work o f C B , and see not which dependencies b u t which alliances, which
engagements it makes with other attempts, past or present. Bilingualism
puts us on the path, but only on the path. For the bilingual person leaps
from one language to another; the one may have a minor use, the other a
major. One can even make a heterogeneous mixture of several languages or
of several dialects. But here it is in one and the same language that one must
succeed in being bilingual, it is on my own language that I must impose the
heterogeneity of variation, it is in it that I must carve out a minor use and
cut away the elements of power or of majority._ One can always start off from
an external situation: for example Kafka, a Czech Jew writing in German;
Beckett, an Irishman, writing simultaneously in English and in French;
Pasolini using dialectal varieties of ltalian. But it is within German itself
that Kafka traces a line offlight or of continuous variation. It is French itself
that Beckett makes stammer, as does Jean-Luc Godard in another way and
Gherasim Luca in yet another way. And it is English that Bob Wilson
causes to whisper, to murmur (for whispering does not imply a weak inten­
sity, but, on the contrary, an intensity that has no definite pitch). Now the
formula of stammering is as approximate as that of bilingualism. Stammer­
ing, in general, is a disorder of speech. But to make a language stammer is
 ONJ Manifesto Less 2 13

another affair. It is to impose on the language, on all the inner elements of

the language-phonological, syntactic, semantic-the work of continuous
variation. I believe that Gherasim Luca is one of the greatest French poets,
and of all time. H e certainly does not owe this to his Romanian origin, but
he makes use of this origin to make French stammer in itself, with itself, to
carry the stammering into the language itself, not simply the speaking ofit.
Read or listen to the poem " Passionement , " which has been recorded as
well as published in the collection Le Chant de la Carpe. One has never
achieved such an intensity in the language, such an intensive use of lan­
guage. A public recitation of poems by Gherasim Luca is a marvelous and
complete theatrical event. So, to be a foreigner in one's own language . . . .
This is not to talk "like" an I rishman or a Romanian talking French. That is
not the case with either Beckett or Luca. It is to impose on the language,
insofar as one speaks it perfectly and soberly, that line of variation that will
make of you a foreigner in your own tongue, or of the foreign tongue, yours, or

of your tongue, an immanent bilingualism for your foreignness. One always

comes back to Proust's formulation: "Beautiful books are written in a sort of
foreign language. " Or, conversely, Kafka's short story "The Great Swim­
mer" (who never knew how to swi m ) : "I must remark that I am here in my
own country and that, despite all my efforts, I do not understand a word of
the language which you are speaking. " So much for the alliances or the en­
counters of CB, involuntary or not, with those whom we have just cited.
They have value only b y the way CB constructs his own methods to make
his own language stammer, whisper, and vary, and to make i t intensive at
the level ofeach ofits elemen ts.
All the l inguistic and acoustic components, indissolubly language and
speech, are thus put into a state ofcontinuous variation. But this is not with­
out effect on the other, nonlinguistic, components: actions, passions, ges­
tures, attitudes, objects, etc. For one cannot deal with the elements of lan­
guage and speech as so many internal variables without placing them in
reciprocal relation with the external variables, in the same continuity, in the
same flux of continuity. I t is in th e same movement that language will tend
to escape the system of power that structures it and action the system of
mastery or domination that organizes it. In a fine article, Corrado Augias
has shown how CB combines a work of "aphasia" on language (diction
whispered, stammering, or deformed; sounds scarcely perceptible or quite
deafening) with a work of " impediment" on things and gestures ( costumes
that hinder movement instead of assisting it, props that are awkward to
shift, gestures that are too stiff or " limp"). Thus, the apple in Salome con­
tinually swallowed and spat out again; and the costumes that keep falling
off and having to be put on again; always the useful object that descr:ts.in-
 2 I4 MINOR LANGUAGES A N D NOMAD ART

stead o f serving, the table that i nterposes itself instead of supportin§.-one

is always obliged to get clear of the objects rather than handle them; or once
more in S.A.D.E. , the copulation perpetually postponed, and above all the
slave who entangles himself, ties himself up in knots in the continuous series
of his metamorphoses, for he must not master his role of slave; and at the be­
ginning of Richard III, Richard who never stops losing his balance, wob­
bling, slipping off the chest of drawers on which he is leaning . . . .

I V. The Theater and I ts Gestures

I s i t necessary to point out, nonetheless, that this double principle, ofapha­

sia and impediment, reveals relations of force by which each body makes
itself an obstacle to the body of the other, as each will shackles that of others?
It is something other than a play of oppositions that will lead us back to the
system of power and domination . It is that by continual impediment ges­
tures and movements are put in a state of continuous variation, the former
in relation to the latter as well as each in itself, exactly as voices and lin­
guistic elements are brought into this milieu of variation. Richard I I I 's ges­
ture keeps abandoning its proper level, its proper height, by a fall, a rise, a
slide: the gesture in positive disequilibrium. The piece of clothing one takes
off and puts back on, which falls off and is donned again, i s like the variation
of clothing. Or consider the variation offlowers that occupies such a place in
CB's practice. In effect there are very few collisions and oppositions in CB's
theater. We can conceive of procedures that would produce stammering by
causing words to collide, phonemes to oppose each other, or even dialectal
varieties to confront one another. But these are not the means that CB him­
self employs. On the contrary the beauty of his style is to achieve the stam­
mering by instituting melodic lines which pull the language outside a sys­
tem of dominating oppositions. And the same goes for the grace of gestures
on stage. It is curious in this regard that angry women, and even critics,
have reproached CB for his direction of the female body and have accused
him of sexism or phallocracy.
The female-object ofS.A .D.E., the naked girl, passes through all the met­
amorphoses the sadistic master imposes on her, transforming her into a suc­
cessive series of objects of use: but she j ust traverses these metamorphoses,
she never adopts a d egrading posture, she strings together her gestures fol­
lowing the line of a variation which allows her to escape the domination o f
the master and come t o life outside his grasp, maintaining her dignity
throughout the whole series. Hats off to the actress who played the part in
Paris! It is never in relations of force and opposition that CB's theater is
deployed, although this theater is " tough" and "cruel . " Much more, the re-
 Ou Manifesto Less 2 lj

lations of force and opposition belong to that which is shown only for the
purpose of being subtracted, cut away, neutralized. Con0ict1 do not much
interest CB. They are simply a medium for variation. CB'1 theater ii de­
ployed only in relations of variation that eliminate "masten ."
In variation, what count are relations o fspeed or slown ess , the modiRca•
tion of these relations insofar as they involve gestures and statements, fol·
lowing variable coefficients along a line oftransformation. It is in this way
that the writing and gestures of CB are musical: it is because every form is
deformed by modifications of speed , with the result that one does not use
the same gesture or the same word twice without obtaining different tem­
poral characteristics. This is the musical formula of continuity, or of trans­
formable form. The "operators" that function in CB's style and direction
are precisely indicators of speed, which no more belong to the theater than
they are external to it. CB has in fact found the way to articulate them fully
in the "text" of his pieces, even though they do not belong to the text. The
physicists of the Middle Ages spoke of deformed movements and qualities ac­
cording to the distribution of velocities among the differen t points ofa mov­
ing body er the distribution a intensities among the different points a a
subject. The subordination of form to speed, to variation in speed, the sub­
ordination of the subject to intensity or affect, to the intensive variation of
affects: these are, it seems to us, two essential goals to achieve in the arts. CB
i s a foll participant in this movement that is bringing criticism to bear on the
form as well as on the subject (in the double sense of"theme" and of" ego").
Affects and no subject, velocities and no form. But once again what count
are CB's own means for realizing this goal: the continuity of variation.
When he identifies the grace in the movement ofdisgrace ( the "idiot saints"
whom he loves), he wishes only to subordinate the designated forms to the
deformity of movement or of quality themselves. There is a whole geometry
in C B 's theater, but a geometry in the manner of Nicolas Oresme, a geome­
try of speeds and intensities, of affects.
CB's films are not filmed theater. Perhaps this is so because the cinema
'
does not employ the same velocities ofvariation as the theater, and above all
because the two variations, that of language and that of gestures, do not
stand in the same relation in cinema. In particular, is it possible that the
cinema may directly constitute a sort of visual music, as ifit is the eyes that
grasp the sound first, while the theater, where even the actions are first ofall
heard, has a hard time disabusing itselfof the primacy of the ear? (Already
in his theatrical version of Notre-Dame eftke Turks CB was seeking ways for
the theater to get beyond this domination by words and to attain to a direct
perception of the action: "The public had to follow the action through panes
of glass, and heard nothing except when the actor deigned to open a little
 2I6 MINOR LANGUAGES AND NOMAD ART

window. " ) But a t all events the important thing, in the theater a s i n the
cinema, is that the two variations must not remain parallel. One way or
another they must be pl,aced one within the other. The continuous variation of
gesture and things, the continuous variation of language and sounds can
interrupt, intersect, cut each other off; they must nevertheless both con­
tinue, forming one and the same continuum, which will be-according to the
case-filmic, theatrical, musical, etc. Someone should do a special study of
CB's films. But remaining within the theater, we should like to find out how
CB proceeds in Richard III, his most recent piece, in which he goes forthest.
The whole beginning of Richard Ill is based on two lines of variation,
which intermix and take turns but have not yet merged. Richard's gestures
never cease to slip, change level, fall only to rise again; the gestures of
the servant, cross-dressed as Buckingham, accord with his own. But also the
voice of the duchess never stops changing tone, passing by way of all the
variations of the mother, at the same time that Richard's voice babbles and
reduces itself to the "articulations of a cave-dweller." If the two variations
still remain relatively separate, as two continuities that intersect, it is be­
cause Richard is ·not yet constituted on stage. In this beginning, there are
still to be sought, in his head and in things, the elements of his impending
constitution. He is not yet an object offear, of love, and of pi ty. He has not
yet made h is "political choice," not yet raised up his war-machine. He has
not yet attained the disgrace of"his" grace, the deformity of his form. But
now, in the great scene with Lady Anne, Richard will constitute himself be­
fore our very eyes. Shakespeare's sublime scene, with respect to which he
has sometimes· been taxed for extravagance or implausibility, is not par­
odied by CB but multiplied accord ing to the velocities or variable develop­
ments that will unite in a single continuity of constitution (not a unity of
representation). ( 1 ) Richard, or rather the actor who plays Richard, begins
to "comprehen d." He begins to comprehend his own idea and the meap.s of
this idea. First he goes through the drawers of the commode, which contain
plaster casts and prostheses, all the monstrosities of the human body. He
takes them out, drops them, picks up another, tests them, hides them from
Anne, then adorns himself with them in triumph. He achieves the miracle
whereby the good hand becomes as contorted, as crooked as the other. He
wins his political choice; he constitutes his deformities and his war­
machine. ( 2 ) Lady Anne, from her side, enters into a strange complicity
with Richard: she wounds and hates him while he is in his "form," but dis­
traught before each deformation and already amorous and consenting. It is
as if a new personality were constituting itself in her too, matching her own
variation with that of Richard. She begins by helping him vaguely in his
search for the prostheses. And, better and better, faster and faster, she starts
to seek herself for the amorous deformation. She will wed a war-machine,
 One Manifesto Less 2 1 7

instead ofremaining in the dependency and power ofa State apparatus. She
enters herself into a variation that weds that of Richard, never ceasing to
undress and redress herself continually, to a rhythm of regression­
progression that corresponds to the subtractions-constructions of Richard.
( 3 ) The vocal variations of the one and the other, phonemes and tonalities,
form a line drawn tighter and tighter, which slips between the gestures and
vice versa. The spectator must not only understand but hear and see the
goal that the mutterings and stumblings of the beginning were already pur­
suing without knowing it: the Idea becomes visible, sensible, politics be­
come erotic. At that moment, there will no longer be two continuities that
intersect but one and the same continuum where words and gestures play
the role of variables in transformation . . . (one would have to analyze the
whole rest of the play and the admirable constitution of the ending-where
one sees clearly that it was not a question for Rich ard of conquering a State
apparatus but of constructing a war-machine inseparably political and
erotic).

V. The Theater and I ts Politics

Let u s suppose that those who admire CB are more or less in accord on these
functions of theater, as we have tried to define them: elimination of con­
stants or invariants not only in the language and the gestures, but also in
the theatrical representation and in that which is represented on stage;
thus the elimination of everything which "makes" power, the.power of what
the theater represents (the king, the princes, the masters, the system), but
also the power of the theater itself (the text, the dialogue, the actor, the di­
rector, the structure) . Hence the passage of everything through continuous
variation, as if on a creative line of flight, which constitutes a minor tongue
within the language, a minor character on stage, a minor transformational
group across the dominant forms and subjects. Suppose one is in accord on
these points. It will be all the more necessary to get to the following simple,
practical questions: ( 1 ) What is the external use of all this, since it is still
theater, nothing but theater? ( 2 ) And in what respect, precisely, does CB
place in question the power of theater or the theater as power? In what re­
spect is he less narcissistic than an actor, less authoritarian than a director,
less despotic than a text? Is he not all the more so-he that claims to be a t
once the text, the actor, a n d the director ( I am a mass; "see how politics
becomes mass, the mass ofmy atoms . " ) ?

O n e h a s not accomplished anything until one has reached that which

merges with someone's genius: his extreme modesty, the point where he is
humble. All CB's declarations of pride are made to express something very
 218 M I N O R L A N G UAGES A N D N O M A D ART

humble. And fi r st ofall that the theater, even the one h e dreams of, i s n o big
thing; that the theater obviously does not change the world and does not
make the revolution. CB does not believe in the avant-garde. No more does
he believe in a popular theater, a theater for everyone, a communication
between the man of the theater and the people. For when one speaks of a
popular theater, one tends always toward a certain representation of coeflicts,
confl icts of individual and of society, of life and of history, contradictions
and oppositions of all sorts that traverse a society, but also individuals. Now
that which is truly narcissistic-and which everyone finds acceptable-is
this representation of conflicts, be it naturalistic or hyperrealistic or what­
ever. There is a popular theater that is like the narcissism of the worker.
No doubt there is Brecht's attempt to ensure that the contradictions, the
oppositions are something other than represented, but Brecht himself de­
sires only that they be "comprehended" and that the spectator have the
elements of a "possible" solution. This is not to exit from the domain of
representation-it is only to pass from a dramatic pole of bourgeois repre­
sentation to an epic pole of popular representation. Brecht does not . push
the "critique" far enough. For the representation of conflicts, CB claims to
substitute the presence of variation as a more active, more aggressive ele­
ment.
But why are conflicts generally subordinated to representation, why
does the theater remain representational each time it takes as its object con­
flicts; contradictions, oppositions? It is because the conflicts are already
normalized, codified, institutionalized. They are "products." They are al­
ready a representation-all the more fit to be represented on stage. When a
conflict is not yet normalized, that is because it depends on something else
more profound, because it is like the lightning fl ash that announces some­
thing else and that comes from something else, a sudden emergence of a
creative variation, unexpected, subrepresentational. I nstitutions are the
organs of representation of recognized confl icts, and the theater is an in­
stitution, the theater-even the avant-garde, even the popular-is "offi­
cial . " By what destiny have the Brechtians taken power over an important
part of the theater? The critic Giuseppi Bertolucci described the situation of
theater in Italy (and elsewhere) when CB was starting his endeavors: be­
cause social reality escapes it "the theater has become for everyone an ideo­
logical l's'�� and an obj ective factor of immobility. " And the same thing
goes for the I talian cinema, with its pseudopolitical ambitions: as Marco
Montesano remarks, " I t is a cinema of institution, despite the conflictual
appearances, for the confl ict filmed ( " mis en scene") is the conflict which
the institution foresees and controls." It is a theater and a cinema that are
narcissistic, historicist, and moralizing. The same for the rich as for the
 Oru Manifesto less 2 19

poor: CB describes them as belonging to the same system of power and

domination that divides them into "poor slaves" and " rich slaves," and
where the artist has the function of an intellectual slave, on one side or the
other. But just how is one to exit from this situation of conflictual, official,
institutionalized representation? How is one to turn to good account the
subterranean work of a free and present variation, which insinuates itself
among the chains of slavery and bursts them apart?
Then there are the other directions: the living theater, where the conflicts
are lived rather than represented, as in a psychodrama. The aesthetic the­
ater, w here the formalized conflicts become abstract, geometrical, orna­
mental. The mystical theater, which tends to abandon representation in or­
der to become communal and ascetic life "beyond the spectacle. " None of
these directions suits CB; he still prefers representation pure and sim­
ple . . . . Like Hamlet, he is seeking a simpler, more humble formula.
The whole question turns around the majoritarianfact. For the theater for
all, the popular theater, is a little like democracy; it appeals to a major­
itariari fact. But this fact is very ambiguous. It assumes a state of power or
domination and not the opposite. Obviously there may be more flies and
mosquitoes than men, but man nevertheless constitutes the meterstick in
relation to which men necessarily have the majority. "The majority" does
not designate a larger quantity, but first and foremost that meters tick in re­
lation to which the other quantities, whatever they may be, will be said to be
smaller. For example, women and children, blacks and Indians, etc., will be
minoritarian relative to the meterstick constituted by man-the white
Christian ordinary-male-adult-inhabitant of today's American or Euro­
pean cities ( U lysses). But at this point everything is turned upside down.
For if "the majority" refers to a model of power, historical or structural or
both at once, one must also say that everyone is minoritarian, potentially mi­
noritarian to the extent that they deviate from this model. Now is not con­
tinuous variation precisely that which keeps overflowing-by excess or by
defect-the representational threshold of the majoritarian standard? Is not
continuous variation the becoming-minoritarian of everyone, in opposition
to the majoritarian fact ofSomeone? May the theater not therefore find for
itself a fu nction modest enough, and yet effective? This antirepresentational
fonction would be to trace, to constitute a sort of diagram of minoritarian
consciousness, as a potentiality of every .person. To render a potentiality
present, actual, is quite another thing from representing a con flict. One
could no longer say that art has a power, that it still belongs to power, even
when it criticizes power. For in drawing up the form of a minoritarian con·
sciousness, it would be ad dressing itself to the powers of becoming, which
are of another domain from that of power and of the representation-
 220 MINOR LANGUAGES A N D NOMAD ART

standa rd. "Art i s not a form of power, i t i s that when i t ceases t o b e art and
begins to become demagogy. " Art submits to many powers, but it is not a
form of power. It matters little that the actor-author-director ex ercises
an ascendancy and behaves when need be in an authoritarian-very
authoritarian-manner. This is the authority of a p erpetual variation, in
opposition to the power or despotism of the invariant. This is the authority,
the autonomy of the st ammerer, of him who has conquered the right to
stammer, in opposition to the "well-spoken" major. Of course the risk is al­
w ays great that the form of minority will restore a maj or ity, refashion a stan­
dard (when art b egins to b ecome demagogy. . . ). The variation itself must
keep varying, that is, passing in effect along new and always unexp ected
pat hs.
What are these paths from the point of view of a politics of the theater?
Who is this. man of the minority? Even the word man is no longer appropri­
ate, so much is i t affected by the majoritarian sign. Why not woman or tran_s­
vestite? But they too are already codified. One can see a politics being
sketched out through CB's declarations or positions. The frontier, that is to
say, the line of variation, does not pass b etween the masters and the slaves,
nor between the rich and the poor. For between them a whole regime ofrela­
tions and op positions is woven that makes of the master a rich slave and o f
the slave a poor master, within the same majoritarian system. The frontier does
not pass through history, nor even through the i nterior of an established
structure, nor even through "the people. " Everyone calls on the spirit of the
p eople, in the name of the maj ori tarian language, but who is the people? " I t
i s t h e p eople that is missing." I n truth, the frontier passes between history
and antihistoricism, that is to say, concretely, "those of whom History does
not take accou n t . " It passes between the structure and the lines of flight that
traverse it. It passes between the people and the ethnic group. The ethnic
g roup is the minoritarian, the line of flight in the structure, the antihistori­
cal element in history. CB lives his own minority in relation to the folk of
Apuglia: his South or his Third World, in the sense i n which everyone has a
South and a Third World. Now when he speaks of the folk of Apuglia to
which he belongs, he senses that the word poor is not at all suitable. How can
one term people poor who would rather die of h unger than work? How can
one term people slaves who do not enter into the game of master and slave?
How can one speak of a " conflict" where there was something q uit e
different, a blazing variation, an ant ihistorical variant-the mad r iot of
Campi Salentina, as CB describes it. But see how one has p erformed a
strange g raft on them, a strange operation: they have been p lanned, repre­
sented, normalized, historicized, integrated to the majoritarian fact, and
yes, one has turned them into the poor, into slaves, into the p eople, into
history-they have b een rendered major.
 One Manifesto less 2 2 1

A final danger, before we can believe that we have under1tood what C B i1

saying. He is not especially intere'sted-not at all- in becoming the head .of
a r egionalist troupe. On the contrary, he demands a nd chnnor1 ror State
theaters, he fights for t hem, there is no c ult of poverty in hi1 work. One re­
quires a lot of political bad faith to see a "contradiction" there or a re•
cuperation. CB has never claimed to be creating a regionalist theater, and a
minority begins already to be normalized when one closes it in on itaelr and
when one cir cumscri bes it with the dance of the good old times (thu1 one
makes of it a subcomponent of the majorit y}. CB never belongs more to
Apuglia, to the South, than when he is making a u niversal theater with En­
glish, French, and American alliances. What h e extracts from Apuglia is a
line of variation, air, soil, sun, colors, lights, and sounds, which he himself
will cause to vary i n quite another way, on other lines-for example, Notre­
Dam.e of the Turks, in which there is more of Apuglia than if he had repre­
sented it in poetry.
To conclude, minori�)I has two senses, undoubtedly related, but quite dis­
t inct. Minari� designates first a factual cond ition, that is, the situation of a
group that, whatever its nu mber, is excl uded from the majori ty, or even in­
cluded, but as a subgrdinate fraction in relation to a standard of measure
that makes the law and fixes the m ajority. One may say i n this sense that
women , children, the South, the Third Wor ld, etc., are stil l minorities, how­
ever n umerous they may be. But then l et us take this first sense "at its
word . " I mmediately there is a second sense: minority no longer designates
a factual condition, but a becoming i n which one is engaged. Becoming­
minoritarian is a goal, but a goal that concerns everyone, since everyone
enters into this goal and this becoming to the extent that each person con­
structs his/her variation around the despotic unity of measure, and es­
capes, one way or another, the system of power that made him/ her a part of
the ma:jority. According to this second sense, it is evident that the minority
is much more numerous than the majority. For example, according to the
first sense women are a mi nority, but i n the second sense there is a
becoming-woman of all, a becoming-woman that is a potentiality for all,
and women have to become-w oman no less than men themselves. This i s a
universal becoming-minoritarian. Here minori� designates the capacity for
becoming, while majori� designates the power or incapacity of a state, of a
:oiit uation. It is here that theater or art can spring up with a specific politi cal
!Unction, on condition that minority does not represent anything regional­
ist, but also nothing aristocratic, aesthetic, or mystical.
Theater will spring up as t hat which represents nothing, but which pre­
:oicnts and con stitutes a consciousness of minori ty, as becoming-universal,
operating alliances here or there as the case may be, following lines of trans­
formation that leap outside the theater and tak� another form or that recon-
 222 MINOR LANGUAGES AND NOMAD ART

vert themselves into theater i n order t o prepare a new leap. I t i s very much a
question of awareness, although it has nothing to do with a psychoanalytic
consciousness, nor with a Marxist or even a Brechtian political conscious­
ness. Consciousness, awareness, is a great capacity, but it is not made for
solutions or for interpretations. It is when consciousness has abandoned so­
lutions and interpretations that it conquers its light, its gestures, its sounds,
and its decisive transformation. Henry James writes: "She had finished by
coming to know the extent to which she could no longer interptet anything;
there were no more darknesses that would enable her to see clearly, there
remained nothing but a cruel light." The more one achieves this form of
minority consciousness, the less one feels alone. Light. One is a mass all to
oneself, "the mass of my atoms." And beneath the ambition of formulas,
there is the more m od est appreciation of what could be a revolutionary the­
ater, a simple, loving potentiality, a component for a new becoming of con­
sciousness.
Trans. Alan Orenstein
Pa rt Five

Politics
 26
On the Line

Whether we are individuals or groups, we are made up of lines and these

lines are very varied in nature. The first kind of line which forms us is
segmentary-ofrigid segmentarity (or rather there are already many lines
of this sort ) : family-profossion; job-holiday; family-and then school­
and then the army-and then the factory-and then retirement. And each
time, from one segment to the next, they speak to us, saying: "Now you're
not a baby any more"; and at school, "You 're not at home now" ; and in the
armyl "You're not at school now. " . . . In short, all kinds of clearly defined
segments, in all kinds of directions, which cut us up in all sense, packets of
segmentarized lines. At the same time, we have lines ofsegmentarity which
are much more supple, as it were molecular. It's not that they are more inti­
mate or personal-they run through societies and groups as much as indi­
viduals. They trace out little modifications, they make detours, they sketch
out rises and falls: but they are no less precise for all this, they even direct
irreversible processes. But rather than molar lines with segments, they are
molecular fluxes with thresholds or quanta. A threslwld is crossed, which does
not necessariry coincide with a segment efmore visible lines. Many things happen on
this second kind of line-becomings, micro-becomings, which don't even
have the same rhythm as our "history." This is why family histories, regis­
trations, commemorations, are so u npleasant, whilst our true changes take
 226 POLITICS

place elsewhere-another polit ics, another time, another individuation. A

profession is a rigid segment, but also what happens beneath it, the connec­
t ions, the attractions and rep ulsions, which d o not coincide with the seg­
ments, the forms of madness which are secret but which neverthe less relate
to the public au thorities: for example, being a teacher, or a j udge, a barris­
ter, an accountant, a cleaning lady? At the same time, again, there is a third_
kind of line, which is even more strange: as if something carried u s away,
across o ur segments, but also across our t hresholds, toward a destination
which is unknown, not for eseeable, not preexistent. This line is s imple, ab­
stract, and yet is the most complex of all, the most tortuous: it is the line of
gravity or velocity, the line of flight and o f the greatest gradient ( " th e line
that the ce nter of gravity must describe is cert ain ly very simple, and, so he
believed, s traight in the majority of cases . . . but, from another point of
view, this line has something exceedingly mysterious, for, according to him,
it is n o thing o t he r than the progre ssion o f t he s oul of the danc e r. . . "1 ) . This
line appears to arise [surgir] afterwards, to become detached from the two
others, ifindeed it succeeds in de taching its elf. For perhaps there are people
who do not have this line, who have only the two others, or who have only
one, who live on only one. Nevertheless, in another sense, this line has al­
ways been there, although it is the opposite o f a destiny: it d oes not have to
de tach itself from the others, rather it is the first, the others are derived from
it. In any case, the three lines are immanent, caught up in one another. We
have as many tangled lines as a hand. We are complicated in a d ifferent way
from a hand. What we call by different names-schizoanalysis, micropoli­
tics, p ragmatics, diagrammatism, rhizomatics, cartography-has no other
o bject t han the study of these lines, in gro ups or as ind iv iduals.
F i tzgerald explains, in a wonderful short story, that a life always goes at
several r hythms, at several speed s .2 Though Fitzgerald is a livin g d rama­
defining life as a d emolition p rocess-his text is s omber, but no less e x em­
plary for that, each sentence inspiring love. His genius is never so great as
when h e speaks ofhis loss of genius. Thus, h e says that for him there were at
first great s egments-rich-p oor, young-old, success-loss of succes s, health­
sickness, love-love's drying up, creativity-sterility-which were related to
social events ( e co no mic crisis, stock market crash, rise of the cinema which
replaced the novel, formation of fascism, all sorts of things which could be
said to be heterogeneous, but whose segments respond to and precipitate
each other). Fitzgerald calls these "cuts" [coupures] ; each segment marks or
can mark a cut. This is a typ e ofline, the segmente d line, which concerns us
all at a particular time, at a particular place. Whether it heads towards d e ­
gradation or success d o e s n o t alter much (on this m o d e l a s uccessful l ife is
not the best, the American Dream is as much in the s treet sweeper s tarting
 On the Line 22 7

out to become a multimillionaire as in the multimillionaire himself, the op­

posite; the same segments) . And Fitzgerald says something else, at the same
time: there are lines ofcrack [filure] , which do not coincide with the lines of
great segmentary cuts. This time we might say that a plate cracks . But it is
rather when everything is going well, or everything goes better on the other
line, that the crack happens on this new line-secret, imperceptible, mark­
ing a threshold of lowered resistance, or the rise of a threshold of exigency:
you can no longer stand what you put up with before, even yesterday; the
distribution of desires has changed in us, our relationships of speed and
slowness have been modified, a new type of anxiety comes upon us, but also
a new serenity. Fluxes have moved, it is when your health is at its best, your
riches most assured, your talent most manifest, that the little cracking
which will move the line obliquely starts to happen. Or the opposite: things
go better for you when everything cracks on the other line, producing im­
mense relief. Not being able to bear something any longer can be a progres­
sion, but it can also be an old man's fear, or the development ofa paranoia.
It can be a political or affective appraisal that is perfectly correct. We do not
change, we do not age, in the same way-from one line to the other. Nev­
ertheless, the supple line is not more personal, more intimate. Microcracks
are also collective, no less than macrocuts are personal. And then,
Fitzgerald speaks of yet another line, a third, which he calls rupture. It might
be thought that nothing has changed, and nevertheless everything has
changed. Certainly it is not the great segments, changes, or even journeys
that produce this line; but neither is it the most secret mutations, the mobile
and fluent thresholds, although these approximate more closely to it. It
might be said rather than an "absolute" threshold has been reached. There
are no longer secrets. You have become like everyone, but in fact you have
turned the "everyone" into a becoming. You have become imperceptible,
clandestine. You have undergone a curious stationary journey. Despite the
different• tones, it is a little like the way in which Kierkegaard describes the
knight of the faith, ONLY MOVEMENTS CONCERN ME:3 the knight
no longer has segments ofresignation, but neither does he have the supple­
m;ss of a poet or of a dancer, he does not make himselfobvious, he resembles
rather a bourgeois, a taxcollector, a tradesman, he dances with so much
precision that they say that he is only walking or even staying st ill, he bl.e nds
in to the wall but the wall has become alive, he is painted gray on gray, or like
the Pink Panther he has painted the world in his own color, he has acquired
something invulnerable, and he knows that by loving, even by loving and
for loving, one must be self-contained, abandon love and the ego . . . (it is
curious that Lawrence has written similar passages). There is now only an
· abstract line, a pure movement which is difficult to discover, he never
 228 POLITICS

begins, h e takes things b y the middle, h e is always i n the middle-in the

middle of two other lines? "Only movements concern me. "
A cartography i s suggested today b y Deligny when h e follows the course
of autistic children: the lines of custom, and also the supple lines where the
child produces a loop, finds something, claps his hands, hums a ritornello,
retraces his steps, and then the "lines of wandering" mixed up in the two
others. 4 All these lines are tangled. Deligny produces a geoanalysis, an
analysis o f l ines which takes his path far from psychoanalysis, and which
relates not only to autistic children, but to all children, to all adults (watch
someone walking down the street and see what little inventions he intro­
duces into it, ifhe is not too caught up in his rigid segmentarity, what little
inventions he puts there), and not only their walk, but their gestures, their
affects, their language, their style. First ofall, we should give a more precise
status to the three lines. For the molar lines of rigid segmentarity, we can
indicate a certain number of characteristics which explain their assem­
blage, or rather their functioning in the assemblages of which they form
part (and there is no assemblage which does not include them). Here there­
fore are the approximate characteristics of the fir st kind ofline.
1 . Segments depend on binary machines which can be very varied if
need be. Binary machines of social classes; ofsexes, man-woman; of ages,
child-adult; of races, black-white; of sectors, public-private; of subjec­
tivations, ours-not ours. These binary machines are all the more com­
plex for cutting across each other, or colliding against each other, con­
fronting each other, and they cut us up in all sorts of directions. And they
are not roughly dualistic, they are rather dichotomic: they can operate
diachronically (if you are neither a nor b, then you are c: dualism has
shifted, and no longer relates to simultaneous elements to choose be­
tween, but successive choices; if you are neither black nor white, you are
a half-breed; if you are neither man nor woman, you are a transvestite:
each time the machine with binary elements will produce binary choices
between elements which are not present at the first cutting-up).
2. Segments also imply devices of power, which vary greatly among

themselves, each fixing the code and the territory of the corresponding
segment. These are the devices which have been analyzed so profoundly
by Foucault, who refused to see in them the simple emanations of a pre­
existing State apparatus. Each device of power is a code-territory com­
plex (do not approach my territory, it is I who give the orders here . . . ).

M. de Charlus collapses at Mme Verdurin's, because he has ventured

beyond his own territory and his code no longer works. The segmentarity
of adj acent offices in Kafka. It is by discovering this segmentarity and
this heterogeneity of modern powers that Foucault was able to break
 On the Line :2 2 9

with the hollow abstractions of the State and of "the" law and renew all
the assumptions of political analysis. It is not that the apparatus of the
State has no meaning: it has itselfa very special function, inasmuch as it
overcodes all the segments, both those that it takes on itself at a given
moment and those that it leaves outside itself. Or rather the apparatus of
the S tate is a concrete assemblage which realizes the machine of over­
coding of a society. This machine in its turn is thus not the State it self, it is
the abstract machine which organizes the dominant u tterances and the
established order of a society, the dominant languages and knowledge,
conformist actions and feelings, the segments which prevail over the oth­
ers. The abstract machine of overcoding ensures the homogenization of
different segments, their convertibility, their translatability, it regulates
the passages from one side to the other, and the prevailing force under
which this takes place. It does not depend on the State, but its effective­
ness depends on the State as the assemblage w hich realizes it in a social
.
field (for example, d ifferent monetary segments, different kinds ofmoney
have rules of convertibility, between themselves and with goods, which
refer to a central bank as State apparatus) . Greek geometry functioned as
an abstract machine which organized the social space, in the conditions
of the concrete assemblage of power of the city. We should ask today
which are the abstract machines of overcoding, which are exercised as a
result of the forms of the modern State. One can even conceive of"forms
of knowledge" which make their offers of service to the State, proposing
themselves for its realization, claiming to provide the best machines for
the tasks or the aims of the State: today informatics? But also the human
sciences? There are no sciences of the State but there are abstract ma­
chines which have relationships ofinterdependence with the State. This
is why, on the line ofrigid segmentarity, one must distinguish the devices of
power which code the diverse segments, the abstract machine which over­
codes them and regulates their relationships and the apparatus ofthe State
which realizes this machine.
3. Finally, all rigid segmentarity, all the lines ofrigid segmentarity, en­
.close a certain plane, which concerns both forms and their development,
subjects and their formation. Aplaneoforgani{ation which always has at its
disposal a supplementary dimension (overcoding). The edu cation of the
subject and the harmonization of the form have constantly haunted our
cult ure, inspired the segmentations, the planifications, the binary ma­
chines which cut them and the abstract machines which cut them again.
As Pierre Fleutiaux says, when an outline begins to tremble, when a seg­
ment wavers, we call the terrible Lunette to cut things up, the laser which
puts forms in order and subjects in their place.5
 2JO POLITICS

The status o fthe other type oflines seems t o b e completely different. The
segments here are not the same, proceeding by thresholds, constituting be­
comings, blocs of becoming, marking continuums of intensity, combina­
tions of fluxes. The abstract machines here are not the same, they are muta­
ting and not overcoding, marking their mutations at each threshold and
each combination. The plane is not the same plane of consistence or of imma­
nence, which tears from forms particles between which there are now only
relationships of speed and slowness, and tears from subjects affects which
now only carry out individuations by " haecceity. " The binary machines no
longer engage with this real, not because the dominant segment would
change (a particular class, a particular sex . . . ), nor because mixtures like
bisexuality or class-mixing would be imposed: on the contrary, because the
molecular lines make fluxes of deterritorialization shoot between the seg­
ments, fluxes which no longer belong to one or to the other, but which con­
stitute an asymmetrical becoming of the two, molecular sexuality which is
no longer that of a man or of a woman, molecular masses which no longer
have the outline of a class, molecular races like little lines which no longer
respond to the great molar oppositions. It is certainly no longer a matter ofa
synthesis of the two, of a synthesis of 1 and 2, but of a third which always
comes from elsewhere and disturbs the binarity of the two, not so much in­
serting itselfin their opposition as in their complementarity. It is not a mat­
ter ofadding a new segment onto the preceding segments on the line (a third
sex, a third class, a third age), but of tracing another line in the middle ofthe
segmentary line, in the middle of the segments, which carries them off ac­
cording to the variable speeds and slownesses in a movement of flight or of
flux. To continue the use of geographical terms: imagine that between the
J%st and the East a certain segmentarity is introduced, opposed in a binary
machine, arranged in the State apparatuses, overcoded by an abstract ma­
chine as the sketch of a world order. It is then from North to South that the
destabilization takes place, as Giscard d'Estaing said gloomily, and a
stream erodes a path, even ifit is a shallow stream, which brings everything
into play and diverts the plane of organization. A Corsican here, elsewhere
a Palestinian, a plane hijacker, a tribal upsurge, a feminist movement, a
Green ecologist, a Russian dissident-there will always be someone to rise
up to the South. I magine the Greeks and the Trojans as two opposed seg­
ments, face to face: but look, the Amazons arrive, they begin by overthrow­
ing the Trojans, so that the Greeks cry, "The Amazons are with us," but.
they turn against the Greeks, attacking them from behind with the violence
of a torrent. This is how Kleist's Penthesilea begins. The great ruptures, the
great oppositions, are always negotiable; but not the little crack, the imper•
ceptible ruptures which come from the South. We say South without attach·
 On l� Li• 2J I

ing any importance to this. We talk ofthe South in order to mark a direction
different from that of the line of segments. But everyone has his South-it
doesn't matter where it is-that is, his line of slope or flight. Nations,
classes, sexes have their South. Godard: what counts is not merely the two
opposed camps on the great line where they confront each other, but also
the frontier, through which eve�ything passes and shoots on a broken mo­
lecular line of a different orientation. May 1 968 was an explosion of such a
molecular line, an irruption of the Amazons, a frontier which traced its un­
expected line, drawing along the segments like torn-off blocs which have
lost their bearings.
We may be criticized for not escaping from dualism, with two kinds of
lines, which are cut up, planified, machined, differently. But what defines
dualism is not the number of terms, any more than one escapes from dual­
ism by adding other terms ( x 2 ) . You only escape dualisms effectively by
shifting them like a foad, and when you find between the 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, precisely, a multiplicity. Now, any assemblage nec­
essarily includes lines ofrigid and binary segmentarity, no less than molecu­
lar lines, or lines of border, of flight or slope. The devices of power d o not
seem to us to be exactly constitutive of assemblages, but to form part of
them in one dimension on which the whole assemblage can topple over or
turn back on itself. But, in fact, insofar as dualisms belong to this dimen­
sion, there is another dimension of the assemblage which does not form a
dualism with this latter . There is no dualism between abstract overcoding
machines and abstract machines of mutation: the latter find themselves seg­
mentarized, organized, overcoded by the others, at the same time as they
undermine them; both work within each other at the heart of the assem­
blage. In the same way there is no dualism between the two planes of tran­
scendent o rganization and immanent consistence: indeed it is from the
forms and subjects of the first plane that the second constantly tears the
particles between which there are no longer relationships ofspeed and slow­
ness, and it is also on the plane of immanence that the other arises, working
in it to block movements, fix affects, organize forms and subjects. The speed
indicators presuppose forms that they dissolve, no less than the organiza­
t ions presuppose the material in fosion which they put in order. We do not
therefore speak ofa dualism between two kinds of "things , " but ofa multi­
plicity of dimensions, oflines and directions in the heart of an assemblage.
' l o the question "How can desire desire its own repression, how can it desire
i ' s slavery?" we reply that the powers which crush desire, or which subju­
g a te it, themselves already form part ofassemblages ofdesire: it is sufficient
 2J 2 POLITICS

fo r desire t o follow this particular line, for i t t o find itself caught, like a boat,
under this particular wind. There is no desire.for revolution, as there is no
desire.for power, desire to oppress or to be oppressed; but revolution, oppres­
sion, power, etc., are the actual component lines of a given assemblage. It is
not that these lines are preexistent; they are traced out, they are formed,
immanent to each other, mixed up in each other, at the same time as the
assemblage of desire is formed, with its machines tangled up and its planes
intersecting. We don't know in advance which one will fimction as line of
gradient, or in what form it will be barred. This is true of a musical assem­
blage, for example: with its codes and territorialities, its constraints and it1
apparatuses of power, its dichotomized measures, its melodic and harmonic
forms which are developed, its transcendent plane of organization, but also
with its transformers of speed between sound molecules, its "nonpulsed
time," its proliferations and dissolutions, its child-becomings, woman­
becomings, animal-becomings, its immanent plane of consistence. The
long-term role of the power of the Church, in musical assemblages, and
what the musicians succeed in making pass into this, or into the middle.
This is true of all assembla ges.
What must be compared in each case are the movements ofdeterritorial­
ization and the processes of reterritorialization which appear in an assem­
blage. But what do they mean, these words which Felix invents to make
them into variable coefficients? We could go back to the commonplaces of
the evolution of humanity: man, deterritorialh:.ed animal. When they say to us
that the hominoid removed its front paws from the earth and that the hand
is at first locomotor, then prehensile, these are thresholds or the quanta of
deterritorialization, but each time with a complementary reterritorializa­
tion: the locomotor hand as the deterritorialized paw is reterritorialized on
the branches which it uses to pass from tree to tree; the prehensile hand as
deterritorialized locomotion is reterritorialized on the torn-off, borrowed
elements called tools that it will brandish or propel. But the "stick" tool is
itself a deterritorialized branch; and the great inventions of man imply a
passage to the steppe as deterritorialized forest; at the same time man is
reterritorialized on the steppe. The breast is said to be a mammary gland
deterritorialized by vertical stature; and the mouth a deterritorialized ani­
mal mouth, by the turning-up of the mucous membranes to the exterior: but
a correlative reterritorialization is carried out of the lips onto the breast and
conversely, so that the bodies and the environments are traversed by very
different speeds of deterritorialization, by differential speeds, whose com­
plementarities form continuums of intensity, but also give rise to processes
ofreterritorialization. At the limit, it is the earth itself, the deterritorialized
( " the desert grows . . . " ) , and it is the nomad, the man of earth, the man of
 On the Line 233

deterritorialization -although he is also the one who does not move, who
remains attached to the environment, desert, or steppe. But it is in concrete
social fields, at specific moments, that the comparative movements of deter­
ritorialization, the continuums of intensity and the combinations of flux
that they form must be studied. We take some examples from around the
eleventh century: the movement offlight of monetary masses; the great de­
territorialization of peasant masses under the pressure of the latest inva­
sions and the increased demands of the lords; the deterritorialization of the
masses of the nobility, which takes forms as varied as the C rusades, settle­
ment in towns, the new types of exploitation of the earth (renting or wage
labor); the new forms of towns, whose installations become less and less ter­
ritorial; the deterritorialization of the Church, with the dispossession of its
lands, its "peace of God ," its organization ofC rusades; the deterritorializa­
tion of woman with chivalric love and then courtly love. The C rusades (in­
cluding the Children's Crusade) may appear as a threshold of combination
ofall these movements. One might say in a certain sense that what is prima­
ry in a society are the lines, the movements of flight. For, far from being a
night from the social, far from being utopian or even ideological, these con­
stitute the social field, trace out its gradation and its boundaries, the whole
of its becoming. A Marxist can be quick ly recognized when he says that a
society contradicts itself, is defined by its contradictions, and in particular
by its class contradictions. We would rather say that, in a society, everything
flees and that a society is defined by its lines of flight which affect masses of
all kinds (here again, "mass" is a molecular notion). A society, but also a
collective assemblage, is defined first by its points of deterritorialization, its
fluxes of deterritorialization . The great geographical adventures of history
are lines of flight, that is, long expeditions on foot, on horseback or by boat:
that of the Hebrews in the desert, that ofGenseric the Vandal crossing the
Mediterranean, that of the nomads across the steppe, the long march of the
Chinese-it is always on a line ofO.ight that we create, not, indeed, because
we imagine that we are dreaming but, on the contrary, because we trace out
the real on it, we compose there a plane of consistence. To flee, but in fleeing
to seek a weapon.
This primacy oflines offlight must not be understood chronologically, or
in the sense of an eternal generality. It is rather the fact and the right of the
untimely: a time which is not pulsed, a haecceity like a wind which blows
up, a midn ight, a midday. For reterritorializations happen at the same time:
monetary ones on new circuits; rural ones on new modes of exploitation;
urban ones on new fonctions, etc. To the extent that an accumulation of all
these reterritorializations takes place, a "class" then emerges which benefits
particularly from it, capable of homogenizing it and overcoding all its seg-
 2J4 POLITICS

ments. A t the limit i t would b e necessary to distinguish the movements o(

masses of all kinds, with their respective coeflicients of speed, and the stabil­
izations of classes, with their segments distributed in the reterritorialization
of the whole-the same thing acting as mass and as class, but on two
different lines which are entangled, with contours which do not coincide.
One is then better able to understand why we sometimes say that there are
at least three different lines, sometimes only two, sometimes only one which
is very muddled. Sometimes three lines because the line of flight or rupture
combines all the movements of deterritorialization, precipitates their quan·
ta, tears from them the accelerated particles which come into contact with
one another, carries them onto a plane of consistence or a mutating ma·
chine; and then a second, molecular line where the deterritorializations are
merely relative, always compensated by reterritorializations which impose
on them so many loops, detours, of equilibrium and stabilization; finally the
molar line with clearly determined segments, where the reterritorializa·
tions accu�1ula te to form a plane of organization and pass into an overcod­
ing machine. Three lines, one of which would be like the nomadic line, an·
other migrant and the third sedentary (the migrant is not at all the same as
the nomadic). Or else there would be only two lines, because the molecular
line would appear only to be oscillating between the two extremes, some·
times carried along by the combination of fluxes of deterritorialization,
sometimes brought back to the accumulation of reterritorializations (the
migrant sometimes allies with the nomad, sometimes is a mercenary or the
federate of an empire: the Ostrogoths and Visigoths). Or else there is only
one line, the primary line of flight, of border or frontier, which is relativized
in the second line, which allows itself to be stopped or cut in the third. But
even then it may be convenient to present THE iine as being born from the
explosion of the two others. Nothing is more complicated than the line or
the lines-it is that w hich Melville speaks of, uniting the boats in their orga­
nized segmentarity, C aptain Ahab in his animal-and-molecular-becoming,
the white whale in its crazy flight. Let us go back to the regimes of signs
about which we spoke earlier: how the line offlight is barred under a despot­
ic regime, affected by a negative sign; how it finds in the Hebrews' regime a
positive but relative value, cut up into successive processes . . . . These were
two cases only, briefly outlined, and there are many others: each time it is
the essential element of politics. Politics is active experimentation, since we
do not know in advance which way a line is going to turn. Draw the line,
says the accountant: but one can in fact draw it anywhere .
 27
Capitalism

The subj ectifi cations, conj unctions, and appropriations do not prevent the
decoded flows from continuing to flow, and from ceaselessly engendering
new flows that escape (we saw this, for example, at the level ofa micropoli­
tics of the Middle Ages). This is where there is an ambiguity in these appa­
ratuses : they can only function with decoded flows, and yet they do not let
them stream together; they perform topical conj unctions that stand as so
many knots or recodings. This accounts for the historians' impression that
capitalism "could have" developed beginning at a certain moment, in
China, in Rome, in Byzantium, in the Middle Ages, that the conditions for
it existed but were not effectuated or even capable of being effectuated. The
situation is that the pressure of the flows draws capitalism in negative out­
line, but for it to be realized there must be a whole integral ofdecoded.flows, a
whole generali{ed conjunction that overspills and overturns the preceding ap­
paratuses. And in fact when Marx sets about defining capitalism, he begins
by invoking the advent ofa single unqualified and global subjectivity, which
capitalizes all of the processes ofsubj ectification, "all activities without dis­
tinction" : "productive activity in general," "the sole subjective essence of
wealth . . . . " And this single subject now expresses itselfin an object in gen­
eral, no longer in this or that qualitative state: "Along with the abstract uni­
versality of wealth-creating activity we have now the universality of the ob-
 236 POLITICS

ject defined a s wealth, viz. the product i n general, o r labor i n general, but as
past, materialized labor. " • Circulation constitutes capital as a subjectivity
commensurate with society in its entirety. But this new social subjectivity
can form only to the extent that the decoded flows overspill their conjunc­
tions and attain a level of decoding t h a t the State apparatuses are no longer
able to reclaim: on the one kand, the flow of labor must no longer be deter­
mined as slavery or serfdom but must become naked and free labor; and on
the other hand, wealth must no longer be determined as money dealing, mer­
chant's or landed wealth, but must become pure homogeneous and inde­
pendent capital. And doubtless, these two becomings at least (for other
flows also converge) introduce many contingencies and many different fac­
tors on each of the lines. But it is their abstract conjunction in a single stroke
that constitutes capitalism, providing a universal subject and object in gen­
eral for one another. C apitalism forms when the fl o w of unqualified wealth
encounters the flow of unqualified labor and conjugates with it. 2 This is
what the preceding conjunctions, which were still topical or qualitative,
had always inh i bited (the two principal inhibitors were the feudal organiza­
tion of the countryside and the corporative organization of the towns). This
amounts to saying that capitalism forms with a genera/, axiomatic ef decoded
flows. "Capital is a right, or, to be more precise, a relation ofproduction that
is manifested as a right, and as such it is independent of the concrete form
that it cloaks at each moment ofits productive fonction. "3 Private property
no longer expresses the bond of personal dependence but the independence
of a s u bject that now constitutes the sole bond. This makes for an important
difference in the evolution of private property: private property in itself re­
lates to rights, instead of the law relating it to the land, things, or people
{this raises in particular the famous question of the elimination of ground
rent in capitalism). A new threshold efdeterritoria/,i�ation. A n d when capital be­
comes an active right in this way, the entire historical figure of the law
changes. The law ceases to be the overcoding of customs, as it was in the
archaic empire; it is no longer a set of topics, as it ·was in the evolved States,
the autonomous cities, and the feudal systems; it increasingly assumes the
direct form and immediate characteristics of an axiomatic, as evidenced in
our civil "code."•
When the flows reach this capitalist threshold of decoding and deter­
ritorialization ( naked labor, independent capital), it seems that there is no
longer a need for a State, for distinct j uridical and political domination, in
order to ensure appropriation, which has become directly economic. The
economy constitutes a worldwide axiomatic, a " u niversal cosmopolitan en·
ergy which overflows every restriction and bond," 5 a mobile and convertible
substance "such as the total value of annual production. " Today we can de·
 Capitalism 2J 7

pict an enormous, so-called stateless, monetary maa1 that clrcul1l"

through foreign exchange and across borders, eluding control by the 811111,
forming a multinational ecumenical organization, constituting • de flC!lD
supranational power untouched by governmental decisions. 6 But whatever
dimensions or quantities this may have assumed today, capitalism ha1 from
the beginning mobilized a force of deterritorialization infinitely surpassing
the deterritorialization proper to the State. For since Paleolithic and Neo­
lithic times, the State has been deterritorializing to the extent that it makes
the earth an object of its higher unity, a forced aggregate of coexistence, in­
stead of the free play of territories among themselves and with the lineages.
But this is precisely the sense in which the State is termed " territorial. "
Capitalism, o n the other hand, i s not at all territorial, even in its beginnings:
its power ofd � territorialization consists in taking as its object, not the earth,
but "materialized labor," the commodity. And private property is no longer
ownership of the land or the soil, nor even of the means of production as
such, but of convertible abstract rights. 7 That is why capitalism marks a
mutation in worldwide or ecumenical organizations, which now take on a
consistency of their own: the worldwide axiomatic, instead ofresulting from
heterogeneous social formations and their relations, for the most part
distributes these formations, determines their relations, while organizing
an international division of labor. From all these standpoints, it could be
said that capitalism develops an economic order that could do without the
State. And in fact capitalism is not short on war cries against the State, not
only in the name of the market, but by virtue of its superior deterritorializa­
tion.
This however, is only one very partial aspect of capital. If it is true that
we are not using the word axiomatic as a simple metaphor, we must review
what distinguishes an axiomatic from all manner of codes, overcodings, and
recordings: the axiomatic deals directly with purely functional elements
and relations whose nature is not specified, and which are immediately re­
alized in highly varied domains simultaneously; codes, on the other hand,
are relative to those domains and express specific relations between
qualified elements that cannot be subsumed by a higher formal unity (over­
coding) except by transcendence and in an indirect fashion. The immanent
axiomatic finds in the domains it moves through so many models, termed
models efreali(.ation. It could similarly be said that capital as right, as a "qual­
itatively homogeneous and quantitatively commensurable element," is re­
alized in sectors and means of production (or that "unified capital" is real­
ized in " differentiated capital"). However, the different sectors are not alone
in serving as models of realization-the States do too. Each of them groups
together and combines several sectors, according to its resources, popula-
 2J 8 PO LITICS

tion, wealth, industrial capacity, etc. Thus the States, in capitalism, are not
canceled out but change form and take on a new meaning: models of real­
ization for a worldwide axiomatic that exceeds them. But to exceed is not at
all the same thing as doing without. We have already seen that capitalism
proceeds by way of the State-form rather than the town-form; the basis for
the fundamental mechanisms described by Marx (the colonial regime, the
public debt, the modern tax system and indirect taxation, industrial protec·
tionism, trade wars) may be laid in the towns, but the towns function as
mechanisms of accumulation, acceleration, and concentration only to the
extent they are appropriated by States. Recent events tend to confirm this
principle from another angle. For example, NASA appeared ready to mobi­
lize considerable capital for in terplanetary exploration, as though capital­
ism were riding a vector taking it to the moon; but following the USSR,
which conceived of extraterrestrial space as a belt that should circle the
earth taken as the "obj ect," the American government cut off funds for ex­
ploration and returned capital in this case to a more centered model. It is
thus proper to State deterritorialization to moderate the superior deter­
ritorialization of capital and to provide the latter with compensatory reter­
ritorializations. More generally, this extreme example aside, we must take
into account a "materialist" determination of the modern State or nation­
state: a group of producers in which labor and capital circulate freely, in
other words, in which the homogeneity and competition ofcapital is dfectu­
ated, in principle without external obstacles. In order to be dfectuated,
capitalism has always required there to be a new force and a new law of
States, on the level of the flow oflabor as on the level of the flow ofindepen­
dent capital.
So States are not at all transcendent paradigms of an overcoding but im­
manent models of realization for an axiomatic of decoded flow s. Once
again, our use of the word axiomatic is far from a metaphor; we find literally
the same theoretical problems that are posed by the models in an axiomatic
repeated in relation to the State. For models of realization, though varied,
are supposed to be isomorphic with regard to the axiomatic they effectuate;
however, this isomorphy, concrete variations considered, accommodates it­
self to the greatest of formal differences. Moreover, a single axiomatic seems
capable of encompassing polymorphic models, not only when it is not yet
"saturated," but with those models as integral elements of its saturation.8
These "problems become singularly political when we think of modern
States.
1 . Are not all modern States isomorphic in relation to the capitalist

axiomatic, to the point that the difference between democratic, total­

itarian, liberal, and tyrannical States depends only on concrete vari·
 Capitalism 2 J9

ables, and on the worldwide distribution of those variables, which al­

ways und ergo eventual readjustments? Even the so-called socialist
States are isomorphic, to the extent that there is on?J one world market, the
capitalist one.
2 . Conversely, does not the world capitalist axiomatic tolerate a real
polymorphy, or even a heteromorphy, of models, and for two reasons? On
the one hand, capital as a general relation of production can very easily
integrate concrete sectors or modes of production that are noncapitalist.
But on the other hand, and this is the main point, the bureaucratic so­
cialist States can themselves develop different modes of production that
only conjugate with capitalism to form a set whose "power" exceeds that
of the axiomatic itself (it will be necessary to try to determine the nature
of this power, why we so often think ofit in apocalyptic t erms, what con­
Oicts it spawns, what slim chances it leaves us . . . )
.

.3· A typology of modern States is thus coupled with a metaeconomics:

it would be inaccurate to treat all States as "interchangeable" (even iso­
morphy does not have that consequence), but it would be no less inaccu­
rate to privilege a certain form of the State (forgetting that polymorphy
establishes strict complementarities between the Western democracies
and the colonial or neocolonial tyrannies that they install or support in
other regions) , or to equate the bureaucratic socialist States with the to­
talitarian capitalist States (neglecting the fact that the axiomatic can en­
compass a real heteromorphy from which the higher power of the aggre­
gate derives, even ifit is for the worse).
What is called a nation-state, in the most diverse forms, is precisely the
State as a model of realization. And the birth of nations implies many ar­
tifices: Not only are they constituted in an active struggle against the impe­
rial or evolved systems, the feudal systems, and the autonomous cities, but
they crush their own "minorities," in other words, minoritarian phenomena
that could be termed "nationalitarian, " which work from within and ifneed
be turn to the old codes to find a greater degree of freedom. The constituents
of the nation are a land and a people: the "natal," which is not necessarily
innate, and the "popular," which is not necessarily pregiven. The problem
of the nation is aggravated in the two extreme cases of a land without a peo­
ple and a people without a land. How can a people and a land be made, in
other words, a nation-a refrain? The coldest and bloodiest means vie with
upsurges ofromanticism. The axiomatic is complex, and is not without pas­
sions. The natal or the land, as we have seen elsewhere, implies a certain
deterritorialization of the territories (community land, imperial provinces,
seigneurial domains, etc. ) , and the people, a decoding of the population.
The nation is constituted on the b�is of these flows and is inseparable from
 24 0 POLITICS

the modern State that gives consistency t o the corresponding land and peo­
ple. It is the flow ofnaked labor that makes the people, just as it is the flow of
capital that makes the land and its industrial base. In short, the nation i s
t h e very operation o fa collective subjectification, t o which t h e modern State
corresponds as a process of subj ection. It is in the form of the nation-state,
with all its possible variations, that the State becomes the model ofrealiza­
tion for the capitalist axiomatic. This is not at all to say that nations are
appearances or ideological phenomena; on the contrary, they are the pas­
sional and living forms in which the qualitative homogeneity and the quan­
titative competition of abstract capital are first realized.
We distinguish machinic enslavemenJ and social subjection as two separate
concepts. There is enslavement when human beings themselves are constit­
uent pieces of a machine that they compose among themselves and with
other thin g s (animals, tools}, under the control and direction of a higher
unity. But there is subjection when the higher unity constitutes the human
being as a subject linked to a now exterior object, which can be an animal, a
tool, or even a machine. The human being is no longer a component of the
machine but a worker, a user. He or she is subjected to the machine and no
longer enslaved by the machine. This is not to say that the second regime is
more human. But the first regime does seem to have a special relation to the
archaic imperial formation: human beings are not subj ects but pieces of a
machine that overcodes the aggregate (this has been called "generalized
slavery," as opposed to the private slavery of antiquity, or feudal serfdom).
We believe that Lewis Mumford is right in designating the archaic empires
megamachines, and in pointing out that, once again, it is not a question ofa
metaphor: " If a machine can be defined more or less in accord with the
classic definition ofReuleaux, as a combination of resistant parts, each spe­
cialized in function, operating under human control to transmit motion and
to perform work, then the human machine was a real machine. "9 Of course, i t
was the modern State and capitalism that brought the triumph ofmachines,
in particular of motorized machines (whereas tpe archaic State had simple
machines at best); but what we are referring to now are technical machines,
which are definable extrinsically. One is not enslaved by the technical ma­
chine but rather subjected to it. I t would appear, then, that the modem
State, through technological development, has substituted an increasingly
powerful social subjection for machinic enslavement. Ancient slavery and
feudal serfdom were already procedures of subjection. But the naked or
"free" worker of capitalism takes subj ection to its most radical expression,
since the process of subjectification no longer even enter into partial con­
j unctions that interrupt the flow. In effect, capital acts as the point ofsubj ec­
tification that constitutes all human beings as subjects; but some, the
 Capitalism 241

"capitalists, " are subj ects o f enunciation that form the private subj ectivity
of capital, while the others, the "proletarians," are subjects of the state­
ment, subj ected to the technical machines in which constant capital is effec­
tuated. The wage regime can therefore take the subjection ofhuman beings
to an unprecedented point, and exhibit a singular cruelty, yet still be justi­
fied in its humanist cry: No, human beings are not machines, we don't treat
them like machines, we certainly don't confose variable capital and con­
stant capital. . . .
Capitalism arises as a worldwide enterprise of subjectification by con­
stituting an axiomatic ofdecoded flows. Social subjection, as the correlate of
subjectific ation, appears much more in the axiomatic's models of realiza­
tion than in the axiomatic itself. It is within the framework of the nation­
state, or ofnational subj ectivities, that processes of subjectification and the
corresponding subjections are manifested. The axiomatic itself, of which
the States are models of realization, restores or reinvents, in new and now
technical forms, an entire system of machinic enslavement. This is no way
represents a return to the imperial machine since we are now in the imma­
nence of an axiomatic, and not under the transcendence of a formal unity.
But it is the reinvention ofa machine of which human beings are constituent
parts, instead of subjected workers or users. If motorized machines con­
stituted the second age of the technical machine, cybernetic and informa­
tional machines form a third age that reconstructs a generalized regime of
subjection : recurrent and reversible " humans-machines systems" replace
the old nonrecurrent and nonreversible relations of subjection between the
two elements; the relation between human and machine is based on inter­
nal, mu tual communication, and no longer on usage or action . 1 0 In the
organic composition of capital, variable capital defines a regime of subj ec­
tion of the worker (human surplus value), the principal framework of which
is the business or factory. But with automation comes a progressive increase
in the proportion of constant capital; we then see a new kind of enslavement:
1tt the same time the work regime changes, surplus value becomes machinic,
and the framework expands to all of society. It cou ld also be said that a
•mall amount of subj ectifi cation took us away from machinic enslavement,
hut a large amount brings us back to it. Attention has recently been focused
on the fact that modern power is not at all reducible to the classical alterna­
tive "repression or ideology" but implies processes of normalization, modu­
l1ttion, modeling, and information that bear on language, perception, de­
•ire, movement, etc., and which proceed by way ofmicroassemblages. This
llKgregate includes both subjection and enslavement taken to extremes, as
lwo simu ltaneous parts that constantly reinforce and nourish each other.
l•'or example, one is subjected to.TV insofar as one uses and consumes it, i n
 242 POLITICS

the very particular situation of a subject of the statement that more or less
mistakes itself for a subject of enunciation ("you, dear television viewers,
who make TV what it is . . . " ) ; the technical machine is the medium be­
tween two subjects. But one is enslaved by TV as a human machine insofar
as the television viewers are no longer consumers or users, nor even subjects
who supposedly "make" it, but intrinsic component pieces, "input" and
"output," feedback or recurrences that are no longer connected to the ma­
chine in such a way as to produce or use it. In machinic enslavement, there
is nothing but transformations and exchanges of information, some of
which are mechanical, others human. 1 1 The term "subjection," of course,
should not be confined to the national aspect, with enslavement seen as in­
ternational or worldwide. For information technology is also the property of
the States that set themselves up as humans-machines systems. But this is
so precisely to the extent that the two aspects, the axiomatic and the models
of realization, constantly cross over into each other and are themselves in
communication. Social subj ection proportions itselfto the model ofrealiza­
tion, just as machinic enslavement expands to meet the dimensions of the
axiomatic that is effectuated in the model. We have the privilege ofundergo­
ing the two operations simultaneously, in relation to the same things and
the same events. Rather than stages, subjection and enslavement constitute
two coexistent poles.
We may return to the different forms of the State, from the standpoint of a
universal history. We distinguish three major forms: ( 1 ) imperial archaic
States, which are paradigms and constitute a machine of enslavement by
overcoding already-coded flows ( these States have little diversity, due to a
certain formal immutability that applies to all of them); ( 2 ) extremely
diverse States- evolved empires, autonomous cities, feudal systems,
monarchies-which proceed instead by subjectification and subj ection,
and constitute qualified or topical conj unctions of decoded flows; ( 3) the
modern nation-states, which take decoding even further and are models of
realization for an axiomatic or a general conjugation of flows (these States
combine social subj ection and the new machinic enslavement, and their
very diversity is a fonction ofisomorphy, of the eventual heteromorphy or
polymorphy of the models in relation to the axiomatic).
There are, of course, all kinds of external circumstances that mark pro­
found breaks between these types of States, and above all submit the archa­
ic empires to utter oblivion, a shrouding lifted only by archaeology. The em­
pires disappeared suddenly, as though in an instantaneous catastrophe. As
in the Dorian invasion, a war-machine looms up and bears down from with­
out, killing memory. Yet things proceed quite differently on the inside,
where all the States resonate together, appropriate armies for themselves,
 Capitalism 24 J

and exhibit a unity of composition in spite of their differences in organiza­

tion and development. It is evident that all decoded flows, ofwhatever kind,
are prone to forming a war-machine directed against the State. But every­
thing changes depending on whether these flows connect up with a war­
machine or, on the contrary, enter into conj u nctions or a general conj uga­
tion that appropriates them for the State. From this standpoint, the modern
States have a kind oftransspatiotemporal unity with the archaic State. The
internal correlation between ( r ) and ( 2 ) appears most clearly in the fact
that the fragmented forms of the Aegean world presuppose the great impe­
rial form of the Orient and fi nd in it a stock or agricultural surplu s, which
they consequently have no need to produce or accumulate for themselves.
And to the extent that the States of the second age are nevertheless obliged
to reconstitute a stock, if only because of external circumstances-what
State can do without one?-in so doing they always reactivate an evolved
imperial form. We find the revival of this form in the Greek, Roman, and
feudal worlds: there is always an empire on the horizon, which for the sub­
jective States plays the role of signifier and encompassing element. And the
correlation between ( 2) and (3) is no less pronounced, for indu strial revolu­
tions are not wanting, and the difference between topical conjunctions and
the great conj u gation of decoded flows is so thin that one is left with the
impression that capitalism was continually being born, disappearing and
reviving at every crossroads ofhistory. And the correlation between ( 3) and
( r ) is also a necessary one: the modern States of the third age do indeed
restore the most absolute of empires, a new " megamachine," whatever the
novelty or timeliness of its now immanent form; they do this by realizing an
axiomatic that fonctions as much by machinic enslavement as by social sub­
jection. Capitalism has reawakened the Urslaal, and given it new strength. 1 2
Not only, as Hegel said, does every State imply "the essential moments of
its existence as a State," but there is a unique moment, in the sense of a
coupling of forces, and this moment of the State is capture, bond, knot, MX­
um, magical capture. Must we speak of a second pole, which would operate
instead by pact and contract? Is this not instead that other force, with cap­
ture as the unique moment of coupling? For the two forces are the overcod­
ing of coded flows, and the treatment of decoded flows. The contract is a
juridical expression of the second aspect: it appears as the proceeding of
subj ectification, the outcome of which is subj ection. And the contract must
be pushed to the extreme; in other words, it is no longer concluded between
two people but between self and self, within the same person-/ch = Ich­
as subj ected and sovereign. The extreme perversion of the contract, re­
instating the purest of knots. The knot, bond, capture, thus travel a long
history: first, the objective, imperial collective bond; then all of the forms of
 244 P O L IT I C S

subj ective personal bon ds; fi nally, the s u bject that binds itself, and i n so
doing renews the most magical operation, " a cosmopolitan, universal ener­
gy which overflows every restriction and bond so as to establish itself i n ­
stead as t h e s o l e bond . " 1 3 Even subj ection is only a relay for t h e fundamen­
tal moment of t he State, namely, civil capture or machinic enslavement.
The State is assuredly not the locus ofliberty, nor the agent of a forced servi­
tude or war c a pture. Should we then speak of"voluntary servitude"? This is
like the expression " magical capture": its only merit is to underline the ap­
parent mystery. There is a machinic enslavement, about which it could be
said in each case that it presupposes itself, that it appears as preac­
complished; this machinic enslavement is no more "voluntary" than it i s
"forced. "
 28
The Three Aspects if Culture

Culture means training and selection. Nietzsche calls the movement of cul­
ture the " morality of customs" (D g ) ; 1 this latter is inseparable from iron
collars, from torture, from the atrocious means which are used to train man.
But the genealogist's eye distinguishes two elements in this violent training
(BGE 1 88)2: ( 1 ) That which is obeyed, in a people, race or class, is always
historical, arbitrary, grotesque, stupid, and limited; this usually represents
the worst reactive forces. ( 2) But in the fact that something, no matter what i t
i s , i s obeyed, appears a principle which goes beyond peoples, races, and
classes. To obey the law because it is the law: the form of the law means that
a certain activi�, a certain active force, is exercised on man and is given the
task of training him. Even if thry are historical(y inseparable these two aspects
must not be confused: on the one hand, the historical pressure of a State, a
Church etc., on the individuals that it aims to assimilate; on the other hand,
the activity of man as generic being, the activity of the human species as
such. Hence Nietzsche's use of the words primitive, prehistoric: the morality of
customs precedes universal history (D 1 8) ; culture is generic activity; "the
labor performed by man upon himself during the greater part of the exis­
tence of the human race, his entire prehistoric labor . . . notwithstanding the
severity, tyranny, stupidity and idiocy involved i n it" ( GM II 2, p. 59). 3
Every historical law is arbitrary, bu�what is not arbitrary, what is pre-
 24 6 POLlTlCS

historic and generic, i s the law of obeying laws. ( Bergson will rediscover this
thesis when he shows, in Les Deux Sources, that all habits are arbitrary but
that the habit of taking on habits is natural . )
Prehistoric means generic. Culture i s man's prehistoric activity. But
what does this activity consist in? It is always a matter ofgiving man habits,
of making him obey laws, oft raining him. Training man means forming him
in such a way that he can act his reactive forces. The activity of culture is, in
principle, exercised on reactive forces, it gives them habits and imposes
models on them in order to make them suitable for being acted. C ulture as
such is exercised in many directions. It even attacks the reactive forces of
the unconscious and the most subterranean digestive and intestinal forces
(the diet and something analogous to what Freud will call the education
of the sphincters-EH II "Why I am so Clever").4 But its principal object is
to reinforce consciousness. This consciousness which is defined by the fugitive
character of excitations, this consciousness which is itself based on the fac­
ulty of forgetting must be given a consistency and a firmness which it does
not have on its own. Culture endows consciousness with a new faculty which
is apparently opposed to the faculty of forgetting: memory. But the memory
with which we are concerned here is not the memory of traces. This original
memory is no longer a function of the past, but a function of the future. It is
not the memory of the sensibility but of the will. It is not the memory of
traces but of words.5 It is the faculty of promising, commitment to the fu­
ture, memory of the future itself. Remembering the promise that has been
made is not recalling that it was made at a particular past moment, but that
one must hold to it at a future moment. This is precisely the selective object
of culture: forming a man capable of promising and thus of making use of
the future, a free and powerful man. Only such a man is active; he acts his
reactions, everything in him is active or acted. The faculty of promising is
the effect of culture as the activity of man on man; the man who can promise
is the product of culture as species activity.
We understand why culture does not, in principle, recoil from any kind of
violence: " perhaps indeed there was nothing more fearful and uncanny in
the whole prehistory of man than mnemotechnics . . . . Man could never do
without blood, torture and sacrifices when he felt the need to create a mem­
ory for himself" ( GM II 3, p. 6 r ). How many tortures are necessary in order
to train reactive forces, to constrain them to be acted, before culture reaches
its goal (the free, .active, and powerful man). Culture has always used the
following means: it made pain a medium of exchange, a currency, an equiv­
alent; precisely the exact equivalent of a forgetting, of an inquiry caused a
promise not kept ( GM II 4). Culture, when related to this means, is called
justice; the means itself is called punishment. "I nquiry caused = pain
 The Three Aspects of Culture 24 7

undergone" -this is the equation of punishment that determines a rela­

tionship of man to man. This relationship between men is determined, fol­
lowing the equation, as a relationship of a creditor and a debtor: j ustice makes
man responsible for a debt. The debtor-creditor relationship expresses the ac­
tivity of cult ure during the process of training or formation. Corresponding
to prehistoric activity this relationship itself is the relationship of man to
man, "the most primitive ofindividuals" preceding even "the origins of any
social organization."6 It also serves as a model "for the crudest and most
primitive social constitutions." Nietzsche sees the archetype of social orga­
nization in credit rather than exchange. The man who pays for the inj ury he
causes by his pain, the man held responsible for a debt, the man treated as
responsible for his reactive forces: these are the means used by culture to
reach its goal . Nietzsche therefore offers us the following genetic lineage: ( I )
Culture as prehistoric or generic activity, an enterprise of training and selec­
tion; ( 2 ) The means used by this activity, the equation of punishment, the
relationship of debt, the responsible man; (3) The product of this activity:
the active man, free and powerful, the man who can promise.

C u l ture Considered from the Posthistoric Point of View

We have posed the problem of bad conscience. The genetic lineage of cul­
ture does not seem to get us any nearer a solution. On the contrary: the most
obvious conclusion is that neither bad conscience nor ressentiment intervene
in the process of culture and justice. "The 'bad conscience,' this most un­
canny and most interesting plant of all our earthly vegetation, did not grow
on this soil" ( GM I I 1 4, p. 82). On the one hand, revenge and ressentiment are
not the origin ofjustice. Moralists, even socialist ones, make j ustice derive
from a reactive feeling, from deeply felt offense, a spirit ofrevenge or justici­
ary reaction. But such a derivation explains nothing; it would have to show
how the pain of others can be a sat isfaction of revenge, a reparation for re­
venge. We will never understand the cruel equation "injury caused =pain
undergone" if a third term is not introduced-the pleasure which is felt in
inflicting pain or in contemplating it.7 But this third term, the external
meaning of pain, has an origin which is completely different from revenge or
reaction: it reflects an active standpoint, active forces, which are given the
training of reactive forces as their task and for their pleasure. Justice is the
generic activity that trains man's reactive forces, that makes them suitable
for being acted and holds man responsible for this suitability itself. To jus­
tice we can oppose the way in which ressentimmt and then bad conscience are
formed: by the triumph of reactive forces, through their unsuitability for
being acted, through their hatrl'Ji for everything that is active, through their
 24 8 POLITICS

resistance, through their fundamental inj ustice. Thus ressentiment, far from
being at the origin ofjustice, is "the last sphere to be conquered by the spirit
ofjustice . . . . The active, aggressive, arrogant man is still a hundred steps
closer to justice than the reactive man. "8
Just as ressentiment is not the origin ofj ustice so bad conscience is not the
product of punishment. However many meanings punishment can have
there is always one meaning which it does not have. Punishment cannot awak­
en a feeling of guilt in the culprit.

It is precisely among criminals and convicts that the sting ofconscience is

extremely rare; prisons and penitentiaries are not the kind of hotbed in
which this species of gnawing worm is likely to flourish . . . . Generally
speaking, punishment makes men hard and cold; it concentrates; it
sharpens the feeling ofalienation; it strengthens the power ofresistance. If
it happens that punishment destroys the vital energy and brings about a
miserable prostration and self-abasement, such a result is certainly even
less pleasant than the usual effects of punishment-characterized by dry
and gloomy seriousness. Ifwe consider those millenia before the history of
man, we may unhesitantly assert that it was precisely through punish­
ment that the development of the feeling of guilt was most powerfully
mndered-at least in the victims upon whom the punitive force was vented .
( GM II 1 -1-, pp. 8 1 -82)

We can oppose point by point the state of culture in which man, at the cost
of his pain, feels himself responsible for his reactive forces and the state of
bad conscience where man, on the contrary, feels himself to blame for his
active forces and experiences them as culpable. However we consider cul­
ture or justice we always see in them the exercise of a formative activity, the
opposite of ressentiment and bad conscience.
This impression is farther reinforced if we consider the product of cultur­
al activity: the free and active man, the man who can promise. Just as
culture is the prehistoric element of man the product of culture is his post­
historic element.

Ifwe place ourselves at the end of this tremendous process, where the tree
at last brings forth fruit, where society and the morality of customs at last
reveal what they have simply been the means to: then we discover that the
ripest fruit is the sooereign individllll,l like only to himself, liberated again
from morality of customs, autonomous and supramoral (for "autono­
mous" and "moral" are mutually exclusive), in short, the man who has
his own independent, protracted will and the right to malce promises. ( GM I I
2, p . 59).
 The Three Aspects of Culture 2 49

Nietzsche's point is that we must not confuse the product of culture with its
mean!\. Man's species activity constitutes him as responsible for his reactive
forces: responsihili!,...deht. But this responsibility is only a means of training
and selection: it progressively measures the suitability ofreactive forces for
being acted. The finished product of species activity is not the responsible
man himself or the moral man, but the autonomous and supramoral man,
that is to say, the one who actually acts his reactive forces and in whom all
reactive forces are acted. He alone "is able to" promise, precisely because he
is no longer responsible to any tribunal. The product of culture is not the
man who obeys the l aw, but the sovereign and legislative individual who
defines himself by power over himself, over destiny, over the law: the free,
the light, the irresponsible. In Nietzsche the notion of responsibility, even in
its higher form, has the limited value of a simple means: the autonomous
individual is no longer responsible to justice for his reactive forces, he is its
master, the sovereign, the legislator, the author, and the actor. It is he who
speaks, he no longer has to answer. The only active sense of responsibility·
debt is its disappearing in the movement by which man is liberated: the ere·
ditor is liberated because he participates in the right of the masters, the deb­
tor liberates himself, even at the price of his flesh and his pain: both ofthem
liberate themselves from the process which trained them ( GM I I 5, 1 3, 2 r ) .
This is the general movement of culture: the means disappearing in the
product. Responsibility as responsibility before the law, law as the law of
justice,j ustice as the means of culture-all this disappears in the product of
culture itself. The morality of customs, the spirit of the laws, produces the
man emancipated from the law. This is why Nietzsche speaks of a self·
destruction ofj ustice.9 Culture is man's species activity; but, since this ac·
tivity is selective, it produces the individual as its final goal, where species is
itself suppressed.
We have proceeded as if culture goes straight from prehistory to posthis·
tory. We have seen it as a species activity which, through the long labor of
prehistory, arrives at the individual as its posthistoric product. And indeed,
this is its essence, in conformity to the superiority ofactive forces over reac·
tive forces. But we have neglected an important point: the triumph, in fact,
of inferior a._n d reactive forces. We have neglected history. We must say of cul·
ture both that it disappeared long ago and that it has not yet begun. Species
activity disappears into the night of the past as its product does into the
night of the future. In history culture takes on a sense which is very different
from its own essence, having been seized by strange forces of a completely
different nature. Species activity in history is inseparable from a movement
which perverts it and its product. Furthermore, history is this very perver-
 25 0 P O L I TICS

sion, i t i s identical to the "degeneration of culture . " Instead of species ac­

tivity, history presents us with races, peoples, classes, Churches, and States.
Onto species activity are grafted social organizations, associations, com­
muni ties of a reactive character, parasites which cover it over and absorb it.
By means ofspecies activity-the movement ofwhich they falsify-reactive
forces form collectivities, what Nietzsche calls " herds" ( GM I II 1 8). In­
stead ofjustice and its process of self-destruction, history presents us with
societies which have no wish to perish and which cannot imagine anything
superior to their own laws. What State would listen to Zarathustra's advice:
"Let yourself, therefore be overthrown" (Z II "Of Great Events " ) ? I O In his­
tory the law becomes confused with the content which determines it, reac­
tive content which provides its ballast and prevents it from disappearing,
unless this is to benefit other, even heavier and more st upid, contents. In­
stead of the sovereign individual as the product of culture, history presents
us with its own product, the domesticated man in whom it finds the famous
meaning of history: "the sublime abortion," "the gregarious animal, docile,
sickly, mediocre being, the Eu ropean today" (BGE 62; GM I 1 r ) . History
presents all the violence of culture as the legitimate property of peoples,
States, and Churches, as the manifestation of their force. And in fact, all the
procedures of training are employed, but inside-out, twisted, inverted. A
morality, a Church, a State are still enterprises of selection, theories of hier­
archy. The most stupid laws, the most limited communities, still want to
train man and make use of his reactive forces. But to make use of them for
what? To carry out what training, what selection? Training procedures are
used but in order to turn man into a gregarious, docile, and domesticated
animal. Training procedures are used but in order to break the strong, to
sort out the weak, the suffering or the slaves. Selection and hierarchy are put
the wrong way round. Selection becomes the opposite of what is was from
the standpoint of activity, it is now only a means of preserving, organising
and propagating the reactive life ( GM I I I r 3-20; BGE 62).
History thus appears as the act by which reactive forces take possession
of culture or divert it s course in their favor. The triumph ofreactive forces is
not an accident in history but the principle and meaning of" uni versa! his to­
ry. " This idea of a historical degeneration of culture occupies a prominent
place in Nietzsche's work: it is an argument in Nietzsche's struggle against
the philosophy of history and the dialectic. It is the source of N ietzsche's
disappointment: culture begins "Greek" but becomes "German . " . . .
From the Untimefy Mediations onward Nietzsche tries to explain how and
why culture comes to serve reactive forces which pervert it. 1 1 More pro­
foundly, Zarathustra develops an obscure symbol: the fire-dog (Z II "Of
Great Events "). The fire-dog is the image of species activi ty, it expresses
 The Three Aspects of Culture 25 1

man's relation t o the earth. But, i n fact, the earth has two sicknesses, man
and the fire-dog itself. For man is domesticated man; species activity is de­
formed , unnatural activity which serves reactive forces, which becomes
mixed up with the Church and the State: " 'The church?' I answered, 'The
church is a kind of State and indeed the most mendacious kind. But keep
quiet, you hypocrite dog! You surely know your own kind best! Like you, the
state is a hypocrite dog; like you, it likes to speak with smoke and
bellowing-to make believe, like you, that it speaks ou t of the belly of
things. For the state wants to be absolutely the most important beast on
earth; and it is believed to be so, too !"' (Z II "Of Great Events, " p. 1 54).
Zarathustra appeals to another fire-dog, "This one really speaks from the
heart of the eart h . " Is this still species activity? But, this time, species ac­
tivity seized in the element of prehistory, to which man corresponds insofar
as he is produced in the element ofposthistory? This interpretation must be
taken into consideration, even ifit is insufficient. In the Untime{y Meditations
Nietzsche was already putting his trust in "the non-historical and supra­
historical element of culture" (what he called the Greek sense of culture
( UM II 10, 8). 1 2
In fact there are a certain number of questions that we cannot yet answer.
What i s the status of this double element ofculture? Is it real? Is it anything
but one ofZarathu stra's "visions" ? Culture is inseparable from the history
of the movement that perverts it and puts it at the service ofreactive forces;
but culture is also inseparable from history itself The activity of culture,
man's species activity: is this not a simple idea? If man is essentially (that is
to say generically) a reactive being, how could he have, or even have had in
prehistory, a species activi!y? How could an active man appear, even in a
post history? If man is essentially reactive it seems that activity must con­
cern a being different from man. If man, on the contrary, has a species ac­
tivity, it seems that it can only be deformed in an accidental way. For the
moment we can only list Nietzsche's theses, their precise significance must
be considered later: man is essentially reactive ; there is nevertheless a spe­
cies activity of man, but one that is necessarily deformed, necessarily miss­
ing its goal, leading to the domesticated man; this activity must be taken up
again on another plane, the plane on which it produces, but produces some­
thing other than man . . . .
It is, however, already possible to explain why species activity neces­
sarily falls in history and turns to the advantage of reactive forces. If the
schema of the Untime{Y Meditations is insufficient, Nietzsche's work presents
other directions in which a solution can be found. The aim of the activity of
culture is to train man, that is to say, to make reactive forces suitable for
service, for being acted. But througbout the training this suitability for ser-
 252 POLITICS

vice remains profoundly ambiguous. For a t the same time i t allows reactive
forces to put themselves at the service of other reactive forces, to give these
latter forces an appearance ofactivity, an appearance ofjustice, to form with
them a fiction that gets the better ofactive forces. It will be recalled that, in
ressentiment, certain reactive forces prevent ot her reactive forces from being
acted. Bad conscience reaches the same end by almost opposite means: in
bad conscience some reactive forces make use of their suitabilityfor being acted to give
other reactiveforces an appearance of acting. There is no less fiction in this pro­
cedure than in the procedure of ressentiment. In this way associations of reactive
forces are formed under the cover ofspecies activity. These associations are grafted
onto species activity and necessarily divert it from its real sense. Training
provides reactive forces with a marvelous opportunity to go into part­
nership, to form a collective reaction usurping species activity.
 29
Toward Freedom

The differences d o not pass between the individual and the collective, fo r we
see no duality between these two types of problem: there is no s u bject of
enunciation, but every proper name is collective, every assemblage i s al­
ready collective. Neither do the differences pass between the natural and
the artificial since they both belong to the machine and interchange there.
Nor between the spontaneous and the organized, since the only question is
one of modes of organization. Nor between the segmentary and the
<:entralized, since centralization i s itself an organization which rests on a
form of rigid segmentarity. The effective differences pass between the lines,
rven though they are all immanent to one another, all entangled in one an­
other. This is why the question ofschizoanalysis or pragmatics, micropoli­
t ics itself, never consists in interpreting, but merely in asking what are your
l i nes, individual or group, and what are the dangers on each.

1. What are your rigid segments, your binary and overcoding ma­
chines? For even these are not given to you ready-made, we are not sim­
ply divided u p b y binary machines of class, sex, or age: there are others
which we constantly shift, invent without realizing it. And what are the
dangers i f we blow u p these segments too quickly? Wouldn 't this kill the
organism itself, the organism which possesses its own binary machines,
even in its nerves and its brain?
 254 P O L IT I C S

2 . What are your supple lines, what are your fluxes and thresholds?
Which is your s e t of relative deterritorializations and correlative reter­
ritorializations? And the distribution of black holes: which are the black
holes of each one of us, where a beast lurks or a microfascism thrives?
3. What are your lines of flight, where the fluxes are combined, where
the thresholds reach a p oint of adjacence and rupture? Are they still tol­
erable, or are they already caught up in a machine of destruction and
s e l f-destruction which would reconstitute a molar fascism? It may hap­
pen that a n assemblage of desire and of enunciation i s reduced to its most
rigid lines, its devices of p ower. There are assemblages which have only
these sorts o f lines. But other dangers s talk each of them, more supple
and viscous dangers, of which each of u s alone i s judge, a s long a s there is
still time. The question "How i s it that desire can desire its o wn repres­
sion?" does not give rise to real theoretical difficulty, but to many practi­
cal difficulties each time. There i s desire as soon a s there i s a machine or
" bo d y without organ s . " But there are bodies without organs like hard­
ened empty e nvelopes, because their organic components have been
blown up too quickly and too violently, an "overdose . " There are bodies
without organs which are cancerous and fascist, in black holes or ma­
chines of abolition. How can desire outmaneuver all that by managing its
plane of immanence and o fconsistence which each time runs u p against
these dangers?

There is n o general prescription. We have done w ith all globalizing con­

cepts. Even con cepts are haecceities, events. What i s interesting about c on­
cepts like d esire, or machine, or assemblage is that th ey only have value in
their variable s , and in the maximum of variables which they allow. We are
not for concepts a s big a s hollow teeth, THE law, THE master, THE rebel.
We are not here to keep the tally of the dead and the victims of h i story, the
martyrdom of the Gulags, and to draw the conclusion that "The revo lution
i s impossible, but we thinkers must think the impossible since the impossi­
ble only e xists through our though t ! " It seems to us that there would n ever
have been the tiniest Gulag ifthe victims had kept up the same discourse al
those who weep over them today. The victims would have had to think and
live in a quite different way to give substance to those who weep in their
name, and who think in their name, and who give l essons in their name. It
was their life force which impelled them, not their bitterness; their sobriety,
not their ambition; their anorexia, not their huge appetites, as Zola would
have said. We have set out to write a book of life, not of accounts, or of the
tribunal even of the people or of pure thought. The question ofa revol ution
has never been utopian s pontaneity versus State organization. When we
challenge the model of the State apparatus or of the party organization that
 TOWOTd Freedom 2 55

is modeled on the conquest of that apparatus, we do not, however, fall into

the grotesque alternatives: either that of appealing to a state of nature, to a
spontaneous dynamic, or that of becoming the self-styled lucid thinker of an
impossible revolution, whose very impossibility is such a source of pleasure.
The question has always been organizational, not at all ideological: is an
organization possible which is not modelled on the apparatus of the State,
even to prefigure the State to come? Perhaps a war-machine with its lines of
flight? In order to oppose the war-machine to the State apparatus in every
assemblage-even a musical or literary one-it would be necessary to eval­
uate the degree of proximity to this or that pole. But how would a war­
machine, in any domain whatever, become modern, and how would it ward
off its own fascist dangers, when confronted by the totalitarian dangers of
the State, its own dangers of destruction in comparison with the conserva­
tion of the State? In a certain way it is very simple, this happens on its own
and every day. The mistake would be to say: there is a globalizing State, the
master of its plans and extending its traps; and then, a force of resistance
which will adopt the form of the State even if it entails betraying us, or else
which will fall into local spontaneous or partial struggles, even if it entails
being suffocated and beaten every time. The most centralized State is not at
all the master ofits plans, it is also an experimenter, it performs injections, it
is unable to look into the future: the economists of the State declare them­
selves incapable of predicting the increase in a monetary mass. American
politics is forced to proceed by empirical injections, not at all by apodictic
programs. What a sad and sham game is played by those who speak of a
supremely cunning master, in order to present the image of themselves as
rigorous, incorruptible, and "pessimist" thinkers. It is along the different
lines of complex assemblages that the powers that be carry out their experi­
ments, but along them also arise experimenters of another kind, thwarting
predictions, tracing out active lines of flight, looking for the combination of
these lines, increasing their speed or slowing it down, creating the plane of
consistence fragment by fragment, with a war-machine which would weigh
the dangers that it encountered at each step.
What characterizes our situation is both beyond and on this side of the
State. Bl!J'Ond national States, the development ofa world market, the power
of multinational companies, the outline of a "planetary" organization, the
extension of capitalism to the whole social body, clearly forms a great ab­
stract machine which overcodes the monetary, industrial, and technological
fluxes. At the same time the means of exploitation, control, and surveillance
hccome more and more subtle and diffuse, in a certain sense molecular (the
workers of the rich countries necessarily take part in the plundering of the
t h ird world, m en take part in the overexploitation ofwomen, etc.). But the
 256 P OLITICS

a bstract machine, with its dysfunctions, i s n o more infallible than the na­
tional States which are not able to regulate them on their own territory and
from one territory to another. The State no longer has at its disposal the
political, institutional, or even financial means which would mable it to
fend off the social repercussions of the machine; it is doubtful whether it can
eternally rely on the old forms like the police, armies, bureaucracies, even
trade union bureaucracies, collective installations, schools, families. Enor­
mous land slides are happening on thi.s side efthe state, following lines of gra­
dient or of flight, affecting principally: (1) the marking out of territories;
( 2 ) the mechanisms of economic s u bj ugation (new characteristics of unem­
ployment, of inflatio n ) ; (3) the basic regulatory frameworks (crisis of the
school, of trade unions, o f the army, o f women . . . ); (4) the nature o f the
demands which become qualitative as much as quant itative ("quality of
life" rather than the "st andard ofliving" ) .
A l l this constitutes what can b e called a right t o desire. I t i s not surprising
that all kinds of minority questions-linguistic, ethnic, regional, about sex,
or youth-resurge not only as archaisms, but in up-to-date revolutionary
forms which call once more into question in an entirely immanent manner
both the global economy of the machine and the assemblages of national
States. Inst ead of gambling on the eternal impossibility of the revolution
and on the fascist return of a war-machine in general, why not think that a

new type efrevolution is in the course efbtcoming possible, and that all kinds of mu­
tating, living machines conduct w ars, are combined and trace out a plane of
consistence which undermines the plane of organization of the world and
the States? For, once again, the world and its States are no more masters of
their plan than revolutionaries are condemned to the deformation of theirs.
Everyth ing is played in uncertain games, "front to front, back to back, back
to front . . . . " The question of t h e fu ture of t h e revolution is a bad question
because, insofar as it is asked, there are so many people who do not becom8
revolutionaries, and this is exactly why it is done, to impede the question of
the revolutionary-becoming of people, at every level, in every place.
 Notes

Editor's Introduction
1 . Fran'<ois Chatelet, Chronique ries ir/les perriues ( Paris: Stock, 1 9 7 7 ).
2. Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, Dialogues, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and
Barbara Habberjam (New York: Columbia University Press, 1 g87), p. 1 2 .
3 . Gilles Deleuze, "II a etc mon maitre," A rts ( 28 October-3 November 1 g64):
8-9.
4 . Deleuze and Parnet, Dialogues, p. 1 3 .
5 . I bid., pp. 1 4- 1 5 .
6 . Gilles Deleuze, Empiricism and Subjectivity. A n Em!Y on Hume � Theory ofHuman
Nature, trans. with an introduction by Constantin V. Boundas (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1 99 1 ) .
7. Gilles Deleuze, Expressionism i n Philosophy: Spino�a, trans. Martin Joughin
(New York: Zone Books, 1 990 ).
8. Gilles Deleuze, SpiltO�a: Prt1£tital Philosopl!Y, trans. Robert Hurley (San Fran­
cisco: City Lights, 1 988).
9. Gilles Deleuze, Berl}Jonism, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habbe1jam
(New York: Zone Books, 1 988).
m . Gilles Deleuze, Diffi rence anri repetition, trans. Paul Patton ( London: Athlone,

Forthcoming).
1 1 . Gilles Deleuze, Cinema r: The Movement-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and
Barbara Habberjam ( MinneapoliJ: University ofMinnesota Press, 1 g86).
 2 58 INTRODUCTION

I 2 . Gilles Deleuze, Niet�sdre arid Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson (New York:
Columbia University Press, I 983).
I 3. Gilles Deleuze, Nieksclre ( Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, I g65).
I4. See Niet�sclre arid Philosophy, pp. 47-49, 68- 7 2 ; see also Dijfmrice et ripititirm,
( Paris: Presses Universitaires de France: I 968) pp. 96- I 68, 365-89, and "Conclu­
sions sur la volonte de puissance et l'eternel retour," Nieksclre: Cakiers de RDyaurnrmt
( Paris: Editions de Minuit, I 967), pp. 275-87. I have argued these points, in a more
elaborate way, in "M inoritarian Deconstruction of the Rhetoric of Nihilism," in
Niet�sclre arid tke Rhetoric �fNilrilisrn: Essays ori lriterpretatirm, Lariguage, arid Politics, ed.
Tom Darby, Bela Egyed, and Benjones (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, I 989),
pp. 8 I -9 2 .
15. Gilles Deleuze, Tir e Logic �(Sm.re, trans. Mark Lester with Charles Stivale, ed.
Constantin V. Boundas (New York: Columbia University Press, I ggo), p. I .
I6. Ibid., pp. I 48-53.
I 7 . Gilles Deleuze, le Pli. lei6rii� et le baroque (Paris: Editions de Minuit, I 988);
translation forthcoming from the University of Minnesota Press.
I8. Deleuze, Dijflrrrice et rlpltitiori, p. I 3 6 .
I 9. Deleuze, Tir e logic � fSmse, p p . 42-47 .
20. Gilles Deleuze, Foucault, trans. Sean Hand ( Minneapolis: University ofMin­
nesota Press, I 988), pp. 94- I 23.
2 I . Deleuze and Parnet, Dialogues, pp. I 24ff.
2 2 . Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Tlrousarid Plateaus: Capitalism and Schi�o­
plrre'flia, trans. Brian Massumi ( Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, I g87),
pp. I 95-200.
23. Bruno Paradis, "Leibniz: un monde unique et relatif," Maga;:irie littlraire,
257 (September I 988): 26.
24. Gilles Deleuze, "Klossowski or Bodies-Language," in Tire logic �f Sm.re, p.
296.
25. G illes Deleuze, Karit's Critical Philosophy: Tire Doctririe �ft/re Fat:Ulties, trans.
Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, I 984). See also Gilles Deleuze, "L'ldee de gencse dans l'esthetique de Kant,"
RtrJUt d'Estkltique, I6 ( I 963) ; 1 1 3-36.
26. This idle mire structures his discussion of intensity-extension, paranoia­
schizophrenia, sense-nonsense, nomads-sedentaries, etc.
2 7 . For Deleuze's theory of intensity, see Dijflrmce et ripititirm, pp. 286-335.
28. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Ariti-Oedipus: Capitalism arid Schi�oplrrmia,
trans. R. Hurley, M. Seem, and H R. Lane (New York: Viking, I 9 77>. passim; A
Tlrousarid Plateaus, passim.
29. Deleuze and Parnet, Dialogues, pp. 77- I 23 .
30. See Herbert Marcuse, Eros arid Civili�atirm: A Plrilosoplrical lriquiry irito Freud
(Boston: Beacon, I 955) ; Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: Ari Essay rm lriterpretatirm,
trans. Denis Savage (New Haven: Yale University Press, I 9 ?0) ; J urgen Habermas,
KrimtJkdgi arid Hurnari lriterests, trans.Jeremy Shapiro ( Boston: Beacon, I 9 7 I ), chs. I o,
I I , I2.
 lntrod111:tion 259

3 1 . Deleuze and Guattari's approach to Lacan is guarded. They praise him for
rendering schizophrenic the psychoanalytic field instead of Oedipalizing the psy·
chotic field, but they are critical ofLacan's distinction between imaginary and sym­
bolic, that is, between inclusive and exclusive disjunctions. See Deleuze and Pamet,
Dialogues, pp. 8 1 -89.
3 2 . Schizoanalytic theory and practice are discussed at length in Deleuze and
Guattari's Ariti-Oedipru, pp. 325-457; see also Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattar� Pol­
itique et Psycharialyse (Alenc;on: Des mots perdus, 1 9 77 ) .
33. Deleuze and Guattari's criticism of t h e "death drive" is developed i n Ariti­
Oedipw, pp. 329-38.
34. For a detailed discussion of the body without organs, see "N ovember 28,
194 7: How Do You Make Yourself A Body Without Organs?" in A Thousarid Plateaus,
pp. 1 49-66.
35. Deleuze calls "molecular" the partial objects ofdesire between which there is
a difference of nature, not only a difference of degree; the distinctions between them
are qualitative, not merely quantitative-as it is with the molar objects. Partial ob­
jects are the molecular functions of the unconscious.
36. See " 1 2 2 7: Treatise on Nomadology-The War Machine" and "7000 a . c . :
Apparatus of Capture," in A Thousarid Plateaus, pp. 35 1 -423, 424-73.
37. "Signes et evenemen ts," Raymond Bellour and Franc;ois Ewald interview
Gilles Deleuze, Maga�irie littlraire, 2 5 7 (September 1 988) : 24.
38. Franc;ois Ewald, "La schizo-analyse," Maga�irie littirtire, 257 (September
1988): 53.
39. Monique Scheepers, "Subjektivitat und Politik," urtdemairis, 53 ( 1 g89): pp.
30-34.
40. P. Lev0yer and P. Encrenaz, " Politique de Deleuze," Lnrdemairis, 53 ( 1 989) :
38.
4 1 . Deleuze, Foucault, p. 1 03.
42 . See pp. 6 9 - 7 7 ; 2 45 - 5 2.
43. The expression mirior dtcoristrw:tiori is not Deleuze's. Franc;ois Laruelle uses it
frequently in Le rUcliri de l 'lcriture ( Paris: Aubier-Flammarion, 1 977) and Au-dela du
priricipe de pouvoir ( Paris: Payot, 1 978). Hr Deleuze's discussion a the issues that
Laruelle labeled "minor deconstruction," see A Thousarid Plateaus, pp. 3-2 5 , 1 1 1 -48.
#· Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Kqfka : Toward a Mirior Literature (Min­
neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1 986).
45. Gilles Deleuze and Carmelo Bene, Superpositioris (Paris: Editions de Minuit,
19 79).
46. See A Thousarid Plateaus, pp. 75-85. Order-word and password translate the
French mot d'ordre and mot de posse.
47. For an overview of the Russian formalists, see Tzvetan Todorov, Tliiorie de la
littirature ( Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1 965).
48. On the tensions between two models of science-the nomadic and the
royal-see A Thousarid Plateaus, pp. 36 1 -74.
49. Deleuze, Difflrence et rlpltitiori, p. 25 1 .
 2 60 3 . INTRODUCTION

50. Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation, 2 vols. (Paris: Editions de
la Difference, 1 987 ) ; translation forthcoming.
5 1 . Cited by Deleuze in A Thousand Plateaw, p. 342.
52. Patrick Vauday, " E crit a vue: Deleuze-Bacon ," Critique, 38 ( 1 98 2 ) : 959.
53. Deleuze, Francis Bacon, 1 : 2 7 .
54. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thowand Plateaw, pp. 3 ro-50.
55. The term was coined by Ronald Bogue as the title of an essay published in
Substance, 66 ( 1 99 1 ) . See Marcuse, Eros and Civili;:ation, esp. part IL "It concerns al­
liance. I fevolution includes any veritable becomings, it is in the domain of5_')1'11b ioses
that bring into play beings of tot ally different scales and kingdoms." A Thowand
Pl�eaw, p. 238.
56. On this distinction, see A Thowand Plateaus, pp. 43-45 and Deleuze's in­
debtedness to Hjelmslev.
5 7 . Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: Time-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert
Galeta (London: Athlone, 1 989).
58. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Que'est-et quel a philosophie? (Paris: Editions
de Minuit, 1 99 1 ) .
59. Deleuze and Parnet, Dialogues, pp. 1 6 , 1 7 .

r. Rhizome �ersus Trees

1 . Translator's note: U. Weinreich, W. Labov, and M. Herzog, "Empirical
Foundations for a Theory of Language," in W. Lehmann and Y. Malkeiel, eds. ,
Directions.for Historical Linguistics ( 1 968), p . 1 2 5; cited by Franr;oise Robert, "Aspects
sociaux de changement dans une grammaire generative," Languages, 32 (December
1 973) : 90.
2. Bertil Malmberg, New Trends in Linguistics, trans. Edward C arners ( Stock­
holm: Lund, 1 964), pp. 65-67 (the example of the Castilian dialect).
3. Erns t j iinger, Approches; drogues et ivresse (Paris: Table Ronde, 1 974), p. 304,
sec. 2 1 8.
4. Remy Chauvin, in Entretiens sur l a sexualite, ed. Max Aron, Robert Courrier,
and Etienne Wollf ( Paris: Pion, 1 969), p. 205.
5. On the work of R. E . Benveniste and G . J. Todaro, see Yves Christen, "Le
role des virus dans I' evolution," La &cherche, 54 ( March 1 975) : "After integration­
extraction in a cell, viruses may, due to an error in excision, carry off fragments of
their host's DNA and transmit them to new cells: this in fact is the basis for what we
call "genetic engineering.' As a result, the genetic information of one organism may
be transferred to another by means of viru ses. We could even imagine an extreme
case where this transfa of information would go from a more highly evolved species
to one that is less evolved or was the progenitor of the more evolved species. This
mechanism, then, would run in the opposite direction to evolution in the classical
sense. l f i t turns out that this kind of transferral of information has played a major
role, we would in certain cases have to substitute reticular schemas {with communic�ions
between branches rgter they have become differentiated) far the bwh or tree schemas crmm?{y wed
to represent evolution" ( p. 2 7 1 ) .
 3. What ls an Event? 261

6 . Frant;;ois jacob, The Logic ofLife, tran s. Betty E . Spillmann (New York: Pan­
theon, 1 97 3 ) , pp. 2 9 1 -9 2 , 3 1 1 (quote) .
7. Carl os Castaneda, Th e Teat:hi'llgs ojDon juan (Berkeley: University ofCalifor­
nia Press, 1 9 7 1 ), p. 88.
8. Pierre Boulez, Conversations with Cilestine Deliege (London : Eulenberg Books ,
1 9 7 6 ) : "a seed which you plant in compost, and suddenly it begins to proliferate like
a weed" ( p. 15 ); and on musical proliferation: " a music that floats and in which the
writing itself makes it impossible for the performer to keep in with a pulsed time"
( p. 69 [translation modified ) ) .

2. What Is Becoming?

r. Plato, Philebus, 24 d . , trans. R. Hackforth; Parmenides, 1 54-55, tran s. F. M.

Cornforth; in E. Hamilton and H . Cairns, eds. Plato: The Collected Dialogues ( Prince­
ton: Princeton University Press, 1 9 6 1 ) .
2 . Plato, Cra�,lus, 437ff.

3. What Is an Event?
1. Emile BrChier, La Theorie des incorporels dans l 'ancien stoicisme (Paris: Vrin,
1928), pp. 1 1 - 1 3.
2. On this example, see the commentary ofBrchier, p. 20.
3. On the distinction between real internal causes and external causes entering
into limited relations of"confatality," see Cicero, De Fato, 9, 1 3, 1 5, and 1 6.
4. The Epicurean notion of the event is very similar to that of the Stoics: see
Epicurus, To Herodotus, 39-40, 68- 7 3 , and Lucretius, De &rum NatUTa, 1 :449ff. As he
analyzes the event, "the rape of Tyndareus' daughter, " Lucretius contrasts el!tlnta
(servitude-liberty, poverty-wealth, war-peace) with conjuncta (real qualities which
are inseparable from bodies ) . Events are not exactly incorporeal entities . They are
presented nevertheless as not existing by themselves-impassible, pure results of
the movements of matter, or actions and passions of bodies. It does not seem likely
though that the Epicureans developed this theory of the event-perhaps because
they bent it to the demands ofa homogeneous causality and subsumed it under their
own conception of the simulacrum.
5. On the account of Stoic categories, see Plotinus , 6: 1 . 2 5 . See also Brchier, p.
4 3·
6. This description of t he purse comprises some of Carroll's b e s t writing: see
S;{vie and Bruno Concluded (New York: Dover, 1 988), ch. 7 .
7 . This discovery o f the surface a n d this critique o fdepth represent a constant in
modem literature. They inspire the work ofRobbe-Grillet. In another form, we find
them again in Klossowski, in the relation between Roberte's epidermis and her
glove: see Klossowski's remarks to this effe ct in the postface to Les Lois de l'hos pitaliti
(Paris: Gallimard, 1 96 5 ) , pp. 1 35 , 344; see also Michel Toumier's Friday, trans. Nor­
man Denny (New York: Pantheon Books, 1 985, by arrangement with Doubleday),
p. 67: "It ii utrange prej udice which s e ts a higher value on depth than on breadth,
 2 62 3 . W H A T IS A N E V E N T ?

and which accepts 's uperficial' as meaning not 'of wide extent' but 'of little depth,
whereas 'deep,' on the other hand, signifies 'of great depth,' and not 'of small sul"­
face.' Yet it seems to me that a feeling such as love is better measured, if it can be
measured at all, by the extent of its surface than by its degree of depth. "

4 . What Is a Multipliciry?

1. For example, in the system of memory, the formation of a memory implies a

diagonal that turns present A into representation A' in relation to the new present B,

Flow of time

}
Order of time

I I I
and into A" in relation to C, etc.: see Edmund Husserl, The Phenomenology of /ntmuJJ
Time-Consciousness, ed. Martin Heidegger, trans.James S. Churchill, intro. Calvin 0.
Schrag (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1 g64), pp. 48-50.
2. Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1 g83), "On the Uses and Disadvantages ofHistory fo1
Life," sec. 1, pp. 63-64.
3. On all of these themes, see Pierre Boulez. ( 1 ) On how transversals always
tend to escape horizontal and vertical coordinates of music, sometimes even draw·
ing "virtual lines," see Notes of an Apprenticeship, ed. Paule Thevenin, trans. Robert
Weinstock (New York: Knopf, 1 g68), pp. 2 3 1 -32, 295- 30 1 , 382-83. ( 2 ) On the idea
of the sound block or "block ofduration," in relation to this transversal, see Boule� Oii
Music Todqy, trans. Susan Bradshaw and Richard Bennett (Cambridge, Mass . : Har­
vard University Press, 197 1 ) , pp. 55-5g. (3) On the distinction between points and
blocks, "punctual sets," and "aggregative sets" with varying individuality, see
"Sonate que me veux-tu?" Mldiations, 7 ( 1 964). The hatred of memory appears fre­
quently in Boulez; see " tloge de l'amnesie," Musique enjeu, 4 ( 1 97 1 ), pp. 5- 1 4, and
''.J'ai horreur du souvenir," in Roger Desormiire et son temps, ed. Denise Mayer and
Pierre Souvtchinsky ( M onaco: Ed. du Rocher, 1 g66). Confining ourselves to con·
temporary examples, one finds analogous declarations in Stravinsky, Cage, and
Berio. Of course, there is a musical memory that is tied to coordinates and is ex·
ercised in social settings (getting up, going to bed, beating a retreat). But the percep­
tion of a musical "phrase" appeals less to memory, even of the reminiscence type,
than to an extension or contraction of perception of the encounter type. It should be
studied how each musician sets in motion veritable blocks of.forgetting: for example,
what Jean Barraque calls "slices of forgetting" and "absent developments" in the
work of Debussy; Debw.ry ( Paris: Seuil, 1 977 ), pp. 1 6g-7 1 . One can refer to a general
study by Daniel Charles, "La musique et l 'oubl i,'' Tra1Jtrses, 4 ( 1 977) , pp. 1 4-23.
 5. Individuation 2 63

4. Roland Barthes, " Ra sch ," in The Responsibility of Forms, trans. Richard
Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1 985), pp. 300-302, 308-9.
5 .There are many differences among painters, in all respects, but also a com·
mon movement: see Wassily Kandinsky, Point and Liu toPlau in Complelt K+itings on
Art, vol. 2, ed. Kenneth C. Lindsay and Peter Vergo ( Boston: G. K. Hall, 1 982), pp.
524-700, and Paul Klee, On Modmi A rt, trans. Paul Findlay, intro. Herbert Reed
(London: Faber, 1 966). The aim of statements like those of Mondrian on the exclu­
sive value of the vertical and the horizontal is to show the conditions under which the
vertical and horizontal are sufficient to create a transversal, which does not even
have to be drawn; for example, coordinates of unequal thickness intersect inside the
frame and extend outside the frame, opening a "dynamic axis" running transver·
sally (see Michel Butor's comments in Repertoire [Paris: Minuit, 1 960-6 1 ] , vol 3,
"Le carre et son habitan t"). One can also consult Michel Fried's article on Pollock's
line, Three American Pai"ers (Cambridge, Mass.: Fogg Art Museum, 1 965), and Hen­
ry Miller's discussion of Nash's line, On T11ming Eighty (London: Village Press,
1973).

5. Individuation
1 . This is sometimes written "ecceity, " deriving the word from ecce, "here is. "
This i s a n error, since Duns Scotus created the word and the concept from hflllC, "this
thing." But it is a fruitful error because it suggests a mode of individuation that is
distinct from that ofa thing or a subject.
2. Michel Tournier, Les Mltlorn ( Paris: Gallimard, 1 975), ch. 23, " L'ame
deploye . "
3. Translator's note: O n Aeon versus ckronos, Deleuze, Logif[lle d11 sense (Paris:
Minuit, 1 969), especially series 23, pp. 1 90-97.
4 . Pierre Boulez, ConrJtrsations with Ce1estin Deliege ( London: Eulenberg Books,
1976), pp. 68- 7 1 : " I t is not possible to introduce phenomena of tempo into music
that has been calculated only el.ectronically, in . . . lengths expressed in seconds or
microseconds" ( p. 70 ).
5. Ray Bradbury, The M(J£/tinerin ofJoy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1 g64),
p. 53.
6. Translator's note: Virginia Wolff; Mrs. Dall ow ay (New York: Harcourt Brace
and World, 1 925), p. 1 1 .
7 . G ustave Guillaume has proposed a very interesting conception of the verb.
He distinguishes between an interior time, enveloped in the "process," and an exte­
rior time, pertaining to the distinction between epochs (Epo'l"es et nivea11x temporels
da'flS le S.JJ tlme de la conj11gaisonfta11,aise, Ca/tiers de ling11istiq11e structurale [Universite de
Laval, Quebec] , 4 [ 1 955] ) . It seems to us that these two poles correspond respec­
tively to the infinitive-becoming, Aeon, and the present-being, Chronos. Each verb
leans more or less in the direction ofone pole or the other, not only according to its
nature, but also according to the nuances ofits modes and tenses, with the exception
of" becoming" and "being," which correspond to both poles. Proust, in his study of
 z 64 5· I N D I VI DUATION

Flaubert's style, shows how the imperfect tense i n Flaubert takes o n the value of an
infinitive-becoming: Chroniques (Paris: Gallimard, 1 9 2 7), pp. 1 97-99.
8. On the problem of proper names (in what sense is the proper name outside
the limits of classification and of another nature, and in what sense is it at the limit
and still a part of classification?), see Alan Henderson Gardiner, The Theory efPropet
NarTUs, 2d ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1 957), and Levi-Strauss, TIN
Savage Mind, ch. 7 ("Time Regained"), pp. 2 1 7-44.
9. We have already encountered this problem of the indifference of psycho­
analysis to the use of the indefinite article or pronoun among children; as early u
Freud, but more especially in Melanie Klein (the children she analyzes, in particu­
lar, Little Richard, speak in terms of "a," "one," "people," but Klein exerts incred·
ible pressure to turn them into personal and possessive family locutions). It seems to
us that Laplanche and Pontalis are the only ones in psychoanalysis to have had any
inkling that indefinites play a specific role; they protested against any overrapid in­
terpretive reduction: see "Fantasme originaire," Les temps modemes, 2 1 5 , April 1 964,
pp. 1 86 1 , 1 868.
10. See the subjectivist or personalist conception o f language in Emile Ben­
veniste, Problems in General Linguistics, trans. Mary Elizabeth Meek (Coral Gables,
Fla.: University of Miami P.ress, 1 97 1 ), chs. 20 ("Subjectivity in Language,"
pp. 2 2 3-30) and 2 1 ("Analytical Philosophy and Language," pp. 2 31 -38),
especially pp. 220- 2 1 and 225-26.
1 1 . The essential texts o f Maurice Blanchot serve to refote the theory o f the
"shifter" and of personology in lingu istics. See L 'entretien infini (Paris: Gallimard,
1969), pp. 556-67 . And on the difference between the two propositions, "I am unfor­
tunate" and "he is unfortunate," or between " I die" and "one dies," see La part du.ftu
( Paris: Gallimard, 1 949), pp. 29-30, and The Space ef Literature, tran s . Ann Smock
(Lincoln: Univ ersit y of Nebraska Press, 1 982), pp. 90, 1 2 2 , 1 26. Blanchot demon­
strates that in all of these cases the indefinite has nothing to do with "the banality of
daily life," which on the contrary would be o n the side of the personal pronoun.
1 2 . Translator's note: These quotes, the first from Nietzsche, the second from
Kafka, are quoted more folly in ch. 1 2 of A Thousand Plateaus, " 1 2 2 r Treatise on
Nomadology," p. 353.
1 3 . For example, see Fram;ois Cheng, Chinese Poetic Writing, trans. Donald A .
Riggs and Jerome P. Seaton (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1 982), espe­
cially his analysis of what he calls "the passive procedures," pp. 23-42.

6. A Theory efthe Other

1 . Michel Tournier, Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique (Paris: Gallimard, 1 967).
English translation, Friday, trans. Norman Denny (New York: Pantheon Books,
1 985, by arrangement), pp. 1 86-87.
2. To urnier's conception clearly contains Leibnizian echoes (the monad as ex­
pression of the world); it also contains Sartrean echoes. Sartre's theory in Being aJ1d
Nothingness is the first great theory of the Other, because it transcends the alterna­
tive: is the Other an object (even if it is a particular object inside the perceptual
 7. Ethics Without Morality 2 65

field), or rather a subject (even ifit is another subject for another perceptual field)?
Sartre is here the precursor of structuralism, for he is the fi rst to have considered the
Other as a real structure or a specificity irreducible to the object and the su�cct.
But, since he defined this structure by means of the "look," he fell back into the
categories of object and subject, making of the Other the one who constitutes me as
an o� cct when he looks at me, even if this means that the Other would himself be­
come an object when I, in turn, look at him. It seems that the structure-Other pre­
cedes the look; the latter, rather, marks the moment at which S<mUOM happens to fill
the structure. The look brings about only the effectuation or the actualization o f a
structure which must nonetheless be independently defined.
3. Toumicr, Frir/ay pp. 94-96.
4. Ibid., p. 204.
5. Ibid., p. 205.
6. Ibid., p. 1 1 5- 1 6.
7 . Ibid., p. 67.
8. Ibid., p. 1 8o.
9. Ibid., pp. 2 1 1 - 1 2 .
1 0 . I bid., p . 1 1 3.
1 1 . Sec the collection Lt Disir t t la pervmion ( Paris: Scuil, 1 967). Guy Rosolato's
article, " E tudc des perversions sexucllcs a partir du fCtishismc," contains some very
interesting, though too brief, remarks on "sexual difference" and "the double" ( pp.
25-26). Jean Clavrcul's article, "Le couple pcrvcrs, " shows that neither the victim
nor the accomplice takes the place of an Other; (on "dcsubjcctivization," sec p. 1 10,
a n d on the distinction between the cause a n d the object o f desire, sec the same au­
thor's "Rcmarqucs sur la question de la rcalite dans lcs perversions," La Psycluma{yst,
8, pp. 29off.). It seems that these studies, founded on Lacan's structuralism and on
his analysis of the lltrl111gnung, arc in the course of development.
1 2 . In Sade there is the evcr-- prescnt theme of molecular combination.

7. Ethi'5 Without Moral�y

I . Benedict de Spinoza, n. Ethics and Stltcttd letters, trans. Samuel Shirley, ed.

with introduction by Seymour Feldtn!f.n ( Indianapolis: Hackett, 1 982). Ethics, I l l ,

2 , schol.
2. Et/tics, I I I , 2, schol. (and I I , 1 3, schol.).
3 . Even the mind has a very large number o fp arts: cf. Ethics, II, 1 5.
4. Et/tics, I I , 28, 29.
5. Ethics, I, appendix.
6. Ethics, I I I, 2, schol.
7. Etllics, I l l , 9, schol.
8. Etllics, I I I , definition of Desire ("in order to involve the cause of this con­
sciousness in my definition . . . " ) .
9. Spinoqi: Tiit Political Hfwks, ed. A. G . Wcrnham (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1958). Spinoza, Tlilological-Politicol Treatise, ch. 4. And utter XIX, to Blycn­
bcrgh, Tll1 Ethics and Stltcttd utters.
 266 7. ETHrcs WlTHOUT MORALlTY

1 0 . Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Gmea/,ogy of Mora/,s, ed. with commentary by

Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1 967) first essay, sec. 1 7.
1 1 . Cf. the text on suicide, Ethics, IV, 20, schol.
1 2 . Theological-Political, Treatise, ch. 4.
1 3. a. Spinoza's denu nciation of "satire": Political Treatise, Spino�a: The Political
r#>rks, ed. A. G . Wernham, ch. I , sec. 1 , and Ethics, I I I , preface.
1 4. Theological-Political, Treatise, preface.
1 5 . Ethics, IV, appendix, ch. 1 3 .
1 6 . Ethics, l , appendix.
1 7 . Ethics, I I I .
1 8 . Ethics, IV, 47, schol.
1 9. Political, Treatise, ch. I O, sec. 8.
20. On the two sorts of passion, cf. Ethics, I I I , general definition of the affects.
2 1 . This was a common procedure that consisted in concealing the boldest or
least orthodox arguments i n appendices or notes ( Ba yle's dictionary is a later exam­
ple). Spinoza renewed the procedure with his systematic method ofscholia, which
refer to each other and are themselves connected to the prefaces and appendices,
thus forming a second subterranean Ethics.

8. Ethics and the Event

1 . With respect to Joe Bousquet's work, which is in its entirety a meditation on
the wound, the event, and language, see two essential articles in Cahiers du Sud, 303
( 1 950) : Rene Nelli, "Joe Bousquet et son double;" and Ferdinand Alquie, "Joe Bous·
quet et la morale du language ."
2 . SeeJoe Bousquet, Les capitales ( Pa ris: L e Cercle du Livre, 1 955), p . r n 3 .
3. Maurice Blanchot, L 'Espace litteraire (Paris: Gallimard, 1 955), p . 1 60.
4 . Essay by Claude Roy on Ginsbert, Nouvel Observateur, 1 968.
5. See Blanchot, L 'Espace, p. 1 55: "This attempt to elevate death to itself, to
bring about the coincidence of the point at which it disappears in itself and that at
which I disappear outside of myself, is not a simple internal affair, but implies an
immense responsibility with regard to things and is possible only through their me­
diation. "

9 . The Selective lest

1 . In the preceding comparison, we are referring to some of the best-known

texts of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. In the case of Kierkegaard, these include Fear
and Tremb ling and &petition, ed. and trans. H. V. and E. H. Hong, published as two
volumes in one ( Princeton University Press, 1 983 ) ; the very imp ortant note in Tiu
Concept ofAnxie�y, trans. R. Thomt e, ed. H. V. and E . H. Hong ( Princeton Universit y
Press, 1 980) ; and passages from the journals and Papers, ed. H. V. and E. H. Hong
( I ndiana Universit y Press, 1 967-78). O n the critique of memory, cf. Philosophical
Fragments or A Fragment of Philosophy, rev. trans. H. V. Hong (P rinceton University
 11. Man and Ovennan 2 67

Press, 1 96 2 )1 and Stages on Lift's Way: Studies by "'rious PersoRS, ed. and trans. H. V.
and E. H Hong ( Princeton University Press, 1 988).
In the case of Nietzsch e, see Tkus Spoke Zaratkrutra (especially part I I , "Of Re.
demption "; and the two main passages in part I I I, "Of the Vision and the Riddle"
and "The Convalescent," one concerning Zarathustra ii� talking to his demon, and
the other concerning Zarathustra convalescent, conversing with his animals), trans.
R. j. Hollingdale ( Penguin, 1 96 1 ) ; but also the Notes of 1 88 1 - 1 882 (in which
Nietzsche explicitly opposes "his" hypothesis to the cyclical hypothesis and crit·
icizes all notions ofresemblance, equilibrium, and identity. Cf. La HJlo,,tide Puissa11£e,
tran s. Bianquis ( Paris: Gallimard, S.d.), pp. 295-301 ) . Finally, for Peguy, see essen­
tially Clio ( Paris: Gallimard, 1 93 1 ) and Lt m)lftere de la ckariti thjea,,,,e d'Arc (Paris,
Gallimard, 1 9 55/ New York, Pantheon Books, 1 943).
2. See Kierkegaard, Fear a"d Trertbli"g ( Crai,,tt et Trembleme,,t, trans. Tisseau,
(Paris: Aubier, 1 984), pp. 52-67) on the nature of the real movement which is not
mediation but "repetition" and which stands opposed to the abstract logica� false
movement described by Hegel. See the remarks from the joumJJ l p ublished as an
appendix to La Ripitition, trans. and ed. Tisseau. One also finds in Peguy a profound
critique o f"logical movement": Peguy denounces this as a conservative, accumula­
tive, and capitalistic pseudomovement. See Clio, pp. 45 et seq. This is close to the
Kierkegaardian critique.
3. Sec Nietzsche, Tkus Spoke Zaratkustra, p art I I I , "Of Old and New Law­
Tables," sec. 4= "But only a buffoon thinks: 'Man can also be jumped over.' "

10. Eternal IUcu"ence

1 . Friedrich Nietzsche, Tkus Spoke Zaratkustra, trans. by R.J. Hollingdale (New
York: Penguin Books, 1 96 1 ) ; hereafter Z.
2. Friedrich Nietzsche, La 110lo,,ti de puissance, trans. by G. Bianquis ( Paris: Gal­
limard, 1 93 5 ) ; hereaner VP. Friedrich Nietzsche, Tke Will to Power, trans. by Walter
Kaufmann and R . J . Hollingdale (New York: Random House, 1 968); hereafter WP.
3. Z I I I, "Of the Virtue That Makes Small," p 1 9 1 ; Z I I , " Of the Compas­
sionate," p. 1 1 3 : "But worst of all are petty thoughts. Truly, better even to have done
wickedly than to have thought pettily! To be sure, you will say: 'Delight in petty
wickedness spares us many a great evil deed.' But here one should not wish to be
spared."
4. Friedrich Nietzsche, Q ,, tire Gmealogy of Morals, trans. by Walter Kaufmann
(New York: Random House, 1 g67).
5. Friedrich Nietzsche, & ce Home, trans. by W. Kaufmann (New York: Random
House, 1 96 7 ) ; hereafter EH.

11. Man and Ovennan

1 . M. Serres, Lt s.:rstbne de Leib,,i(. ( Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
1 982), pp. 648-57.
 2 68 I I . M A N A N D O VE R M A N

2 . See The Order ef Things, trans. A . Sheridan (New York: Pantheon 1 970), chs. 41
5, 6; hereafter OT.
3- Les Mots et les choses ( Paris: Gallimard, 1 966), p. 243 (hereafter MC), ( OT, pp.
320-3 1 ) . Daudin's exemplary study, Les classes zoologiques et l 'idee de serie animau
( Paris: Editions des Archives contemporaraines, 1 g83), had shown how classifica­
tion in the classical age developed according to series.
4. Naissance de la clinique ( Paris: Presses U niversitaires de France, 1 g63), pp. 1 1 9,
1 38 ( The Birth efthe Clinic, trans. A. Sheridan ( New York: Pantheon, 1 973), pp. 1 1 8,
1 36).
5. This theme has found its fullest expression in J. Vuillemin's book l'hiritag1
kantien et la revolution copernicienne ( Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1 954).
6. In OT Foucault constantly recalls the necessity ofrecognizing two stages, but
these are not always defined in the same way: either, in a narrow sense, they are
things which first receive a particular historicity, and then man appropriates this
historicity for himself in the second stage (MC, pp. 380-8 1 [OT, pp. 370-7 1 ] ) ; or
else, in a larger sense, it is " the configuration s" which change first, followed by their
"mode of being" (MC, p. 233 [OT, p. 2 2 1 ] ) .
7. MC, p. 268 ( OT, p. 258).
8. See Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Principes de phillosophie zoologique ( Paris:
Pichon et Didiet, 1 830) , which eontains the polemic with Cuvier on folding.
9. On the great " break" brought about by Cuvier, whereby Lamarck still be­
longs to classical natural history while Cuvier makes possible a history of the living
creature that will manifest itself in Darwin, see MC, pp. 287-Bg ( O T, pp. 1 74-76)
and MC, p. 307 ( OT, p. 294): "evolutionism is a biological theory, ofwhich the condi·
tion of possibility was a biology without evolution-that of Cuvier."
I O . MC, p. 2 9 1 ( O T, p. 2 78 ) . We feel that this text, which deals with nineteenth­

century biology, has much wider implications and expresses a fimdamental aspect of
Foucault's thought.
1 1 . This is the point emphasized by P. Klossowski in his Nietzsche et le cercle viciewc
( Paris: Mercure de France, 1 978).
1 2 . As we have seen, it is Bichat who breaks with the classical conception of
death, as being a decisive indivisible instant (M arraux's formula, taken up again by
Sartre, whereby death is that which "transforms life into a destiny," still belongs tQ
the classical conception). Bichat's three great innovations are to have seen death at
being coextensive with life, to have made it the global result of partial deaths, and
above all to have taken "violent death" rather than "natural death" as the model (or
the reasons for this last point, see Recherches physiologiques sur la vie et la mort [Paris
Fortin , Masson et Cie., ca. 1 8oo], pp. 1 1 6- 1 9) . Bichat's book is the first act ofa mod­
ern conception of death.
1 3 . See MC, p. 2 9 1 ( OT, p. 278).
1 4. See "What .Is an Author?" in language, Counter-Memory, Practice, e d . D . F.
Bouchard ( I thaca: Cornell University Press, 1 97 7 ) , pp. 1 36-39.
1 5 . MC, pp. 397- 98 ( OT, pp. 385-87).
1 6 . See MC, pp. 309, 3 1 3, 3 1 6- 1 8, 395-97 ( OT, pp. 296, 300, 305 -6, 384-85), or
 13. Delirium: World-Historical 2 69

the characteristics of modern literature as being "the experience of death . . . , un­

thinkable thought . . . , repetition . . . , finitude."
1 7 . O n the reasons given by Foucault for this special situation in language, see
MC, pp. 306 - 7 ( OT, pp. 293 - 94) and MC, pp. 3 1 5 - 1 6 ( O T, pp. 304- 5 ) .
1 8 . MC, p . 39 5 (OT, p . 383). Rimbaud's letter not only invokes language o r litera­
ture, but the two other aspects: the foture man is in charge not only of the new lan­
guage, but also of animals and whatever is unformed (in the " Letter to Paul
Demeny" [Paris: Pleiade, 1 97 2 ] , p. 255).

12. Psychoana lysis and Desire

1 . E. A Bennett, Ce quej1111g a vraimentdit (Paris: Gerard, 1 973), p. 80.

2. Translators' note: in English in the original.
3. Serge Leclaire, Dimasquer lt ritl (Paris: Seuil, 1 9 7 1 ), p. 35.
4. Cf. the famous case of President Schreber and the verdict which grants him
his rights. (Translaton' note: the reference is to Freud's essay, " Psychoanalytic
Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia [Dementia Para­
noides] ," in vol. 9 of the Pelican Freud Library, Cast Histories II [Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1 979]).
5 . Cf. Robert Castel, Lt Psyckoana�.,sme ( Paris: Fran�ois Maspero, 1 973).
6. Cf. a curious text ofJ. A. Miller in OmicaT, 1 .
7 . Jacques Donzelot, in T1ie Policing of Families, trans. R. Hurley ( London:
Hutchinson, 1 980), shows that psychoanalysis has evolved from the private rela­
tionship and that it perhaps entered the "social" sector very much earlier than has
been thought.

13. Delirium: World-Historical, Not Familial

1 . R. D. Laing, T1ie Politics ofExperitMt (New York: Ballantine, 1 g61 ), pp. 1 54-
55.
2. On the interplay of races and intensities in the theater ofcruelty, see Antonin
Artaud, Oeuvres complitts ( Paris: Gallimard), vols. 4 and 5: for example, the project of
"La conquete du Mexique," vol. 4, p. 1 5 1 ; and the role of intensive vibrations and
rotations in "Les Cenci," vol. 5, pp. 46ff (Translators' note: for the English text of
.

the latter, see Antonin Artaud, The Cmci, trans. Simon Wa tson Taylor [ New York :
Grove Press, 1 970 ], pp. vii ff.)
3. Arthur Rimbaud, U'" saison m nlfor ( Paris: Flammarion, 1 g89).
4. Nietzsche, letter to Jakob Burckhardt, 5 January 1 889, in Stlecud Lttttrs of
Friedrick Nitt�scke, trans. Christopher Middleton (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1 969), p. 34 7.
5 . Jacques Besse, "Le - danseur," in La grande Pflf'I' ( Paris: Editions Belfond,
1 g69). The whole first part of this book describes the schizo's stroll in the city; the
second part, "Legendes folles , " progresses to the hallucinations or deliriums of his­
torical episodes.
 2 70 r 3 . DELIRIUM: WORLD·HISTORICAL

6 . Wilhelm Reich, The Function of the Orgasm, trans. Vincent R . Carfagno ( New
York: Simon and Sch uster, 1 973), p. 70. For a critique of autism, see Roger G entis,
Les murs de l 'asile ( Paris: Maspero, 1 9 70), pp. 4 1 1T.
7 . Mau rice Gar�on, Louis XVII ou lafausse inigme (Paris: Hachette, 1 968), p. 1 7 7.

1 4 . Becoming-Animal

1 . Rene Scherer and Guy Hocquenghem, Co-ire, &cherche, 22 ( 1 9 76), pp. 76-82:

see their critique of Bettelheim's thesis, w hich considers the becomings-animal of

the child merely an autistic symbolism that expresses the anxiety of the parents
more than any reality of the child. See Bruno Bettelheim, The Emfty Fortress (New
York: Free Press, 1 967 ).
2. Philipp e Vagi, "Les philosophes du fantasti que," Liberation, 3 1 March 1 9 7 7 .
For the preceding cases, what we must arrive a t is a n understanding of certain so·
called neurot ic behaviors as a fonction of becomings- animal, ins tead of relegating
becomings-animal to a psychoana·lytic interpretation of behaviors. We saw this in
r elation to masochism (and Loli to explains that the origin of his feats lies in certain
masochistic experiences, a fi.ne text by Christian Maurel conjugates a becoming·
monkey and a becoming-horse in a masochistic pairing). Anorexia would also have
to be understood from the point of view of becoming-animal.
3. See Newswee!, 16 May 1 977, p. 5 7 .
4 . See Dolfi Trost, Visible et invisible ( Paris: Arcanes 1 953) and Librement mlcha­
nique ( Paris: Minotaure 1 955): "She was simultaneously, in her sensible reality and
in the ideal prolongation of her lines, like the projection of a human group yet to
come."

15 . The Signs ofMadness: Proust

1 . Marcel Proust, "Within a Budding Grove," in &membrance of Things Past, 3

vols. trans. C. K. Scott Moncridf, Terence Kilmartin, and Andres Mayor (New
York: Vintage Books, 1 982), vol. 1 , p. 568.
2. Marcel Proust, "Time Regained , " in &membrance of Things Past, vol. 3,
pp. 832-33.
3. Marcel Proust, "The Captive, " in &membrance of Things Past, vol. 3, pp. 203-4.
4 . Marcel Proust, "The Fugitive, " in Remembrance of Things Past, vol. 3, p. 6 1 3 .
5. Proust, "Within a Budding Grove, " p. 5 79.
6. Marcel Proust, "The Guermantes Way," in &membrance �(Things Past, vol. 2 ,
p . 298.
7. Char lus' three speeches are: "Within a Bu dding Grove, " pp. 578-80; "The
Guermantes Way, " pp. 294-306; and "The Guermantes Way," pp. 574 -86.
8. Proust, "The Guermantes Way, " p. 5 77.
9. A n elementary combination is defined i n terms of the encounter o fone mas­
culine or feminine part of an individual with a masculine or feminine part of another.
Thus, we may have: the masculine part ofa man and the feminine part of a woman;
but also the masculine part of a woman and the feminine part of a man; the mas-
 17. language: Major and Minor 271

culine p art o f a man and the feminine part of another man; the masculine part o f a
man and the masculine part ofanother man . . . .
10 . Pr oust, "The Captive, " pp. 202-3.
1 1 . On the distinction between main characters and narrator in &mem6rance, see
Gerard Genette, Figures JI I ( Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1 9 72), pp. 25gf. Genette intro­
duces to this distinction many corrections.
1 2. Marcel Proust, "Cities of the Plain," in /Umem6rance of Things Past, vol. 2 ,
p . 976.

16. What is Desire

1 . Cf. the article of Roland Barthes on Schumann, "Rasch," in Language,

cours, socilti: Pour Emile Benvenisu, ed. J. Kristeva, j.-C. Milnes, N. Ruwet ( Paris:
Seuil, 1 9 75), pp. 2 1 Bff
2 . Translator's note: the original is, literally, "Oh, I could tell you, mummy," a
line fi·om a French nursery rhyme.
3. Rene Nellie, in L 'Erotique des Troubadours (Tours, 1 963), gives a good analysis
of this plane ofimmanence of courtly love, in the way it challenges the interruptions
that pleasure wou ld like to introduce into it. In a quite different assemblage, similar
utterances and techniques are to be found in Taoism for the construction of a plane
of immanence of desire (cf., R. Van Gulik, Sexual Life in Ancient China [ Leiden:
E . J. Brill, 1 96 1 ] , and the commentaries ofJ.·F. Lyotard, Economie Libidinale [ Par is:
Minuit, 1 974] ) .
4 . D. H . Lawrence, Eros et les chiens ( Paris: Bourgois, 1 9 70 ) , p. 290.
5. Ray Bradbury, The Machineries ofJoy pp. 38-39.

17. Language: Major and Minor

1 . On the expansion and diffusion of states of language, in the "patch of oil"

mode or the "paratrooper" mode, see Bertil Malm berg, New Trends in Linguistics,
trans. Edward Carners (Stockholm: Lund, 1 964), ch. 3 (which uses N. Lindqvist's
important studies on dialect). What are needed now are comparative studies of how
homogenizations and centralizations of given major languages take place. In this
respect, the linguistic history ofFrench is not at all the same as that of English; nei­
ther is their relation to writing as a form of homogenization the same. For French,
the centralized language par excellence, one may refer to the analysis of Michel de
Certeau, Dominique julia, and Jacques Revel, Unepolitique de la langue (Paris: Gal­
limar d, 1 9 7 5 ) . The analysis covers a very brief period at the end of the eighteenth
century, focusing on Abbot Gregory, and notes two distinct perio ds: one in which the
central language opposed the rural dialects, just as the town opposed the
countryside, and the capital the provinces; and another in which it opposed "feudal
idioms," as well as the language of the emigres,just as the nation opposes everything
that is foreign to it, an enemy to it: " I t is also obvious that the rejection of the dialects
resulted from a technical inability to grasp stable laws in regional speech patterns"
( pp. I 6off ) .
 2 72 I 7 · L A N G U A G E : M AJ O R A N D M I N O R

2 . See Michel Lalonde, Change, 30 ( March 1 9 7 7) , pp. 1 00- 1 22 , where the poem,
"Speak White," quoted in text, appears, along with a manifesto on the Quebecois
language ("La deffense et illustration de la langue quebecqoyse").
3. On the complex situation of Afrikaans, see Breyten Breytenbach's fine book,
Feu Froid (Paris: Bourgeois, 1 9 76); G. M. Lory's study ( pp. 1 0 1 - 1 07) elucidates
Breytenbach's project, the violence of his poetic treatment of the language, and his
will to be a " bastard, with a bastard language. "
4 . O n the double aspect o f minor language, poverty-ellipsis, and overload­
variation, one may refer to a certain number of exemplary studies: Klauss Wagen­
bach's study of the German of Prague at the beginning of the twentieth century,
Franz Kajlca: Eine Biographie seiner Jugend (Bern: Francke, 1 958) ; Pasolini's study
demonstrating that Italian was not constructed on the basis of a new standard or
mean, but exploded in two simultaneous directions, "upward and downward ," in
other words, toward simplified material and expressive exaggeration (L 'expirience
hiritique: Langue et cinema ( Paris: Payot, 1 9 76), pp 46-47 ) ; and ]. L. Dillard's st udy
bringing out the double tendency of Black English on the one hand to omit, lose,
disencumber, and on the other to overload, to develop "fancy talk" (Black English
[New York: Random House, 1 972] ) . As Dillard notes, there is no inferiority to the
st andard language; instead there is a correlation between two movements that nec­
essarily escape from the standard level of language. Still on the topic of Black
English, LeRoi Jones shows the ex tent to which the two conjoined directions ap­
proximate language to music (Blues People [New York: William Morrow, 1 963) , pp.
30- 3 1 and all of ch . 3 ) . O n a more general level, one will recall Pierre Boulez's analy­
sis of a double movement in music, dissolution of form, and dynamic overload or
proliferation: Conversations with Cilestin Deliege (London: Eulenberg Books, 1976), pp.
20-22.
5. Yann Moulier, preface to Mario Tronti, Ouvriers et capital (Paris: Bourgois,
1 97 7 ) , p. 6 .
6. Pasolini, L'expirience hiritique, p . 6 2 .
7. See the "Strategy Collective" manifesto on the Quebecois language in
Change, 30 (March 1 9 7 7 ) ; it denounces the "myth of subversive language," which
implies that simply being in a minority is enough to make one a revolutionary: "this
mechanist equation derives from a populist conception of language . . . . Speaking
the language of the working class is not what links an individual to the positions of
that class . . . . The argument that Joual has a su bversive, countercultural force is
entirely idealistic" ( p. 1 88).

18. Minor Literature: K<ifka

1 . See letter to Brod in Franz Kafka, Letters to Friends, Family and Editors, trans.
Richard and Clair Winston (New York: Schocken Books, 1 977) , June 1 92 1 , p. 289,
and commentaries in Wagenbach, Franz K aflca, Annies de jeunesse (Paris: Mercure:
1 96 7 ) , p. 84.
2. Kafka, Diaries, trans. Martin Greenberg (New York: Schocken Books , 1 949),
29 December 1 9 1 1 , p. 1 94.
 18. Minor Literature: Kafka 2 7J

3 . Ibid., p. 1 93 : "Literature is less a concern of literary history, than of the

people."
4 . See "Wedding Preparations in the Country," in Kafka, Complttl Storits (New
York: Schocken Books, 1 9 7 1 ) : "And so long as you say 'one' instead of '[,' there's
nothing in it" ( p. 53) . And the two subjects appear several pages later: "[ don't even
need to go to the country myself, it isn't necessary. I'll send my clothed body," while
the narrator stays in bed like a bug or a beetle ( p. 55). No doubt, this is one of the
origins of Gregor's becoming-beetle in "The Metamorphosis" (in the same way,
Kafka will give up going to meet Felice and will prefer to stay in bed). But in "The
Metamorphosis,'' the animal takes on all the value of a true becoming and no longer
has any of the stagnancy of a subject of enunciation.
5. See Michel Ragon, Historit rk la liutralwrt proUtarimnt '" Frantt (Paris: Albin
Michel, 1 974) on the difficulty of criteria and on the need to use a concept of a "sec­
ondary zone literature."
6. Kafka, Diarits, 25 December 1 9 1 1 , p. 1 93 : "A small nation's memory is not
smaller than the memory of a large one and so can digest the existing material more
thoroughly."
7. See the excellent chapter " Prague at the Turn of the Century," in Wagen­
bach, Fr� Keflca, on the situation of the German language in Czechoslovakia and
on the Prague school.
8. The theme of teeth is constant in Kafka. A grandfather-butcher; a streetwise
education at the butcher-shop; Felice's jaws; the refusal to eat meat except when he
sleeps with Felice in Marienbad. See Michel Cournot's article, "Toi que as de si
grandes dents,'' Nouvtl OlmrrJtJttur, 1 7 April 1 9 7 2 . This is one of the most beautiful
texts on Kafka. One can find a similar opposition between eating and speaking in
Lewis Carroll, and a comparable escape into nonsense.
9. Franz Kafka, Tiu Trial, trans. Willa and Edwin Muir (New York: Schocken
Books, 1 956) ; ''He noticed that they were talking to him, but he could not make out
what they were saying, he heard nothing but the din that filled the whole place,
through which a shrill unchanging n_ote like that ofa siren seemed to sing."
1 0 . Kafka, Diarits 20 August 1 9 1 1 , pp. 6 1 -62.

1 1 . Kafka, Diarits: "Without gaining a sense, the phrase 'end o fthe month' held
a terrible secret for me" especially since it was repeated every month-Kafka him­
self suggests that if this expression remained shorn of sense, this was due to laziness
and "weakened curiosity." A negative explication invoking lack or powerlessness, as
taken by Wagenbach. It is well known that Kafka makes this sort of negative sugges·
tion to present or to hide the objects of his passion.
1 2 . Kafka, Lttttrs to Milma trans. Philip Boehm (New York: Schocken, 1 990),
p. 58. On Kafka's fascination with proper names, beginning with those that he in­
vented, see Kafka, Diarits, 1 1 February 1 9 1 3 (apropos of the names in Tiit Krdict).
13. Kafka commentators are at their wars t in their interpretations in this respect
when they regulate everything through metaphors: thus, Marthe Robert reminds
us that the Jews are likt dogs or, to take another example, that "since the artist is
treated as someone starving to death Kafka makes him into a hunger artist; or since
he is treated as a parasite, Kafka makCS> him into an enormous insect" ( Otu11rts com-
 2 74 1 8. M I N O R L ITERAT U R E : KAFKA

ptetes, Circle d u livre precieux, vol. 5 , p . 3 1 1 ) . I t seems to u s that this i s a simplistic

conception of the literary machine-Robbe-Grillet has insisted on the destruction of
all metaphors in Kalka.
1 4. See, for example, the letter to Pollak in Kafka, Letters, 4 February 1 9m1,
pp. 1 -2 .
1 5 . See H . Vidal Sephiha, "Introduction a l'etude d e l'in tensif, " i n Langages, 1 8
(June 1 970), pp. 1 04-20. We take the term tensor fromJ.-F . . Lyotard who uses i t to
indicate the connection of intensity and libido.
1 6 . Sephiha, " I ntroduction," p. 1 07: "We can imagine that any phrase convey­
ing a negative notion of pain, evil, fear, violence can cast off the notion in order to
retain no more than its limit-value-that is, its intensive value"; for example, the
German word sekT, which comes from the Middle High German word, Ser meaning
"painfu l."
1 7 . Wagenbach, Franz Kqfka, pp. 78-88 (especially pp. 78, 8 1 , 88).
18. Kafka, Diaries, 1 5 December 1 9 1 0 , p. 33.
19. Henri Gobard, "De l a vehicularite de l a langue anglaise," Langues modernes
(January 1 97 2 ), and L � lienation linguistique: analyse tetraglossique ( Paris: Flammarion,
1 976 ) .
20. Michel Foucault insists o n the importance of the distribution between what
can be said in a language at a certain moment and what cannot be said (even ifit can
be done). Georges Devereux (cited by H . Gobard) analyzes the case of the young
Mohave I ndians who speak about sexuality with great ease in their vernacular lan­
guage, but who are incapable of doing so in that vehicular language that English
constitutes for them; and this is so not only because the English instructor exercises
a repressive function, but also because there is a problem of languages (see Essais
d'etlmopsyckiatrie ginirale [Paris: Gallimard, 1 970) , pp. 1 25-26).
2 1 . On the Prague circle and its role in linguistics, see Change, 3 ( 1 969), and 1 o
( 1 97 2 ) . It is true that the Prague circle was only formed in 1 92 5 . But in 1 920,
Jakobson came to Prague where there was already a Czech movement directed by
Mathesius and connected with Anton Marty who had taught in the German univer­
sity system. From 1 902 to I go 5 , Kafka followed the courses given by Marty, a disci­
ple of Brentano, and participated in Brentanoist meetings.
2 2 . On Kafka's connections to Lowy and Yiddish theater, see Brod, Franz Kqfka,
pp. I 1 0- 1 6 , and Wagenbach, Franz Kqfka, pp. 1 63-67. In this mime theater, there
must have been many bent heads and straightened heads.
23. Franz Kafka, "An Introductory Talk on the Yiddish Language," in Franz
Kafka, Dearest Father, trans. Ernst Kaiser and Eithne Wilkins ( New York: Schocken
Books, 1 954), pp. 38 1 -86.
24. A magazine editor will declare that Kafka's prose has "the air of the clean­
liness of a child who takes care of himself" (see Wagenbach, Franz Kqfka,
p. 8 2 ) .
2 5 . "The Great Swimmer" i s undoubtedly one of the most Beckett-like of
Kafka's texts: "I have to well admit that I am in my own country and that, in spite of
all my efforts, I don't understand a word of the language you are speaking."
 19. Nomad Art: Space 2 75

19. Nomad Art: Space

1 . The principal texts are Alois Riegl, Die Spatromische Kunstindustrie (Vienna:
Staatdruckerei, 1 92 7 ) ; Wilhelm Worringer, A bstraction and Empathy: A COfltribution to
the Psychology of Style, trans. Michel Bu llock (New York: I nternational Universities
Press, 1 96 3 ) ; Henri Maldiney, &gard, parole, espace ( Lausanne: L'Age d'homme,
1 973), especially "L'art et le pouvoir du fond," and Maldiney's discussion of
Cezanne.
2. All of these points already relate to Riemannian sp ace, with its essential rela­
tion to "monads" (as opposed to the unitary subject of Euclidean space see Gilles
Chatelet, "Sur une petite p hrase de Riemann," Anarytiques, 3 (May 1 9 79). Although
the "monads" are no longer thought to be closed upon themselves, and are postu·
lated to entertain direct, step-by-step local relations, the purely monadological
point of view proves inadequate and should be superseded by a "nomadology" (the
ideality of striated space versus the realism of smooth space).
3 . See Edmund Carpenter's description in Eskimo (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1 964) of ice space, and of the igloo: "There is no middle distance, no
perspective, no outline, nothing the eye can cling to except thousands of smokey
plumes of snow . . . a land without bottom or edge . . . a labyrinth alive with the
movements of crowded people. No flat static walls arrest the ear or eye . . . and the
eye can glance through here, past there" (no pagination).
4. These two aspects, the encompassing element and the center, figure inJ ean­
Pierre Vernant's analysis of space in Anaximander, in Mythe et pensie che� les Crees
(Paris: Maspero, 1 9 7 1 -74), vol. 1 , part I l l . From another perspective, the entire
history of the desert concerns the possibility of its becoming the encompassing ele­
ment, and also of being repelled, rejected by the center, as though in an inversion of
movement. In a phenomenology of religion like that of Van der Leeuw, the nomos
itself does indeed appear as the encompassing-limit or ground, and also as that
which is repelled, excluded, in a centrifugal movement.
5. Whatever interactions there may be, the "art of the steppes" had a specificity
that was communicated to the migrat ing Germans; in spite of his many reservations
about nomad culture, Rene Grousset makes this point in The Empire of the Steppes,
trans. Naomi Walford (New Brunswick, N J . : Rutgers University Press, 1 970),
pp. 1 1 -2 5 . He notes the irred ucibility ofScyt hian art to Assyrian art, Sarmatian art
to Persian art, and Hunnic art to Chinese art. He even points out that the art of the
steppes influenced more than it borrowed (see in particular the question of Ordos
art and its relations to China).
6. On this question oflight and color, in particular in Byzantine art, see Henri
Maldiney, JUgard, parole, espace, pp. 2031f., 2391f.
7. The correlation, "haptic-close- abstract," was already suggested by Riegl.
But it was Worringer who developed the theme of the abstract line. Although he
conceives of it essentially in its Egyptian form, he describes a second form in which
the abstract assumes an intense life and an expressionist value, all the while remain­
ing inorganic; see A bstraction and Empathy, ch. 5, and especially Fonn in Gothic (Lon­
don: Putnam's and Sons, 1 92 7 ) , pp. 38-5 5 .
 276 1 9 . NOMAD ART: SPACE

8 . Andre Leroi-Gourhan, .U geste et la parole ( Paris: Albin Michel, 1 964- 1 965), 2

vols. Tedinique et langage, I : 263f[; La memoire et les r..Fthmes, 2: 2 1 gf. ( " Rhythmic marks
are anterior to explicit figures" ) . Worringer's position is very ambiguous; thinking
that prehistoric art is fundamentally figurative, he excludes it from art, on the same
grounds as he excludes the "scribblings of a child" (Abstraction and Empathy, pp. 5 1 -
55). Then h e advances the hypothesis that the cave dwellers were the "ultimate re­
sult" of a series he says began with the abstract ( p. 1 30). But would not such a hy­
pothesis force Worringer to revise his conception of the abstract, and to cease identi­
fying it with Egyptian geometricism?
9. Worringer establishes an opposition between the power of repetition, which
is mechanical, multiplying, and without fixed orientation, and the force of symme­
try, which is organic, additive, oriented, and centered. He sees this as the fundamen­
tal difference between Gothic ornamentation and Greek or classical ornamentation;
see Form in Gothic, pp. 53-55 ("The Ceaseless Melody of the Northern Line "). In a
fine book, Estkttiques d'Orient et d 'Occident ( Paris: E. Leroux, 1 937), Laura Mor­
genstern develops a particular example, distinguishing the "symmetrical antithe­
tism" of Sassanid Persian art from the "disjointed antithetism" of the art of the
p roto-lranian nomads (Sarmatians). Many authors, however, have stressed the cen­
tered and symmetrical motifs in barbarian or nomad art. Worringer anticipated this
objection: " Instead of the regular and invariably geometrical star or rosette or simi­
lar restfol forms, in the North we find the revolving wheel, the turbine or the so­
called sun wheel, all designs which express violent movement. Moreover, the move­
ment is peripheral and not radial'' (Form in Gothic, p. 54). The history of technology
confirms the importance of the turbine in the life of the nomads. In another, bio­
aesthetic, context, Gabriel Tarde opposes repetition as indefinite potential (puis­
sance) to symmetry as limitation. With symmetry, life constituted an organism for
itself, taking a star-shaped or reflected, infolded form ( the radiata and mollusks). I t
i s true that i n doing so i t u nleashed another type o f repetition, external reproduc­
tion; see L 'opposition uni111rselle ( Paris: Alcan, 1 8g 7 ) .
1 0 . Translator's note: Worringer, Abstraction and Empathy, p . 33.
1 1 . Translator's note: Worringer, Abstraction and Empathy, p. 42.
1 2 . On all these points, see Georges Charriere's very intuitive book, Scytkian A ri
(New York: Alpine Fine Arts Collection, 1 979), which includes a great number of
reproductions. It is doubtless Rene Grousset who has most effectively emphasize d
"slowness" as a dramatic pole of nomad art; see The Empire of the Steppes, pp. 1 3- 1 4-
1 3 . Dora Vallier, in her preface to the French translation ofAbstraction and Emp•
thy (A bstraction et Ei'!folilung [Paris: Klincksieck, 1 978] ), is right to note Worringcr
and Kandinsky's independence from one another, and the differences between the
p roblems they were addressing. However, she maintains that there is still con•
vergence and resonance between them. In a sense, all art is abstract, with the figura•
tive springing from certain types ofabstraction. But in another sense, since there are
very different types of lines (Egyptian-geometrical, Greek-organic, Gothic-vita l ,
etc.), the question then becomes one of determining which line remains abstract, or
realizes abstraction as such. It is doubtful that it is the geometrical line, since it sti ll
draws a figure, even though an abstract and nonrepresentative one. Rather, the ab·
 20. Cinema and Space: The Frame 2 7 7

stract line i s that defined b y Mi chael Fried i n relation t o certain works b y Pollock:
multidirectional, with neither inside nor o utside, form nor background, delimiting
no thing, describing no contour, passing between spots or points, filling a smooth
space, stirring up a close-lying haptic v isual matter that "both invites the act of
seeing o n the part of the spectator yet gives his eye nowhere the rest once and for all"
( Three American Painters [Cambridge, Mass . : Fogg Art Museum, 1 965] , p. 1 4 ) . In
Kandinsky himself, abstraction is realized not so much by geometrical structures as
by lines of march or transit t hat seem to recall Mongolian nomadic motifs.

20. Cinema and Space: The Frame

r. S e e P . Pasolini, l 'Expirience hiritique, pp. 263-265.

2 . Noel Burch, Praxis du cinema, p. 86: o n t h e black or white screen, when i t no
longer simply serves as "pu nct uation" but takes o n a " s tructural v alue."
3 . Claude Oilier, "Souvenirs 'ecra n,"' i n Cahiers du Cinima, p. 88. It is this which
Pasolini analyzed as "obsessive framing" in Antonioni ( l'Expirimce hiritique, p. 1 48 ) .
4. Dominique Vi llain, i n an u n published work which includes interviews with
cameramen (cadreurs), analyzes these two conceptions of framing: le Cadrage
cinbnatographique.
5. Lotte Eisner, l'Ecran dimoniaque ( Paris: Ramsay, 1 98 5 ) , p. 1 2 4 . Translated as
T/¥ Haunted Screen ( Berkeley: University of California Press, 1 969 ).
6. Cf. Bouvier and L eu trat, "Nosferat u ," in Cahiers du cinbna, pp. 7 5 -7 6.
7. Jean Mitry, Esthitique et psychologi,e du cinbna ( Paris: Editio ns Universitaires,
1 990), vol. 2 , pp. 78-79.
8 . Pascal Bonitzer, "Decadrage, " i n Cahiers du cinbna, 284 (January 1 9 78).
9 . R . Bresson, Notes on Cinematography, trans. Jonathan Griffin (New York:
Urizen 1 9 7 7 ) , p. 28: "A sound must never come to the help ofan image, nor an image
to the help ofa sound . . . . I mage and sound must not support each other, but must
work each i n turn through a sort ef relay. "
1 0 . The most systematic study of the out-of- field was made b y Noel Burch, pre­
cisely in relation to Renoir's Nana ( Une Praxis du cinbna, ( Paris: Gallimard, 1 986),
pp. 30-51 ) . And i t i s from this point of v iew t h a t J ea n Narboni contrasts H itchcock
and Renoir (Hitchcock, "Visages d ' H itchcock ," p. 3 7 ) . B u t , as Narboni recalls, the
cinematographic frame is always a mask in Bazin's sense: this is because Hitch­
cock's closed framing also has its out-of-field, although in a completely different way
from Renoir ( n o t a "space which i s continuous and homogeneous with that of the
screen" bu t an "o ff-space" "which is discontinuous and heterogeneous to that of the
screen," which defines virtualities).
1 1 . Bergson developed a l l t hese points in Creati11t Evolution, trans. Arthur
Mitchell ( New York: Holt, 1 9 1 1 ) , Ch . 1 . On the "tenuous thread," cf p. 1 1 .
1 2 . Bo nitzer o k!iects to Bu rch's v iew that there is no " becoming-field of the o ut­
of- fi eld" and that the out-of-field remains imaginary, even when i t i s actualized by
the effect of a continuity shot: something always remains out-of- field, and according
to Bonitzer it is the camera itself, which can appear on its own account , but by intro­
ducing a new dualit y into the image (le regard et la voix, p. 1 7) . These remarks of
 z 78 2 0 . C I N E MA A N D S P A C E : T H E F R A M E

Bonitzer seem to u s to be solidly based. But we believe that there i s a n internal

duality in the out-of-field itself which does not merely relate to the working imple­
ment.
1 3 . Dreyer, quoted by Mau rice Drouzy, Carl Th . Dr�-;er ni Nilsson Essai de
psychocritique ( Paris: Cerf, 1982), p 353.

21 . Cinema and Time

1 . Paul Rozenberg sees in this the essence of E nglish ro mant icism. See his Le
romantisme anglais ( Paris: Laro usse).
2. j.M.G. LeClezio, "The Extra-Terrestria l," in "Fellini," Lllrc, 45, p. 28.
3. On Marxist criticism on the evolution ofneo-realism and its characters, cf. Lt
nio-rialisme, Etudes dnimatographiques, p. 1 0 2 . And on Marxist criticism in Japan,
especially against Ozu, cf. Noel Burch, Unt! Praxis du cinima, p. 283. It must be
emphasized that in France the new wave, in its visionary aspect, was deeply under­
stood by Sadoul.
4. a. Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, p. 392.
5. Marc Chevrie analyzes Jean-Pierre Leaud's playing as "medium" in terms
close to Blanchot's ( Cahiers du cinima, 35 1 (September 1 983) : 3 1 -33).
6. Cr iticism of metaphor is equally present in the new wave with Godard and in
the new novel with Robbe-Grillet (Pour un nouveau roman). It is true that, more re­
cently, Godard has taken inspiration from a metaphorical form, for instance, in the
case of Passion: "The knights are metaphors for the bosses" (Lt Monde, 2 7 May
1 982) , but, as we shall see, this form draws on a genetic and chronological analysis of
the image, much more than on a synthesis or comparison of images.
7. D. H. Lawrence wrote an important piece in support of the image and
against cliches in relation to Cezanne. He shows how parody is not a solution; and
neither is the pure optical image, with its voids and disconnections. According to
him, it is in the still lifes that Cezanne wins his battle gainst chiches, rather than in
the portraits and landscapes ( " In troduction to These Paintings ," Phoenix, ed. D.
McDonald ( London: Heinemann, 1 936). We have seen how the same remarks ap­
plied to Ozu.
8. "Lectosign" refers to the Greek lekton or Latin dictum, which indicates what is
expressed i n a proposition independent of the relationship of this to its object. Sim­
ilarly for the image when it is captured intrinsically, independent of its relationship
with a sup posedly external object.
9. Text of Antonioni's quoted by Pierre Leprohon, Antonioni ( Paris: Seghers),
p. 1 03: "Now that we have today eliminated the problem of the bicycle (I am using a
metaphor, try to understand beyond my words), it is important to see what there is
in the spirit and heart of this man whose bicycle has been stolen, how he has
adapted, what has stayed with him out of all his past experiences of the war, the
post-war and everything that has happened in our country. " (See also the text on
Eros sick, pp. 1 04-6.)
I O . Noel Bu rch is one of the first critics to have shown that the cinematographic

image ought to be read no less than seen and heard; and this in connection with Ozu
 23 . The Diagram 2 79

(Pour un observateur lointain ( Paris: Galli mard, 1 982), p. 1 75 ). But already in Praxis du
cinemt1 Burch showed how Story of a lfNJe Affair inaugurated a new relation between
story and action, and gave the camera an "autonomy," rather like that ofa reading,
pp. 1 1 2 - 1 8 ; on the "cont inuit y grasped through discrepancy," see p. 47.

22. Painting and Sensation

1 . Henri Maldiney, Regard parole espace ( Lausanne: E ditions !'Age d'Homme,

1 9 73), p. 1 36. Phenomenologists like Maldiney and Merleau-Ponty see Cezanne as
the painter par excellence. They analyze, in fact, sensation or rather "sensing," not
only in terms ofrelating sensible qualities to an identifiable object (figurative move­
ment), but also f rom the point of view of each quality constituting a field which
stands by itself without ceasing to interfere with the other's ( " pathetic" moment).
Hegel's phenomenology short-circuits this aspect of sensation, which, nonetheless,
is the basis ofevery possible aesthetics. See Maurice Merleau-Ponty, PhtwJmmology of
Perception ( London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 1 962), pp. 207-42; Maldiney, &gard
parole espace, 1 24-208.
2. D. H. Lawrence, " In troduction to These Paintings," in Phoemx, pp. 55 1 -84.
3. Francis Bacon. Interviewed by Dtwid Sylwster (New York: Pan theon Books, 1 9 75),
p. 1 8 .
4 . Ibid., p . 63.
5. Ibid., p. 65.
6 . All these themes are constantly present in Francis Bacon. Interviewed by Dtwid
Sylvester.
7 . Ibid., p. 58.
8. Ibid., pp. 83-84.
9. Ibid., p. 58 (" coagulation ofnon-representational marks").
ro. Ibi d . , pp. 76-8 1 (see also p. 47: "I have never tried to be horrifi c").
1 1 . Ibid., p. 43. Bacon seems to rebel agai nst psychoanalytic suggestions; Sylves­
ter, in another context, tells him that "the Pope is il Papa" ; Bacon answers politely:
"Well, I certainlyhave never thoughtofit in that way" ( p. 7 1 ). For a more elaborate,
psychoanalytic interpretation of Bacon's paintings, see Didier Anjeu, u Corps de
l:4utre ( Paris: Gallimard), pp. 333- 40.
1 2 . Francis Bacon. Interviewed by David Sylvester, pp. 75-76, r n8.
1 3 . O n sensation and rhythm, systole and di astole (and on Cezanne's pages on
them, see Regard Parole Espace, pp. 1 47- 1 7 2 .
1 4. Francis Bacon. Interviewed by David Sylwster, p . 74.

23 . The Diagram
1 . This is very important text of Bacon taken from Francis Bacon. Interviewed by
David Sylvester, p. 56. "FB: Wel l, very often the i nvoluntary marks are much more
deeply suggestive than others, and those are the moments when you feel that any­
thing can happen. DS: You feel it while you're making those marks : FB: No, the
marks are made, and you survey the t�ing like you would a sort of graph. And you
 2 80 23. THE DIAGRAM

see within this graph the possibilities of all types of fact being planted. This is a
difficult thing; I ' m expressing it badly. But you see, for instance, if you think of a
portrait, you maybe at one time have put the mouth somewhere, but you suddenly
see through this graph that the mouth could go right across the face. And in a way
you would love to be able in a portrait to make a Sahara ofthe appearance-to make
it so like, yet seeming to have the distances of the Sahara." In another passage, Ba­
con explains that, when he makes a portrait, he often looks at photographs which
have nothing to do with the model-for example, a photograph ofa rhinoceros for
the texture of the skin (ibid . , p. 32).
2 . Ibid., p . 90.
3. On the possibility that involuntary marks offer nothing and spoil the paint­
ing, leading it "into a kind of marshland, see ibid, 90.
4. See ibid ., p. 56: "And you see within this graph the possibilities ofall types of
fact." Wittgenstein invoked a diagrammatic form in order to express the "pos­
sibilities of fact" in logic.
5. Ibid . , p. 56.
6. Henri Maldiney compares, in this respect, CCzanne and Klee. See &gartl
parolees/KJct, pp. 1 49-5 1 .
7 . This tendency to eliminate the manual has always been present in painting,
in the sense that we say about a certain work that "we no longer feel the hand . "
F ocillon analyzes this tendency- "ascetic frugality" -which reaches its apex i n ab­
stract painting. See Vie des Formes, suilli de l 'Eloge de la Main ( Paris: Presses Univer­
sitaires de France, 1 934), 5th ed., pp. 1 1 8- 1 9. But, as Focillon says, the hand feels
itself all the same. In order to distinguish a real from a false Mondrian, Georg
Schmidt used to appeal to the intersection of the two black sides of a square, or to the
disposition of the layers of color along right angles (see Mondrian, Reunion des
Musees Nationaux, p. 1 48).
8. See Elie Faure's famous text on Velasquez, Histoire de l � rt. L :A. rt Motleme r
(Paris: Gallimard, 1 g88), pp. 1 67- n.
9 . O n these new blind spaces, see Christian Bonnefoi's analyses o n Ryman in
Christian Bonnefoi's "A propos d e l a destruction d e l'entite d e surface," Macula, 3-4
( 1 978) : 1 63-66. For Yves-Alain Bois' analyses ofBonnefoi see Yves-Alain Bois, "Le
fotur anterieur," Macula, 5-6 ( 1 979) : 229-33.
1 0 . Clement Greenberg (Art and Culture: Critical Essays [Boston: Beacon Press,

1 96 1 ] ) and Michael Fried ("Trois Peintres Americains, " in Peintlre: &1Jue ti'Estkitique
[Paris: Union Generale d' Editions)) have been the first to analyze the spaces of
Pollock, Morris Louis, Newman, Noland, etc., and to define them in terms of"strict
opticality." Undoubtedly, the question for these critics was how to break away from
the extraaesthetic criteria that Harold Rosenberg had invoked, as he baptized action
painting. They reminded us that Pollock's words-although "modern" -are, first
and foremost, tableaus, and as such answerable to formal criteria. The question,
though, is to find out whether opticality is the right criterion for these works. It
seems that Fried entertains doubts but that he abandons them too quickly (see pp.
283-87 ) . The term action painting can be aesthetically correct.
1 1 . Greenberg has noted very forcefully the importance of this abandonment of
the easel, especially in Pollock. He emphasizes, in this context, the "Gothic" theme,
 26. On the Line 281

without giving i t , though, the full meaning that the term can assume with respect to
Worringer's analyses (one of Pollock's paintings is called Gothic) ; it seems that
Greenberg sees no alternative other than that between ''painting with easel'' and
"mural painting" (it seems to us that this would rather apply to the case of
Mondrian). See in Macula, 2, ':Jackson Pollock's File."
1 2 . Bacon often criticizes abstraction for staying "at only one level" and for spoil­
ing the "tension" ( Francis Bacon. lnterriewed by Dflll id Sylvester, p. 60). About Marcel
Duchamp, Bacon says that he admires him more for his attitude and less for his
p ainting; in fact, his painting strikes Bacon as symbolics or "shorthand figuration"
(ibid., p. rn5).
1 3 . Ibid., p. 94: "I hate that kind ofsloppy sort ofCentral European painting; it's
one of the reasons I don't really like abstract expressionism"; see also p. 6 1 : ''I think
Michaux is a very, very intelligent and conscious man . . . . And I think that he has
made the best tachist or free marks that have been made. I think he is much better in
that way, in making marks, thanjackson Pollock ."
1 4 . See Gregory Bateson, "Why D o Things have Outlines?" in Steps to an Ecology
of Mind (San Francisco: Chandez, 1 972), pp. 27-32. What used to make Blake mad,
incensed, or forious, was for people to th ink of him as mad; but it was also because of
"some artists who paint as if things did not have contours. " He used to call them
"the slobbering school ."
1 5 . Francis Bacon. lnterriewed by Dflll id Sylvester, p . 94: ''You would never end a
painting by suddenly throwing something at it. Or would you?-Oh yes. In that
recent triptych, on the shoulder of the figure being sick into the basin, there's like a
whip ofwhite paint that goes like that. Wel l, I did that at the very last moment, and I
simply left it. "

24. Music and Ritornello

1 . See Fernand Deligny, "Voix et voir," Rlckerckes, 8 (April 1 975), on the way in

which, among autistic children, a "line of drift " deviates from the customary path
and begins to "vibrate," "toss about," "yaw."
2. Paul Klee, On Modern A rt, trans. Paul Findlay, intro. Herbert Reed (London:
Faber, 1 g66), p. 43 (translation modified to agree with the French version cited by
the authors ) . See Henri Maldiney's comments in &garde parole espace (Lausanne:
L'Age d'homme, 1 973) , pp. 1 49-5 1 .
3 . O n the musical no me, the ethos, and the ground or land, notably in polypho­
ny, seejoseph Samson in Historie de la musique, ed. Roland Manuel ( Paris: Gallimard,
1 9 7 7), vol. 2, pp. 1 1 68-72. One may also refer to the role in Arab music of the "ma­
qam," w hich is both a modal type and a melodic formula; see Simonjargy, IA rnus­
ique arabe ( Paris: PUF, 1 9 7 1 ), pp. 55ff.

26. On the Line

1 . Heinrich von Kleist, U berdas M arionettentkeater: Arifsil(.e und A neUoten (Frank­

fort a . M .: lngel, 1 980).

 2 82 26. ON THE LINE

2 . F . Scott Fitzgerald, Tke Crat:k- Up, witk Otker Pier:es arid Stories (Harmo­
ndsworth: Penguin, 1 965).
3. S. Kierkegaard, Fear arid Trrmblirig, trans. Walter Lowrie ( Princeton: Prince­
ton University Press, 1 968). This also shows the way in which Kierkegaard, in rela­
tion to movement, sketches a series of scripts that already belong to the cinema.
4. Fernand Deligny, "Cahiers de l'immuable," &ckerckes 18 (Paris: Recherches,
1975).
5 . Pierrette Fleutiaux, Histoire du goieffre et de la luriette (Paris:Julliard, 1 976).

27. Capitalism

1 . Karl Marx, " Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy," in A Cori­

tributiori to tke Critique ef Political Er:oriO'ff!J\ trans. N. L Stone (Chicago: Charles H.

Kerr, 1 904), p . 298 (translation modified).
2. On the historical independence ofthe two series, and their "encounter," see
Etienne Balibar in Althusser and Balibar, Lire le Capital, vol. 2 ( Paris: Maspero,
1 968), pp. 286-89.
3. See Arghiri Emmanuel, Uriequal Exr:karige: A Study ef tke Imperialism ef Trade
(New York: Monthly Review Books, 1 97 2 ) , pp 1 3- 1 4, and the following passage he
cites from Paul Sweezy, Tke Theory ef Capitalist DerJtlopmmt (New York: Monthly Re­
view Press, 1 942), p. 338: " 'Capital' is not simply another name for means of pro­
duction; it is means of production reduced to a qualitatively homogeneous and
quantitatively measurable fund of value" (whence the equalization ofp rofit). In his
analysis of the primitive accumulation of capital, Maurice Dobb (Studies iri tke
Dt1Jtlopmerit ef Capitalism, rev. ed. [New York: International Publishers, 1 g64], pp.
1 7 7-86) effectively demonstrates that primitive accumulation bears not on the
means of production but on "rights or titles to wealth" ( p. 1 77; modified to agree
with the French translation cited by the authors), which, depending on the circum­
stances, are convertible into means of production.
4. See the distinction certain jurists make between Roman, "topical," law, and
modern, "axiomatic," law of the civil-code type. We may define certain fundamental
ways in which the French Civil Code is closer to an axiomatic than to a code: ( 1 ) the
predominance of the enunciative form over the imperative and over affective for­
mulas (damnation, exhortation, admonishment, etc. ); ( 2 ) the code's pretension that
it forms a complete and saturated rational system; (3) but at the same time the rela­
tive independence of the propositions, which permit axioms to be added. On these
aspects, see jean Ray, Essai sur la structure logique du code r:ivilftarit;ais (Paris: Akan,
1926). It has been established that the systematization ofRoman law took placevery
late, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
5. Translator's note: Marx, Ecoriomic arid Pkilosopkic Mariuscripts ef 18<14-, ed. and
intro. DirkJ. Struik, trans. Martin Mulligan (New York: International Publishers,
1 964), p. 1 29.
6. See Jean Saint-Geours, Pouvoir etji'llllrir:t ( Paris: Fayard, 1 9 79). Saint-Geours
is one of the best analysts of the monetary system, as well as of "private-public"
mixes in the modern economy.
 28. Tiu Three Aspects of Culture 2 83

7. On the tendency toward the elimination of ground rent in capital i sm, sec
Samir Amin and Kostas Vcrgopoulos, La pestion pqysamu: et le 'apillllinu ( Paris: .tdi­
tions Anthropos, 1 974). Amin analyzes the reasons why ground rent and rent or
mines keep or assume a present-day meaning in the peripheral regions, although in
different ways; sec Tiit Law ef Value anri Historical Mallrialism, trans. Brian Pearce
(N cw York: Monthly Review Press, 1 978 ), chs. 4 and 6.
8. In troductory books on the axiomatic method emphasize a certain number of
problems. For example, sec Robert Blanche's fine book, L 'anomatiqru ( Paris: PUF,
1 959) (a bridged and translated by G. B. Keene as A.riomatics [ N cw York: Free Press
of Glencoe, 1 962] ). There is first ofall the question of the respective independence of
the axioms, and whether or not the system is saturated, or "strongly complete"
(secs. 1 4 and 1 5). Second, there is the question of''modcls ofrcalization, " their het­
erogeneity, but also their isomorphy in relation to the axiomatic system (sec. 1 2).
Then there is the possibility of a polymorphy of models, not only in a nonsaturated
system, but even in a saturated axiomatic (secs. 1 2 , 1 5, and 26). Then, once again,
there is the question of the "undecidable propositions" an axiomatic confronts (sec.
20). Finally, there is the question of "power," by which nondcmonstrablc infinite
sets exceed the axiomatic (sec. 26 and "the power of the continuum"). The com­
parison of politics to an axiomatic is based on all of these aspects.
9. Lewis Mumford, "The First Mcgamachinc," Diogerws, 5 5 (July-September
1 g66), p. 3 (translation modified to agree with the French translation cited by the
authors).
10. Ergonomics distinguishes between "human-machine" systems (or work

posts) and "humans-machines" systems (communicational aggregates composed of

human and nonhuman clements). But this is not only a difference of degree; the
second point of view is not a generalization of the first: ''The notion of information
loses its anthropocentric aspect,'' and the problems arc not of adaptation but of the
choice of a human or nonhuman clement depending on the case. Sec Maurice de
Montmollin, Les �ystemes hommes-m"'hines ( Paris: PUF, 1g67_). The issue is no longer
to adapt, even under violence, but to localize: where is your place? Even handicaps
can be made useful, instead of being corrected or compensated for. A deaf· mute can
be an essential part ofa "humans-machines" communicational system.
1 1 One of the basic themes of science fiction is to show how machinic enslave­
•

ment combines with processes ofsubjection, but exceeds and differs from them, per­
forming a qualitative leap. Take Ray Bradbury: television not as an instrument lo­
cated at the center of the house, but as forming the walls of the house.
1 2. Sec Lewis M umford, The Pertlagon ef Powtr, vol. 2 of The Myth ef the Mat;/iines
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1 970), pp. 236-360 (a comparison of the
"old mcgamach inc" and the modern one; despite writing, the old mcgamachinc no­
tably suffered from difficulties in "communication ").
13. Marx, Mama,ripts ef 1844, p. 1 29.

28. The Three Aspects efCulture

1 . Friedrich Nietzsche, Da_ylma1', trans. by R. J. Hollingdalc (New York: Co­

l umbia University Press, 1 98 2 ) ; hereafter D.
 2 84 2 8 . T H E T H R E E A S P EC T S O f C U L T U R E

2 . Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Eril, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (New York:

Penguin, 1 973); hereafter BGE.

3. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy ef Morals, trans. by Walter Kaufmann
and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Random House, 1 g67 ); hereafter GM.
4- Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Humo, trans by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Ran­
dom House, 1 967).
5 . G M II 1: O n this point the resemblance between Freud and Nietzsche is con­
firmed Freud attributes verbal traces to the preconscious, these are distinct from
the mnemonic traces peculiar to the unconscious system. This distinction permits
him to reply to the question "How to render repressed elements ( pre-)conscious?"
The reply is: "By restoring these intermediary preconscious elements which are ver­
bal memories." Nietzsche's question would be stated in this way: how is it possible to
"act" reactive forces?
6. GM I I 8, p. 70: It was in the debtor-creditor relationship "that one person
first encountered another person, that one person first measured himselfagainst an­
other."
7. GM I I 6, pp. 65-66: "Whoever clumsily interposes the concept of 'revenge'
does not enhance his insight into the matter but farther veils and darkens it (for
revenge merely leads us back to the same problem: 'how can making suffer con­
stitute a compensation?')." This is what is lacking in the majority of theories: show­
ing from what point of view "making suffer" gives pleasure.
8. GM I I 1 1 , p. 75: "The law represents on earth . . . the struggle against the
reactive feelings, the war conducted against them on the part of the active and ag­
gressive powers. "
9. GM I I I O , p . 7 3 : Justice "ends, a s does every good thing o n earth, by overcom­
ing itself."
1 0 . Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. by R . J . Hollingdale (New

York: Penguin Books, 1 96 1 ) ; hereafter Z.

r 1 . Friedrich Nietzsche, "Schopenhauer as Educator," trans. by James W. Hill­

esheim and Malcolm R. Simpson (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1 965). chap. 6-

Nietzsche explains the diverting of culture by invoking the "three egoisms," the ego­
ism of acquirers, the egoism of the State, the egoism of science.
1 2 . Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimery Meditations, trans. by R. J. Hollingdale (Cam­

bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1 g83).

 Works by Gilles Deleuze

1 946 "Du Christ a la bourgeoisie. " Espace, pp. 93- 1 06.

"Mathese, science, et philosophic." Preface to Johann Malfatti von Mon­
tereggio, Etudes sur la mathese; ou, anarchie et hierarchie de la science. Trans. by
Christian Ostrowski. Paris: E ditions du Griffon d'Or.
1 94 7 " Preface." To Didero t, La religieuse. Paris: Marcel Da ubin.
1952 (with Andre Cresson). David Hume: Sa vie, son oeuvre, avec un expose de sa phi­
losophie. Paris: Presses U niversitaires de France.
1 953 Empirisme et subjectiviti: Essai sur la nature humaine selon Hume. Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France. English trans. and introduced by Constantin V.
Boundas, Empiricism and Subjectivity: An Essay on Hume 's Theor;y of Human Na­
ture. New York: Columbia University Press, 1 99 1 .
Instincts et institutions. Paris: Hachette.
1956 "Bergson ( 1 859- 1 94 1 ) . Les philosophes cilibres, sous l a dir. M. Merleau­
"

Ponty. Paris: Editions d'Art Lucien Mazenod.

"La conception de la difference chez Bergson. " Etudes Bergsoniennes, vol. 4, pp.
7 7- 1 1 2 .
195 7 Bergson: Memoire et vie. Paris: Presses U niversitaire de France.
1959 "Nietzsche, sens, et valeurs. " A rguments, vol. 3, no. 1 5, pp. 20-28.
 286 i%rks by Gilles DeletR:,e

1 96 1 "De Sacher- Masoch a u masochisme," A rgumtnls, vol. 2 1 , pp. 40-46.

"L ucrece et le naturalisme." Etudies Philosophiques, vol. 1 6, no. 1 , pp. 1 9-29.
Reprinted with modification in the Logiquedu mu ( 1 969).
1 962 Nie�che et la philosophie. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France ( 2d rev. ed.
1 967). English trans. by Hugh Tom linson: Niet;:,sche and Philosoph.J- New York:
Columbia University Pr ess, 1 g8 3.
" 2 5oe anniversaire d e l a nai ssance d e Rousseau: Jean·Jacques Rousseau,
precurseur de Kafka, de Celine, et de Ponge. " In A rts, no. 87 2 (June 6- 1 2 ), p.
3·
1 963 L4 philosophie critique de Kant: Doctrines desfacultes. Paris: Presses Uni versitair es
de France. English trans. by H ugh To mlinson and Barbara Habberjam:
Kant's Critical Philosophy: The Doctrint ef the FatUlties. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 1 984.
"Unite de A la recherche du temps ptrdu." Revue dt Metaphysique et de Morale, vol.
68, pp. 427-42.
"My stere d 'Ariane." Etudes Nietzschiennts, p p . 1 2- 1 5 .
L'idee de genese clans l'esthetique d e Ka nt." Revue d'Esthitique, vol. 1 6,
pp. 1 1 3-36.
1 964 Marcel Proust et les signes. Paris: Presses Universitaires de Fr ance (2d enlarged
ed. 1 970). English trans. by Richard Howard: Proust and Signs. New Yor k: G .
Braziller, 1 9 7 2 .
"Deux philosophes s'expliq uent" (Gilles Deleuze: "II a et c mon maitre";
Kostas Axelos: "Il a fai descendre la meta physique clans Jes cafes"). Arts (Oc­
tober 28-November 3), pp. 8-9.
1 965 Nietzsche. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
"K lossowski et les corps-langage. " Critique, no. 2 1 4, pp. 1 99- 2 1 9. Reprinted
with modifications in the Logique du sens ( 1 969).
1 966 Le Bergsonisme. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. English trans. by
Hugh Tom linson and Barbara Habberjam: Bergsonism. New York: Zone
Book s, 1 988.
"L'Homme: Une existence douteuse." Le Nou!Jll Observateur, no. 8 1 (June 1 -
7 ) , pp. 32-34.
"Philosophie de la serie noire." A rts & Loisirs, no. 18 (January 24-'February
1 ) , pp. 1 2- 1 3 .
1 967 " I ntrodu ctio n to E. Zola. La bete humaine." In Oeu111n complftes d'Emile Zol11,
Paris: Cercle du Livre Precieux, vol. 6, pp. 1 3-2 1 . Modified and reprinted in
Logique du sens ( 1 969).
(with Michel Fou cault). " Introduction generale a Nietzsche. " In Frederich
Nietzsche, La gai savoir: Les .fragments posthumes (1881-18811). Trans. Pierre
Klossowski. Vol . 5 of Oeuvres philosripltiques completes. Paris: Gallimard .
 1%rks by Gilles Deltu.(.t 2 87

Presentation de Sacher-Masoch mnde texte integral de la Ji.mu a lafauruJTI!'. Trani. by

Audc Willm. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit. English trans. by jean McNeil
and Audc Willm: Masochism: A r1 lr1m-pretatior1 of Cold111ss ar1d Cruelty; 10111"1
with the emire text of Vm11S in Furs by ltopold llOll Sat:her-Masoch. New York: G.
Brazillcr, 1 97 1 . Reprinted as Masochism: Cold111Ss ar1d Cruelty; � ir1 Fws,
Gilles Dclcuzc and Leopold von Sachcr-Masoch. New York: Zone Books,
1 g85.
"Sur la volonte de puissancc ct l'etcrncl rctour." Nieti:.sche: Cold.rs de RDyau­
rnont. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit.
"Unc theoric d'autrui" (Michel Tournicr). Critique, vol. 23, no. 241 pp. 503-
25. Reprinted with modifications in Logiq11e dums. Trans. as " Michel Tour­
nicr and the World Without Others . " &oriorny arid Society, vol. 1 3 ( 1 984), pp.
52-7 1 .
"La methodc de dramatisatio n." B11lletin de la Societi Frarl{aise de Philosophie,
vol. 6 1 , no. 3: Seance du 2 8 janvicr 1 96 7 .
" A quoi rcconnait-on le structuralismc." Les Foyers de la aJt11re. November.
Reprinted in Hist(/jre de laphilosophie: /dies, Doctri111s. Fr. Chi.tclct, ed., vol. 8.
Paris: Hachette, 1 972- 73.
"Renverser le platonismc (lcs simulacrcs). " Revru de Metaphysique e t de Morale,
vol. 7 1 , no. 4 (October-December), pp. 426-38). Reprinted with modifica­
tions in the Logiqru dums ( 1 969).
"L'eclat de rirc de Nietzsche. " le Nouvel Observateur, April 5 pp. 40-4 1 .
1 g68 Dif[irmce et ripititiori. Paris: Presses Univcrsitaircs de France. English trans.
by Paul Patton: Diffe rence arid RepetUior1. London: Athlone, forthcoming.
Spirio�a et le problirne de l'expressior1. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit. English
trans. by Martin joughin: Expressionism ir1 Phllosophy: Spir1o�a. New York:
Zone Books, 1 990.
"Le Schizophrenc ct le mot." Critiqru, vol. 24, no. 255-56, pp. 7 3 1 -46. Re­
printed with modifications in the Logiq11e d11 sens. English trans. and ed. by
Josue Harari: "The Schizophrenic and Language: Surface and Depth in
Lewis Carroll and Antonin Artaud ." Ttxt11t1l Strategies, pp. 2 7 7-95. I thaca:
Cornell University Press, 1 9 79.
(withj. N. Vuarnct). "Entrcticn sur Nietzsche." us Lettres Fra"'jaises, March
5·
1 969 logique duens. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit: English trans. by Mark Lester
with Charles Stivalc. Edited by Constantin V. Boundas: The Logic of Sense.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1 990.
"Spinoza ct la methodc generalc de M. Gucroult." &Vile de Metaphysique et de
Morale vol. 74, pp. 426- 3 7 .
"Gilles Dclcuzc parlc d e la philosophic." l a Qpir1�111 littiraire, no. 68
( March 1- 1 5). I nterview with Jeanette Colombcl (on Difference et ripititior1).
 2 88 H-&rks by Gu/es Deleuze

1 970 spino�a: Plti.losopkie pratique. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit. English trans. by
Robert H urley: Spino�a: Practical Plti.losopky. San Francisco: City Lights
Books, 1 988.
"Faille et feux locaux: Kostas Axelos. " Critique vol. 26, no. 2 7 5 , pp. 344-5 1 .
"Schizologie . " Preface to Louis Wolfson, Le scki�o et les langues. Paris: Galli­
mard
(with Felix Guattari) . "La synthese disjonctive." L � n:. no. 43, pp. 54-6 2 .
Reprinted with modifications i n Capitalisme et Scki�opkrenie. vol. 1 : L-Anti­
Oedipe ( 1 97 2 ).
" U n nouvel archiviste." Critique, vol. 2 6 , no. 2 7 4 ( March), pp. 1 95-209. Re­
printed as Un nouvel arckiviste. Montepellier: Fata Morgana, 1 9 72 . English
trans. by Stephen Muecke: "A New Archivist" in Theoretical Strategies, ed. by
Peter Botsman. Sydney: Local Consumption, 1 982.
1 97 2 (with Felix Guattari). Capitalisme et sclti.�opkrinie. Tome I : L-Anti- Oedipe. Paris:
Les Editions de Minuit. (2d enlarged ed. , 1 980). English trans. by Robert
Hurley, M. Seem, and H. R. Lane: Anti- Oedipus: Capitalism and Scki�opkrmia.
New York: Viking Press/ A Richard Seaver Book, 1 977.
''Trois problemes de groupe." Preface to Felix Guattari, Psyckanal_yse et trans­
vtrsaliti. Paris: F. Maspero. Trans. as "Three Group Problems," Semiotext(e),
vol. 2 , no. 3 , pp. 99- r n9.
"Qu'est-ce que c'est tes machines desirantes a toi?" Preface to "Saint Jack ie:
Comedienne et bourreau," by Pierre Benichou. Les Temps ModtrMs, no. 3 1 6,
pp. 854-56.
"Helene Cixous et I' ecriture stroboscopique." L e Mondt, August 1 1 .
"Les intellectuels et le pouvoir: Entretien Michel Foucault-Gilles Deleuze ."
L � n:. no. 49, pp. 3- r n . Trans. a s "The I ntellectuals and Power: A Discussion
Between M. Foucault and G. Deleuze," 1elos, no. 1 6 ( 1 973), pp. r n3-9. Also
trans. by Donald Bouchard, " Intellectuals and Power." In Bouchard, ed.,
Language, Counter-MtmOTJI Practice, pp. 205- 1 7 . Ithaca, N. Y .: Cornell Univer­
sity Press, 1 97 7 .
"Hume." Histoire de la pkilosopkie: Idles, doctrines, Tome 2 . Franc;ois Chatelet,
ed. Paris: Hachette.
(with Felix Guatarri) . "Sur capitalisme et schizophrenie." L�rc: Deleu�e,
no. 49 (2d ed. , 1 980), pp. 47-55. Reprinted in Pourparlers, 1972-1990 ( 1 990),
pp. 24-38. Interview with Catherine Bakes-Clement.
(with Felix Guatarri). "Deleuze et Guatarri s'expliquent." La Quin�aine Lit­
tiraire, Uune 1 6-20) pp. 1 5- 1 9. I nterview with Serge Leclaire, Franirois
Chatelet, H. Torrubia, Pierre Clastres, Roger Dadoun, P. Rose, and R. Pivi·
d al.
"11 languaggio schizofrenico." I n Tempi Moderni, 1 2 . I nterview with Vittorio
Marchetti. Reprinted in Una tomha per edipo ( 1 974), pp. 339-56.
 Hilrks by Gilles DeleU{e 2 89

1 973 Michel-Antoine Buznier (ed.). Entretiens: C'est demain l a veille. Paris: Les Edi­
tions du Seuil.
(with FClix Guattari). " 1 4 Mai 1 9 1 4: U n seul ou plusieurs loup s?" Minuit, no.
5. English trans. by Mark Seem: "May 1 4 , 1 9 1 4: One or Several Wolves?"
Semiotext {e), vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 1 3 7-47.
"Lettre a Michel Cressole. " I n Michel Cressole, Deleu�e, pp. 107- 1 8. Paris:
Editio ns Universitaires. Reprinted in Pourparlers ( 1 990). English trans. by
Janis Forman: " I Have Not hing to Admit," Semiotext(e), vol 2, no. 3 ( 1 9 77),
pp. 1 1 1 - 1 6 .
" Pensee nomade . " Niet�sche au4jourd'hui? vol. 1 . Paris: 1 0/ 1 8. English trans.
by Jacqueline Wallace: " Nomad Thought," Semiotut(e) vol. 3, no. 1 ( 1 978),
pp. 1 2 -20.
(with Felix Guattari ). "Le nouvel arp enteur: I ntensites et blocks d'enfance
clans 'Le chateau.' " Critique, vol. 29, no. 3 1 9, pp. 1046-54.
(with Felix Guattari). "Bilan-programme pour machines desirantes. "
Minuit, no. 2 (January), pp. 1 -25. Reprinted i n 2 d ed. o fCapitalisme e t schi�o­
phrinie. vol 1 : l'Anti-Oedipe ( 1 9 72).
"Presence et fonction de la folie clans la recherche du temps perdu." Saggi e
richerche de letteraturefrancese, XII. Rome: Bulzoni. Reprinted in 3d ed . of Proust
et les signes.
"Le froid et le chaud" (on Gerard Fromanger). Presentation of the exhibi­
tion, "Fromanger: Le peintre et le mo dele." Paris: Baudard Alverez.
1 9 74 " I n troduction." To Felix Guattari, Una 1omba per Edipo; A cura di Luisa
Muraro. Trans. by D. Levi and L. Muraro. Verona: Bertani.
"Preface." To Guy Hocquenghem, l 'apres-mai des faunes, pp. 7- 1 7. Paris:
Grass et.
1975 (with Felix Guattari). Kefka: Pour une littirature mineure. Paris: Les Editions de
Minuit. English trans. by Dana Pol an: Kafka: 1oward a Minor literature. Min­
neapolis: University of Minnesota press, 1 986.
"Deux regimes de fous." In Psychanalyse et Simiotique, Armando Verdiglione,
ed. 3d colloquim held in Milan in May 1 9 74. Paris: Union Generale d'Edi­
tions.
(with Felix Guattari). " Psychoanalysis and Ethnology. " Substatree: A &view of
Theor_y and literar_y Criticism, pp. 1 70-97.
"Ecrivain non: Un nouveau cartographe. " Critique, no. 343, pp. 1 2 07-27. Re­
printed with modifications in Foucault.
(with Roland Barthes, Gerard Genette et al.). "Table ronde" (on Proust).
Cahiers Marcel Proust, new series, no. 7 (Etudes Proustimnes, I I ) , pp. 87- 1 1 5 .
Proceedings ofa colloquy o n " Proust and the New Criticism," sponsored by
New York University and L'Ecole Normale Superieure, January 20-22,
1 9 7 2.
 2 90 WOrks by Gilles Dele�e

1 976 (with Felix G uattari). Rhi;:.ome: /,,1.Toductirm. Pari s: Les Editions de Minuit.
English trans. by Paul Foss a nd Paul Patton: " Rhizome," Ideology a"d Crm­
scious,,ess, no. 8 ( Spring 1 98 1 ) , pp. 49- 7 1 . Reprinted wi th modifications as the
introduction to Mille Plateaux ( 1 980).
"Avenir de linquistique. " Preface to H. Gobard, L'alierwtirm li,,quistique: A,,a­
lyse tel.Taglossique. Paris: Flammarion.
(with Michel Foucault and Felix Guatarri). "Formations des equipements
collectifs." Transcript of discussions. I n Fran�ois Fourquet and Lion
Murard, Les equipemnr.ts de poulJOir, pp. 39-4 1 , 1 6 1 -95, 2 1 2-27. Paris: Union
Gener ale des Editions. Revised version of the journal Recherches: Les equip­
me,,ts collectifs, no. 1 3 (December 1 973).
"Entretien avec Gilles Deleuze." Caliiers du Ci,,lma, no. 2 7 1 , pp. 5- 1 2 . Re­
printed in Pourparlers. ( 1 990 ). Trans. as "Three Questions on Six.fois deux: An
Interview with Gilles Deleuze." Afterimage, vol. 7 (Summer 1 978), pp. 1 1 3-
19.
1 9 77 "A propos des nouveaux philosophes e t d 'un problcme plus general." M i"uit,
no. 24, supplement (June 5), no pagination. Abridged version reprinted in
Le Mrmde, june 1 g-20, p. 1 6 , as "Gilles Deleuze contre les 'nouveaux phi­
losophes.' " Reprinted in foll in Recherches, Les u,,torelli, no. 30 (November),
pp. 1 79-84. I nterview fromj une 5.
(with Felix Guattari). Politique e t Psycltarra�')lse. Alem;on: Des Mots Perdus.
(with Claire Parnet). Dialogues. Paris: Flammarion. English trans. by Hugh
Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam: Dialogues. New York: Columbia Uni­
versity Press, 1 987.
"L'ascension du soci al." Postface t o Jacques Donzelot, L a police des.families.
Paris: Minuit. English translation by Robert Hurley : "The Rise of the So­
cial," foreword to Donzelot, the Polici"g of Families. New York: Pantheon
Books, 1 979.
"Nous croyons au caractcre constructiviste de certaines agitations de
gauch e." Recherches, Les u,,torelli, no. 30 (November), pp. 1 49-50.
"Le juif rich e." I nterview, Le Morule, February 1 8 . Trans. as "Der Reiche
Jude." In Daniel Schmid, Pro Helvetica. Zurich: Zytglogge, 1 g82.
"Gilles Deleuze fascine par ' L e Misogyne.' " L a Quirr;::. ai"e Litteraire, vol. 229.
Review of Alain Roger, L e Misogyrre. Pari s: DenoCI, 1 97 7 .
(with Felix Guatarri). " L e pire moyen de faire l' Europe." L e Mrmde, Novem­
ber 2 .
1 978 (with Carmelo Bene). Sourapposi;:.irmi. Mi lan: Feltri nelli . Supnpositiorrs. Paris:
Les Editions de Minui t, 1 979.
(with F. Chatelet et al.). Ou il est questirm de la toxicoma,,ie. Alen.yon: Des Mots
Perdus.
" Philosophic et minorite ," Critique, vol 34, no. 369, pp. 1 54-55.
 Works by Gilles DeletR,e 291

" Four Propositions o n Psychoanalysis." Trans. and e d . by Paul Foss and

Meaghan Morris in Language, St.tualiry, and Pt1Vtl"sion, pp. 1 34-40. Sydney:
Feral Publications. (From Politique et Psyt:hanoJ_-,se 1 9 7 7 . )
(with Claire Parnet a n d A . Scala). "The I nterpretation of Utterances."
Trans. and ed. by Paul Foss and Meaghan Morris in Language, Sexualiry, and
Peruersion, pp. 1 4 1 -5 7 . Sydney: Feral Publications. (From Politique et Psycha­
noJ_-,se 1 9 n )
" Les geneurs. " L e Mondt. April 7 .
" La plainte et le corps. " (P. Fed.id a). Le Mondt. October 1 3 .

"Spinoza e t nous ." Revue dt Synthese. 3 d series, nos. 89- 9 1 (January­

September). Reprinted as chapter 6 of Spino�a: Philosophie practique ( 1 970),
2 d ed.
(with Fanny Deleuze). Preface to D. H. Lawrence, ApocoJ_'1fm, pp. 7-37.
Paris: Balland.
1979 " Open Letter t o Negri's judges . " La Repuhhlica, May. Trans. by Committee
April 7 . Semiotext(e), vol. 3 ( 1 980), pp. 1 82-84.
"En quoi la philosophic peut serv ir a Jes ma thema ticiens o u meme a des mu­
siciens, mcme et surtout quand elle ne parle pas de musique ou de mathe­
matiques. " In Pierre Merlin, ed., Vincennes ou le disir d'apprmdre, pp. 1 20-2 1 .
Paris: Alain Moreau.
1 980 (with Felix Guattari ). Capitali.sme et scl1i;;.ophrinie: Mille plateaux. Pari s: Les
Editions de Minuit. English trans. by Brian Massumi: A Thousand Plateaus:
Capitalism and Schi;;.ophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnespta Press,
1987.
" 'Mille plateaux' ne font pas une montagne, ils ouvrent mille chemins phi­
losophiques." Liberation, October 2 3 , pp. 1 6- 1 7. Reprinted in Pourparlers
( 1 990 ) as "Entretien sur Mille plateaux, " pp. 39-52. I nterview with Christian
Descamps, Diddier Eribon, and Robert Maggiori.
"Entretien 1 980: Huit ans apres. " L� rc: Dele�e, no. 49 ( 1 972; 3d ed. 1 980),
pp. 99- 1 0 2 . 1 980 interview with Catherine Clement, added in 2d ed.
"Pourquoi en est-on arrive la?" I n terview with Franr;ois Chatelet on Vin­
cennes. Liberation, March 1 7 .
"Mille plateaux pour combien de chemins?" In Magazine Littiraire vol. 1 6 7
(December), pp. 58-59.
1 98 1 Francis Bacon: Logique dt la sensation. 2 vols. Paris: Editions d e la Difference.
"Preface ." To Antonio Negri, L 'anomalie sauvage: Puissance et pouvoir chez
Spino;;.a. Trans. by F. Matheron. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
In tervention by Gilles Deleuze in Bene, Carmelo. Otello, o la deficien;;.a delta
donna. Milan: Feltrinelli.
(with Felix Guattari). "How to Make Yourself a Body Without Orga ns."
 292 Works by Gilles De/eu('.e

Trans . by Suzanne Guerlac. Semiotext(e), vol. 4, no. 1 , pp. 265-7 0 . ( From

Mille Plateaux.)

( with Felix Guattari ) . "A Bloated Oedipus. " Trans. by R achel McComas.
Semiotext(e), vol. 4 , no. I. ( From Kajka: Pour une littiraJure mineure . )

"Peindre le cri. " Critique, vol. 3 7 , n o . 408, p p . 506- 1 1 . (From Francis Bacon.)

" L a peinture enflamme l'ecri t u re." L e Mondt. December 3, p. 1 5. [ n terview

with Herve Gu ibert on Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation . English transla­
t ion: "What Counts ls the Scream . " The Guardian, January Io, 1 982.
1 g8 2 "Lettre a U n o s u r le langage. " Le Revue de la Pmsie d'A f#ourd'hui, December,
Tokyo.
1 98 3 Cinima 1: L 'image-motllitment. Paris: L e s Editions d e Minuit. English trans.
Cinima z: Tiu Muvement-Image by Hugh To mlinson and Barbara Habberjam.
Minneapolis: University o f Minnesota Press, 1 986.

(with Felix Guattari ) . On the Line. Trans. by JohnJohnston. New York: Semi­
otext(e).

Preface. Nietoche and Philosophy. Tran s. by Hugh Tomlinson. New York: Co­
lumbia University Press.

"Cinema I, premiere." Libiration, Octobe r 3, p. 30. And "L e philosophe men­

uisie r." [nterview with Didier Eribon. Liberation, October 3, p. 3 I .

"Portrait d u philosophe en spectateur." u Mondt, October 6, pp. 1 , 1 7 .

"La photographic est d�a tin�e dans les chose s." Cahins du. Cinima, no. 352
(October), pp. 35-40. [nterview with Pascal Bonitzer and Jean Narboni on
September 1 3, edited b y the participants. Reprinted i n Pourparlers ( 1 990) as

"Sur L'image-mol/llt11Wl t," pp. 67-8 I .

" [ nedit: Godard e t Rivette . " La Quin;:aine littiraire, 404, (November 1 ) .

"L'abstraction lyrique." Change International, 1 (Autumn) (From Cinema 1:

L 'image-mouwment.)
"F rancis Bacon: The Logic o f Sensation." Flash Art, no. 1 1 2 (May) ( From
Fra11eis Bacon.)

(with Jean-Pierre Bamberger). "Le pacitisme au'j o urd-hui . " Les Nouwlles,
D ecember 1 5- 2 1 , pp. 60-64.
[nterview. Cahkn du Cinima, no. 352 ( October). Reprinted in Pourparlers
( 1 990 ).

1 984 " O n Four Poetic Formulas Which Might Summarize the Kantian Philoso­
phy." Preface to Kant's Critical Philosophy. Trans. by Hugh To mlinson and
Barbara H abberj am. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

"Grandeur de Vasser Arafa t . " Revue d'Etudts Palestiniennes, no. I o, pp. 4 1 -4 3.

(with Felix Guattari). "Concrete R u l e s and Abstract Machine s." Trans. by

Charles Stivale . Substance : Theory and Literar_� Criticism, vol. r 3, no. 3/ 4, pp. 7-
1 9. (Fr om Mille Plateaux.)
 ffii rks by Gilles Deleu{.e 2 93

" Books. " Art Fon.m, vol. 2 2 , no. 5 (January), pp. 68-69.
" Michel Tournicr and the World Without Others." Trans. by Graham Bur­
chell. Ecoriomy arid Sociny, vol. 1 3 1 , no. 1 , pp. 52-7 1 .
(with Felix Guattari). "Mai 68 n'a pas c u lieu." us Nouvelles, May 3- 1 0,
pp. 75-76.
"Lettre a Uno: Comment nous avons travaille a dcux" (on Guatarri). La Re­
vue de la Pmsle d'A '9ourd'kui, September, Tokyo, special issue.
"Le temps musical." La Revue de la Pmsle d'Aujourd'kui. September, Tokyo,
special issue.
1 g85 Cirrima 2: L'image-temps. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit. English trans. by
Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galcta: Cirrema 2: T1ie Time-Image. Minneapolis:
University of M innesota Press, 1 g8 9.
"Les intcrccsscurs. " I nterview with Antoine Dulaurc and Claire Pamct.
L'Autrejoumal, no. 8 (October), pp. 1 2- 2 2 . Reprinted in Pourparlers, ( 1 990).
"Schizophrenic ct societe." Em:yclopaedia Uriversali.r, vol. 1 6, pp. 524- 2 7 .
"Active and Reactive. " Trans. by Richard Cohen and e d . b y David B . Al­
lison. Cambridge: M I T Press, 1 9 85 . ( From Niet(.Sckt tt la plilosopkie.) 'JM New
Niet{scke, pp. 8o- m6.
(with Felix Guattari). "Nomad Art . " Trans. by Brian Massumi. A rl arid Text,
no. 1 9 ( October-December), pp. 1 6-26. (From Mille Plateaux. )

(with Felix Guattari). "City State . " Tran s. b y Brian Massumi. Zorre, no. 1 1 2 ,
pp. 195-99. (From Mille Plateaux. )
(with Felix Guattari). "Becoming-Human." Trans. by Brian Massumi. Sub ­
jects/ Objects, no. 3o pp. 24-32. (From Mille Plateaux.)
"Les plagcs d'immancncc." I n L'Art des cotefins, Mt1arrges efforts a Maurice dt
Garrdillac, cd by Annie Cuzcnavc and jcan-Fran�ois Lyotard, Paris: PUF.
"Le philosophc ct le cinema." Cirrlma, no. 334 (December 18-24) , pp. 2-3.
Reprinted in Pourparlers as "Su r L'image-temps," pp. 82-87.
"Il etait unc etoilc de groupc" (on Fran�is Chatclct). Libiratiori, December
27.
1986 Foucault. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit. English trans. by Scan Hand:
Foucault. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press , 1 g88.
(with Felix Guattari). Nomadology: The HUr Maekirre. Trans. by Brian Mas­
sumi. New York: Scmiotcxt(c). Reprinted in A TkowaridPlateaus ( 1 g87).
" 'Le ccrvcau, c'cst l'ecran': cntrcticn avcc Gilles Dclcuzc. " Cakiers du ciriima,
no. 380 (February), pp. 25-32.
"La vie commc unc oeuvre d 'art." Le Nouwl Obsm«eur, 1 1 38 (September 4 ) ,
pp. 66-68. Reprinted in Pourparlers ( 1 990).
Preface. To Serge Dancy, Cirri-lectures. Paris: Cahicrs du cinema. Reprinted in
 2 94 J#Jrks by Gilles DeleU{.e

Pourparlers as "Lettre a Serge Dancy: Optimisme, pessimisme, et voyage,"

pp. 97- 1 1 2 (which refers to the title ofDaney's book as Cini-Jourllll l).
" 'Fendre !es choses, fendre !es mots' " (on Foucault). Libtralion, September 2 ,
pp. 2 7-28, and September 3 , p. 38. In terview with Robert Maggiori. Re­
printed in Pourparlers ( 1 990 � pp. 1 1 5-28.
" Un portrait de Foucault. " Interview with Claire Parnet, Pourparlers ( 1 990),
pp. 1 39-6 1 .
"Sur I e 'Regime cristallin.' " Hors cadre vol. 4 , pp. 39-45. Reprinted in Pour­
as "Doutes sur l'imaginaire," pp. 88-96.
parlers ( 1 990)
"Le plus grand film irlandais (en hommage a Samuel Beckett)." Revue d 'Es­
thitique, pp. 38 1 - 8 2 .
"Bo ulez , Proust, et le temps: 'Occuper sans compter.' " In Claude Samuel,
ed., Eclatsl Boule�, pp. 98- 1 00. Paris: Edit ions du Centre Pompidou .
"The Intellect ual and Politics. " History oft he Present (Spring), pp. 1 - 2 and 1 9-
21.
1 98 7 " Preface t o the English Language Edition." Dialogues. Trans. by Hugh
Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. New York: Columbia University Press.
(with Jean-Pierre Bamberger). "A gauche sans missiles ." Les Nouvelles
(December 1 5-3 1 ), pp. 6 1 - 62, 64. Joint interview witn Claire Pam et.
1 988 Le pli: Leibniz et le baroque Paris: Editions de Minuit. English trans. The Fold:
Leibniz and the Barbque ( Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1 992).
Plricles et �rdi: La philosophie de Franfois Cluitelet. Paris: Editions de Minuit.
"Foucault: Hi storien du present." Magazine Littiraire, vol. 257 (September),
pp. 5 1 -52 .
"Signes et evenements" (entretien) Magaziiu Littiraire, vol. 257 (September),
pp. 1 6-25. Reprinted in Pourparlers ( 1 990) as "Sur la philosophic," pp. 1 85-
2 1 2.
" U n critcre pour l e baroque." Chimires, vol. 5/6, pp. 3-9. Reprinted i n re­
vised form in Le pli.
" 'A Philosophical Concept.' " Topoi vol. 7, no. 2 (September), pp. 1 1 1 - 1 2 , no
translator listed. Reprinted in Who Comes After the Subject? (London: Rout­
ledge, 1 99 1 ).
"La pensee mise e n plis." Libiration, September 22, pp. I - I I I . Reprinted in
Pourparlers ( 1 990) as "Sur Leibniz," pp. 2 1 3- 2 2 .
1 989 "Qu-est-ce qu'un dispositit?" and ensuing discussion in Michel Foucault:
Philosophe, pp. 1 85-95. Paris: Seuil, 1 989.
" Preface to the English Edition" Cinema 2 : The Time-Image, pp. xi-xii.
( Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1 989). Translated by Hugh
Tomlinson and Robert Galeta.
" Postface: Bartleby, ou la formule" in H. Melv ille, Bartleby, Les iles enchanties,
le campanile, pp. 1 7 1 - 208. Paris: Flammarion.
 Uiirks by Gilles Deleul:.I 2 95

"Lettre a Reda Bensmaia . " �iru, vol. 1 4, no. 53, p. 9. Reprinted as

" Lettre a Reda Bensmaia sur Spinoza" in Po.rparl11s ( 1 990), pp. 223-25.
1 990 "Le devenir revolutionnaire et les creations politiques . " Futur A11tirieur vol 1,
(Spring), p p . 1 00- 1 08. Reprinted in Pourparkrs ( 1 990) as "Controle et
devenir," pp. 229-39.
" Post-scriptum sur les societes de controle." L 'A lllrt jormuJl, no. 1 (M ay).
Reprinted in P011 rparl11s ( 1 990), pp. 24D-247.
Pourparlns, 1972-19!}0. Paris: Editions de Minuit. English translation: lnllr-
11itws, 1 972- 1 990. New York: Columbia University Press, forthcoming.
"Les conditions de la question: Qu'est-ce que la philosophic?" Chimirts, vol.
8 ( May), pp. 1 2 3-32. Reprinted in revised form in Q.u 'tst-ct q111 la philosoplrit?
English translation by Daniel W. Smith and Arnold L. Davidson: "The Con­
ditions of the Question: What is Philosophy?" vol 1 7, no. 3 Critical /11quiry
(Spring), pp. 47 1 - 78.
"Lettre-preface" to M . Buy dens, Sollara: L'tstlritiqut de Gilles Dtl�t. Paris:
Vrin, p. 5 .
(with Pierre Bourdieu,Jerome Lindon, and Pierre Vidal-Naquet). "Adresse
au gouvernement franc;ais." Li/JiratiOll, September 5, p. 6 .
1 99 1 " A Return to Bergson . " afterword to B11gS011ism, trans. by Hugh Tomlinson.
New York: Zone Books, pp. 1 1 5- 1 8.
"Preface to the English-Language Edition ." Empiricism a11d Su/Jjectilli{y: A11 E�
say111 Hume 's T1itory <(Huma11 Naturt. Translated by Constantin V. Boundas.

New York: Columbia Un iversity Press, pp. ix-x.

"Preface" to E. Alliez, Lis ttmps capUaux, vol. 1 : RicUs de la c011quit1 du temps,
pp. 7-9. Paris: Editions du Cerf.
" Prefazione: Una nuova stilistica" to G. Passerone, La Lirtta astratla: Prag­
matica dtUa stilt, pp. 9- 1 3 . Milan: Edizioni Angelo Guerini.
(with Rene Scherer). "La guerre immonde." Li/Jiratio11, March 4 , p. 1 1 .
(with Felix Guattari). Q.u'at-ct qut la pltilosopltie? Paris: Editions de Minuit.
English translation: What Is Pliilosopliy ? New York: Columbia University
Press, forthcoming.
(with Felix Guattari). "Secret de fabrication: Deleuze-Guattari-Nous
deux." Li/JlratiOll, September 1 2 , pp. 1 7- 1 9.
1 992 Revised version of"M ystere d'Ariane." Magaz.i11t Littiraire, vol. 298 (April),
pp. 2 1 -24.
 Index

Abraham, 8 5 , 8 7 Bacon, F ranc is, 1 88, 1 99

Abstract: expressionism, 1 98; machine, Franeis Ba&on, lllUrviewtd by DfJlJid Sylwstn,
229, 2 3 1 2 7 9 11113- 1 2, l 4, I , 28011112-5, 2 8 1 1111 1 2,
Action painting, 1 98 , 1 99 1 3, 1 5
A e o n, and Chronos, 55, 5 7 , 26311113, 7 Bad, and good, 73
Albertine, 1 2 4, 1 26, 1 2 7 , 1 28 , 1 3 1 , 1 32 , B aer,Jean, 99
1 3 3 , 1 34 , 1 35 Barthes, Roland, 263JLt. , 2 7 1 11 1
Alice, 39 Bat eson, Gregory, 28 1 11 1 4
A h husser, Louis and Ba libar, Et ienne, B eckeu, Sa muel, u 6 , 1 5 5 , 2 1 2 , 2 1 3 ;
2 8 2 , 2 7 11 2 Beckeu's law, 1 9 1
A m i n , Samir a n d Vergopo ulos, Kostas, B ecoming, 39-41 ; animal, 1 22-26; emis­
283117 sion of particles, 1 22 ; not i m i t a t io n ,
Anaximander: space o f 2 7 5 11 4 1 2 3-24; a n d the mid dle, 207-8; i s mo·
Anti- Oedipus, 1 1 2 lecular, 1 24 - 25; minoritarian, 1 50;
Antonio ni, Michelangelo, 1 74, 1 85 , 2 7 8119 pure 39-40; simultaneity of, 3 9 - 4 1 ;
Aparallel evol u t i o n , 32-34 woman, 1 24-26
Aristotle, 4 4 Being, a nd extra-Being, 44-45
Art, and space, 1 65 - 7 2 Bellour, Raymond, 2591137
Artaud, A n t o n i n , m 2 , 1 1 7 , 1 63 , 1 9 0 , 2 0 7 , B ennen, E. A., 269111
2 6 9 , 1 311 2 Bene, Carmelo, 204- 2 2 ; and s t a t e t he·
Assemblage, 1 05 at er, 22 1 ; amputation of the compo•
Augias, Corrado, 2 1 3 nents of power, 205 - 7
Axiomati cs, 283 118 Benveniste, Emile, 26411 1 0
Benveniste, R. E., 3 3 , 260115
 Index

Bergson, Henri, 6, 2 7 7n 1 1 Castaneda, Carlos, 2 6 1 n 7

Bertolucci, Guiseppi, 2 1 8 Castel, Robert, t og, 269n5
Besse,Jacques, 1 1 8 , 269, 1 3n5 The Castle, 1 5 7
Bettelheim, Bruno, 270, 1 411 1 Celine, Ferdinand D . , 1 63
Btyond Good and Evil, 284n2 cezanne, Paul, 1 66 , 1 87 , 1 88 , 1 92 , 1 95,
Bichat, Xavier, 268n 1 2 ; and Heidegger on 278n7, 279n 1
death, 1 00 Chaos, and ritornello, 20 1 -202
Binarism, 1 53 Charles, Daniel, 262n3
The Birth of the Clinic, 268n4 Charlus, 1 2 7-35 passim, 2 2 8
The Birth of Tragedy, 87 Charriere, Georges, 2 76n 1 2
Bizet, Georges, 87 Chatelet, Fram;ois, 3 , 2 5 7
Blanche, Robert, 283n8 Chatelet, Gilles, 2 7 5n2
Blanchot, Maurice, 58, 8 1 , 264n 1 1 , 266n5 C h a u v i n , Remy, 3 3 , 26on4
Body, in Spinoza, 69-70 Cheng, Franc;ois, 26411 1 3
Body without organs, 5 1 , 1 1 5, 1 1 6, I 1 7, Cho msky, Noam, 29, 30, 34-35, 1 45, 1 46,
1 1 8 , 1 1 9 , 254, 259n34; and becoming­ 1 47, 2 I O
woman, 1 2 6; cancerous, 254; fascist, Christen, Yves, 26on1
254; in Remembrance of Time Past, 1 34-35 Chronos, and Aeon, 55, 57, 1 85 , 263nn3, 7
Bogue, Ronald, 26on55 Chrysippus, 45-46
Book: classical, 27; image of the world, Cicero, 2 6 1 n3
2 7 - 29 , 33-34; and modernity, 28; Cinema, 1 73-79, 1 80-86; cliche and im­
radicle-system, 28-29; root-book, 2 7 - age, 1 82-83; expressionism, 1 75-76;
28 framing, 1 73-74; the o p en, 1 78; out-of­
Bonitzer, Pascal, 1 76 , 2 7 7nn 1 2 , 8 field, 1 7 1 -7 7 ; and space, 1 7 3-79; and
Bonnefoi, Christian, 28on9 time, 1 So-86; the Whole, I 7 7 -78
Bopp, Franz, 99 Classical Thought, and God-form, 96-97;
Boulez, Pierre, 50, 55, 2 6 1 n8, 262n3, and infinity, 96-97
263n4, 2 7 2n4 Clavreul,Jean, 265n1 I

Bousquet,Joe, 78, 79, Bo, 266nn 1 , 2 Concept, and haecceity, 254

Bradbury, Ray, 263n5, 2 7 1 n5 , 283n 1 1 Consciousness, an illusion, 70, 7 1 ; the il-
Brecht, Bertold, 2 1 2 , 2 1 8 lusion of, 74; and the Other, 62-63
Brehier, Emile, 43, 2 6 1 nn 1 , 2 , 5 Content, 57
Bresson, Robert, 1 7 7 , 2 7 7n9 Contour, 1 99-200
Breytenbach, Breyten, 2 7 2 n 3 Cournot, M ichel, 2 73n8
Brisset, Stephane, 1 0 2 Cratylus, 40
Brod, M a x , 1 5 5, 2 74n22 Culture: and h i story, 249-52; and justice,
Bronte, Charlotte, 54 246; and memory, 246-47; prehistory
Burch, Noel, 1 78, 2 7 7nn2, 1 2 , 2 78-79n t o of, 245-49; posthistory of, 247-49; and
Burroughs, Will iam, 28, t o2 pu nishment, 246-47; and responsibil­
Butor, Michel, 263n5 ity, 249; and ressentiment, 2 4 7-48; selec­
tion, 246-52
Capitalism, 235-44; and general axioma­ Cummings, E. E., 98
tic, 236, 2 3 7 , 238, 240, 2 4 1 ; and ma­ Cuvier, Georges, 98, 99, 268n9
chinic enslavement, 240-43, 244; and Cynics, 46
social subjection, 240-44; and the
State, 2 3 7 - 3 8 , 239, 242-43, 244 Dada, 1 02
Carpenter, Edmund, 275n3 Darwin, Charles, 97, 99, 268n9
 Index 299

Daybreak, 2 8 3 n 1 Eternal recurrence, 90-94; and active

Death, 1 00 ; drive, 259n3J; of m a n , 1 00- d estruction, 92; and becoming•active,
101 92-93; the being of becoming, 9$ its
Deframing, 76, 1 78
I characteris tics, 9 1 -93; and nihilism,
Deligny, Fer.nand, 28 1 n 1 , 282n4 9 1; and reactive forces, 9 1 -92; selective
Deligny's cartography, 228 ontology, 94; and trans mutation,
Delirium, I I 5- 2 I ; is racial, 1 1 6- 1 7 ; is 92-93
'
world- historical, 1 20 Euclidean geometry and the Greek City,
Derrida: deconstruction of, I 7 1 1 1 - 1 2 , 229
Descartes, Rene, 70 Event, 8-9, 42-48; and accident, 79, 1 82 ;
DeSica, Vittorio, 1 85 and actor, 79-80; its counteractualiza­
Desire, 1 2 , 1 05- 42, 23 1 - 3 2 , 254; and as­ tion, 80-8 1 ; and death, 8 1 ; and ethics,
semblages, 1 36 - 3 7 ; constructivist, not 78-82; incorporeal entity, 42-43;
spontaneist, 1 3 7; and de ath, 1 3 7 ; quasi-cause, 44; to will the, 79
definition of , 72; Grace, 1 1 4; i s j oy, 1 40; Evenlum lantum, 8 1
and lack, 1 1 2- 1 3 , 1 3 9-40; and plea­ Expression, 57
sure, 1 39-40; and psychoanalysis, 105- Ewald, Fram;ois, 259n37
1 1 4; righ t t o , 253; a n d schizoanalysis,
1 05-42; and sexuality, 1 40-4 1 , in Spi­ Fasc is m, and paranoia, 1 20- 2 1
noza, 7 1 - 7 2 Faulkner, William, 54
Desiring machine s, 1 40-4 1 Faure, Elie , 28on8
Deterritorialization, 2 3 2 - 3 3 Fea r and Trembling, 266:9 n 1 , 282n3
Diagram, I 93-200; chaos, I 9 5 ; a n d Fellini, Federico, 1 8 1
catastrophe, 195, 1 9 7; a n d code, 1 96 Feuerbach , Ludwig, 1 00
Dialectics, science of incorporeal events, 46 Figuration, 1 8 7 , 1 88, 1 89
Difference, 1 1 - 1 2 , 39- 1 02 Figurative, 1 94
Dillard , ] . L., 272n4 Figure, 1 8 7, 1 88, 1 89
Dividuel, 1 76 Finitude, a nd 1 9th century, 97- 1 oo
Dobb, Maurice , 282, 27n3 Fitzgerald, F . Scott, 226-27, 282n2
Donzelo t, Jacques, 269n7 Flaubert, Gus tave, 264n7
Doubles, 63, 65, 67 Fleutiaux, Pierre tte, 229, 282n5
Dryer, C a r l , 1 74, 1 75 , 1 76, 278n 1 3 Focillon, He nri, 28on7
Dua lism, 2 8 1 Fold: and Fouca ult, 99- 1 00; and 1 9th
Duchamp, Marcel, 1 90 century, 99- 1 00
Forces, 95- 1 02 passim
Ecce Homo, 267, 1 on5, 284n4 Fouc ault, Michel, 95- 1 02; 1 09, 1 1 1 , 228,
Ecole Freudienne de Paris, 1 1 0- 1 1 2 74n20; a n d classical thought, 96-97;
l·:instein, Albert, 1 6 1 a n d fi nitud e, 97- 1 00; a n d Heidegger,
Eisenstein, Sergei , 1 74, 1 75 1 00 ; " unfold," 9 7
l·:isner, Lotte, 277n 5 Frame: angle of, 1 76 ; legible a n d visible,
Em manuel, Arghiri, 282, 27n3 1 74; object of geometric divisions, 1 74-
Encrenaz, Philip pe, 259n40 75; object of physical gradations, 1 75-
l•:picureans, 44, 84, 26 1 n4 76
Epicurus, 75, 26 1 n4 Freedom, 253-56
l·:1hics: amo rfali, Bo; and event, 9, 78-82; Freud, Sigmund, 1 06 , 1 07, 1 09, 1 2 1 , 1 3 7,
typology of immanent modes of exis­ 1 4 1 , 264n9, 269n4; a n d L ittle H a n s , 56,
tence, 73; without morality, 69- 77 57, 1 06, 1 3 7, 1 4 1
 3 00 Index

Friday, and the Ot her, 64-65 Jacob, Fram;ois, 33, 2 6 irz6

Fried, Michael, 2 6 3 11 5 1 2 7 711 1 3 1 2 Borz 1 0 Jak o bson, IWman, r 73
James, Henry, 2 2 2
Gance, Abel, 1 74 James, W illiam, 66
G ar-.on, Maurice, 2 70117 Jargy, Simon, 2 B 1 rz3
Gardiner, A l a n H . , 2 6 4 rz B Job, B 5 , B 7
Gavi, P h i l i p p e , 1 2 3 Jones, L eRoi, 2 7 2 11 4
On tht Genealogy efMorals, 2 6 6 11 10 , Jl)ne s, W . , 9 B
26 7 : 1 on4, 2 B 4rzrz3, 5 , 6 , 7 , B , 9 Joyce, J ames, 2 B , 1 5 5
Genet te, Gerard, 2 7 1 11 1 I J u n g , Carl, 1 0 6
Geolfroy Saint-Hil aire, E t i enne, 99, 26BrzB J unger, Ernest, 2 60113
Gabard, Henri, 1 6 0, 2 7411 1 9 J ussieu, Adrien d e , 9B
Godard , J ean-Luc, 1 5!f-60, 1 74 , l Bo, l B 1 ,
l B 3 , l B4 , 2 1 2 , 2 3 1 , 27Brz6 Kafka, Franz, 14B, 1 52 - 6 4 1 2 1 0 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 3 ,
G o e t h e,Johann von, 1 54 , 1 9B , 20B 2 2 B , 2 6 4 11 1 2 1 2 7 2 rzrz 1 , 2 , 2 73 rz rz � 4, 6 , B,
Good, and bad, 7 2 - 7 4 9, 1 0 , 1 1 , 1 2 , 1 3 , 2 74rzrz 1 4, 1 B , 2 3 , 25 ;
Greenberg, Clement, 2Borzrz1 o, 1 1 Diaries, 1 5B; and his law, 1 9 1 ; and
Gri flith, D. W. , 1 7 5 Oedipus, l 53 i and Yiddish, 1 6 2
Grotowsk i,J erzy, 2 0 7 Kandinsky, Wassily, 5 2 , 1 96 , 1 9 7 , 1 99,
G rousset, Rene, 2 7 5 11 5 , 2 76rz 1 2 2 6 3 11 5
G u i l laume, G u stave, 263117 K a n t , I m manuel, 1 0- 1 1 1 44 , B 5 , 9 7
Gulag, 2 5 4 Kierkegaard, S0ren, 66 , 2 6 6 : 911 1 , 2 6 7 112 ,
2 B 2 11J; a n d Hegel, 8 $ a n d rep etit ion,
Habermas, J urgen, 25Brz30 B3, B41 B 5 , B6- B 7 , BB, B 9
Haecceity, 5 4 - 5 6 , 1 2 2 , 1 2 6 Klee, Paul, 5 2 , 1 95 , 2 0 2 , 2 6 3 11 5 , 2 B 1 rz 2
H a i k u , 54 Klein, M e l anie, 1 05 - 1 o6 , 1 06 - 1 0 7 ,
Hamlet, 2 0 4 264115
Heidegger, M a r t i n : a n d Bichat o n death, Kl eist, Heinrich van, 32, 206, 208, 2 3 0 ,
1 00 ; and Foucault, 1 00 2 B 1 rz 1
Hegel, Georg, B 5 , B 6 , BB, 243 Klossowski, Pierre, 1 1 9, 2 6 1 11 7 , 26Brz 1 1
Herzog, Werner, 260111
H i s tory, and reactive forces, 2 5 0 - 5 1 L a bov, W i l liam, 1 4 7 , 2 1 0, 2 6 on1
Hi tchcock, Alfred, 1 7 3 - 7 4 , 1 7 7 , I B4 Lacan,Jacques, 1 0 7 , 2 5 9 11 3 1
Hocquengem, Guy, 1 2 2 , 1 2 3 , 2 7 0 1 1 4 n 1 Laing, R. D . , 1 1 5 , 269, 1 311 1
H u m e , David, 5 Lalonde, Michel, 2 7 2 11 2
Humor: art ofthe s u rface, 46; and irony, Lamarck, Chevalier d e , 9 7 , 9 B , 99 , 2 68119
46, B 9 Lang, Fritz, 1 6 1
Hu sserl, E d m u n d , 6 1 , 2 6 B rz 1 L anguage: constant s and vari ables, 1 4 5 ,
1 4 B; e a t i n g a n d sp eaking o r writing,
I n d e fi n i t e articl e, 57, 5 B , 1 05 1 5 6 - 5 7 ; int ensive use of, 159; major­
I ndividuati on, 54-5B; and haecceity, 54- minor, 1 4B-49, 2 0 9 - 1 0 ; and politics,
55 1 45
I ndividual and collec tive, 253 Lapl anche,Jean, and Pont a li s , J . - B . ,
I n fini tive, 5 7, 1 05 264119
Infinity, i n classical t h o u ght , g6 Laruelle, Franc; ois, 2591143
I n t e n s i ty, 2 5Brz2 7 Latit ude, and l ongitude, 56
Irony and humor, B9 Law, moral and social, 74
 Index J O I

Lawrence, D. H . , 54, 1 1 3 , 1 2 5, 1 88, Minor deconstruction, 259n43

2 7 1 n4, 2 78 n 7 , 2 79n2 Minority: and becoming, 2 2 1 ; defined,
Leclaire, Serge, 1 08, 269n3 1 49 -50; and revolution, 1 63
Lectosign, 2 7 8n8 Minor language, 1 6- 1 8 , 1 46-64; and be­
Lehmann, W., and Malkaiel, V. , 26on1 coming, 1 50- 5 1 ; not a dialect , �
Leibniz, Gottfried W., 9- 1 0, 264n2 Minor literature, 1 52-64; assemblage of
Lenz, F riedrich W., 1 1 6 enunciation, 1 54; and collectivity, 1 53 -
Leroi-Gourhan, Andre, 27 6 n 8 54; a n d deterritorialization, 1 52 ; and
Levoyer, P ascal, 2591140 metaphor, 1 58-59 ; and p olitics, 1 53 ;
Lewis Carrol, 39-4 1 , 46-48, 2 6 1 n6, 26¥8 a n d prolet arian literature, 1 55
Lines, 225-34; of flight or rupture, 3 1 , Minor theater, 2 1 1 , 220-2 1 ; constant
226, 2 2 7 , 230- 3 1 , 2 3 3 , 254; mol;r-or variation, 2 1 4- 1 7 ; and language varia­
s egmentary, 32, 2 2 5 , 253; molecular, tions, 2 1 2 - 1 4; its politics, 2 1 7 - 22 ;
225- 26, 230-3 1 ; in painting, 52-53 speed-s low ness, 2 1 5
Little Hans, 56, 57, io6, 1 3 7 , 1 4 1 Mitry, Jean, 1 76 , 2 7 7n 7
Little Richard, 1 06 - 7, 264n9 Molar lines, 254; their characteristics,
Logic, of the senses, 1 92 2 2 8 - 29
Longitude, and latit ude, 56 Molecular, 259 n35
Lorca, Federico G., 54 Mondrian, Piet, 1 95, 198, 263n5
Louis, Morris , 1 96 Monet, Claude, 52
Luca, Gherasim, 2 1 2, 2 1 3 Montesano, Marco, 2 1 8
Lucretius, 7 5 , 2 6 1 n4 Montmol lin, Maurice de, 283n 1 0
Lyotard ,Jean-F ran�ois, 2 7 1 n3 Morali ty, refers t o transcendental values,
73
Madness: Charlus and Albertine, 1 3 2-33; Movement- image, 1 84-85
two kinds of, 1 3 3 Multilineal s yst ems, 49-57 passim
Majority, 208-9; defined, 1 49-50; and Multiplicity, 29, 30, 49-53; defined by the
t h eater, 2 1 9 line offl ight, 3 1 ; and music, 50-51
Malbury, Berti!, 26on2, 2 7 1 n 1 Mumford, Lewis, 240, 283nn9, 1 2
Ma ldiney, Henri, 1 65, 1 68 , 2 7 5n11 1 , 6 , Music, 20 1 - 3
2 79 1111 1 , 1 3 , 28on6, 28 1 11 2 Muybridge, Eadweard, 1 9 1
Mallarme, Stephane, 1 02
Man, essentially reactive, 25 7 Narboni, Jean, 2 7 7n 1 0
Marcuse , Herbert, 2 58n30, 26on55 Nellie, Rene, 266n 1 , 2 7 1 n3
Marivaux, Pierre, Cablet de Chamblain, Nietzsche, Friedrich, 6-8, 76, 100, 109,
209 1 74, 246-52 passim, 262112, 26¥ 1 2,
Marx , K arl, 99, 235, 238, 28211 1 , 26611 10, 266:9 n 1 , 26 7 n 3 , 26 7 : 1 onn 1 , 2, 3,
2 8 2 :2 7n5, 283 n 1 3 4, 5, 2 6 9 : 1 3n4, 283n 1 , 284nn 2- 1 2; affir·
Marxism, 1 50 mation, 93- 94; aphorisms, 28; eternal
Marxis t crit icism of cinema, 2 78113 recurrence, 90-94; and history, 50; and
Maurel, Christian, 270, 1 4n2 Hegel, 85; and Kant, 85; overman,
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 2 7 9 n 1 1 0 1 - 2; and repetition, 83, 84, 85, 86-
Meyrink, Gus tav, 1 55 8 7 , 88, 8 9 ; a n d Spinoza, 69, 70, 72; and
Michaux, 1 99 transmutation, 93
Middle, and becoming, 207 -8 N ij insky, Vaslav, 1 1 6
Mill er, Henry, 1 2 5, 263115 Nomad Arts, 1 8- 2 1 , 1 65 - 2 2 2 ; abstract
Miller,J. A., 269n6 line-concrete line, 1 69-70; abstract-
 J02 Index

Nomad Arts ( Continued ) Politics, 1 3- 1 6 , 225-56

figurative, 1 70-7 1 ; abs tract-organic, PollockJackson, 1 96 , 197, 1 98, 1 99 , 263n5
1 7 1 - 7 2 ; and "clos e range" vision, 1 65, Pop ular Theater, 2 1 8
1 69 ; defined, 1 6 5f; and haptic space, Principle: o r asignirying rupture, 32; or
1 65 , 1 68 cartography, 3 4-35; or connection, 29-
Nomadic absolute, 1 67 30; ordecalcomania, 34-35; or hetero­
Nomos, 275n4 geneity, 29-30; or mult ipl icity, 30-32
Proper name, 57, 1 5 7-58, 253, 264n8
Oi lier, Claude, 2 7 7n3 Proust, Marcel, 60, 1 26 , 1 2 7-35, 2 1 3 ,
Optical space, 1 68 , 1 98 2 7 0 , 1 snn 1 - 8, w, 12
The Order ojTliings, 268nn2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 1 0 , Psychiat ry: two cases or madness, 1 08-g
1 3 , 1 5, 1 6 , 1 7 , 1 8 Psychoa nalysis: and castration, 1 0 7 ; from
Order-words, and passw ords, 1 7 - 1 8 contract to sta tute, 1 og- 1 o; critique of,
Oth er: a priori , 59, 6 5-66; defined, 60- 1 2 - 1 3 , i o 5- 1 4; interminable, 1 09- w ;
6 1 , 65-66; effect s or its presence, 60- a n d interpretation, 1 06 - 7 ; inde� sui,
64; neither subject nor object, 59, 6 1 - 1 i o- 1 1 ; and Oedipus, 1 0 7 ; and politi­
62; otherwise-, 66, 6 7 ; as structure, 59, cal microcontagion, 1 08 ; and power,
6 1 ; theory or the, 59-68 1 1 1 - 1 2 ; and si gni fication, 1 07
Outs ide, 1 4- 1 6 Punctual s y s tems, 49-50
Overman, 95- i o 2
Ozu, Yasujiro, 1 74, 1 8 1 , 1 84 Ragan, Michel, 2 7 3n5
Ray, jean, 282, 27n4
Painting, 1 66 , 1 8 7-92; and abstraction, Rr active forces, 250- 5 1
1 95-96; abstract expressioni sm or i n­ Reich, Wilhelm, 1 1 9 , 2 7on6
formal art, 1 96-97; and hysteresis, Refrain, 20 1 - 3 (see Ritornello)
1 93-94; modern, 1 98-99; p oint-line in, Rr mbrandt Harmenszoon von Rijn, 1 88
52; and sensation, 1 8 7-92 &mem/Jrance of Things Past, 1 2 7-35 passim;
Paradis, Bruno, 258n23 270, 1 sn n 1 -8; 1 0 , 1 2 ; narrator in, 1 3 3-
Paradox: or becoming, 39-4 1 , 45; and the 35; and BwO, 1 3 4-35
Stoi cs, 45-46 Renoir, jean, 1 7 7 , 2 77n 1 0
Para llelism, 70 R ep et ition, 39- 1 02 passim, esp. 83-89,
Paranoia and fascism, 1 20- 2 1 90-94; category or the philosophy or
Partial objects, 1 1 9-20, 259n35 the l'Uture, 8]; and generalities or habit,
Pasol i ni, Pier Paolo, 1 5 7 , 1 7 3 , 2 1 2, 85-86; and Kant's categorical imp era­
2 7 2nn4, 6, 2 7 7 n 1 tive, 90; and laws or nature, 84; and
Peguy, Charles, 8 5 , 1 02 , 1 g6 memory, 8 5-86; as selective test, 83, 90;
Perspective, 52-53 suspension or ethics, 84-85; and the­
Pliilosopliical Fragments, 266, 9n 1 atre, 87-88
P lane or consistence, 3 1 , 1 1 3 ; and haec­ &petition, 266:9n1
ceities, 56 &ssentiment, 7 9 , 8 2, 248
Plane or immanence: and desire, 1 36 - 3 7 , Rr territorializat ion, 232- 3 3
1 38 Revolution, a n d S t a t e apparatus, 254-55
Plato, 39-40, 45, 26 1 nn 1 , 2 Rhizome, 27-36, 56 ; characteristics or,
Platonism, 1 74 29-36; how to make one, 34; and map,
Pleasure and desire, 1 3 9-40 35
Plotinus, 26 1 n5 Rhythm, 1 9 2
Politi cal Treatise, 266, 1 3n 1 9 Ricardo, D av id, 99
 1'11itx JOJ

Richard the Third, :205, 2 1 4, 2 1 6 7 5 - 7 7 ; inadequate ideas, 7 1 ; parallel­

Ricoeur, Paul , 2581130 ism, 70; philosophy ofl ife , 75-76; sad
Rieg), Alois, 1 65 , 1 68 , 2 7 5n 1 , 275n7 pas sions, 7 5 - 7 7
Riemann, Georg: space, 275n2 Spinoza's Ethics, 7 0 , 7 5 , 7 6 , 7 7 , 265nn 1 -8,
Rimbaud, Arthur, 1 02 , 269n3, 267 n 1 8 266nn 1 1 , 1 3 , 1 5 , 1 6 , 1 7, 1 8 , 20
Ritornello, 1 38-39, 2 0 1 - 3 ; its role, 203 Stages on life's Way: Studies by Various Per­
Rivette, Jacques, 1 8 1 sons, 2 6 7 , 9n 1
Robbe-Grillet, 1 83 , 26 1 n7 , 2 7 8n6 Stammering, in minor theater, 2 1 2- 1 3
Robert, Fran'>oise, 260111 State a pparatus, 229; and revolution,
Romeo andJuliet, 204 254-55
Ros ola to, Guy, 26 5n 1 1 State, beyond and on this side, 255-56
Ros selini, Robe rto, 1 8 1 , 1 84 Sto ics, 8-9, 42-48 passim, 78, 84, 1 74,
Roussel, Raymond, 1 52 2 6 1 nn4, 5
Straubs, 1 84
S.A.D.E., 205, 2 1 4 Structure of perve rsion, 66-68
de Sade, 26 5n 1 2 Superfold: and the formation of the fu-
Saint-Geours, J ean, 282, 27n6, ture, 1 0 1 ; and Foucault, 1 0 1
Samson.Joseph, 28 1 n 3 Surface, 45
Sartre s , J e a n- Paul, 3 , 264-65n2 Sweezy, Paul, 282, 27n3
Scheeper, l'donique, 259n39 Sylvie and Bruno, 48
Schizophre nia: and reality principle, 1 1 8 ; Sylvie and Bruno Concluded. 2 6 1 n6
and singul arities, 1 1 9
Schlegel, A ugust Wilhelm von, 99 Tensor, 1 59
Schreber, 1 2 0, 269n4 Theater: living, 207; minor, 204-22; of
Schumann, Robert, 5 1 -52, 1 38-39, 1 4 1 re petition, 88; and representation of
Scotus, Dun s , 263n1 conflicts, 2 1 8- 1 9
Selection, a n d culture, 250-51 Theological-Political Treatise, 265n9, 266n 1 4
Sensation, 1 8 7-92; a n d ambivalence o f Through the loolcing- Glass, 3 9
feeling, 1 90 ; a n d motor hypothesis, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 267:9nn 1 , 3;
1 90-9 1 ; and object represented, 1 88- 2 6 7 : wnn 1 , 3 , 284nw
90; orders of, 1 88-89; and phenomeno­ Tim e, and cinema, 1 80-86
logical hypothesis, 1 9 1 -9 2 ; and Time-image, 1 85
rhythm, 1 9 2 Todaro, G . j . , 33, 260115
Sephiha, H. Vidal, 1 59, 2 74n 1 5, n 1 6 Todorov, Fran'>ois, 259n47
Serres, l'dichel, 96, 267, 1 1 n 1 Tournie r, l'dichel, 55, 6 1 , 68, 2 6 1 n 7 ,
Sexuality, 1 40-41 2 6 3 n 2 , 26411n 1 - 1 1
Shakespeare, 204 Transversal c omm unication, 3 3
Sherer, Rene, 1 2 2 , 2 7 0 , 1 4n 1 Tros t, Dolfi, 2 70, 1 411 4
Simulacrum, 45 Turner, Joseph I'd. W., 1 91
Singularity, 8 1 - 82
Sm ith, Adam, 98 Unfold, a nd classical thoug ht, 97
Space: and cinema, 1 7 3 - 79 ; smooth- Untime{� Meditations, 250, 257, 262n2,
striated, 1 65-6 9 passim 28 4n 1 2
Species activity, 250 Urstaat, 243
Sp eed and slowness, 2 3 1
Spinoza, 5-6, 69- 7 7 ; actions and pas· Vagi, Philippe, 270, 1 4n2
sions, 76-77; desire in, 7 1 - 7 2 ; andjoy, Va lc!ry, Paul, 47, 1 88
Van Gulik, R . , 2 7 1 113 I ,1
Vauday, Patrick, iii.. i-t- d ' ; Ml. er, 267, 1 on2
Vicq d'Azur, 98 W ihon, B.-,b, 207, 2 1 2
Vuill e m i n , J u les, 268n5 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1 94
Woolf, Virginia, 56, 1 2 5 , 1 26, 208, 263n6
Wagenbach, Klauss, 1 58, 1 59, 2 72nn 1 , 4 , Worringer, Wilhelm, 1 65 , 1 68, 1 7 1 , 1 g8 ,
2 7 3 n 7 , 2 7 4Rn 1 7 , 2 2 2 75nn 1 , 7 , 2 7 7nn8- 1 1 , 1 3
Wagner, Richard, 8 7
Wegener, Robert, 1 6 1 Zen, 46, 1 1 3
Wein reich, U . , 30, 26on1 Zola, Emile, 254
"\Vhat is an Author?," 268n 1 4