DElEUZE BEYOND BAD IOU

INSURRECTIONS: CRITICAL STUDIES IN RELIGION, POlITICS, AND CULTURE

· ONTOLOGY, MULTIPLICiTY,

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Copyright © 201 3 Columbia University Press

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Crockett, Ciayton,.1969-

Deleuze beyond Badiou : ontology, multiplicity, and event I Clayton Crockett.

p. cm. - (Insurrections: critical studies in religion, politics

and culture)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-231 -1 6 268-5 (cloth: alk. paper) -

ISBN 978-0-231 -1 6 269-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) -

ISBN 978-0-231-53091 -0 (e-book)-

1 . Deleuze, Gilles, 1925-1995. 2. Badiou, Alain. Deleuze.

3. Badiou, Alain. L Title.

B2430.D454C7 6 201 3

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FOR JEFF AND NOELLE

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ix

PART l. SETIING UP THE ENCOUNTER

ONE. Introduction

lWO. The Clamor of Being: Badiou vs. Deleuze

PART Ii. DELEUZE

3

11

THREE. A Repetition of Difference 29 FOUR. Deleuze's Logic of Double Articulation 57 FIVE. Producing the Event as Machine, as Fold, and as Image 75

PART III. BADIOU

SIX. Being a Sublime Event

SEVEN. Being a Subject in a Transcendental World

PART IV. DELEUZE BEYOND BADIOU

103

121

EIGHT. Energetics of Being 145 NINE. Politics of the Event 165 TEN. Vodou Economics: Haiti and the Future of Democracy 185

Notes 195

Index 211

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I WOULD LIKE to thank my fellow Insurrectionists, including Jeff

Robbins and Noelle Vahanian, to whom this book is dedicated, as well

as Creston Davis, Ward Blanton, and Slavoj Zizek. I also thank Wendy

Lochner and Christine Mortlock at Columbia University Press. It was

Jeff's question from a student posed to Creston and me a couple years

ago that spurred this endeavor.

I am also indebted to Michael Grimshaw, who, along with Ward

Blanton, read the manuscript and made extremely helpful sugges­

tions. No one could ask for better readers. I read Deleuze as part

of an informal discussion/reading group at UCA along with Kevin

Mequet, Taine Duncan, Jeff Lambert, Catherine Brown, and Mason

Brothers, and I deeply appreciate their engagement with Deleuze's

texts and ideas, and especially Kevin's willingness and ability to

tutor me in technical problems of science and mathematics, with­

out which I could never have understood Difference and Repeti­

tion. I also want to acknowledge Jack Caputo, Catherine Malabou,

Charles Harvey, Danny Finer, and Catherine Keller for their support

and encouragement.

Fellow readers and scholars of Deleuze whose thinking has also

helped me include Philip Goodchild, Ken Surin, Dan Barber, Anthony

Paul Smith, and finally Daniel W Smith, whom I don't know person­

ally but whose presentation on Deleuze at SPEP in 2008 was incredible

and whose philosophical understanding of Deleuze is unparalleled. I

also want to thank Adrian Johnston and Bruno Bosteels for their seri­

ous work on political theory with Zizek and Badiou.

A slightly different version of chapter 6 was published as "Being a

Sublime Event: A Critique of Alain Badiou's Magnum Opus;' in Avella

Publishing Journal, volume 1, issue 1, 2011, special inaugural issue on

the sublime. Thanks to Jason Wakefield, editor-in-chief, for permis­

sion to publish.

X ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ONE INTRODUCTION

WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? Let's imagine that a certain kind of philo­

sophical thinking, one that in English-speaking contexts goes by the

name "Continental;' passes from Germany to France after World War

II. After Husserl and Heidegger, with an assist from Bergson and

Sartre, philosophy switches territories and gears and becomes struc­

turalism, whose main purpose (again from the standpoint of Eng­

lish readers of French philosophy) is to become poststructuralism.

Poststructuralism has integrity as a (French) philosophical move­

ment, although it immediately bifurcates into deconstruction, which

attaches to the proper name of Jacques Derrida, and postmodernism,

which is invented by Jean-Fran<;:ois Lyotard but is useful as a catch­

all to encompass most forms of poststructuralism. Let's imagine that

there are two major French philosophers in the second half of the

twentieth century who are not easily assimilated into these categori­

cal schemas: Gilles Deleuze and Alain Badiou. Finally, let's consider

that there are two main problems of philosophy toward the end of the

twentieth century: First, the general problem posed by the linguistic

turn that affects all forms of philosophy in the twentieth century, ana­

lytic as well as Continental-this turn eclipses both the traditional

philosophical concerns with ontology as well as Heidegger's renewal

of the question of being, which is also posed in terms of language.

Second, the problem that haunts twentieth-century philosophy,

especially after World War II, is the problem of totality, which dis­

tinguishes a postwar and post-Holocaust (as well as anti-Hegelian)

philosophical attitude.

Whether the linguistic turn is associated with Frege or Nietzsche

or Saussure, language becomes the fundamental problem of philoso­

phy during the twentieth century. Both Wittgenstein and Heidegger

take up the question of language and its relation to reality in different

ways. Jiirgen Habermas claims that we can see a "paradigm shift from

philosophy of consciousness to philosophy of language" around the

turn of the twentieth century.l At the beginning of Being and Event,

Badiou declares that Heidegger is "the last universally recognizable

philosopher:' primarily because he renews the question of being.2

However, Badiou rejects Heidegger's poetic discourse as the primary

model for philosophy, opting instead for a mathematical ontology.

Mathematics, not poetry, "pronounces what is expressible of being

qua being:'3 According to Badiou, "there is little doubt that the cen­

tury has been ontological, and that this destiny is far more essential

than the 'linguistic turn' with which it has been credited:'4 Badiou

opposes the linguistic turn in philosophy that characterizes philoso­

phy of much of the .century, and calls for a renewed formalization in

and of philosophy.

Heidegger raises the ontological question, but then he links ontol­

ogy with language. Post-Heideggerian French philosophy, also influ­

enced by Saussure's linguistics, remains obsessed with questions of

language, and how it affects the discourses of phenomenology and

hermeneutics. Deleuze avoided these dominant discourses of herme­

neutics and phenomenology, and he never viewed language as a fun­

damental problem. Deleuze's philosophy was always already onto­

logical, and it was not shaped by the linguistic turn. Badiou follows

Deleuze in evading the consequences of the linguistic turn, although

Badiou is more invested in formalizing this ontology in mathemati­

cal terms, whereas Deleuze is more interested in problematizing

philosophy, that is, seeing how philosophy asks questions and poses

problems. Badiou's philosophy and his mathematics are axiomatic,

whereas Deleuze's philosophy is more unsettled, and in a continual

state of becoming.

4 SETTING UP THE ENCOUNTER

The problem of totality is partly the theoretical response of Euro­

pean philosophy to the shocking forms of totalitarianism that emerged

in the twentieth century, most famously under the names of fascism

(Nazism) and communism (Stalinism).5 In order to avoid or oppose

totality, philosophers have sought ways of affirming pluralism, per­

spectivalism, difference, and multiplicity. Continental philosophers

attempt to think and to thematize that which resists thought and

escapes thematization. Here the immediate enemy is Hegel's encyclo­

pedic system of dialectics, because it is seen as swallowing all forms

of thought and life. Kierkegaard's existential protest against Hegel is

valorized as an authentic opposition to a totalizing and dehumanizing

system. Although in the early twentieth century a Marxist Hegelian­

ism was extremely influential in French thought, primarily by way of

Alexandre Kojeve's incredible synthesis,6 after the crimes of Stalinism

became apparent Hegel's thought became suspected of being com­

plicit with the logic of totalitarianism.

For most of the late twentieth century, Hegel was viewed opposi­

tionally, and Deleuze was one of the main philosophers who wanted

nothing to do with Hegelian dialectics. At the turn of the twenty­

first century, however, Hegelianism has been rehabilitated beyond the

poststructuralist critique, which has been shown to be a caricature by

the important work of Slavoj Zizek, Catherine Malabou, and others?

Behind the problem of totality, however, lies the problem of the One,

and hidden in the shadow of Hegel looms Plato. Deleuze opposes

Platonism and the One by liberating simulacra from their enslave­

ment to models, forms, or copies, while Badiou rehabilitates Plato but

rejects the One. Both Badiou and Deleuze valorize the multiple, but

in different ways, as will become clear in this study. Deleuze is able

to affirm multiplicity by opposing Platonism, and he sees the death

of God as the dismantling of the foundational One. Badiou, however,

claims that Deleuze cannot escape the shadow of the One, and ends

up grounding multiplicity in a renewed vision of the One, whereas for

Badiou an affirmation of Plato is possible that does not necessitate an

embrace of the One. A genuine Platonic multiplicity can be achieved

mathematically, by means of set theory, and this set theory provides

Badiou an ontology that frames an event. Even though the event

5 INTRODUCTION

cannot be prescribed from mathematical being as irreducible mul­

tiplicity, an understanding of being allows one to understand how it

is that events can happen. Finally, the follow-up to Being and Event,

Logics of Worlds, develops a transcendental logic that explains how

events irrupt out of being.

This book offers a counterreading of Deleuze over against and

beyond Badiou's powerful critique in his influential work Deleuze: The

Clamor of Being, published in French in 1997, shortly after Deleuze's

death in 1995, and translated into English in 2000. Badiou was inspired

by a series of written letters between himself and Deleuze between

1992 and 1994 that eventually came to an end and an impasse. Deleuze

told Badiou that he did not want his letters published, declaring them

too '''abstract; not up to the occasion:'8 After Deleuze died, Badiou

was asked to write an essay on Deleuze, and he says that he saw this

as "one last, posthumous letter" written to a friend with whom he had

a relationship that was conflicted, and as concerning a philosophical

encounter that never quite took place.9 Badiou expresses his critique

in strong terms, although he seems ambivalent about attacking the

person he considers his only serious contemporary rival after the pub­

lication in 1988 of Being and Event. Badiou claims, despite Deleuze's

language celebrating multiplicity, that Deleuze is ultimately a philoso­

pher of the One.

In order to open up a space for his own claim as a great philoso­

pher, Badiou is forced to criticize and ultimately distort Deleuze's phi­

losophy, as I will show in this book. Badiou claims that, in addition

to being a philosopher of the One and deceiving most of his read­

ers about it, Deleuze is austere, aristocratic, and politically quietist

in his work. However, he reads Deleuze selectively and ignores what

does not fit the image of Deleuze that he constructs. In chapter 2,

I will exposit Badiou's critique and show how he interprets Deleuze

in his influential book. This reading of Badiou's book will provide a

foil against which to develop my reading of Deleuze, which occurs in

chapters 3-5. In chapter 3, I will provide my own reading of Deleuze's

masterwork, Difference and Repetition. I claim that it is not possible

to really understand Deleuze's thought without engaging and compre­

hending Difference and Repetition, although at the same time this is

6 SETTING UP THE ENCOUNTER

extremely difficult to do because Deleuze synthesizes so much philo­

sophical, scientific, and literary material, and he radicalizes it in pro­

found and unexpected ways.

In chapter 4, "Deleuze's Logic of Double Articulation:' I focus on

Deleuze's logic, from his follow-up to Difference and Repetition, The

Logic of Sense. In The Logic of Sense, drawing from Stoicism as well

as his reading of Lewis Carroll, Deleuze posits two series, a series of

bodies and a series of sense. This duality is not grounded in a unity,

although Badiou cannot read it any other way. I will explain how

Deleuze's logic in The Logic of Sense develops into his logic of double

articulation in A Thousand Plateaus, written with Guattari. Further­

more, this logic of double articulation can be read as a motor schema,

to use Catherine Malabou's phrase from her book Plasticity at the

Dusk of Writing. Although Malabou privileges Hegel, Heidegger, and

Derrida in her work, I argue that her understanding of plasticity is

informed by Deleuze and is in some respects compatible with his

philosophy, although there is a profound tension in reading Hegelian

dialectics together with Deleuzian difference. Chapter 5, "Producing

the Event as Machine, as Fold, and as Image:' takes the notion of event

that Deleuze expresses in The Logic of Sense and shows the shape it

takes in his later work, specifically Anti-Oedipus, The Fold, and the

Cinema books.

In this book I am explicitly developing a coherent interpretation

of Deleuze's philosophy over the course of his extraordinary career.

For this reason I will not directly engage with the many important

and influential works Deleuze wrote about other figures, including

Hume, Nietzsche, Spinoza, Proust, Bergson, Kant, Sacher-Masoch,

Kafka, and Bacon. These are all valuable and important studies, and

in many ways Deleuze worked out his philosophy by means of a

profound engagement with other thinkers as well as artists, but the

danger of reading De1euze on another figure is that the result is a

composite. Nietzsche and Philosophy, for example, is the expression of

a kind of Deleuze-Nietzsche. In this book, Deleuze helped create the

so-called French Nietzsche who became so prominent and influential

in the 1960s and 1970S. At the same time, it takes a great deal of time

and effort to extract Deleuze from this composite, and if readers of

7 INTRODUCTION

Deleuze in English exclusively focus on these texts as opposed to the

foundational philosophical works like Difference and Repetition and

The Logic of Sense, it becomes almost impossible to adequately under­

stand Deleuze's overall thought.

According to my interpretation, Deleuze is a philosopher of the

event. Of course, he is not the only philosopher who thematizes the

idea of the event, but his understanding of an event is crucial for

appreciating the importance this term takes on in poststructuralism

and eventually for Badiou. Badiou axiomatizes being in order to allow

for an event. In chapters 6 and 7, I will turn directly to Badiou's phi­

losophy in his major works. Although I favor Deleuze and criticize

Badiou in this book, I am in no way dismissive of his work and its

significance. I will engage with Badiou explicitly and seriously, but

it will be a contrasting reading to the one I valorize of Deleuze, so

in this sense it is a limited (and limiting) reading. Chapter 6, "Being

a Sublime Event:' will focus mainly on Being and Event, although I

will draw a connection with his early work, The Concept of Model. In

addition to explicating Badiou's mathematical ontology, I will criti­

cally engage it from the standpoint of Kant and the Kantian sublime.

Both Badiou and Deleuze were hostile to Kant and Kantianism, but

Deleuze acknowledged Kant's influence more explicitly and repressed

Hegel's, whereas Badiou acknowledges his similarity to Hegel but

repudiates Kant. I will show, however, that Badiou's mathematical

ontology almost exactly reproduces Kant's argument concerning

the mathematical sublime, even if Badiou expresses it in terms of

set theory.

Chapter 7, "Being a Subject in a Transcendental World;' shows how

Badiou's Logics of Worlds remedies a lack of consideration of the sub­

ject in Being and Event. In many respects, subjectivity is downplayed

in Being and Event, and a subject comes into being out of fidelity to

an event rather than by being inscribed in being. At the end of Being

and Event, Badiou even criticizes the residual Cartesianism in Lacan,

suggesting that we need to get away from "the idea that there were

always some subjects:'10 From this extreme position, which Badiou

adopts in order to avoid the subjectivity of pathos, Romanticism, and

language, he returns to an earlier work, Theory of the Subject, in order

8 SETTING UP THE ENCOUNTER

to integrate the subject more deeply into being in Logics of Worlds.

I will show how the subject becomes compatible with the object in

this sequel, and how both converge on the thinking of a body. Logics

of Worlds does not constitute a break with Being and Event, but is a

qualification and complexification of the dualism that pervades Being

and Event. I argue that Badiou's logic in Logics of Worlds is more compatible

with Deleuze than his logic in Being and Event, even though Badiou

describes himself as becoming more Hegelian. At the same time,

Badiou's axiomatization of mathematics in set theory still contrasts

with Deleuze's concern with the immanent becoming of mathematics

and physics. In a more speculative chapter, I assert the significance of

theoretical physics over against theoretical mathematics, and suggest

that this emphasis on physics is not a return to the Pre-Socratics, as

Badiou charges in Deleuze: The Clamor of Being. Chapter 8 sketches

a provocative "Energetics of Being" that is inspired by Deleuze, but

draws out more explicitly some of the connections of his work with

theoretical physics, which Deleuze himself mostly neglected to spec­

ify. Deleuze engaged more obviously with mathematics and biology

than with physics, but he was writing at the same time that chaos

theory and complexity theory were being elaborated, and he provides

a philosophical framework that better accounts for these phenomena

than the strictures of Badiou's thought. . In chapter 9, I argue that the creation of a time-image is a directly

political and revolutionary event for Deleuze, against the charge that

Deleuze detached himself from politics and political concerns at

the end of his life and retreated into aesthetics. Badiou argues that

Deleuze retreats into a kind of austere, solipsistic solitude toward

the end of his . life. I suggest that this reading is incorrect, because

it ignores the revolutionary political significance of the time-image

that Deleuze constructs in Cinema 2. Along with Guattari, in A Thou­

sand Plateaus Deleuze with his analysis of nomadology and the war

machine presses a political analysis of territory as far as it will go,

but he realizes that deterritorialization will always be reterritorial­

ized by the state, with its apparatuses of capture. In order to escape

this inevitable reterritorialization, Deleuze turns to aesthetics, first in

9 INTRODUCTION

his book on Francis Bacon, and then his books on Cinema. Politics

thought as territory conforms to what Deleuze calls the movement­

image, whereas his goal in Cinema 2 is to construct a time-image,

a brain for the people who do not yet exist but can be brought into

existence. The state cannot think, which is why the state cannot create

a time-image, only appropriate it. Although Deleuze's political event

is different from Badiou's, I will suggest that it is no less important

and in some respects it is potentially more revolutionary. In a final

chapter on "Vodou Economics;' I will examine Haiti as a sort of case

study of what Deleuze calls "the people who are missing" in contem­

porary neoliberalism, and suggest that understanding Vodou spirits

or lwa in terms of a time-image provides striking resources for con­

ceiving a radical politics in a postsecularist context. This last chapter

is less explicitly focused on Deleuze, but it develops a quasi-Deleuzian

reading of and application for our contemporary political and eco­

nomic situation, and shows why Deleuze remains an important theo­

retical resource.

10 SETTING UP THE ENCOUNTER

TWO THE CLAMOR Of BE�NG BADIOU VS. DElEUZE

DELEUZE: THE CLAMOR OF BEING is one of the strongest readings

of Deleuze that exists, and Badiou does an incredible job of synthesiz­

ing and presenting an image of Deleuze's philosophy so that we can

consider it at a more profound level. Badiou is committed to, and

equal to the challenge of, bestowing a Cartesian clarity upon every­

thing that he engages, which includes nearly every sphere of human

thought and activity. Before engaging this critique, I want to say that

I am ambivalent about polemics: on the one hand I appreciate and

admire Badiou's incredible ability to polemicize, especially on matters

of politics, and what I admire above all else is his uncompromising

resistance to the onslaught of neoliberal capitalism at a time when

seemingly everyone was at least resigned to it, if not actively celebrat­

ing it; on the other hand, I do appreciate Foucault's caution, "never

engage in polemics;' at least in terms of philosophy.! My resistance to

polemics in philosophy may be the result of my status as an outsider

in strict disciplinary terms, such that I do not have to choose between,

say, Badiou and Deleuze, Deleuze and Derrida, Derrida and Zizek, Zizek and Negri, Negri and Agamben, Agamben and Vattimo, and so

on. Or it may simply be a putting into practice of the Deleuzian AND:

"multiplicity is precisely in the 'and:"2

In order to construct an image of himself as a master philosopher,

Badiou constructs an image of Deleuze as alter-master-ego, and offers

a fixed, frozen representation of Deleuze to readers. It is masterful,

but it is also a distortion, this "aristocratic, hierarchized space;'3 from

which the image of Deleuze is drawn. Badiou offers us an austere,

ascetic, and aristocratic Deleuze, who pursues his rigorous philoso­

phy in ironic solitude completely apart from the turbulence of history.

In order to reduce Deleuze to this frozen image, Badiou is forced to

claim that Deleuze is a classicist, a metaphysician in the traditional

style, while overlooking or downplaying what is new in his thought.

On the contrary, as Jean-Clet Martin affirms: "The conquest of mul­

tiplicities does not attempt to emulate Hegel by reducing the totality

of the real to a uniform play of the one and the many, the same and

the other. The rhizomatic logic of multiplicities leads Deleuze to a

multilinear conception of thought that-far from compartmentaliz­

ing itself within autonomous sectors, and circles of circles-produces

folds, pleats and lines of flight that brings aesthetics, philosophy, eth­

ics and science together within a mobile territorY:'4

In Deleuze: The Clamor of Being, Badiou relies heavily on the

quotation from Difference and Repetition that provides the title: ''A single and sam� voice for the whole thousand-voiced multiple, a sin­

gle and same Ocean for all the drops, a single clamour of Being for

all beings:'s This quotation is taken from the last page of Difference

and Repetition, although it appears in a slightly different and more

compressed form in chapter 1: ''A single voice raises the clamour of

Being" (DR 35). In the conclusion, it is more like a crescendo that

culminates the incredible work of the book, and while Badiou takes

from the last sentence, he does not reproduce the entire sentence. The

phrase following the quotation reads: "on condition that each being,

each drop and each voice has reached the state of excess-in other

words, the difference which displaces and disguises them and, in so

turning upon its mobile cusp, causes them to return" (DR 304). This

condition is important, because it expresses the Nietzschean impera­

tive that only what becomes returns, only difference returns as dif­

ference (not the same). We can only say that "Everything is equal!"

and "Everything returns!" Deleuze claims, "at the point at which the

extremity of difference is reached;' which is not a return to the One

but a bursting open (DR 304).

12 SETT ING UP THE ENCOUNTER

Here Being is the One-All, and all of Deleuze's work is read as

the submission of thinking to "a renewed concept of the One" (CB

n). A single voice or a single event (we could also think about the

indeterminate article-a life) is a singular voice or a singular event.

As Alfred North Whitehead writes in Process and Reality, "the many

become one, and are increased by one;' that is, become many again.6

The sameness of this process is a result of Badiou reading it under the

sign of identity or monotony, and of his reading Deleuze too much

in Heideggerian terms. Badiou claims that Deleuze is "less distant

from Heidegger than is usually believed;' which is true (CB 21). But

then Badiou makes too much of Deleuze's invocation of Parmenides

along with Heidegger in the quotation from Difference and Rep­

etition. Badiou assimilates Parmenides (read through Heidegger) to

Deleuze's philosophical position: "Parmenides maintained that Being

and thought were one and the same thing. The Deleuzian variant of

this maxim is: 'it is the same thing which occurs and is said'" (CB 20).

I will come back to this quotation from The Logic of Sense later in this

book, in chapter 4. But here Badiou refuses to confront the radically

Nietzschean heart of Deleuze's philosophy: only that which becomes

(becomes different) returns. Even though Deleuze reinterprets what

Nietzsche means by the eternal return and forces it to mean the eter­

nal return of difference rather than of the same, by neglecting the

significance of Deleuze's Nietzsche for Deleuze in favor of the more

simple view that Deleuze assimilates Nietzsche to Bergson, Badiou

fails to adequately understand Deleuze's philosophy.

By favoring Bergson over Nietzsche as the primary model for

Deleuze, Badiou is able to charge Deleuze with being a thinker

obsessed with the past. This overemphasis on the past then deter­

mines Badiou's misreading of the distinction between the virtual and

the actual. Although he correctly understands and appreciates how

Deleuze does not oppose the active and the passive, he fails to apply

the same logic to this fundamental distinction between the actual and

the virtuaL Badiou appreciates how Deleuze deploys the conception

of neutrality to avoid being caught between such "premature attribu­

tions as active and passive" (CB 34). But this subtlety is lost when

applied to the virtual/actual opposition: "'virtual' is without any doubt

13 THE CLAMOR Of BEING

the principal name of the Being in Deleuze's work" (CB 43). An actual

being possesses its Being by means of the virtual, or its own virtuality.

In this sense, "the virtual is the ground of the actual;' despite Deleuze's

repudiation of the notion of any absolute ground (CB 43).

Badiou charges Deleuze with a "Platonism of the virtual;' because

Badiou cannot read Deleuze other than in terms of Platonism. Deleuze

emphasizes the reality of the virtual to overcome the traditional Aris­

totelian opposition between actual and potential; in this sense the vir­

tual has its own reality. But that does not mean that Deleuze grounds

the actual in the virtual. Badiou ontologizes the virtual over against

the actual, and reads the virtual as a Platonized pure past of form and

fold. I will show, however, that while this distinction between virtual

and actual is incredibly important for Deleuze, actual and virtual are

distinguished but not opposed. According to Badiou, Deleuze's "vir­

tual ground remains for me a transcendence;' but that is because he

reads the virtual as a ground, a strong foundation for the actual, and

this move also precludes Badiou from appreciating what is new in

Deleuze's philosophy.

This issue gets to the heart of the dispute between Deleuze and

Badiou, because Badiou reproduces some of Deleuze's judgments

about the unbridgeable impasse between them from their correspon­

dence in the early 1990S. Basically, Deleuze argues that Badiou is

unable to establish a genuine thinking of multiplicity with set theory,

and according to Badiou this is because Deleuze views sets as actuali­

ties, or states of affairs. Because they cannot rise (or descend) to the

level of the virtual, sets cannot be fundamental in regard to ontology,

even though Badiou argues that all of Deleuze's figures (fold, interval,

chaos) can also be schematized in and as sets (CB 47). Badiou claims

that in rejecting his set theory as too actual, Deleuze is preserving and

protecting the priority of the virtual.

According to Badiou, the virtual is real, which means that it is the

actualization and affirmation of itself. "Ultimately;' he writes, "what

counts is the divergent process of actualization by which the real is

arrayed within itself as the intermingling of virtualities invested, in

differing degrees of power, in the beings they actualize" (CB 49). By

overdetermining the difference between virtual and actual, Badiou

14 SETIING UP THE ENCOUNTER

charges that the virtual plays with and manifests itself, which is a

repetition of identity and a manifestation of the One. If it is the pro­

cess of actualization that constitutes reality, then the virtual loses its

absolute priority over the actual and reality functions as a third term

along the line of neutrality in relation to the contract between active

and passive.

By reading the virtual as the ground of the actual and as transcen­

dent in this way, Badiou delivers Deleuze entirely over to his precur­

sor, Bergson. Furthermore, he reduces the three syntheses of time in

chapter 2 of Difference and Repetition to two, matter and memory,

present and past, so that every event is simply the folding of an immu­

table Being, which is One. Badiou claims that Bergson is Deleuze's

"real master, far more than Spinoza, or perhaps even Nietzsche" (CB

39). If Bergson provides the key to interpreting Deleuze, then Badiou's

explanation of Bergson becomes decisive for Badiou's reading. I am

not contesting Bergson's influence, but to totally conflate Deleuze

with Bergson is to misunderstand what is new and original about

Deleuze's thought.

In Deleuze: The Clamor of Being, Badiou focuses on the concept

of movement, which ultimately takes place as a Whole, and this is

the spiritual reality of duration. He quotes Cinema 1, where Deleuze

writes that "movement has two aspects, . . . that which happens

between objects and parts, [and] that which expresses the duration

of the whole" (quoted in CB 40). These two aspects of movement­

"from a case to the One, then from the One to the case:' in which

thought "intuits the movement of the One itself" -oscillate to and

from Being and beings (CB 40). Badiou's reading of movement under

the sign of the One neglects the dramatic breakthrough of Cinema 2,

which thinks "beyond the movement-image:' As I will argue in later

chapters, Cinema 2 represents the decisive text from which to read

Difference and Repetition as well as Capitalism and Schizophrenia. The

idea of the time-image bursts the bonds of the movement-image and

the notion of thought constrained in and by movement, including

the political, as I will show in the last chapter. Here Badiou claims

that "the movement of Being itself" is "only the interval, or the differ­

ence, between these two movements" (CB 40). This reading flattens

15 THE CLAMOR OF BEING

Deleuze, because it reduces thinking and being to movement, follow­

ing Badiou's emphasis on a "Bergson-Deleuze." Toward the end of the

book, Badiou sets up a contrast between Bergson and Brunschvicg in

order to claim Brunschvicg as an ancestor in a line of descent paral­

leling but opposing the vitalism of the immanent One.

According to Badiou, "the new is a fold of the past" in Deleuze's

work (CB 91). The fold is the folding of an outside to create an inside,

which constitutes the subject. Thinking and living come from outside;

they affect an individual rather than emerge from it. Badiou identifies

the fold with memory, such that "everything new is an enfolded selec­

tion of the past" (CB 91). By reading Deleuze's philosophy from the

perspective of the The Fold, and by asserting that the fold is a new fold

of an old virtual past, Badiou completes the assimilation of Deleuze

to his reading of Bergson and disposes of everything new in Deleuze's

work. Despite the "attention Deleuze gives to the most radically new

forms of art and psychiatry, of science and the movement of different

politics:' Badiou cannot ignore the fact that "under the jurisdiction

of the One, the thought of the new plunges the latter into that part

of it which is its virtual-past" (CB 91). Badiou opposes this thought

of the new as a fold of the past, but this equation of the fold with the

virtual and with the past is a serious distortion of Deleuze's thought,

as I will demonstrate in this book. Deleuze's conception of temporal­

ity is extremely complex, but it is not linear and I do not think it is

Platonic. In chapter 5 I will explain why I think The Fold is more of an

epistemological and less of an ontological work, at least in the terms

in which it is generally understood, and also argue that it is a mis­

take to privilege The Fold as the lens through which to read Deleuze's

entire philosophy.

Above all, in Deleuze: The Clamor of Being Badiou is forced to ren­

der Deleuze's thought in terms of representation and identity. Every­

where Badiou posits or uncovers identities: the identity of being and

thinking ("a nonprincipled identity of thought and being" [CB 801; "the

subject . . . is the identity of thinking and being [CB 90 J); the "identity

of thinking and dying" (CB 14); the identity of time and truth ("time

is truth itself:' which is nothing temporal; thus, "the absolute being

of the past is indiscernible from eternity" [CB 61] ) ; the unicity of the

16 SETTING UP THE ENCOUNTER

dice throw ("there is only one throw of the dice" [eB 73]) ; and the

identity of Being as One-All. This logic of identity consumes Deleuze:

The Clamor of Being, despite the critique of identity in Difference and

Repetition, which I will discuss in the next chapter.

Badiou claims that Deleuze's antidialectical method "rejects all

recourse to mediations" (eB 32). This claim results in commenta­

tors strongly influenced by Badiou such as Peter Hallward saying

that Deleuze lacks any theory of relations. In Out of This World, Hall­

ward reads Deleuze too dualistically and asserts that Deleuze sim­

ply opposes creative becoming and created being. He claims that

since for Deleuze "being is creativity, it can only fully become so

through the tendential evacuation of all actual or creaturely media­

tion:'? Hallward's quasi-gnostic interpretation of Deleuze evacuates

from Deleuze's thought any notion of relation. Although Deleuze was

critical of conventional notions of relation, including the relations of

representation and mediation, Hallward goes too far in arguing that

Deleuze's thought allows no relation between creativity and created

creature. The creature is a fold of creativity that participates in an

ongoing creativity on the basis of its creativity and its createdness.

Because Hallward reads Deleuze's binary distinctions as oppositional,

he mistakes distinction for opposition, and loses the tension provided

by the plane of immanence. For Hallward, "the political aspects of

Deleuze's philosophy amount to little more than utopian distraction;'

because Hallward is unable to appreciate the political implications

of Deleuze's thought.s The constructive nature of Deleuze's thought

directly concerns the political, contrary to such contemporary read­

ings, as I will show in chapter 9.

Deleuze rejects internal relations of property because of his cri­

tique of identity; if beings lack identity, then they lack proper parts

and thus internal relations. This criticism of internal relations con­

stitutes his critique of organisms, the notion of an internal proper

arrangement and teleological functioning of being. Relations exist;

however, they are external to their terms. Relations do not belong

to their owners, to what is being related. If meditation is a relation

predicated on identity, which it is in most stereotypical readings of

Hegelian mediation, then Deleuze rejects mediation. But that does

n THE ClAMOR OF B�NG

not mean that Deleuze rejects all relations. They just have to be

reconceptualized in nonidentitarian terms.

Badiou suggests that Deleuze's intuition consists in "perpetual

reconcatenation" (CB 36), which is a double movement. This double

movement is the logic of Deleuze's thought and it is more based on

a kind of intuition (a "distinct-obscure" understanding) than a rig­

orous logic. (I will explain my understanding of Deleuze's logic in

chapter 4.) Here in Deleuze: The Clamor of Being, Badiou explains

correctly that "for Deleuze, every construction of thought goes from

A to B, then from B to 11.' (CB 36). The double movement introduces a

kind of disorientation, or non-sense, that plunges thought into chaos.

According to Badiou, "nonsense is nothing other than the univocity

of Being" (CB 38), but I think this goes too far. Badiou sees Deleuze

as mastering the descending statements of sense and the ascending

statements of non-sense that culminate in univocal Being and rig the

game for the One. Badiou introduces levels of ascent and descent that

are not simply present, and he reads Deleuze's entire philosophy from

the standpoint of movement.

This focus on movement also governs Badiou's reading of the eter­

nal return of the same. Although Badiou notes that Deleuze opposes

all identity and all sameness, he says that sameness is the affirma­

tion of the return itself. In this way, "the return is the creation of the

Same for the different, and by the different" (CB 71). In a similar way,

according to a similar movement, Deleuze is accused of mastering

both chaos and order, sense and nonsense, chance and determinism.

In the throw of the dice, Badiou argues, Deleuze rejects a series of

throws and restricts himself to one throw. "In all throws, the same

Throw returns;' according to Badiou, "because the being of the cast

is invariable in its productive determinism: to affirm all chance in a

single moment" (CB 74) . Badiou accuses Deleuze after his death of

a productive determinism, of determining both sides of any situa­

tion by recourse to a One that is transcendent but hidden within the

immanent process of becoming. By contrast, Badiou holds himself

apart as the master of subtraction, a Platonism shorn of the One. I will

show how Deleuze emphasizes the production of being rather than

subtraction from it, but I dispute the charge of determinism, which

18 SEITING UP THE ENCOUNTER

results from the identification of chance and the predetermined total­

ity of Being that occupies and affirms it. According to Badiou, there

can be no genuine multiplicity without the One except the multiplic­

ity given by means of set theory. In Being and Event, set theory sets

out an irreducible mathematical multiplicity, and any state or situa­

tion comes into existence by subtracting from this multiplicity in a

counting-as-one.

But part of the problem of multiplicity in this engagement between

Badiou and Deleuze concerns the number of multiplicities. As Louise

Burchill, the translator of Deleuze: The Clamor of Being, points out,

and as Deleuze and Guattari explain in a brief critique of Badiou in

What Is Philosophy?, Deleuze operates with more than one conception

of multiplicity (CB xviii) . According to Deleuze and Guattari, there

must be "at least two multiplicities;' not because they prefer dualism,

but "because the multiplicity is precisely what happens between the

twO:'9 Badiou compresses the number of multiplicities into one in

order to oppose a unitary concept of multiplicity to the One. Since

Badiou affirms his axiomatic definition of multiplicity, he fuses the

Deleuzian multiplicities into a single, univocal multiplicity that is

anchored in a hidden One.

In an extremely powerful and technical essay on "Mathematics and

the Theory of Multiplicities:' Daniel W Smith points out that Badiou

not only compresses multiplicity into a single concept, he also amal­

gamates a number of distinct ideas of the One together. Badiou's con­

ception of the One refers variously to Neo-Platonism, the Christian

God, Spinoza's Substance, Kant's Whole, Nietzsche's Eternal Return,

and Bergson's elan vital, among others. In this way, the count -as-one of

the One means that "the concept of the 'One' effectively becomes little

more than a marker in Badiou's writings for any non-set-theoretical

ontologY:'lO Smith explains that although Deleuze does make use of a

concept of the One (the "One-All" as a plane cut out of chaos), he is

not a philosopher of the One in Badiou's sense.

Badiou confuses One-ness with univocity, which are strictly speak­

ing incompatible. As Smith makes clear, Deleuze argues in Difference

and Repetition that "the term 'Being' can be said in a single and uni­

vocal sense" only "if Being is said univocally of difference as such:'ll

19 THE CLAMOR OF BEING

To declare that "Being is One" and that "Being is univocal" is techni­

cally inconsistent, and such is Badiou's inconsistency that his reading

tries to distort Deleuze's thesis from the latter to the former. Smith

charges that although Badiou sets up a serious encounter between his

own and Deleuze's thought, Badiou fails to engage the central ground

of opposition between them, which is the concept of mathematical

multiplicity. Deleuze: The Clamor of Being "does not contain a sin­

gle discussion of Deleuze's theory of multiplicitites;' writes SmithY

Rather than critique Deleuze's mathematical conception of multiplic­

ity directly, Badiou distorts Deleuze's philosophy by claiming that

Deleuze is secretly a philosopher of the One.

The true dispute between Badiou and Deleuze concerns the ontol­

ogy of mathematics, according to Smith. And what is striking about

Badiou's critique is that he attempts to eliminate the mathematical

nature of Deleuze's ontological multiplicity. By eliminating Deleuze's

discussion of mathematics, Badiou is able to claim that Deleuze is

a Pre-Socratic philosopher with a naive vision of philosophy as a

physics of beingY Although I will argue in chapter 8 that Deleuze's

work has many connections with contemporary physics, as Manuel

DeLanda points out, this is not an exclusion or denigration of mathe­

matics. Deleuze undertakes an extraordinary derivation of differential

calculus in chapter 4 of Difference and Repetition, and mathematical

ideas constantly inform his thought.

Badiou asserts that ontology is mathematics, but what he really

means is that ontology is "axiomatic set theory;' as Smith points

OUt.14 Smith contrasts Badiou's axiomatics with Deleuze's mathemati­

cal ontology, which is concerned with problematics. Axiomatics

is what Deleuze and Guattari call a "major" or "royal" science in A

Thousand Plateaus, whereas problematics concerns the constitution

of a scientific theory, which is more "minor" or "nomadic:'ls Royal

science operates according to a "hylomorphic" model that sharply

distinguishes between matter and form, which is a "legal or legalist"

model.l6 Royal science works with striated but homogeneous space,

which is already cut up into categories. By contrast, nomadic science

deals with a smooth, dynamic space that follows diverse movements

without logically opposing them. According to Deleuze and Guattari,

20 SElliNG UP THE ENCOUNTER

"there are itinerant, ambulant sciences that consist in following a

flow in a vectorial field across which singularities are scattered like so

many 'accidents' (problems):'17 Badiou legislates propositions based

on set theory, whereas Deleuze enters into the dynamism of problems

and attempts to think on their terms and from their basis.ls

In Difference and Repetition, as Smith explains, Deleuze works out

a problematics for the construction of differential calculus. As cal­

culus developed from Leibniz and Newton, it functioned by means

of differential equations, the famous dx, that worked with dynamic

and continuous notions that could not be strictly formalized. The

mathematical solution of calculus concerns the passage from a more

geometrical and intuitive model to an algebraic model, where the

infinities received precise formalization in "purely arithmetic terms"

by Karl Weierstrass.19

According to Deleuze, Weierstrass provides a '''static' interpreta­

tion of the differential and infinitesimal calculus, in which there is

no longer any fluction toward a limif'20 This fixing of dynamic, geo­

metrical concepts culminates in Dedekind's achievement of "rigor­

ously defining the continuity of the real numbers in terms of a 'cuf"

and then Cantor's axiomization of infinity in discrete sets.21 Arithmat­

ics involves making discrete and eliminating continuity, although the

question of the continuum reemerges at the level of sets: Cantor opts

for the continuum hypothesis in terms of sets, whereas Badiou rejects

the continuum hypothesis and consistently affirms sets as discrete

multiples. Deleuze affirms the seemingly more obsolete, continuous

version of calculus not because he is a conservative aristocratic phi­

losopher, but because continuity offers a link to intuition, and intu­

ition explains how scientific discovery works. The formalization or

axiomatization of sciences, including mathematics, comes after the

initial insight, which is fraught with messy and contradictory implica­

tions. Royal science comes along and purifies scientific theories, and

Badiou clearly opts for axiomatic royal science. Deleuze understands

how these dynamic intensities end up disappearing in the solutions,

but they manifest themselves at the level of problems. And phi­

losophy for Deleuze is all about setting up problems. According to

Smith, "Deleuze uses the calculus as a model for his conception of

21 THE CL�MOR OF BEING

immanent Ideas:'22 In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze wants to

show how theories come into existence, which is a chaotic process,

before they get cleaned up.

Deleuze appeals to differential geometry and "the problem of

n-dimensional curved surfaces" in Gauss and Riemann as an alter­

native to the arithmetic formalization of set theory. In his book on

Deleuze's philosophy, Jean-Clet Martin explains that "Riemann had the

idea to make a figure vary upon spaces of different curvatures, in order

to expose them to different dimensions, transferring a part of Euclid­

ean space on an elliptical space by means of a topological transforma­

tion:'23 Badiou, on the contrary, dismisses Riemannian space as a "pre­

liminary figure of the One" and reduces it to a subset of set theory.24 I

am in no way an expert in mathematical theory, but Deleuze is using

a certain history and understanding of mathematics based on Rie­

mann to construct his philosophy. Furthermore, Deleuze is showing

how philosophical construction is similar to scientific invention, even

though he later distinguishes them more clearly in What Is Philosophy?

Finally, geometry and minor science are significant because they pre­

serve a link to experience: as Smith says, it is the calculus that "estab­

lishes this link between mathematics and existence:'25 Deleuze prefers

minor sciences, no matter what field in which they lie, because they

resist the autonomy and self-sufficiency of science, which becomes a

kind of transcendental power to legislate thought and action.

Badiou is a more royal philosopher, in these terms. His axiomat­

ization of mathematics in terms of set theory fixes continuity and

becoming, and excludes precisely what he wants to occur, namely an

event. As Smith writes, "Badiou, by contrast, in taking axiomatics as

his ontological model, limits his ontology to the pole of mathemat­

ics that is constituted on the elimination of event, and he therefore

necessarily denies events any ontological status: 'the event is forbid­

den; ontology rejects it:"26 Badiou desires an event so powerfully that

he sets up his ontology to exclude it, and then he theorizes about its

irruption beyond being, in a way completely unforeseen and unpre­

dicted. Deleuze, however, encompasses events, multiple events, within

his ontology, which is not solely mathematical but does not exclude

mathematical events either.

22 SETTING UP THE ENCOUNTER

What is an event, especially a revolutionary political event? Slavoj Zizek allies himself with Badiou (and against Deleuze, or at least

Deleuze and Guattari) in political terms, even as he distances him­

self in some critical respects from Badiou's ontology. In his book

Organs Without Bodies, Zizek offers his own reading of Deleuze,

which is informed by Badiou's critique. Zizek does not completely

accept Badiou's argument, but he does affirm his suspicion of the

"idealism" of Deleuze's vitalism in terms set by Badiou. As opposed

to Deleuze's philosophy, where "difference refers to the multiple

singularities that express the One of infinite Life:' in Badiou's work

"we get multitude(s) without any underlying Oneness:' which Zizek

prefersY This preference for Badiou's mathematical multiplicity is

ironic, considering that Zizek does not pursue his engagement with

and critique of Deleuze along the lines laid out by Badiou. Further­

more, Zizek ends up criticizing Badiou's insistence on a mathemati­

cal ontology. Zizek claims that "ultimately, one should reject Badiou's

notion of mathematics (the theory of pure multiplicity) as the only

consistent ontology (science of being): if mathematics is ontology,

then, to account for the gap between Being and Event, one either

remains stuck in dualism or one has to dismiss the Event as an

illusory local occurrence within the encompassing order of being"

(OWB 107). Zizek rejects Badiou's account of mathematical multi­

plicity, even though he relies on it to criticize Deleuze. That is, Zizek

recognizes that there is not only one kind of multiplicity-there are

multiple multiplicities, as discussed above. Zizek is one of our most important contemporary philosophers,

as well as a brilliant and incisive thinker and writer, but Organs

Without Bodies is not his best book. It is a loose and somewhat epi­

sodic encounter, using the occasion of an engagement with Deleuze

to develop some of Zizek.'s own impressions about contemporary

art, science, and politics (the "Consequences" of the subtitle). Zizek

understands "organs without body" as "the virtuality of the pure

affect extracted from its embeddedness in a body" (OWB 30). The

title reverses Deleuze's use of Antonin Artaud's phrase "body without

organs" (or BwO), where an organ refers above all to the hierarchy

and teleology that characterizes an organism and its functioning. In

23 THE CLAMOR OF BEING

A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari oppose Artaud's BwO to the signifying organs of psychoanalysis. They declare that "the BwO is what remains when you take everything away:' but that psycho­analysis "does the opposite: it translates everything into phantasies, it converts everything into phantasy, it retains the phantasy. It royally botches the real, because it botches the BWO:'28

Zizek's core reading of Deleuze consists in developing an oppo­sition between two distinct logics, one that applies to The Logic of

Sense, and another that characterizes his work with Guattari, mainly in Anti-Oedipus. Zizek constructs a "deadlock" of two opposing ten­dencies in Deleuze's work, "on the one hand, the logic of sense . . . the logic of the radical gap between generative process and its immate­rial sense-effect:' and "on the other hand, the logic of becoming as PRODUCTION of beings" (OWB 21) . This deadlock leads Deleuze to embrace the second option, with Guattari, which is according to Zizek the wrong choice.

The reason Zizek prefers the former logic of The Logic of Sense

is because this logic understands sense as the "EFFECT of bodily­material processes-causes:' which is more materialistic, whereas Anti­

Oedipus is idealist precisely because bodies are produced out of more ideal "virtual intensities out of which bodies emerge through actu­alization" (OWB 2l) . This opposition already exists within The Logic

of Sense, where Deleuze hesitates between a formal and a material genesis. Formal genesis indicates "the emergence of reality out of the immanence of impersonal consciousness as the pure flow of Becom­ing:' whereas material genesis explains "the emergence of the immate­rial event-surface itself out of bodily interaction" (OWB 22) . Again, Zizek prefers the latter, material genesis: "Body without organs" refers to the formal genesis that dominates Anti-Oedipus, which is "argu­ably Deleuze's worst book:' whereas "organs without body" pertains to the material genesis that prevails in The Logic of Sense (OWB 21, 30).

An organ no longer attached to the body is Lacan's phallus, which is not simply the male sex-organ, but the signifier par excellence. Zizek claims that Deleuze's dark precursor is structurally similar to the phallus, because "the dark precursor is the signifier of a metadiffer­ence" (OWB 81). Later, Zizek suggests that the phallus functions as

24 SETTING UP THE ENCOUNTER

the signifier of castration, which is another kind of difference, and this makes it the quintessential "organ without a body" (OWB 83).

The question, however, is to what extent Zizek manufactures this opposition of logics in The Logic of Sense. I see Anti-Oedipus as com­patible with The Logic of Sense, although there is a shift in perspective. Deleuze becomes much more suspicious of structuralism and Laca­nian psychoanalysis, and he writes The Logic of Sense from above, so to speak, from the level of sense and language as it reaches down toward bodies, whereas Anti-Oedipus is written from below, at the level of desiring machines, looking up. The collaboration with Guat­tari is experimental and in some respects irreverent, and misleading if read in isolation from Deleuze's other works such as Difference and

Repetition and The Logic of Sense. Later in this book, in chapters 4

and 5, I will argue that Anti-Oedipus is more compatible with The

Logic of Sense than Zizek declares. Zizek constructs the deadlock that he finds in Deleuze's logic, and then he accuses Deleuze of making the wrong choice, when in fact there is no fundamental opposition between what Zizek calls Deleuze's material and formal logic.

Later in Organs Without Bodies, Zizek criticizes the faddish emphasis on micropolitics and micro fascism by leftists influenced by a superficial reading of Deleuze and Guattari. On the one hand, Capi­

talism and Schizophrenia is a desperately serious project, an attempt to push capitalism to its limits at least in theory, and it is quite a stretch to suggest that Deleuze could be considered "the ideologist of late capitalism" simply because some of his ideas are simulated in vulgar fashion at the level of consumer culture (OWB 184). On the other hand, it is a symptom of late capitalism that politics in the grand style gives way to a trivialized micropolitics; but to champion and sloganize a "libidinal micropolitics" is to severely mis-understand and mis-use Deleuze (OWB 190). In political terms, what Zizek most strongly criticizes is a caricature of Deleuze, including the guilt-by -association of vitalism with fascism (OWB 191). In chapter 9, I will argue that Deleuze's philosophy is extremely relevant for political thinking today, against the critiques of Badiou and Zizek. At the same time, I agree with Zizek that the form of politics or micropolitics that pre­dominates in Capitalism and Schizophrenia is not the most relevant or

25 THE CLAMOR OF BEING

useful form of political engagement, and I prefer to read Capitalism

and Schizophrenia from the standpoint of Cinema 2.

In laying out and critiquing Badiou's (and to a lesser extent Zizek's) critique of Deleuze, I am concerned not only with defending Deleuze from Badiou's misleading attack; I also want to open up a space for my own reading of Deleuze. In the next chapter, I offer a reading of Difference and Repetition that grounds my understanding of Deleuze.

26 SETTING UP THE ENCOUNTER

THREE A REPETITION Of D�fFERENCE

IN DIFFERENCE AND REPETITION and The Logic ojSense, Deleuze's original philosophical works from the late 1960s, the language of uni­vocity and the univocity of Being are more heuristic than metaphysi­cal in the Platonic sense. Univocity provides a way to bring together philosophy and ontology and to express the irreducible multiplicity of Being itself. In his reading of Deleuze in Deleuze: The Clamor oj

Being, Badiou puts too much emphasis on chapter 1 of Difference and

Repetition, as well as the conclusion of the book. Chapter 2 is explo­sive and revolutionary, and so is chapter 5, and these two chapters are key to understanding the book as a whole. Chapter 3, "The Image of Thought:' is the hinge of the book, and it is mainly a critique of con­temporary common sense and philosophical good sense as it com­poses an image of thought. Deleuze is explicitly critical of the notion of image here, although he implicitly uses the second half of the book to compose an alternate image of thought. He later elaborates his explicit constructive, nonreactionary idea of the image in the Cinema

books, as I will discuss in later chapters. Chapters 4 and 5 are extremely technical, demanding extensive

knowledge of science and mathematics, and many philosophers with­out training in the sciences struggle to understand these chapters and how they fit with the rest of the book. I claim that chapter 2 is the climax of the book in conventional philosophical terms, but chapter 5

is the most amazing and extraordinary chapter overall, which is remarkably still almost impossible to fully understand and appreci­ate. Chapter 6, the conclusion, surveys the ground covered by the rest of the book. Essentially, chapter 4 repeats chapter 1, and both primar­ily address difference, whereas chapter 5 repeats chapter 2, and here both chapters are more explicitly involved in a profound thinking of repetition. Again, these repetitions revolve around chapter 3, which is the center of the book.

In chapter 1, Deleuze presents himself the challenge of composing a philosophy in which "difference is internal to the Idea; it unfolds as pure movement, creative of a dynamic space and tie which corre­spond to the Idea" (DR 24). As he explains in the introduction, there are two forms of repetition: the bare material repetition of identity in sameness, and the clothed spiritual repetition of differences. Deleuze claims that "a bare, material repetition (repetition of the Same) appears only in the sense that another repetition is disguised within it, consti­tuting it and constituting itself in disguising itself" (DR 21). The latter repetition is a repetition of difference, which is hidden underneath and animates the former. The first repetition is conceptual and rep­resentative, but this repetition of the Same is only made possible by virtue of the second repetition, in which "difference in internal to the Idea" (DR 24). The problem is that this disguised repetition is hidden by the first repetition, and requires a philosophical investigation to bring it to light. The concept of difference is not new for philosophy, but philosophy has been unable to think difference in itself apart from conceptual representation and mediation, which means that we have no idea of difference as such. "Perhaps the mistake of the philosophy of difference, from Aristotle to Hegel via Leibniz, lay in confusing the concept of difference with a merely conceptual difference, remaining content to inscribe difference in the concept in general" (DR 27). This subjection of difference to generality precludes the thinking of radical or primary difference.

At the beginning of chapter 1, Deleuze lays out four principal aspects of reason as "the medium of representation" : identity, analogy, oppo­sition, and resemblance (DR 29). These four "shackles of mediation" constrain difference and prevent it from being thought in itself. He

30 OELEUZE

begins with Aristotle's conceptual scheme, and Aristotle's distinction between genera and species. The problem is that specific differences are organized and maintained by their subsumption under larger generic differences, and these differences function by means of resemblance. In this way, "generic and specific differences are tied together by their complicity in representation" (DR 34). Generic differences equivocate the specific differences, and inform an Aristotelian notion of differ­ence as a reflexive concept. Difference is reflexive in Aristotle because "difference allows the passage from similar neighboring species to the identity of a genus which subsumes them" (DR 34).

The only way to break free from this Aristotelian subsumption of difference is to push the univocation of specific difference to the level of genera. Here is where Duns Scotus comes in as a challenge to Aris­totelian logic and Thomistic logic, which are ultimately analogical. For Scotus, the univocity of being grounds difference itself, which is now primary rather than secondary, as it was in Aristotle. Accord­ing to Deleuze, what is crucial to the notion of univocity "is not that Being is said in a simple and same sense, but that it is said, in a single and same sense, of all its individuating differences or intrinsic modali­ties" (DR 36).

It would appear that the distribution of being as differences that are at the same time "distributing a space" (DR 36) requires the thought of univocity, and it does so specifically in terms of theoretical lan­guage. Deleuze famously invokes Duns Scotus, and says that "it is not a matter of being which is distributed according to the requirements of representation, but of all things being divided up within being in the univocity of simple presence (the One-All) . Such a distribution is demonic rather than divine, since it is a peculiarity of demons to operate in the intervals between the gods' fields of action" (DR 37). So in order to think repetition as difference, we have to first think being as univocally distributed, as One-All; but it is the demonic intervals that are ultimately important. The univocity of being is what provides for us a plane of immanence or consistency. However, the plane of consistency is a dark precursor. To say that differences are primary or original does not really say very much; we have to know how differ­ences are related, which Deleuze discusses toward the end of chapter 2.

31 A R EPETITION OF DIFFERENCE

Before shifting to this crucial discussion in chapter 2, however, we need to continue to follow the way that Deleuze attempts to think difference apart from representational identity in chapter 1. The logic of univocity allows Deleuze to break with Aristotelian logic, which is based on resemblance and analogy; but whereas Scotus is neutral in his affirmation of univocity, Deleuze pushes Scotus in the direction of Spinoza and Nietzsche. By reading the notion of eternal return as a radicalization of a univocal process of selection that works accord­ing to a Spinozist substance, Deleuze affirms that "returning is the becoming-identical of becoming itself' which means that the identi­cal belongs to or returns on the basis of the different (DR 41). The series Scotus-Spinoza-Nietzsche, which is read as a liberation of dif­ference in itself, is contrasted to the efforts of Leibniz and Hegel, who attempt to think infinite difference in orgiastic terms, as the infinitely large (Hegel) or the infinitely small (Leibniz) . The problem is that both Leibniz and Hegel attempt to think infinite (or orgiastic) repre­sentation, but "in the last resort infinite representation does not free itself from the principle of identity as a presupposition of represen­tation" (DR 49). Deleuze clearly prefers Leibniz to Hegel, but both base representation upon a principle of identity: "the convergence of series" in Leibniz and "the mono centring of circles" in Hegel. Differ­ence grounds the demonstration of identity that precedes it, centering or attracting difference with identity.

Deleuze concludes his survey of the history of philosophy by returning to Plato. He claims that "the task of modern philosophy has been defined: to overturn Platonism" (DR 59). Platonism is both an elaboration and a betrayal of Plato's thought, and Deleuze glimpses in Plato's idea of division without middle term or mediation a way to think difference in itself. The Platonic Idea then becomes a model for thinking the virtual in chapter 4, even though the capture of Platonism by dialectics and Aristotelian logic installs the system of representation that subordinates difference to identity. At the end of chapter 1, Deleuze presses the Platonic distinction between original and copy in order to liberate the simulacra from their subservience to forms. According to Deleuze, "Plato gave the establishment of dif­ference as the supreme goal of dialectic. However, difference does

32 DmUZE

not lie between things and simulacra, models and copies. Things are simulacra themselves, simulacra are the superior forms, and the diffi­culty facing everything is to become its own simulacrum, to attain the status of a sign in the coherence of eternal return" (DR 67). Perhaps the strangest section of chapter 1 is the brief "Note on Heidegger's Philosophy of Difference" that interrupts the discussion of Plato at the end of the chapter (DR 64-66). Deleuze was apparently instructed by his thesis committee to insert some sort of explicit treatment of Heidegger into the text, and the result is this incredible summary of Heidegger's thought and Deleuze's use of it. In his note, Deleuze sum­marizes Heidegger's philosophy in five theses, the most important of which are the first two:

1. The not expresses not the negative but the difference between Being and being . . . .

2. This difference is not "between" in the ordinary sense of the word. It is the Fold, Zwiefalt. It is constitutive of Being and of the manner in which Being constitutes being, in the double movement of "clear­ing" and "veiling:' Being is truly the differenciator of difference­whence the expression "ontological difference" (DR 65).

Difference is the ontological difference between Being and beings, and it is not simply a negative relation, a "Not;' but rather the fold between Being and beings. This fold is not simply a static distinction but an operational differenciator. Although this note is clunky for the flow of the chapter, it is crucial because it not only shows how Deleuze is reading and interpreting Heidegger, but also pinpoints the specific function of the differenciator that Deleuze returns to in chapter 2.

In many ways the key concept of Difference and Repetition is not difference, but repetition, which is why chapter 2, "Repetition for Itself;' is so important. Here we have the three syntheses of time: the composition of habit or Habitus following Hume and Husser!, the constitution of memory as Eros-Mnemosyne following Bergson and Proust, and finally and most importantly, the Kantian split that leads

33 A REPETITION OF DIFFERENCE

to the third synthesis, which is death, the pure and empty form of time that leads to the eternal return.

The chapter opens with a thesis from Hume, the subject of Deleuze's first book, Empiricism and Subjectivity. This thesis is the opening sentence of the chapter: "Repetition changes nothing in the object repeated, but does change something in the mind which contemplates it" (DR 70). The object in itself does not change, but the mind draws something different from the reappearance of the object by means of the imagination. Because Hume's thesis is a thesis about subjectivity, it pertains to our understanding of time. Time, according to Deleuze, "is constituted only in the originary synthesis which operates on the repetition of instants" (DR 70). The present moment is a contraction or subtraction of time from the passage of moments that occurs in the mind by means of a passive synthesis that Hume calls habit. Drawing on Bergson as well as Husserl, Deleuze demonstrates how this passive synthesis works: the imagination draws "something new from repeti­tion;' it extracts difference from this experience of repetition (DR 76).

The experiences of repetition and its differences are then repeated, and they compose the living present by constituting a passive self or dissolved-disunified-self who undergoes "the thousands of habits of which we are composed" (DR 78).

This is the first synthesis of time, the. time of the present which passes that constitutes us as a dissolved or passive self. At the same time, Deleuze argues that in order to experience the present as pres­ent, we require another time, another synthesis. The second synthesis grounds the present of time in memory, which is "a more profound passive synthesis" than habit (DR 79) . Memory is the second syn­thesis of time that "constitutes the being of the past" (DR 80). There always exists a past that does not exist, but that nevertheless grounds the temporal present. This past is what Deleuze will later call virtual, building off Bergson, and he claims that "the present designates the most contracted degree of an entire past, which is itself like a coexist­ing totality" (DR 82). This distinction between present and past, habit and memory, will later reappear in the Cinema books as the differ­ence between the peaks of the present and the sheets of the virtual past. The danger is to read these syntheses in opposition to each other,

34 DElEUZE

and forget the third synthesis of time. Here the present is grounded in the past, but we do not remain with the past. Deleuze associates the second synthesis not only with Bergson but also with Proust and Proustian reminiscence.

The past grounds the present, and Deleuze names it Eros. Eros redeems lost time by allowing us to "penetrate this pure past in itself, this virginal repetition which is Mnemosyne» (DR 85). The explora­tion of the pure past is erotic and offers us meaning and refuge, which is fundamentally how Badiou reads Deleuze, but this is not the secret of all our existence, "unless we have not yet found the last word, unless there is a third synthesis of time» (DR 85). We do not understand Dif­ference and Repetition if we reduce the syntheses of time from three to two, and we do not adequately understand Deleuze if we read his distinctions between two terms or alternatives as binary oppositions. The entire project of Difference and Repetition is dedicated to getting us to think beyond the system of representational identity, and oppo­sition is one of the marks of the representational regime. Many of the best interpreters of Deleuze struggle with the transition from the second to the third synthesis. For example, Dorothea Olkowski states that "no memory becomes action until the third synthesis is classed into play, though it is not always clear in Deleuze how to separate the second and third syntheses:'J

We get from the second to the third synthesis through Kant. The Kantian Cogito is very different from the Cartesian Cogito, because while the Cartesian Cogito is in time, for Kant time is in the Self. Deleuze says that "it is as though the I were fractured from one end to the other: fractured by the pure and empty form of time» (DR 86). Kant's distinction between the empirical self as an object of knowl­edge and understanding and the active subjectivity of the transcen­dental apperception splits the self or I within itself, and time is the name of this split. Time is what allows for the transcendental syn­thesis of knowledge, but this synthesis only operates by means of a fracture and a death of self and of God.

The pure and empty form of time becomes the opening to the future, the passage of death that constitutes the third synthesis of time. The pure and empty form of time in chapter 2 of Difference and

35 A REPETITION OF D IFFERENCE

Repetition becomes the time-image in Cinema 2, as I will explain in chapter 5. In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze claims that "if the greatest initiative of transcendental philosophy was to introduce the form of time into thought as such, then this pure and empty form of time in turn signifies indissolubly the death of God, the fractured I and the passive self" (DR 87) . It is only by means of this cut, the fact that the pure and empty form of time is death, that novelty is possible.

With Kant, time is out of joint. With the third synthesis, "time itself unfolds (that is, apparently ceases to be a circle) instead of things unfolding within it (following the overly simple circular figure)" (DR 88). Here time is not subordinated to movement and appears static, but this stasis is only the precondition of novelty: "time is the most radical form of change, but the form of change does not change" (DR 89). The fracture in the I is a caesura, a cut that becomes a passage because it drives the third synthesis, that of the future. We repeat, become different, only by dying to our identity and becoming subject to Deleuze's reformulation of the eternal return: only what becomes returns. Only what dies repeats. Death is the caesura or passage through which events happen. They take place not as the restoration or repetition of a pure virtual past, but as new. "Eternal return affects only the new, what is produced under the condition of default by the intermediary of metamorphosis" (DR 90 ). This production of the new does not reproduce the agent or the condition that constitutes it; "it is repetition by excess which leaves intact nothing of the default or the becoming-equal" (DR 90). The difficulty is to read Difference and

Repetition consistently from the perspective of difference, rather than lapsing back into the presupposition of identity.

Deleuze summarizes this first repetition of the three syntheses of time: "We produce something new only on condition that we repeat-once in the mode which constitutes the past, and once more in the present of metamorphosis. Moreover, what is produced, the absolutely new in itself, is in turn nothing but repetition: the third repetition, this time by excess, the repetition of the future as eternal return" (DR 90). After working through this series of three repetitions philosophically, Deleuze repeats it in a psychoanalytic register (this is before his antagonistic break with Lacan); here the first synthesis is

36 DElEUZE

the passive synthesis of binding, the second is the Eros that tears vir­tual objects out a pure past and gives them to us to be lived, and finally the third synthesis is the narcissistic, wounded ego that is produced by the death drive.2

Deleuze criticizes Freud for reducing the death drive to the desire to return to a state of inanimate matter. According to Deleuze, "Freud strangely refused any other dimension to death;' but here the death drive and its repetition compulsion is what drives the passage to the third synthesis (DR 111). Here "time empty and out of joint, with its rigorous form and static order, its crushing unity and its irreversible series, is precisely the death instinct" through which the narcissistic ego passes. Death is the pure and empty form of time, the constitu­tion of Thanatos as the third synthesis or series of time. Death is not a simple negation of life; it is present in life as the threshold of eternal return. We die to ourselves as we repeat. Death is not "the opposition between matter and immortal life;' as we normally imagine it accord­ing to the logic of representation; "death is, rather, the last form of the problematic, the source of problems and questions, the sign of their persistence over and above every response" (DR 1l2). The third syn­thesis is a groundlessness beyond ground that refers to the process of the eternal return of difference.

Deleuze says that these three syntheses together constitute the unconscious, and all three work beyond the pleasure principle. The first synthesis is the binding principle that founds time on the basis of a living present, the second synthesis in turn grounds present time on a pure past that becomes accessible as memory, and finally the third synthesis isolates time in itself as a pure ungrounded form through which to drive repetition. Deleuze's presentation and rearticulation in a psychoanalytic register of the three syntheses of time is an incredible work of philosophical brilliance, one that builds off Heidegger's treat­ment of time in Being and Time (although Deleuze does not explicitly refer to Heidegger in his discussion of the syntheses of time), and it is in some respects the climax of the book in conventional philosophi­cal terms. It took me years to comprehend the significance of chapter 2, and even then I still could not really understand chapters 4 and 5,

except in episodic and isolated terms, until I read it with someone

37 A REPETITION OF DIFFERENCE

who could explain how the math and science interact with the philo­sophical ideas.3 Difference and Repetition is a book that requires care­ful and repeated rereading from multiple points of view.

Deleuze claims that we do not know how to think because we do not know how to play: we conceive repetition and return as affirma­tions that impose limits, because we resist affirming "the all of chance" (DR 116). The affirmation of futural repetition as eternal return where only what becomes (different) returns suggests that Deleuze is not simply wedded to an immemorial past, as Badiou claims. After his magisterial presentation (and re-presentation) of the three syntheses of time, Deleuze takes up the key question of how difference can be related to difference. This section toward the end of chapter 2 is abso­lutely crucial for understanding what Difference and Repetition means and whether it can possibly make sense.

Deleuze does finally invoke Heidegger in setting up the problem:

In accordance with Heidegger's ontological intuition, difference must be in articulation and connection in itself; it must relate differ­ent to different without any mediation whatsoever by the identical, the similar, the analogous or the opposed. There must be a differ­enciation of difference, an in-itself which is like a differenciator, a Sich-unterscheidende, by virtue of which the different is gathered all at once rather than represented on condition of a prior resemblance, identity, analogy or opposition. (DR 117)4

The question is, how does difference operate on itself? There must be a second degree of difference, a differenciator. There are two basic requirements for the development of difference into a differentiator without any representation. The first is "an organization in series:' There must be at least two series. Second, there must be a communi­cation between series, a "force" or intensity that "relates differences to other differences" (DR uS). It is the "intensive character of systems" or series that is important here, the manner by which difference is related to difference, the construction of a second-order difference. An intensive field communicates differences to differences, and pro­duces individuations. "Once communication between heterogeneous

38 DElEUZE

series is established, all sorts of consequences follow within the sys­tem. Something 'passes' between the borders, events explode, phe­nomena flash, like thunder and lightning" (DR 118).

Here Deleuze directly confronts the most difficult issue of the entire book: "The most important difficulty, however, remains: is it really difference which relates different to different in these inten­sive systems? Does the difference between differences relate differ­ence to itself without any other intermediary?" (DR 119) . To recog­nize difference as difference, or to distinguish between and among differences, we would seem to need to refer to a kind of resemblance or identity. This is why so many scholars agree with Peter Hallward and others who claim that Deleuze lacks a theory of relations.5 This is wrong. Relations are external to their terms, because internal relations seem to presuppose resemblance in order to mediate rela­tions among things. We find ourselves resorting to a presupposi­tion of identity to underlie differentiation, but that's what Deleuze is showing us is not necessary. ''Are we not condemned to rediscover a privileged point at which difference can be understood only by virtue of a resemblance between the things which differ and the identity of a third party?" (DR 119). No; but "here we must pay the greatest attention to the respective roles of difference, resemblance and identitY:'

The question directly concerns the force or intensity that allows communication between differences, or series of differences. We assume a privileged path of thinking from identity to difference, but as a matter of fact it's the reverse: "Thunderbolts explode between dif­ferent intensities, but they are preceded by an invisible, dark precur­

sor, which determines their path in advance but in reverse, as though intagliated" (DR 119) . This is due to the pressure differential in thun­derstorms. "Likewise, every system contains its dark precursor which ensures the communication of peripheral series:' The dark precursor is the differenciator, and it is also what later becomes the plane of immanence or plane of consistency. The problem is that we are used to thinking in terms of background dependence, so we presume that there is a background upon which events occur, and that the plane of immanence would then be this background. But this is incorrect.

39 A REPETITION OF DIFFERENCE

There is no background, and the dark precursor does not supply a background. How then does the dark precursor work?

There is no doubt that there is an identity belonging to the precursor, and a resemblance between the series that it causes to communi­cate. This "there is:' however, remains perfectly indeterminate. Are identity and difference here the preconditions of the functioning of the dark precursor, or are they, on the contrary, its effects? (DR 119).

Of course Deleuze argues for the latter, which means that the dark precursor projects "upon itself the illusion of fictive identity, and upon the series which it relates the illusion of a retrospective resemblance" (DR 119). There is (il y a) identity, but this identity is a transcendental illusion cast by the shadow of the dark precursor. Resemblance and identity are illusions, "in other words, concepts of reflection which would account for our inveterate habit of thinking difference on the basis of the catego­ries of representation" (DR 119). The dark precursor conceals the in-itself of difference in its operation, which gives rise to the illusion of identity. So the dark precursor is the differenciator, because "given two hetero­geneous series, two series of differences, the precursor plays the part of the differenciator of these differences" (DR 119). The dark precursor is invisible and the path it traces only becomes visible in reverse, when the lightning strikes. Differential conditions cause phenomena to occur. Difference in itself communicates to itself through a force or intensity that Deleuze names repetition. The dark precursor is "the disparate"

(DR 120), whereas resemblance is an effect or external result. One way to better understand the role of the dark precursor as the

disparate is to think of it as a moire pattern.6 A moire is an interference pattern that emerges when two fabrics or grids are brought together and superimposed, one on top of the other. The pattern that emerges is the difference between the two patterns. For Deleuze, differenciation occurs when two series are brought together in such a way that the dif­ferences between the two series create a third. It's not the identity of the points in the series that creates identity here; it's the relationship of dif­ference between the two series that generates the pattern. The dark pre­cursor is the activity of relating series to series, without any background,

40 DElEUZE

and the lightning flash is what emerges when the two series are inter­related or intermeshed. The disparate indicates the process of the pro­duction of difference as identity out of difference.

At the end of chapter 2, Deleuze returns to his theme from the conclusion of chapter 1 and rearticulates his profound anti-Platonism in terms of the liberation of simulacra from the constraints of model­copy. However, he leaves off fully explaining the intensity that makes differenciation possible until chapter 5, after his critique of the image of thought in chapter 3 and his discussion of ideas in chapter 4. We have to appreciate the extent to which Deleuze does not fully resolve or explain his solution to the deepest problem of the book at the end chapter 2. He gestures toward a solution, but defers working it out and applying it until chapter 5. In some respects, Deleuze has to break off his discussion; he has to pause and retreat in a sense with chapter 3 and then carefully build up again toward the question with chap­ter 4, so that chapter 5 can make sense. Even so, it's hard to imagine that many readers have fully grasped what Deleuze has accomplished, including why chapter 5 is the key to the whole book as well as one of the most incredible works of thought ever produced.

Chapter 3 on "The Image of Thought" offers the closest thing Deleuze gives to a method, because he wants to show how philosophy is possible when it is liberated from natural and obvious images or habits of thinking. Most of our images of thought are based on com­mon sense, or at best philosophical good sense, but Difference and

Repetition attempts to sketch out a new image of thought for philoso­phy. Most understandings of philosophy are circular in some sense; they operate according to the image of the circle. The problem is that this circular image precludes radical difference, or the appearance of something new. Deleuze says that "the circle image would reveal instead that philosophy is powerless truly to begin, or indeed authen­tically to repeat" (DR 129) .

All too often, philosophy begins with a prephilosophical position, the presumption of "everybody knows": "everybody knows what it means to think and to be" (DR 130). Philosophy begins by purifying and clarifying this everyday common sense. Here "the most general form of representation is thus found in the element of a common sense

41 A REPETITION OF DIFFERENCE

understood as an upright nature and a good will" (DR 131). This is the moral image of thought, the construction of a good person based on orthodox common sense. In contrast to the moral image of thought, Deleuze favors Nietzsche's effort to find philosophy's beginning "in a rigorous struggle against this image, which it would denounce as non­

philosophical" (DR 132).

In concert with this moral image of thought as upright good will, Descartes emphasizes truth as good sense based on the model of rec­ognition. Common sense and good sense are complementary: "for while common sense is the norm of identity from the point of view of the pure Self and the form of the unspecified object that conforms to it, good sense is the norm of distribution from the point of view of the empirical selves and the objects qualified as this or that kind of thing" (DR 133-34). Kant represents the culmination of this alliance between good sense and common sense drawn from Descartes, but he also indicates its dissolution in aesthetic terms in the discordant harmony of the senses that occurs in the case of the sublime (DR 146).

So long as philosophy operates according to a model of recogni­tion, it shuttles between the adequation of the abstract good sense of the Self and the common sense of the empirical selves. Philosophy organized as good sense or common sense functions according to the representational dichotomy of truth and error, whereas Deleuze valorizes the notion of a prephilosophical stupidity (DR 150). We are confronted with stupidity because "something in the world forces us to think:' and this something is not "an object of recognition:' but "a fundamental encounter" (DR 139). Stupidity refers to the experi­ence of what we cannot simply recognize and formulate, that which disrupts the workings of sense, what we usually call non-sense. Here (DR 155) Deleuze prefigures his analysis of the paradoxes of sense in The Logic of Sense.

So long as we think according to a pregiven image of thought, we are stuck in a representational mode of thinking. Deleuze tries to free philosophy from representation by analyzing the image of thought it implicitly works with, and by showing how philosophy should embrace its own prephilosophical stupidity so that it can truly cre­ate new and different ideas. According to Deleuze, "truth is a matter

42 IlElEUZE

of production, not of adequation" (DR 154) . Sense is not something external to which we can appeal as a measure of truth, but sense is constituted in the production of truth. We generate a new image of thought by reorienting sense in the direction of what appears to be non-sense, a paradox or limit of sense that is freed from "the probable truths of a simple doxa" (DR 157). This paradoxical sense "is located in the problem itself" or in the "complex theme" with which problems and questions work (DR 157).

Problems are ideas, and Deleuze's reversal of Platonism reveals that ideas are problems, not solutions. "Problems are Ideas them­selves" (DR 162) . Thinking is learning to inhabit these problems and experience them as Ideas rather than simple propositions to be solved or resolved. For Plato, learning is the passage or transition from nonknowledge to knowledge, but it cannot be simply identified with either knowledge or non knowledge. Deleuze offers a profound rereading of Plato in Difference and Repetition. He claims that Plato "introduces difference, apprenticeship and heterogeneity into thought only in order to subject them again to the mythical form of resem­blance and identity" (DR 166). So Plato closes down the insight into difference that he himself glimpses, even as he generates the model of resemblance that stifles this difference.

At the end of the chapter, Deleuze lays out eight postulates of the dogmatic image. These postulates are: (1) the postulate of the principle; (2) the postulate of the ideal, or of common sense; (3) the postulate of the model, or of recognition; (4) the postulate of the element, or of representation; (5) the postulate of the negative, or of error; (6) the postulate of logical function, or of the proposition; (7) the postulate of modality, or of solutions; and finally, (8) the postulate of the end, or of result, the postulate of knowledge (DR 167). These postulates of the dogmatic image of thought are contrasted with the possibility of a thought without image, or a philosophical thinking that proceeds without a pre given image to orient it. This thought without image generates its own image and its own sense as it thinks, particularly in the time-image, as we will see in chapter 5 .

How do we think an idea without an image? At the start of chapter 4, "Ideas and the Synthesis of Difference;' Deleuze invokes Kant and

43 A REPETITION OF D IFFERENCE

claims that "problems are Ideas" (DR 168). Ideas are both objective and undetermined, and this essential indetermination is what allows for their determination. To think through the indeterminate nature of an idea, Deleuze appeals to the mathematical symbol dx and opposes the notion of differential calculus to the idea of contradiction, or not-A. Re claims, provocatively, that "there is a treasure buried within the old so-called barbaric or pre-scientific interpretations of the differential calculus, which must be separated from its infinitesimal matrix" (DR 170). The symbol dx allows us to think ideas as simultaneously unde­termined (dx, dy) , as determinable (dy/dx), and finally, as effectively determined (values of dy/dx) . "In short, dx is the Idea;' as Deleuze concludes (DR 171) . As we saw in chapter 2, Deleuze is not interested in mathematics as such; he recognizes that his image of differential calculus is insufficient and out of date. But the symbol dx helps him theorize the Idea.

Each of these elements-indeterminacy, determinability, and determination-takes place within the context of a differential func­tion that works as an operator to determine results, and together they compose "the reciprocal synthesis of differential relations as the source of the production of real objects" (DR 173). Ideas are given a principle of sufficient reason by the three elements of indeterminate quantitability, determinable qualitability, and potentiality of determi­nation, and these three elements compose the distinctness of ideas (DR 176). Deleuze appeals to the symbol and thought of infinitesi­mal calculus to provide a "better" understanding of an Idea, even though he knows that differential and infinitesimal calculus has been superseded by set theory with its "strictly finite interpretation of the calculus" (DR 176). Badiou, of course, resorts to twentieth-century set theory to ground his understanding of ontology, but he is more axiomatic in his appeal to mathematics, as we have seen. Infinitesimal calculus based on geometrical intuition gives way to finite arithmeti­cal solutions in the nineteenth century, and Deleuze in fact shows how mathematics arrives at the point where it is then theorized by Badiou: "The real frontier defining modern mathematics lies not in the cal­culus itself but in other discoveries such as set theory, which, even though it requires, for its own part, an axiom of infinity, gives a no less

44 DELEUZE

strictly finite interpretation of the calculus" (DR 176). This is where mathematics as such gives way to dialectics, or philosophy. "Prob­lems are always dialectical:' Deleuze states. "What is mathematical . . . are the solutions" (DR 179) .

So contemporary axiomatic mathematics is based on not on dif­ferential calculus but on set theory, which is where Badiou takes up mathematics for his axiomatic philosophy. But for Deleuze the point is not simply to formalize the most current state of mathematics, but rather to illustrate how dialectical Ideas are formed. "In this sense there is a mathesis universalis corresponding to the universality of the dialectic:' he writes. "If Ideas are the differentials of thought, there is a differential calculus corresponding to each Idea, an alphabet of what it means to think" (DR 181). What interests Deleuze in his discussion of calculus is not its solutions, which have been surpassed, but its ability to pose new problems. The play of difference at work in the differen­tial calculus is taken up into the explanation of the Idea. Solutions are mathematical, whereas philosophical problems are dialectical. Deleuze is less interested in the solutions that modern mathematics finds than the problems that it poses, and how it enables us to better think difference without a preexisting image.

The reference to dx and to the development of differential calcu­lus allows Deleuze to conclude that "Ideas are multiplicities: every idea is a multiplicity and variety" (DR 182). Deleuze refers to Rie­mann here, and asserts that multiplicity is based not on a combi­nation of the one and the many, but "rather [on] an organization belonging to the many as such, which has no need whatsoever of unity in order to form a system" (DR 182). Everything is a multiplic­ity or a series, not a unity or a one. Even the one is a multiplicity. According to Deleuze, "an Idea is an n-dimensional, continuous, defined multiplicity" (DR 182) . The idea is a kind of structure, but this structure is a complex theme or internal multiplicity. Ideas are structures without identity and their genesis emerges without any pregiven form or resemblance. Deleuze mentions three examples: atomism (as a physical idea), the organism (as a biological idea), and social ideas in a Marxist sense. The solutions that incarnate these Ideas are always correlated to the complex problems they pose

45 A REPETITION OF DIFFERENCE

in a dialectical manner, made up of quantitative, qualitative, and potential elements.

In the middle of the chapter, Deleuze discusses the actual and the virtual, and he distinguishes between differentiation as virtual differ­ence and differenciation as actual difference. The distinction between the virtual and the actual is a doubling of the object: "every object is double without it being the case that the two halves resemble one another, one being a virtual image and the other an actual image" (DR 209) . The idea is both actual and virtual; they are two sides of the same process of becoming. It is too idealistic to claim that Deleuze opposes virtual to actual and effectively reduces the latter to the for­mer. In Difference and Repetition, "the entire Idea is caught up in the mathematic-biological system of different/citation" (DR 220).

Deleuze introduces his famous distinction between virtual and actual in the context of his criticism of negativity. He claims that "Ideas contain all the varieties of differential relations and all the dis­tributions of singular points coexisting in diverse orders 'perplicated' in one another" (DR 206). The virtual content of an idea is perplic­ated, or folded in itself; but it becomes actualized in specific ways. The determination of this virtual content of an Idea is its differen­tiation, whereas the actualization of an Idea into parts is its differen­ciation. Here Deleuze makes a crucial distinction between modes of differentiation by using a technical mathematic term, differentier, to name virtual differentiation. In French, dlfterencier is the more com­mon verb meaning to become different, and Deleuze uses this word to mean the actualization of difference. He says that "it is always in rela­tion to a differentiated problem or to the differentiated conditions of a problem that a differenciation of species and parts is carried out, as though it corresponded to the cases of solutions of the problem" (DR 207). Negativity does not exist in the process of either virtual differ­entiation or actual differenciation, and more importantly, we should not read these two terms-actual and virtual (or differenciation and differentiation)-as oppositions.

Although Badiou rightly grasps the significance of the term virtual

for Deleuze's thought, he goes too far in claiming that the actual is grounded in the virtual. Even if the virtual is the royal road to the

46 DElEUZE

idea in chapter 4, it is not a ground in any foundational sense, but

a crucial step and distinction for appreciating the two sides of any

idea.7 Deleuze makes clear that both virtual and actual are fully real,

and should not be aligned with the distinction between possible and

real. Yes, Deleuze explains the virtual in mathematical terms, giving

us an impressive derivation of differential calculus at the start of the

chapter. The discussion of infinitesimals in premodern calculus leads

to the determination of ideas in their distinctness, singularity, and

preindividual nature. That is, ideas are differentiated virtually, differ­

entiated and integrated in a complete determination that shows how

thinking about mathematics in terms of intuited problems rather

than axiomatic solutions offers a better understanding of ideas, 'as

discussed in the previous chapter. But Ideas are also differenciated, or

become actualized in specific determinations, and you cannot oppose

the actual to the virtual content of the idea; they are two sides of the

same coin.

Deleuze ends chapter 4 with an incredibly compressed discussion

of biology as the locus of the actualization of the idea. We can associate

the more extensive discussion of mathematics with the composition

of the virtual of the idea, whereas the brief discussion of biology at the

end of the chapter invokes the actualization of the Idea. Both hinge on

the crucial discussion of the virtual and the actual and differentiation

and differenciation at the heart of the chapter. Deleuze appeals to the

development of differential calculus to assemble his understanding of

virtual differentiation, even though he does not simply import math­

ematics into his work, but rather philosophizes mathematical ideas.

He cannot truly explain how difference works, how it is internally

differentiated and distinct in an assembled multiplicity, and then how

it gets enacted without working through these difficult scientific con­

cepts. Most readers struggle to follow the technical aspects, if not the

logic, of Deleuze's book. I do not fully understand the mathematics

involved, but I think he is applying the nascent catastrophe theory of

Rene Thorn to Reimannian n-dimensional space in a post-Einsteinian

relativistic context. Rather than assessing the mathematical concepts

themselves, I am laying out the trail of development of the book,

and trying to show how he explains not only difference but also how

47 A REPETITION OF DIFFERENCE

difference gets produced, or repeated. It is the repetition of differ­ence in intensity that is the key to the book, and this question is only resolved-or rightly posed-in chapter 5.

At the end of chapter 4 Deleuze asks, "How does actualization occur in things themselves?" (DR 214). Here the agents of actualiza­tion are spatiotemporal dynamisms. "Beneath the actual qualities and extensities, species and parts, there are spatiotemporal dynamisms. These are the actualizing, differenciating agencies" (DR 214). The world is an embryo, an egg, and this generalized dynamism underlies the categorization of nature into genus and species. Dynamic pro­cesses dramatize or perform an Idea. The virtual differentiated Ideas are determinate in themselves, but they have to be performed, put into practice. The spatial and temporal dynamisms underlie and pro­duce the species and parts that we observe and appreciate. The spatio­temporal dynamisms resemble what Kant calls schemata in the Cri­

tique of Pure Reason insofar as they supply "a rule for determination of time and of construction for space" (DR 218). But the difference is that schemata for Kant function according to conditions of logical possibility, whereas the dynamisms in Deleuze are understood more in terms of their power to enact ideas.

In Difference and Repetition, the idea is associated with difference and with the clothed repetition, and privileged over the presumed identity in the concept and its bare repetition. Later, in What Is Philos­

ophy?, however, Deleuze and Guattari speak more affirmatively of the creation of concepts: "philosophy is the art of informing, inventing and fabricating concepts:'8 But this discussion of the idea is still too abstract, and we still do not fully understand what it is that produces ideas, or what drives repetition. "Where, however, does this power of dramatization come from? . . . We have not yet shown what grounds dramatization, both for the actual and the Idea, as the development of the third element of sufficient reason" (DR 221).

The answer, we learn in chapter 5, is intensity. Intensity concerns energy, but it is difficult for us to think in terms of intensity. Deleuze says that difference is not diversity: "Diversity is given, but difference is that by which the given is given, that by which the given is given as diverse" (DR 222) . Differences are differences of intensity, and these

48 OElEUZE

differences are the means by which what is given is given. According to Deleuze, "intensity is the form of difference in so far as this is the reason of the sensible. Every intensity is differential, by itself a dif­ference" (DR 222). This differentiality, the differential of difference, shows up in a coupling, an arrangement that reveals "the properly qualitative notion of quantity:' Just as the dark precursor is called the disparate, here Deleuze says that disparity is a doubling of difference that progresses into infinity. Disparity is the intensity of difference, the condition of all appearance. The dark precursor is the differencia­tor of difference that is called the disparate in chapter 2, and in chap­ter 5 disparateness is defined as the intensity of difference. When we think about energy, we can distinguish between intensive and exten­sive factors. The problem is that "we know intensity only as already developed within an extensity, and as covered over by qualities" (DR 223). We take extensity for intensity, and conflate the quantitative with the qualitative aspects of energy. Intensity is a kind of difference that hides beneath extensity, which cancels out difference in its appear­ance. For Deleuze, "intensity defines an objective sense for a series of irreversible states which pass, like an 'arrow of time: from more to less differenciated, from a productive to a reduced difference, and ulti­mately to a canceled difference" (DR 223). In other words, difference as intensity c;ancels itself out in extensity. At the same time, something of intensity (difference as difference) is preserved, and this is the force or motor of repetition. Intensity drives repetition, but it drives it in such a way as to cancel itself out in the process of becoming actualized in extensive reality.

Well, almost. Intensity practically cancels itself out, but not totally and not virtually. Going back to the image of thought from chapter 3,

Deleuze explains how good sense manifests itself in terms of thermo­dynamics. Thermodynamics works out the canceling out of intensity as difference in extensity; this is the process of entropy from Camot to Bolzmann. There is a kind of transcendental illusion of entropy: "entropy is an extensive factor, but, like all extensive factors, it is an extension or 'explication' whIch is implicated as such in intensity, which does not exist outside the implication or except as implicated, and this is because it has the function of making possible the general

49 A REPETITION OF D IFFERENCE

movement by which that which is implicated explicates itself or is extended" (DR 229) . I will return to the question of entropy in chapter 8, in the context of a thermodynamics of nonequilibrium systems. Here, difference "is cancelled in so far as it is drawn outside itself, in

extensity and in the quality which fills that extensity. However, differ­ence creates both this extensity and this quality" (DR 228). Difference cancels itself out, but it (repetition) is responsible for the production of extensity (actualization) that cancels out difference as intensity. Here, in a way, the virtual power of difference is intensity while the actual power is extensity, but difference concerns the entire system. The problem is that when we just work with and from the extensive differences in fact, we fail to grasp the intensive differences that pro­duce these extensities, because the nature of extensity is to cancel out the intensive differences that bring it about. Entropy is the extension of all extensions, the largest possible extensity that cancels out all dif­ferences. At the same time, "of all extensions, entropy is the only one which is not measurable either directly or indirectly by any procedure independent of energetics" (DR 228). Entropy can only be measured from within an energetic system. Deleuze claims that "depth is the intensity of being" (DR 231), because from our perspective intensity appears underneath extensity, although Deleuze later qualifies and criticizes this metaphorics of depth.

How does intensity worle? Intensity is the force that determines difference and produces repetition. Intensity as a qualitative quantity is covered over and canceled out by extensity, or quantitative quality. Deleuze says intensity "includes the unequal in itself. It represents difference in quantity; that which cannot be cancelled in difference in quantity or that which is unequalisable in quantity itself" (DR 232). A given number can only give way to another number, canceling itself out. But there is a kind of unequalizability or remainder in a series of numbers: "if a given number cancels its difference, it does so only by explicating it within the extension that it installs. Nevertheless, it maintains this difference in itself in the implicated order in which it is grounded" (DR 232). Intensity is a kind of hysteresis, a kind of car­rying across of difference from one extensity to the next, even as it is canceled out in actuality.

50 DElEUZE

You have to have at least two, because you have to have a series or sequence, more than one. The two do not come from or return to one; they affirm their difference in intensity by means of their disparate relatedness. As Deleuze says, "since it is already difference in itself and comprises inequality as such, intensity affirms difference" (DR 234).

How does difference affirm itself? It cannot affirm its identity, because it does not have one. Difference affirms the process of intensity that creates and produces difference by means of repetition. Difference cannot simply refer to itself; it has to refer to another term or series, another difference or other differences to which it is related by dispar­ity. Intensity is the disparity of relation. If you construct at least two series, then if you distinguish one series as superior and another series as inferior, "intensity affirms even the lowest; it makes the lowest an object of affirmation" (DR 234). This is the asymmetrical synthesis: everything goes from high to low, and by virtue of that movement the lowest is affirmed. "High and low, moreover, are only a manner of speaking" (DR 234). The point is that difference finds and flows and affirms the lowest number or the smallest possible series. The asym­metrical synthesis is a revision of entropy, considered not in terms of extensive qualities but intensive ones.

Depth is a metaphor for an intensive spatium, a kind of pure space that transmits or relays the differential qualities. Deleuze modifies Bergson's distinction between differences in degree and differences in kind, claiming that in fact every difference in degree is a difference in kind. Differences in degree are just the "lowest degree of difference:' while differences in kind are "the highest form of difference" (DR 239).

The asymmetrical synthesis goes from high to low, that is, it affirms the lowest, the differences in degree, as differences in kind. Deleuze explains that "a qualitative difference does not reproduce or express a difference in intensity. However, in the passage from one quality to another . . . there are phenomena of delay and plateau, shocks of difference, distances, a whole play of conjunctions and disjunctions, a whole depth which forms a graduated scale rather than a properly qualitative duration" (DR 238). Again, Deleuze is modifying Bergson's purely qualitative duration, which is not distinct enough for his pur­poses. All of these phenomena of difference, of shock and delay, assist

51 A REPETITION OF DIFFERENCE

in the transfer of difference from one event to another, and thereby sustain repetition.

What is it that keeps entropy from laying waste to everything? It is viewed as purely extensive; therefore we do not rightly understand it. Entropy is the asymmetrical synthesis that is the reduction or can­celing out of differences which is also the affirmation of difference as difference (the affirmation of difference as intensity). Intensity drives entropy, which is the outward form of this process. As Deleuze claims, "if intensity were not there to attend to, support, and relay quality, what would the duration attributed to quality be but a race to the grave?" (DR 238). Time would exist only as the time necessary to annihilate difference in extensity, and there would be no possibility for novelty. Intensity is genuinely canceled in extensity, but only "out­side itself, in extensity and underneath quality" (DR 240). We cannot directly access it; only indirectly can we say that intensity is impli­cated in itself, that it preserves something of itself in order to give to another difference.

Energy is should be redefined in terms of pure intensity. Deleuze says that "energy in general or intensive quantity is the spatium, the theatre of all metamorphosis or difference in itself which envelops all degrees in the production of each" (DR 240). Energy is an inten­sive rather than a purely extensive quality; it is a difference "buried in this pure intensity" that drives becoming as repetition. Intensity is the force or motor that drives repetition. Intensity is disparity; it is a dark precursor that relates by differenciating, precisely because it never appears as such. Intensity is virtual in opposition to actual extensity, but it also contains within itself both the virtual and the actual functions of the Ideas. Intensity is the putting into effect of the Idea. The synthesis of Ideas appears symmetrical in chapter 4, in the­ory or in virtual terms. But the synthesis in actuality is asymmetrical, because intensity is actualized as unequal. Intensities are not virtual multiplicities, but rather implicated multiplicities, "made up of rela­tions between asymmetrical elements which direct the course of the actualization of Ideas and determine the cases of solutions for prob­lems" (DR 244). Intensity dramatizes Ideas; it determines the process of actualization of Ideas in their virtuality. According to Deleuze, "it is

52 OElEUZE

intensity which is immediately expressed in the basic spatio-temporal dynamisms and determines an 'indistinct' differential relation to the Idea to incarnate itself in a distinct quality and a distinguished exten­sity" (DR 245).

The eternal return is "is said of a world without identity, without resemblance or equality:' The eternal return expresses itself in terms of something identical, but it does not refer to anything identical or any identity. The eternal return "is the identical of which is said of the different, the resemblance of which is said of the pure disparate,

the equal which is said only of the unequal and the proximity which is said of all distances" (DR 241). The eternal return of intensity as difference creates identity by a process of individuation. "The essen­tial process of intensive quantities is individuation. Intensity is indi­viduating, and intensive quantities are individuating factors" (DR 246) . Individuating factors precede and make up the self, but it is a "dissolved Self" that is produced and maintained by these intensi­ties. The I and the Self are undermined and displaced by individu­ation (DR 258), and this means that death is inscribed in the I and the self. In psychic systems, the Other represents these individuating factors (DR 261).

In the conclusion, Deleuze summarizes the entire book in a way that recalls the introduction. He reminds us of the "four iron collars of representation: identity in the concept, opposition in the predicate, analogy in judgment and resemblance in perception" (DR 262). These four illusions distort difference, and they make repetition appear to be an external and derivative process. Here repetition appears to be the bare material repetition of the same, the repetition of a predeter­mined identity under different conditions. The entire book makes a case for the reverse: repetition is repetition of difference. Only differ­ence repeats. Difference can be synthesized in the idea thought out­side of or beyond representation, and the force that drives repetition is intensity or intensive difference. Repetition must be freed from rep­resentation, the representation of identity in the concept. As already mentioned, in What Is Philosophy? Deleuze and Guattari will claim that philosophy can create new concepts, but here in Difference and

Repetition the emphasis is upon the idea.

53 A REPETITION OF DIFFERENCE

Deleuze argues that the Cogito does not think; it is essentially a stupidity. The Cogito expresses at best the possibility of thinking, but it can only think by means of the pure and empty form of time. According to Deleuze, "it is the empty form of time which intro­duces and constitutes Difference in thought, on the basis of which it thinks, in the form of the difference between the indeterminate and the determination" (DR 276) . Deleuze is profoundly anti-Cartesian here, in contrast with Badiou, who philosophizes according to the model of indubitability and clear certainty. The self is fractured and stupid, and the world "is a world of impersonal individuations and pre-individual singularities" (DR 277) teeming with intensity. Life is distinct but obscure, and this obscurity is the result of the hiding of the virtual beneath the actual, intensity beneath extensity, and so on. "What, after all, are Ideas;' he writes, "with their constitutive multi­plicity, if not these ants which enter and leave through the fracture in the E" (DR 277).

Ultimately difference occurs between two repetitions. Repetition is not simply succession, but takes place on distinct levels. "Difference is no longer drawn from an elementary repetition but is between the lev­els or degrees of a repetition which is total and totalizing each time" (DR 287). The totality of repetition is the fact that everything is given each time; all chance, all existence, is affirmed in every throw. Differ­ence happens between two repetitions. One repetition is the repeti­tion of the same, from which difference is subtracted, and the other repetition is "of the Difference, and includes difference" (DR 287). We are trained to see and represent the former repetition, and to privilege it, which causes us to miss the clothed repetition that lies beneath. The bare repetition gives symmetry and equality and produces difference only secondarily, while the clothed repetition is a repetition of asym­metry and inequality that includes difference as primary.

But Deleuze sets up this distinction and opposition only to explode it a few pages later: "the distinction between the two repetitions, how­ever, is still not enough" (DR 292). There is a third repetition that surpasses and destroys the other two. There is, "beyond the grounded and grounding repetitions, a repetition of ungrounding on which depend both that which enchains and that which liberates, that which

54 DmUZE

dies and that which lives within repetition" (DR 292-93). This is an

ontological repetition, which is the ultimate repetition. Only the third

repetition returns. The Negative, the Identical, the Similar, the Analo­

gous, the Opposed: they do not return. The first and second repetition

do not return insofar as they are opposed. Deleuze says that "only

affirmation returns-in other words, the Different, the Dissimilar"

(DR 299). Deleuze liberates the simulacra that return from the chains

of representation and resemblance in which they have been trapped,

even though he later abandons the word simulacra after Baudrillard

makes it such an important term in his philosophy, which in the view

of Deleuze corrupts it.

After developing this incredible ontology of repetition in Differ­

ence and Repetition, Deleuze writes an epistemology of sorts in The

Logic of Sense. The Logic of Sense is more concerned with language

than with being, and in it Deleuze introduces his understanding of

the idea of the event, which substitutes for the idea of intensity in Dif­

ference and Repetition . In the next chapter, I will show how Deleuze's

logic in The Logic of Sense articulates an epistemological conception

of double articulation that carries forward into his experimental work

with Guattari in the 1970S, Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus.

Although Deleuze and Guattari shift from the perspective of The Logic

of Sense back to a more ontological point of view in Anti-Oedipus, they

do not break with the underlying logic, and this shows up more clearly

in A Thousand Plateaus.

55 A REPETITION OF D IFFERENCE

fOUR DElEUlE'S lOG IC Of DOUBLE ARIICUlAT�ON

THE L O GIC O F SENSE, originally published in 1969, i s the follow-up to Difference and Repetition, and these two works constitute the core of Deleuze's original philosophy. In thirty-four series of reflections plus five appendices, Deleuze reflects intensively on the logic of sense and language. In some respects, Difference and Repetition can be read as more ontological, whereas The Logic of Sense is more epistemologi­cal. Deleuze was also influenced by both structuralism and Lacanian psychoanalysis when he wrote The Logic of Sense; and Anti-Oedipus,

written with Guattari, represents a break with both Lacan and struc­turalism. I will suggest, however, that there are more continuities between The Logic of Sense and Anti-Oedipus than many readers, including Zizek, appreciate.

The logic of sense is above all a logic of the event, because sense produces an event. Before we see how sense produces an event, the first question is, what is sense? The word sens in French means both sense and direction. Sense is a polyvalent word, and it indicates a multidirectionality. Sense goes both ways: in the direction of good sense, and in the direction of what appears to be non-sense. "Good sense affirms that in all things there is a determinable sense or direc­tion [sens J :' Deleuze explains, "I;mt paradox is the affirmation of both senses or directions at the same time:'l Deleuze draws on the para­doxical non-sense in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through

the Looking Glass to consider the nature of sense. Carroll's work is shot through with paradoxes, and "what is good for Carroll is good for logic" (LS 74). Sense appears most often in the form of good sense or common sense, but when we take sense in the opposite direction it becomes paradoxical. "The paradoxes of sense;' Deleuze states, "have the characteristic of going in both directions at once, and of rendering identification impossible" (LS 75).

In addition to Lewis Carroll, Deleuze appeals to Stoicism to appre­ciate and interrogate sense. He claims that sense is "the expressed of the proposition;' which means "an incorporeal, complex, and irreduc­ible entity, at the surface of things, a pure event which inheres or sub­sists in the proposition" (LS 19) . The event is an expression of sense. At the beginning of the book, after invoking Carroll, Deleuze refers to the work of Emile Brehier on Stoic thought. He quotes Brehier saying that the Stoics distinguished "radically two planes of being, something that no one had done before them; on the one hand, real and pro­found being, force; on the other, the plane of fact, which frolic on the surface of being, and constitute an endless multiplicity of incorporeal being" (LS 5) . In other words, the Stoics introduced a cut between corporeal and incorporeal being. Deleuze follows this Stoic cut and distinguishes between two series, a corporeal series of bodies and an incorporeal series of language. Furthermore, sense occurs along this superficial, incorporeal being. Finally, sense produces events, follow­ing the logic of sense and non-sense introduced by Lewis Carroll.

How does sense produce an event? Deleuze says that "events are like crystals, they become and grow only out of the edges, or on the edge" (LS 9). There is no simple ontological separation between bod­ies and sense, but sense spreads out along the border of the body, where it takes shape and gives expression to itself as language. This is an event. "It is by following the border, by skirting the surface, that one passes from bodies to the incorporeal;' according to Deleuze (LS 10). Bodies appear as depth in contrast to superficial sense, but this is only after the cut is made. The cut is also an event; it is an event of sense and language, but it produces our sense of body as body. In Dif­ference and Repetition, the event is the name for the intensity that is registered on sense from the interaction with the series of bodies. The

58 DElEUZE

event in The Logic of Sense is or does the same thing as intensity in Difference and Repetition. The difference is that in The Logic of Sense

Deleuze writes from the perspective of surface (sense and language), whereas in Difference and Repetition he writes more from the stand­point of depth (forces and bodies), or what he calls the sensible.

In Organs Without Bodies, Zizek claims that material bodies pro­duce sense, as discussed in chapter 2; but this is simply not the case because body as body does not preexist the cut that produces sense.2 For Deleuze, it is always a question of production, but there is both production of material body out of sense and production of sym­bolic sense out of corporeal body. The event is specifically the cut of production or becoming, what creates or generates something new. Deleuze does not consistently use a materialist logic over an idealist logic or vice versa.

Deleuze continually constructs series. In The Logic of Sense he con­trasts a series of sense with a series of bodies. Lewis Carroll is the proper name and author of the series of sense, but Deleuze invokes Antonin Artaud's schizophrenic language to discuss body. For Artaud, "there is no longer any surface;' which means that "the entire body is no longer anything but depth" (LS 86-87). The schizophrenic body appears to exist without surface, which means it lacks apparent sense. Schizophrenic language refuses symbolic discourse and symbolic meaning. For the schizophrenic, "the surface has split open" (LS 86).

Schizophrenic language breaks apart the smoothness of the surface upon which sense resides. Carroll instructs us how sense moves back and forth along a surface, but Artaud's language shatters this surface to create a "glorious body;' that is, an "organism without parts" or a "body without organs" (LS 88).

This body without organs is the result of schizophrenic language, and here is the opening toward Anti-Oedipus, the choice of Artaud over Carroll that Zizek criticizes and laments. But schizophrenic language or schizo-analysis is still a kind of language. Deleuze says that "in schizophrenia, there is a way of living the Stoic distinction between two corporeal mixtures;' but this is not the repudiation of that very distinction between sense and body (LS 89). Sense and body are distinguished by the primary Stoic cut, which is an event. Sense

59 DElEUZE'S LOGIC OF DOUBLE ARTICULATION

and body are also conjoined by this distinction, which can also be called a fold. Deleuze hesitates between a language of cut and break and a language of pleats and folds throughout his entire career, and sometimes an interpretation of Deleuze's philosophy hinges on decid­ing between these two images.3 However, I think it is more productive to keep the tension between fold and cut and to see how they work in Deleuze. The cut/fold constitutes a disjunctive conjunction, compos­ing the word Deleuze uses in reference to Leibniz, in-compossibility. Ultimately, the cut/fold is a way of relating two series of multiplicities, as I mentioned in chapter 2. 'There must be at least two multiplicities or series, and then the relation between them, which is also a kind of disjunction, constitutes a third multiplicity that is included/excluded in the first two series.4

The surface series of sense "have really nothing in common with the poles of depth which are only apparently similar" (LS 91); that is why Artaud is much more profound than Carroll. Sense occurs along the surface and manifests as event, but sense is also fragile and can easily break down. Sense appears autonomous, but it can "be transformed into the two 'deep' nonsenses of passion and action, and the incorporeal effect can thus be reabsorbed into the depth of bodies" (LS 95) . Sense and body do not simply intersect; there is a parallelism at work along this cut between corporeal and incorporeal entities. The event is strictly speaking an effect of sense, a product of sense, and even sense itself. But events are still negatively related to the depth of bodies, and they transmit a corporeal signal in a spe­cial way to generate singularities, which are "the true transcendental events" (LS 102-3).

A singularity occurs due to "the topological surface of contact" that brings together the potential energy of the pure event and the actual realization of the event (LS 103). Deleuze says that events do not "occupy the surface but rather frequent it;' which means that events occur at the surface but are not restricted to the surface. Events take place on the edge, at the border of sense, where sense sets up a relay with body, and the more powerfully an event can evoke body, the more profound the event. To the extent that Deleuze sets up an opposition between a series of sense and a series of body, the event

60 DElEUZE

complicates the terms of this distinction, even though the event hap­pens at the level of sense. "'The splendor and the magnificence of the event is sense. 'The event is not what occurs (an accident), it is rather inside what occurs, the purely expressed. It signals and awaits us" (LS 149). The event is a singularity that transforms the potential energy of body into the actualization of language in the production of sense.

If the idea of the event as the third complicates Deleuze's distinc­tion between body and sense, then the "Twenty-First Series of the Event" wrecks it. He discusses a little-known writer, Joe Bousquet, whom he calls him a Stoic. According to Deleuze, Bousquet "appre­hends the wound that he bears deep within his body in its eternal truth as a pure event" (LS 148). Reflecting on Bousquet, Deleuze sug­gests that every event "is a kind of plague, war, wound or death:' that is, an affliction of body (LS 151). An event is a transmutation of this affliction that occurs in the will. The challenge is to attain the will that the event creates in us, to become what we are, not at the level of the self (or what Deleuze and Guattari in Anti-Oedipus call the molar level), but rather at a preindividual or molecular level. It is a question "of becoming the quasi-cause of what is produced in us:' which is a kind of am or fati, love of fate (LS 148).

Deleuze asks: "What does it mean to will the event? Does it mean to accept war, wounds and death when they occur? . . . If will­ing the event is, primarily, to release its eternal truth, like the fire 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 scar of all wounds, and death turned on itself would be willed against all deaths. We are faced with a volitional intuition and a transmutation" (LS 149) . The transmutation is a change in will, "a sort of leaping in place of the whole body which exchanges its organic will for a spiritual will" (LS 149) . This exchange is an event, a pure event that takes place inside what merely happens. Incorporeal sense reaches down or around and touches body, a glorious incorporealized body without organs that charges the event. Sense never reaches body as body, once the incorporeal cut has been made, but it still affects and is affected by it. The "bifurcating and ramified series . . . resonate within one another" (LS 179).

61 DELEUZE'S LOGIC OF DOUBLE ARTICULATION

Toward the end of the book, Deleuze invokes the univocity of Being to explain how these series can be thought together. Here "phi­losophy merges with ontology, but ontology merges with the univoc­ity of Being" (LS 179). Badiou spends much time quoting these pas­sages, but he does not spend enough time explaining how Deleuze sets up his series and interrelates them. The univocity of Being is not One, as Badiou claims; rather, it is the only way to say how the series interact. "The univocity of Being does not mean that there is one and the same Being:' Deleuze explains. "On the contrary, beings are multiple and different, they are always produced by a disjunctive synthesis" (LS 179) . Univocity provides a language, a sense by means of which to talk about the irreducible multiplicity of beings. Uni­vocity draws together event and sense, "the identity of the noematic attribute and what is expressed linguistically" (LS 180). Being is pure event, which does not mean that Being is One; but this univocity indicates "the minimum of Being common to the real, the possible and the impossible" (LS 180).

To talk about multiplicity, we need a language, a way to make sense of it. The Logic of Sense provides a sense that allows us to talk about events as what happens when two series (sense and body) converge in their divergence. The difficulty is that sense is overdetermined; it is both a part as one of the series and a whole as the univocal Voice ("that Being is Voice that it is said, and that it is said in one and the same 'sense' of everything about which it is said" [L5 179]), and this describes the overarching situation. That is why Deleuze assigns the event entirely to the side of sense, to the series of language. "The univocity of sense grasps language in its complete system, as the total expresser of a unique expressed-the event" (L5 248). But this does not mean that there is nothing but sense and language. Already in The Logic of Sense, which is Deleuze's most "structuralist" text, Deleuze never loses sight of the passions of bodies. Bodies are no more and no less real than languages. One way to read Anti-Oedipus

is to see it as a rewriting of The Logic of Sense from the standpoint of bodies, conceived as desiring machines. But this is not a huge turn away from his earlier philosophy, influenced by the temptation of the "bad" Guattari, because Deleuze had already written Difference and

62 DElEUZE

Repetition, which is already more ontological and material. So Anti­

Oedipus is more of a return to the perspective of Difference and Rep­

etition than a deviation. I will consider Anti-Oedipus, with its hostility to Lacan, psycho­

analysis, and structuralism, along with The Fold and the Cinema

books, in terms of a series of events-production, in the next chapter. The logic that Deleuze establishes in The Logic of Sense is a logic of double articulation, an articulation of corporeal body and noncor­poreal sense. These articulations occur in multiple series, just as the book is written in chapter series. In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari spell out an explicit logic of double articulation that accords with The Logic of Sense but that also complicates and bifurcates some of its distinctions.

In A "Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari compose a series of chapter reflections that are provocatively given dates that serve as plateaus, a word they borrow from the anthropologist Gregory Bate­son. In the introduction, they introduce the notion of the rhizome, or a radical root system, which works differently from the typical arboreal metaphor of a tree. "The rhizome itself assumes very diverse forms;' they explain, "from ramified surface extension in all direc­tions to concretion into bulbs and tubers:'5 A rhizomatic structure is not hierarchically organized, because root systems grow in complex and tangled ways, employing "principles of connection and heteroge­neity" (ATP 7). The metaphor of the rhizome provides an alternative to more common images of thought and organization.

A Thousand Plateaus is not simply a series of loosely connected reflections on disparate themes and topics, as it might appear to superficial readers. What ties the diverse chapters together is the idea of a concrete assemblage and an abstract machine that produces it. Their criticism of models of meaning based on linguistics is "not that they are too abstract but, on the contrary, that they are not abstract enough, that they do not reach the abstract machine that connects a language to the semantic and pragmatic contents of statements, to collective assemblages of enunciation, to a whole micropolitics of the social field" (ATP 7). What are the conditions of thinking these machinic assemblages? To achieve the necessary level of abstraction,

63 DElEUZE'S lOGIC OF DOUBLE ARTICULATION

Deleuze and Guattari are forced to make a cut, a division between smooth, fluid space and a striated or segmented, organized space. These two kinds of spaces are not simply opposed to each other, although Deleuze and Guattari consistently valorize the former, smooth spaces. They show how they interrelate and interlink, how such spaces are produced and how they produce machinic assem­blages. Ziiek and Badiou are right to be concerned with the simple celebration and denigration of one pole or series over the other, which some Deleuzians fall into; but it is never quite so clear-cut in Deleuze's work, because every cut is also a fold and vice versa.

Just as in The Logic of Sense, in A Thousand Plateaus there are two series, one tied more to sense (striation, segmentation) and one tied more to body (smoothness, a pure body without being divided up into organs). Here the preference for the latter is more pronounced than in The Logic of Sense, which primarily explores the series of sense; but both are necessary in the working of abstract machines and the production of concrete assemblages. The problem is that we (struc­turalists, linguists, and the like) too often get caught up in sense and never reach the smoothness of body in its operation. Machinic assem­blages take place, and Deleuze and Guattari analyze them in terms of territory. I will take up the more political and territorial aspects of A

Thousand Plateaus in the last chapter, but here I am focusing more explicitly on the logic they deploy.

In chapter 3, '\0,000 B.C.: The Geology of Morals (Who Does the Earth Think It Is?);' Deleuze and Guattari set out a very compact description of their logic of double articulation using geological terms. 1be Earth is a body without organs that "is permeated by unformed, unstable matters, by flows in all directions, by free intensities or nomadic singularities, by mad or transitory particles" (ATP 40). The Earth as a pure smooth body without organs does not exist; it is strati­fied into layers and belts. These strata "consist of giving form to mat­ters, of imprisoning intensities or locking singularities into systems of resonance and redundancy, of producing upon the body of the earth molecules large and small and organizing them into molar aggre­gates" (ATP 40). Strata are striations; they compose striated space(s). Strata "operate by coding and territorialization upon the earth" (ATP

64 DELEUZE

40). The body without organs is the zero degree of organization that

is unorganized but indicates potentiality for organization.

Strata or layers always occur in pairs. They are doubled, with one

stratum serving as a substratum for the other. The surface of stratifica­

tion is a machinic assemblage, which is "between two layers, between

two strata" (ATP 40). Here in A Thousand Plateaus, a machinic assem­

blage corresponds to an event in The Logic of Sense. The machinic

assemblage is both between the two strata and at the same time

between the strata and the body without organs. The body without

organs "is itself the plane of consistency, which becomes compact or

thickens at the level of the strata" (ATP 40) . The plane of consistency

is Deleuze and Guattari's term for what Deleuze calls in Difference and

Repetition the dark precursor, and in his book on Spinoza a plane of

immanence.6 In A Thousand Plateaus, the body without organs serves

to indicate the plane of consistency, a minimum of intelligibility nec­

essary for the lightning flash of ideas in Difference and Repetition or

the occurrence of an event in The Logic of Sense. The plane of imma­

nence or consistency is not a ground in any representational or onto­

logical sense. Stratification happens by way of illuminating a plane, a

pure body that takes shape only by contrast, negatively.

Strata take form by means of double articulation. Double articu­

lation is also a doubled articulation. Articulation occurs by means

of a doubling and redoubling. 'i\rticulate twice, B-A, BA;' Deleuze

and Guattari instruct, because "God is a lobster, or a double pincer,

or a double bind" (ATP 40). The first articulation is a simple series,

whereas the second articulation, which is a repetition, establishes a

causal connection, a link between the two entities B and A?

Deleuze and Guattari explain that "the first articulation chooses

or deducts, from unstable particle-flows, metastable molecular or

quasi-molecular units (substances) upon which it imposes a statis­

tical order of connections and successions (forms)" (ATP 40). The

first articulation subtracts substances from this smooth flow of body

and forms a territory, B-A. This articulation proceeds from substance

to form, but it does not begin with pregiven substance, because any

prior substance would already be stratified. The substance is produced

along with the form in the creation of a machinic assemblage. "The

65 DELEUZE'S LOGIC OF DOUBLE ARTICULATION

second articulation;' Deleuze and Guattari write, "establishes func­

tional, compact, stable structures (forms), and constructs the molar

compounds in which these structures are simultaneously actualized

(substances)" (ATP 41). Here the forms fuse (into) substance, BA.

In geological terms, the first articulation is a kind of sedimentation,

which layers strata "according to a statistical order" (ATP 41). The

second articulation is the "folding" that "effects the passage from

sediment to sedimentary rocle;' which is a kind of folding or fusing

together of form and substance (ATP 41) .

Deleuze and Guattari do not make a strict distinction between

substance or matter and form. Both processes are at work in both

modes of articulation. Substances refer to territory, to territorializa­

tion, de territorialization, and reterritorialization, while form involves

coding, decoding, and overcoding.B The first articulation consists in

a minimal, flexible order, whereas the second articulation is too rigid

for Deleuze and Guattari's purposes: "one type is more supple, more

molecular, and merely ordered; the other is more rigid, molar, and

organized" (ATP 41). It is the second articulation that makes the body

without organs into an organism, whereas the first articulation pre­

serves access to the body without organs while providing just enough

order to allow for sense. As Deleuze and Guattari later claim in What

Is Philosophy?, "we require just a little order to ward off chaos:'9 For

Deleuze, uncovering problems means a kind of un coding and deter­

ritorialization, a process of unreading or opening up texts, ideas, con­

cepts, and problems to the level of supple molecular flows in order to

insert thought productively into the act of becoming.

In any case, despite Deleuze's (and Deleuze and Guattari's) prefer­

ence for molecular articulation over molar articulation, the point is

that articulation is double and doubled. What they call a concrete,

machinic assemblage is between these two articulations and occurs

between the two strata, rather than simply on or along one of them.

Strata in A Thousand Plateaus could be considered in terms of series

in The Logic of Sense, whereas machinic assemblages are events. There

are always at least two series, at least two strata, because events occur

in the interstices between them, between the molecular and the molar,

between sense and body, between sedimentation and folding.

66 DElEUZE

Deleuze and Guattari call the strata "judgments of God" insofar as

they constitute an expression of God, who is a Lobster (ATP 40). If

God is a Lobster, then the Law of God is the law of double articula­

tion, which is why each stratum is a judgment of God. Later in the

chapter, they claim that "the first articulation concerns content, the

second expression" (ATP 44). Expression can be related more closely

to sense, whereas content is similar to body, but this mapping is

rough and inexact. The point is that articulation does not separate

substance and form, which belong to both articulations. Articulation

separates content and expression. Even as they make this distinction,

Deleuze and Guattari immediately complicate it: "the double articu­

lation sometimes coincides with the molecular and the molar, and

sometimes not; this is because content and expression are sometimes

divided along those lines and sometimes along different lines" (ATP

44). Here the distinction between content (first articulation) and

expression (second articulation) is more neutral, without the strong

preference for the first articulation that begins the chapter. This is one

of the main reasons that Deleuze is so difficult to read: he (and Guat­

tari) constantly makes distinctions and these distinctions are often

expressed in very preferential, almost moral, terms; but just as often

the moral preference is later qualified or withdrawn, and the distinc­

tion appears more neutral. Opposing terms are never simple oppo­

sitions, but the challenge in reading Deleuze is deciding when and

where these contrasts are morally charged and when they are simply

neutral differences.

Furthermore, while Deleuze and Guattari insist that the distinc­

tion between content and expression is real, as opposed to the dis­

tinction between form and substance, "content and expression are

relative terms" nevertheless (ATP 44). And what's more, the distinc­

tion between first and second articulation is completely relative as

well, even though it is also a real distinction. Finally, "there exist

intermediate states between content and expression, expression and

content: the levels, equilibriums, and exchanges through which a

stratified system passes" (ATP 44). The logic of double articulation

is a complex logic: the composition of strata out of a pure body, the

ordering of the content (which is still relatively smooth), and then

67 DElEUZE'S LOGIC OF DOUBLE ARTICULATION

the organization of the striated expression of the strata. Existing in

tension or connection with the body without organs that still reso­

nates as a plane of consistency, the machinic assemblage, or the event,

resides between the strata, on the surface of the strata. The event does

not simply reach down to or access the ideal body without organs,

but it registers it as an affect or passion. Here I am combining and

conflating the logic of The Logic of Sense with the logic of double

articulation in A Thousand Plateaus. Although Deleuze and Guattari

do not hold on to the strong connection between sense and language,

and the consequently strong distinction between sense and body that

Deleuze sets up in The Logic of Sense, there is still an important logi­

cal and epistemological continuity.

The paradoxical logic of sense and the logic of double articulation

both escape the linguistic logic of signifier vs. signified. According

to Deleuze and Guattari, "a form of content is not a signified, any

more than a form of expression is a signifier" (ATP 66). Content and

expression do not correspond to any dualism of words and things.

Rather, "there are two distinct formalizations in reciprocal presuppo­

sition and constituting a double-pincer: the formalization of expres­

sion in the reading and writing lesson (with its own relative contents),

and the formalization of content in the lesson of things (with their

own relative expressions). We are never signifier and signified. We are

stratified" (ATP 67). The presentation of these strata as they develop

out of a nonstratified body without organs appears to take place in

stages. The separation of strata and body without organs and the

distinction of the first and the second stratum obscure the fact that

this entire system is given all at once; the divisions are logical but

not temporal or ontological. First of all, Deleuze and Guattari's insis­

tence on the plane of consistency means that there is no metaphor;

"all that consists is Real" (ATP 69). There is no ontological difference

between words and things, which means that the plane of consistency

is another way of affirming univocity. Ultimately we cannot even

insist on "a dualism or summary opposition between the strata and

the destratified plane of consistency" (ATP 70). The strata take place

relative to the plane of consistency and vice versa; the plane of con­

sistency does not preexist the strata. The plane of consistency, or the

68 DELEUZE

destratified body without organs, refers to what Deleuze calls the dark

precursor in Difference and Repetition.

The plane of consistency is profoundly interrelated with what

Deleuze and Guattari call the abstract machine. According to Deleuze

and Guattari, "the plane of consistency is occupied, drawn, by the

abstract Machine; the abstract Machine exists simultaneously devel­

oped on the destratified plane it draws" (ATP 70). The abstract machine

is what produces differences; it is the force of repetition in Difference

and Repetition. Implicated in the plane of consistency, the abstract

machine "constructs continuums of intensity: it creates continuity for

intensities that it extracts from distinct forms and substances" (ATP

70). As discussed in the previous chapter, intensity is what drives rep­

etition, and intensity is what is produced by the abstract machine. The

abstract machine is the differenciator of A Thousand Plateaus.

The abstract machine is distinct from the machinic assemblage.

The machinic assemblage, as I already indicated, refers to what The

Logic of Sense calls the event. The machinic assemblage is produced

by the abstract machine in accord with the plane of consistency. The

machinic assemblage is located at or given with the level of the strata,

and it is both subject to and strictly exceeds the logic of double articu­

lation, because it occurs between strata and orders them while pre­

serving a relation with the destratified plane of consistency. "In every

respect;' they write, "machinic assemblages effectuate the abstract

Machine insofar as it is developed on the plane of consistency or

enveloped in a stratum" (ATP 71) .

Articulation doubles and is re-doubled; it repeats differently. First

there is the destratified body without organs, which doubles into the

plane of consistency and the abstract machine. Then there is the split­

ting between the body without organs and the strata. The strata are

further doubled in a pincer or double bind, the double articulation of

B-A (not AB!) and then BA. Finally the double articulation of abstract

machine and machinic assemblage, which repeats ideas from both

Difference and Repetition and The Logic of Sense. Everywhere these

bifurcations repeat, reproduce, become many, converge, and appear at

times to become one (but never One), and then converge and become

many again. Multiple doublings of multiple series intersect and

69 DElEUZE'S LOGIC OF DOUBLE ARTICULATION

interact, constituting and producing events. Univocity is the only way

to make sense of this ontological multiplicity.

To further reflect on and elaborate Deleuze and Guattari's logic of

double articulation, I want to appeal to the contemporary philoso­

phy of Catherine Malabou. Malabou is a student of Jacques Derrida,

and she has written mainly on Hegel, Heidegger, and Derrida. She

has written a provocative critique of Deleuze's dismissal of Hegel, in

which she argues that Deleuze fails to realize how his own logic of

multiplicity falters in the case of Hegel, who always appears as "the

single figure of the thinker of identity:'l0 Despite Deleuze's monoto­

nous rendering of Hegel as the exemplary philosopher of representa­

tion, Malabou claims that in his " Philosophy of Nature, Hegel develops

a problemati� of habit that is very close to that of Deleuze. In his work

a conception of the organism as energized horde exists in conjunc­

tion with the logic of the process of the genus:'ll Despite Malabou's

distance from Deleuze, her work is studded with quasi-Deleuzian

insights, and her notion of plasticity helps illuminate Deleuze's con­

ception of double articulation.

Malabou's signature idea, which she derives from Hegel, is the

notion of plasticity. For Malabou, plasticity refers primarily to form,

and it possesses three components: "at once the capacity to receive

form . . . and the capacity to give form:'12 And to these, the two com­

mon meanings of plasticity, Malabou adds a third form, that of

destructive plasticity: "but it must be remarked that plasticity is also

the capacity to annihilate the very form it is able to receive or cre­

ate:'13 In her book What Should We Do with Our Brain?, Malabou

explores the significance of neuroplasticity for philosophy and vice

versa. Although Deleuze and Deleuze and Guattari have been less

explicitly concerned with the findings of contemporary neurology, at

the end of their lives they foreground the notion of the brain as a

vital category for philosophical understanding, primarily in What Is

Philosophy? and Cinema 2.

In her book Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing, Malabou sets her own

thought in relation to that of Hegel, Heidegger, and Derrida, and pro­

poses that we think of plasticity as "a motor scheme, the pure image

of thought:' which "is a type of tool capable of garnering the greatest

70 DElEUZE

quantity of energy and information in the text of an epoch:'14 We live

in a period in which writing's status as a master signifier is in decline,

and Malabou claims that plasticity is now "the best-suited and most

eloquent motor scheme of our time:'lS In postulating plasticity as a

motor scheme, and insisting that plasticity is fundamentally tied to

form, I suggest that Malabou's understanding of plasticity is relevant

for Deleuze, even if her emphasis on Hegel, Heidegger, and Derrida

appears to make her philosophy very different from that of Deleuze.

The scenario of writing pertains to the epoch of twentieth-cen­

tury philosophy, which is marked by the linguistic turn. Writing in is

broadest sense gives way to a generative plasticity, a plasticity of form.

For Malabou, the insistence on form means a refusal of the Levina­

sian and Derridean conceptions of the trace, which negatively imply a

certain persistence of transcendence. The confrontation with Levinas

in Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing is decisive: Malabou asserts "the

mutual convertibility of trace and form in an attempt to put an end to

the dematerialization and demonetarization of contemporary philos­

ophY:'16 I read Malabou's emphasis on form and consequent rejection

of the notion of the trace as an affirmation of immanence that is com­

patible with Deleuze's idea of a plane of immanence. In her afterword

to Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing, Malabou dwells upon "the impos­

sibility of fleeing:' the inescapability of plasticity and form. She claims

that the true question is "not how to escape closure but rather of how

to escape within closure itself'17 Deleuze does not explicitly assert the

priority of form in the way that Malabou does, but he consistently

repudiates transcendence in philosophy.

In an essay titled "Detache-Moi:' Malabou reads the famous pas­

sages on Master and Slave in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit in

terms of attachment and detachment. Malabou claims that Hegel's

thought makes absolute detachment impossible, although attachment

is always hetero-affective. The Phenomenology of Spirit declares "the

impossibility of auto-affection:'18 Hegel names this hetero-affective

form of subjectivity "plasticity:' For Malabou, the relation of form to

itself is hetero-affective rather than auto-affective, and a similar struc­

ture of hetero-affectivity holds for Deleuze and Deleuze and Guattari.

For Deleuze, the plane of immanence or consistency functions the

71 DELEUZE'S lOGIC OF DOUBLE ARTICULATION

way form does in Malabou; it provides a consistency but not a self­

consistency that could be explained in terms of auto-affection. The

plane of immanence is also the differentiator, the disparate, or the

dark precursor, and it works hetero-affectively.

So I think that there is a general compatibility between Malabou

and Deleuze, and that plasticity for Malabou functions as a motor

scheme that produces concepts, effects, and machinic assemblages in

a manner similar to Deleuze and Deleuze and Guattari. More spe­

cifically, plasticity operates in a hetero-affective way that preserves

and produces differences, even though Malabou locates this hetero­

affectivity in Hegel whereas Deleuze refuses to see true difference in

the Hegelian dialectic. Finally, there is a connection between Mala­

bou and Deleuze at the level of double articulation. At the beginning

of Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing, Malabou considers the transfor­

mational mask as reflected on by Claude Levi-Strauss. These masks

are "conceived and represented in terms of a double aspect;' made of

"a union of 'plastic and graphic components:"19 These masks illus­

trate double articulation, although they also confuse it, because they

appear symmetrical and dualistic. According to Malabou, "masks

thus reveal the interchangeability or conversion relation between plastic

and graphic, image and sign, body and inscription:'20

For Malabou the mask illustrates the double relation or articulation

between plastic (B-A) and graphic (BA) elements that provides the

tension within which her philosophy takes form. She subsumes the

graphic under the plastic components in a way, but she does not sim­

ply assimilate them, and she does not want to deny the rupture, which

is symptomatic of what she calls destructive plasticity. For Deleuze

and Guattari, double articulation works according to a similar, plastic

logic. Molecular becoming occurs in a series or sequence that is then

repeated, or re-presented in the form of a causal connection to be read

off as natural, which is a molar stratum. The molar stratum is similar

to what Malabou understands by graphic, and the molecular is close

to what she indicates by plastic in Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing and

other works. The third form of plasticity is the hinge and the rupture

between the plastic and the graphic, just as in A Thousand Plateaus

the molecular and the molar form strata, but the assemblage takes

72 DELEUZE

place between the two, in the becoming or the passage, the dash (-)

between B and A, which is elided in the molar stratum.

Malabou says that in her work she is concerned with "the transfor­

mational relations between figure and writing and the reason why the

dialogue between form and writing presents itself as a structure:'21 I

am trying to isolate and articulate a structure or form that passes for

a logic in the work of Deleuze and Deleuze and Guattari, primarily

in The Logic of Sense and A Thousand Plateaus. The transformational

relations between B and A are the result of repetition in Difference and

Repetition, and they take a certain structure in The Logic of Sense and

A Thousand Plateaus, which is a double articulation. Transformational

masks are one way to represent this double articulation, although they

are also misleading if taken too literally, either in Deleuze and Guat­

tari or in Malabou. "It was over . . . . The double-articulated mask had

come undone, and so had the gloves and the tunic, from which liq­

uids escaped" (ATP 73). The machinic assemblages rotate and spin

dynamically, undoing the static double-articulated mask. This coming

undone is the result of what Malabou calls destructive plasticity, the

capacity of plasticity to annihilate form.

In the next chapter, I will take up the three main ways that Deleuze

and Guattari and Deleuze articulate the production of an event.

Events are produced primarily as desiring machines (Anti-Oedipus)

or machinic assemblages (A Thousand Plateaus), as folds (The Fold),

and as images (Cinema 1 and Cinema 2) .

73 DElEUZE'S LOGIC OF DOUBLE ARTICULATION

FI\lE PRODUCING THE EVENT AS MACHINE, AS fOLD, AND AS IMAGE

T H E IDEA O F T H E E V E N T has dominated Continental philosophy

in the second half of the twentieth century, and the event is crucial

for both Deleuze and Badiou. Philosophically, the notion of the event

comes from Heidegger and his understanding of the Ereignis of Being.

The Ereignis has been variously translated as "event of appropriation"

and "en -owning;' but it can also be translation simply as "event:' In

his Beitriige, or Contributions to Philosophy, Heidegger sketches out

the conditions and possibilities of a new destining of Being, a new

manifestation that would succeed the original manifestation of Being

in early Greek philosophy. Ereignis is "the essential swaying of be-ing

itself;' and only if we can think Being as Ereignis can we glimpse the

difference between the "first beginning" and the "other beginning;'

which requires a leap into be-ing as well as its subsequent grounding

in Dasein.1 According to Heidegger, Being (or be-ing; in his later work

Heidegger writes Sein as Seyn) as Being recedes from human calcula­

tive grasping, and we have lost sight of Being itself because we only

know how to measure and know beings.

We can read Badiou and Deleuze as successors to Heidegger, as

thinkers of Being as well as thinkers of the Ereignis, the event that

manifests Being anew. The difference is that while Heidegger empha­

sizes Gelassenheit, or letting the Being of beings be, as a mode of hold­

ing open the possibility of a revelation of Being as Being in terms of

Ereignis,2 Badiou bifurcates Being and event and inscribes Being into

a mathematical ontology from which the event subtracts. The event

occurs as an irruption of and from Being, and as I will discuss in

more detail in the next chapter, Being is irreducible (mathematical)

multiplicity that manifests in being or beings by way of the count-as­

one of a situation, while the event is also subtractive but not foresee­

able or predictable in terms of Being or being. Deleuze, on the other

hand, emphasizes the production of Being as event. Of course, one

way to relate Heidegger's ontological difference to Deleuze is to say

that a being is actual while Being itself is virtual. This conforms with

Badiou's reading of Deleuze, but this is not a very good mapping of

Heidegger onto Deleuze. As discussed in chapter 2, Being/virtual vs.

being/actual is too oppositional, and it overemphasizes the virtual as

the ground of the actual. I contend that Being itself is produced by

means of the event.3

In France, Heidegger and Husserl were influential on Existential­

ism and Phenomenology. Structuralism emerges in the 1950S in the

philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the anthropology of Claude

Levi-Strauss, and the psychoanalytic thought of Jacques Lacan.

Structuralism criticizes the absolute freedom of the ego granted by

Sartre and Camus, and shows how meaning is implicated in and

emerges from structures. Structuralism abandons the later Heideg­

gerian project of meditative openness to Being in favor of a more

rigorous empirical and scientific methodology. The event returns

in French philosophy, however, and serves to distinguish struc­

turalism from what is later called poststructuralism. As Jacques

Derrida writes in his influential essay "Structure, Sign, and Play

in the Human Sciences:' "perhaps something has occurred in the

history of the concept of structure that could be called an "event;'

if this loaded word did not entail a meaning which it is precisely

the function of structural-or structuralist-thought to reduce or

to suspect. But let us speak of an 'event: nevertheless, and let us use

quotation marks to serve as a precaution. What would this event be

then? Its exterior form would be that of a rupture and a redoubling:'4

For poststructuralism, the event is what prevents the closure of any

structure or system on itself, and the shift to the language of the

76 DElEUZE

event represents a retrieval of Heidegger as well as a deployment of

his term in a very different context.

Deleuze does not privilege the term event in Difference and Repeti­

tion, but he does favor it in The Logic of Sense, which is at one and

the same time his most structuralist and poststructuralist book in the

technical sense. Although Deleuze does not use this word as a special

concept in most of his later work, the event can be generalized to

refer to what Deleuze means by becoming, which is also a produc­

tion rather than something that simply happens. In his constructive,

visionary books from the late 1960s, Deleuze is also influenced by

Jacques Lacan's structuralist reading of Freudian psychoanalysis. The

major shift between The Logic of Sense and Anti-Oedipus involves

Deleuze's break with Lacan and his antipathy, along with Guattari's,

toward any kind of psychoanalytic theory or practice. Deleuze later

says that psychoanalytic knowledge is a "kind of terrorism, an intel­

lectual and emotional terrorism made to break down a resistance

which psychoanalysis deems unhealthi'5 This hostility to Lacanian

psychoanalysis, along with the experimental style that Deleuze and

Guattari deploy, serves to distinguish Anti-Oedipus from The Logic of

Sense, which reads as more structural and symbolic. The problem is

that this polemic against psychoanalysis also obscures the deep conti­

nuities between Difference and Repetition, The Logic of Sense, and the

two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia.

The event is produced in different ways in Deleuze's work. In The

Logic of Sense, the event is a production of sense. However, already in

this book Deleuze employs the language of a machinery of produc­

tion. He says that "there resounds today the news that sense is never

a principle nor an origin, but that it is produced. It is not something

to discover, to restore, and to re-employ; it is something to produce

by a new machinery" (LS 72). In his experimental two-volume work

on Capitalism and Schizophrenia, coauthored with Guattari, Deleuze

privileges the production of the event in terms of machine. Later, after

Deleuze resumes his single-authored texts, Deleuze experiments with

two other major ways to produce an event. In The Fold: Leibniz and

the Baroque, the event is produced as a fold of Being, while in the

Cinema books the event is produced as image.

77 PRODUCING AN EVENT AS MACHINE, AS FOLD, AND AS IMAGE

In Anti-Oedipus, desiring machines directly produce what Lacan

calls the real. Desire is not imaginary: it is not based on the fantasy of

what the subject who desires lacks; rather, "desire does not lack any­

thing:' According to Deleuze and Guattari, "the real is the end prod­

uct, the result of the passive syntheses of desire as autoproduction of

the unconscious:'6 The unconscious is not something that one has;

it must be produced. Deleuze collapses the distinction Lacan makes

between the symbolic (which is where Lacan locates the uncon­

scious) and the real (which evades all signification). Deleuze claims

in another essay that "the unconscious is a substance that must be

created, placed, made to flow; it is a social and political space which

must be won:'7 The production of the unconscious is a revolutionary

event. In naming the production of the real by desiring machines an

event, I am stressing the continuity between The Logic of Sense and

Anti-Oedipus, and also showing how Deleuze, with the aid of Guat­

tari, moves away from a symbolic and structuralist reading of events

as pure expressions of sense, toward an explicitly productive under­

standing of an event in relation to bodies.

Desire produces the real, and this is social and political rather

than just an individual production: "social production is purely and

simply desiring production itself under determinate conditions" (AO

29). Deleuze and Guattari criticize Lacan's separation of desire from

the real and its relegation to a purely symbolic order. Schizophrenic

language radically questions the bourgeois model of symbolic real­

ity that is based on forms of neurotic disavowal, and the method of

schizo-analysis developed by Deleuze and Guattari pushes capitalism

to its limits, at least in theory.

They ask: "Wouldn't it be better to schizophrenize-to schizo­

phrenize the domain of the unconscious as well as the sociohistorical

domain, so as to shatter the iron collar of Oedipus and rediscover

everywhere the force of desiring-production; to renew, on the level .

of the real, the tie between analytic machine, desire and production?"

(AO 53). The unconscious is not imaginary or symbolic; "it is the

real in itself' The productive unconscious is "anti-Oedipus" because

Oedipus serves as the name for that which organizes and controls­

represses-the productivity of the desiring machines, and Oedipus

78 OElEUZE

becomes the name under which Deleuze and Guattari criticize psy­

choanalysis. I am less interested in the polemic against psychoanaly­

sis, even though Zitek and Badiou find themselves on the other side

of this dispute insofar as they are both post -Lacanians. There are ways

to read Lacan more powerfully and politically, as Badiou and Zitek

certainly show. For me, the overall distinction lies between a general

operation of subtraction (Badiou and to a certain extent Zitek) and

production (DeletlZe).

If desiring machines directly produce the real, then how do these

desiring machines work? Deleuze and Guattari claim that "every

object presupposes the continuity of a flow;' which the machine inter­

rupts to produce an object (AO 6). They write that "every machine, in

the first place, is related to a continual material flow (hyle) that it cuts

into" (AO 36). If the material flow is the real, then symbolic reality

subtracts from the real to produce an object. On the other hand, the

real is the process, not the material flow that is posited beyond the

productive workings of the machines. Every machine is a machine of

a machine, which means that every machine both interrupts and rees­

tablishes a flow or continuity of material processes: "In a word, every

machine functions as a break in the flow in relation to the machine to

which it is connected, but at the same time is also a flow itself, or the

production of a flow, in relation to the machine connected to it. This

is the law of the production of production" (AO 36).

The body without organs signifies the pure flow that cannot pro­

duce anything, but it gives energetic antiproductive intensity for

the production of machines. The body without organs "is nonpro­

ductive; nonetheless it is produced, at a certain place and a certain

time in the connective synthesis" (AO 8), which is an asymetrical

synthesis, as we saw in Difference and Repetition. As a way to resist

the organization of organs, the body without organs "presents its

smooth, slippery, opaque, taut surface as a barrier. In order to resist

linked, connected, and interrupted flows, it sets up a counterflow of

amorphous, undifferentiated fluid" (AO 9) . Flows ooze and evade

their capture and control by organs and organizations. Oedipus,

configured in psychoanalysis as a familial complex, represents the

repressive containment of molecular flows. Flows are detached and

79 PRODUCING AN EVENT AS MACHINE, AS FOLD, AND AS IMAGE

broken off, but the question concerns how this is done. There is a

better and a worse way of cutting.

In The Logic of Sense, Deleuze articulates the Stoic cut between

corporeal and incorporeal entities. In a similar way, in Anti-Oedipus

there are detachments that are more of "a slicing ofG' which can be

used for producing other codes and contributing to new flows (AO

39). Here, cutting into the flows detaches some part of the flow from

a chain, "and the partial objects of production presuppose stocks of

material or recording bricks within the coexistence and the interac­

tion of all syntheses" (AO 40). Machines are constructed out of cuts

and breaks in the chain of flow, and then they themselves serve to both

cut and compose new machines as events. For Deleuze and Guattari,

"to withdraw a part from the whole, to detach, to 'have something left

over; is to produce, and to carry out real operations of desire in the

material world" (AO 41). In Anti-Oedipus the fact that machines produce machines indicates

a collapse of the two levels of sense and body in The Logic of Sense that

could be read as dualistic. At the same time, the ontological collapse

of levels and the rejection of any ontological dualism never means the

elimination of epistemological distinctions, of being able to divide in

two. In Anti-Oedipus, the whole is the smooth, ideal body without

organs, while the part is the link that constitutes sense. Sense has to

be produced; it has to be withdrawn from the broader process of flow

and created as an event. Machines create themselves as machines in a

process of autoproduction, producing the event. From the standpoint

of the previous chapter, however, this process can be more correctly

described as a hetero-production.

The production of the real is the production of an event, even

though Deleuze does not continue to privilege this term in Anti­

Oedipus. In The Logic of Sense, Deleuze rejects the metaphorics of

depth that was privileged in Difference and Repetition and writes

from the perspective of the surface, even though he does not simply

reject depth, because bodies resound in the depths of sense. In Anti­

Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari write from the perspective of the desir­

ing machines that produce events more from below. The machines are

working in the basement, and they evade the traps of an Oedipal,

80 OmUZE

normalizing psychoanalysis to channel their productions into con­

ventional symbolic meanings. Ultimately, even though Deleuze favors

the very small over the very large, he is devoted to overcoming any

simple opposition between surface and depth, but without making

such distinctions impossible. There is no "such thing as either man

or nature now, only a process that produces the one within the other

and couples the machines together" (AO 2). Machinic production

cuts across such traditional divisions in a schizophrenic way.

According to Deleuze and Guattari, schizophrenia is not the psy­

chotic state of a deranged or semicomatose person, but a line of flight,

a productive delirium that can perhaps deliver someone outside the

clutches of capitalism. They suggest that "a schizophrenic out for a

walk is a better model than a neurotic lying on the analyst's couch"

(AO 2) . Both capitalism and schizophrenia can be understood on

the basis of flows and flights, a process that they call deterritorializa­

tion because it abandons, destroys, or removes territory as territory.

The difference is that while capitalism deterritorializes territory, it

ultimately reterritorializes in a judgmental and repressive way. Schizo­

phrenia, on the other hand, tends toward an absolute deterritorializa­

tion that cannot easily be reterritorialized.

To analyze and understand capitalism, Deleuze and Guattari

model it along with their own schizophrenic model. Schizophrenia as

diagnosed in psychoanalysis and psychiatry is an effect of capitalism

and its repression, whereas true schizophrenia is liberating. Capital­

ism and schizophrenia closely resemble each other, "yet it would be

a serious error to consider the capitalist flows and the schizophrenic

flows as identical, under the general theme of a decoding of the flows

of desire" (AO 245) . Capitalism appropriates schizophrenic flows of

desire, turning them into forms of its own perverted death drive. Cap­

italism is parasitical; it forms "a gigantic machine for social repres­

sion-psychic repression, aimed at what nevertheless constitutes its

own reality-the decoded flows" (AO 245).

Capitalism works with and beyond relative limits, constantly

loosing and capturing flows, directing and managing them, decod­

ing and then axiomatizing them. Schizophrenia, by contrast, is "the

absolute limit that causes the flows to travel in a free state on a

81 PRODUCING AN EVENT AS MACHINE, AS FOLD, AND AS IMAGE

desocialized body without organs" (AO 246) . Schizophrenic desire

does not lend itself to capture and self-repression, which means that

it is fundamentally different from capitalism at its limit. Schizophre­

nia offers an alternative possibility to capitalism, and it shows how

capitalism is caught up in its own death drive. Capitalism represses

and stifles desire.

Both capitalism and schizophrenia work with breaks and flows,

but in very different ways and for very different ends. Everything

depends "on whether the decodings are caught up in an axiomatic or

not; on whether one remains at the level of the large aggregates func­

tioning statistically, or crosses the barrier that separates them from

the unbound molecular positions; on whether the flows of desire

reach this absolute limit or are content to displace a relative immanent

limit that will reconstitute itself further along; on whether controlling

deterritorializations are added to the processes of deterritorializa­

tion; and on whether money burns or bursts into flames" (AO 247).

In Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari compose an incredible wager:

that they can push capitalism to its limit in order to deterritorialize to

such an extent that it would no longer be possible to reterritorialize.

If we could go far enough in the direction of an absolute deterritorial­

ization, then "the movement of deterritorialization [would create 1 of

necessity and by itself a new earth" (AO 321).

As Zizek points out in Organs Without Bodies, this schizophrenic

deterritorialization itself became reterritorialized in a faddish intel­

lectual micro- or even pseudopolitics of the Left, and Anti-Oedipus

became a best-seller in philosophy without many readers ever truly

comprehending the nature and stakes of what Deleuze and Guattari

were doing.8 In its experimental style, Anti-Oedipus and to an extent

A Thousand Plateaus generated their own hermetic language and

conceptuality that has been difficult to integrate into Deleuze's own

philosophy, much less broader currents of Continental philosophy

more generally.

In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari extend their analy­

sis of desiring machines, although here desiring machines are called

machinic assemblages that are produced by abstract machines.

Although in Anti-Oedipus "desire is revolutionary in its very essence"

82 DElEUZE

(AO 116), in A Thousand Plateaus they are less interested in the

specific libidinal nature of desire, which has in some ways played

itself out.9 Furthermore, in A Thousand Plateaus Deleuze and Guat­

tari take their analysis of capitalism understood as territory to its

limit and reach a profound impasse, which is related to their worry

about the ways in which desire can always be redirected and reap­

propriated. Here in this chapter, I will focus briefly on the function

of machinic assemblages at the end of A Thousand Plateaus, drawing

on the analysis I did in the previous chapter. I will return to the polit­

ical impasse that Deleuze reaches along with Guattari in the chapters

on the war machine in chapter 9 in my discussion of the apparatus

of capture.

As we saw in the previous chapter, the distinction between con­

crete or machinic assemblages and abstract machine cuts across the

distinction between the body without organs (which is the plane of

consistency) and the layers of strata. The process of stratification is

a double articulation, as we have seen: the first articulation is more

molecular and more loosely connected; the second articulation sta­

bilizes connections in molar compounds. Both articulations combine

substance or territoriality and form or coding. Production is a strat­

ification-"how to 'make' the body an organism" (ATP 41). Despite

Deleuze and Guattari's antipathy to strata and stratification, they are

not simply opposed to this form of production. The problem is that

the strata are the extensities from Difference and Repetition, which

hide the intensities "beneath" them. The intensities are not elsewhere;

they are on the surface, but they are not visible at the level of the

articulated strata. As Deleuze says in The Logic of Sense, the event is

not what happens (extensity, stratum), it is what is going on in what

happens (the machinic assemblage and the plane of immanence).

To understand what's going on in the process of production or

articulation, you have to destratify or deterritorialize, you have to

get back to the molecular level and see how the strata are composed.

The strata emerge out of a process of double articulation: they are

the midpoint in the continuum between the pure, smooth body

without organs and the machinic assemblages. But we see the strata

as the end point of the processes of production. We think that the

83 PRODUCING AN EVENT AS MACHINE, AS FOLD, AND AS IMAGE

reason for the plane of consistency and the machinic assemblages

is to generate strata. The strata are only the layers, however, or the

thickening of the body without organs at a certain point. "The sub­

ject of stratification is a machinic assemblage distinct from the strata:'

which is an "interstratum" (ATP 40) . The event is the production of

a machinic assemblage between the strata. The strata must be desedi­

mented or de constructed to locate the machinic assemblage within or

between them.

The machinic assemblage functions like the differentia tor or dark

precursor in Difference and Repetition. Technically, this is incorrect

though. The machinic assemblage is the lightning strike that occurs as

a result of the difference between the layers of strata. The dark precur­

sor is the body without organs or the plane of consistency. The plane

of consistency as a smooth space serves as an operator to highlight the

difference between the strata. The plane of consistency is not a back­

ground, and it is not a thing; it is an operator. When you line up the

strata, it is what allows you to compare them using not their identity

but their difference. It works like a moire pattern, which is a term in

physics that refers to the interference pattern that is generated when

you overlay two grids with slightly different mesh sizes or shift them

so that they overlap at slightly different angles. The difference that

results is produced by the operation, and it is an assemblage.

The assemblage is the event, and it has both an actual and a vir­

tual aspect. The virtual aspect of the assemblage is what Deleuze and

Guattari call an abstract machine. The abstract machine is not "a Pla­

tonic Idea, transcendent, universal, eternal. Abstract machines oper­

ate within concrete assemblages" (ATP 510). If the assemblage is the

event as produced, the abstract machine is the edge along which the

line of production occurs. The abstract machines work with "the cut­

ting edge of decoding and deterritorialization. The draw these cutting

edges" (ATP 510).

The smooth space of the plane of consistency defines the differ­

ences between the segmented or striated strata. It operates as a dark

precursor or differentiator, allowing one access to the molecular pro­

cess of articulation, production, or differentiation. The strata are what

are produced as extensities, the resulting molar compounds. But the

84 DElEUZE

event that occurs in what happens concerns the intensities, the con­

struction of machinic assemblages. The actualization of assemblages

is the occurrence of the event, the lightning strike that illuminates

what is going on within and between the strata. The virtualization of

the assemblage is the abstract machine, which draws the cutting edges

of deterritorialization (or, in Anti-Oedipus, antiproduction) that give

vector directionality to the production of the assemblage.

Deterritorialization is a line of flight that cuts out a space away

from a territory. What Deleuze calls intensities in Difference and Rep­

etition propel this line of flight. Absolute deterritorialization "can be

called the creator of the earth-of a new land, a universe, not just

a reterritorialization" (ATP 509). Intensity here concerns movement,

and this is a movement that is different in kind from relative move­

ment or relative deterritorialization that can be reterritorialized. "A

movement is absolute;' Deleuze and Guattari explain, when it "relates

'<t body considered as multiple to a smooth space that it occupies in

the manner of a vortex. A movement is relative . . . when it relates a

body considered as One to a striated space through which it moves"

(ATP 509). The distinction between relative and absolute does not

concern distance or speed, but the quality of relation, whether to a

smooth space understood as the plane of consistency or the differen­

tiator, or to a striated space that consolidates a body as already articu­

lated, as produced, which covers up the event. An event cannot occur

without relation to a smooth space, a dark precursor or a plane of

immanence/ consistency.

As we will see, Deleuze moves away from thinking the event in

terms of movement and more in the direction of time in Cinema 2

and The Fold. In A Thousand Plateaus, though, abstract machines

work to cut, to de territorialize, to open and close assemblages. There

are thus "different types of abstract machines that overlap in their

operations and qualify the assemblages": abstract machines of consis­

tency, abstract machines of stratification, and axiomatic or overcod­

ing abstract machines (ATP 514). Abstract machines are not simply

"good" but are morally ambivalent and function to open up as well

as close down. Deleuze and Guattari sketch the rules for abstract

machines at the end of A Thousand Plateaus, and for them "every

85 PRODUCING AN EVENT AS MACHINE, AS FOLD, AND AS IMAGE

abstract machine is linked to other abstract machines" in a complex

"mechanosphere" (ATP 514). Abstract machines provide the deter­

ritorializing force that produces assemblages, and these assemblages

are produced as events.

In Anti-Oedipus, intensities are expressed as flows, although these

flows are also related by machinic breaks. In A Thousand Plateaus,

intensities are incorporated within the machinic assemblages them­

selves, which perform the work of territorializing and deterritorial­

izing. As I will discuss in chapter 9, the end of A Thousand Plateaus

culminates in an impasse, which is the limit of a philosophy based on

movement and a political understanding based on territory. In his last

major works, Deleuze experiments with other forms of production.

One way to read Deleuze is to privilege an alternative and force a solu­

tion to the question: fold or cut, form or break? A better way to read

Deleuze is to realize that Deleuze never finally chooses one over the

other, but constantly works between the two. In The Fold, the form or

the fold takes precedence, and The Fold is sometimes seen as Deleuze's

culminating philosophical statement. I do not deny the importance of

The Fold, but it cannot be read in isolation from his Cinema books,

which are at least as important. Here I will explain how Deleuze turns

to Leibniz and the neo-Baroque fold to express an event, and then I

will analyze Cinema 2 and its production of the event as image, spe­

cifically as time-image.

Why is Deleuze so interested in the Baroque? Part of his interest is

because of his renewed focus on aesthetics in the 1980s, following his

great collaboration with Guattari. Deleuze articulates a neo-Baroque

aesthetics in The Fold, inspired by the complexity of Leibniz's phi­

losophy. Another reason for this shift to Leibniz is that he was seek­

ing a way out of the Kantian impasse that bifurcates knowledge and

being. Kant's incredible critiques sound the death knell for traditional

metaphysics, although they also spur the great German idealists who

immediately follow him such as Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel to try to

overcome this split between things as they appear to us and things as

they are in themselves. Deleuze refuses to follow in the steps of Ger­

man idealism and repudiates Hegelian dialectics, seeking nondialecti­

cal forms of synthesis in Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Bergson. Ultimately,

86 DELEUZE

however, Deleuze is influenced by Lacan's Four Fundamental Concepts

of Psychoanalysis, where Lacan contrasts the "dark God" of Nazism

that results from the irreducible Kantian antimonies with the Amor

intellectualis Dei of Spinoza.lO Lacan says that Spinoza's "transcendent

love;' while more attractive, is foreclosed from our contemporary

experience. I suggest that Deleuze concurs, because while he consid­

ers Spinoza the "Christ" of the philosophers, it is because he is only

incarnated once, and because he remains in some respects inacces­

sible because his thought is so light and pure,u

So if Spinoza is figured as light and Kant as darkness, then Leibniz

is between the two, and Deleuze finds in Leibniz a chiaroscuro that

is not simply a mixture but a way to unfold Kant backward and open

up an alternative way to configure the nature and stakes as well as the

possibilities of philosophy. The Kantian problematic leads straight to

Nietzschean nihilism in which "the world lost its principles:" 2 Deleuze

claims that for Nietzsche and Mallarme the world lacks any principle,

and that our challenge is to "think without principles, in the absence

of God and in the absence of man himself" (F 67). The "Kantian ref­

uge" was "the last refuge of principles;' but it too collapsed, and had to

collapse. We live in a world without principles, which is the collapse

of all "theological Reason" (F 67).

Here is where the Baroque comes in, at the point of collapse, as

a way to "save" the theological ideal. Deleuze says that "the Baroque

solution is the following: we shall multiply principles . . . and in this

way we will change their use" (F 67). The Baroque offers Deleuze a

way to multiply principles and put them to new uses, which avoids

the disaster that results from realizing that none of these principles

is uncontested or absolute. The Leibnizian game is a proliferation of

principles, and it contrasts with the throw of the dice in Nietzsche and

Mallarme, which is the absence of principles. In The Fold, Deleuze

reads Leibniz in conjunction with Alfred North Whitehead's process

thought as a detour around the Kantian problematic that culminates

in a loss of principles, and this results in a restoration of possibility

for philosophy.

What is the Baroque? According to Deleuze, the Baroque is not

an essence but "an operative function;' a "trait. It endlessly produces

87 PRODUCING AN EVENT AS MACHINE, AS FOLD, AND AS IMAGE

folds" (F 3) . 1he fold as such goes to infinity, and in its basic form

it is a pleat of matter. Bodily matter is elastic: it folds and unfolds.

The elasticity of folds in The Fold is not dissimilar to Catherine Mala­

bou's thinking about plasticity, as discussed in the previous chapter,

although Deleuze would resist its Hegelian origin. Matter as a contin­

uous fold folds on itself in a special curvilinear way to produce a soul.

Outer material pleats curve in on themselves to constitute another

fold, or a second floor. The Baroque house has two floors, a ground

floor of matter and a second floor that composes the soul. "The soul

itself is what constitutes the other floor" (F 13) . The soul is formed

as a monad because it is enclosed on itself; the second floor has no

windows. 1he closure of the fold on itself creates a soul, and a soul has

a world precisely because of this closure, which "gives the world the

possibility of beginning over and over again in each monad" (F 26).

The Fold itself is not simply the pleat of matter or the fold of the

soul, but the "between-two-folds" (F 13), which recapitulates but also

transforms Heidegger's ontological difference between Being and

beings. In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze appends a "Note on

Heidegger's Philosophy of Difference" to the end of chapter 1. Here

he explains that difference in Heidegger, expressed as the "Not:' das

Nichte, is not a simple hole or a "lake of nonbeing:' as Sartre under­

stands it (DR 64) . Deleuze claims that Merleau-Ponty has a better

understanding of Heidegger when he theorizes Heideggerian differ­

ence in terms of "folds and pleating:' Difference in Heidegger does not

primarily concern negation. Deleuze explains that "the not expresses

not the negative but the difference between Being and being:' which

is ontological difference (DR 64). Furthermore, "this difference is not

'between' in the ordinary sense of the word. It is the Fold, Zwiefalt. It is constitutive of Being and of the manner in which Being constitutes

being, in the double movement of 'clearing' and 'veiling' Being is truly

the differenciator of difference" (DR 65).

Deleuze develops his understanding of the Zwiefalt at length in

The Fold. One way to read The Fold is to see it as an inversion and

an extension of The Logic of Sense. Rather than a more conventional

dichotomy where sense occurs on the surface and bodies interact in

the depths, here matter consists of a relatively smooth fold and the

88 DElEUZE

soul (sense) is a fold of matter, the folding of matter on itself. Then

souls fold over again to produce bodies. "The World is actualized in

souls, and is realized in bodies" (F 120) . The Zwiefalt is between the

two folds of soul and matter and soul and body. "And between the

two folds, in the in-between of the fold, [is] the Zwiefalt, the bending

of the two levels, the zone of inseparability that produces the crease

or seam" (F 120) .

What is an event? In chapter 6 of The Fold, Deleuze returns explic­

itly to the question of the event, which he treated in detail in The Logic

of Sense. The machinic language of Capitalism and Schizophrenia is

downplayed, but the event is still produced, in this case as a kind of

fold. The Zwiefalt is the event, or in Leibniz's terms, the vinculum

(bond or chain) between monads. Deleuze picks up on the strange

notion of the vinculum substantiale that Leibniz introduces in his later

work to provide a kind of corporeal substantiality and unity to the

plurality of monads. For Deleuze, the vinculum is a membrane or a

screen. What is the condition for an event? "Events are produced in

a chaos, in a chaotic multiplicity, but only under the condition that

a sort of screen intervenes" (F 76). Chaos as such does not exist; it is

a pure and ideal multiplicity or many. The screen makes something

emerge from chaos as a background. The Fold, or Zwiefalt, is the

screen that relates, compares, and differentiates folds.

Something emerges from chaos as a one, which reads as very simi­

lar to Badiou's formulation of how a one comes about as a subtrac­

tion from an infinite mathematical multiplicity. Deleuze says that the

one is "not a pregiven unity, but instead the indefinite article that

designates a certain singulariti' This is how the many become one:

by way of a screen or a "formless elastic membrane" (F 76). Deleuze

draws on the thought of Whitehead to screen Leibniz and clarify his

understanding of the event. There are three conditions of the event in

the conjunction of Leibniz and Whitehead: extension, intensity, and

individuation. Extension stretches one part and casts it as a whole

over all of its other parts: "the event is a vibration with an infinity of

harmonics or submultiples, such as an audible wave' (F 77). Intensity

means that "extensive series have intrinsic properties" that establish a

conjunction in their intersection with the extensities (F 77). Deleuze's

89 PRODUCING AN EVENT AS MACHINE, AS FOLD, AND AS IMAGE

discussion of extension and intensity in The Fold resonates with Dif­

ference and Repetition, although the contrast between them is more

harmonious in The Fold because Deleuze is less hostile to the notion

of extension in the latter book. Finally, the third component of the

event is the individual, which is the result of individuation. Deleuze

affirms Whitehead's claim that "the individual is creativity, the forma­

tion of a New" (F 77). The individual emerges as a becoming, a pre­

hension that relates past and present, subject and object, potentiality

and reality. The prehension of the event renders the event as an event

to another event.

The individual prehension occurs in the contrast between exten­

sion and intensity, and the difference between them. The extension is

a continuous vibrating fold, the pleat of matter, while intensity is the

fold of the soul, the creation of a subjective aim in Whitehead's terms.

Intensity occupies the upper floor in The Fold rather than the lower

one, as opposed to in Difference and Repetition, where intensity was

described as working in the depths. The individual is the production

of novelty or individuation, which is the effect of repetition whereby

an event is produced when you screen out a one from chaos. An indi­

vidual is a singularity, a singular event that is always new.

Deleuze contrasts Whitehead with Leibniz in The Fold. An event

occurs by the activity of overlaying two series and seeing their resem­

blance and their difference. For Leibniz, the Baroque harmony is

preestablished; it is created separately by God, who chooses the best

possible or compossible world. Compossibility sustains Leibnizian

harmony, which conjoins monads and matter and God into a world.

The monads are closed; they only have a window, which means that

God has to connect them. The fact that monads are only indirectly

related means that they can be gathered together in any universe where

the possible comprises them. The Baroque God compares worlds and

chooses the richest compossible world. Solutions run through logical

possibilities and are composed by them.

What is the attraction of Whitehead? Whitehead opens the monads

to the world: "prehension is naturally open, open onto the world,

without having to go through a window" (F 81) . This opening means

that now solutions pass not through compossiblities but through

90 DElEUZE

incompossibilities. For Whitehead, "bifurcations, divergences, incom­

possibilities and discord belong to the same motley world that can

no longer be included in expressive units, but only made or undone

according to prehensive units and variable configurations or chang­

ing captures. In a same chaotic world divergent series are endlessly

tracing bifurcating paths" (F 81). Processes pass through bifurcating

disjunctions that render identity even as they reconstitute it. The play

of the world is not convergent harmony but a divergent series. Even

God "becomes Process, a process that affirms incompossibilities and

passes through them:' Nothing remains apart from the process or

play of divergent series. Incompossibility means that no overarching

harmony can be restored; however, there is an aesthetic neo-Baroque

harmony in the vibrating movement and interplaying of the series that

constitutes an "emancipation of dissonance" and a polytonality (F 82).

The Fold is not Deleuze's final philosophical statement. It is a read­

ing of Leibniz, and therefore it must be read and inserted into the

series of interpretations of other philosophers, from Hume to Kant to

Bergson to Nietzsche to Spinoza. At the same time, this interpretation

is privileged because it allows Deleuze to sketch out an alternative to

the Kantian problematic, and to elaborate a neo-Baroque metaphys­

ics and aesthetics of the fold. He says that "we are discovering new

ways of folding, alan to new envelopments, but we all remain Leibniz­

ian because what always matters is folding, unfolding, refolding" (F

137). The New Harmony that closes the book is an aesthetic principle,

where solutions no longer pass through accords but rather disjunc­

tion and discords or divergent series. The Fold is also an attempt at

a renewal of philosophical possibility: how to think philosophically

after its supposed death, how to fold, unfold, and refold the philo­

sophical tradition to think and create anew.

The fold is not simply pregiven; it is produced in certain specific

forms and ways as an event, which is why the event (including the

chapter on Whitehead, "What is an Event?") lies at the center of the

book. As a result of thinking the event in Baroque terms, "the concept

becomes a 'concetto: or an apex, because it is folded in the individual

subject just as in the personal unity that amasses for itself the many

propositions, but that also projects them in the images of the cycle

91 PRODUCING AN EVENT AS MACHINE, AS FOLD, AND AS IMAGE

or the series" (F 126). Here we can see how Deleuze in a reprise with

Guattari claims that philosophy involves the creation of concepts in

What Is Philosophy? The concept is folded in the individual subject,

and produced both as a fold and as an image.

The fold is one alternative form for the production of the event

in Deleuze's later philosophy. The other is the image. In his Cinema

books, Deleuze rehabilitates the image from his denigration of images

of common sense or good sense in Difference and Repetition. In Cin­

ema 1: The Movement-Image, Deleuze analyzes the history of cinema

in light of Bergson's philosophy. Although Bergson was opposed to

cinema as a corruption or degradation of perception, Deleuze shows

how Bergson's philosophy was enacted in many ways in the early his­

tory of cinema, in the films of Griffith and Eisenstein, among others.

Deleuze argues that "the discovery of the movement-image, beyond

the condition of natural perception, was the extraordinary invention

of the first chapter of Matter and MemorY:'13 The movement-image is

enacted cinematically, even as it was theorized by Bergson. Deleuze

says that as a result of this process, "the material universe, the plane of

immanence, is the machine assemblage of movement-images:'14

Deleuze respects the integrity of the history of cinema, and his

work has been influential on contemporary film studies; but he is

also writing a work of philosophy that focuses on the shift from a

movement-image to a time-image. So the Cinema books follow a tra­

jectory from Bergson's philosophy to cinema and then back to phi­

losophy. As Paola Marrati explains in her important book on Deleuze

and cinema, for Bergson images are matter itself, and matter after

Einstein converts into energy. Deleuze takes from Bergson the idea

that consciousness is not the privilege of a transcendental subject, but

rather is a thing among other things: "conscious perception surges

in images themselves:'ls It is the interval between perception and

action, or between action and reaction, that allows for freedom and

genuine change.

Classical cinema in the early twentieth century is dominated by

movement-images. These images subordinate time to movement,

and they presuppose an organic whole. There are three aspects of the

movement-image: the perception-image, the action-image, and the

92 DElEUZE

affection-image. In the perception-image, cinema creates new per­

ceptions in its viewers in ways that disrupt natural perception. The

action-image shows the essence of movement: it is filmed in and as

action that connects an activity and a result. Finally, the affection­

image is generated in the interval or "in-between" of the perceptive

and active.16 The deepening of the affection-image in the films of

Hitchcock stimulates a new kind of cinema and a new kind of think­

ing, which ultimately takes us "beyond the movement-image:' The

movement-image shows us an indirect image of time, because time

is always linked to movement, the flow of images. This movement is

a movement of the Whole, which is presupposed by both American

Hollywood cinema and Soviet Revolutionary cinema. The Whole is

given in cinema in the form of a montage, and the montage demon­

strates the revolutionary potential of cinema for the masses.

Deleuze does not denigrate the movement-image, but he sees a

crisis in the movement-image occurring around World War II. As

Marrati writes, "the twentieth century begins only after the war.

It is the rise of Fascism, Nazism, Stalinism and World War II that

destroys the faith of history:'17 In Italian neorealism and French New

Wave cinema in particular, Deleuze glimpses the postwar posing of

a new problem that arises at the level of thought: "If all the move­

ment-images, perceptions, actions and affects underwent such an

upheaval, was this not first of all because a new element burst on the

scene which was to prevent perception being extended into action in

order to put it in contact with thought, and, gradually, was to sub­

ordinate the image to the demands of new signs which would take it

beyond movement?"18 The new problem arises in thought when the

movement-image breaks down, because the affection-image breaks

apart the link between perception and action and movement dete­

riorates into cliche. The crisis of the action-image is that "the image

constantly sinks to the state of cliche: because it is introduced into

sensory-motor linkages" (TI 21). Movement appears to run along

prescribed tracks, pregiven sensory-motor links that determine what

movement is and does.

This new thinking image is a time-image, and the time-image

is the revolutionary concept of Deleuze's later philosophy. It is not

93 PRODUCING AN EVENT AS MACHINE, AS FOLD, AND AS IMAGE

just cinema that reaches a state of crisis; it is philosophy itself, espe­

cially a philosophy and even a politics that is based on movement, as

Deleuze's was primarily in Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Philosophy

and politics based on movement imply an organic conception of the

Whole and of History, which disappears in the collapse of the move­

ment-image. Describing a scene from a film by Ozu, Deleuze explains

that it presents a direct time-image, which "is time, time itself, 'a little

time in its pure state'" (TI 17). 'The breakdown of the movement-image

allows time to surface directly as a pure image.

Time emerges out of recollection. 'The first form of the time-image

is the recollection-image. In Cinema 1, subjectivity emerges at the

level of affection, which is between the perception-image and the

action-image. Recollection, based on memory, is a "purely optical and

sound situation" that forms a circuit between an actual and a virtual

image. 'The subjectivity that corresponds to the recollection-image

"takes on a new sense, which is . . . temporal and spiritual" (TI 47). The circuit that constitutes time is a bifurcation, or a forking point, a

split between past and present. The two forms of recollection-image

that Deleuze discusses are the largest and smallest images, the dream

and the crystal. 'The crystal-image is the smallest possible image, and

"it is this most restricted circuit of the actual image and its virtual

image which carries everything, and serves as internal limit" (TI 69).

The actual and the virtual are compressed into the smallest and clos­

est possible form, such that the distinction between actual and virtual

becomes indiscernible in the crystaL Together the actual and virtual

images "crystallize, giving us the key to other circuits that are revealed

to be slivers of the crystal-image:'19

'The crystalline form of the time-image is crucial, but this zone

of indiscernability constitutes the passage to the time-image proper.

Deleuze says that the crystal is an expression, which means an articu­

lation or a layer in the terms of A Thousand Plateaus. But it is the

smallest possible layer, and it shows the formation of time in its struc­

ture (mirror) and genesiS (seed). "In the crystal-image there is this

mutual search-blind and halting-of matter and spirit: beyond the

movement-image, 'in which we are still pious'" (TI 75). The crystal

image shows at once the actual and the virtual together in the same

94 nElEUZE

image: "thus the image has to be present and past, still present and

already past, at the same time" (TI 79). The pure virtuality of the past

is a pure recollection that exists outside of consciousness and time.

The recollection-image carries the sign of the past as pure virtuality.

The temptation is simply to equate the time-image with the crys­

tal-image, which is born of the recollection-image. In this way, the

time-image becomes a sign of a pure virtual past, and Badiou is cor­

rect to criticize it. But I think that the crystal-image, which leads to

the time-image, is not itself the time-image that Deleuze constructs

in Cinema 2. As Jean-Clet Martin points out, "the crystal-image is the

point of divergence, the diffraction of time-not its unveiling:'20 This

is why it is helpful to read Cinema 2 from the standpoint of Difference

and Repetition and the three syntheses of time. The first synthesis of

time, habit or the present, corresponds to the sensory-motor image,

which is under the sign of the movement-image. The second synthesis,

which is the past of recollection, connects to the recollection-image

of Cinema 2. The recollection-image in its smallest possible form is

the crystal-image, but the crystal has two functions: mirror and seed.

As mirror, the crystal-image is the essence of recollection and consti­

tutes time as a pure past that subsumes the actual into the virtual. The

depth of field that shows itself in the crystal arranges "a background

in the circuit through which something can flee: the crack" (TI 85) . It

is the crack of the seed of the crystal that breaks through to the time­

image proper, which is also a shattering of all images of time based

on representation. The time-image itself corresponds to the third syn­

thesis of time in Difference and Repetition, the passage to the future

that occurs only through the break, the fracture, or the caesura. The

caesura is the empty form of time that is "the most radical form of

change, but the form of change which does not change" (DR 88-89).

In Difference and Repetition, the caesura "must be determined in the

image of a unique and tremendous event" that divides the image,

splits it in two. The totality of time is caught in this tearing apart of

the image into two unequal parts.

In Cinema 2, the break is called an interstice. It is the concentra­

tion of time in the crystal that "splits in two dissymmetrical jets, one

of which makes all the present pass on, while the other preserves all

95 PRODUCING AN EVENT AS MACHINE, AS FOLD, AND AS IMAGE

the past" CTI 81) . Time consists of this split, which is the germ or seed

of time generated by the crystal-image. Deleuze says that while the

crystal is not time, "we see time in the crystal" CTI 81). The unequal

exchange between past and present, virtual and actual, that takes

place in the mutual image of the crystal produces the break that con­

stitutes the future. "What we see in the crystal is always the bursting

forth of life, of time, in its dividing in two or differentiation" CTI 91).

Chapter 5 of Cinema 2, "Peaks of Present and Sheets of Past:' repeats

and recapitulates the ground covered in chapter 4 on "The Crystals

of Time:' If the past is a virtual sheet, a plane of immanence, then

the peaks of the present instantiated this virtual past as present; but

time does not flow, it preexists always and everywhere. This is the more

obvious, and a wrong reading of Cinema 2 and of Deleuze's work over­

all. Referring to Augustine, Deleuze says that "there is a present of the

future, a present of the present and a present of the past, all rolled up in

the event" CTI 100), which implies this continuous, unchanging order

of time and a denial of the event, at least in Badiou's terms. Except that

in film, as in philosophy, as in life, things get all jumbled up.

In a discussion of Welles, Deleuze claims that "he shows the impos­

sibility of any evocation, the becoming-impossible of evocation in a

still more fundamental state of time" CTI 114). Here the "regions of

the past no longer release recollection-images; they set free hallucina­

tory presences: women, books, little girls, homosexuality, paintings"

(TI 100). Welles does with cinema what Kafl<a did for literature: he

broke the consistency of recollection with the past. "Nothing is decid­

able any more: the coexisting sheets now juxtapose their segments"

(TI 114). At the end of the chapter, Deleuze says that Resnais continues

the disorientation effected by Welles. Resnais constructs undecidable

alternatives between sheets of the past. According to Deleuze, Resnais

attains a cinema of Thought, where the brain becomes a memory of

the world CTI 122). Feelings are sheets of the past, or ages of the world,

but "thought, the brain, is the set of non-localizable relations between

all these sheets, the continuity which rolls them up and unrolls them

like so many lobes, preventing them from becoming fixed in a death­

position" (TI 125). The essence of the image becomes thought, based

not on movement and space but on topology and time.

96 DElEUZE

Time is not linear; it is not a causal series of A . . . B . . . C. The

language Deleuze uses to talk about time implies an alternative, which

is more medieval, in which all time coexists as virtual present and

then is actualized in events. This is the reading Badiou gives, and it is

wrong. Deleuze is not interested in developing a metaphysical under­

standing of time as unchanging eternity; he interested in. building a

brain. Building a brain involves producing the event as time-image,

a pure image of time that cuts entities away from their automatic

sensory-motor linkages and reconstitutes them in another series or

another order.

In chapter 6, Deleuze claims that the pure form of time puts truth

in crisis, because it falsifies all of the natural sensory-motor linkages.

The powers of the false means that all movement is false movement:

"movement which is fundamentally decentered becomes false move­

ment" (TI 143) . This is the result of the "precession of simulacra;'

which Baudrillard proclaims and cinema films. If there is no natu­

ral movement, then all movement is false movement. The difference

between Deleuze and Baudrillard is that Deleuze does not cynically

celebrate the universality of the falsehood. It is only the creative artist

who knows how to work with the powers of the false to create truth.

The artist "is creator of truth, because truth is not achieved, formed,

or reproduced; it has to be created" (TI 146). Deleuze says that "the

power of the false is delicate, allowing itself to be recaptured by frogs

and scorpions. But it is the only chance for art or life" (TI 147).

How do we create truth using the power of the false? How can we

build a brain, whether in cinema or philosophy, society or nature? At

the conclusion of chapter 6, Deleuze introduces the third time-image,

distinct from the first two (the crystal-image and the recollection­

image), which are more concerned with the order of time. The third

time-image, what I am calling the time-image proper, "concerns the

series of time, which brings together the before and after in a becom­

ing, instead of separating them; its paradox is to introduce an endur­

ing interval in the moment itself" (TI 155). Together, the three time­

images "shatter the empirical continuation of time, the chronological

succession, the separation of the before and the after" (TI 155) . The

alternative to the standard chronological succession of time is not an

97 PRODUCING AN EVENT AS MACHINE, AS FOLD, AND AS IMAGE

eternal stasis of Parmenidean Being in which there is no movement

or change. This is a false dichotomy. It is the interval or interstice that

gives time its character and dynamism as thought.

In the explosive chapters 7 and 8, Deleuze develops his under­

standing of the interstice as the third time-image. Something forces

us to think, a shock that tells us that we are not yet thinking. This

shock of the unthinkable disturbs the material automatism of images

and forces a reorientation. The first response is the attempt to restore

equilibrium, to retrieve the movement-image and reconstitute it in

sensory-motor terms. If that project fails, then we try to reproduce it

in memory, as recollection. The attempt is to set up a parallel under­

standing that retains and makes sense of the shock. With the inter­

stice as the third time-image, "the question is no longer that of the

association or attraction of images. What counts is on the contrary the

interstice between two images: a spacing which means that each image

is plucked from the void and falls back into it" (TI 179). Deleuze says

that the process works as follows: "Given one image, another image

has to be chosen which will induce an interstice between the two. This

is not an operation of association, but of differentiation, as mathema­

ticians say, or of disappearance, as physicists say: given one potential,

another one has to be chosen, not any whatsoever, but in such a way

that a difference of potential is established between the two, which

will be productive of a third or of something new" (TI 179-80). This

choosing of images so as to induce an interstice is what it means to

think, and what it means to construct a brain.

The interstice is what links the images, creating a time-image

and therefore a brain, but the brain is produced. The difference of

potential that produces novelty should be understood along the

lines of the asymmetrical synthesis of the sensible in Difference

and Repetition. It is the difference in potential that generates the

intensity to close that gap, and the process of collapsing the inter­

stice produces the third. Because time is the interstice, the gap is

never fully closed; it is repeated differently, with a new interstice.

As Deleuze says, the third time-image is not ordinal but serial: it is

a series of images and the interstitial cuts between them that pro­

duces the time-image as event.

98 OELEUZE

The cinematic event occurs through "the method of BETWEEN,

'between two images', which does away with all cinema of the One"

(TI 180). The whole is not the "One-Being:' but "the constitutive

between -two of images" (TI 180). The interstice is the cinematic cut,

but the cut does not take place along preestablished lines of move­

ment or action; the cut as interstice both cuts and relinks images

in a novel way. The series of cuts constitutes a brain, "a topological

cerebral space" populated by "micro-fissues which were not simply

voids to be crossed, but random mechanisms introducing themselves

at each moment between the sending and receiving of an association

message" (TI 211). Our understanding of the synaptic brain, where

the interstitial gaps constitute the lived brain itself, provides Deleuze

with ammunition for his theorization of cinema and philosophical

thought. He pulls the interstice out from the series it links together

and offers it to us as a pure time-image; it operates as "the equivalent

of an irrational cut, which determines the non-commensurable rela­

tions between images" (TI 213).

At the end of chapter 8, the brain expands by means of these

cuts and relinkages, becoming a screen. "If the cut no longer forms

part of either of the two series of images which it determines:'

Deleuze repeats, then "there are only relinkages on either side" (TI

215 ) . If the cuts and relinkages continue to grow and expand, they

absorb the images and the brain becomes a screen, "a new brain

which would be at once the screen, the film stock and the camera,

each time membrane of the outside and the inside" (TI 215). The

screen echoes the membrane in The Fold, but what is crucial is how

the event is produced as a brain by means of the interstitial time­

image. We produce images directly by means of the time-image,

rather than indirectly by reference to movement. Building a brain

does not simply take place against an organic template of the rep­

resentational Whole to which the brain refers, and it does not exist

simply to relay thoughts along an inscribed circuit to produce pre­

scribed commands of action. Time is a new form of subjectivity that

replaces the nineteenth-century view of History in a grand sense,

but this teleological or progressive History is no longer believable

in our world today.

99 PRODUCING AN EVENT AS MACHINE, AS FOLD, AND AS IMAGE

We desperately need to be building a new brain for our selves and

our society, and this is an urgent political project. Cinema 2 is an

explosive and revolutionary book, and it has important implications

for politics, including answering the charge of Badiou and others that

Deleuze becomes an apolitical thinker. As Marrati claims, in his Cin­

ema books Deleuze is not tinkering around with aesthetic concepts by

going to the movies; rather, he is engaged in a serious "effort to think

agency anew, along different lines than those prescribed by liberalism

and historicism:'21

I break off my discussion of Cinema 2 here, however, and defer

considering its political effects until the last two chapters of this

books of this book. In the next two chapters, I will engage directly

with Badiou's philosophy as it manifests in Being and Event and Log­

ics of Worlds, respectively. In chapter 6 , I press further my critique

of Badiou in Being and Event, but in chapter 7 I also suggest ways

in which Badiou's philosophy in Logics of Worlds is more compatible

with Deleuze, partly by drawing on his less well-known work Theory

of the Subject.

100 nElEUZE

SIX BEING A SUBUME EVENT

ACC ORDING TO THE theoretical physicist Lee Smolin, OUr human

world is "incredibly big, slow and cold compared with the fundamen­

tal world" of particle physics as indicated by the Planck scale.! Alain Badiou's mathematical ontology is most fully developed in his book

Being and Event, which represents a significant new philosophical understanding of the world. But perhaps his thought here is ulti­mately too "big, slow and cold" because of his overemphasis on a static

and axiomatic form of mathematics. In this chapter, I read Badiou's

mathematical ontology as an elaboration of the Kantian sublime, in

which Badiou rigorously separates the mathematical sublime from the

dynamical sublime to eliminate all vestiges of subjectivity from Being.

The result is a frozen ontology. At the same time, the way that Badiou

characterizes the event in Being and Event can be correlated with the

dynamical sublime, as long as one recognizes that Badiou repudiates

any transcendental subject who would be capable of synthesizing ontol­ogy or prescribing the conditions for an event. Badiou purges the sub­ject from Being and Event, and this obscures the Theory of the Subject in his previous book. In some respects, Badiou is forced to compose his

follow-up to Being and Event, Logics of Worlds, to restore the subjective

aspect of existence and bridge the gap between the event-subject and

the set-theory ontology that precludes it. I will discuss both Theory of the Subject and Logics of Worlds in the next chapter.

So I am taking a break from my presentation of Deleuze and

returning to Badiou. This is a polemical book though, and thus I am

unfair to Badiou's philosophy. But I am using it, and in particular

Badiou's critique of Deleuze, as a foil against which to develop my

interpretation of Deleuze. So I am not interested in presenting or

appreciating Badiou on his own terms here, which does not mean that

I don't appreciate or admire his thought. Quite the contrary. I want to

engage Badiou's work more explicitly in this chapter and the following

one, not to do justice to it, but to show in more detail how it is mostly

incompatible with the understanding of Deleuze that I am assembling

in this book What is most problematic is the vision of ontology in

terms of set theory that informs Being and Event. I will suggest in the

next chapter, however, that a line of flight can be set up from Theory

of the Subject to Logics of Worlds that partially bypasses the frozen

ontology of Being and Event and is closer to Deleuze's dynamic ontol­

ogy, even if Badiou expresses his thinking more in terms of Hegel. In

this chapter, I will show how Badiou's mathematical ontology, which

functions as both the condition of possibility and the condition of

impossibility of an event, is eerily similar to a philosopher who deeply

informs Deleuze's work but that Badiou despises, namely Kant.z

We can say that Badiou's philosophy is quasi-Kantian insofar as it

is obsessed with the conditions of possibility for an event to occur, a

pure irruption of novelty beyond being. To think this chance, which is

for Badiou also the possibility of becoming a subject and the political

possibility of revolution, he is forced to formalize these conditions,

even to the point of their exclusion of an event. Nonetheless, there

is an event. Events happen; but they are not common, ordinary, or

everyday events that are saturated with the ideology of bourgeois cap­

italism. No, events must be dramatic and powerful. Events are mak­

ings and remakings of history and of human beings who are subject to

them. Being and Event represents the most extraordinary attempt to

formulate and formalize the conditions of ontology with the resources

of set theory, and to show where and how an event can happen, and if

it happens, even though we cannot entirely predict it.

Badiou struggles with and through this duality of ontology

and event throughout his career, and Being and Event is both his

104 BADIOU

masterpiece and his most pronounced dualistic expression of these

two terms. Logics of Worlds is written, in certain ways, with the same

purpose as Kant's in his writing of the third critique, the Critique

of Judgment: to bridge the gap that each one had previously set up

between pure and practical reason. But if Being and Event is Badiou's

Critique of Pure Reason, then Badiou's second critique was written

first, and it is called Theory of the Subject. The subject mostly disap­

pears in Being and Event, and but we should note that the subject as

elaborated in Theory of the Subject is basically assimilated to the event

in Being and Event, and presupposed in general for the entire book.

Before turning directly to Being and Event, I want to consider

Badiou's earlier work, The Concept of Model, and how a formal mathe­

matical understanding of model drives Badiou's work, even as he wants

to use it as a basis from which to derive a revolutionary subject, which

he does in Theory of the Subject. The Concept of Model is based on a

set of lectures Badiou gave in 1968 at the Ecole Normale Superieure.

Badiou was a student of Louis Althusser and a keen reader of Jacques

Lacan, whose seminar he also attended. In this book, Badiou defines

a mathematical understanding of model in a way that distinguishes it

from a more general logical or philosophical understanding of model.

Furthermore, Badiou wants to differentiate his conception of model

from the pervasive notion of structure in French thought, as well as

situate his understanding carefully with and against Althusser's Marx­

ist understanding of the relationship between science and ideology.

What is striking about the history of this book is that in the middle

of Badiou's lecture course the famous events of May 1968 broke out,

interrupting them. Badiou was suddenly completely involved in sup­

porting the students and workers in their protest against the Gaullist

regime. Here is an incredible dramatization of the contrast between

Badiou's interest in philosophical-mathematical formalization and his

deep engagement with radical Marxist and Maoist political struggle.

The event occurs, unforeseen in the midst of his project of theoreti­

cal formalization, and Badiou immediately acts out of fidelity to the

events of May ' 68, thereby becoming a revolutionary subject. A good

way to read Badiou's later work is to see him wrestling with the inter­

section of these two interests.

105 BE ING A SUBLIM E EVENT

In the book The Concept of Model, Badiou sets out his theses con­

cerning the notion of a mathematical model. He argues that we can

isolate and separate a "concept of mathematical logic" from a more

"descriptive notion of scientific activity:'3 When this specific math­

ematical concept of model is subsumed under a general philosophi­

cal category and thought in terms of the philosophy of science, it is

ideological. But we can liberate this mathematical concept and deploy

it in more practical, experimental, and revolutionary ways. Badiou is

suggesting that Althusser's opposition between science and ideology

is too broad and vague, and he wants to show where and how a spe­

cific scientific practice evades and resists bourgeois ideology.

In this brief, dense text, Badiou constructs the syntactic and

semantic elements of his concept of a mathematical model, includ­

ing rules of deduction, generalization, and separation. Importantly,

Badiou rejects the continuum hypothesis in this early work, claiming

that "a well-formed expression [should] be denumerable;' because "to

speak of a model is to exclude the possibility of a formal language

being continuous:'4 Badiou's concept of model is specifically math­

ematical and not logical because "an axiom is logical if it is valid for

every structure, and mathematical otherwise:'5 The problem with

logic, according to Badiou, is that it is too general and broad, and

it diffuses the specific force of a mathematical logic with this ideo­

logical generalization. Not until Logics of Worlds (2006) does Badiou

develop a positive, satisfactory understanding of logic, because until

that point he considered logic too linguistic and ideological. 6 In The

Concept of Model, for a formal mathematical model to work it requires

an exclusive specificity to become a weapon or a tool for practical and

materialistic experimentation. A proper mathematical model allows

for "the regions of mathematical science [to be] incorporated into the

material apparatuses where this science is put to the test:'7 A material­

ist use of science puts a finite mathematical model into practice for a

specific purpose.

Badiou sums up his achievement toward the end of the book: "In

other words, once clarified by dialectical materialism, the rigorous

examination of the scientific concept of model permits us to trace a

line of demarcation between two categorial (philosophical) uses of the

106 BADIOU

concept: one is positivist, and enslaves it to the (ideological) notion

of science as representation of the real; the other is materialist, and,

according to the theory of the history of sciences (a specific region of

historical materialism) indirectly readies its effective integration into

proletarian ideologY:'8 This materialist mathematical model becomes

bifurcated in Badiou's later work. On the one hand, the materialistic

and exclusive model is more explicitly politicized into a materialist

dialectic concerned with the composition of a proletarian subject in

Theory of the Subject. On the other hand, the formalized mathemati­

cal model of The Concept of Model gets elaborated into the set-theory

ontology of Being and Event. Of course the language and formalization

is much more extensive, but the crucial change in Badiou's philosophy

is the separating out of the subject from the realm of ontology and

the subject's identification with the event. In Being and Event, being

as inconsistent multiplicity is set up to exclude the event, but also in

a strange way to make it possible. The two concepts are constructed

with the greatest possible tension. Within the context of Badiou's

ontology, though, the main advance of Being and Event beyond The

Concept of Model comes with Badiou's understanding of the empty

set, or the void.

In Being and Event, Badiou claims that being qua being is math­

ematics, which is best expressed in terms of contemporary set theory.

The postulates of set theory can be encapsulated in nine canonical

axioms: extensionality, subsets, union, separation, replacement, the

void, foundation, the infinite, and choice. These axioms, as Peter Hall­

ward explains, "postulate, by clearly defined steps, the existence of an

actually infinite multiplicity of distinct numerical elements:'9 Philoso­

phy after Heidegger must grapple with and properly clarify this onto­

logical situation using the tools of "the mathematio-Iogical revolution

of Frege-Cantor:'l0 The ontological situation can then be related to a

modern, post-Cartesian understanding of the subject, and it is the

task of philosophy to think this transition, which is the impossible

passage from Being to event.

So for Badiou, the fundamental insight is that "mathematics is

ontology" (BE 4). Philosophy is oriented toward understanding

ontology as pure mathematics using the most sophisticated tools of

107 BEING A SUBLIME EVENT

mathematical formalization. This is why Badiou makes use of compli­

cated mathematical equations and theorems throughout the course of

the book. I don't think that it is essential to be able to follow the equa­

tions and notations, however, to comprehend the basic ideas.

Being and Event proceeds according to a logic of axiomatic deci­

sions. The first move is to decide in favor of the multiple over against

the One. If the One is not, or is derivative of the many, then there

exists a primary multiplicity of being that cannot be directly thought.

To think being, we have to present it in a situation, which means that

we have to subtract from this fundamental multiplicity an element

that will "count-as-one" in order to present it. For being to present

itself in a situation, it must subtract from this multiplicity by means of

a procedure known as counting, whereby a state of a situation "counts­

as-one" a technically infinite state of affairs. The "count -as-one" is the

condition according to which "the multiple can be recognized as mul­

tiple" (BE 29) . Multiplicity as such characterizes mathematical ontol­

ogy, but it cannot be presented directly.

The presentation allows for a stability, a structure, or a situation.

A state is a later re-presentation of this original presentation: "the

State always re-presents what has already been presented" (BE 106). Badiou claims that "there is no structure of being" (BE 26), but that

"the ontological situation [is] the presentation of presentation" (BE

27). What ultimately exists, the real as real or the thing in itself, is an

inconsistent and unpresentable multiplicity. But we can present this

multiplicity by means of the one, which does not exist, but functions

to separate out an element of the multiple to allow us to think it.

Set theory is that formulation of mathematical logic that allows us

to think consistent and infinite multiplicities, and set-theory ontology

provides us a way to think being as being. Cantor's set theory enables

us to think consistent multiplicity as a set (BE 42), even though Can­

tor himself wanted to ground his set-theory ontology in an absolute

infinity that can be named God. Badiou, an avowed atheist, discounts

Cantor's theological solution, and opts instead for the void, or the null

set. The notion of the void provides the consistency of the thinking

of being in mathematical terms because it indicates the nothing that

every multiple is a multiple of. If we choose not to name the void as

108 BADIOU

one, the alternative is to name the void as multiple, which means that any presentation of being as a structured or consistent multiplicity has to separate itself from the void. The void is the means by which sub­traction occurs, because it is a set to which no members belong. As Frederiek Depoortere explains, "what is named by 'the void' is unpre­sentable and inaccessible, while as named by 'the void: it is neverthe­less presented and accessible:'ll The void is the subtractive suture to being that enables the count-as-one to present being as a consistent or thinkable multiple (BE 67). The void is an empty set, the null set 0, which is "the unpresentable point of being of any presentation" (BE 77).

The notion of the void is crucial for Badiou's understanding of being, because the void allows for the excess of inclusion over belong­ing: "inclusion is in irremediable excess of belonging" (BE 85). The theorem of the point of excess means that for any subset of a set, there is always at least one member that is included in the set which does not belong to that set. This theorem pertains to what are called power sets. In the case of finite sets, a power set, or the set of parts or subsets that can be included in the elements of that set, can be calcu­lated in exact quantitative terms. But for infinite sets, the calculation of a power set is not possible; "the quantity of a powerset is literally undecidable:'12 As Oliver Feltham notes, "for Badiou, there is thus an unassignable gap between presentation [belonging] and representa­tion [inclusion] : there are incalculably more ways of re-presenting presented multiplicities than there are such multiples:'I3 An even tal multiplicity differs from an ordinary multiplicity precisely insofar as it includes elements that do not belong to it as a member of a particular set. Badiou puts it another way: "no multiple is capable of forming-a­one out of everything it includes" (BE 85). The fact that a set includes more parts than are capable of being represented prefigures an event but it does so by inversion.

The distinction between belonging (to a set) and inclusion (as a part of a set, or a submultiple) emerges by means of the void. The void accounts for the fact that there is a submultiple that is a part which cannot be represented as belonging to a situation. As Badiou says, "there are always sub-multiples which, despite being included in a situation as compositions of multiplicities, cannot be counted in

109 BEING A SUBLIME EVENT

that situation as terms, and which therefore do not exist" (BE 97) . This

inexistence indicates the place of the void, which is necessary for the

constitution of an evental site.

An even tal site inaugurates a form of historicity. Historicity "is

founded on singularity, on the 'on-the-edge-of-the-void; on what

belongs without being included" (BE 185). Although the event con­

stitutes a certain break with being, it is in a way prefigured or condi­

tioned already within being, because what becomes the event emerges

out of the ontological excess of inclusion over belonging. In fact,

the event is precisely the reversal of this excess, that is, a relation of

belonging or self-belonging that exceeds inclusion in any situation.

This means that Badiou is not ultimately a dualist in Being and Event,

and that furthermore the event is not an irruption of a mystical or

transcendent reality. Badiou is interested in distinguishing the event

from being, however, in order to be able to show how an event cannot

simply be prescribed or predicted from within being. He states that

the composition of the evental site "is only ever a condition of being

for the event;' and that "there is no event save relative to a historical

situation, even if a historical situation does not necessarily produce

events" (BE 179).

So rather than a strict dualism, an event emerges out of and is

prefigured already by an inconsistent state of being. At the same time,

an event is described as reversing this excess of inclusion over belong­

ing. With mathematical ontology, we have an infinite or indefinite

multiplicity, because there are always parts that are included within a

set that cannot be presented as belonging within a set, but only delin­

eated as a situation by an operation of subtraction. We count-as-one

an indefinite multiplicity to present a situation, which is then repre­

sented as the state of a situation. With an event, however, belonging

exceeds inclusion. That is, an event is characterized as a phenomenon

where the relation of belonging or self-belonging takes precedence

over its inclusion in any state or situation. Badiou says that "one can­

not refer to a supposed inclusion of the event in order to conclude in

its belonging" (BE 202) . A multiple can only be recognized as an event

by means of an intervention that is not included within the situation.

"An intervention consists;' he claims, "in identifying that there has

110 BAOIOU

been some undecidability, and in deciding its belonging to the situ­

ation:' Rather than a simple reversal, it might be better to describe

an event as a torsion or twisting of this relationship of inclusion and

belonging, to use a term from Theory of the Subject that is discussed

in the following chapter. Here the excess of inclusion of parts over the

belonging of elements in a set gets twisted up in such a way that the

excessive parts fuse into a kind of belonging that irrupts in a kind of

chain reaction. An event is a bomb.

Most of Being and Event involves the elaboration of Badiou's fun­

damental ontology, which is developed as a contrast to or the back­

ground of an event, which occurs apart from any prescribed condi­

tions of possibility. According to Badiou, "with the event we have the

first concept external to the field of mathematical ontology" (BE 184) .

As Bruno Bosteels writes, "ontologically speaking, self-belonging

is even the only feature-condemned in set theory-that describes

the event. On the other, though, it is tied to the situation by way of

the evental site whose elements it mobilizes and consequently raises

from minimal to maximal existence. And of the evental site, perhaps

symptomatically, there is no matheme:'14 So the event is distinguished

from ontology by its excess of belonging over inclusion, but being and

event do not constitute a dualism. If this is the case, then why does

Badiou privilege the term event to such an extent? Because he wants

to make the subject emerge out of an event, rather than dependent on

any kind of predetermined structure of being. The excess of inclusion

over belonging, or parts over elements, sets up a lmot or ontological

impasse that constitutes what Bosteels calls "the closest site where an

event, as a contingent and unforeseeable supplement to the situation,

raises the void of being in a kind of insurrection, and opens a possible

space of subjective fidelitY:'ls A subject becomes subjectivized out of

fidelity to an event, rather than existing already at the level of being.

At the conclusion of Being and Event, Badiou claims that his break

with Lacan consists in dispensing with the necessary presupposition

"that there were always some subjects" (BE 434).

Why does Badiou want to establish being on a mathematical basis

that does not presuppose subjectivity? I suggest mainly because he

wants to avoid the subjectivism that plagues modern philosophy and

111 BEING A SUBLIME EVENT

epistemology with its attendant relativism. As Quentin Meillassoux

puts it, insofar as metaphysics accepts the situation of thought and

being as one of correlation to consciousness, it ends in contemporary

skepticism, which is "a religious end of metaphysics:'l6 Here thinking

becomes fideism, since there is no alternative to the finitude of reason

because of the finitude of the reasoner. Mathematics is infinite rather

than finite, so it represents a viable avenue to truth that avoids the

subjective dead end.

Meillassoux sets up his alternative to strong correlationism by

showing how this correlationism is a consequence of Kantian philoso­

phy. Meillassoux returns to Hume to propose a solution that involves

a radicalization of contingency. Building upon Badiou, and express­

ing his ideas as a consequence of Cantor, Meillassoux claims that

"what the set-theoretical axiomatic demonstrates is at the very least

a fundamental uncertainty regarding the totalizability of the possi­

ble:'l7 This means that we cannot extend aleatory or chance reasoning

beyond the objects given in experience to encompass "the very laws

that govern our universe:'l8 Meillassoux avoids Kantian correlation­

ism by claiming that the very laws of reason and being are themselves

contingent but stable, and that "it is precisely this super-immensity of

the chaotic virtual that allows the impeccable stability of the visible

world:'l9 Some metaphysicians might feel that this is a high price to

pay to overcome the subjectivism and fideism implied by correlation­

ism, but it is a strikingly original theory.

Like Meillassoux, Badiou has antitheological reasons to privilege

mathematics. For him, mathematics fully consummates the death of

God, because it develops a secular understanding of the infinite. The

fact that Badiou privileges the void rather than the One means that

"God is dead at the heart of presentation:'20 This is why Badiou claims,

against Cantor, that set theory precludes the absolute infinite that

Cantor wants to posit as God.21 Infinite multiplicity disjoined from the

tyranny of the One allows mathematics to adequately express being.

Badiou criticizes Romanticism in its nineteenth- and twentieth­

century forms (which includes Heidegger and post-Heideggerian­

ism), because Romanticism embraces subjective finitude and valorizes

only a poetic expression of thought. According to Badiou, "Romantic

112 BADIOU

philosophy localizes the infinite in the temporalization of the concept

as a historical envelopment of finitude:'22 Badiou opposes the "pathos

of finitude" to the "banality" of mathematics because mathemati­

cal infinity properly understood prompts no religious feeling on the

level of the subject. He wants to avoid and eliminate the pathos of the

sublime precisely by recourse to mathematical plurality that creates a

situation of indifferent infinity.

Badiou's complex reading of set theory in Being and Event is intim­

idating to nonmathematicians, but his philosophical use of transfinite

number theory represents a fascinating appropriation of Kant's notion

of the mathematical sublime that is purged of any pathos of feeling.

Meillassoux helps us understand the stakes of Badiou's mathematical

ontology because he deploys mathematics against the implications of

Kantianism, and it is interesting that Being and Event lacks a chapter

on Kant, since it includes chapters on many other significant modern

philosophers. My reading of Badiou's mathematical ontology, ironi­

cally, is that it is a radical interpretation of the Kantian mathematical

sublime. That is, Badiou is adamantly opposed to the subjective quali­

ties of pathos that are engendered by the Kantian sublime, but his

understanding of a mathematical infinity that cannot be synthesized

into a one reproduces the structure of Kant's mathematical sublime,

stripped of any subjective faculties.

In the Critique of Judgment, Kant contrasts the mathematical

with the dynamical sublime after elaborating a critical conception

of beauty. The judgment of beauty consists in a free play or accord

between the faculties of imagination and understanding when con­

templating a beautiful object. The subject forms a judgment of taste

based upon a feeling of purposiveness stimulated by the object, and

this judgment lacks objective scientific content. At the same time, a

judgment of taste is universally applicable, and can be ascribed to any

rational being.

The transition from beauty to sublime occurs when the object

arouses discord or purposivelessness rather than purposiveness. The

mathematical sublime occurs when a mind's faculty of representa­

tion attempts to represent an infinite magnitude in a finite presenta­

tion, which outstrips the ability to comprehend what it apprehends.

113 BEING A SUBL IME EVENT

Imagination can apprehend to infinity, Kant declares, but when it

leaves behind its fragile accord with understanding in the judgment

of beauty, imagination threatens to burst the bounds of the finite rep­

resenting subject, which is why reason must intervene and force a

presentation. This presentation fails, which constitutes a breaking of

imagination, but attests to the supreme power of reason in its ability to

put an unruly imagination on triaL Kant says: "What happens is that

our imagination strives to progress toward infinity, while our reason

demands absolute totality as a real idea, and so the imagination, our

power of estimating the magnitude of things in the world of sense, is

inadequate to that idea. Yet this inadequacy itself is the arousal in us

of the feeling that we have within us a supersensible pOWd'23 Imagi­

nation outstrips the ability of understanding to comprehend its appre­

hension to infinity. So reason has to step in and force the situation by

demanding the presentation of an infinite apprehension in a single

finite image. This is similar to what Badiou calls the count -as-one, or

the representation of a situation. The sublime apprehension or intu­

ition is of an inconsistent multiplicity, and Kant specifically qualifies

it as mathematical because it is a "logical estimation of magnitude:'24

Even if Kant is operating in much more straightforward linear terms

compared with modern mathematics and magnitudes, as well as pro­

cesses of understanding, he is getting at the same paradox as Badiou.

The main difference is that for Kant, the sublime remains fundamen­

tally aesthetic and romantic, because it is a product of the operation

of a subject's faculties.

When confronted with an object that induces a sublime judgment,

Kant says that "the mind feels agitated"; it experiences "a rapid alter­

nation of repulsion from, and attraction to, one and the same object:'

Ultimately, "the thing is, as it were, an abyss in which the imagination

is afraid to lose itself'25 The agitation or vibration that unsettles the

mind induces the pathos of finitude, that is, the finitude of a finite sub­

ject attempting to comprehend an infinite phenomenon. The subject

experiences pain, purposivelessness, and powerlessness in response to

an object experienced as sublime, but she also experiences a powerful

pleasure in reason's ability to lift or elevate the subject above the object

in contemplation, which is the essence of the dynamical sublime.

114 BADIOU

The dynamical sublime operates in a similar way to the mathemat­

ical sublime, but here the key issue is might or power, the imagina­

tion's ability to reckon with the overwhelming force of nature (such

as a waterfall), and reason's ability to elevate the mind above such a

conflict. Kant says that "when in an aesthetic judgment we consider

nature as a might that has no dominance over us, then it is dynami­

cally sublime:'26 The dynamical sublime consists in an elevation over

nature or being that attests to reason's superior might in a moral

manner.

I am arguing three things:

(1) Kant is already conflating the dynamical sublime with the

mathematical sublime in his discussion of the mathematical sublime,

because he is describing the power of an object to induce a discord

within and among the faculties of the human subject and the power of

reason to force imagination to admit its failure to present an infinite

intuition. That is, for any experience to be determined as sublime, it

must also be dynamical, even if it is also mathematical. So the math­

ematical sublime is a special case of the sublime in general, which is

better characterized as dynamical, as concerned with the might and

power of nature vs. the human mind.

(2) Badiou strips out the mathematic sublime from its moorings

in the dynamical sublime and its conflict of the mental faculties.

His mathematical ontology is essentially a variety of the mathemati­

cal sublime purged of dynamic subjectivity. Kant cannot envision

an ontological sublime phenomenon without relation to a subject.

Badiou expresses precisely this thought in the language of set theory

by characterizing being as an inconsistent multiplicity that cannot be

represented in a situation without losing something that is included

within it as a part. The Kantian abyss is here an operative void that

subtracts a presented situation. The irreducible excess of inclusion

over belonging repeats the irreconcilable conflict between imagina­

tion and understanding that Kant obscures in the third critique (and

which also appears in the Critique of Pure Reason).27

(3) In Being and Event, the event functions as a quasi-dynamical

sublime, but this is more subtle and less apparent because the subject

115 BEING A SUBLIME EVENT

emerges out of fidelity to an event. Badiou wants to reverse the prior­

ity of the Kantian transcendental subject, so that the subject does not

precede or prescribe either being or an event. At the same time, the

dynamism of the event becomes or replaces the subject, which was

worked out in his previous book, Theory of the Subject.

The dynamical sublime works on a model of elevation, and here is

where the idea of the sublime leads directly to Hegel's notion of subla­

tion, with its conception of preserving at a higher level. Badiou, how­

ever, cuts off the mathematical sublime and radically purges it of any

relationship to subjectivity. The elevation of the dynamical sublime

is proscribed, but I am arguing that the dynamism of the dynami­

cal sublime becomes horizontalized in and as the event in Being and

Event. Here the event is ecstatic, or stands out from being in a way that

retains the shadow of the dynamical sublime even though it is not a

transcendental operation.

According to Kant, in the analytic of the sublime reason is forced to

intervene to resolve the conflict between understanding and imagina­

tion, because imagination gets out of control and proceeds to infinity.

Badiou wants to incorporate infinity into pure reason in an asubjec­

tive or neutral way, but he is Kantian in a sense because he feels that

it is necessary to break the romantic imagination with the discipline

of formal-rational mathematical thought. The pathos-ridden subject

elevates himself along with his presumption of nature, whereas the

rigor of mathematical ontology as formulated by Badiou brings him

back to earth and grounds him in a historical situation.

Badiou says that the fundamental law of the subject is forcing (BE

410) . Drawing on the work of Paul Cohen, Badiou claims that "despite

being subtracted from the saying of being (mathematics), the subject

is in possibility of being" (BE 410). The subject comes into being in

accordance with the force of a sublime event by means of a generic

extension that produces truth. The subject of truth "forces veracity at

the point of the indiscernible" (BE 411). Truth is constituted by this

forcing of the subject onto itself out of fidelity to an event.

The event surpasses ontology, which is Badiou's name for what Kant

calls understanding, although it conforms to reason, which is Kant's

116 BADIOU

name for what Badiou calls philosophy. Imagination is incapable of

thinking or producing the event. Events happen, however, at the sub­

lime edge of the void where the abyss threatens to swallow formalized

ontology. Badiou's thought, however, like Kant's, allows us to build

a bridge across the gulf between pure mathematical-ontological and

practical-historical reason. Kant's problem is that the abyss of the sub­

lime threatens the entire edifice of his Critique of Pure Reason, because

understanding comes to ruin and Kant, taking the standpoint of Rea­

son, blames imagination for not being able to do what understand­

ing is supposed to do in the analytic of taste and what understanding

clearly does in the Transcendental Deduction at the heart of the first

critique. Badiou wants nothing to do with Kant or with the Kantian

sublime, but his thought in Being and Event repeats it in an uncanny

way. Just as in Kant's judgments of beauty, there are "certain state­

ments which cannot be demonstrated in ontology, and whose veracity

in the situation cannot be established" because they are not objective

in Kantian terms (BE 428) . At the same time, by what Kant calls a

subjective universality, these statements "are veridical in the generic

extension" or by analogy in terms of the Critique of Judgment (BE 428).

At the "point where language fails, and where the Idea is interrupted;'

or where understanding wavers, and where imagination spins out of

control, the Subject is brought face to face with the sublime event that

it is. "What it opens upon is an un-measure in which to measure itself;

because the void, originally, was summoned" (BE 430).

Kant's reading of the sublime is from the standpoint of a subject,

which is why the sublime carries what Badiou calls "a pathos of fini­

tude" in an essay included in his Theoretical Writings. On the other

hand, Badiou's method of subtraction offers an alternative interpreta­

tion of the sublime. According to Badiou, "the madness of subtraction

constitutes an act . . . the act of a truth;' but this is a truth of math­

ematical being devoid of any subjectivity.28 Badiou emphasizes sub­

traction as opposed to sublimation or sublation, but I am interpreting

each of these concepts-subtraction (Badiou), sublimation (Freud),

and sublation (Regel)-as varieties of the Kantian sublime.

Badiou subtracts the mathematical sublime from the dynami­

cal sublime, with its pathos of finitude, but more radically from any

117 BEING A SUBLIME EVENT

association with a subject's faculties of representation. Cut free from a

subject, mathematical subtraction, the core of Kant's mathematical sub­

lime, which indicates the excessiveness of infinity in relation to finite

representation, becomes the basis for the elaboration of a fundamental

ontology based 6n infinite multiplicity. The unity of transcendental sub­

jectivity refers to the one who synthesizes or subjectivizes the multiple,

or what Kant calls the manifold. But Badiou reverses this relationship

with his idea of subtraction: subject emerges as an effect of subtraction

from the multiple/being, the count-as-one. And the event occurs as the

excess of belonging to a situation beyond what can be included in it,

which is a (heterodox in relation to Kant) dynamically sublime event

that precedes and produces a subject who can be faithful to it.

In another essay from his Theoretical Writings, Badiou discusses

love and castration. He claims that for Lacan, love of truth is "purely

and simply the love of castration."29 Castration means that truth

emerges from out of the void, which is an emptiness rather than a

plenitude. Upon hearing the word castration, most readers conjure

up an emotional response, but Badiou wants to dispel any affect and

think castration as subtraction without any pathos. He writes, "castra­

tion thereby manifests itself stripped of the horror that it inspires as

a pure structural effect."3o There is something extremely cold about

Badiou's thought, because he wants to reduce or eliminate the impli­

cations of pathos, horror, and anxiety at the level of ontology and

subjectivity. This procedure produces an austerity that empties con­

ceptions such as castration, subtraction, and the void of their roman­

tic connotations, and it contrasts with the style of someone like Slavoj Zizek, whose work plays up these more affective aspects of reality.

The only way that philosophy can be adequate to being and con­

front truth is to acknowledge truth as castration, as subtraction from

an indeterminate and unmanageable multiplicity. Infinite multiplicity

cannot be controlled and ruled by the One; the One or the count-as­

one emerges out of infinity by means of the subtractive void. "Truth is

bearable for thought:' Badiou claims, "only in so far as one attempts to

grasp it in what drives its subtractive dimension, as opposed to seek­

ing its plenitude or complete saying:'3J Infinite presentation is what

Kant calls a manifold, and what Kant calls synthesis is actually for

118 BADIOU

Badiou a subtraction, a count-as-one. The problem that Kant comes

up against in the mathematical sublime is the fact that human under­

standing cannot conceptualize infinite multiplicity as infinite multi­

plicity, and this indicates a limitation of human thinking (although

Kant is careful to blame imagination solely for this inadequacy). For

Kant (and here is where the dynamical sublime comes in), the inability

to process a mathematical magnitude in its infinite multiplicity attests

to a power of human reason to discipline imagination and elevate

human thinking about nature. For Badiou, the power of human rea­

son is split between the speculative power of mathematical reasoning,

which is able to think being as being but unable to represent it without

reducing or subtracting from it, and the practical dynamic ability of a

subject to become herself by means of fidelity to an event.

I am reading Kant into Badiou in a provocative way to show where

and how Badiou's project in Being and Event can be seen as post­

Kantian in relation to the Kantian sublime, even as he opposes and

eliminates transcendental subjectivity. Where Badiou most radically

departs from Kant is in his rejection of the privileged interiority of

the faculties of the subject, which are obviously reintroduced in the

dynamic sublime, which induces in the subject a profound awareness

of her finitude. I think this radical purging of subjectivity is fascinat­

ing, at least in the efforts of a renewal of thinking beyond the limits

of relativism and subjectivism as they have become instantiated in

many theoretical expressions. By relegating the subject to an effect of

the count-as-one, or representation, the subject is decentered from

the fundamental workings of being as being. At the same time, in his

bracketing of subjectivity, Badiou freezes being so that it conforms to

his mathematical ontology.

To shift from the frozen ontology of his masterwork, Being and

Event, to his follow-up, Logics of Worlds, as read through Theory of the

Subject is a lund of recovery of subjectivity for ontology, as we will see

in the next chapter. If subjectivity reappears at the level of ontology,

then substance cannot be thought apart from subject, as Hegel asserts,

and I would argue that this move renews the question of the dynami­

cal sublime. What if we cannot completely separate the mathematical

from the dynamical sublime, but have to think both together? And

119 BEING A SUBLIME EVENT

what if we think ontology as the mathematical and the dynamical

sublime together from a perspective radically de-void of subjectiv­

ism but not subjectivity understood broadly as the self-organization

of complex self-adaptive systems? Such a reading would push Badiou

in a more physical, if not meta-physical, direction. If ontology is more

dynamic and less static or frozen, then perhaps being must be thought

not in terms of formal mathematics but in the post-Einsteinian terms

of energy transformation. In his popular writings, the theoretical

physicist Smolin argues that the lesson of Einstein today is that time

and space are not background-dependent; they evolve. The interrela­

tions and iterations of quantum loops or what Roger Penrose calls

spin networks define space and time.32

We desire to fix space and time to a background (as in Newtonian

metaphysics), just as we desire to formalize mathematical proposi­

tions as ontology (as in Badiou), just as we desire to find the basic

building blocks of reality and name them (as in the standard model

of subatomic particle physics). But what if what is really real about

being is energy transformation, and what if we have not fully under­

stood the implications of relativity theory? We desperately need new

ways of thinking about energy in both theoretical and practical ways,

and the work of Alain Badiou helps philosophers get past some of the

impasses of contemporary subjectivism. But ultimately his result, in

Being and Event at least, is too frozen. We need to be able to think the

sublimity of energy in mathematical and dynamical terms, beyond

Kant but in a way that acknowledges the avenues for thinking that

he opened up. Kant is relevant not merely as a foil or as a caricature

of transcendental idealist subjectivity, but as part of what Deleuze

calls an effects-series, from a Kant effects-series to an Einstein effects­

series to a Badiou effects-series.

In chapter 8 I will lay out my understanding of Deleuze in terms of

energy, ontology, and physics in a way that extends beyond Badiou's

ontology in Being and Event as well as Badiou's efforts to fix Deleuze's

philosophy in Deleuze: The Clamor of Being. But first I will go back

and consider Theory of the Subject and Logics of Worlds to demon­

strate another reading of Badiou that is perhaps more compatible

with Deleuze.

120 BAD IOU

SEVE�] BEING A SUBJECT IN A TRANSCENDENTAL WORLD

I N T HIS C HA P T E R , I step back from the dizzying heights of Being

and Event to consider how Badiou composes the subject in his

extraordinary work that precedes Being and Event, Theory of the Sub­

ject. Theory of the Subject shows how Badiou constructs his under­

standing of a dynamic subjectivity, which is largely obscured by the

notion of event in Being and Event. From Theory of the Subject, I want

to largely bypass Being and Event in order to suture the subject of The­

ory of the Subject to the vision of transcendental logic and particularly

Badiou's understanding of an object in Logics of Worlds. In Theory

of the Subject, Badiou's multiple logics are still too formal and axi­

omatic compared with Deleuze's logic, but they are more subtle and

flexible than in Being and Event, and ultimately more compelling than

Badiou's ontology. Taking a line of flight from Theory of the Subject

to Logics of Worlds and largely bypassing Being and Event allows us

to construct a Badiouian logic that is more dynamic and less static, a

logic that is more compatible with Deleuze's logic even if there remain

important differences.

In Theory of the Subject, Badiou constitutes a subject of history, the

proletariat (Marx, Mao), by way of a critical encounter with Lacan's

psychoanalytic thinking of subjectivity. Badiou's method is that of a

dialectical materialism where the essential operation is division, a

Two, as opposed to a metaphysics of the One. For Badiou, "dialectics

states that there is the Two, and intends to infer the One from it as

a moving division:'l Deleuze, however, posits the multiple, "which is

never more than a semblance since positing the multiple amounts to

presupposing the One as substance and excluding the Two from it"

(TS 22) . Deleuze figures philosophy as a "process without a subject"

because the "multiple is the pinnacle of the One" (TS 23). Badiou can­

not think the multiple other than as One until he gets to Being and

Event, where the multiple as multiple is an inconsistent and literally

unthinkable multiplicity from which a one is subtracted. But it is the

intrinsic division of the One that creates the conditions for an authen­

tic subject in Theory of the Subject.

The subject does not preexist the process of its emergence; it is

not a pregiven entity. In some respects, we can use Deleuze's distinc­

tion between molar and molecular processes to think about Badiou

here. Badiou is interested in the molar becoming of a political and

revolutionary subject, and he establishes the quasi conditions for the

subject's emergence as an event. Here mathematics is not segregated

so strictly from the process of the becoming of a subject, but plays a

fundamental role in this process, as we shall see. Badiou claims that

"there can be no molecular critique of the molar concept of politics:'2

Deleuze posits and thinks a molecular level "underneath" the molar

subject, and in Difference and Repetition as well as Capitalism and

Schizophrenia he is more concerned with presubjective individuating

processes. According to my interpretation of Deleuze, however, we

should not simply oppose the molecular to the molar, even though

Deleuze prefers the molecular level of thinking and being. Badiou's

effort to compose a molar subjectivity is a genuine event, because

it diagonally (dialectically) engages with molecular mathematics in

terms of set theory toward the end of the book, even if this set theory

is not developed into the full-blown ontology of Being and Event.

Theory of the Subject is more dynamic in its dialectical materialism,

whereas Being and Event freezes being in order to separate it from the

event that irrupts out of it.

In Theory of the Subject, Badiou accepts the situation set up by

Lacan in Lacan's late work of the 1970S, which concerns the project

of formalization and the notion of the real as the limit or impasse of

122 BADIOU

formalization. Badiou says that "we need a theory of the pass of the

real, in the breach opened up by formalization. Here, the real is no

longer only what can be lacking from its place, but what passes through

by force" (TS 23). As Bruno Bosteels, the translator and most acute

reader of Theory of the Subject, points out, "the subject 'is' nothing but

this gap in the structure, the fissure between the real and its impos­

sible symbolization:'3 Although the first section of the book explic­

itly engages with Hegel, Badiou reads Hegel in and through Lacan

because he wants to set up an analogy between Marx and Hegel and

Badiou and Lacan. Lacan's formalization of the real and the subject of

the unconscious offers a structural dialectic. This structural dialectic

is accepted by Badiou and then pushed or forced through an opening

toward a more historical or dynamic dialectic. Lacan forecloses the

subject by means of the structural dialectic, which prevents a genuine

subject from emerging. This can also be seen in Lacan's rejection of

the significance of May '68, which is an authentic political event for

Badiou, as Bosteels points out.4

So Badiou accepts Lacan's structural dialectic in order to apply his

law of division or splitting, where he divides the dialectic into "its

structural aspect and its historical aspect. The side of place (the sym­

bolic, in the Lacanian terminology) and the side of force (the real)"

(TS 114). The symbolic, static place and the dynamic real that forces

a subject are "two sides of one and the same reversible blade;' but

it is the emergence of the second out of the first that makes Theory

of the Subject such an important work. A subject emerges out of the

gap between the symbolic and the real by means of a profound tor­

sion. "The torsion of the true designates a circularity without a unified

plane, a discontinuous curve" that interrupts the straightforward rep­

etition of the Whole (TS 123) . This is not a Deleuzian repetition of dif­

ference, but a more conventional repetition of identity. Badiou appeals

to torsion to make a difference, to make the subject by means of an

event, "not in the sense of an inversion, but rather a slanting: what we

saw as straight, we must see as twisted" (TS 124). As Bosteels explains,

"this is without a doubt the most single most important moment in

all of Badiou's Theory of the Subject: a symptomatic twist, or torsion,

of the subject upon the impasses of its own structural placement:'5

123 BEING A SUBJECT IN A TRANSCENDENTAL WORLD

The twisting of the subject out of place consists of a topology that ·constitutes the destruction of an originally structured place (TS 131).

A subject is made possible by means of a structural lack, which

Badiou takes from Lacan. This is the lack of desire, the gap between

what a person wants and what she has or can do. Lack is fundamental

for Badiou's structural dialectic, and the historical dialectic emerges

from or twists out of that gap in a process of destruction of the

placed structure. Badiou takes over and divides Lacan's ontology. He

accepts the lack and forces its destruction, which is the revolution that

enables a subject to occur. An event is a grand event, a molar event,

and Badiou is always concerned with macropolitics, never with what

Deleuze and Guattari call micropolitics. A subject is a big deal; it is a

revolutionary communist subject, not just any subject with his private

and personal desires and dreams.

Badiou sets out his thinking in fours. He doubles dichotomies

and then repeats them differently. He summarizes Lacan's thought in

terms of "four theses, the system of which covers the four names of

truth (coherence, repetition, totality, torsion)" (TS 136). Totality is the

concept of the whole, which is imaginary, while repetition occurs by

means of a fundamental lack because we repeat the empty place that

structures repetition. The phallus provides coherence or consistency

for the entire process by means of signification, while the subject

is "in eclipse;' produced out of the torsion of a vanishing term that

twists on itself.

The force of torsion rips the subject apart from its support in sym­

bolic structure and law, and gives it to itself as subject. Badiou says

that "the subject-support is inescapably divided between the part of

itself that is subjected to repetition (since it is placed) and that part

that interrupts, blocks, and brings about the nonrepeatable" (TS 142).

The subject is grounded in lack but becomes itself by interrupting this

lack and forcing the destruction of its place. The dialectic of lack and

destruction produces a subject. In the second, destructive moment,

"the subject placed as force can force the excess over the place" (TS

157). Out of this process of destruction, Badiou articulates four fun­

damental concepts of the subject: anxiety, the superego, courage,

and justice.

124 BADIOU

Anxiety is the awareness of lack, of a distance between where

the subject is placed and an intuition of its excess over or beyond

that structural placement. The superego names the entity that causes

destruction, whether it is the State against which one revolts or the

dictatorship with which one identifies in order to revolt. There is an

agent of destruction, which is the superego, but like anxiety, the super­

ego is a necessary part of the process of subject formation that must

be overcome. The two positive concepts of the subject are courage and

justice. Courage is the determination to continue, not to give up or

give in no matter what. Courage is the commitment to the dialectical

process of scission, "the destructive tipping of the scales in which the

truth is sustained in its division" (TS 174). Justice emerges as a result

of the production of the subject. Justice "recomposes the space under

the mark of a law which henceforth is lacking in that which attaches

to it" (TS 174). This means that recomposition is not simply reconsti­

tution of a law of place or structure, but the elaboration of a "nonlaw

as law" that adheres to the continual division and disruption of fixed

place (TS 175). Each of these concepts possesses a matheme that I will

not reproduce here (see TS 174).

A theory of the subject is dialectical and materialist. Badiou writes

Theory of the Subject during the late 1970S, when Marxism and Com­

munism are on the defensive in world affairs, both practically and

theoretically. As we will see in chapter 9, Deleuze and Guattari are

absorbed with a similar problem, which is how to generate and sup­

port revolutionary anticapitalist and antistatist thinking and practice.

Badiou claims that "to defend Marxism today means to defend a

weakness. We must practice Marxism" (TS 182). To practice Marxism

means to practice a new materialism over against all philosophical

and political idealisms. Idealism is "the obligatory language of con­

servation;' which necessarily "subordinates nature to the concept"

(TS 184-85). This idealistic conservatism insists upon the indivisibil­

ity oflaw and political practice in order to prevent the interruption of

power of the ruling elite.

Badiou's dialectical materialism, however, affirms the divisibility

of law and the interruption of the status quo. Materialism recognizes

that nature precedes the concept without reifying or deifying nature.

125 BEING A SUBJECT IN A TRANSCENDENTAL WORLD

Materialism "attests within the concept to the purifying emergence

of force" (TS 185) . It consists in an assault on all idealisms, whether

religious, humanistic, or linguistic. This force of materialism to divide

or break open the concept is its purifying force, which opens the door

for a subject to exist. Materialism comprises two central theses: "the

thesis of identity: being is exclusively matter"; and "the thesis of pri­

macy: matter precedes thought, and not the other way around" (TS

193) . For Badiou the significance of materialism means that there is

only one region of being, and attests to the division of being in itself

as well as in thought, which is his dialectical method. The insistence

on one region of being is similar to Deleuze's concept of a plane of

immanence, even if Deleuze's production of thought and being out of

being is not simply dialectical.

In Theory of the Subject, then, Badiou sketches a new materialism

as a way to renew Marxist dialectics at a time when it is desperately

on the defensive. This new materialism is similar to Deleuze's mate­

rialism in some epistemological respects, but it is more atomistic and

mathematical than Deleuze's physical-energetic materialism, because

both the logic and the ontology of materialism is mathematical, most

strikingly in Being and Event. In the following chapter, I will spell out

more of the nature and contemporary stakes of Deleuze's materialism

in terms of theoretical physics and non equilibrium thermodynamics.

For Badiou, thinking about being takes two forms. First, thought

is a reflection on being, which is a more straightforward repetition of

nature or being in thought. Reflection is based on identity, which is

what Deleuze denies. Second, however, there is a transportation or

transposition that Badiou calls an asymptote that "mathematizes the

thesis of primacy" (TS 195). Badiou requires the One of reflection in

order to divide it into Two with the asymptote, even though Deleuze

in Difference and Repetition shows that you do not need a prior iden­

tity to produce difference, as we saw in chapter 3. Since Badiou thinks

in molar terms, you cannot have interruption without something

being posited originally to interrupt; he claims that Deleuze thinks

. an impossible multiplicity, a diffuse "radicalism of novelty:' and a

groundless "liberation of flux" (TS 207). Badiou anchors the Two

in the One, as its division or scission. He says that you cannot have

126 BAnlOU

excess, interruption, or destruction without structure, placement, and

lack. The subject emerges out of the torsion or twisting from one into

the other. Later in Theory of the Subject, Badiou claims that "without

the anchorage of lack, the excess would be nothing but a leftist chi­

mera, quicldy reversed into its opposite: a philosophy of nature as we

see in the case of Deleuze" (TS 287). But this is only true if identity

precedes and grounds difference, which is not the case with the dif­

ferenciator in Difference and Repetition. The only way that Badiou can

think the multiple as multiple is via set theory, but this thinking is too

static and issues in a frozen ontology.

Back to Badiou's materialism. For him, "materialism operates as

the unifying scission of a structure of reduplication and an effect of

approximation. It posits the Same, plus its remainder" (TS 197). And

it is the excess of the remainder that occurs in the process of approxi­

mation that gives true difference for Badiou, although Deleuze does

not require the original positing of the same. The thinking of iden­

tity by a logic of reflection can be named and formulated as algebra,

whereas the notion of the asymptotic remainder is called topology

(TS 197). The subject emerges at the intersection of algebra and topol­

ogy, or space and force. A materialist subject "effectuates the opera­

tions of a topological algebra" (TS 209). Badiou needs both algebra

and topology to think the subject. The subject comes to be out of the

gap between topology and algebra, or the excess of topological force

over algebraic composition.

Algebra provides a precise formulation, a structural placement for

and delimitation of the subject and its situation. But a true subject

can exist only by standing out from the background of its algebraic

legislation. Badiou takes inspiration from Lacan's topology, but argues

that Lacan never truly escapes algebraic structural-symbolic thinking.

Badiou radicalizes Lacanian topology by means of his understand­

ing of set theory from Cantor to Cohen in a way that prefigures the

grandiose achievement of Being and Event. Topology comes "from

the need for a mathematical guarantee in order to grasp movement"

(TS 210). Whereas algebra concerns "what happens when two distinct

and homogeneous events end up being combined under certain con­

straints;' topology aims at "what happens when one investigates the

127 BEING A SUBJECT IN A TRANSCENDENTAL WORLD

site of a term, its surroundings, that which is more or less 'near' to it;'

or its neighborhood (TS 211). Algebra "produces difference based on

the other (element) as the same. The topological disposition makes

identity of the same according to the multiple-other of its neighbor­

hoods" (TS 211). So algebra refers to the elements that belong to a

set, whereas topology deals with the parts of a set that are included

even as this inclusion exceeds belonging, to put it in terms of Being

and Event.

Algebra names the calculable in materialism, while topology

'«takes things by the pack: It metaphorically translates the functional

in materialism" (TS 215). Algebra "is a logic of belonging; topology, a

logic of adherence" (TS 216) . What is interesting here is that topology

names what in Being and Event is the excess of inclusion or parts over

belonging, and this is what gives an evental site its composition. An

event irrupts out of being at an evental site by means of a kind of tor­

sion of the evental site on itself where inclusion twists around to con­

stitute a strange kind of belonging, an adherence that explodes into

and out of being. Here in Theory of the Subject, the subject plays the

precise role that the event does in Being and Event. In Being and Event,

Badiou downplays-or rather presupposes-the specific notion of

the subject in favor of legislating the conditions of the possibility of

an event.

Topology, or what Badiou calls a topological materialism, deals

with the intersection and inclusion of neighborhoods. He says that

"given a neighborhood of a point, there exists a subneighborhood

of this point such that the first neighborhood (the 'bigger' one) is

the neighborhood of each of the points of the second (the 'smaller'

one)" (TS 223). Topological multiplication of neighborhoods ampli­

fies inclusion, producing an asymptotic approximation of common

terms, regions, and names. In this way, we can see how topology can

produce a kind of consistency of neighborhoods, or regions in what

Badiou calls a subjective process, in distinction from subjectivization.

Algebra applies to subjectivization; it follows the causality that pro­

duces a subject by destroying its previous structural place, whereas

topology supplies a way to formulate the consistency of the subjec­

tive process that recomposes another order of the real beyond the

128 BADIOU

fantasy of idealistic imagination. Badiou says that "the real of the sub­

ject guarantees consistency without the mediation of the imaginary" by

crossing the knot of algebra and topology (TS 246). Subjectivization

refers to the causal chain of subject-taking-place that can be thought

and formalized with algebraic precision. Subjective process, however,

means for Badiou a consistency that can be accounted for only in

topological terms. Badiou gives an extraordinary reading of Lacan's

famous essay "Logical Time and the Assertion of Anticipated Cer­

tainty:' which I will not go into here; from it, he draws the conclu­

sion that it is only the differentially implicated coexistence of other

times and other speeds of thought that gives the subject its freedom

and existence. Each person occupies a neighborhood of distinct but

included parts, and it is the differential matrix of these neighborhoods

that constitutes the logic of the real for Badiou. At some point we act,

and "the act takes precedence over reasoning" (TS 257). This means

that "it is the interruption of an algorithm, and not its execution, that

has a subjectivizing effect" (TS 257).

Badiou divides concepts, modalities, and temporalities in two, pro­

ducing and replicating divisions. He says that "the subject materializes

the division of materialism:' because it consists in "the topological

upheaval of an algebra" (TS 257-58). This topological upheaval of an

algebra is supported by Badiou's interpretation of set theory, specif­

ically Cantor's theorem that says that "the cardinality of the set of

parts of [a set] E is always superior to the cardinality of E itself" (TS

261). There is something excessive and inexistent about the superi­

ority of parts over sets themselves, which gives Badiou the opening

to formulate his theory of the subject. Cantor's theorem implies that

"conceived topologically, by the inclusion of its parts, E destroys the

totalizing law of the maximum of multiplicity that it is supposed to

be" (TS 266). The problem is that mathematicians, including Cantor,

want to limit the implications of this radical theorem to algebra, and

supply an order to legislate it. Such mathematicians "neglect the real

of the neighborhoods; they restrict the alterity of the Same to its alge­

braic filiations" (TS 266).

The name given to this legislation is the continuum hypothesis,

which asserts a smooth and ordered continuum of being, such that

129 BEIN G A SUBJECT IN A TRANSCENDENTAL WORLD

even the excessive cardinality of subsets can be placed in a consis­

tent and predictable order. Unfortunately for Badiou, "in 1939, Godel

demonstrates that the continuum hypothesis is consistent with the

axioms of set theory" (TS 267). Happily, however, "in 1963, Cohen

demonstrates that the negation of the continuum hypothesis is as

consistent with the axioms of set theory as its affirmation" (TS 271).

As Peter Hallward points out, "if this continuum hypothesis were

true, not only would there be . . . a precise, measurable link between

physical continuity and number, but everything within the transfinite

universe could be thought of as in its appropriate place, as occupy­

ing degrees in a clearly ordered hierarchY:'6 Cohen not only supplies

proof that the assumption of the continuum hypothesis is not neces­

sary for axiomatic set theory; he further theorizes the generic set, a

set that possesses the minimum possible description and the widest

possible application.

Badiou says that as a consequence of the generic set, "Cohen

replaces the properties of implication (if p, then q), with the more

evasive property of forcing: if there is such and such a condition,

a statement q is 'forced' to be the case" (TS 272). A condition is a

condition of a generic set, and the fact that truth is forced rather

than implied means that it is not determined. The mathematical

operation of forcing allows Badiou to analogously think the sub­

ject. "Conceived of as a break;' Badiou asserts, "subjectivization cer­

tainly operates within a logic of forcing" (TS 273). The force that is

exerted on a place "surrects" a subject; the place does not simply

imply it in any logical way. Forcing also allows a "generic extension"

that "allows the production of an impressive quantity of new sets"

(TS 273) . The excess indicated by a generic set constructs a power

set out of the cardinality of a set, and this excess cannot simply be

recouped in an algebra or an order. As Oliver Feltham explains, this

is the core of Badiou's discovery that then becomes elaborated into

Being and Event: "the heterogeneity of the emergent political subject

can be thought in a set-theoretical framework as the unnameable

or generic subset of a sef'7 This is a mathematical-dialectical break

between excess and place that gives Badiou the opening for thinking

a true revolutionary subject.

130 BAD IOU

Badiou's use of mathematics in Theory of the Subject is more

dynamic, more pragmatic, and more minor in Deleuzian terms than

it is in Being and Event. Here mathematics becomes a sharp weapon:

"precision put into the blade of the Marxist barber, mathematics is the

unalterable blade with which one ends up bleeding pigs to death" (TS

219). As Foucault says, knowledge is for cutting, but not all tools are

fitted equally for different jobs. In Theory of the Subject, mathematics

is a razor that cuts through bourgeois complacency during a desper­

ate time for progressive politics. In chapter 9, I will show how Deleuze

attempts to fashion his own political weapon with the time-image in

response to a similar political situation. Nobody can fault Badiou

for his courage; however, the mathematical ontology of Being and

Event is too large and cumbersome and loses the tension with politi­

cal praxis. Again, Badiou favors fewer, grander events over smaller

and more numerous ones. He charges Deleuze with sanctioning too

many events, which for Badiou end up being all one event rather than

a genuine multiplicity.8 Although Deleuze prefers the infinitesimally

small, Badiou charges that "smallness is hierarchy: the constructible

universe is built in strata in such a way that each stratum contains

only objects that can be defined hierarchically on the basis of the pre­

ceding strata" (TS 268) . I have already explained in chapter 4 how

Deleuze's (and Deleuze and Guattari's) constructible universe is strati­

fied in A Thousand Plateaus, but these strata are not divorced from the

smooth body without organs, and they are not hierarchically layered.

In the last section of the book, Badiou develops the ethics that his

mathematical materialism of the subject entails. Although he claims

that "there exists no Marxist ethics" (TS 309), Badiou develops his

understanding of ethics in relation to the "four fundamental concepts

of Marxism:' These four concepts are: the party, the class struggle,

the dictatorship of the proletariat, and communism (TS 282). Each

of these concepts is correlated with the four concepts of the subject­

anxiety, courage, the superego, and justice-as well as with the dis­

tinction between subjectivization and subjective process. The result is

"four kinds of ethics": an ethics of praise, an ethics of resignation, an

ethics of discordance, and finally and most importantly, a Promethean

ethics "where one posits that the place is yet to come in a world open

131 BEING A SUBJECT IN A TRANSCENDENTAL WORLD

to re-evaluation, which the fire of just excess recomposes" (TS 319-

20). Prometheus is the mythical carrier of fire, and he represents the

ideal ethics for Badiou, because carrying the fire recomposes a world.

We can see this Promethean ethics instantiated in Cormac McCar­

thy's novel The Road. In the novel, an unnamed father and son are

traveling across a burnt-out postapocalyptic landscape that is the

result of a meteor strike. Most of the people and nearly all of the ani­

mals are dead, and almost everyone else with whom the man and boy

come into contact have resorted to cannibalism to survive. The boy

asks his father whether they would eat people out of desperation and

starvation: "We wouldn't ever eat anybody, would we?" And the man

replies "No. Of course not:'

Because we're the good guys.

Yes.

And we're carrying the fire.

And we're carrying the fire. Yes.

According to Badiou, the Promethean subject recomposes a world

(TS 319) . Here is the transition not only to Badiou's book on Eth­

ics written in 1993, but more importantly to his sequel to Being and

Event, Logics of Worlds, published in French in 2006. We could say

that Badiou writes Logics of Worlds to amend the (appearance of a)

radical break between being qua being thought in terms of mathe­

matical ontology and the category of the event that emerges almost

miraculously out of being. Logics of Worlds also restores the status

of the subject, who had been taken up almost entirely into the event

in Being and Event, and could only truly emerge afterward, out of

fidelity to an event. Feltham explains that Badiou is also responding

to the difficult question posed by Jean-Franyois Lyotard of how an

event can be recognized, except by a kind of transcendental agency

that functions according to a sovereign decisionism.lO "His solution in

Logiques des mondes;' Feltham says, "is to fuse all three categories: the

132 BAD IOU

event is a particular kind of site, and the event itself has consequences

and leaves traces in the logical structure of a world:'ll So in Logics

of Worlds, the event and the evental site, which are kept problemati­

cally separate in Being and Event, fuse together in the formation of

a world. This move allows Badiou to think a transcendental logic of

an irreducible multiplicity of worlds, while still leaving room for the

powerful transformation that an event entails.

Despite Badiou's earlier disdain for logic, in his latest master­

work he finally develops a suitable logic for thinking being and event

together, and this logic is a repetition of Hegel's Science of Logic, even

though Badiou recognizes that Deleuze's logic represents its more

powerful contemporary counterexample.12 In Logics of Worlds, Badiou

wants to correlate a rehabilitated and revised theory of the subject

from Theory of the Subject with a reconceptualized object by means

of a theory of relation. The logic of appearing of subject and object

in a world together issues in a new understanding of body. What is a

body? ''A body is really nothing but that which, bearing a subjective

form, confers upon a truth, in a world, the phenomenal status of its

objectivity" (LW 36). Badiou composes a "calculated phenomenol­

ogy" to account for the appearance of bodies in worlds, "the worldly

materiality of subjects-in-truth" (LW 37-38).

I am not going to delve into the specifics of Logics of Worlds in

great detail, but only sketch out the parameters in broad strokes, so

that readers can see how this book not only corrects Being and Event

but also elaborates Theory of the Subject. In fact, Badiou condenses

and recapitulates Theory of the Subject in book 1 of Logics of Worlds as

a "Formal Theory of the Subject:' Because the "Greater Logic" of the

Transcendental, the Relation, and the Object takes up the bulk of the

book, it is easy to overlook the significance of the subject unless one

reads Logics of Worlds from the standpoint of Theory of the Subject.

Badiou says that he "was not mistaken" in his Theory of the Sub­

ject about the fundamental dialectic between structure and excess,

although he moved a little too quickly, "without drawing-in a

Greater Logic-all the consequences of the obligatory materialism"

(LW 45-46). So the theory of the subject is still in place as a "formal"

theory of the subject, and its material conditions get spelled out with

133 BEING A SUBJ ECT IN A TRANSCENDENTAL WORLD

the Greater Logic of Logics of Worlds. Badiou claims that there are

three predominant figures of the subject: "faithful, reactive, obscure"

(LW 62). The faithful subject is opposed to the reactive subject and

the obscure subject, because "the product of this fidelity is the new

present which welcomes, point by point, the new truth" (LW 53).

Truth is not found in any of these determinate subjects, even if it is

welcomed by the faithful subject; but it is a formal excess that "abides

in the multiform materiality in which it is constructed as the generic

part of a world" (LW 63). The excess of truth that makes a subject,

or "reactivates a subject in another logic of its appearing-in-truth;' is

resurrection (LW 65). The resurrection of the subject who is faithful

to the even tal trace in the global present makes a subject an immortal,

or gives the subject an infinite mode of truth in which to live. Because

there are four types of truth, there can be four distinct subjects in each

of the three figures (faithful, reactive, and obscure): political subjects,

artistic subjects, amorous subjects, and scientific subjects.

Following this recapitulation of the theory of the subject, Badiou

turns to the Greater Logic, which spans the Transcendental, the

Object, and the Relation. The Greater Logic "entirely subsumes the

lesser linguistic and grammatical logic" that Badiou denigrates (LW

93). The Greater Logic examines "the conditions under which multi­

ple-being can be thought in a world, and not only in its being as such"

(LW 93). The notion of the transcendental concerns the appearing of

being in the world, where world replaces the term situation from Being

and Event (LW 99). The being of beings is understood in terms of

mathematical set theory, while "the appearing of the being of beings is

being-there" (LW lO2). The transcendental phenomenology of appear­

ing concerns three operations: a minimum of appearance based on

the limit concept of nonappearance; the conjunction of two or more

multiples together; and the envelope, or the horizon, of "globalising

appearance" in a "region of appearing" (LW 103). There is a transcen­

dental maximum of appearance that corresponds to "the being which

is absolutely there;' but "there is no [overarchingJ Universe, only

worlds" (LW 139). Worlds are irreducibly multiple and plural.

With the second part of the Greater Logic, Badiou constructs an

object that is independent of any subject. This subjectless object is

134 BADIOU

"that which counts as one within appearing or that which authorizes

us to speak of this being-there as inflexibly being-itself" (LW 193). The

notion of an object that is independent of a subject is necessary as "a

logical moment of the materialist dialectics;' because only a logic of

the object such as this "effectively allows the subjective formalisms to

find support in that which serves as their objective dimension: the

body, which supports the appearing and duration of every subject,

making intelligible the idea that an eternal truth can be created in a

particular world" (LW 193). The object is a pure multiple that nonethe­

less appears in a minimal atomic form (LW 195) . This atom of appear­

ing is also an atom of being, but it does not depend on any subjective

experience or observer. Badiou is creating an entirely objective logic

of appearing so that he can afterward situate the subject in relation

to it as an event of truth. Badiou's atomic logic localizes or fixes "the

One in being . . . in accordance with the mathematical law of belong­

ing, or pure presentation" (LW 221). Every object is the being-there

of a being.

The final section of the Greater Logic treats the concept of rela­

tion. Relation concerns how objects interact. Relations depend on

objects: Badiou says that "a relation is a connection between objec­

tive multiplicities-a function-that creates nothing in the register of

intensities of existence, or in that of atomic localizations, which is not

already prescribed by the regime of appearance of these multiplici­

ties (by the objects whose ontological support they are)" (LW 301).

Badiou circumscribes relations by making them entirely dependent

on objects. Relations are a function of visibility within a particular

world, and visibility is an indication of (relative) universality (LW

302). Since Badiou affirms that all relations are visible, there are no

hidden or invisible relations. Therefore all relations are universal, at

least relative to objects and the world in which they occur. Relations

are not events, because they do not "transform the transcendental

evaluations" but rather presuppose these transcendental conditions

and objects (LW 311).

At the end of the Greater Logic, Badiou distinguishes a relation,

which is necessarily universal, from an event, which is not entirely

visible or universal in terms of its appearance in a world. Book 5 of

135 BEING A SUBJECT IN A TRANSCENDENTAL WORLD

Logics of Worlds, "The Four Forms of Change;' is a brief and some­

what elliptic meditation on the event in terms of real change. An event

is a genuine change, whereas "we cannot find the means to identify

change either in the order of mathematics, the thinking of being qua

being, or in that of logic, the thinking of being-there or appearing"

(LW 357). Even if Badiou fuses the event with the evental site, as

Feltham points out, there is still something extraordinary about the

event that is incompatible with ontology and logic. The site is the site

of singularity, existing by itself, where an evental multiplicity happens

because of the "existential intensity concentrated upon the multiple

which is marked by self-belonging" (361). Here Badiou eliminates the

paradoxical inversion of the relation between inclusion and belong­

ing that marks Being and Event in order to achieve consistency. He

admits that "I am now able fundamentally to equate 'site' and 'even tal

multiplicity' -thus avoiding the banal aporias of the dialectic between

structure and historicity" (LW 361).

The site is an object that "happens to count itself in the referen­

tial field of its own indexing;' which thereby allows it to become the

ontological support of its appearance (LW 363). A site exists by itself,

and therefore it supports the possibility of a singularity "because it

summons its being in the appearing of its own multiple composition"

(LW 363). The site appears in an instant and then disappears, leav­

ing only a trace. But this vanishing trace may set off an event if a

faithful subject resurrects itself upon it. Badiou distinguishes between

weak and strong sites, and only a strong site contains the possibility

of becoming an event. A weak singularity sinks back into the normal

conditions of the world. But for a strong site, "the force of existence

in the appearing of a site would have to compensate for its vanish­

ing. Only a site whose value of existence is maximal is potentially an

event" (LW 372). Badiou here thinks the event in terms of a site where

a singularity appears. But I think that a site can only be an event if a

subject surges or resurrects at the site of maximal existence. Site +

Subject = Event.

Badiou includes a chapter that distinguishes his notion of the event

from that of Deleuze, where he repeats some of the same claims that

he made in Deleuze: The Clamor of Being. I will come back to this

136 BADIOU

latest engagement with Deleuze at the end of the chapter. First I want

to see how Badiou generates his understanding of body. The body can

only be understood on the basis of Badiou's theory of points in book

6. The point is what stitches together the subject and the objective

multiplicities that appear in a world. A point is a topological operator

of decision, a yes or no whereby a body is identified and takes shape in

a world according to subjective force and truth. The subject becomes a

subject by maldng a radical choice to take place in the world as body,

which is ultimately not just an object but a body of truth. Badiou

says that "a faithful subject is the form of a body whose organs treat

a worldly situation 'point by point'" (LW 399). The points of a world

compose a topological space for a subject/body to emerge. "Points

space out the world" (LW 416). They constitute space for existence by

concentrating "the degrees of existence, the intensities measured by

the transcendental, into only two possibilities" (LW 416). The point is

the instance of the Two, the instantiation of division or decision. We

can attempt to refuse the choice, but the instant of decision offers "the

des tina I possibility of a world" (LW 409).

What is a body? The entire Logics of Worlds culminates in the

thinking of a physical body, which completes the metaphysical sub­

ject. A body is "this very singular type of object suited to serve as

a support for a subjective formalism, and thereby to constitute, in a

world, the agent of a possible truth" (LW 451) . A body is constituted

with an event. An object can become a singular site if it takes itself as

an object of self-belonging. This singularity in its tension can maxi­

mally become an event if it is strong enough and attracts a subject.

The subject becomes a subject by resurrecting itself in a body, by tak­

ing a body as that which bears the truth of the event. A body is what

can bear the subjective formalism that is only possible out of fidelity

to an event. Here the body "may serve as the material support for

the evental trace, thus lending force to the production of the present

(faithful subject)" (LW 453).

A body does not have to be an organic body. Just as Deleuze oper­

ates with an extremely broad conception of life (one that Badiou vehe­

mently criticizes), Badiou expands our conventional understanding

of body to include the body of a sea and the body of a poem. A body

137 BEING A SUBJECT IN A TRANSCENDENTAL WORLD

is anything that can bear subjective form and attest to the truth of an

event. He defines the body as "the set of elements of a site . . . which

entertain with the resurrection of the inexistent (consciousness and

life) a relationship of maximal proximity" (LW 466). A body can

be measured by its intense relation with the "becoming existent of

the inexistence" (LW 467). Inexistence here is the trace of the event,

which vanishes and therefore does not still exist, but leaves its trace

as a call for a subject to bear the body in truth. According to Badiou,

"the body is the set of everything that the trace of the event mobilizes:'

and therefore the body becomes a new evental present in its fidelity

to the trace of the inexistent event. This is why a body can bear a

subjective form.

As opposed to Deleuze's denigration of organs, Badiou celebrates

the regional organization of parts of the body, which are made out

of points, point by point. These regional organs become body parts,

and then the overall body "(self-)organizes" (LW 470). Each organ

is a local region that contributes to a global harmony. ''A body, in its

totality:' Badiou claims, "is what gathers together those terms of a site

which are maximally engaged in a kind of ontological alliance with

the new appearance of the inexistent, which acts as the trace of the

event" (LW 470). This is what it means to live, to become a body out of

fidelity to the event. There are worlds without bodies, worlds that are

too atonic, stable, inconsequential, inactive, or inorganic (LW 491).

Worlds that include bodies, and therefore truths, are extremely rare

and thus all the more valuable.

At the end of Logics of Worlds, Badiou affirms that "life is the

creation of a present:' and that to live is "thus an incorporation into

the present under the faithful form of a subject" (LW 508). There is

something immortal about true life because this incorporation into a

present involves an experience of truth as eternal. As opposed to the

banality of democratic materialism and its emphasis on finite experi­

ence and mundane living, Badiou asserts that "we are open to the

infinity of worlds. To live is possible. Therefore, to (re)commence is

the only thing that matters" (LW 514).

This is a grand and sweeping vision, but it is also austere and stoic.

Badiou ends up affirming life in a way analogous to Deleuze's affirma-

138 BADIOU

tion of life, except that for Badiou, life, like an event, is extremely rare.

Deleuze is too democratic because for Deleuze life is everywhere and

events happen all the time. This implication of course runs counter

to Badiou's claim that Deleuze is fundamentally an aristocratic phi-

10sopher. Before turning to Deleuze's physics as a counter to Badiou's

in Logics of Worlds, I want to consider Badiou's critique of Deleuze's

conception of the event.

In section 2 of book 5 on "The Four Forms of Change;' Badiou

considers "The Event According to Deleuze:' Badiou grounds his and

Deleuze's interest in the notion of the event in the philosophy of Sartre

and Sartre's proposal of "an impersonal transcendental field" in which

the subject is constituted (LW 381). Badiou agrees with Deleuze's cri­

tique that Sartre "was still too concerned with the unification of the

transcendental" to "expose the subject to the chance of a pure Out­

side" (LW 381). Although both Badiou and Deleuze are faithful to the

event, their accounts diverge. Badiou lays out four axioms of the event

for Deleuze and then contrasts them with his own four axioms of the

event. Here are the four Deleuzian axioms of the event:

Axiom 1. "Unlimited-becoming becomes the event itself'

Axiom 2. "The event is always what has just happened, what will hap­

pen, but never what is happening."

Axiom 3. "The nature of the event is other than that of the actions

and passions of the body. But it results from them:'

Axiom 4. "A life is composed of the same single Event, despite all the

variety of what happens to it:' (LW 382-83)

Badiou concludes that for Deleuze, "the event is the fate of the One"

(LW 384). Again, as argued in chapter 2 and throughout this book,

Badiou is forced to axiomize, freeze, and distort Deleuze's thought in

order to contrast it with his own, truer philosophy.

Because the event is concerned with becoming and with multiplic­

ity, Badiou proposes that it can only be thought consistently in terms

of the One. He says that for Deleuze, "the event is the ontological

realization of the eternal truth of the One, of the infinite power of

Life" (LW 382). B adiou can only think multiplicity as multiplicity by

139 BE ING A SUBJEGT IN A TRANSGENDENTAL WORLD

means of set theory, which is technically inconsistent and unthink­

able; so to think a situation, we have to subtract from this multiplic­

ity and "count-as-one" a consistent presentation. For Badiou, Deleuze

can only think multiplicity as becoming if it is the becoming of some

totality, some eternal truth, a One or God. This is a philosophical

thinking solely according to a logic of identity and belonging that

Deleuze opposes and critiques in Difference and Repetition. Badiou

does not know how to think difference and excess without positing a

prior identity or structure from which to differ, which is why Badiou

is ultimately Hegelian. Difference must be destructive negativity, and

it must take place as a radical break or cut from what is, which is

being. At the same time, being is already a stable composition sub­

tracted from an inconsistent multiplicity. Badiou assumes that think­

ing must proceed as a cut or a break, a subtraction from what is.

Deleuze's notion of becoming is too much of a fold, an explication

of what is already implicated in being. But Deleuze does not simply

choose fold over cut, and I have tried to show how the cut functions

in Difference and Repetition as the passage to the third form of time in

the eternal return, and as the time-image in Cinema 2.

Badiou claims that Deleuze is concerned with the past and the

future, but never the present. Badiou says that for Deleuze the event is

"the eternal identity of the future as a dimension of the past;' whereas

for him the event is a new present (LW 382). Of course, this con­

clusion ignores the third synthesis of time in Difference and Repeti­

tion and, more importantly, delivers the futural aspects of Deleuze's

thought entirely over to the reign of the memory and the past. Badiou

claims that either there is no present for Deleuze or else everything

is present. Again, this is an extreme flattening of Deleuze's thinking,

because Badiou assumes and imposes a sameness on the multiplici­

ties that become in and as events and then forces them to submit to a

foundation in the Same or the One. Deleuze, on the contrary, operates

with multiple forms of multiplicity, and he is interested in how they

intersect and interact in compossible and incompossible ways. For

Deleuze, the plane of immanence means that the pure multiplicity

of set theory (or what Deleuze and Guattari call smooth space or the

body without organs) operates amid the objects in the world, creating

140 BADIOU

subjects and presubjective individuations. Badiou sets the realm of

multiplicity or pure being in a faraway realm distant from actual states

of affairs so as to create the greatest possible tension and explosiveness

when these multiples set off an event in a world.

Badiou distinguishes the event from the actions and passions of

bodies, because he wants the event to generate bodies as bearers to

and witnesses of the event. Bodies cannot produce events, because

they can only exist as the result of an event. Despite his attempt to

overcome the duality between being and event in Logics of Worlds,

Badiou remains committed to a fundamental separation of the event

from its composition in being and its appearance in worlds. This move

attests to Badiou's desire to preserve the purity and the power of the

event, which must change the world by decomposing it and produce

new truth. Deleuze does not like the term truth because it usually

conforms to a model of representation, but Badiou rehabilitates a non­

representational and productive model of truth. For Deleuze, truth is

created out of the powers of the false in an event, but these events are

too common and too embedded in worlds for Badiou's taste.

Badiou says that for Deleuze "a life is composed of the same single

Event:' which means that "there can only be One event:' I don't think

that the latter follows from the former. If an event organizes or makes

a life, then a life is a plane of immanence or consistency, and that is

not life as a quasi-organic totality. Badiou totalizes Deleuze's notions

of becoming, life, and event to contrast them with his own totaliz­

ing notions of world, being, and event. Badiou claims that "there is a

de-composition of worlds by multiple event-sites" for him, in con­

trast to Deleuze's One-Same-All monotonous event. For Deleuze, the

event as what happens is both compositional and decompositional,

and by setting the incompossibility of worlds in a single realm, all that

Deleuze is doing is precluding a hierarchical, overarching universe to

harmonize everything, which is what Badiou also precludes.

Badiou concludes that Deleuze essentially believes in God, and

that his disciples (such as Hardt and Negri) "are busy blessing unbri­

dled Capital" (LW 387) even as they struggle to oppose capitalism.

Badiou draws this conclusion by claiming that "like all philosophers

of vital continuity, Deleuze cannot maintain the gap between sense,

141 BEING A SUBJECT IN A TRANSCENDENTAL WORLD

the transcendental law of appearing, and truths as exceptions" (LW

386). But Deleuze is also a thinker of discontinuity, or more correctly

a philosopher who attempts to think otherwise than opposition ally,

whereas Badiou cannot think otherwise than in terms of fundamental

oppositions. If the event is not radically opposed to being, it cannot

instantiate truth. But we are not forced to think about being and event

in this way, and in the next section I will develop the consequences of

my interpretation of Deleuze beyond Badiou's philosophy as well as

the limits of Badiou's interpretation of Deleuze.

142 BAOIOU

B EI N G IS E N E RGY transformation. In Difference and Repetition,

Deleuze does not explicitly use the language and theories of phys­

ics to the extent that he draws on mathematics and biology, but his

ideas are nevertheless extremely relevant for contemporary physics.

In this chapter, I will discuss Deleuze's ontology and suggest that it is

based on energy transformation rather than atomic reductionism or

mathematical set theory. Badiou conceives one form of mathemati­

cal multiplicity in Being and Event, and in Logics of Worlds he shows

how this mathematical multiplicity underlies an atomistic material­

ism. For Deleuze, however, materialism is neither reductionistic nor

atomistic, and his view of energy is strikingly relevant for contempo­

rary scientific understandings of the world.

Of all of Deleuze's commentators, Manuel Delanda has gone the

furthest in showing how Deleuze's ontology is related to nonlinear

dynamics and chaotic complexity. Although Deleuze does not cite

the work of Ilya Prigogine, Prigogine's work on dissipative, far-from­

equilibrium systems is consonant with Deleuze's critique of thermo­

dynamics in Difference and Repetition , discussed briefly in chapter

3. Finally, the new science of non equilibrium thermodynamics con­

ceives thermodynamics in general more along the lines that Deleuze

lays out in chapter 5 of his extraordinary book. I will survey some of

these points of intersection, and then suggest a new energy paradigm,

which is more athermal, that is, based on electromagnetism rather

than heat. We desperately need an athermal magnetoelectrodynam­

ics, both in theory and in practice.

In his book Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, Manuel

Delanda explains that Deleuze's idea of multiplicity is based on

contemporary theories of mathematics: "multiplicities specify the

structure of spaces of possibilities, spaces which, in turn, explain the

regularities exhibited by morphogenetic processes:" Multiplicities

resemble manifolds in differential geometry, which calculates the

rate of curvature change for a curve. Friedrich Gauss developed a

way to measure points and changes along a surface without reference

to "a global embedding space:' while Bernhard Riemann addressed

N-dimensional spaces, or surfaces.2 A manifold indicates "the space

of possible states" that a system can have, and we can model a state or

phase space by mapping how many dimensions of freedom or move­

ment that state space contains.

Virtuality has to do with the levels of dimensionality or the degrees

of freedom of any physical or mathematical system. Virtuality con­

cerns mathematical manifolds or multiplicities. As defined by Henri

Poincare, a singularity represents the inherent long-term tendencies

of a system, and these singularities can be further specified as attrac­

tors. Singularities are "recurrent topological features" that define mul­

tiplicities and replace more conventional philosophical identities or

essences.3 In the dynamic movement of a system, key transitions may

occur that are symmetry-breaking transitions, and these are bifurca­

tions. These bifurcations occur, and they progressively differentiate

"an undifferentiated intensive space:' giving rise to "extensive struc­

tures" that appear deterministic but in fact are only probabilistic.4

Using contemporary scientific language, Delanda details how these

virtual intensities actualize in space and in time. In his book, Delanda

is less interested in a close reading of Deleuze's philosophy than in

translating his ideas into contemporary scientific and mathematical

theory. Delanda shows how relevant Deleuze's thought is for contem­

porary ideas about chaos and complexity, although he ends up over­

emphasizing the virtual. Delanda separates out the virtual to demon­

strate this connection to contemporary physics, and he establishes a

146 DELEUZE BEYOND BADIOU

parallelism between virtuality and actuality that does not quite exist

in Deleuze's work to the extent that Delanda claims. Delanda says that

the virtual form of time is a kind of "absolute simultaneity" that con­

stitutes a nonmetric form of time.s For Delanda, Deleuze's pure time

is a pure becoming that "always sidesteps the present, since to exist

in the present is to be, no longer to become:'6 I think that this is a

tempting mis-representation of Deleuze's philosophy, and it is close

to Badiou's interpretation of Deleuze's understanding of the virtual,

even though Badiou goes further in assigning the virtual to a pure

past, rather than to a pure becoming that is not present.

According to Delanda, "a pure becoming would imply a temporal­

ity which is perfectly symmetric in this respect, the direction of the

arrow of time emerging as a broken symmetry only as the virtual is

actualized:'7 I claim that this broken symmetry is fundamental rather

than secondary, and that thermodynamics operates at the heart of

being. It is tempting to view time as derived from more fundamental

physical relationships, but Delanda does understand that the consti­

tution of the virtual is an operation of subtraction and a kind of preac­

tualization. To construct the virtual, one has to "assemble multiplici­

ties together by creating convergent and divergent relations among

the ordinal series emanating from them:'8 So multiplicities are virtual

rather than, strictly speaking, actual, and they are processes rather

than identities. The preactualization of assembling multiplicities is

then related to a counteractualization that extracts virtual events from

intensive processes by means of a quasi-causal operator, which is the

dark precursor. As an escape from a particular actual state of affairs,

this counteractualization follows a line of flight.

Delanda uses Deleuze's philosophy to set up a flat ontology, one

that extracts processes from a background of absolute or metric

space-time. He says that "each multiplicity defines a space of its own" ;

no multiplicity is embedded in another space. Virtual space does not

unify multiplicities in a higher-dimensional space; it is a space made

up of the "coexisting multiplicities themselves in their heterogene­

ity:'9 According to Delanda, what Deleuze does in his philosophy is

develop an operator, a quasi-causal operator, called the dark precur­

sor, that creates multiplicities as virtual events by extracting them

147 ENERGETICS OF BEING

from actual processes and setting them out on a plane of consistency.

To extract a virtual event from an actual event is "to define what is

problematic about it;' which is why Deleuze emphasizes the setting-up

of problems over the axiomatic achievement of solutions.lO

In his final chapter, Delanda addresses the laws of physics more

generally. A Newtonian framework privileges an absolute background

of metric space and time, as well as straightforward linear causality.

Even if relativity theory and quantum mechanics challenges this pic­

ture, we still have not fully integrated the revolutionary insights of

twentieth-century physics into our thinking. Deleuze is genuinely

post-Einsteinian because he replaces an axiomatic approach to phys­

ics (which Badiou not only retains but reinforces) with a problematic

approach. The problematic approach "rejects the idea that funda­

mental laws express general truths and views them instead as posing

correct problems:'l1 Linear causality renders a system unproblematic,

whereas "nonlinear and statistical causality re-problematize material

systems, showing them capable of self-organization and self-assembly,

with many things left unexplained in the effect after the mere citation

of an external cause:'12 The axiomatic approach to physics proceeds

from general universal law to particular case, and from cause to effect

in a unidirectional way. Deleuze reverses this relation of general and

particular, because it is not necessarily the particular initial condi­

tion of a system that is important. A functioning attractor means that

"many different starting points within the same basin of attraction

end up in the same place, the attractor;' although small perturbations

can have very large effects, and relatively large perturbations can

have little or no effect on the system.13 The distribution of singulari­

ties "determines what changes in initial conditions are relevant (rela­

tive to the end state), and which are irrelevanf'14 Chaotic complexity

means that repeated iterations do not obey an abstract law, but fol­

low statistically probable patterns based on the attractors that govern

the system. Delanda's work allows philosophers to appreciate the rel­

evance of Deleuze's philosophy for contemporary understandings of

scientific complexity.

One name for the fundamental problem of contemporary physics

is quantum gravity. Quantum gravity is a problem, not a solution,

148 DElEUZE BEYOND BADIOU

because we do not yet know how to integrate gravity, in light of gen­

eral relativity, into the standard model of quantum particle physics.

Carlo Rovelli, one of the leading physicists working on the problem

of quantum gravity, explains the situation: "We have learned from GR

[General Relativity] that spacetime is a dynamical field among oth­

ers, obeying dynamical equations, and having independent degrees

of freedom . . . . We have learned from QM [Quantum Mechanics]

that every dynamical object has quantum properties, which .can be

captured by appropriately formulating its dynamical theory within

the general scheme of QM. Therefore, spacetime itself must exhibit

quantum properties:'ls The difficulty is that most applications of quan­

tum mechanics to field theory "rely heavily on the existence of the

'stage', the fixed, non-dynamical background metric structure:'16 To

preserve conventional quantum field theory, many attempts to find

a quantum theory of gravity are forced to truncate the radicality of

general relativity by reintroducing a background space-time with a

nondynamical metric. This is the path of most forms of string theory,

even in its supersymmetric forms. An alternative approach, pursued

by Rovelli and Lee Smolin, is quantum loop gravity, which dispenses

with any space-time background. In quantum loop gravity, quantum

states are represented by spin networks that generate time and space.

Spin networks �re background independent: "the spin network itself

is not located anywhere:'l?

If time and space are not the background, but emerge in the pro­

cess of quantum fluctuation and actualization out of a spin foam,

then this raises a very acute problem of time. Here Rovelli affirms the

"reciprocal usefulness of a dialogue between physics and philosophY;'

especially at a time when we are confronted with such an intractable

problem as quantum gravity. The empirical dilemma is that we have

reached the limit of verifiable experimentation and measurement; we

just cannot get down to the Planck scale of length, which is where

gravity and quantum mechanics are conceivably integrated. The

option for many physicists working on various aspects of quantum

gravity, particle physics, and string theory is either to covertly reintro­

duce a background metric of time-space, a smooth virtual space that

gets broken up at macrolevels, or to dispense with any background

149 ENERGETICS OF BEING

and give up time in any fundamental sense. Rovelli opts for the latter:

"In quantum gravity, I see no reason to expect a fundamental notion

of time to play any role:'18

Many contemporary physicists follow Rovelli in dispensing with

time, including Julian Barbour and Roger Penrose. These physicists

are ultimately Platonists, because they hold onto a fundamental con­

figuration space of infinite possibilities. This is a virtual space, but

it loses what makes Deleuze's philosophy important. What Deleuze's

philosophy offers is a way to hold onto a fundamental notion of time

without reintroducing background dependence. As Delanda points

out, Deleuze's theory of multiplicities makes up a flat ontology that

does not rely on the background of a metrical space-time. What we

need are two distinct conceptions of time to avoid the either-or of a

background metric or a timeless world. One "form" of time would

be entrained in the space-time that emerges along with the spin

networks without any metrical background. These spin networks of

dynamic space-time are emergent, they are granular and discrete, and

they break down at Planck lengths. Inspired by Deleuze in Cinema 2,

we could call these spin networks of space-time images.

The images or spin networks of space-time repeat; they are indefi­

nitely iterated. If there is no second form of time, then Barbour and

Rovelli are right and a quasi-Platonic configuration space of infinite

possibilities is all that there is. Here movement exists, but not time.

However, to accede to this view is to refuse the trajectory from move­

ment to time that Deleuze makes in Cinema 2. The second form of

time is the arrow that gives directionality to the series of spin net­

works/images. This arrow is an intensity, the force that drives the

repetition, and it is not simply due t? the subjective perspective we

impose upon events based on the nature of our consciousness. The

arrow is real; it is thermodynamic.

Chaotic complexity is effectively infinite iteration-repetition.

What propels repetition is entropy. Chaos is not precisely determin­

istic chaos, b)ecause that determinism only exists at the level of linear

causality and general law. Most of the laws of physics are formulated

for linear systems at equilibrium. The science of chaotic complexity

emerges from nonlinear systems that operate far from equilibrium,

150 DELEUZE BEYOND BAD IOU

such as fluid dynamics. Nonequilibrium systems exhibit striking

behavior, including the functioning of multiple attractors and sensi­

tive dependence on initial conditions.19 Ilya Prigogine's work on dis­

sipative systems that function far from equilibrium influences Delan­

da's reading of Deleuze. Furthermore, Prigogine's coauthor, Isabelle

Stengers, is a philosopher of science who has read and been influ­

enced by Deleuze.20

In their book Order Out of Chaos, Prigogine and Stengers show

how thermodynamic processes, including time, are embedded deeply

within real physical processes. Nonlinear fluid dynamic systems offer

a way to understand the production of order or structured organiza­

tion from out of chaos. Ordered complexity emerges far from equilib­

rium, in dissipative structures. Dissipative structures appear to exhibit

what Schrodinger called negative entropy, although this term is tech­

nically inaccurate because these dissipative structures are entropic in

terms of the nonequilibrium thermodynamics developed below. They

operate outside of thermodynamic equilibrium and they are open sys­

tems, which means that they obey the laws of entropy.

Ultimately they dissipate more energy as heat than they use, but

they are able to take in enough energy from the environment to sus­

tain themselves in a process of self-organization. In his book From

Being to Becoming, Prigogine examines oscillating supercritical sys­

tems. He explains that in thermodynamic states that are unstable, a

dissipative structure occurs that is symmetry-breaking. Once these

symmetry-broken or nonequilibrium states are established, they pos­

sess a certain stability. Prigogine highlights three aspects of these

dissipative structures: "the function, as expressed by the chemical

equations; the space-time structure, which results from the instabili­

ties; and the fluctuations, which trigger the instabilities:' which are

sensitive to initial conditions of perturbations.21 The function, which

represents the chemical equations, is more virtual, while the space­

time structure is more actual, and the interplay between function,

structure, and fluctuations produces ordered complexity by means of

the fluctuations.

These fluctuations are bifurcations. Bifurcations are forking points

where systems leave symmetrical equilibrium and choose alternative

151 ENERGETICS OF BEING

solutions. According to Prigogine, "bifurcations are the manifestation

of an intrinsic differentiation between parts of the system itself and

the system and its environmene'22 The fluctuating bifurcations that

break symmetry introduce irreversibility. "Once a dissipative struc­

ture is formed, the homogeneity of time;' Prigogine says, "is broken:'23

These dissipative structures also exhibit irreversibility; they cannot be

run backward, which is the essence of thermodynamics. According to

Prigogine, "irreversibility is the manifestation on a macroscopic scale

of 'randomness' on a microscopic scale:'24 The irreducible random­

ness attested to by quantum physics goes hand in hand with ther­

modynamic irreversibility at the macroscopic level. Both levels are

explained in terms of stochastic laws of probability, which Delanda

calls singularities or tendencies of behavior.

In his later book The End of Certainty, Prigogine attempts to rec­

oncile thermodynamics with quantum mechanics by deepening

how we understand probability at both levels. He isolates an opera­

tor, the Liouville operator, to extend the eigenvalues of the Hamil­

tonian beyond Hilbert space. I do not have the expertise to evalu­

ate Prigogine's project, but he challenges the timelessness of the

Schrodinger wave equation '1', which is generally understood in

terms of probability amplitudes. That is, in the· Schrodinger equation

amplitudes are virtual probabilities, and time is subsumed under a

quasi-Platonic virtuality, as in Julian Barbour's book The End of Time.

Barbour downplays the jumps that are associated with the collapse

of the wave function. Prigogine claims that in his formulation, "the

eigenfunctions of the Liouville operator are not expressed in terms of

probability amplitudes or wave functions, but rather in terms of prob­

abilities proper;' which means actual irreversibility.25 If this is the case,

then "the quantum superposition associated with the linearity of the

Schrodinger equation is violated:'26 For Prigogine, probability is not a

function of our own ignorance, but rather how nature works on both

microscopic and macroscopic levelsY

Prigogine attempts an impressive synthesis of quantum mechan­

ics and thermodynamics. He locates irreversibility at the deepest lev­

els of reality, and claims th,at probability is actual and not just virtual.

Furthermore, his later work indicates that dissipative structures are

152 DElEUZE BEYOND BADIOU

not exceptional; they are the rule. The problem with many scien­

tific and nonscientific accounts of complexity is that complex self­

organization is presented against a background of entropy under­

stood from the standpoint of nineteenth -century thermodynamics.

If entropy is the tendency that governs the universe, then the exis­

tence and increase of ordered complexity appears as a contradiction

or at best a counteractualization. The laws of thermodynamics were

formulated by Rudolf Clausius and Ludwig Boltzmann, who built

on Sadi Carnot's theories about the workings of steam engines. The

first law says that energy is always conserved. The second law states

that in any system, not all of the energy can be used for work; some

of it will be lost as entropy, usually in the form of heat. The incon­

trovertibility of the second law and its implications have proved

enormously influential, leading to predictions of a universal "heat

death:' In 1928, Sir Arthur Eddington wrote the following caution:

"If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe

is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations-then so much the

worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by

observation-well, these experimenters do bungle things sometimes.

But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermody­

namics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse

in deepest humiliation:'28

The laws of thermodynamics are one of the two major scientific

legacies of the nineteenth century. The problem is that they appear to

directly conflict with the other, evolution. As the ecologist Rod Swen­

son explains, this situation gives the impression of "two incommen­

surable rivers-the river of physics that flows downhill, and the river

of biology, psychology and culture that flows uphill:'29 Recent work

by Swenson and others has suggested that there is only one river, and

evolution is not an exception to but rather a further development of

the laws of thermodynamics. Building on the work of Prigogine on

dissipative systems, as well as that of Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Swen­

son holds that autocatakinetic systems will select the path or paths

"that minimize potential or maximize the entropy at the fastest rate

given the constraints;' which is the law of maximum entropy produc­

tion.30 Given a temperature or pressure differential, the flow of energy

1 53 ENERGETICS OF BEING

that occurs will work to reduce this gradient differential as quickly

and efficiently as possible.

Swenson gives the example of a warm cabin in cold woods. Heat

escapes the cabin into the surrounding environment relatively slowly,

but if one opens a window or a door, the rate of heat dissipation increases

in order to maximize the entropy as quickly as possible. Ordered

or organized flow through the window or door is more efficient at

reducing po.tentials than disordered flow, and this is most clearly seen

in a vortex, where organized air or water flow empties a container

much more quicldy than a slow, disorganized system. Swenson draws

the conclusion that "the world can be expected to produce order

whenever it gets the chance-the world is in the order-production

business because ordered flow produces entropy faster than disor­

dered flow:'3l If Swenson is correct, then the production of order is

not an exception to the second law, but a consequence of it. The func­

tioning of dissipative, autocatakinetic, or self-organized systems has

been analyzed as exceptional structures; but what if these structures

are the ru1e rather than the exception?

Biological evolution is still an incredible event, but it may be a leap

in .degree rather than in kind in relation to chemical and physical pro­

cesses. The new science of thermodynamics that has emerged in the

last half of the twentieth century does not conform to the stereotypical

image of classical thermodynamics from the nineteenth century. In

their book Into the Cool, Eric D. Schneider and Dorion Sagan exam­

ine and recapitulate the emergence of this revised science. Schneider

and Sagan reformulate the second law as "nature abhors a gradient:'32

Entropy production is gradient reduction. The reduction of gradients

at the maximum possible rate internally organizes complex processes,

such as Benard cells, Taylor vortices, and chemical cycles.33

For example, "Taylor vortices are produced in an apparatus that

consists of two cylinders, one inside the other, with a fluid filling the

gap between the cylinders:' When you turn the inner cylinder, the

resulting "rotation of the cylinders produces lateral pressure gradi­

ents across the fluid:'34 Later, the fluid dynamist Donald Coles showed

that "at a critical point of increased rotation, the fluid assumed one

of eight different flow patterns:'35 The point is that these patterns that

154 DElEUZE BEYOND BAD IOU

characterize Taylor flows and Taylor vortices are steady-state organi­

zations that are produced by the rotation that generates a pressure gra­

dient differential, and the flows are the result of the system attempting

to reduce the pressure differential as efficiently as possible. A simple

rotational gradient produces complex patterns. Furthermore, these

nonequilibrium systems display a kind of memory: "in their cyclicity

they embody pa,st modes of reaching equilibrium:'36 The system car­

ries short-term memory of past states that helps it reduce a gradient

most effectively, given that its direct path to equilibrium is blocked.

The interaction of the system and its history-which is the combina­

tion of the intensity that drives the system and the extensity that it

exhibits, in Deleuzian terms-produces novel patterns. These patterns

continue as long as there is a gradient differential that is being gener­

ated that fuels it.37

Complex patterns are the result of entropy, not the exception to it.

The second law "helps provide the temporal frame for the evolution of

new laws:' According to Schneider and Sagan, "the second law leads to

structure by selecting compounds in low-energy molecular combina­

tions, and in selecting for cyclic networks that continuously degrade

energY:'38 Life can be seen as a more complexly ordered, genetically

self-replicating process that is made possible by the prior organiza­

tion of physical and chemical systems. Living systems also cycle com­

plex compounds by means of metabolism, and this is a stable way to

degrade energy. Life may have originated from an ancient chemical

gradient-sulfide-oxygen-in deep-sea thermal vents. Schenider and

Sagan speculate that "organic chemicals across a gradient may have

been selected for properties of maintenance and stickiness to mineral

surfaces that were their original environment:'39

Thermodynamics was developed out of principles concerning

steam engines, but a broadened "nonequilibrium thermodynamics, as

the mother of all sciences of complexity, has practical applications to

economics, ecology, evolutionary theory, architecture, origins-of-life

research, climate research, art, and NAS�s search for extraterrestrial

life:'40 In this new non equilibrium thermodynamics, life and other

complex systems are grounded upon energy flows and the direction­

ality of nature toward eliminating gradient differentials.41 Here heat

155 ENERGETICS OF BEING

is one among many gradients, not the only one. Using in part this

new vision of thermodynamics, I will in fact suggest that we need to

view thermodynamics more athermally. Energy dynamics is certainly

entangled with heat, but the reduction of energy dynamics primarily

to heat is too classically thermodynamic in nineteenth-century terms.

Strikingly, Deleuze anticipates some of these scientific develop­

ments in Difference and Repetition, especially in chapter 5. So much

attention has been paid to the virtual status of mathematical, bio­

logical, and philosophical ideas in chapter 4 that chapter 5 has been

somewhat neglected. The asymmetrical synthesis of the sensible

means precisely the breaking of symmetry that destroys a gradient.

Deleuze says that "every intensity is differential, by itself a difference"

(DR 222). Intensity defines an arrow of time that passes "from more

to less differenciated, from a productive to a reduced difference" (DR

223). This differential intensity is canceled out in extensity, which

hides the intensive difference that produces entropy in its attempt to

recover equilibrium.

The classical model of thermodynamics represents, according

to Deleuze, "a strange alliance at the end of the nineteenth century

between science, good sense, and philosophy" (DR 223). In classical

thermodynamics, philosophy and science are constrained by the good

sense of entropy. Good sense "goes from the side of things to the side

of fire: from differences produced to differences reduced. It is ther­

modynamic" (DR 225). Good sense does not completely do away with

difference, but it recognizes difference only insofar as it is canceled

out in extensity over time. Differential intensity gives way to entropy

and heat death; differences are reduced to a smothering sameness.

The distribution of sense seems entropic, that is, based upon the pro­

gressive elimination of differences.

Deleuze cites Leon Selme's work on Clausius and Carnot, saying

that Selme "wanted to show that the increase of entropy is illusory"

(DR 228). Entropy is based on a transcendental illusion because it is

a universal presupposition that cannot be directly measured. Entropy

is the canceling out of differences, but it loses sight of the intensive

differences that drive the process. Nonequilibrium thermodynam­

ics is much closer to Deleuze's ontology in Difference and Repetition.

156 DElEUZE BEYOND BADIOU

Deleuze explains the fundamental paradox of the classical concep­

tion of entropy: "Entropy is an intensive factor but, unlike all other

extensive factors, it is an extension or 'explication' which is implicated

as such in intensity, which does not exist outside the implication or

except as implicated, and this is because it has the fundion of mak­

ing possible the general movement by which that which is implicated

explicates itself or is extended. There is thus a transcendental illusion

essentially tied to the qualitas, Heat, and to the extension, Entropy"

(DR 229) . Entropy is both extensity and intensity, but it cannot

account for intensity except as canceled out in extensity. Deleuze uses

a classical metaphorics of depth (which he later repudiates) in iden­

tifying depth with the intensity of being, but he shows how intensity

works below and beyond the transcendental illusion of entropy.

Intensive quantity "represents difference in quantity, that which

cannot be cancelled in difference in quantity or that which is unequal­

is able in quantity itself" (DR 232). This means that intensive differ­

ence both maintains and cancels out difference in its explication.

Deleuze says that "if a type of number cancels its difference, it does

so only by explicating it within the extension that it installs. Never­

theless, it maintains this difference in itself in the implicated order in

which it is grounded" (DR 232). Intensity preserves itself as difference

as it reveals itself as extensity. Extensity appears elsewhere, outside of

intensity: "Intensity is the uncancellable in difference of quantity, but

this difference of quantity is cancelled by extension, extension being

precisely the process by which intensive difference is turned inside

out and distributed in such a way as to be dispelled, compensated,

equalized and suppressed in the extensity which it creates" (DR 233).

The force that drives intensity, which is the differential intensity that

produces extension, is repetition. Or rather, intensity is already a

differential force itself, producing extensive identities outside itself.

Intensity is a process of infinite fractal iterations, the production of

images of space-time that repeat differently. Intensity drives the arrow

of time that makes the process irreversible rather than time-reversible

in a Newtonian sense.

Intensity affirms itself as difference even as it produces extension.

Intensity "makes difference itself an object of affirmation" (DR 234).

157 ENERGETICS OF BEING

Difference can only affirm itself as a series, a number of repetitions.

Since "intensity is already difference, it refers to a series of other

differences that it affirms by affirming itself" (DR 234) . Intensity

for Deleuze is a kind of multiplicity, and Deleuze affirms that there

are always at least two forms of multiplicity. 'There are always two

series, one higher and one lower, calculated along a quantitative

scale. Deleuze explains that intensity "makes the lowest an object

of affirmation" (DR 234 'The asymmetrical synthesis goes from

higher to lower, affirming the lower. 'This synthesis is the reduction

of gradient differentials that Swenson and Schneider and Sagan are

talking about.

'The asymmetrical synthesis of gradient reduction is a process of

individuation. Individuation "is the act by which intensity determines

differential relations to become actualized, along the lines of differen­

ciation and within the qualities and extensities it creates" (DR 246).

Individuation occurs and recurs eternally, that is, as an infinite num­

ber of discrete quantitative times. Individuation is produced; it is not

based on any prior Platonic identity, which is discussed in my reading

of Difference and Repetition in chapter 3. 'The eternal return "is said

of a world without identity, without resemblance, or equality" (DR

241). Eternal return is the infinite iteration of discrete differences, the

productive expansion of time-space images or spin networks. Swen­

son says that entropy production as the dissipation of potentials "dra­

matically increasers] the space-time dimensions of a system:'42 'The

expansion of space-time itself accords with the dramatic discovery of

the existence of dark energy in the last decade of the twentieth cen­

tury. 'The expansion of space-time, which Deleuze calls the spatium

in Difference and Repetition, sets up a gradient that is then reduced

in a symmetry-breaking event. Time is split between its capture in a

time( -space) image (or spin network). of pure time and its aperiodic

generation of new images, new ideas, and new bodies by means of the

interstitial cut between the time-images that selects a new series, as

discussed in Cinema 2 and chapter 5 of this book.

What drives the process or selection of images? Time understood

as the irreversible arrow of entropic production and gradient reduc­

tion. Here time is energy, what Deleuze calls repetition. According to

158 DElEUZE BEYOND BADIOU

Deleuze, "we define energy in terms of the difference buried in this

pure difference and it is the formula 'difference of intensity' which

bears the tautology, but this time the beautiful and profound tautol­

ogy of the Diffe.rent" (DR 240). Energy "or intensive quantity is the

spatium, the theatre of all metamorphosis or difference in itself which

envelops all its degrees in the production of each" (DR 240). Energy

is intensity; it is the force that drives dynamic repetition. We struggle

so much to understand and comprehend time because time itself is

split into two dissymmetrical jets, one that joins with space to form

a time-image and one that drives the production of images itself. The

split tempts many thinkers who have grappled with this intractable

problem to give up on time, including Einstein, Godel, Barbour, Rov­

elli, and BadiouY

Being is energy conversion, which is why it is fundamentally dif­

ferential or becoming rather than a static entity. Nonequilibrium ther­

modynamics treats energy flows across a gradient, and the reduction

of that gradient produces entropy but also produces order. This fact

seems paradoxical, but it is not; it is part of the order of things. At the

same time, the problem with thermodynamics is that even despite

its revision, it is still too preoccupied with heat. As thermodynamic

systems, we burn or oxidize carbohydrates as fuel. The second law

indicates that this process is always relatively inefficient and dissipates

low-grade energy as heat. Human civilization is based mostly on the

exploitation of cheap sources of stored solar energy. Machines run

on fuel that is burned, giving off heat as a by-product. The discovery,

extraction, and utilization of fossil fuels is an enormously productive

resource that gives us far more bang for our buck, or in technical

terms, Energy Return on Energy Invested.

The incredible scale of global human civilization in material terms

over the last two centuries cannot be imagined without vast resources

of cheap energy in the form of petroleum deposits. The problem early

in the twenty-first century, however, is twofold: (1) we have reached

or are reaching worldwide limits in the rate of extraction and produc­

tion of petroleum products; and (2) the emission of carbon entropy

on the scale of global production is contributing to global climate

change, mostly in the form of an increase in temperatures, but also as

159 ENERGETICS OF BEING

an increase in extreme forms of weather due to chaotically complex

feedback and feed-forward processes. Given access to energy reserves,

humans and other organisms will maximize entropy and grow until

they cannot do so anymore. It seems that we are running up against

real ecological and environmental limits.

We desperately need sane energy policies and resource manage­

ment to increase the efficiency, conservation, and recycling of energy

sources and materials.44 Infinite growth is not possible since natural

resources are finite, although this fact conflicts with the ideology

of contemporary capitalism. We need to create a new brain for our

species, or we will die and go extinct. We will die and eventually go

extinct in any case, but in the short term we need a radically new

approach to energy, both theoretically and practically.

I am arguing that Deleuze's work, particularly in Difference and

Repetition and Cinema 2, is an incredible and underappreciated

resource for this theoretical revolution. But it will not go far enough

as long as it is still thought in terms of the transcendental illusion of

thermodynamics. We need an energetic athermal dynamics, one that

envisions energy and energy production beyond heat. Heat is one gra­

dient among others, and we need new, nonthermal gradients. Einstein

showed us a new way to conceive of energy with his theory of special

relativity, but we have not followed through with his revolution, and

we got distracted to some extent by the incredible insights of quantum

mechanics. It's not that Einstein was right or wrong in his suspicion of

the truths of quantum physics; it's that Einstein showed us a new way

to think about energy, electromagnetically.

Nuclear energy is a new frontier, but its promise has greatly

exceeded its achievement. All we have managed to do with the pow­

erful sources of energy locked within the atomic nuclei has been to

build boilers and bombs. Nuclear energy has proved much less effi­

cient than oil and natural gas. Conventional nuclear energy uses fissile

materials to heat water to turn a turbine that then produces electric­

ity. The basic principles are essentially thermodynamic in a classical

sense. Nuclear fusion remains a tantalizing possibility, but any prac­

tical application is always receding, always at least a few decades in

the future.45

160 DElEUZE BEYOND BADIOU

What if it were possible to introduce a new form of nuclear fis­

sion, one that is athermal and based on magneto-electric principles?

Using the work of Kevin Mequet, whose collaboration has informed

and enriched this chapter, I want to speculate on an alternative form

of nuclear energy production.46 We have discovered and made use

of electricity and electrical power in incredible ways, but we do not

understand its companion force, magnetism, very welL The earth has

a strong magnetic field, and the existence of this field is what allows for

the existence of an atmosphere and therefore water and life; but we do

not know exactly how this magnetic field is generated. There appears to

be no known source of electricity in the earth's core, and we generally

conceive magnetism as a result of an electrical field. Einstein demon­

strated that an electric field propagates a magnetic field at a right angle,

which in turn produces another electrical field, at the speed of light.

So we suppose that there must be a source of electricity in the earth's

mantle or core. But earth has a rocky core, unlike the gas giants and the

sun, which have gaseous cores filled with superconductive plasma that

allow the generation of enormous magnetic fields. Furthermore, min­

erals such as iron and nickel in the earth are at a temperature higher

than the Curie temperature, above which electrical and magnetic con­

ductivity break down. It would seem to be impossible to sustain an

electric or magnetic field at temperatures above the Curie temperature.

The current explanation involves the movements of the earth and

has a fancy name: magnetohydrodynamics. But it is not really an

explanation; it's more of a name that takes the place of an explana­

tion. What if there is no source of electricity inside the earth? How

could the magnetic field be generated without a prior source of

electricity? What if the magnetic field is being generated from the

nuclear reactions themselves? Fissile and fertile nuclear elements in

the earth's mantle and core, mostly uranium and thorium, are under­

going convection and coriolis movements because of earth's rotation

and temperature and density gradients. These movements could sus­

tain a paramagnetic field despite the existence of heat above the Curie

temperature. Suppose these motions and these reactions are what is

producing the earth's anomalously strong magnetic field. Is there any

theory that could support such a hypothesis?

1 61 ENERGETICS OF BEING

In 1957, Richard Feynman and Murray Gell-Mann developed the theory of Strange Particle (Fermi) Interaction, which explains how weak nuclear forces coincide with electromagnetism.47 This theory goes a long way toward explaining quantum electrodynamics, and opens the way toward quantum chromo dynamics, much of the work for which was done by Gell-Mann. The 1957 theory shows, via the famous Feynman diagrams, a nuclear beta decay reaction, which gives off an electron. But what is interesting is that there is a small mag­netic force produced as well, a magnetic moment. Mequet suggests that Feynman and Gell-Mann's theory, along with earth's motions and density, explains where the magnetic field is coming from.

If we could model this system, basically a miniature earth, we could build a magneto-electric generator. The generator would have nuclear elements entrained in stainless steel rotating shells around a dynamic core. The nuclear interactions would produce the magnetic field directly, from which we could then generate electricity. This is a novel approach to nuclear energy production that is athermal; it does not involve burning nuclear materials as fuel. We cannot solve the prob­lem of nuclear fusion because we have never properly understood the problem of nuclear fission. We cannot be certain if this would work, but it is at least worth exploring and testing for viability and for spur­ring further thinking and experimentation along these lines.

What if the "solution" to the energy crisis is the earth itself? We need a new ecology based on energy dynamics that is realistic about the limits of thermodynamics but not trapped within a thermo­

dynamic paradigm. Who does the earth think it is? Deleuze and Guattari ask this question in A Thousand Plateaus, and I don't think we have been able to really appreciate how profound a question it is. Understanding this question of who earth is may be the differ­ence between life and death for our species in the not-so-distant future. We have smooth energy-electrical and magnetic-as well as layered strata of elements that are mixed by means of convection and coriolis motions. The magnetosphere is a truly a body without organs within whose "skin" we live and breathe. The magnetosphere allows earth to grow and maintain an atmosphere, without which life is not possible.

162 DELEUZE BEYOND BADIOU

In this chapter, I have developed some of the extraordinary sci­

entific and physical implications of Deleuze's thought and suggested

new ways of thinking about time, energy, and energy transformation.

In the next chapter, I will revisit the question of the political from

the standpoint of Deleuze's (and Deleuze and Guattari's) later work

and suggest that Badiou is wrong to accuse Deleuze of precluding any

political event.

163 ENERGETICS OF BEING

IN T HIS P E N U LTIMATE chapter, I reflect from the standpoint of

Deleuze on a politics of the event. What is polities? For Badiou, as

we have seen, politics is necessarily a major and molar affair that cre­

ates revolutionary subjects. Badiou claims that, for all its violence,

the twentieth century was marked by an extraordinary "passion for

the rea!:,l Even though most of the communist revolutionary proj­

ects have ended in failure, Badiou remains faithful to them as events

and to the possibility, however remote, of a future political event. A

political truth requires the commitment to the communist idea, or at

least to the power and force of Ideas. In The Communist Hypothesis,

he claims that "the dominant imperative in the world today is 'Live

without an Idea:"2 An Idea here "is the subjectivation of an interplay

between the singularity of a truth procedure and a representation of

Histori'3 Badiou remains faithful to Ideas, to the Idea of History that

is implied by world transforming events, and specifically to the event

of May 1968.

Badiou argues that for Deleuze there are too many events, and that

therefore an event does not represent a break from the status quo,

which means that Deleuze's thought possesses no inherently radical

politics and succumbs to the tyranny of the dominant capitalist prac­

tices. After Anti-Oedipus was published in the 1970S, Badiou, who was

a colleague of Deleuze at the University of Vincennes, attacked him

mercilessly in print and even, as Badiou himself admits, "once led a

'brigade' to intervene in his seminar:'4 Badiou published an article

under a pseudonym called "The Fascism of the Potato;' attacking the

notion of the rhizome for justifying revisionism and supplying read­

ers with trendy concepts that posed no threat to the capitalist status

quo. According to Badiou, '''play quietly in your corner' is the watch­

word of rhizomatic multiplicitY:'5

Furthermore, Deleuze's later interest in literature and aesthetics

was derided by Jacques Ranciere, who claims that "literature opens

no passageways toward a Deleuzian politics. There are no Dionysian

politics:'6 Rather than accept Badiou's caricature of Deleuze and Guat­

tari, or Ranciere's determination about the political insignificance of

Deleuze's later work, we need to more carefully trace the trajectory

from Capitalism and Schizophrenia to Cinema 2. I agree with Paola

Marrati's striking thesis: "Cinema 1 and 2 are the key texts in which

Deleuze develops his political philosophy:'? I will explain in this chap­

ter why I think Cinema 2 is the culmination of Deleuze's philosophy

and why it represents an important political event.

What is going on politically, and what is the significance of the

events of May 1968? Let's step back and ask some questions about 1968

from a different vantage point. According to Slavoj Zizek, Badiou's

political ally who shares much of Badiou's antipathy to Anti-Oedipus,

the events of 1968 that brought France to a standstill represented "a

crisis of a certain form of University discourse;' to use Lacan's term.s

Part of the official ideology that served the intellectual elite was break­

ing down, and a new form of discourse needed to be erected in its

place. "What effectively happened in the aftermath of '68;' Zizek

explains, "was the rise of a new 'spirit of capitalism:" So even if May

'68 represented a potential break, it also served as a transition to a

new form of capitalism, which "triumphantly recuperated the egali­

tarian and anti-hierarchical rhetoric of 1968, presenting itself as a suc­

cessful libertarian revolt against the oppressive social organizations

of corporate capitalism and of 'really existing' socialism:'9 This new

spirit of capitalism triumphed in the 1980s and 1990S, vanquishing

the USSR and co-opting the Communist Party of China. Much of the

radical philosophy that was published in France and Italy in the late

166 DELEUZE BEYOND BADIOU

1960s and 1970S was devoted to conceptually thinking through what

happened in 1968 in France and elsewhere, and more importantly,

what did not happen.

Another perspective on May 1968 is supplied by Paul Virilio in a

provocative and disturbing essay about "The End of the Proletariat:'

Virilio explains that 1968 represents the culmination of the militariza­

tion of the working classes, and that after this goal has been achieved

the proletariat is no longer necessary as a distinct organization.

According to Virilio, "the proletarianization of the working classes is

only one form of militarization-a temporary form."lo The idea of a

dictatorship of the proletariat serves to galvanize and militarize work­

ers, but after 1968, "when the proletariat's kinetic energy dominated

political life, having dominated the battlefield, is reaching an end;' the

worker is discarded in favor of a militarization of the social body itself

by new media technologies.1I This further militarization accompanies

and drives the new spirit of capitalism that Zizek discusses.

We need a deeper and broader understanding of ecology based on

energy thermodynamics, as discussed in the previous chapter. The

late 1960s and early 1970S marks a material transformation, which

is expressed in political, economic, social, and philosophical forms.

In wealthy parts of the world, we have become accustomed to two

things: an incredible degree of material civilization and comfort, and

a dizzying rate of technologi�al change. These two phenomena are

only possible because of the exploitation of fossil fuels, especially oil,

over the last century or so. The development of American oil fields,

the discovery of supergiant oil fields in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in

the Middle East, and the militarization of much of the globe during

the Second World War led to a massive material and cultural trans­

formation of society in the 1950S and 1960s. For a short time, indus­

trial economic growth promised to "lift all boats;' generating close to

full employment and creating welfare societies in rich countries, and

stimulating development in Third World nations.

At the end of the 1960S, following the Green Revolution that

applied petroleum machines and petroleum-based pesticides and fer­

tilizers to agriculture, the world economy began to hit a wall. In the

United States, oil production peaked in 1970, and was followed by the

167 POLITICS OF THE EVENT

decision of the Nixon administration to abandon the gold standard

and allow interest rates to float free. In the early 1970S, following the

Yom Kippur War and the US support of Israel, OPEC (at the time

AOPEC) announced an oil embargo that shocked the American and

global economy. The United States affirmed its political support of the

corrupt Saudi regime in return for the pledge to flood the markets

with cheap oil, and the US economy gradually recovered through the

use of very high interest rates. And it was this flow of cheap oil from

Saudi Arabia that bankrupted the Soviet Union, because the USSR

could not sell its oil for a profit on world markets.

At the same time, in the early 1970S environmentalism emerged as

a significant force, with the scientific understanding and public aware­

ness of atmospheric and water pollution and resource limits. During

the 1970S disciples of the economist Milton Friedman were develop­

ing their methods of economic austerity, which were first tested out

in Latin American countries under authoritarian governments before

being unleashed on much of the rest of the world by the IMF and

the World Bank.12 The neoliberal "Washington Consensus" func­

tioned throughout the 1980s and 1990S to privatize and redistribute

wealth from peasants and workers to corporate elites. As the Green

Revolution of global agriculture went global, "policies of agricultural

deregulation and financial discipline enforced by the IMF and World

Bank continued to generate an exodus of surplus rural labor to urban

slums even as cities ceased to be job machines:' leading to what Mike

Davis calls a "Planet of Slums:'13 My argument is that as capitalism

runs up against real global limits in natural resources, the only way

it can continue to function is to grow at the expense of the impov­

erishment of others. Capitalism has always been uneven and unfair,

generating enormous productivity by means of inequality, but in a

world of shrinking resources, absolute growth is impossible. So the

only alternative is relative growth, which leads to the concentration of

wealth and the pauperization of millions, which has been occurring

in real terms since the early 1970s.

The global capitalist demand for cheap energy for economic growth

is at the heart of the tech bubble that burst in 2000, then the global

"war on terror" that is really a series of energy wars, and finally the

168 OmUZE BEYOND BADIOU

creation and exploding of the largest financial bubble ever created, the

real estate bubble that burst in late 2007, leading to the global recession

of 200S. The global economic jobless "recovery" was not really a recov­

ery, but a precarious stabilization that further functioned to redistrib­

ute wealth and assets from poor and moderately wealthy people to the

rich, and 2011-2012 saw a further crisis of debt, this time involving not

just financial institutions but sovereign governments. As of the pub­

lishing of this book, there is no simple resolution to these problems

on the horizon. The reason that we cannot recover, despite the efforts

to blow up a green bubble, is because we have reached the limits of

cheap energy, which has sent oil and gas prices soaring so that they

choke off any nascent economic recovery. Peak oil means that half of

the available oil has been used up, and the other half will gradually get

harder and more expensive to extract. Oil production has peaked in

the first decade of the twenty-first century, and we face dangerous and

destabilizing declines as well as shortages of other natural resources,

including phosphates and water. These shortages are taking place as

we face the first serious effects of global climate change, as weather

events become more extreme as the planet warms and ice melts.

So what is to be done? Do we militantly wait for another event,

and hope that it happens before we die or become extinct? Or do we

create an event of thinking? A time-image is a political event, and it

is responsive to the political situation of our time. As Paola Marrati

suggests, Deleuze believes that concepts like History, God, and Self

are too big to function for any effective political action, and that, in

fact, politics based on action runs into serious problems because the

movements become programmed in advance and then reduced to cli­

ches, or else captured by state and capitalist apparatuses. Marrati says

that "we certainly need more thought to create 'new forms of life'; but

we also need, maybe in the first place, to acknowledge the power of

thought:'14 We need to attend to the revolutionary nature of thought

itself, and this is something that Badiou and Deleuze both share, even

if they differ in their assessments and evaluations of how that works.

I think Marrati is correct in her perception of the political nature of

Deleuze's work on cinema, but I also think that Deleuze is responding

to more recent political processes and pressures.

169 POLITICS OF THE EVENT

This is a somewhat speculative account, but at the end of A Thou­

sand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari develop a political philosophy

based on an understanding of movement as far as it can go, until it

breaks down. This impasse attests to the ultimate failure of the incred­

ible project that is Capitalism and Schizophrenia. In both Anti-Oedipus

and A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari borrow the language

of Paul Virilio, using the terms territorialization, deterritorialization,

and reterritorialization. In Anti-Oedipus, these terms barely appear,

and they are more elaborated in the sequel. For Anti-Oedipus, the

intrinsically schizophrenic flows of desiring machines both exceed

and sustain capitalist and Oedipal control. In chapter 3, "Savages, Bar­

barians, Civilized Men:' Deleuze and Guattari speculate on the origins

of the State and of capitalism in a sketch of what later becomes the

plateau in A Thousand Plateaus on "1227: Treatise on Nomadology­

The War Machine:' Deleuze and Guattari appeal to Nietzsche's analy­

sis in On the Genealogy of Morals in positing the formation of the

State as a "primitive inscription machine . . . that renders the debt

infinite and no longer forms anything but one and the same crushing

fate" (AO 192). Human society and statehood is founded in and by

debt, which is calculated and inscribed in an oppressive and savage

machinery. This originary marking out of a territory and a people in

a state is then opposed by a countermovement, a "barbarian despotic

machine." This barbarian despotic machine, which becomes the war

machine in A Thousand Plateaus, "has to be conceived of in terms

of an opposition between it and the primitive territorial machine:

the birth of an empire" (AO 192). The barbarian despotic machine is

de territorializing; it attacks and makes war on the territory of states

and nascent empires, which are always on guard to prevent the break­

down of order that these barbarians represent.

Finally, modern civilized societies function by assimilating the

barbarian despotic machine into the initial primitive state machin­

ery. Deleuze and Guattari claim that "civilized modern societies are

defined by processes of decoding and deterritorialization. But what

they deterritorialize with one hand, they reterritorialize with the other"

(AO 257). Modern state capitalism works by de territorializing and

breaking apart natural resources and traditional forms of life, but

170 DElEUZE BEYOND BADIOU

only to reterritorialize them as productive land, labor, money, and

wealth. The desperate experiment of Capitalism and Schizophrenia,

which is not a bourgeois justification of the status quo, is a response

to the deterritorialization and subsequent reterritorialization of May

'68. Deleuze and Guattari ask, what if we reverse the two, and liberate

deterritorialization fully from its capture and reterritorialization by

the state, the military, and corporate capitalism? Here is the thesis of

desiring machines. If the flows of desire are the same flows that fund

capital, might it be possible to liberate these flows in a schizophrenic

manner so that they would not be able to be reappropriated by capi­

talism? Schizophrenia, they argue, "is indeed the absolute limit that

causes the flows to travel in a free state on a desocialized body without

organs. Hence one can say that schizophrenia is the exterior limit of

capitalism itself or the conclusion of its deepest tendency, but that

capitalism only functions on condition that it inhibit this tendency,

or that it push back or displace this limit, by substituting for it its

own immanent relative limits, which it continually reproduces on a

widened scale" (AO 246). In Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Deleuze

and Guattari attempt to push capitalism to and beyond its limit, to

the point of absolute de territorialization, where it breaks down and

frays apart.

This courageous attempt to think what May ' 68 tried to enact obvi­

ously and necessarily fails, and it is then derided by Badiou, Zizek,

and others. The two chapters toward the end of A Thousand Plateaus,

the "Treatise on Nomadology" and the '�pparatus of Capture;' essen­

tially rewrite this story in a more thorough, careful, and precise man­

ner. Here, tellingly, the order is reversed: the discussion of nomadol­

ogy precedes the analysis of the State as the quintessential apparatus

of capture. We can see an almost inevitable end of any war machine,

however Deleuze and Guattari try to valorize it, as its warlike power

is invariably co-opted by the State. The barbarian war machine func­

tions to threaten and disrupt ancient and medieval empires for a time,

but eventually, as a contemporary writer puts it, "the nomads' igno­

rance of civilization's complex technologies, including sophisticated

water management, proved to be one of their grave weaknesses in

trying to govern the societies they conquered:'15 Thus the Mongols

171 POLITICS OF THE EVENT

proved to be the last great nomadic people, as evidenced by the date

assigned to the plateau, 1227.

Furthermore, the apparatus of capture is dated to 7000 B.C., which

implies the preexistence of the state and its inevitable victory by

assimilating the forces of the nomadic war machine that opposes it.

As Deleuze and Guattari write, "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 functions as much by machinic

enslavement as by social subjection. Capitalism has awakened the

Urstaat and given it a new strength" (ATP 460) . The plateau of the

apparatus of capture, or the inevitable reterritorialization of all efforts

at deterritorializing, is followed by a very abstract discussion of smooth

and striated space, and then the "Conclusion: Concrete Rules and

Abstract Machines:' The language and structure of A ThoLlsand Pla­

teaLlS, while incredibly abstract and experimental, is also much more

sober and analytical than the exuberant hopefulness of Anti-Oedipus.

In the conclusion to A Thousand Plateaus, published in French

in 1980 and probably still unsurpassed in experimental form and

thought, Deleuze and Guattari revisit the notion of absolute deter­

ritorialization, a deterritorialization that cannot be captured and

ret.;rritorialized, and conclude that the location of absolute deterri­

torialization is the earth itself. They affirm that any notion of terri­

tory must possess "vectors of deterritorialization" that are multiple

and operative within it. At the same time, deteuitorialization "is in

turn inseparable from correlative reterritorializations" (ATP 509).

Ultimately, however, reterritorialization is not simply the return to an

original territory, but "rather [to) these differential relations internal

to [deterritorialization) itself, this multiplicity internal to the line of

flight:' Reterritorialization allows for colonization and capitalization

of resources, and frees up or liberates realms of freedom and reflec­

tion. Deterritorialization never occurs simply apart from reterrito­

rialization, but there exists an absolute of deterritorialization within

deterritorialization -reterritorialization itself. Furthermore, this abso­

lute is not a quantitative movement; "it expresses only a type of move­

ment qualitatively different from relative movement" (ATP 509) .

172 DElEUZE BEYOND BADIOU

Earth is not territory, and it is not simply a result of global capi­

talist reterritorialization. Absolute deterritorialization, or deterrito­

rialization par excellence, is earth, or "the glacial:' Earth itself "as

ardent, eccentric, or intense focal point is outside the territory and

exists only in the movement of" deterritorialization (ATP 509). Inso­

far as it is the product of deterritorialization in such a way that it

cannot simply be reterritorialized, earth is "the strict correlate" of

deterritorialization. Deleuze and Guattari call for an absolute form of

deterritorialization that would be "called the creator of a new earth­

of a new land, a universe, not just a reterritorialization" (ATP 509) .

On the one hand, we desperately need a new way of thinking and

thinking about earth that exceeds capitalist globalization, a new ecol­

ogy that understands economics in terms of finite nature resources

and thermodynamic energy flows. At the same time, what I think

Deleuze and Guattari exhaust is the possibility of any philosophy

or politics based solely on movement or territory. The State always

appropriates, captures, redirects, and lives off of deterritorialized

flows, forces, and desires, and this is part of the lesson of the failure

of May ' 68, as Zizek understands.

So then the conventional account of Deleuze's philosophical trajec­

tory, perpetuated by Badiou, is that Deleuze retreated from politics

(and perhaps it was only Guattari's influence that brought his atten­

tion there in the first place), and retreated into aesthetics, literature,

painting, and cinema, and eventually a fascination with Baroque art

and architecture. Finally, Deleuze tinkered in old age with the age­

old question of What Is Philosophy?, and since Felix was depressed,

he decided as an act of generosity to add Guattari's name to his final

book16 My counterreading is that Deleuze's retreat into aesthetics was

not only a retreat, it was a deep and searching attempt to renew not

only philosophy but also politics, and his retreat was also a relaunch­

ing of urgent political thinking, which culminated in the explosive

effects of the time-image, which has not been appreciated nearly well

enough. What Cinema 1 and 2 recount is not simply the history of

twentieth-century cinema, but Deleuze's own shift from a philosophy

based on movement, which is the premise of Capitalism and Schizo­

phrenia, to a philosophy based directly on time.

173 POlITICS OF THE EVENT

Before Deleuze wrote the Cinema books, he published a provoca­

tive study of the painter Francis Bacon, subtitled The Logic of Sensa­

tion, which came out in 1981. I read this book as a transitional book,

where Deleuze is searching for an aesthetic to assist in a renewal of

philosophical thought. He finds something interesting in Bacon's

paintings, but it ends up being not quite what he is looking for, which

he discovers in cinema. What is significant about Bacon's work for

Deleuze is that his unconventional paintings of human subjects iso­

late an unnatural figure apart from any context of natural figuration.

Deleuze explains that "it is the confrontation of figure with field, their

solitary wrestling in shallow depth, that rips the painting away from all

narrative as well as from all symbolization:'!7 In the book, figuration

is explicitly associated with movement, and sensation names what

will later emerge as time in the time-image. Bacon's work expresses

sensation directly without it's being subordinated to the movement

of narrative or figuration. "Movement does not explain sensation;'

Deleuze writes, "on the contrary, it is explained by the elasticity of

the sensation:' Movement is contained in Bacon's paintings, and this

movement is significant, violent, and intense. But "in the end, it is a

movement 'in-place; a spasm, which reveals a completely different

problem characteristic of Bacon: the action of invisible forces on the

bodf'18 Sensation involves the action of invisible forces on the body,

and this sensation will reoccur in Cinema I as the affection-image that

undoes the action-image and plunges the movement-image into crisis

because its actions deteriorate into cliches.

Action degenerates into cliche in the recent history of art, politics,

and cinema because movement becomes automatic, and this auto­

maticity undermines the integrity of movement as such, even as it

makes possible a direct image of time. I have already discussed the

production of images and the idea of the time-image as an event in

Deleuze's philosophy in chapter 4 of this book. There, however, r did

not draw out the political implications of my reading. Here I will con­

sider the two most explosive chapters of Cinema 2, 7 and 8, from the

perspective of a politics based on time. At the beginning of chapter

7, "Thought and Cinema;' Deleuze presupposes Walter Benjamin's

famous essay"The Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction:'

174 DELEUZE BEYOND BADIDU

Deleuze does not explicitly refer to this essay or name Benjamin,

but he considers the idea that "cinema as industrial art achieves self­

movement, automatic movement, and it makes movement the imme­

diate given of the image" (TI 156). This automatic movement gives rise

to a "spiritual automaton in us;' and it is the shock of this automatic

spiritual automaton that forces us to think, and ultimately to think

time as such.

Deleuze is wrestling with Benjamin's famous distinction between

the aestheticization of politics in fascism and the politicization of

aesthetics that Benjamin calls for in authentic communist practice.19

According to Deleuze, cinema as a mass art "was in danger of becom­

ing the dummy of every kind of propaganda" (TI 157). Deleuze relies

on the Russian filmmaker Eisenstein to show how the experience of

shock that is produced by the automaticity of cinema "forces us to

think, and to thirik the Whole" (TI 158). This is the production of

a conceptual montage in cinema, which strives to think the Whole

that is given in part as a shock to the nervous system by the spiritual

automaton of material reproduction. In classical cinema, there is still

a viable concept of action that expresses the natural "relation between

man and the world;' which cinema films eTI 161).

The problem with cinema is not that there were so many mediocre

films, which is also a consequence of mass production. The problem is

that the very art of the masses quickly became the art of intoxicating

and manipulating the masses. The liberation of desire and the deter­

ritorialization of a nomadic war machine that would oppose the state

were reterritorialized on fascism in Europe. Deleuze says that "the

mass-art, the treatment of masses, which should not have been insep­

arable from an accession from the masses to the status of true subject,

has degenerated into state propaganda and manipulation, into a kind

of fascism which brought together Hitler and Hollywood, Hollywood

and Hitler. The spiritual automaton became fascist man" eTI 164). We

expect the processes and products of our technological civilization

to liberate us, but they serve rather to enslave us, and to make us at

once master and slave of our own oppression. Here Deleuze drives the

point home by referring to Virilio's thesis: "there has been no diver­

gence or alienation in an art of the masses initially founded by the

175 POLITICS OF THE EVENT

movement-image; on the contrary the movement-image was from

the beginning linked to the organization of war, state propaganda,

ordinary fascism, historically and essentially" (TI 165). Virilio's thesis

as represented by Deleuze here accords with his cynical evaluation

of the power of the proletarian movement as a mass movement and

the negative significance of May '68. 'The movement-image has always

been a trap, and we are screwed.

Deleuze is too smart not to recognize the truth of this situation,

but despite this damning indictment of the essence of cinema and its

images, he continues to believe that it harbors some revolutionary sig­

nificance. Is he just being duped? Deleuze turns to Artaud, who origi­

nally shared the excitement for early cinema but then quicldy became

disillusioned. For Artaud, what is important is the "powerlessness at

the heart of thought" that shocks us into an awareness that we are not

yet thinking (TI 166). Although Artaud was more interested in other

forms of art, Deleuze applies Artaud's insights to cinema. Deleuze says

that with Artaud, "the spiritual automaton has become the Mummy,

this dismantled, paralysed, petrified, frozen instance which testifies

to 'the impossibility of thinking that is thought'" (TI 166). Here the

Mummy is the core or the navel of thought, which leads thinking

beyond or outside itself, where it bumps up against a limit that later

becomes a fault. 'The "innermost reality" of cinema is not the Whole,

which thought cannot think without being manipulated and duped,

but rather "a fissure, a crack" (TI 167).

'The crack of thought at the navel of being is the gap that opens

onto a time-image. If politics is based primarily on movement, any

move we make is already predicted and prescribed, and the game itself

is rigged. To choose to play on the board and act based on selected

options of movement-conform, protest, write, work, donate, cam­

paign, legislate, and so on-is to lose because the alignment of capi­

talism and the State has sovereign control over your movements and

even your desires. What is left? Only thought, but only in a negative,

not a positive, sense. You can only think that you are stuck, iliat you

are not truly thinking; but that thought opens up a crack and you

can follow that crack into a time. 'The spiritual automaton is an idiot,

a "dummY;' a "Cartesian diver in us, unknown body which we have

176 DELEUZE BEYOND BADIOU

only at the back of our heads whose age is neither ours nor that of

our childhood, but a little time in the pure state" (TI 169). Time in its

pure state names that powerlessness of thought, which has a strange

potentiality or power.

The crisis of the movement-image and the deterioration of action

into cliche dispossesses us of the world. Our inability to think means

our inability to think a world, except as a fantasy or false world, which

means that the real world is unthinkable and therefore unlivable.

Deleuze states that the world has become intolerable for us. But "it is

not in the name of a better or truer world that thought captures the

intolerable in this world, but, on the contrary, it is because this world is

intolerable that it can no longer think a world or think itself" (TI 169-

70). The intolerable is "the permanent state of a daily banality" (TI 170).

Cinema for Deleuze takes upon itself the modern problem of

belief: we do not believe in the world. "We do not even believe in the

events that happen to us, love, death, as if they only half concerned

us. It is not we who make cinema; it is the world which looks to

us like a bad film" eTI 171). Our own consciousness has been colo­

nized such that we perceive and act as if we are the star of a movie.

Unfortunately, it is never a good movie, but usually an intolerably

banal movie and at best a bad movie. The movement-image implies

an organic Whole of which it is a part. This movement-image runs

aground when we lose our faith in our perception of the world and

the value of our actions upon it. "The link between man and the

world is broken" (TI 171-72). We still talk about the world as if we

believe in it, but Deleuze thinks that we only half-believe because our

sensory-motor links between human perception and human action

in the world have broken down. Furthermore, he does not think that

these links can be restored, that the world can be put back together

for us the way that it was as an object of faith. So what do we have

left? "Henceforth, this link must become an object of belief" (TI 172).

All we have is the links themselves, which still function even if they

do not function representationally.

We need to be more thoughtful, more desperate, and more cre­

ative. The power and potential of modern cinema is its capacity to

restore our belief in the world by filming the time-image directly as

177 POLITICS OF THE EVENT

transformative link. The link is no longer the organic link to a Whole,

but the interstice between two images. The time-image refers to this

productive interstice. Referring to Jean-Luc Godard, Deleuze explains

that Godard's method is not one of association but rather one where

"given one image, another image has to be chosen which will induce

an interstice between the two:' which is an operation of differentiation

(TI 179). The time-image is the "between two images:' the interstice

that produces an image as link, and this "does away with all cinema

of the One" (TI 180).

We need to produce a new world with these fragmented links, a

world that would not be another world or a new world, but this world,

produced anew. That is the political and artistic challenge of the time­

image, what Marrati calls "an immanent conversion of faith:'20 Believ­

ing in the world means believing in the radically transformative and

revolutionary power of thinking, precisely in its unpower, or impou­

vior. Believing means for Deleuze above all believing in a body. "We

must believe in the body, but as in the germ of life, the seed which

splits open the paving-stones, which has been preserved and lives on

in the holy shroud or the mummy's bandages, and which bears wit­

ness to life, in this world as it is. We need an ethic or a faith, which

makes fools laugh; it is not a need to believe in something else, but a

need to believe in this world, of which fools are a part" (TI 173).

Given a body, how does cinema or the time-image help us build

a brain? In chapter 8, "Cinema, Body and Brain, Thought:' Deleuze

says that the body is no longer the obstacle to thinking, as in classi­

cal philosophy, but rather what thought "plunges into or mllst plunge

into, in order to reach the unthought, that is life" (TI 189) . Badiou's

mathematical formalism takes its distance from life and preserves an

austere power of thought untouched by bodies. It's not a question for

Deleuze of opposing thought and bodies, and here we can see how

The Logic of Sense relates to Cinema 2. In The Logic of Sense, as we

have already seen, Deleuze contrasts two series, a series of incorpo­

real language and a series of corporeal bodies. Here in Cinema 2, we

have two kinds of modern cinema, a cinema of body, associated with

Godard, and a cinema of the brain, associated with Resnais (TI 204).

Instead of language, Deleuze uses the word thought. The event is what

178 OElEUZE BEYOND BAD IOU

happens when body is linked to thought in a certain way, when the

links of body are charged with building a brain and the brain is liter­

ally and viscerally embodied. The two series, thought and body, form

a kind of parallax:, such that neither collapses entirely into the other,

but remain separated by an invisible cut, which is the synaptic gap or

interstice of an event as time-image. The time-image is the event, the

event of producing or creating a brain, and this event is directly and

importantly political.

In this chapter, Deleuze distinguishes between an inside (thought)

and an outside (body), and shows how each aspect intensifies in mod­

ern cinema and in our scientific understanding of the brain. What

we saw previously as an "organic process of integration and differ­

entiation" comes to indicate "an absolute outside and inside, in con­

tact topologically" (TI 211). This topological cerebral space conjoins

thinking and embodiment together, but they are conjOined by cuts,

or microfissures that define the brain as "an acentered system" (TI

211). These breaks or fissures take precedence over organic integra­

tion and association. It is the interstice that relates images together;

"it is the equivalent of an irrational cut, which determines the non­

commensurable relations between images" (TI 213). The cut "relinks

images on either side;' absorbing them to become a "membrane of the

outside and the inside" (TI 215). In this way, Deleuze affirms, "the cin­

ematographic image becomes a direct presentation of time, according

to non-commensurable relations and irrational cuts" (TI 214). The cut

of the image and the fact that the image is unlinked from its organic

connection or association with other images in the composition of

a world as a Whole means that the interstice is the link itself. The

link itself is the direct presentation of time, because time cannot be

directly presented as an image, but only composed between two or

more images; yet time is just as fully present in the film or the frame.

The time-image is an operation of time, an entropic intensity that

drives the repetition of images differently, to put it in the language of

Difference and Repetition.

The time-image puts thought into contact with its outside, which is

unthought. A time-image shows the unthought at the heart of thought

as that which propels thought forward, to the creation of something

179 POLITICS OF THE EVENT

new. Deleuze claims that Resnais is not just a cerebral filmmaker, but

a great political filmmaker (TI 215) . Resnais is a great political film­

maker because he knows "how to show the people are what is missing"

(TI 215). The problem with classical cinema is that the masses were

pregiven or presupposed, and mass art and politics were to fashion

them into a people. The masses were supposed to become a revolution­

ary subject, "but a great many factors were to compromise this belief:'

including Hitler, Stalinism, and "the break-up of the American people;'

who were reduced by consumer capitalism (TI 216). We can mourn the

loss of the people and the failure of the promise of revolutionary mass

art and politics, but that does notlIing but give in to despair.

Deleuze offers an alternative: "if there were a modern political

cinema, it would be on this basis: the people no longer exist, or not

yet . . . the people are missing" (TI 216). If the people are missing, then

they need to be filmed, they need to be invented, and that is the task of

contemporary cinema, which Deleuze associates with Third World or

minority cinema. On the one hand, this conclusion appears negative,

because we have to give up the dream of revolutionary politics on a

classical grand scale, which is what Badiou refuses to do. Deleuze is

unequivocal. He says that "there will no longer be conquest of power

by a proletariat, or by a united or unified people" (TI 220). We have

to give up this impossible dream. But the alternative is not to sim­

ply surrender to the cynical realism of neoliberal capitalism. On the

other hand, there is the consciousness that "there were no people, but

always several peoples, an infinity of peoples, who remained to be

united, or should not be united, in order for the problem to change"

(TI 220) . Here is Deleuze's expression of what Antonio Negri and

Michael Hardt call the multitude, and Hardt and Negri's coauthored

volumes (Empire, Multitude, Commonwealth) extend the vision of

Deleuze and Deleuze and Guattari into the twenty-first century.2!

If the people are missing, then the challenge or the opportunity

is to create them, not as unified but as multitude. For Negri, it is the

time of living labor that produces human subjectivity, and this is a

kind of time-image, as is seen most clearly in Time for Revolution. In

the second essay of that book, "Kairos, Alma Venus, Multitudo;' Negri

names what Deleuze calls time in its pure state kairos, the Greek term

180 DElEUZE BEYOND BADIOU

that contrasts with chronological time. Kairos can mean now-time,

or an auspicious moment to be seized; but from a Deleuzian stand­

point kairos is not given, it is produced by the linking and unlinking

of images. Negri says that "the event of real knowledge is produced,

in all probability, precisely at the point where the restlessness of time

reveals itself as power:'22 This power is not the actualized power of

potestas; rather, it is the potential power of Spinoza's potentia, as Negri

explains in his book on Spinoza, The Savage Anomaly. As Negri puts

it in Time for Revolution, "kairos is power at precisely the moment

that the experience of time restlessly observes the edge over which it

leans:'23 The edge over which it leans is the interstitial cut, the fact that

no image has a natural connection with its successor. Therefore one

plunges into the intensity of time to forge a connection with another

image, at every moment, with the goal of assembling a brain.

According to Deleuze, there is a membrane, a double becoming,

between inside and outside, private and public, I and world, and this

membrane is a plastic membrane. For a Third World or minority

people-and today almost everyone is on the way to becoming minor­

ity in material terms-"it is as if the whole memory of the world is

set down on each oppressed people, and the whole memory of the

I comes into play in an organic crisis" eTI 221). The I who assumes

the role of actor, director, or politician in a genuine sense, rather than

as a corrupt dupe of corporate capital, "is in a situation of producing

utterances which are already collective, which are like the seeds of the

people to come, and whose political impact is immediate and ines­

capable" (TI 221). This conception of Third World cinema could seem

like it conforms to the microidentitarianism of cultural identity poli­

tics that reigned in some quarters of the intellectual English-speaking

world in the 1990S, but I want to suggest a more radical significance

for Deleuze's thought here. He is experimenting with the political pos­

sibilities of the time-image, the direct presentation of time in its pure

state, which stitches together humanity and world in an ethic or faith

that is postcapitalist.

I am arguing that Cinema 2 is not just a book on cinema, and that

it is not simply a renewal of philosophical thinking, although it is also

that. It is a revolutionary political treatise, because it engages with

181 POLITICS OF THE EVENT

the direct production of a time-image. Deleuze delves deeply into

thought in an attempt to create a new brain for our species, which

is an explosive political activity. It's about restoring the links of belief

with the world, which are frayed and broken. Most of our thinking

and our actions are cliched and resemble a bad movie. Their possibili­

ties are completely prescribed by the State. But Badiou and Deleuze

(as well as Zizek and Negri) Imow that the State cannot think! The

time-image is the restoration of the link between humanity and the

world. The power and possibility of modern cinema, as well as of con­

temporary political theory, is its ability to restore our belief in the

world, here and now.

The problem is not simply the loss of the world: we have lost our

belief in ourselves, politically, ethically, and as a people. Since the peo­

ple are missing, Deleuze transfers his hopes to Third World cinema,

a cinema of and for minorities, as a vehicle for inventing the people

who are missing; but this is not any simple identity politics. '�rt,

and especially cinematographic art, must take part in this task: not

addressing a people, which is presupposed already there, but of con­

tributing to the invention of a people" (TI 217). Isn't this what genuine

political movements do? Invent a people, which is a form of populism

similar to that expressed by Ernesto Laclau's On Populism.

According to Laclau, "the political operation par excellence is

always going to be the constitution of a people:'24 This occurs when

an equivalential chain of elements becomes condensed and then

expressed by a Singular element. This chain forms and is made pos­

sible by means of an empty signifier.2s An empty signifier functions

like what Lacan calls an object a, or a little bit of the real that gets

caught in the symbolic realm and functions to warp the field of the

symbolic. The object a "represents" what is missing, what it cannot

represent, which is how a people can resemble or represent them­

selves as missing. Laclau criticizes Deleuze (as well as Hardt and Negri

and to some extent Zizek) because he reads De1euze's emphasis on

immanence as a form of homogeneity that prevents the creation of

an empty signifier that comes to represent the people.26 I think that

Laclau fails to appreciate the heterogeneity of Deleuze's philosophy in

his critique. Laclau insists on the moment and operation of a kind of

182 DElEUZE BEYOND BAD/OU

negativity, which Deleuze criticizes; but for Deleuze the composition

of a time-image and the production of a people is heterogeneous and

proceeds by means of the cut or interstice that breaks the chain of

natural signification. Although we should not collapse Deleuze into

Laclau, Laclau's analysis of populism is relevant to a political under­

standing of how cinema films a people who are missing.

The invention of a people today involves the construction of a

time-image, a new way to think, to directly short-circuit the cliches,

manipulations, and self-deceptions of the State. An invention of a

people is an event, the production of the event. Most events occur

under the signature of a name, but the name is not a proper name but

rather a conceptual persona under which the event is consolidated.

These conceptual personae can be named Chavez or Morales or Mar­

cos or Aristide-most of these progressive names are Latin American

today, but there is no ethnic or cultural essence. It is the contingent

but necessary condition-partly socioeconomic and partly historical

and partly ecological-for any political event todayY Deleuze says that

"third world cinema has this aim: through trance or crisis, to consti­

tute an assemblage which brings real parties together, in order to make

them produce collective utterances as the prefiguration of the people

who are missing (and, as Klee says, 'we can do no more')" (TI 224).

We can do no more, but we can do no less. Radical thinking is

insurrectionary, just as the time-image is a revolutionary political

concept. Kevin Mequefs generator, which was described in the previ­

ous chapter, is the manifestation of a time-image, in a virtual sense.

It remains to be seen whether or not it could be actualized, and if so,

what its effects would be. We know that we are all going to die, even

if we choose to disavow that knowledge. Whether Freudian or Laca­

nian, some kind of death drive seems undeniable, and we are bent

on destroying ourselves even as we generate imaginary and symbolic

ways to deny this fact to ourselves and to others. But despite or beyond

this death drive, what would it mean to truly embrace and enact a

time-image, and relink ourselves with one another and the world? Our

survival as a political species may depend on this possibility. In the

final chapter, I will consider one of the most desperate cases in the

modern world, the nation of Haiti, as an application of the time-image.

183 POlITICS OF THE EVENT

TEN V�DOU ECON�M�CS HAITI AND THE fUTURE Of DEMOCRACY

B Y WAY O F A C O N C L U S I O N , and as an opportunity to flesh out

further my understanding of the significance of Deleuze's politics of

the event as sketched out in the previous chapter, I engage here in a

limited way with Haiti and with Vodou as a sort of test case of a con­

sideration of democracy. Haiti throughout its history and even more

visibly since the earthquake in 2010 supplies a set of extreme and bru­

tal conditions for thinking seriously about a desperate people who

are missing, as well as a way to think about politics today in a post­

secularist, postliberal context.l In this context, what would it mean to

consider Vodou as a kind of time-image in a Deleuzian sense?

Human beings originated in Africa, and spread from there

throughout the world. In 1492, Christopher Columbus, a Genoan

sailing under the flag of Spain, landed on the island that was called

by the native Taino Ayti, and by the Spanish Espanola (Hispaniola).

This European encounter with a "New World" marked a profound

shift to what was later called modernity. The natives were enslaved to

make the land profitable and productive, but they were quicldy devas­

tated by disease and the brutal conditions and practically wiped out.

The ingenious Europeans then imported people purchased as slaves

from West Africa to work the plantations, and it was this continu­

ous supply of human beings from Africa that enriched Europe with

the enormous production of American colonies. Colonialism, slavery,

and racism, as well as the displacement and destruction of indigenous

peoples, represents the messy underside of liberal modernity, and this

provided the capital that sparked the industrial revolution.

The English and French came later to the game, but were not to

be outdone by the Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch. France took the

western half of Hispaniola from Spain in 1697, and called their new

colony Saint-Domingue, which became the most profitable colony in

the world in the eighteenth century. This profit came from the enor­

mous success of its sugar and coffee plantations, but it was achieved

at a terrible cost. African slaves were treated with horrible cruelty,

and the death rate was extremely high: "on average, half of the slaves

who arrived from Africa died within a few years:'2 In August 1791,

however, in the wake of the French Revolution of 1789, a huge slave

insurrection broke out which culminated in the independence of

Haiti in 1804. This was the first successful slave revolution in the New

World, although it was won at an enormous cost, including the killing

of whites, the enfranchisement of a mulatto elite, and the ostracism

and impoverishment of the new country. Haiti only established dip­

lomatic relations with France in 1825 by agreeing to pay 150 million

francs as compensation for the loss of its slaves. The United States,

horrified by the success of the Haitian Revolution and its implications

for US slaves, refused to recognize Haiti as an independent nation

until 1861.

The European nations were motivated to contain and limit the

spread of this democratic outbreak. With the loss of its most profit­

able colony, France under Napoleon sold off its other territories in

America to the United States, which became known as the Louisiana

Purchase. France was eclipsed by Great Britain as the most power­

ful nation in the world during the nineteenth century, and London

became the center of capital, banking, and commerce. In turn, after

World War I tore Europe apart, the United States replaced Britain as

the political, economic, and military leader of the world. To cement

its status as emerging superpower, the US Marines invaded Haiti in

1915 and remained until 1934, ostensibly to preserve Haiti from Ger­

man interference, although General Smedley Butler "charged that the

marines invaded Haiti as bill collectors for the National City Bank of

186 DElEUZE BEYOND BADIOU

New York [now Citibank]:'3 After the end of the invasion, the United

States ensured its economic and political interests by means of puppet

dictators, culminating in the reigns of Jean-Claude Duvalier and then

and Franyois Duvalier.

As the Peter Hallward points out in his book Damming the Flood,

"to the astonishment of contemporary observers, the armies led by

Toussaint and Dessalines had thus broken the chain of colonial slav­

ery at what had been, in 1789, its strongest link:'4 What is even more

astonishing is the silence that surrounds this event, even two centu­

ries later, as Michel-Rolph Trouillot explains. Most Western histori­

ographies, textbooks, and popular writings have "taught generations

of readers that the period from 1776 to 1843 should be called 'The

Age of Revolutions: At the very same time, this corpus has remained

silent on the most radical political revolution of that age:'5 Liberal

democracy, as celebrated in Western histories, means democracy with

constraints and exceptions, not actual democracy. Liberal democracy

safeguards markets above everything else, including people, which

makes it the p erfect ideology of capitalism. As a hegemonic paradigm

in contemporary political science, democratization works to moder­

ate and limit democracy: "in the paradigm's view, democracy cannot

tolerate too many popular pressures; it cannot be too democratic:'6

According to Robert Fatton, the conservatism of the democratization

paradigm enables what he calls a "predatory democracy" to exist in

contemporary Haiti. Although Fatton restricts his analysis to Haiti, it

can be generalized to apply to most forms of neoliberal democracy.

The fa<;:ade of democracy hides a desperate political, economic, and

military power play, where nationalist and corporatist forces struggle

to engineer globalization and redirect wealth toward an increasingly

small global elite.

Neoliberal democracy is not democracy; it is a smoke screen

through which lies are repeated as truth, and media, markets, and

military apparatuses function to diffuse and disperse direct politi<:;al

action and prevent people from exercising power. As Deleuze puts it

in Cinema 2, discussed in the previous chapter: "the people are miss­

ing" (TI 216) . The people do not exist as a people; they are pawns of

neoliberal economy. The economic religion that stems from disciples

187 VODOU ECONOMICS

of Milton Friedman prescribes austerity for the people, the destruc­

tion of unions and labor, the opening of markets to the global corpo­

rate elite, and the privatization of industries, with crippling debt as the

lever to enforce these policies upon reluctant nations, backed up by

the threat of covert or overt military action. The idea that greater con­

centration of the mechanisms of production and accumulation of the

fruits of wealth in the hands of the elite will "triclde down" to the poor

led then-presidential candidate George H. W Bush to declare in 1980

that Ronald Reagan's policies were a kind of "Voodoo Economics:'

Bush's characterization is racist, and it plays on the stigma, ignorance,

and fear that Haitian religion sometimes evokes. In addition, when

he became vice president under Reagan, and then president in 1988,

he did nothing to alter the fundamental shape of these policies. But

at this moment, Bush was correct in (poorly) criticizing Reagan's eco­

nomic policies, which became entrenched and have been disastrous

for everyone on the planet besides a tiny few.

I would like to suggest a shift, from "Voodoo" economics to

"Vodou" economics, that is, from a racist, corrupt, and destructive

system of political economy based upon the fundamental lie that you

can have infinite economic growth based upon a finite base of natural

resources, to an acknowledgment of the contested nature of reality

and resource scarcity and the profoundly democratic aspirations of

people. Voodoo is a popularized stereotype and misrepresentation

that functions in white popular culture to stigmatize Haitian religion.

Vodou or Vodun is the more commonly accepted scholarly spelling,

and it refers to a very complex phenomenon. The role of Vodou in

Haiti's political insurrection and later history is complex and multi­

faceted, as is the very definition and identity of Vodou itself. It was a

religious leader, Boulunan, who helped organize and direct the upris­

ing in 1791, which was preceded by a legendary secret Vodou ritual in

the woods of Bois-Caiman, which culminated in "drinking the blood

of a black pig sacrificed before" the conspirators.7 A common turn of

phrase suggests that "Haiti is 80% Catholic, but 100% Vodou:'8 Vodou

is often presented in world religions textbooks and courses as a "syn­

cretistic religion;' but that implies that it is a simple mixture or blend­

ing of indigenous, African, and Roman Catholic elements, which

188 DmUZE BEYOND BAD IOU

ignores the complexity of the evolution ofVodou from Dahomey and

Kongo and how it was forced to hide beneath a Catholic Christian

veneer in order to survive. I would argue, instead, for an integral Afri­

can constitution of Vodou, even though this integrity is not exclusive

or essentialist. Still, the African characteristic ofVodou can be viewed

as primary in terms of its dynamism, and it can be seen in terms of a

dynamic aspiration of the Haitian people for self-expression.

So-called indigenous religions are distinguished from world reli­

gions by the fact that they work to maintain cosmic balance or har­

mony, whereas world religions are usually more progressive and linear

and work toward transformation of the world in material and spiritual

terms. At the same time, the classification of religion into world reli­

gions serves to marginalize indigenous traditions (and usually to con­

tinue to privilege Christianity in subtle or not-so-subtle ways).9 One

recent work that complicates this taxonomy is the attempt to under­

stand Orisa Devotion as World Religion.lO Haitian Vodou is character­

ized by this concern for cosmic balance in an ambivalent universe, but

it is a mistake to suggest that it is primitive compared to more modern

religious traditions. According to Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, "Vodou is

a coherent and comprehensive belief system and world view in which

every p erson and every thing is sacred and must be treated accord­

ingly:'ll In fact, Vodou can be better characterized primarily in terms

of a religious and social practice, that of serving the lwa or spirit, and

only indirectly and implicitly in terms of a belief system.

Anthony Pinn presents a good overview and interpretation of

Vodou in his Varieties of African-American Religious Experience. Pinn

explains that "for practitioners, the structure and expense of service to

the loa is essential because it provides for the basic spiritual and physi­

cal needs of life; the energy necessary to maintain 'balance' is available

through communication with and attention to cosmic forces:'12 Orisas

or lwas are anthropomorphized energy forces that cannot be ignored,

but they can be tapped into and used for good or ill. The crucial fac­

tor here is not the supernatural pantheon of lwas such as Papa Legba,

Baron Samedi, Erzulie, Damballah, and the like, or even their division

into relatively calm and pleasant Rada and relatively aggressive and

dangerous Petro lwas. The crucial issue is the notion that there is no

189 VODOU ECONOMICS

free lunch: every transaction-moral, physical, and spiritual-has a

cost. We cannot set up a human society with a political economy that

is completely divorced from the natural world. Eventually there will

be a reckoning. Vodou economics is an economics of scarcity, reflect­

ing the true conditions of existence, rather than the fantasy of infinite

growth and globalization at no costP

Human appropriation and exploitation of stored energy resources

in the form of nonrenewable fossil fuels followed upon the exploita­

tion of American natural resources and African slave labor to produce

the industrial revolution and the unbelievable standards of living in

wealthy countries in the twentieth century. The ideology of infinite

growth sustained capitalism and liberal democracy among the Euro­

pean and American powers throughout this period. Currently, how­

ever, we are running out of what Thorn Hartmann calls the "last hours

of ancient sunlight" and running up against real limits of resource

extraction, atmospheriC emission absorption, and population carry­

ing capacity.14

The transformation of liberal capitalism into neoliberal corporate

capitalism coincides with the peaking of domestic oil production in

the United States in 1970, which brought about the end of the artificial

gold standard in 1971 and the OPEC oil shocks in 1973. The response

to a situation of declining energy reserves and the onset of a situation

of global scarcity prompted the United States to use all of its politi­

cal, economic, and military resources to ensure that oil denominated

in dollars continue to flow, fueling an orgy of consumption on the

part of the wealthy elite and middle class of rich nations. This pro­

cess has culminated in the impoverishment of a majority of people

on the planet and the creation of the largest bubble ever created, the

real estate bubble that collapsed in summer 2007, triggering a severe

global recession in 2008.15

We cannot understand Haitian politics or religion in isolation from

the larger neoliberal world. Two centuries after the Haitian uprising,

the people again rose up, in a flood, at the doorstep of imperialism,

sweeping a liberation theologian named Jean-Bertrand Aristide into

office. "In 1791 and again in 1991:' according to Hallward, "Haiti is the

place where people broke the chains of imperial domination not at

190 DElEUZE BEYOND BADIOU

their weakest, but at their strongest link:'l6 Hallward details the mas­

sive amounts of coercion, repression, corruption, and propaganda

deployed by the United States, France, the United Nations, and the

Haitian elite to destroy this populist movement. He shows the incred­

ible efforts to which the United States went to discredit Aristide in

2004, and the extent to which US and UN forces went to drive Aris­

tide from the country. Lavalas, which means flood or torrent, is the

p olitical representative or party in a broadened sense, of the Haitian

people, and it has progressed over the last two decades "as an experi­

ment at the limits of contemporary political possibility:'l7

Populism consists of the constitution of a people, as Ernesto Laclau

analyzes in his book On Populist Reason, and Laclau's analysis can

be applied to Lavalas. As discussed in the previous chapter, Laclau

explains that political systems are made up of hegemonic antago­

nisms, not a harmonious equilibrium. He claims that "identification

with an empty signifier is the sine qua non for the emergence of a

'people: But the empty signifier can operate as a point of identifica­

tion only because it represents an equivalential chain:'l8 Identification

works by condensing an equivalence around a special sort of rep­

resentation, an "empty signifier:' An empty signifier means that the

people are not simply given before their political constitution, and the

empty signifier can often take the name of a person. The empty signi­

fier indicates that the people are missing, in Deleuze's terms. Aristide

functions as an empty signifier for the creation of the Haitian people

in a political, populist context. It's not simply who Aristide is as a per­

son, his character and talents, and so on, but what he represents, and

this is why the reverse of populism, the counterpopulism of imperial­

ism, works for the demonization of popular, populist figures such as

Aristide, Chavez, Morales, Castro, and others.

I am not equating Vodou with Aristide and the Haitian people

in a simple equation of identity, but rather indicating the complex

composition of a people out of foreign and indigenous and hetero­

geneous elements, including Roman Catholic liberation theology.

The point is that Aristide came to express the profound democratic

aspirations of the Haitian people, and the neoliberal order was forced

to resort to extraordinary measures to eliminate him.l9 As Aristide

191 VODOU ECONOMICS

himself says, globalization is not democracy. When "the only mea­

sure of human progress is economic growth, . . . global capitalism

becomes a machine devouring our planee'2o What we call democrati­

zation is an instrumental effort to open up markets for the expansion

of capital, for the creation of a gigantic global market that also leads to

the impoverishment, devastation, and death of human beings. (Neo)

liberal democracy is not democracy: "our concept and practice of

democracy must make a giant leap forward. We must democratize

democracy;' according to AristideY I am suggesting that an under­

standing and appreciation of Haitian history, culture, and economy,

including Haitian Vodou, can help us understand what it would mean

to democratize democracy. Furthermore, it was Aristide, a Christian

liberation theologian, who legalized Vodou in Haiti.

"Democracy in Haiti will be an Africanizing process;' according to

the Haitian scholar Patrick Bellegarde-Smith.22 I want to understand

the resonance of this provocative statement not in terms of racial

essence or identity politics, but in terms of a general democratizing

of democracy. That is, what if democracy, if it comes, comes out of

Africa? (How) could it be an African or Africanizing process? The

African philosopher Jacques Derrida has appealed to and theorized

about a "democracy to-come;' a democratic justice that would sub­

vert all (liberal) democracies. In his book Rogues, Derrida explains

that democracy is not a past or present idea, but rather an invocation,

because there is "no idea of democracy. And so, in the final analysis,

no democratic ideal:'23 Democracy is radicalized by assigning it to an

impossible future, a future to-come, that is, not a future which is sim­

ply an extension of the present but the shadow of an unforeseen event.

This is what Aristide means by democratizing democracy. Democracy

is not based upon a present arrangement or explicit state of affairs, but

is predicated on justice and freedom, which are technically incalcu­

lable and exceed any and all determinate horizons.

According to Derrida, there is always and necessarily a religious

element inscribed in this invocation, even though Derrida is ambiva­

lent about religion in its present forms. Derrida relates the opening

of a democracy to-come to Martin Heidegger's claim that "only a god

can save us;' suggesting that we must think the god in that phrase

192 DElEUZE BEYOND BADIOU

beyond our monotheistic conceptions of a sovereign God. "A god:'

Derrida states, is "neither the One God nor gods, neither the One

God of the Bible nor the God or gods of the philosophers and of

ontotheology:'24 Of this god who could save us, Heidegger says that

"I am not convinced that it is democracy:' but Derrida stresses the

hesitation and the uncertainty in that phrase, suggesting that perhaps

it does concern democracy after all, just not in its liberal and techno­

cratic form.2s What if the god that Heidegger calls for and that Der­

rida invokes in the name of democracy is an oris a or a lwa? What if

democracy involves serving the lwa, becoming the horse to assist in

serving the people? And finally, what if the lwa is not an anthropo­

morphized person, or a physical energy force, but rather precisely a

time-image in Deleuze's terms? The lwa along with its veve, its vis­

ible symbol, constitutes a time-image insofar as it concentrates virtual

potentiality and actual power in a precarious and unstable form. This

form then links to other forms, other lwa, and other practices, con­

stituting a signifying process based not on representation and move­

ment but pure time. So long as Vodou is understood as representing

another realm of spiritual forces, which communicates with and acts

within this one, it is not a time-image. But if the forces of Vodou are

seen as themselves links with which to refashion the world and our

belief in it, no matter how intolerable it is, then perhaps these ele­

ments ofVodou compose a time-image.

Democracy cannot just be theorized; it must be performed, maybe

even danced and sung by the people who are marginalized and "miss­

ing:' We could think about the performance of Raras on the streets of

Haiti, in all of their complexity and ambiguity, as Elizabeth McAlister

explains in her excellent book Rara! Rara is an annual parade during

the weeks of Lent that consists of Vodou elements and symbols, and

expresses complex social and political commentary, often in crude

sexual terms. In her conclusion, McAlister suggests that "as tradi­

tional peasant groups, Raras can be viewed as the prepolitical fore­

runners of the contemporary grassroots popular organizations that

make up the democratic peasant movemenf'26 Another expression of

Vodou symbolism is the popular racine or roots music, influenced by

Haitian Freedom Culture from the 1970S as well as Jamaican Reggae,

193 VODOU ECONOMICS

which emerged in the 1980s and 1990S. Along with Rara, racine music

played a role in the popular protest against the military coup that

drove Aristide from office in 1991 and ruled until his return in 1994.

Groups such as Boukman Eksperyans and RAM popularized Vodou

ideas for a mass audience, including in the United States, and served

as a source of energy and pride for Haitians struggling against the

military dictatorship and foreign intervention.27 One song by RAM is

called "Fey;' which means leaf and is a key Vodou term and ingredi­

ent. At the same time, the song was seen and sung as a thinly veiled

reference to Aristide, since one of the lines says that "they made him

leave the country:' The song includes the line "the day you see me fall

is not the day I die;' which is a good expression for the people.28 They

fall under the crushing weight of poverty, guns, and discrimination,

but they do not die. They go missing, but they resurrect again and

again, as a people, with new leaders, and they insurrect against the

global corporate Empire.

The principalities of neoliberalism made Aristide leave the coun­

try again in 2004, but he returned to Haiti in the spring of 2011, in

the wake of a devastating earthquake that was seized upon by neolib­

eral capital and the best-intentioned nongovernmental organizations

as an opportunity for yet another round of shock treatment for an

already desperately impoverished people. In Haiti now, but increas­

ingly in many places around the globe, the people are missing. They

have been ignored, neglected, abused, and cast out of sight except

to represent the object of pity and charity for wealthy liberals when

disaster strikes, and an economic opportunity to remake parts of Haiti

into a thriving neoliberal tourist zone. The fact that the people are

missing means that democracy is dead. But the people who are miss­

ing are the only chance for democracy, as they venture forth to occupy

and reconstitute a world.

194 DmUZE BEYOND BAD IOU

1. INTRODUCTION

1. Jiirgen Habermas, Post-Metaphysical Thinking: Philosophical Essays, trans. William Mark Hohengarten (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992), p. 7.

2. Alain Badiou, Being and Event, trans. Oliver Feltham (New York: Con­tinuum, 2006), p. l.

3. Ibid., p. 8. 4. Alain Badiou, Deleuze: The Clamor of Being, trans. Louise Burchill (Min­

neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), P. 19. 5. See Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Meridian,

1960); Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alfonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969).

6. See Alexandre Kojeve, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. James H. Nichols (Ithaca: Cornell Univer­sity Press, 1980).

7. See Slavoj Zizek, Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993); Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality and Dialectic, trans. Lisabeth During (London: Routledge, 2004); and Slavoj Zizek, Clayton Crockett, and Creston Davis, eds., Hegel and the Infinite: Religion, Politics, and the Dialectic (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011).

8. Badiou, Deleuze: The Clamor, p. 6. 9. Ibid., p. 6.

10. Badiou, Being and Event, p. 434.

2. THE CLAMOR OF BEING: BADIOU VS. OElEUZE

1. See Alain Badiou, Polemics, trans. Steve Corcoran (London: Verso, 2006); and Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Col­lege de France, 1977-1978, trans. Graham Burchell (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 4.

2. Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations, 1972-1990, trans. Martin Joughin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), p. 44.

3. Alain Badiou, Deleuze: The Clamor of Being, trans. Louise Burchill (Min­neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), p. 12. Hereafter cited par­enthetically in the text as CB.

4. Jean-Clet Martin, Variations: The Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, trans. Con­stantin V Boundas and Susan Dyrkton (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), p. 146.

5. Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), p. 304. Hereafter cited parenthetically in the text as DR.

6. Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York: Free Press, 1980), p. 21.

7. Peter Hallward, Out of This World: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Creation (London: Verso, 2006), p. 2. Although I am critical of Hallward's interpre­tation of Deleuze, which follows too closely upon his influential reading of Badiou in Badiou: A Subject to Truth (Minneapolis: University of Min­nesota Press, 2003), I want to affirm the incredible importance of Hall­ward's boole on Haiti, Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of Containment (London: Verso, 2007), which is a searing engagement with contemporary politics and a damning critique of neoliberalism.

8. Hallward, Out of This World, p. 162. 9. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, trans. Hugh

Tomlinson and Graham Burchill (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), p. 152.

10. Daniel W Smith, "Mathematics and the Theory of Multiplicities: Badiou and Deleuze Revisited:' Southern Journal of Philosophy 41 (2003): 411-49,

quote at p. 431.

11. Ibid. 12. Ibid., p. 412. 13. See Badiou, Deleuze: The Clamor, p. 102: "Deleuze was a pre-Socratic in

the sense that the Greeks themselves referred to those thinkers; as physi­cists, by which we are to understand 'thinkers of the AIr"

14. Smith, "Mathematics and the Theory of Multiplicities:' p. 412.

196 2 . THE CLAMOR OF BEING: BAOIOU VS. DELEUZE

15. Ibid. 16. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and

Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minne­sota Press, 1990), p. 369.

17. Ibid., p. 372. 18. In her bool< Gilles Deleuze (London: Routledge, 2002), Clare Colebrook

also asserts that Deleuze's philosophy is fundamentally concerned with problems: "Deleuze took nothing for granted and insisted that the power of life-all life and not just human life-was the power to develop prob­lems" (p. 1).

19. Smith, "Mathematics and the Theory of Multiplicities:' p. 418. 20. Quoted in ibid., p. 419. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid., p. 426. 23. Martin, Variations, p. 161. 24. Smith, "Mathematics and the Theory of Multiplicities:' p. 429. 25· Ibid., p. 433. 26. Ibid., p. 413. 27. Slavoj Zizek, Organs Without Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequences (New

York: Routledge, 2004), p. 29. Hereafter cited parenthetically in the text as OWB.

28. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 150.

3. A REPETITION OF D IFFERENCE

1. Dorothea Olkowski, Gilles Deleuze and the Ruin of Representation (Berke­ley: University of California Press, 1999), p. 141.

2. Despite her difficulty distinguishing the second and third synthesis of time, Olkowski does appreciate the Significance of Deleuze's treatment of the death drive in her book: "The death drive is the only sure means of willing the complete negation of these fixed entities and thereby willing the affirmation of creation" after the ruin of representation. Ibid., p. 18l.

3. This person is Kevin Mequet, an architect with a strong technical back­ground in math and science and a great grasp of theoretical ideas. We have read Difference and Repetition together twice, and only in light of these rereadings has the entire structure of the book come into focus. I will introduce some of Mequet's own ideas about nuclear energy in chapter 8, in the context of Deleuze's thinking of intensity and nonequilibrium thermodynamics.

197 3. A REPETITION OF DIFFERENCE

4. Note that in chapter 2 Deleuze has not yet made the technical distinction between differenciation as actual difference and differentiation as virtual difference that comes into play in chapter 4.

5. See Peter Hallward, Out of This World: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Cre­ation (London: Verso, 2006).

6. l owe this insight to Kevin Mequet. 7. Louise Burchill, the translator of Deleuze: The Clamor of Being, points

out that Deleuze uses and distinguishes between hvo different words in French, fond and fondement. The former is a relative or groundless ground, whereas the latter is more of a foundational ground. Badiou does not distinguish between the two terms; furthermore, he does not "recog­nize" Deleuze's distinction (CB xix).

8. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, trans. Hugh Tom­linson and Graham Burchell (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), p. 2

4. DELEUZE'S LOGIC OF DOUBLE ARTICULATION

1. Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, trans. Mark Lester with Charles Stivale (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), p. 1. Hereafter cited paren­thetically in the text as LS.

2. See Slavoj Zizek, Organs Without Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequences (New York: Routledge, 2004), p. 21.

3. See the brief discussion of Heidegger at the end of chapter 1 in Difference and Repetition, where he prefers Merleau -Ponty's understanding of Heidegger's "Not" in term,'> of folds and pleating over Sartre's characterization of the "Not" in terms of nonbeing as a break or "lake of nonbeing:' On the other hand, Deleuze elsewhere celebrates and champions Sartre as his "teacher;' and he does not consistently repudiate breaks within being. See Deleuze, "He Was My Teacher;' in Desert Islands, and Other Texts, 1953-1974, trans. Michael Taormina (Los Angeles: Semiotext( e), 2004), pp. 77-80.

4. On the logical relation of inclusion and exclusion, see Michel Serres, The Parasite, trans. Lawrence R. Schehr (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), pp. 22-25.

5. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minne­sota Press, 1990), p. 7. Here after cited parenthetically in the text as ATP.

6. See Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, trans. Robert Hurley (San Francisco: City Lights, 1988), p. 199.

198 3. A REPETITION OF DIFFERENCE

7. As Clare Colbrook explains in Gilles Deleuze (London: Routledge, 2004), reversing the sequence of B and A: "There is a connection of 'a: then 'b; allowed by the flow of time; this is then repeated, precisely because it is the nature of life to produce over and over again" (p. 80).

8. This assimilation of form to coding is what gives Deleuze his predilec­tion for signs and semiotics, especially as expressed in the philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce. In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari dis­tinguish three kinds of signs, which correspond generally to what Peirce calls first, second, and third kinds of signs: "indexes (territorial signs), symbols (deterritorialized signs), and icons (signs of reterritorialization)" (ATP 65). See also the elaboration of signs in Cinema 2: opsigns, sonsigns, lectosigns, and the like.

9. Gilles Deleuze and H!lix Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, trans. Hugh Tom­linson and Graham Burchell (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), p. 202.

10. Catherine Malabou, "Who's Afraid of Hegelian Wolves?;' in Deleuze: A Critical Reader, ed. Paul Patton (London: Blackwell, 1996), p. 115.

11. Ibid., p. 132. 12. Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, trans. Sebas­

tian Rand (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), p. 5 (emphasis in original).

13. Ibid. 14. Catherine Malabou, Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing: Dialectic, Destruc­

tion, Deconstruction, trans. Carolyn Shread (New York: Columbia Univer­sity Press, 2009), p. 14.

15. Ibid., p. 15·

16. Ibid., p. 45. 17. Ibid., p. 65. 18. Catherine Malabou, "Detache-Moi;' in Judith Butler and Catherine Mala-

bou, Sois mon corps (Paris: Bayard, 2010), p. 49.

19· Ibid., p. 3. 20. Ibid. (emphasis in original). 21. Ibid. (emphasis in original).

5. PROOUCING THE EVENT AS MACHINE, AS FOLD, AND AS IMAGE

1. Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), trans. Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), pp. 6-7-

199 5. PRODUCING THE EVENT AS MACHINE, AS FOLD, AND AS IMAGE

2. See ibid., p. 23: "From the human side, grounding-not creating-is let­ting the ground be . . . so that man once again comes to himself and recov­ers self-being:'

3. For a reading of Deleuze's philosophy as production, see Alberto Toscano, The Theatre of Production: Philosophy dnd Individuation Between Kant and Deleuze (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). For Toscano, production understood as individuation escapes Badiou's critique. As Toscano sees it, production as individuation and progressive determination, avoids the problem of "the atemporal production of the temporal" (p. 189). Basi­cally, Deleuze's emphasis on an atemporal Time either conflates the dis­tinction between actual and virtual into a monist One, or subsumes the actual under the virtual. Toscano relies on the work of Gilbert Simonden to counter the some of the force of Deleuze's Bergsonism. My reading here bears some resemblance to Toscano's reading of Deleuze, although Toscano's production of individuation is more actual, and diminishes the significance of the virtual so that production can be more linear and uni­directional. This is why Toscano downplays the significance of the time­image in Cinema 2, but I think the time-image can be understood in more actual and individuated terms.

4. Jacques Derrida, "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences:' in Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 278.

5. Gilles Deleuze, "On the Vincennes Department of Psychoanalysis:' in Two Regimes of Madness: Texts and Interviews, 1975-1995, trans. Ames Hodges and Mike Taormina (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006), p. 62.

6. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizo­phrenia, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (Minneapo­lis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983), p. 26. Hereafter cited parentheti­cally in the text as AO.

7. Gilles Deleuze, "Four Propositions on Psychoanalysis:' in Two Regimes of Madness, p. 81.

8. See Slavoj Zizek, Organs Without Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequences (New York: Routledge, 2004), p. 187.

9. See Philip Goodchild, Deleuze and Guattari: An Introduction to the Poli­tics of Desire (London: Sage, 1996), p. 133. Goodchild explains the shift from the psychoanalytic language of desire to a more abstract language of a plane of immanence and abstract machines as partly the result of Deleuze's break with Foucault, although Goodchild argues that Deleuze and Guattari only alter their language, not their conception of an "imma­nent philosophy of desire:'

200 5. PRODUCING THE EVENT AS MACHINE, AS FDLD, AND AS IMAGE

10. Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), p. 275.

11. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, trans. Hugh Tom­linson and Graham Burchell (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), p. 60.

12. Gilles Deleuze, The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, trans. Tom Conley (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), p. 67. Hereafter cited parentJ:;etically in the text as F.

13. Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), p. 2.

14· Ibid., p. 59. l�. Paola Marrati, Gilles Deleuze: Cinema and Philosophy, trans. Alisa Hartz

(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), p. 33. 16. Deleuze; Cinema 1, p. 65. 17. Marrati, Gilles Deleuze, p. 55. 18. Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and

Robert Galeta (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), p. 1. Hereafter cited parenthetically in the text as TI.

19. Marrati, Gilles Deleuze, p. 72. 20. Jean-Clet Martin, Variations: The Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, trans. Con­

stantin V. Boundas and Susan Dyrkton (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), p. 76.

21. Marrati, Gilles Deleuze, p. xi.

6. BEING A SUBLIME EVENT

1. Lee Smolin, Three Roads to Quantum Gravity (New York: Basic Books, 2001), p. 63.

2. In Logics of Worlds: Being and Event II, trans. Alberto Toscano (London: Continuum, 2009), Badiou says that "Kant is the one author for whom I cannot feel any kinship:' He is a philosophical sadist, "a paradoxical phi­losopher whose intentions repel, whose style disheartens, whose institu­tional and ideolo&ical effects are appalling, but from whom there simul­taneously emanates a kind of sepulchral greatness" (pp. 535-36). Deleuze was also ambivalent about Kant, calling him an "enemy" and the "fog of the North:' See the translators' introduction to Gilles Deleuze, Kant's Crit­ical Philosophy: The Doctrine of the Faculties, tr.ans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984),

201 6. BE ING A SUBLIME EVENT

pp. xv-xvi. Deleuze engaged much more extensively and productively

with Kant's philosophy, however, whereas Badiou largely neglects it. 3. Alain Badiou, The Concept of Model: An Introduction of the Materialist

Epistemology of Mathematics, trans. Zachary Luke Fraser and Tzuchien Tho (Melbourne: Re-press, 2007), p. 9.

4. Ibid., p. 33 (emphasis in original). 5. Ibid., p. 35 (emphasis in original). 6. See Badiou's discussion of the distinction between logic and mathematics

in The Concept of Model and his later philosophy in the interview with Tzuchien Tho that follows the translated text of The Concept of Model, specifically ibid., p. 85.

7· Ibid., p. 43· 8. Ibid., p. 48. 9. Peter Hallward, Badiou: A Subject to Truth (Minneapolis: University of

Minnesota Press, 2003), p. 83. 10. Alain Badiou, Being and Event, trans. Ray Brassier (New York: Contin­

uum, 2006), p. 2. Hereafter cited parenthetically in the text as BE. Words or phrases in italics are italicized in the original text and are not my emphasis.

11. Frederiek Depoortere, Badiou and Theology (London: Continuum, 2009),

p. 78 (emphasis in original). 12. Oliver Feltham, Alain Badiou, Live Theory (London: Continuum, 2008),

P· 95·

13. Ibid. 14. Bruno Bosteels, "Thinking the Event: Alain Badiou's Philosophy and the

Task of Critical Theory;' in The History of Continental Philosophy, ed. Alan D. Schrift (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 8:73.

15. Bruno Bosteels, '�lain Badiou's Theory of the Subject: The Recommence­ment of Dialectical Materialism;' in Lacan: The Silent Partners, ed. Slavoj Ziiek (London: Continuum, 2006), p. 150.

16. Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contin-gency, trans. Ray Brassier (New York: Continuum, 2008), p. 46.

17. Ibid., p. 105· 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid., p. lll. 20. Alain Badiou, "Philosophy and Mathematics: Infinity and the End of

Romanticism;' in Theoretical Writings, ed. and trans. Ray Brassier and Alberto Toscano (New York: Continuum, 2006), p. 39.

21. See Depootere, Badiou and Theology, p. 120.

22. Badiou, "Philosophy and Mathematics;' p. 38.

202 6. BEING A SUBLIME EVENT

23. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1987), p. 106.

24. Ibid., p. 107. 25· Ibid., p. 115. 26. Ibid., p. 119. 27. See my interpretation of the Kantian sublime, including my reading of the

Critique of Judgment into the Critique of Pure Reason, in Clayton Crockett, A Theology of the Sublime (London: Routledge, 2001).

28. Alain Badiou, "On Subtraction;' in Theoretical Writings, p. 105. 29. Alain Badiou, "Truth: Forcing and the Unnameable;' in Theoretical Writ-

ings, p. 122 (emphasis in original) . 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid. 32. See Smolin, Three Roads to Quantum Gravity, p. 128.

7. BEING A SUBJECT IN A TRANSCENDENTAL WORLD

1. Alain Badiou, Theory of the Subject, trans. Bruno Bosteels (London: Con­tinuum, 2009), p. 22. Hereafter cited parenthetically in the text 'as TS.

2. Quoted in Peter Hallward, Badiou: A Subject to Truth (Minneapolis: Uni­versity of Minnesota Press, 2003), p. 174.

3. Bruno Bosteels, "Alain Badiou's Theory of the Subject: The Recommence­ment of Dialectical Materialism;' in Lacan: The Silent Partners, ed. Slavoj Zizek (London: Verso, 2006), p. 129.

4. See ibid., p. 135. 5. Ibid., p. 136. 6. Hallward, Badiou, p. 69.

7. Oliver Feltham, Alain Badiou,' Live Theory (London: Continuum, 2008), P· 7l.

8. In Deleuze: The Clamor of Being, Badiou says that, as opposed to Deleuze's, his "ontological multiplicity does not compose any series, it is sporadic (events are rare), and cannot be totalized" (CB 76).

9 . Cormac McCarthey, The Road (New York: Vintage, 2006), pp. 128-29. 10. Feltham, Alain Badiou, Live Theory, p. 105. 11. Ibid., p. 106. 12. See Alain Badiou, Logics of Worlds: Being and Event 2, trans. Alberto

Toscano (London: Continuum, 2009), pp. 7-8. Hereafter cited parentheti­cally in the text as L W. Badiou distinguishes his line of thinking, grounded in a French mathematical tradition, from Deleuze's, which is grounded in

203 7. BEING A SUBJECT IN A TRANSCENDENTAL WORLD

the "vitalist mysticism" of Bergson, even though both attempt to think the infinite. He also claims that "Logics of Worlds stands to Being and Event as Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit stands to his Science of Logic, even though the chronological order is inverted:'

8. ENERGETICS OF BEING

1. Manuel Delanda, Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy (New York: Continuum, 2002), p. 10.

2. Ibid. 3· Ibid., p. 15· 4. Ibid., p. 25· 5. Ibid., p. 126. Furthermore, in a note on p. 150 Delanda assimilates what

Deleuze calls sense in The Logic of Sense to the virtual, which I think is an overinterpretation. Sense is produced, which means that it is composed of actual and virtual processes, including language, and body is not simply actualization in The Logic of Sense, but has an important virtual function in relation to an event.

6. Ibid., p. 127. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid., p. 132. 9. Ibid.

10. Ibid., p. 134. 11. Ibid., p. 169. See also Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on

the Necessity of Contingency, trans. Ray Brassier (New York: Continuum, 2008). Meillassoux follows Badiou's mathematical ontology of infinities, but he also takes a thinking of contingency to its ultimate conclusion, suggesting a radical solution of Hume's problem, where physical laws of nature themselves are merely accidental regularities.

12. Delanda, Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, p. 174. 13. Ibid., p. 181. 14. Ibid. 15. Carlo Rovelli, "Quantum Spacetime: What Do We Know?:' in Physics

Meets Philosophy at the Planck Scale: Contemporary Theories in Quantum Gravity, ed. Craig Callender and Nick Huggett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 109.

16. Ibid. 17. Ibid., p. 110. See also Lee Smolin, Three Roads to Quantum Gravity (New

York: Basic Books, 2001).

204 7. BEING A SUBJECT IN A TRANSCENDENTAL WORLD

18. Ibid., p. 1l4. See also Julian Barbour, The End of Time: The Next Revolution in Physics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

19. See James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science (New York: Penguin,

1987). 20. See Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, Order Out of Chaos: Mans New

Dialogue with Nature (New York: Bantam, 1984). Deleuze praises White­

head's philosophy in both Difference and Repetition (see DR 284-85) and The Fold (see F 76-82).

21. Ilya Prigogine, From Being to Becoming: Time and Complexity in the Physi­cal Sciences (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1980), pp. 100-101.

22. Ilya Prigogine, The End of Certainty: Time, Chaos, and the New Laws of Nature (New York: Free Press, 1996), p. 69.

23. Ibid.

24. Prigogine, From Being to Becoming, p. 176. 25. Prigogine, The End of Certainty, p. 149. 26. Ibid.

27. For a more explicitly mathematical treatment of probability in physics, which is compatible with Prigogine's overall approach, see Peter Coles,

From Cosmos to Chaos: The Science of Unpredictability (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2004).

28. Arthur Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (Cambridge: Cam­

bridge University Press, 1928), p. 74. 29. Rod Swenson, 'i\.utocatakinetics, Evolution, and the Law of Maximum

Energy Production: A Principled Foundation Towards the Study of Human

Ecology;' Advances in Human Ecology 6 (1997), http://www.spontaneous order.net/humanec02.htmI.

30. Ibid. 31. Ibid.

32. Eric D. Schneider and Dorion Sagan, Into the Cool: Energy Flow, Thermo-dynamics, and Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), p. 6.

33· Ibid., p. 77· 34. Ibid., p. 126.

35. Ibid., p. 128. 36. Ibid., p. 129. 37. See ibid., p. 130. • 38. Ibid., p. 31. 39. Ibid., p. 180.

40. Ibid., p. 138.

41. In this vein, it is significant that Stephen Hawking's major scientific con­

tribution was the discovery of the application of thermodynamic laws to

205 8. ENERGETICS O F BEING

black holes. Black holes can be treated as entropy producers: they dissi­pate heat as information, and they eventually can disappear, given massive time spans far beyond the scope of the universe. See also the contribution of Ted Jacobson, whose paper shows that Einstein's field equations are convertible into thermodynamic equations, "Thermodynamics of Space­time: The Einstein Equations of State:' Physical Review Letters 75 (1975) : l260-63, http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/V75/i7/Pl260_1.

42. Swenson, '�utocatakinetics, Evolution, and the Law of Maximum Entropy Production:'

43. See Palle Yourgrau, A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Godel and Einstein (New York: Basic Books, �985).

44. On energy efficiency, see Robert U. Ayres and Edward H. Ayres, Crossing the Energy Divide: Movingfrom a Fossil Fuel Dependence to a Clean-Energy Future (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Wharton School Publishing, 2010).

45. See David Goodstein, Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004).

46. See Kevin Mequet, "Why It's Time to Develop a Fully Scalable NuME­gen' Device Using the Feynman/Gell-Mann Radiomagnetic Effect:' http://www.scribd.com/doc/33017155/KDM -Proposal-N uMEgen­Ver02-Scientific-20100605 -Final.

47. See R. P. Feynman and M. Gell-Mann, "Theory of the Fermi Interaction:' Physical Review 109, nO. 1 (1958).

9. POLITICS OF THE EVENT

1. See Alain Badiou, Le Siecle (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2005), p. 54. 2. Alain Badiou, The Communist Hypothesis, trans. David Macey and Steve

Corcoran (London: Verso, 2010), p. 231. 3· Ibid., p. 235· 4. Quoted in Franqois Dosse, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari: Intersecting

Lives, trans. Deborah Glassman (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), p. 367.

5. Quoted in ibid., p. 366. 6. Quoted in ibid., p. 437. 7. Paola Marrati, Gilles Deleuze: Cinema and Philosophy, trans. Alisa Hartz

(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), p. x (emphasis in original) .

8. Slavoj Zizek, Living in the End Times (London: Verso, 2010), p. 355. 9· Ibid., p. 356.

206 8. ENERGETICS OF BEING

10. Paul Virilio, "The End of the Proletariat:' in The Paul Virilio Reader, ed. Steve Redhead (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), p. 26.

11. Ibid., p. 28.

12. See Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007).

13. Mike Davis, Planet of Slums (London: Verso, 2006), p. 15. 14. Marrati, Gilles Deleuze, p. xiv. 15. Steven Solomon, Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civiliza­

tion (New York: HarperCollins, 2010), p. 118.

16. On the composition of What Is Philosophy?, which was "manifestly writ­

ten by Deleuze alone:' see Dosse, Gilles Delelize and Felix Guattari, p. 456.

17. Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, trans. Daniel W. Smith (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), p. xxxii

(emphasis in original).

18. Ibid., p. 36 (emphasis in original). 19. See Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, ed. Hannah

Arendt (New York: Schocken, 1968), pp. 241-42. 20. Marrati, Gilles Deleuze, p. 86.

21. I will not analyze Hardt and Negri's important work, although I think

that it is one of the most hopeful theoretical visions that we have today. For many intellectuals including myself, the force of reading Empire struck like a hammer during a desperate time of terror, war, and the manipulation of evidence and propaganda following the attacks of 9/11

and the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Negri himself describes

his exile in Paris following his prison sentence in Italy as a period

of "washing my clothes in the Seine:' which means "bringing Italian

workerism into contact with French poststructuralism and thereby pro­ducing a short circuit between Foucault and Deleuze and the struggles that had developed in Italy and linking these with the thought those

struggles had produced:' Antonio Negri, "Preface to the 2002 Edition:' in The Labor of Job: The Biblical Text as a Parable of Human Labor, trans. Matteo Mandarini (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009), p. xxii. My only worry with their overall project, as is well expressed in

Commonwealth (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009), is that the emphasis on immaterial biopolitical production, which "is not constrained by the logic of scarcity:' threatens to obscure and divert

attention from the limits of material production in terms of planetary natural resources (p. 283).

22. Antonio Negri, Time for Revolution, trans. Matteo Mandarini (London: Continuum, 2003), p. 152.

207 9. POLITICS OF THE EVENT

23. Ibid., p. 153. 24. Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason (London: Verso, 2005), p. 153. 25. Ibid., pp. 96-97. 26. Ibid., p. 239. 27. On the contemporary political significance of Chavez and Morales, see

Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala, Hermeneutic Communism: From Heidegger to Marx (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011).

10. VODOU ECONOMICS: HAITI AND THE FUTURE OF D EMOCRACY

1. I am in no way a scholar of Haiti or Haitian Vodou, and so operating at the very limits of my expertise and reliant on the important work of many others, which is also the condition for scholarship to occur. I would like to specifically thank Cecile Accilien for her comments and suggestions on a draft of this chapter.

2. Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004), p. 40. See also the classic but still persuasive account by C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins (New York: Vintage, 1963).

3. Hans Schmidt, The United States Occupation of Haiti, 1915-1934 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1971), p. 17.

4. Peter Hallward, Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of Containment (London: Verso, 2007), p: 11. See also the suggestion by Susan Buck-Morss that Hegel was following the Haitian revolution in newspaper reports, and that his dialectic of Master and Slave was at least partly elaborated with Haiti in mind. Susan Buck-Morss, Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009). Buck­Morss also suggests that Boukman (Book-Man) was Muslim (p. 141).

5. Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon, 1995), p. 98.

6. Robert Fatton Jr., Haiti's Predatory Republic: The Unending Transition to Democracy (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2002), p. 2.

7. Dubois, Avengers of the New World, p. 100. 8. Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, "Resisting Freedom: Cultural Factors in

Democracy-The Case for Haiti:' in Invisible Powers: Vodou in Haitian Life and Culture, ed. Claudine Michel and Patrick Bellegarde-Smith (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), p. 102.

9. On the c01"\struction of the categories and criteria of world religions in the late nineteenth and early twentieili centuries, see Tomoko Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).

20B S. POlITICS OF THE EVENT

10. Jacob K. Olupona and Terry Rey, eds., Orisa Devotion as World Religion: The Globalization of Yoruba Religious Culture (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008).

11. Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, Haiti: The Breached Citadel, 2nd ed. (Toronto: Canadian Scholars' Press, 2004), p. 24.

12. Anthony B. Pinn, Varieties of African-American Religious Experience (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), p. 33.

13. For a critique of orthodox economics, see Herman E. Daly, Beyond Growth: The Economics of Sustainable Development (Boston: Beacon, 1996). Daly engages with ethics and religion at the end of his book as motivating fac­tors toward a more sustainable situation� but he restricts his discussion to monotheistic principles of creation and stewardship. I suggest that a more radical ethic can be drawn from an understanding ofVodou lwa as energy forces that function in terms of an unavoidable exchange. Another example is the Meso-American view of the world as an "eating landscape" in which humans both consume and are consumed in an environment of scarcity. See Philip P. Arnold, Eating Landscape: Aztec and European Occupation of Tlalocan (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2001), pp. 105-11.

14. See Thorn Hartmann, The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: The Fate of the World and What We Can Do Before It's Too Late (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2000).

15. See Naomi Klein's excellent presentation (although she omits the role of declining energy resources) of the political and economic effects of Friedmanite free-market policies from 1973 up to the present in The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007).

16. Hallward, Damming the Flood, p. xxxiv (emphasis in original). 17. Ibid., p. 314. 18. Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason (London: Verso, 2005), p. 162. 19. Hallward marshals compelling evidence that the United States did not

just accept Aristide's resignation and escort him out of the country on February 29, 2004, but in fact abducted him and forced him to resign and emigrate. See Hallward, Damming the Flood, pp. 232-49.

20. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Eyes of the Heart: Seeking a Path for the Poor in the Age of Globalifation (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 2000), p. 6.

21. Ibid., p. 36 . . 22. Bellegarde-Smith, "Resisting Freedom;' p. 112. 23. Jacques Derrida, Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, trans. Pascale-Anne

Brault and Michael Naas (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), p. 37.

209 10. VODOU ECON OMICS: HAITI AND THE FUTURE OF DEMOCARCY

24. Ibid., p. 110. 25. Ibid., p. lll.

26. Elizabeth McAlister, Rara!: Vodou, Power, and Performance in Haiti and its Diaspora (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), p. 157·

27. See Gerdes Fleurant, "The Song of Freedom: Vodou, Conscientization, and Popular Culture in Haiti;' in Michel and Bellegarde-Smith, Invisible Powers, pp. 60-62.

28. RAM, "Fey:' Ai"bobo (Cave Wall Records, 1996). The song is originally writ­

ten and sung in Krey61, although an English translation is included in

Bob Shacochis, The Immaculate Invasion (New York: Penguin, 1999), p. 47.

210 10. VODOU ECONOMICS: HAITI AND THE FUTURE OF DEMOCARCY

INDEX

abstract machine (Deleuze and Guat­tad), 63-64, 69, 82-86, 172

actual (Deleuze), 13, 17, 48, 50, 54, 60, 141, 147-148, 193; actualiza­tion, 46-48, 50, 52, 61, 85, 148; and

virtual, 14-15, 46-47, 52, 76, 84, 94-96, 148, 152

Agamben, Giorgio, 11 algebra, 21, 127-130 Althusser, Louis, 105-106 apparatus of capture (Deleuze and

Guattad), 83, 171-172 Aristide, Jean-Baptiste, 183, 190-192,

194 Aristotle, 30-31 Artaud, Antonin, 23-24, 59-60, 176 assemblage (Deleuze and Guattari),

63-66, 68-69, 72-73, 82-86, 92, 183

Augustine, 96

Bacon, Francis, 7, 174 Baroque, n. 86-88, 90-91, 173 Bateson, Gregory, 63

Barbour, Julian, 150, 153, 159 Baudrillard, Jean, 55, 97 Being, 4, 6, 8, 13, 16, 19-20, 31, 58, 62,

75, 77, 86, 98, ll2, ll5, 120, 129, 142, 147; Badiou and being, 8-9, 15-19, 22-23,76, 103-104, 107-ll2, 115-ll9, 122, 126, 128, 132-136, 140-142; being as energy transformation,

120, 145, 159; Being and Event (Badiou), 4, 6, 8-9, 19, 100, 1°3-105, 107-108, llO-113, 115-117, ll9-122, 126-128, 130-134, 136, 145; Being and Time (Heidegger), 37; Deleuze

and being, 12-20, 24, 29,31, 33-34, 5°, 55,58, 62, 76,88, 122, 126, 140, 157, 176; Deleuze: The Clamor of Being (Badiou), 6, 9, 11-12, 15-20, 29, 120, 136; Heidegger and being, 3-4, 33, 75-76, 88; univocity of being, 18-19, 29, 31-32, 62, 68, 70

Bellegarde-Smith, Patrick, 189, 192 Benjamin, Walter, 174-175 Bergson, Henri, 3, 7, 13, 15-16, 19,

33-35, 51, 86, 91-92

body without organs (Deleuze and Guattari), 23-24, 59, 61, 64-66, 68-69, 79-80, 82-84, 131, 140, 162,171

Bolzmann, Ludwig, 153 Bosteels, Bruno, 111, 123 Boukman, 188 Boukman Eksperyans, 194 Bousquet, Joe, 61 brain, 10, 70, 96-100, 160, 178-179,

181-182; What Should We Do with Our Brain? (Malabou), 70

Brehier, Emile, 58 Brunschvicg, Leon, 16 Burchill, Louise, 19 Bush, George H. w., 188 Butler, Smedley, 186

calculus, 20-22, 44-45, 47 Camus, Albert, 76 Cantor, Georg, 21, 107-108, 112, 127, 129 capitalism, 11, 15, 25, 78, 81-83, 104,

141, 160, 166-168, 170-172, 176, 180, 187, 190, 192; Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Deleuze and Guat­tari), 15, 25-26, 77, 81, 89, 94, 122, 166, 170-171, 173

Camot, Sadi, 49, 153, 156 Carroll, Lewis, 7, 57-60 castration, 25, 118· Castro, Fidel, 191 Chavez, Hugo, 183, 191 Clausius, Rudolf, 153, 156 Cogito, 35, 54 Cohen, Paul, 116, 127, 130 Coles, Donald, 154 Columbus, Christopher, 185 communism, 5, 125, 131 continuum hypothesis, 21, 106,

129-130

212 INDEX

dark precursor (Deleuze), 24, 31, 39-40, 49, 52, 65, 69, 72, 84-85, 147

Davis, Mike, 168 death drive, 37, 81-82, 183, deconstruction, 3 Dedekind, Richard, 21 De Landa, Manuel, 20, 145-148,

150-152 democracy, 185, 187, 190-194 Derrida, Jacques, 3, 7, 11, 70-71, 76,

192-193 Descartes, Rene, 42 desiring machines (Deleuze and

Guattari), 25, 62, 73, 78-80, 82, 170-171

Dessalines, Jean-Jacques, 187 deterritorialization (Deleuze and

Guattari), 9, 66, 81-82, 84-85, 170-173, 175

dialectic. dialectics, 32, 45. 121, 123-124, 133. 136; dialectical mate­rialism. 106-107, 121-122, 125, 135; Hegelian. 5. 7. 72. 86; Marxist, 126

differenciator, differentiator (Deleuze), 33. 38-40. 69, 72, 84-85, 88. 127

double articulation (Deleuze and Guattari), 7. 55. 63-65, 67-70• 72-73, 83

Duns Scotus, 31 Duvalier. Frall<;:ois, 187 Duvalier, Jean-Claude, 187

Earth, 64, 82, 85, 116, 161-162. 172-173 Eddington. Arthur, 153 Eisenstein, Sergei. 92, 175 Einstein, Albert, 92, 120. 159-161 energy, 49, 60-61. 71. 92. 120, 145.

151, 153, 155-156, 158-163, 167-169,

189-190, 193-194; dark energy, 158; intensity and, 48, 52, 159; nuclear energy, 160-162; thermodynamics and, 153, 156, 167, 173

entropy, 49-52, 150-151, 153-160 Eros, 33, 35, 37 Eternal Return, 13, 19, 32-34, 36-38,

53, 14°, 158

fascism, s, 25, 93, 166, 175-176 Fatton, Robert, 187 Feltham, Oliver, 109, 130, 132, 136 Feynman, Richard, 162 Fold (Deleuze), 7, 12, 14, 16-17, 30,

33, 60, 64, 73, 77, 86, 88-92, 140; The Fold (Deleuze), 7, 16, n n, 85-91, 99

Foucault, Michel, 11, 131 Frege, Gottlob, 4, 107 French Revolution, 186 Freud, Sigmund, 37, 117 Friedman, Milton, 168, 188

Gauss, Carl Friedrich, 22, 146 Gell-Mann, Murray, 162 God, 19, 87, 90-91, 108, 112, 140-141,

169, 192-193; death of God, s, 35-36, 112; God is a lobster, 65, 67

Godard, Jean-Luc, 178 Giidel, Kurt, 130, 159 Griffith, D. w., 92 Guattari, Felix, 7, 9, 24-25, 57, 62,

77, 86, 173; Deleuze and Guat­tari, 19-20, 23-25, 4�, 53, 55, 61, 63-73, 77-85, 92, 124-125, 131, 140, 162-163, 166, 17°-173, 180

Haiti, 10, 183, 185-194 Haitian Revolution, 186

213 INDEX

Hallward, Peter, 17, 39, 107, 130, 187, 190-191

Hardt, Michael, 141, 180, 182 Hartmann, Thorn, 190 Hegel, Georg Willielm Friedrich, s,

7-8, 12, 30, 7°-72, 86, 104, 116-117, 119, 123, 133; Deleuze's critique of Hegel, 32, 70, 88; Hegelianism, 5

Heidegger, Martin, 3-4, 7, 70-71, 76, 107, 112, 192-193; Heidegger's Ereignis, 75-76; Heidegger's influ­ence on Deleuze, 13, 33, 37-38, 76, 88; Heidegger and language, 4

hermeneutics, 4 Hitler, Adolf, 175, 180 Hollywood, 93, 175 Hume, David, 7, 33-34, 91, 112 Husserl, Edmund, 3, 33-34, 76

Idea, 19, 22, 38, 66, 69-7°,75, 114, 116-117, 192; Idea (Badiou), IS, 135, 165; Idea (Deleuze), 8, 20, 22, 30, 41-48, 52-55, 61, 65-66,71, 146, 156, 174; Platonic Idea, 32, 84

identity, 13, 39-40, 126-127, 140, 158, 181, 191; identity in Badiou, 16-18, 126-128; identity in Deleuze, 16-18, 3°-32, 35-36, 38-43, 45, 48, 51, 53, 62, 7°, 84, 91, 123,126-128, identity and difference, 39-41, 53, 84; repetition of identity, 15, 30, 123

imaginary, 78, 124, 129, 183 intensity (Deleuze), 38-41, 48-55,

59, 69, 79, 85, 89-90, 98, 136, ISO, 155-159, 179, 181; intensity and extensity or extension, 48-50, 52, 54, 89-90, 155-157

interstice (Deleuze), 66, 95, 98-99, 178-179, 183

Kafka, Franz, 7, 96 Kant, Immanuel, 7-8, 19, 35-36,

42-43, 48, 86-87, 91, 104-105, 113-120; Kantian sublime, 8, 42, 103, 113-120

Kierkegaard, Soren, 5 I<J.ee, Paul, 183 Kojeve, Alexandre, 5

Lacan, Jacques, 8, 24, 36, 57, 63, 76-79, 87, 105, Ill, 118, 121-124, 127, 129, 166, 182

Laclau, Ernesto, 182-183, 191 language, 3-4, 8, 25, 31, 62, 76, 125,

146; language in Deleuze, 6, 29, 55, 57-63, 68, 77> 82, 89, 97, 145, 170, 172, 178; language in Badiou, 106-107, 115, 117; philosophy of language, 4; schizophrenic lan­guage, 59, 78

Leibniz, Gottfreid Wilhelm, 21, 30, 32, 60, 86-87, 89-91

Levi-Strauss, Claude, 72, 76 Levinas, Emmanuel, 71 linguistics, 4, 63 logic, 5, 13, 17, 24-25, 31-32, 37, 47,

57-58, 68, 73, 106, 121, 127-129, 133, 135-136, 140; Badiou's logic, 6, 9, 106, 108, 121, 126, 130, 133-135; Deleuze's logic, 7, 12, 18, 24-25, 32, 55, 57, 59, 68, 70, n 121; logic of double articulation, 7, 63�64, 67-70, 72-7}; The Logic of Sense (Deleuze), 7-8, 13, 24-25, 29, 42, 55, 57, 59, 62-66, 68-69, 73, 77-78, 80, 83, 88-89, 178; Logics of Worlds, 7-9, 100, 103-105, 119-121, 132-134, 136-139, 141, 145

Lwa, 10, 189, 193 Lyotard, Jean-Franc;:ois, 3, 132

214 I NDEX

magneto-electric generator, 161-162 magnetosphere, 162 Malabou, Catherine, 5, 7, 70-73, 88 Mallarme, Stephane, 87 Mao Zedong, 121 Marcos, Subcomandante, 183 Marrati, Paola, 92-93, 100, 166, 169,

178 Martin, Jean-Clet, 12, 22, 95 Marx, Karl, 121, 123 Marxism, 125, 131, materialism, 107, 125-129, 131, 133, 138,

145; dialectical materialism, 106, 121-122, 125; new

materialism, 125-126 mathematical ontology (Badiou), 4,

8, 20, 23,76, 103-104, 108, 110-111, 113, 115-116, 119, 131-132

May 1968, 105, 165-167 McAlister, Elizabeth, 193 McCarthey, Cormac, 132 mechanosphere (Deleuze and Guat-

tari), 86 Meillassoux,Quentin, 112-113 Mequet, Kevin, 161-162, 183 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 76, 88 micropolitics (Deleuze and Guattari),

25, 63,124 molar (Deleuze and Guattari), 61,

64, 66-67, 72-73, 83-84, 122, 124, 126, 165

molecular (Deleuze and Guattari), 61, 65-67, 72, 79, 82-84, 122, 155

Morales, Evo, 183, 191 motor scheme, 7, 70-72 movement-image (Deleuze), 15,

92-95, 98, 174, 176-177

Napoleop, 186 Nazism, 5, 87, 93

Negri, Antonio, 11, 41, 180-182 neoliberalism, 10, 194 Neo-Platonism, 19 neuroplasticity, 70 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 4, 7, 13, 15, 19, 32,

42, 86-87, 91, 170 nomadology (Deleuze and Guattari),

9, 170-171

oil, 160, 167-169, 190 Olkowski, Dorothea, 35 One, 4-5, 20, 23, 45, 51, 89, 113-114;

Badiou on the One, 18-19, 22, 108, 112-114, 118, 121-122, 126, 135, 139; count-as-one (Badiou), 19, 108-110, 113-114, 118-119, 135, 140; Deleuze as philosopher of the One, 6, 13, 15-20, 23, 139-141; Deleuze on the One, 12, 62, 69, 76, 85, 89-90, 99, 122, 141, 178; One God, 193; one and the many, 12-13, 45, 51

One-All (Deleuze), 13, 17, 19, 31 OPEC, 168, 190 opperator, 44, 84, 137, 147, lsi Orisa, 189, 193 Ozu, Yasujiro, 94

Parmenides, 13 Penrose, Roger, 120, 150 phallus, 24, 124 phenomenology, 4, 76, 133-134 Pinn, Anthony B., 189 Planck scale, 103, 149 plane of consistency (Deleuze), 31, 39,

65, 68-69, 83-85, 148 plane of immanence (Deleuze), 17, 31,

39, 65, 71-72, 83, 85, 92, 96, 126, 140-141

plasticity, 7, 70-73, 88

215 INDEX

Plato, 5, 32-33, 43; Platonism, 4, 14, 18, 32, 41, 43

pleasure principle, 37 Poincare, Henri, 146 postrnodernism, 3 poststructuralism, 8, 76 Prigogine, Ilya, 145, 151-153 Prometheus, 132 Proust, Marcel, 7, 33, 35 psychoanalysis, 24-25, 57, 63, 77> 79,

81

quantum gravity, 148-150

RAM, 194 Ranciere, Jacques, 166 Rara, 193-194 Reagan, Ronald, 188 real, 12, 14, 24, 67-68, 78-80, 107-108,

123, 128-129, 165; Lacanian real, 78, 122-123, 182; real numbers, 21; real vs. possible (Deleuze), 47, 62

repetition (Deleuze), 15, 30-31, 33-38, 40, 47-55, 65, 69, 73, 9°, 123-124, 126, 133, ISO, 157-159, 179; Differ­ence and Repetition (Deleuze), 6-8, 12-13, 15, 17, 19-22, 25-26, 29, 33, 35, 36, 38, 41, 43, 46, 48, 53, 55, 57-59, 63, 65, 69, 73, 77> 79-80, 83-85, 88, 90, 92, 85, 98, 122, 126-127, 140, 145, 156, 158, 160, 179

representation, 16, 31-32, 70, 141, 177, 191, 193; Badiou and representa­tion, 107, 109, 114, 119, 165; Deleuze and representation, 17, 30-32, 37-38, 40-43, 53, 55, 95, 141; Kant and representation, 113, 118

Resnais, Alain, 96, 178, 180 reterritori�lization (Deleuze and

Guattari), 85, 170-173

rhizome (Deleuze and Guattari), 63, 166

Riemann, Bernard, 22, 45, 146 Romanticism, 8, 112 Rovelli, Carlo, 149-150, 159

Sacher-Masoch, Leopold von, 7 Sagan, Dorion, 154-155, 158 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 3, 76, 88, 139 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 4 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph

von, 86 schizo-analysis (Deleuze and Guat-

tari), 59, 78 schizophrenia, 59, 81-82, 171 Schneider, Eric. D., 154-155, 158 Schrodinger, Erwin, 151-152 Selme, Leon, 156 set theory, 14, 45; set theory (Badiou)

5, 8-9, 19-22, 44-45, 103-104, 107-108, 111-113, 115, 122, 129-130, 134, 140, 145; set theory (Deleuze), 22, 44-45, 140; set theory (Cantor), 108, 112, 127

simulacra, 5, 32-33, 41, 55, 97 singularity, singularities, 21, 64, 146,

148, 152; singularity (Badiou), 110, 133, 136-137, 165; singularity (Deleuze), 23, 47, 54, 60-61, 89-90

Smith, Daniel W, 19-22 Smolin, Lee, 103, 120, 149 Spinoza, Baruch, 7, 15, 19, 32, 86-87,

91, 181 Stalinism, 5, 93, 180 Stengers, Isabelle, 151 Stoicism, 7, 58 strata (Deleuze and Guattari), 64-69,

72, 83-85, 131, 162 structuralism, 3, 25, 57, 63, 76 subject, 8-9, 16, 78, 84, 91-92,

216 INDEX

103-105, 107, 111, 113-139, 141, 165, 174-175, 180; Theory of the Subject (Badiou), 8, 100, 103-105, 107, 111, 116, 119-122, 125-128, 131, 133

Swenson, Rod, 153-154, 158 symbolic, 59, 77-79, 81, 123-124, 127,

182-183

territorialization (Deleuze and Guat­tari), 64, 66, 170

Thanatos, 37 thermodynamics, 49-50, 126, 145, 147,

151-156, 159-160, 162,167 Third World cinema, 180-183 Thorn, Rene, 47 time-image (Deleuze), 9-10, 15,36,

43, 86, 92-95, 97-99, 131, 140, 158-159, 169, 173-174, 176-183, 185, 193

topology (Badiou), 96, 124, 127-129 torsion (Badiou), lll, 123-124, 127-

128 totalitarianism, 5 Toussaint Louverture, Franc;:ois­

Dominique, 187 Trouillot, Michel-Rolph, 187

unconscious, 37, 78, 123

Vattimo, Gianni, 11 Virilio, Paul, 167, 170, 175-176 virtual (Deleuze), 13-16, 32, 34, 36-37,

46-48, 52, 54,76, 84, 94-97, 112, 146-152, 156, 183, 193; virtual and actual, 13-15, 46-47, 52, 54, 76, 84, 94-96; virtual event, 147-148

vitalism, 16, 23, 25 Vodou, 10, 185, 188-194 void (Badiou), 98-99, 107-112, 115,

117-118

war machine, 9, 83, 170-172, 175 Weierstrass, Karl, 21 Welles, Orson, 96 Whitehead, Alfred North, 13, 87,

89-91 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 4

217 INDEX

World War I, 186 World War II, 3-4, 93, 167

Zizek, Slavoj, 5, 11, 23-26, 57, 59, 64, 79, 82, 118, 166-167, 171, 173, 182; Organs Without Bodies, 23, 25, 59

INSURRECTIONS: CRITICAL STUDIES IN RElIGION, POlITICS, AND CULTURE

Slavoj Ziiek, Clayton Crockett, Creston Davis, Jeffrey W. Robbins, Editors

The intersection of religion, politics, and culture is one of the most discussed areas

in theory today. It also has the deepest and most wide-ranging impact on the world.

Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture will bring the tools

of philosophy and critical theory to the political implications of the religious turn.

The series will address a range of religious traditions and political viewpoints in the

United States, Europe, and other parts of the world. Without advocating any specific

religious or theological stance, the series aims nonetheless to be faithful to the radi­

cal emancipatory potential of religion.

After the Death of God, John D. Caputo and Gianni Vattimo, edited by Jeffrey w. Robbins

The Politics of Postsecular Religion: Mourning Secular Futures, Ananda Abeysekara

Nietzsche and Levinas: "After the Death of a Certain God," edited by Jill Stauffer

and Bettina Bergo

Strange Wonder: The Closure of Metaphysics and the Opening of Awe, Mary-Jane

Rubenstein

Religion and the Specter of the West: Sikhism, India, Postcoloniality, and the Politics

of Translation, Arvind Mandair

Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing: Dialectic, Destruction, Deconstruction, Catherine

Malabou

Anatheism: Returning to God After God, Richard Kearney

Rage and Time: A Psychopolitical Investigation, Peter Sloterdijk

Radical Political Theology: Religion and Politics After Liberalism, Clayton Crockett

Radical Democracy and Political Theology, Jeffrey W. Robbins

Hegel and the Infinite: Religion, Politics, and Dialectic, edited by Slavoj ZElek, Clay­

ton Crockett, and Creston Davis

What Does a Jew Want? On Binationalism and Other Specters, Udi Aloni

A Radical Philosophy of Saint Paul, Sta.nislas Breton, edited by Ward Blanton, trans­

lated by Joseph N. Balian ··

Hermeneutic Communism: From Heidegger to Marx, Gianni Vattimo and Santiago

Zabala