dls%2E2014%2E0142

Deleuze and Beckett: An ImmanentEncounter

Magdalena Wisniowska Royal Academy Schools, London

Abstract

Understanding the exact nature of Deleuzes debt to Kant forms a largepart of contemporary Deleuzian scholarship, a project made all the moreurgent since the publication of Meillassouxs critique of correlationismin 2007. These Kantian readings present Deleuze as someone whocontinues Kants transcendental project by reconsidering the nature ofimmanent critique. Immanent critique is no longer seen here as partof the critical enquiry into the possible conditions of experience, butas a staging of an encounter with the genetic principle constitutingthese conditions, the real condition common to both the human subjectand the world in which he or she lives. Such is the implicit demandof genetic recasting: that critique in its immanent form is somethingwe can experience and learn. Presented with this demand, this essayaddresses the problem of staging this immanent form of critique. It looksto Deleuzes essay on the work of Samuel Beckett, The Exhausted, tosuggest a possible site for such an encounter with constitutive principle.Specifically, in Deleuzes discussion of . . . but the clouds . . . it finds atheory of the image, which can be understood in genetic terms, as atheory of the virtual. Thus the essay puts forward the thesis that Beckett,in constructing the image through the exhaustive process, recreates thevirtual plane, in its openness and flux.

Keywords: Beckett, Kant, exhaustion, the virtual, the image

Deleuze Studies 8.2 (2014): 173198DOI: 10.3366/dls.2014.0142 Edinburgh University Presswww.euppublishing.com/dls

174 Magdalena Wisniowska

I. Immanence

The starting point for this essay lies with a claim made by ChristianKerslake in his 2009 study on immanence, Immanence and the Vertigo ofPhilosophy: From Kant to Deleuze. When negotiating between Deleuze,Spinoza and Hegel, he suggests that imagination, in its transcendentalform, is something we can encounter, empirically speaking, in the hereand now. More so, he argues that for Deleuze, immanent critiqueconsists precisely of such an encounter. He writes:

It is the transcendental imagination, which is ultimately constitutive forhuman experience, and unless we learn the hidden art of the imaginationto which Kant alluded in his remarks on the Schematism, the human beingis destined to remain enclosed in the constituted frameworks of its finitude.(Kerslake 2009: 20)

In Kants Critique of Pure Reason, the transcendental imagination iscapable of a hidden or, according to Pluhars translation secret, art(Kant 1996: 213). It is able to mediate between the pure categoriesof understanding (as derived from Aristotelian logical judgements) andthe pure forms of intuition (space and time) by producing schemas ofsensible concepts, rules according to which our intuitions are determinedby concepts. Though, as one of the conditions of possible experience,transcendental imagination is essential for cognition, it itself cannot beknown, as in, it is not something we can divine from nature and laybare before ourselves (213). Yet Kerslake seems to suggest that thishidden art this spontaneous productive capacity for schema mightbe something we can learn. Indeed, if we do not acquire this kind oftalent, we are not performing Kants critical project correctly.

To understand more of the nature of Kerslakes claim, we mustfurther consider the context in which it is written. Despite Deleuzesanti-Kantian position being well known, Kerslakes account belongs to astrand in contemporary Deleuzian scholarship which seeks to unfold theexact nature of Deleuzes debt to Kant, a task all the more urgent sincethe publication of Quentin Meillassouxs critique of correlationism in2007.1 Kerslake together with Daniel Smith (1996), Joe Hughes (2008,2009) Levi Bryant (2008, 2009) and Edward Willatt (2009) sees Deleuzeas inheriting Kants critical project, to the extent that, like Kant, Deleuzewishes to perform a critique of values upon which critique is founded(Bryant 2009: 323). However, for Deleuze, these founding values arenot the kind described in the Critique of Pure Reason, comprising thea priori forms of intuition, categories of the understanding and ideas

Deleuze and Beckett: An Immanent Encounter 175

of reason. Instead, he finds an alternative set of principles elsewhere,with an altogether different character. Hughes repeatedly quotes fromDeleuzes The Idea of Genesis in Kants Esthetics (Hughes 2008: 1718;2009: 4):

The first two Critiques indeed invoke facts, seek out the conditions fromthese facts and find them in ready-made faculties. It follows that the firsttwo critiques point to a genesis, which they are incapable of securing on theirown. But in the aesthetic Critique of Judgement Kant poses the problem ofthe genesis of the faculties in their original free agreement. Thus he discoversa ground still lacking in the first two critiques. (Deleuze 2004a: 61)

The reference now is to the way in which Kant describestranscendental imagination in the early chapters of the third critique,the second moment of the judgement of taste. Here the pleasure ofbeauty is different from the pleasure associated with the agreeable asit derives from a state of mind in which the faculties of imaginationand understanding are in free play (Kant 1987: 21719). In DesertIslands (Deleuze 2004a: 634), but also in Difference and Repetition(Deleuze 2004b: 180, 183, 210) and other work on Kant (Deleuze 2008:425), Deleuze emphasises how this free play of the faculties producesa quickening or furthering of powers. When free, imagination isthat which arouses understanding, and understanding in turn is thatwhich puts imagination into play (Kant 1987: 296). Such arousalis even more apparent in Kants discussion of the sublime, in whichimaginations confrontation with its limit is directly responsible for theoutpouring feeling of the suprasensible power of reason (Kant 1987:226). Hughes, but also Kerslake, shows how Deleuze rewrites this kindof productive confrontation as genetic principle, not simply responsiblefor arousing feelings of the suprasensible, but responsible for the veryconstitution of our subjectivity, with all its associated faculties.2

Setting Kerslakes argument into the above context, we begin tounderstand why he might consider transcendental imagination to beconstitutive for human experience. He subscribes to the view of Deleuzeas a post-Kantian thinker, someone who responds to the demand forthe unconditioned self-grounding principle that must lie at the basis ofknowledge (Kerslake 2009: 18). This he finds in Kants concept of thetranscendental imagination, providing imagination is not reduced hereto its function in the Critique of Pure Reason, as the mere schematictranscendent application of its synthesis, but is seen at its mostproductive, whether in Heideggers existential ontology of constitutivefinitude or in the post-Romantics philosophy of the imagination.


For Kerslake, imagination in this constitutive sense takes over the roleusually granted to the Spinozian model of immanence, in which theworld is seen to be the expression of God and Gods divine infinityis that in which the entire world participates (Deleuze 1992a: 176;Kerslake 2009: 346). We can also see why, if Kants critical project isto be continued correctly, it must uncover this kind of self-groundingprinciple. Without learning more about the nature of transcendentalimaginations hidden art, Kants critical enquiry remains incompleteand we are destined to remain with the simple conditioning of fact inready-made faculties, rather than sure to discover the genetic groundof these faculties (Deleuze 2004b: 192). However, this kind of recastingof Kants transcendental project still leaves the question of immanentcritique unanswered. What we cannot understand is how how is sucha principle to be uncovered? How is this hidden art of the imaginationto be uncovered, encountered and learnt?

This is the point at which my essay begins. I would like to suggestthat Deleuze does indeed stage his immanent critique as an encounterwith an unconditioned principle in Kerslakes terms, an encounter witha productive sense of Kants transcendental imagination and he doesso most profoundly in his late essay on the work of Samuel Beckett. Iwould like to propose The Exhausted as a site for this kind of immanentcritique (Deleuze 1998).

II. The Exhausted

At first glance, Deleuzes essay might not seem the best site for suchan encounter. The Exhausted makes no direct reference to the conceptof immanence and only broaches the question of the genetic principleindirectly, through the concept of birth. We learn, for instance, thatto be exhausted is to be exhausted before birth (Deleuze 1998:152). Similarly, Deleuze describes the one who is exhausted seatedin darkness, head sunk in crippled hands as an original witness,present before being born (1556). However, the essay does notexpand on these few comments and these comments taken by themselvesshould not be seen as evidence of immanent critique, though theyremain quietly suggestive. Primarily, the essay is meant to serve as apostscript to the first French translation of Deleuzes television playsand as such, represents Deleuzes first serious discussion of these works.Although Deleuze had referred to Beckett prior to the publication of TheExhausted notably in Difference and Repetition (Deleuze 2004b: 100)and in Cinema I (Deleuze 2005: 6870) it is only here and in the essay


The Greatest Irish Film (Becketts Film) (1998) that he examines thework in depth.

Yet to see the essay as a piece of art criticism providing a necessaryintroduction to Quad, Ghost Trio, . . . but the clouds . . . or Nacht undTrume is equally problematic. For one, we learn very little about thecontext of these works nothing about where and when they were firststaged, nothing of their actual staging, their complicated scripts andexacting camera work, nothing of their historical or critical backgroundsand nothing of their critical significance. Indeed, we learn very littleabout them at all, except how they might pursue the concept ofexhaustion. In this sense Deleuzes essay is closest to how Levi Bryantdescribes Deleuzes engagement with artwork in terms of a new theoryof aesthetics (Bryant 2009: 33). According to Bryant, Deleuze looksto different artists (as well as novels and, of course, film) in orderto show how these might be seen as producing or individuatingdifferent forms of sensibility (33). Taking his cue from Deleuzes workin What Is Philosophy?, Bryant writes: The aim is not to represent theseartists or determine what they meant, but to analyse the percepts theyinvented, and uncover the capacities for affecting and being affectedthey have brought into the world (33). Bryants interpretation would beconvincing were it not for the fact that The Exhausted does not uncoverany such percepts or affects. It does not develop a theory of aestheticsany more than a theory of art, and makes no reference to sensation,perception or experience of any kind. Instead, we are simply presentedwith a concept of exhaustion and then shown how this functions inBecketts work generally and in the television plays specifically.

Thus the essay follows a very rigid structure and can be easily dividedinto three parts. In the first third, Deleuze identifies his central conceptof exhaustion through contrast and comparison with the concept ofrealisation. He then shows how Beckett enacts this concept of exhaustionthrough the particular way he uses language in his novels, plays, andradio and television pieces. In this second third of his argument, Deleuzeattributes to Beckett a kind of meta-approach, a manipulation of thepossibilities inherent in language. Finally, in the last third, he outlinesthe role of exhaustion in each of the television plays individually. Onlyin this sense can we see The Exhausted as staging a kind of immanentenquiry, in that it provides an analysis of the principle of exhaustion firstput forward or contributed by Beckett (Deleuze 1998: 154).

What then is exhaustion, this principle to which most of Beckettswork is seen to adhere? For Deleuze, exhaustion is one way in whichwe can approach the possible. Whereas in our everyday activity we tend


to realise the possible by pursuing certain goals, aims and plans, inexhaustion these are renounced and all of possibility is affirmed (Deleuze1998: 152). Deleuze also stipulates that only a truly exhausted personcan perform this kind of logical exhaustion, as only someone trulyexhausted can renounce all aims and plans. Thus logical exhaustivenessand physiological fatigue are closely linked (1545).

We can see how this principle might be relevant to Becketts work,if we think of Beckett as performing this kind of double exhaustionthrough his use of language. Once again, the same kind of distinctionapplies: whereas under normal circumstances we use language to namethe various projects we wish to realise, Beckett renounces such familiargrammatical and syntactical structures precisely in order to affirm allpossible permutations. This kind of meta-construction Deleuze callslanguage one, and he associates it most closely with the earlier novelsand theatre pieces. And just as logical exhaustiveness is dependent onthe persons physiological fatigue, so it is that we cannot consider theexhaustion of words without the accompanying exhaustion of the voicesthat utter them, including, necessarily and problematically, the writersown. This kind of self-silencing Deleuze calls language two, and he seesit as a feature of Becketts work from The Unnamable onwards.

More directly, we can also see how this same exhaustive principlemight apply to Quad, Ghost Trio, . . . but the clouds . . . or Nachtund Trume, though in a somewhat different shape and form. All ofthese later works pursue what Deleuze describes as the third languageof exhaustion, the exhaustive language of spaces and images. It is as ifwe had reached a point at which the previous exhaustions of languagesone and two opened up a space for the extra-linguistic, which can onlynow be adequately explored. In all cases, we are presented with eithera space (Quad, Ghost Trio and . . . but the clouds . . . ) or an image(. . . but the clouds . . . and Nacht und Trume) that is indeterminate innature that is not one realised possibility, but seems to affirm them all.So, for instance, in Ghost Trio the protagonist does not sit in a particularroom but in a grey rectangular space. When the camera zooms in, inorder to present the bed, the window or the door, they all appear as thesame grey rectangle. Similarly, the face of the woman who appears tothe protagonist of . . . but the clouds . . . is not the face of any particularfemale character but a blurred close-up. Furthermore, Beckett oftenseems to accentuate this any-space-whatever and indefinite image: inQuad the four actors get to traverse all sides and diagonals of the square;in Ghost Trio the protagonist opens the door, opens the window andlooks under the bed in successive order; and in . . . but the clouds . . .


he lists all possible ways in which the woman had previously appearedto him. And it must also be added, that like with the exhaustions oflanguages one and two, this kind of more logical side of exhaustion isaccompanied by physiological fatigue. In . . . but the clouds . . . and inNacht und Trume we actually see the silent protagonist, sitting in thedark, head down on crippled hands (Deleuze 1998: 155).

III. Immanent Readings

But what then of the concept of immanence, with which I introducedthis essay? How is this concept relevant to The Exhausted, when allthat seems to be discussed is the question of exhaustion and the wayin which this concept is played out in literature, theatre and televisionplays? Where can we find the transcendental concept of imagination,and with it, the staging of an immanent critique, in which the nature ofthis transcendental imagination is learnt?

First of all, it must be said that in The Exhausted Deleuzes debt toSpinoza is very much apparent. When Deleuze first distinguishes betweenthe exhaustion and the realisation of the possible, he makes the followingremark on the exhausted person and his state of exhaustion: That theimpossible should be asked of me, good, what else could be asked ofme. There is no longer any possible: a relentless Spinozism (Deleuze1998: 152) From this we learn that the point at which we can no longercome up with further possibilities is the point of Spinozism. Whateverexhaustion may or may not be, it remains Spinozian in character. But tobegin reading The Exhausted in such a way is somewhat problematic,because it involves us taking into account a reversal of terms.

To understand more of this reversal, we need to return to Kerslakeand the problem of immanent critique. Other than unfolding the exactnature of Deleuzes debt to Kant, Kerslake is very good at showing howfor Deleuze, Spinozas ontology foreshadows post-Kantian attempts toground philosophy in genesis. According to Kerslake, Deleuze findsan equivalent to the kind of unconditioned self-grounding principledemanded by the post-Kantians, in Spinozas idea of expression. BecauseSpinozas God is that which expresses itself in the world and the worldin turn is the expression of this God, we can construe the expressivenature of this divine being as a prototypical immanent principle (Deleuze1992a: 176).

Providing we keep to Kerslakes post-Kantian discussion ofimmanence, the terms here are of the real rather than the possible.The question is not of those conditions what Deleuze identifies as


the Kantian ready-made faculties of intuition, understanding andreason which allow for the possibility of experience. These he dismissesas mere conditioning (Deleuze 2004b: 192, 201, 216). Rather, Deleuzealways aims to uncover the genetic ground of the world shaped bythese faculties, the real ground that underlies our already constitutedexperience. Kerslake (2009: 18, 83) but also to an extent Hughes(2008: 1718; 2009: 34) and Smith (1996: 29) point to the well-known passage from Difference and Repetition: In fact, the conditionmust be a condition of real experience and not possible experience. Itforms an intrinsic genesis, not an extrinsic conditioning (Deleuze 2004b:192). It might therefore seem strange that Deleuze alludes to Spinozawhen identifying exhaustion with the exhaustion of possibility. TheExhausted clearly states that relentless Spinozism is the impossiblemoment at which the exhausted person exhausts the possibility as awhole. However, as Asja Szafraniec points out in her study of Beckett,Deleuzes late essay calls for a reversal of these two terms (Szafraniec2007: 1201). The possible here is not the same as the Kantianpossible, that Kantian world experienced under the conditions of thetranscendental subject. In fact, it is closer to the original self-groundingprinciple associated with Spinoza, demanded by the post-Kantians anddescribed by Kerslake. Or as Deleuze writes, God is the originary, thesum total of possibility. The possible is realised only in the derivative, intiredness, whereas one is exhausted before birth, before realising oneself,or realising anything whatsoever (I gave up before birth) (Deleuze 1998:152). We have encountered this concept of birth before, when firstintroducing The Exhausted. I have described it as quietly suggestive.We can now see how it might signify a great deal more, dealing withthat originary state which lies at the heart of any philosophical modelseeking a genetic approach to the problem of immanence.

Following on from this reversal of terms, we can also see howimmanent critique might be staged as an encounter with this originarystate. To pursue a course of relentless Spinozism both logical andphysiological exhaustion to the point at which there is no furtherpossibility, is to assume a state that in the Spinozian model is Gods only.This, in a sense, is what Beckett achieves in his work, a certain God-like presence. According to Szafraniec, just as Spinozas God exhaustshimself to become everything he understands, the writer exhausts himselfin the process of writing, to be a flux, which combines with all otherfluxes (Szafraniec 2007: 120). Anthony Uhlmann argues something verysimilar in his 1999 study, although in this case, God does not representAbsolutely everything but negatively, Absolutely nothing (Uhlmann


1999: 14). Taking into account the three levels of Spinozas ontology,he suggests that Becketts exhaustion is the exhaustion of modes orindividuated things, both in the attribute of extension and the attributeof thought. It is this exhaustion of modes that requires the merging withthe plane of immanence, the univocity of Being or Spinozas substanceor God.

However, it must also be said that to read The Exhausted in thisSpinozian fashion is to follow a strand in Deleuzian scholarship whichtends to neglects its more Kantian aspects. Here I would like to turnto Audrey Wassers recent essay on The Exhausted, A RelentlessSpinozism: Deleuzes Encounter with Beckett (2012). Like Szafraniec,Uhlmann and others, Wasser begins by pointing out the Spinozianelement of The Exhausted. However, unlike other commentators, sheemphasises the carnal or passional nature of Spinozas thought in theontology of sense rather than essence or substance.3 For Wasser, itis not Spinozian God that is key to understanding Deleuzes essay, butrather Spinozas definition of affect as indicating a bodily change of state.Specifically, she is interested in how such a definition of affect impactsour understanding of thought, as also capable of being affected.

In her interpretation of Deleuzian transcendental empiricism, thoughtchanges with every sensible encounter. She uses the term encounterin a post-Kantian fashion, to describe thoughts confrontation with asensible limit, familiar from the discussion of the sublime, especiallyof the generative role it plays in Deleuzes recasting of Kantstranscendental project. For Wasser, every time something is sensed,thought is forced to think, precisely because it is confronted withsomething exterior and independent of it. Such a midpoint of thoughtis useful when considering the double concept of exhaustion, because thepoint of exhaustion the point at which we no longer have any furtherpossibility at our disposal might also be construed as a confrontationwith a limit. More so, it is a confrontation with a limit that has abodily aspect. Just as in Difference and Repetition Deleuze might beseen as holding the respective fatiguing of the faculties responsiblefor the transmission of shock to the final faculty of thought, in TheExhausted physiological exhaustion is very much part and parcel ofthe exhaustive process.4 As Deleuze emphasises, it is only when we aresufficiently disinterested to pursue our goals, aims and plans that wecan arrive at the point of exhaustion (Deleuze 1998: 154). Thus forWasser, Becketts is not so much a relentless but a relenting Spinozism,which in orienting Spinoza towards the corporeal, serves to make thismost abstract of universes a little more concrete (Wasser 2012: 1289).


This allows us to make the tentative conclusion that the constitutiveprinciple invoked in The Exhausted might be construed as a kind ofproductive confrontation with a limit, familiar from Kantian discussionsof the sublime but also clearly at work in the exhaustive process. In thissense, we can understand his as an immanent critique in the Kantiantradition as the critique of the values upon which critique is founded,in that this confrontation with limit is central to thought. Beckett, byengaging with the exhaustive process, presents such a principle directly.Quad, which Wasser discusses in detail, would be one such instance ofan immanent critique. Quad illustrates the constructive function of theexhaustive process, its players tiring at the four corners but exhaustingthe space in the middle (Wasser 2012: 12930).

Yet in light of the recent research carried out by Smith, Hughes, Bryantand others, Wassers interpretation is also incomplete. To further expandon how this might be the case requires a far more detailed account ofthe genetic line that begins with sensibility and the material impression,and proceeds via the creation of faculties to thought, and ultimatelyrepresentation. To do so, I would like to turn to Joe Hughes, whosework on this problem of genesis in a Kantian context is exemplary.

Both in Deleuze and the Genesis of Representation (2008) andin his introduction to Difference and Repetition (2009), Joe Hughesconvincingly argues that the midpoint of Deleuzian epistemology liesnot with the violence of the sensible encounter but with the creationof the virtual. This is not to say that he dismisses Wassers kindof genetic account entirely. According to Hughes, in Difference andRepetition Deleuze does trace the principles of thought back to theinitial violent meeting between the subject and the unrecognisable,fragmented object. Hughes would also agree that this shock results inthe creation of thought appropriate to this wounding difference (and,of course, the entire series of faculties, sensibility, imagination andmemory, each dealing with the violence in its own way). However, forHughes, it is important that the process Wasser describes culminates inthe establishment of a future and open state of determinability, morefamiliar to readers of Difference and Repetition as the virtual realm ofmultiplicity (Deleuze 2004b: 21479).

From Hughes we learn that Deleuzes epistemology is always thestory of two asymmetrical halves. In the first, we get to see how thevirtual is established and the idea progressively determined. Accordingto the terms of Difference and Repetition, this process involves larvalsubjects, repetitions and passive synthesis, and Wassers account is usefulinsofar as it shows how the force of the encounter both constitutes


a series of passive selves or larval subjects and causes these geneticelements of unconscious subjecthood to be exceeded (Wasser 2012:1303). However, to complete this trajectory of thought, the ideamust be brought back from its futuristic virtual horizon and actualisedin the present. Otherwise, it is very clear how the violence of thesensible encounter might be seen to be disruptive of thought indeed,responsible for its mutation but not how this violence might allow fordetermination. While this shift of midpoint might seem overly technical,it bears on the problem of unconditioned principle, in that it is the virtualand not the encounter, which ultimately determines our knowledge ofthe object.

Furthermore, such a shift of midpoint also has an impact on theontological aspect of Deleuzes argument, especially as presented byKerslake. Kerslake shows that Deleuze builds his concept of imaginationon Spinozian ideas of God and his expression. Imagination in itsproductive form takes over the role previously granted to Spinozasconcept of God, as the one self-grounding principle. If there is aSpinozian aspect here, in Hughess argument, it can also be found in thisdiscussion of virtual midpoint. We can rewrite the path that begins withthe encounter and leads via the idea back to determination, as the storyof how Being is wrestled from unindividuated beings so that it may berestored to them as individuated.5 It takes place within the Nietzscheanworld of the will to power, in which the only difference is the differencein intensity. In such an intensive world, the point of determinationoccurs with the thought of the eternal return, this defined as the momentof awareness equal to the bodily experience of the world of intensityand violence.6 While Hughes draws comparisons with Spinozas idea ofsubstance as that which is in itself and conceived through itself (Hughes2009: 64), we might see how the figure God also meets these criteria.

Does this, however, impact our understanding of The Exhausted?Can we still see it as an immanent encounter, in the sense of Kantianimmanent critique? If so, is it a pre-critical, metaphysical encounterwith a Spinozian God? Or rather, do we come here face to facewith the violence of the sensible encounter between body and materialimpression? And where, in these very different accounts, can we find aplace for the virtual?

IV. The Virtual Image

Before answering, I would like to move away from these ontologicalinterpretations to consider one aspect of The Exhausted that these tend


to overlook. Wasser but also Bryden and Szafraniec all seem to ignorethe fact that Deleuzes essay culminates with the theory of the image. Aswe have already seen, in the second part of his essay Deleuze shows howBeckett uses language to reach a state of exhaustion. Deleuze identifiesthe construction of three different successive meta-languages: the firstconsisting of the exhaustion of words, the second of voices, and thethird of the extra-linguistic elements of space and image. Suggestivelyfor our consideration of immanent critique, he describes the final stateof exhaustion as the point of Imagination Dead Imagine (Deleuze1998: 158). When Beckett does manage to exhaust words so that it nolonger is a question of a combinatorial imagination imagining a wholeof a series, and when Beckett does manage to exhaust voices, so that theimagination sullied by memory is no longer pierced with unbearablememories, absurd stories or undesirable company, then he achievesthis most difficult of points (158). At this immanent limit of languageappears the visual or aural image (158). It would seem, then, if we wishto learn more about Deleuzes concept of the transcendental imaginationand how it may be encountered, we must examine the nature of thisunsullied image more closely.

The problem, however, is that the nature of this visual or auralimage is poorly understood. Many of the Spinozian accounts I havereferred to tend to overlook the concept of the image in favour ofthe other extra-linguistic element mentioned in The Exhausted andfound in Becketts work, namely, the concept of space. We have seenhow Wasser, for example, focuses her discussion on Quad, in whichBecketts exhaustion of space is most apparent (Wasser 2012: 12930).Mary Bryden also ends both of her essays on The Exhausted witha discussion of this work (Bryden 1996: 901; 2002: 8991). Othercommentators simply shift our attention to other texts. Szafraniec (2007)draws on Deleuzes Cinema books while Uhlmann in his essay Imageand Intuition in Becketts Film (2004) prefers a more Bergsonianapproach. The situation is not helped by the fact that Deleuze himselfis very vague at this stage of the argument. Or rather, the image presentsitself as vague.

If we look briefly at Deleuzes treatment of the image in thesecond part of The Exhausted, we can see why the image might beaccompanied by a sense of confusion. On the one hand, Deleuze presentsthe image as something singular, nothing more than a woman, a hand,a mouth, some eyes (Deleuze 1998: 158). As the image is considered tobe free of both words and voices, this kind of sense of singularity feelsappropriate. On the other hand, Deleuze also describes the image as a


process, something very much emphasised by Mary Bryden (Bryden2002: 86). These women, hands, mouths and eyes that appear after theexhaustions of languages one and two are not objects (though theymight appear this way from the objects point of view) but a process(Deleuze 1998: 159). However, Deleuze seems to be unclear as to whatkind of a process the image is. At first, he describes the image as aritornello, something that comes and goes, like the patch of sky inFirst Love (159). Once again we can see how such a definition of theimage is appropriate to Becketts work, evoking, for instance, the wayin which the face of the woman appears and disappears in . . . but theclouds . . . . But then Deleuze also argues that the nature of the imageis self-dissipating (160). Thus the image is also known for its short-lasting, explosive character. It does not return but ends, quite suddenly,in an explosion that captures all the possible (161).

If we consider this vague concept of the image in relation to the virtual,however, then many characteristics of the image become clear. Beforeengaging in such a comparison, let us first return to Hughes and hisaccount of Deleuzes genetic alternative to Kantian epistemology. So far,I have shown how the genesis of thought can be traced back to an initialencounter between the body and material object. The shock of this initialencounter is then transmitted through the various faculties in an attemptat interpreting this violence, and here Wassers account (2012) is usefulto understand more of this process. However, despite acknowledging thevirtuals constitutive role in the determination of the object, I have notyet described how this violence constitutes the virtual. In order to showthe relation between the two the image of The Exhausted and thevirtual of Difference and Repetition we need to establish what happensafter the moment at which all the attempts at interpreting the violenceleading up to this breaking point are cast aside, together with all thepassive selves and larval subjects.

In Difference and Repetition Deleuze describes this virtual platformin the following way:

The system of the future by contrast must be called a divine game since thereis no pre-existing rule, since the game bears already upon its own rules andsince the child player can only win, all of chance being affirmed each time.(Deleuze 2004b: 142)

From this we learn that the virtual has two main characteristics.First of all, the system of the future has no pre-existing rule. AKantian enquiry into conditions that allow for the possibility ofexperience will not discover in this Nietzschean world a priori forms


of intuition, categories of understanding or idea of reason. The geneticset of principles what in Difference and Repetition, Deleuze termsideas must be constituted, each time anew.7 However, these arenothing more than mere differentials, valueless in themselves and onlyacquiring a value when they enter a reciprocal relation with one another(Deleuze 2004b: 21619).

Second, this system of the future has no subject, or at least, not thekind of subject familiar from Kantian philosophy. Instead, the subjectof the future is appropriate to a system without pre-existing rules, acontingent or aleatory point to the ideas valueless differential (Deleuze2004b: 24751). The point at which the child player affirms all of chanceand throws the pair of dice is the aleatory point at which differentialideas are placed in a reciprocal relation with each other. While itmight seem that this point takes on the role of Kantian apperceptionin that it lends thought the kind of unity comparable to the I think,we must remember that there is no unified consciousness in Deleuzianepistemology. Here within the system of a dissolved self, the I isalways fractured (10810).

Keeping these characteristics of the virtual in mind, let us return toDeleuzes theory of the image. The first characteristic of the image is itssingularity. After the respective exhaustions of words and voices, Beckettleaves us with no more than a woman, a hand, a mouth (Deleuze 1998:158). These singularities might be understood as indefinite becausein becoming free of both voices and words, they retain nothing ofthe personal of the imagination sullied by memory and nothing ofthe rational of the combinatorial imagination sullied by reason (158).Interestingly enough for our comparison with the virtual, while thesesingularities can be described as indefinite (we do not know, for instance,what woman, whose face, what mouth is being referred to here), Deleuzealso describes them as determinate (160).

The indefinite/determinate state of image also helps us understandwhy Deleuze describes it as a process and not an object. It is importantto remember here that at stake in Deleuzes essay is an exhaustiveprocess taking place on two different levels. This process is not easy; itis exhaustive; it is draining. As Deleuze writes, to reach this point of theimage is extremely difficult and very few painters, musicians, writershave managed to achieve it (Deleuze 1998: 1589). Once it is achieved,however, this state is almost impossible to maintain. The effort requiredto keep the image free from all associations is simply too great. This iswhy the image tends to appear and disappear and eventually, to explodein an act of self-dissipation.


Indeed, it is this images act of self-dissipation which binds the thirdlanguage of exhaustion most closely with the virtual sphere. As wehave already learnt, the process of exhaustion takes place on twodifferent levels. On the one hand, it consists of the logical exhaustivenessand we can see how its affirmation of chance echoes the descriptionof the child player with its throw of dice found in Difference andRepetition. On the other hand, the affirmation of chance in logicalexhaustiveness is dependent on the fatigue of the one who exhausts.As Deleuze argues, only someone who is sufficiently disinterested canexhaust possibility in this way (Deleuze 1998:154). Therefore, we cansee Becketts constructions of languages one, two and three as hissuccessive attempts at reaching that state of fatigue which would allowfor logical exhaustiveness. While in the language one of words we mightstill encounter characters responsible for the construction of inclusivedisjunctions, the silencing of voices of language two has a direct impacton subjectivity. Again, as we have already seen, the narrators voice isone of the many voices necessarily included in the exhaustive process. Inthe language three of image, however, Beckett dispenses with the kindof agency associated with languages one and two. No one exhausts theimage; the image exhausts itself.

V. . . . but the clouds . . .

Without making any claims at this early stage, it is worth noting a coupleof points. The concept of the virtual and the concept of the image seem toshare some important characteristics. For one, both can be understoodas a principle (though the exact nature of this principle is yet unclear).The state of exhaustion in which the image participates more thanthat, achieves is described by Deleuze as originary, as the sum of allpossibility. Realisation of determinate goals is, in this case, only thederivative (Deleuze 1998: 152). Likewise, the virtual is that whichultimately allows for the determination of the object. Both the virtualand the image are characterised as indeterminate, either as indefiniteor without pre-existing rule (Deleuze 1998: 158; 2004b: 142). Bothalso achieve such an indeterminate state in a similar way, by dispensingwith a certain kind of established subjective agency. The virtual subjectis no more than an aleatory point the exhausted person, disinterested(Deleuze 1998: 154). We can, however, learn more.

The best example of this relation between the image and the virtualcan be found in the third part of The Exhausted, in Deleuzes discussionof . . . but the clouds . . . , a short television play, first screened by the


BBC in 1976 as part of a longer programme dedicated to the work ofSamuel Beckett. The play follows the central characters attempts at therecollection of a womans face. We see how he shuffles across a centrallylit stage, east to west and west to east, changes his clothes off-screenand eventually ends up in the mental sanctum in the north, where theimage had previously been seen.8 There, head in hands, he recalls howon other nights she had appeared to him, to stay briefly, to linger andto mouth the words of The Tower by W. B. Yeats, but the clouds inthe sky (Beckett 1984: 261). As we hear the protagonists account, theimage of a womans face invades our screen (Deleuze 1998: 170).

As this kind of sentimental examination of lost love (Ackerleyand Gontarski 2004: 77), it is not immediately apparent how . . .but the clouds . . . engages with the more theoretical questions ofthe virtual. However, it is worth noting that Deleuze introduces theplay by suggesting that in this work, Beckett returns to the post-Cartesian theories found in his earlier novel, Murphy (Deleuze 1998:169). Specifically, he refers to chapter 6 of the novel, in which Beckettdistinguishes between the various zones of Murphys mind. From theriotous potpourri of many metaphysical systems that this chapterevokes (Fletcher 1965: 54), we learn that within the hollow sphereof Murphys mind the universe assumes three distinct forms. Beckettidentifies the first form as the actual, the second as virtual and the thirdas virtual rising to actual or actual falling to virtual (Beckett 2011:107). Already here we gain an initial insight. There is a virtual at workin . . . but the clouds . . . , and this virtual belongs to its protagonistsearlier counterpart, Murphy. There is also a second point to be gained.Whereas Murphy has both mental and physical experience of the actual,the virtual is mental only. Though Murphy enjoys all three forms ofhis universe, if he wants to move from one zone to another indeed,if he wishes to invoke the virtual state he can only do so accordingto the law of inversion (Deleuze 1998: 169), by keeping his body atrest.

Indeed, I would like to argue that Deleuze uses this referenceto Murphy to map the virtual/actual distinction onto the logical/physiological distinction of exhaustion he has developed so far. ForDeleuze, the image is virtual in that, like Murphys virtual universal,it is mental in nature. This is the one aspect of the image that Deleuzeemphasises in a particular section of the essay that has no equivalentelsewhere. The sanctum in which the protagonist sits when invoking theimage has only a mental existence; it is a mental chamber (Deleuze1998: 169). Similarly, what matters here is no longer the exhaustion of


space, but the mental image to which it leads (169). We can thereforeconclude that the process of exhaustion is also such a mental activity.At the very least, both the logic of exhaustion and Murphys mentalacrobatics conform to the same law of inversion. Both require a physicalor physiological exhaustion on the protagonists part.

Such a mapping of one distinction onto the other becomes even moreobvious in the following section, where Deleuze repeats many of hisformer claims about the image, but this time keeping to his newlyestablished mental framework. He still insists that the image of . . . butthe clouds . . . raises the thing or the person to the state of an indefinite(Deleuze 1998: 170). He also argues that the image cannot be separatedfrom the process of its own disappearance because the energy that theimage carries results in its self-dissipation (170). However, in this casehe presents the characteristics of the image as part of a mental activity.When we first see the protagonist sitting at his desk, he states, When Ithought of her, it was always night. I came in (Beckett 1984: 259). Butthen immediately, he corrects himself, No that is not right. When sheappeared it was always night. I came in (259). To raise something orsomeone to the state of the indefinite is to call to the eye of the mind(Deleuze 1998: 170).

The exhaustion of the image then, insofar as the image achieves astate that is both indefinite and self-dissipative (Deleuze 1998: 170),constitutes a mental process, which can be understood in virtual terms.When the protagonist stops thinking and begins to call to the eye ofthe mind, he begins to engage with this kind of virtual mental process(170). However, we must also note that Deleuze evokes the virtualindirectly, through a reference to Becketts earlier novel, Murphy. It isstill unclear how Murphys virtual relates to the virtual of Difference andRepetition. This relation between the two different forms of virtualityDeleuze only establishes later, in the final stage of his analysis, wherehe explains, first, more about the kind of mental activity that Murphyengages in when he puts the law of inversion into action; and second,the consequences for the protagonist, whose call to the eye of themind is rewarded by the appearance and subsequent disappearance ofa womans face.

Regarding the state of exhaustion required of dissipating image,Deleuze writes:

[The image] announces that the end of the possible is at hand for theprotagonist of . . . but the clouds . . . [. . . ]. There is no longer an image,anymore than there is a space: beyond the possible there is only darkness,


as in Murphys third and final state, where the protagonist no longer movesin spirit, but has become an indiscernible atom, abulic, in the dark . . . of . . .absolute freedom. (Deleuze 1998: 170)

Once again Deleuze refers to the hollow sphere of Murphys mind tomake his point, but this time, to the experience Murphy has of its actual,virtual and in-between forms. When Murphy first lies to rest, in orderto travel through the different zones of his mind, he initially encountersa world that is very similar to our own, for which it acts as a kind ofparallel. In this zone of light Murphy can, for instance, enjoy mentallyreciprocating a kick that he had received physically, when in the physicalworld. Providing he rests further, Murphy can then enter the secondzone of half-light, comprising forms without parallel (Beckett 2011:110). This second, more unfamiliar world he can only enjoy throughcontemplation, in the manner of Dantes Belaqua.9 But Murphys thirdand final state belongs to the third zone of darkness in which thereare no forms, whether parallel or otherwise. Beckett describes it as aflux of forms, a perpetual coming together and falling asunder of forms(112). There are no elements or states, nothing but forms becoming andcrumbling into fragments of a new becoming (112). To engage in themental activity productive of the image to call something to the eye ofthe mind is to therefore participate in this kind of state of flux.

If we now compare the two different forms of virtuality thatbelonging to Murphy and that of Difference and Repetition theirmutual resemblance becomes clear. When Beckett describes the thirdzone of darkness as a world without element or states, he also explainsthat these forms become and crumble into fragments of a new becomingwithout love or hate or any intelligible principle of change (Beckett2011: 112). While a Spinozian aspect cannot be entirely dismissed, it isdifficult not to see this world as resembling the Deleuzian virtual realm ofmultiplicity.10 Like the open system of the future, it has no pre-existingrule. And furthermore, like this system, it has a mathematical equivalent.Deleuze likens the idea to the reciprocally determined differential;Beckett, the flux of forms, to a matrix of surds (113).

Similarly, Becketts description of Murphy evokes the kind ofsubjecthood Deleuze associates with the open system of the futureand the progressive determination of the Idea. We have seen how thechild player, free of any prior associations, rules the open system ofthe future. We have also seen how Ideas are progressively determinedat a contingent or aleatory point. In Nietzschean terms, the thoughtof the eternal return is the moment of awareness equal to the bodily


experience of the world of intensities. It is the blind, acephalic(headless) and aphasic (speechless) point, at which powerlessnessis turned into power (Deleuze 2004b: 24950). Consider then thefollowing description of Murphy at this point: Here he was not free,but a mote in the dark of absolute freedom. He did not move but wasa point in the ceaseless unconditioned generation and passing away ofline (Beckett 2011: 112). In the third zone of darkness, Murphy losesthe degree of sovereignty and freedom he found in zones one and two.He can no longer reciprocate kicks or contemplate beatitudes. This lastzone is also not a zone through which Murphy can mentally traverse.Whatever its treasures, they are not the kind among which he can move.Rather, he becomes a point within the overall movement, reduced to amote within the general freedom.

VI. Birthplace

From our comparison it would seem that the relation between the twoconcepts, the image of the third language of exhaustion and the virtual ofDifference and Repetition, is quite strong. Both involve the constructionof a mobile and fluctuating mental state in which the individual or thesubject responsible loses a sense of agency. So much we learn fromDeleuzes reference to Murphy and his third and dark state, described byBeckett in terms of the virtual. Nevertheless, this still leaves one questionunanswered, the question with which I began this exploration of TheExhausted. Does it follow that Deleuzes is an immanent critique in thepost-Kantian sense? Can we find in The Exhausted an encounter withwhat Kerslake describes as the unconditioned self-grounding principlethat lies at the basis of knowledge? Is this what Beckett manages toachieve with the making of the elusive image, the learning of Kantstranscendental imagination, understood by Deleuze as a constitutive,genetic ground?

In Kerslakes Kantian terms, immanent critique would necessarilyencounter self-grounding principle in the guise of Kants transcendentalimagination, the hidden power, which in Deleuzes rewriting of Kantstranscendental project assumes a major constitutive role. In TheExhausted we encounter such real conditions in the concept of theself-dissipating image. For what else is the virtual with which Deleuzeintroduces . . . but the clouds . . . ? This is Murphys virtual as presentedin Becketts early novel, the third form assumed by the hollow sphere ofMurphys mind, experienced as a mobile and dark world of continuousbecomings. We can conceive this virtual as a Spinozian world, the flux,


which combines all other fluxes, as described by Szafraniec (Szafraniec2007: 120). We can also, by following Hughess interpretation, presentit as the midpoint of a trajectory that begins with the violence of thesensible encounter and ends with the determination of the object. Assuch, the virtual is constitutive of the actual world, an actual world thatthe Kantian would recognise as his or her own, the world of distinctobjects, experienced by the individual subject.

We can see how the virtual of the self-dissipating image might beconstrued as such a constitutive ground if we once more considerDeleuzes remarks on God and origin. As we already know, Deleuzeintroduces the distinction between exhaustion and realisation by writing:God is the originary, the sum total of possibility. The possible isrealised only in the derivative, in tiredness, whereas one is exhaustedbefore birth, before realising oneself, or realising anything whatsoever(I gave up before birth) (Deleuze 1998: 152). According to Spinozianinterpretations of The Exhausted, this one original God, the sum ofall possibility, is a Spinozian God, the one substance from which allemerges. Equally, however, we can construe this originary God-like stateas the virtual realm of Difference and Repetition. The virtual too isthere before birth, in that it is before the determination of the worldof distinct objects and individual subjects.

Indeed, Hughess account shows how this world of extension andquality must presuppose an altogether different world of intensities,without such extensions and qualities. However, it needs to be noted thatthis priority of the God-like state of the virtual the exhaustion beforebirth is constitutive, in that it lies at the origin of such an objectiveworld. While ultimately all representation can be traced backed to theinitial material encounter in sensibility, Hughess account has shownhow this of itself is not sufficient for determination. Determination onlyoccurs in that moment when violence erupts to establish the Nietzscheansystem of the future and with it, those ideas which give rise to theprinciples of actualisation.

We can also see how Deleuzes discussion of the self-dissipating imagemight answer the post-Kantian demand for a self-grounding principleof subjectivity. When making the distinction between exhaustion andrealisation, Deleuze defines the time and place prior to birth as bothbefore realising anything whatsoever and before realising oneself(Deleuze 1998: 152). In Kantian terms, the one who actively realisesdifferent goals, aims and plans is nothing other than the individualsubject, negotiating the world of distinct objects; whereas the one whois exhausted exists prior to the realisation and thereby prior to such


subjectivity. In section II of this essay, I have mentioned two instancesin which Deleuze refers to birth. In the first instance Deleuze makes hisreference to the Spinozian God; in the second he writes:

Tiredness affects action in all its states, whereas exhaustion only concerns anamnesiac witness. The seated person is the witness around which the otherrevolves while developing all degrees of tiredness. He is there before birthand before the other begins. (Deleuze 1998: 1556)

Prior to such subjectivity is the amnesiac, who is witness to theother and this others endlessly tiring activity. A very specific kind ofsubjecthood is at stake.

It is this very specific subjecthood of the seated person thatembodies self-grounding principle. If we return to our discussion ofthe Deleuzian epistemology, this has shown that, just as the world ofobjects presupposes the world of intensities, the world of a unified,conscious subject presupposes passive and unconscious subjecthood.I have referred to Wassers essay as a particularly good account ofthe series of larval subjects and passive selves that form the firsthalf of Deleuzes epistemological trajectory. Yet I have also arguedthat the type of figures dominating Becketts late work, notably theseated protagonists of . . . but the clouds . . . or Nacht und Trume,resemble the fractured subjects and passive selves of Wassers accountno more than they resemble the single unified consciousness of theKantian subject. Instead, Becketts figures are appropriate to the mobile,fluctuating world to which they belong. Before birth and before theother begins is the child player who throws the pair of dice, thealeatory point at which differentials enter a reciprocal relation witheach other. Like Murphy in his third and final state, these subjectivitiesembody a Nietzschean kind of intense self-awareness, their power ofdetermination arising from their seeming powerless. This is how weought to understand the seated protagonists of . . . but the clouds . . .or Nacht und Trume: as those subjectivities sitting at the origin ofdetermination, presiding over the virtual platform.

Finally, we are in a position to discuss how The Exhausted mightstage its specific kind of immanent critique. Providing that we accept thevirtual of The Exhausted as the kind of self-grounding principle foundin Kantian readings of Difference and Repetition, we can reconstructDeleuzes essay as an encounter with such a principle. Going throughDeleuzes argument systematically and beginning with the betweenexhaustion and realisation, we know that the possible is either somethingwe realise by setting goals, aims and plans, or it is something we exhaust,


precisely by renouncing these kinds of aims. Exhaustion incorporatesthe sum total of possibility, whereas realisation is only derivative(Deleuze 1998: 152). Mapping then the one distinction onto the other,the possible corresponds to principle or condition, and the real to thatwhich is conditioned by this principle. In our terms, as derived fromHughess reading of Difference and Repetition, the affirmation of thepossible as a whole corresponds to establishment of the virtual and,in the same way, the process of realisation to the actualisation of thevirtual in the world of objects and subjects. Beckett, by renouncing theaims associated with realisation, in fact renounces the conditioned.The double exhaustion of logic and fatigue allows him to uncover whatin normal circumstances is obscured: the principle of the conditioned.For Kerslake, this was the hidden power of Kants transcendentalimagination; in our case, this is the virtual realm of multiplicity. Throughthis exhaustive process, Beckett uncovers that generative mixture ofopenness and flux, hidden by the qualities and extension of the objectit actualises.

Continuing our systematic analysis, we can see the construction of thethree languages of exhaustion as Becketts way of staging his immanentcritique. The distinction with which Deleuze began his essay once againapplies. Just as Deleuze opposes the process of realisation to the processof exhaustion, he opposes the language associated with realisationwith the type of language characteristic of Becketts late work. Undernormal circumstances we use language to help establish the aims ofrealisation, to name these aims and to voice them. In other words, weuse language to construct our actual world. Beckett on the other hand,first by exhausting words, then voices, and then finally those extra-linguistic elements which appear in the absence of both word and voice,disrupts the realising function of language to manifest the virtual. Theprotagonist of . . . but the clouds . . . and the female face, the series oftelevision plays which includes . . . but the clouds . . . but also Quad,Ghost Trio and Nacht und Trume, the third language of images andspaces: all can be seen as Becketts way of recreating the conditions of thevirtual plane, without the actual that is conditioned by it. The followingremark only seems to confirm such an interpretation:

But the image is more profound because it frees itself from its object in orderto become a process itself, that is, an event as a possible that no longer needsto be realised in a body or object, somewhat like a smile without the cat inLewis Carroll. (Deleuze 1998: 168)


We can therefore conclude that to encounter self-grounding principle isto encounter such a smile without the cat. Or rather, The Exhaustedplaces a demand on us: not to realise; not to name and voice; not evento think (as the protagonist of . . . but the clouds . . . makes clear, thewoman appears not because she is thought, but only when invoked).We must renounce all that has to do with the realisation of possibility,and with this, a little of ourselves. If we loosen the grip of subjectivitysufficiently to achieve that impossible tension of the image, an image nolonger bound by reason or memory, then we are free, like Murphy, tomove among our minds treasures.

VII. Conclusion

In the Critique of Judgment, Kant brings to the concept of transcendentalimagination a new aspect. Whereas the first critique presents imaginationas nothing more than a hidden power, a spontaneous synthetic capacitythought necessary for cognition but ultimately unknowable, in thethird critique imagination assumes a more active role. In its free playwith the faculty of understanding, it quickens this power, and theirmutual arousal is something that can be felt. In The ExhaustedDeleuze shows how Beckett, in the exhaustion of the image, reachesa state comparable to that of Kantian imagination (imagination herereassuming its productive arousing role) in that Deleuze associates theexhaustion of the image with a certain kind of freedom. Just as there isfreedom when imagination is no longer restricted by the determinationin concept, there is freedom to be found in the virtual state, in thedarkness of Murphys mind. Insofar as Becketts late television playsachieve the remaking of this virtual state, the productive imaginationbecomes something learnt.

Thus we can conclude that The Exhausted stages an immanentcritique, in that we uncover something of a hidden constitutive powerand we learn more about the nature of self-grounding principle;however, we need to account for our own reversal of terms. ThatDifference and Repetition is a rewriting of the first critique from thepoint of view of the third is by now a well-rehearsed argument. Incontrast, I have read the The Exhausted in light of Difference andRepetition Deleuzes third critique from the point of view of thefirst to show how it adds to our understanding of the virtual in thegenesis of knowledge. In this sense, The Exhausted performs its ownkind of immanent criticism.


Notes1. See especially the first chapter of Meillassouxs After Finitude (2008: 127),

where the critique of Kant is first laid out and is at its most explicit.2. We can also include Bryant in this list, who refers to Deleuzes Nietzsche and

Philosophy (1992b) to argue Kants critique is incomplete. Despite denouncingthe transcendent, Kant does not show how the categories are a result of agenesis (Bryant 2009: 323). What we require is a genesis of reason itself aswell as a genesis of the understanding and its categories (Deleuze 1992b: 85).

3. That Deleuzes is a philosophy of sense rather than essence or substanceis a central claim of his Kantian interpreters. See, for instance, how Hughesintroduces his phenomenological argument in Deleuze and the Genesis ofRepresentation (Hughes 2008: 1617).

4. Wasser draws on the account given in Difference and Repetition pp. 98100.This is particularly appropriate, as Deleuze happens to refer to Beckett directlywhen defining fatigues role in passive synthesis and the constitution of time asa living present.

5. The epistemological slant of my essay prevents me from a more in-depthdiscussion of ontological difference. For further reading of the ontologicalargument in Difference and Repetition and the Deleuzian drawn trajectory ofDuns Scotus, Spinoza and Nietzsche see Hughes 2009: 53, 624. Badiou 1999is another key interpreter.

6. Deleuze refers to the concept of the eternal return at various points inDifference and Repetition. See especially pp. 3045 for the distinction he drawsbetween the thought of the eternal return and the feeling of the will topower.

7. Deleuze shows how the idea is constituted in chapter IV of Difference andRepetition (Deleuze 2004b: 21479). He introduces the idea as a Kantianproblem, proceeds through a discussion of modern calculus and develops theconcept by referring to other mathematical, biological, Marxist examples. In thisrather complex way, Deleuze aims to explain the precise nature of the new idealsynthesis of difference.

8. Deleuze uses the term mental chamber to describe the dark space in whichthe protagonist sits and evokes the image (Deleuze 1998: 169). In the play, theprotagonist simply states vanished in my little sanctum and crouched, wherenone could see me, in the dark (Beckett 1984: 259).

9. Belaqua of Dantes Divine Comedy acts as a prototype, not only for Beckettin his characterisation of Murphy, but also for Deleuze. Szafraniec notes thesimilarities between the exhausted person and his predecessor Murphy, whoboth, like Dantes Belaqua, do nothing that can be discerned (Szafraniec 2007:122).

10. See P. J. Murphys essay for an explicitly Spinozian interpretation (Murphy1994: 2257).

ReferencesAckerley, C. J. and S. E. Gontarski (2004) The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett,

New York: Grove Press.Badiou, Alain (1999) Deleuze and the Clamor of Being, trans. Louise Burchill,

Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.Beckett, Samuel (1984) . . . but the clouds . . . , in Samuel Beckett, Collected Shorter

Plays, London: Faber, pp. 25762.


Beckett, Samuel (2011) Murphy, New York: Grove Press.Bryant, Levi R. (2008) Difference and Givenness: Deleuzes Transcendental

Empiricism and the Ontology of Immanence, Evanston, IL: NorthwesternUniversity Press.

Bryant, Levi R. (2009) Deleuzes Transcendental Empiricism, Notes Towards aTranscendental Materialism, in Matt Lee and Edward Willatt (eds), ThinkingBetween Deleuze and Kant: A Strange Encounter, London and New York:Continuum, pp. 2848.

Bryden, Mary (1996) The Schizoid Space: Beckett, Deleuze and LEpuis, SamuelBeckett Today /AujourdHui, 5, pp. 8595.

Bryden, Mary (2002) Deleuze Reading Beckett, in Richard Lane (ed.), Beckett andPhilosophy, New York: Palgrave, pp. 8091.

Deleuze, Giles (1992a) Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, trans. MartinJoughlin, New York: Zone Books.

Deleuze, Giles (1992b) Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson, London:Athlone Press.

Deleuze, Giles (1998) The Exhausted, in Gilles Deleuze, Essays Critical andClinical, trans. Daniel L. Smith and Michael A. Greco, London: Verso.

Deleuze, Giles (2004a) The Idea of Genesis in Kants Esthetics, in Gilles Deleuze,Desert Islands and Other Texts, 19531974, trans. Michael Taormina, ed. DavidLapoujade, New York: Semiotext(e).

Deleuze, Giles (2004b) Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton, London andNew York: Continuum.

Deleuze Giles (2005) Cinema I, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam,London and New York: Continuum.

Deleuze, Giles (2008) Kants Critical Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson andBarbara Habberjam, London and New York: Continuum.

Fletcher, J. (1965) Samuel Beckett and the Philosophers, Comparative Literature,17, pp. 4356.

Hughes, Joe (2008) Deleuze and the Genesis of Representation, London and NewYork: Continuum.

Hughes, Joe (2009) Deleuzes Difference and Repetition: A Readers Guide, Londonand New York: Continuum.

Kant, Immanuel [1790] (1987) Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner S. Pluhar,Indianapolis: Hackett.

Kant, Immanuel [1781, 1787] (1996) Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Werner S.Pluhar, Indianapolis: Hackett.

Kerslake, Christian (2009) Immanence and the Vertigo of Philosophy: From Kant toDeleuze, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Meillassoux, Quentin (2008) After Finitude: An Essay in the Necessity ofContingency, trans. Ray Brassier, London: Continuum.

Murphy, P. J. (1994) Beckett and the Philosophers, in John Pilling (ed.), TheCambridge Companion to Beckett, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,pp. 22240.

Smith, Daniel (1996) Deleuzes Theory of Sensation: Overcoming Kantian Duality,in Paul Patton (ed.), Deleuze: A Critical Reader, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers,pp. 2956.

Szafraniec, Asja (2007) Beckett, Derrida and the Event of Literature, Stanford:Stanford University Press.

Uhlmann, Anthony (1999) Beckett and Poststructuralism, Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Uhlmann, Anthony (2004) Image and Intuition in Becketts Film, SubStance, 104,33:2, pp. 90106.


Wasser, Audrey (2012) A Relentless Spinozism: Deleuzes Encounter with Beckett,SubStance, 127, 41:1, pp. 12436.

Willat, Edward (2009) The Genesis of Cognition Deleuze as a Reader of Kant,in Matt Lee and Edward Willatt (eds), Thinking between Deleuze and Kant: AStrange Encounter, London and New York: Continuum, pp. 6785.

Date post:	10-Sep-2015
Category:	Documents
Upload:	mikadika
View:	10 times
Download:	0 times

dls%2E2014%2E0142

Documents