Joe Hughes-Deleuze and the Genesis of Representation (Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy)...

Deleuze and the Genesis of Representation

Continuum Studies in Continental PhilosophySeries Editor: James Fieser, University of Tennessee at Martin, USA

Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy is a major monograph series from Continuum. The series features fi rst-class scholarly research mono-graphs across the fi eld of Continental philosophy. Each work makes a major contribution to the fi eld of philosophical research.

Adornos Concept of Life, Alastair MorganBadiou and Derrida, Antonio CalcagnoBadiou, Balibar, Ranciere, Nicholas HewlettDeconstruction and Democracy, Alex ThomsonDeleuze and Guattaris Philosophy of History, Jay LampertDeleuze and the Genesis of Representation, Joe HughesDeleuze and the Meaning of Life, Claire ColebrookDeleuze and the Unconscious, Christian KerslakeDerrida and Disinterest, Sean GastonEncountering Derrida, edited by Simon Morgan-Wortham and Allison WeinerFoucaults Heidegger, Timothy RaynerHeidegger and the Place of Ethics, Michael LewisHeidegger Beyond Deconstruction, Michael LewisHeideggers Contributions to Philosophy, Jason PowellHusserls Phenomenology, Kevin HermbergThe Irony of Heidegger, Andrew HaasLevinas and Camus, Tal SesslerMerleau-Pontys Phenomenology, Kirk M. BesmerThe Philosophy of Exaggeration, Alexander Garcia DttmannSartres Ethics of Engagement, T. Storm HeterSartres Phenomenology, David ReismanRicoeur and Lacan, Karl SimmsWhos Afraid of Deleuze and Guattari? Gregg Lambert

Deleuze and the Genesis of Representation

Joe Hughes

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Joe Hughes 2008

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN-10: HB: 1-8470-6284-9ISBN-13: HB: 978-1-8470-6284-0

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication DataHughes, Joe.Deleuze and the genesis of representation/Joe Hughes. p. cm.Includes bibliographical references.ISBN-13: 978-1-84706-284-0 (HB)ISBN-10: 1-84706-284-9 (HB)1. Deleuze, Gilles, 19251995. 2. Representation (Philosophy) I. Title. B2430.D454H84 2008194--dc22 2008001543

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Contents

Acknowledgments viii

Preface ix

Abbreviations x

Part I: Husserl and Deleuze

Chapter 1: Husserl, Reduction and Constitution 3Chapter 2: The Logic of Sense 20

Part II: Anti-Oedipus

Chapter 3: The Material Reduction and Schizogenesis 51Chapter 4: Desiring-Production 62Chapter 5: Social Production 81

Part III: Difference and Repetition

Introduction to Part III: Difference and Repetition 103Chapter 6: Static Genesis: Ideas and Intensity 105Chapter 7: Dynamic Genesis: The Production of Time 127

Conclusion 155Notes 159Bibliography 180Index 191

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Ian Buchanan, Claire Colebrook, and Simon Mal-pas not only for reading the fi nal manuscript and offering their invaluable advice, but also for their friendship along the way. Jeff Bell, Mary Bryden, Matt McGuire, Lisa Otty, Patricia Pisters, Mat Sletten, Dan Smith, and Alex Thomson all at one point altered the shape of this book during one of our many conversations at conferences, pubs, or muddy walks through Scot-land. Above all I want to thank my friends and family for their support over the course of this long project, especially Sarah Tukua and Pat and Jana Hughes.

Preface

From its beginning Deleuze scholarship has produced a number of excellent works tracing Deleuzes relationship to phenomenology. Most of these have focused on the differences and similarities between Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty.1 A few have considered Deleuzes relationship to Heidegger.2 But no one to my knowledge has noticed the extent of Deleuzes deep indebtedness to Husserl and in particular to the project of genesis Husserl rigorously developed in his late works.3 In this book I want to emphasize a Husserlian inspiration behind Deleuzes work. What I am concerned to show is not Deleuzes appropriation, here and there, of specifi c Husserlian concepts, but rather that Deleuzes entire project is essentially phenomenological to the degree that it takes up the ques-tion of genetic constitution and develops it in its own way. In the fi rst chapter I describe Husserls theory of genetic constitution. In the following chapters I show how Deleuzes three central textsThe Logic of Sense, Anti-Oedipus, and Difference and Repetitiondevelop a new theory of genetic constitution.

I have disrupted their order of publication in my presentation in order to stress the conceptual continuity between books. This would no doubt present a problem if my intention were to provide a narrative account of the develop-ment of Deleuzes theory of genetic constitution. My goal, however, is simply to show that at a very general levelthe level of the formal structure of the works in questionDeleuze develops a consistent and perhaps systematic account of the genesis of representation.

Abbreviations

Deleuze (and friends)

AO Anti-OedipusAP Anti-Oedipus PapersBG BergsonismC1 Cinema 1C2 Cinema 2CC Coldness and CrueltyDG DialoguesDI Desert IslandsDR Difference and Repetition EC Essays Critical and Clinical EP Expressionism in Philosophy ES Empiricism and Subjectivity FB Francis Bacon

FC Foucault KA KafkaKP Kants Critical PhilosophyLS The Logic of SenseNG NegotiationsNP Nietzsche and PhilosophyPI Pure ImmanencePP Spinoza: Practical PhilosophyPS Proust and SignsPV Pericles et VerdiTF The FoldTP A Thousand PlateausTR Two Regimes of MadnessWP What is Philosophy

Husserl

APS Passive and Active Synthesis

CES Crisis of European Sciences CTM Cartesian MeditationsE&J Experience and JudgmentFTL Formal and Trans. LogicITC Time-Consciousness

Others

MM Bergson, Matter and MemoryCPR Kant, Critique of Pure ReasonPP Merleau-Ponty,

Phenomenology of PerceptionTI Levinas, The Theory of

Intuition In Husserls Phenomenology

PART I

Husserl and Deleuze

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Chapter 1

Husserl, Reduction and Constitution

There is not much consensus in the current critical literature when it comes to the question of Deleuzes relationship to phenomenology. Many critics would fi nd the claim that Deleuze is some sort of a phenomenologist entirely misplaced. For some, this is because Deleuzes thought is radically independent of the philosophical tradition and draws its infl uence from a (surprisingly canonical) list of aberrant thinkers: Lucretius, Spinoza, Nietzsche, Bergson, and so on.1 For others, Deleuzes thought is most effective not as a description of consciousness, but as a philosophy of contemporary physics.2 For Foucault, nothing could be further from the Phenomenology of Perception than The Logic of Sense.3 But at the same time a number of critics have also made very important connections between Deleuzes thought and Merleau-Pontys.4 Claire Colebrook argues that Deleuzes thought can be seen as a radicalisation of phenomenology5 while Constantine Boundas fi nds this reading tempting, but ultimately unsatisfactory.6 It even seems that Deleuze himself consistently dis-tances himself from mere phenomenology7 or epiphenomenology.8 There are several reasons behind this lack of consensus, but almost all of them come down to the impossibility of concisely defi ning the word phenomenology.

In 1933, Eugen Fink published his famous article,9 The Phenomenological Philosophy of Edmund Husserl and Contemporary Criticism, as a defense of Husserls phenomenology in response to neo-Kantian criticisms. This article is useful here not only because it was extremely infl uential in France, but also because Finks general argument was that Husserls critics failed to understand what phenomenology was on its own grounds, opting instead to criticize Husserl from the point of view of their own Kantianism. As a result, it gives a very broad and surprisingly precise defi nition of phenomenology. Finks expla-nation develops around two essential concepts that explain phenomenology: the phenomenological reduction and the problem of constitution.10 Although this book is not a detailed study of Deleuzes relationship to particular phenom-enologists, it does insist that Deleuzes thought unfolds entirely within these two general orientations of phenomenology.

The reduction

The reduction was one of the central components of Husserls philosophy during the middle period of his work. Husserl describes it in his Cartesian

4 Deleuze and the Genesis of Representation

Meditations as the inhibiting or putting out of play of all positions taken toward the already given Objective world and, in the fi rst place, all existential positions. This already given Objective world and its existential position are Husserls technical terms for describing the way in which we experience the world from the point of view of our daily activity, or what he calls our natural attitude. In this attitude we do not stop to refl ect on how we see what we see and the sense we make of it. Rather, when I reach for a pair of scissors, I reach for an Objective pair with an existential position. The scissors exist in space, on my table. When Husserl asks us to put these assumptions out of play, he is simply asking us to look at the scissors in a different way. Rather than seeing them as the actual scissors, we should see them as phenomena, as a mental representation of the scissors. The putting out of play which the reduction performs therefore does not leave us confronting nothing. On the contrary, it leaves us confronting the world of phenomena (CTM 20; cf. 26). The reduction opens up the world that appears to consciousness. It shifts our atten-tion away from objects as they are in the world and in our everyday experience and focuses instead on objects as representations and as accomplishments or productions of a transcendental consciousness.

Put simply, rather than seeing a pair of scissors as a material object, it is neces-sary to look at it as a sedimentation of all the meanings that have been given to it in the course of your life and the way in which those meanings come now to defi ne that object, all in the blink of an eye, as something for cutting paper, which your grandmother might use to cut pizza, which you should not run with, and what can be particularly effective at removing dirt from under your fi nger nails if you have nothing else at your disposal, and so forth. The material pair of scissors has specifi c measurable dimensions; it interacts with the objects around it according to the laws of physics. The phenomena or representation of the scissors, however, does not have the same dimensions or the same relations with the objects surrounding it. It is caught up in the fl ow of internal time and divided into a horizon of memory and of anticipation. It is mixed with the senses we have previously made of scissors and with anticipations which correspond to these habitualities. The phenomeno-logical reduction simply asks us to stop seeing objects as material things in the world and to start looking at them as representations of things which are borne of distinct cognitive processes. In its most basic sense it is simply the treatment of the contents of consciousness as contents of consciousness rather as contents of the world (Moran 152).

The fi rst task of phenomenology is to describe these phenomena. How does a representation fi t into its various horizons of anticipation and memory? Because this consciousness which the reduction reveals is a transcendental consciousness, Husserl famously described phenomenology in the Cartesian Meditations as a study of transcendental experience.11 And since this was one of his fi rst books to be translated into Frenchby Levinas in 1931Husserls thought became widely known as a transcendental empiricism.12

Husserl, Reduction and Constitution 5

Phenomenology is a transcendental empiricism because it begins with an experience and description of the transcendental.

In the introduction to The Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty makes use of the reduction in a way which not only clarifi es its function but unfolds a line of reasoning which Deleuze will directly take up in one of his early works. Throughout the introduction, Merleau-Ponty establishes certain characteristics of his theory of perception. The world of perception is the world in which the body interacts with its surroundings and makes sense, through a process of constitution, of the objects which it confronts or which confront it. The fi rst two chapters of the introduction describe, among other things, two ways in which the world of perception and its immanent meaning has been either over-looked or misrepresented by philosophy. In the fi rst chapter, he argues that there is no such thing as empiricisms unit of experience. He describes this unit as the sensation of an isolated undifferentiated, instantaneous, dot-like impact (Phenomenology 4). For Merleau-Ponty there are no solitary impressions in perception. Every object of natural or actual perception is always given as already belonging to a fi eld of perception (4). Each object is always in a network of relationships with other objects and already has its own immanent sense which is produced in the body before it becomes a dot-like representation (40).

In the second chapter, Merleau-Ponty extends this argument to the theories of association. If we admit sensation in the classical sense, the meaning of that which is sensed can be found only in further sensations, actual or virtual (16). But meaning can never be established in this way because an atomic sensation can only relate externally to another atomic sensation. We are then faced with either an infi nite regress or with the identity of two sensations and therefore a thesis external to empiricism (17). Merleau-Ponty brings the same argument against association as he did against the empiricist theory of sensation: it overlooks that any object is already given within a context, a group, a positive indeterminacy, and with its perceptual meaning already produced before any associating can take place (1820). Association presupposes this immanent sense. Because of this, the empiricist theory of sensation misses the essential function of perception which is to lay the foundations of, or inaugurate, knowledge. Empiricism can only see [perception] though its results (19).

At the same time that Merleau-Ponty makes these arguments, he also asks how this conception of a discreet unit of sensation made its way into philoso-phy. His answer is distinctly Husserlian and repeats the methodological guidelines laid down in the notion of reduction. Merleau-Ponty writes that analytic perception is a late product of thought directed at objects (12). In our everyday experience, we see objects in the world, and they seem to be discreet representations: they are self-contained and have well-defi ned limits. A car can run into another car. Two billiard balls collide and go in their own separate directions. But these are the results of the activity of perception. They


presuppose the work of the body and of thought which produces out of the data of perception well-defi ned representations. Because these are the products of the body, they cannot turn around and describe that same world out of which they are produced, in the same way that a product can not describe the raw material that it used to be, or a defi nition should not use the word it is supposed to defi ne. When we do this we make perception out of things perceived (5).

Merleau-Ponty therefore argues that the idea of a unit of experience came about by transposing the characteristics of already constituted empirical objects onto the constituting activity of perception. We take the fi nal productthe perception of an objectand use it to describe the impersonal transcendental fi eld out of which it was produced (68ff.; 95ff.).13 In other words, we trace the transcendental from the empirical. This is the methodological import of the phenomenological reduction and the suspension of the natural attitude. It is a way to discover the transcendental without superimposing on it any of the char-acteristics of the empirical, or what is produced by the transcendental.

However, it would seem that Deleuze never makes a big deal of the reduction. In fact he never even mentions it except for once in Anti-Oedipus (AO 107) and once in The Logic of Sense where he claims that Husserl discovered the neutrality of sense thanks to the phenomenological methods of reduction (LS 10102).14 But even here, Deleuze never gives the impression that he will take up these methods. Some critics, however, have argued that Deleuzes thought does indeed make use of a form of the reduction, or a kind of reduction. For example, Ray Brassier, following Laruelle, fi nds a transcendental or hyletic reduction in Deleuze which isolates the plane of immanence from both subjective and objective determinations, and Leonard Lawlor has even gone so far as to suggest that The Logic of Sense takes place entirely under the sign of the phenomeno-logical reduction.15 Lawlor argues that unless we were already within the reduction we could never return to phenomena. Here Lawlor makes an extremely important point that I will defend over the course of the next two chapters: though it begins and continually emphasizes (or valorizes) the tran-scendental, Deleuzes thought ends in phenomena, in an empirical consciousness of fully individuated objects.

Despite the lack of attention Deleuze calls to the reduction, there are at least two important places where Deleuze makes signifi cant use of it. In the fi rst he develops an argument almost identical to the one I just outlined from the introductory chapters of the Phenomenology of Perception. In his 1964 book Proust and Signs, Deleuze explains that there are two ways Prousts apprentice can miss the sense of a sign:16 objectivism and subjectivism. Objectivism characterizes the apprentices belief that sense can be found in the object which emits the sign. Subjectivism is when, after the continuous disappointments brought about by the objectivist attitude, the apprentice tries to discover the sense within himself, in his subjective chains of association (PS 34; my emphasis). But this subjectivism


doesnt give up the meaning either, but only leads the apprentice to a meaning-less relativity (36). At the end of the apprenticeship, however, the apprentice discovers essence, the sense of the sign.17 This follows Merleau-Pontys critique of the unit of sensation (objectivism) and association (subjectivism) almost exactly by arguing that both miss the already given sense and both overlook the work of a transcendental constitution which they presuppose. Indeed, what the apprentice discovers after the failure of both objectivism and subjectivism is that essence or sense is responsible for the constitution of signs and their meanings (PS 38). But what is even more striking is the similarity of their expla-nations for the strength and infl uence of the objectivist interpretation. Deleuze asks, why does the apprentice initially think that sense can be found in the object emitting the sign? Why does the apprenticeship begin in objectivism? His answer is that this impulse follows from the natural direction of perception or of representation (PS 29). Deleuze will repeat this argument several times across the course of the third chapter. Perception follows a law of constancy which directs our mind to concentrate on stable objects in perception. Our natural attitude toward the world is the one in which we confront objects according to this natural direction of perception. What the apprentice learns through his series of disappointments, then, is the necessity of the reduction, or to break from the constancy principle in order to discover sense.

The second signifi cant place in which Deleuze makes use of the reduction as a methodological tool is his sweeping critique of the history of philosophy under the title the image of thought. This critique had already made an appearance in both Nietzsche and Philosophy (1962) and in the fi rst essay of Proust and Signs (1964), but it is not until Difference and Repetition (1968) that it becomes systematic. In Difference and Repetition Deleuze outlines eight postulates which he claims, adopting Kants terminology, defi ne a dogmatic image of thought. To this dogmatic image, Deleuze will oppose his own critical image. Despite their variety, all eight dogmatic presuppositions share one crucial problem: We discover in all the postulates of the dogmatic image the same confusion: elevating a simple empirical fi gure to the status of the transcendental, at the risk of allowing the real structures of the transcendental to fall into the empirical (DR 154). Each postulate describes thoughtor more, precisely, the work of thoughtin the image of its product. From this point of view, we can see that the critique of the dogmatic image of thought merges with the general criticism leveled against philosophy throughout Difference and Repetition and the early works: namely that it gets caught in the circle of representation and fails to go beyond it. This is exactly the problem the phenomenological reduction is intended to resolve: it supposedly brackets the empirical, the natural attitude of perception directed at objects in order to allow us to more accurately describe the transcendental life of consciousness. However, a statement of intention is no guarantee that the employment of the reduction will be successful, and many of Deleuzes criticisms will attack very subtle points where, despite embracing the reduction, many


aspects of the natural attitude creep into Husserls work. Deleuzes critique of the image of thought can thus be read as a reaffi rmation of the necessity for reduction even if he does not use that particular word. Because the reduction is the motivating critical intuition at the heart of each criticism, we can extend Leonard Lawlors comment to cover at least Difference and Repetition, if not the whole of Deleuzes work as Brassier has suggested: The Logic of Sense takes place entirely under the sign of the phenomenological reduction.

But what does Deleuze oppose to the dogmatic image? What defi nes a truly critical image of thought? Without a doubt, it is the engagement with the problem of genesis: The conditions of a true critique and a true creation are the same: the destruction of an image of thought which presupposes itself and the genesis of the act of thinking in thought itself (DR 139, my emphasis). The beyond of representation is transcendental constitution. The critical image of thought is the one which shows the genesis of thought itself. Later in Difference and Repetition, Deleuze gives a similar defi nition of a true or radical critique. A radical critique is one which carries out the genesis of what it critiques (DR 206).18 It must be the case then, that insofar as Difference and Repetition is a critique of representation, it is also necessarily at the same time an account of the genesis of representation. In opposing representation, it becomes a theory of representation. This brings us to the second of phenomenologys defi ning ideas according to Fink.

Genetic constitution

Perhaps even more important than the reduction is the second of phenomenol-ogys basic systematic ideas: Husserls notion of constitution.19 This holds for Deleuze as well. In Difference and Repetition, the sole reason that tracing the transcendental from the empirical was problematic, and the primary reason that representation was criticized was that it obscured the point of view of gen-esis, or constitution (DR 160). The constituted does not resemble its process of production, its constitution, in the same way a car does not resemble the pro-duction line which built it. Etymologically, phenomenology just means the study of phenomena, but Husserls philosophy was never just a descriptive sci-ence limited to the description of phenomena (Fink 76). In fact the overwhelming majority of Husserls later writings are devoted not to the description of phe-nomena, but to explaining them by working out the process of their constitutiona point of view which the reduction made plausible.20 Because the reduction ensures that we approach objects as phenomena rather than as objects in the world, the expression constitution of objects has an entirely dif-ferent sense than it normally would. Considered as an object, a table is constituted by actually building it, by assembling its parts and putting a fi nish on it. But considered as a phenomena, the constitution of objects means that


that very same table is now constituted by giving sense to the data presented in perception.21 It represents the way I fi rst made sense of what a table was as a child, and slowly accrued meanings over the course of my life so that the per-ception of the table attains a stable meaning.

As Fink points out, Phenomenology directly formulates the problem of con-stitution as the problem of the bestowal of meaning (Sinn) (Fink 91; original emphasis. cf. 102). Taken in its most general sense, constitution or sense-be-stowal is the process in which a mental act (noesis) or a series of mental acts give form to or animate sensuous data (hyl) and by doing so produces either an ideality, an object in perception or a sense (all three of which can be called a noema). This is because the sense data, by itself, is meaningless. The entire project of constitution is concerned with explaining how this meaningless data is organized into stable representations which communicate with our memo-ries and expectations to produce meaningful objects. Much of Husserls earlier work investigated the various kinds of noeses and noemata. His later work con-tinues and expands this line of research to include the deepest levels of subjectivity or constitution. Because Deleuzes entire philosophy directly takes up the problem of genetic constitution it is worth providing a relatively detailed outline of Husserls understanding of the process of genesis.

However, there are two models of sense bestowal in Husserls work, and it is only the second, later formulation that has any signifi cance for Deleuze. In his later works, Husserl distinguished between two types of phenomenologystatic and genetic. Static phenomenology concerns Husserls earlier works with their overwhelming emphasis on logic and their hesitation to investigate subjectivity much deeper than the life-world. When poststructuralists criticize Husserl, it is usually this phase of his work that they fi nd problematic. Genetic phenomenol-ogy concerns Husserls later worksfrom about 1917 onand represents a turn to a philosophy of life.22 The word genesis has two closely related senses in Husserls thought. On the one hand it keeps its traditional meaning by refer-ring to the way in which meanings become sedimented over time. Husserl will argue, for example, that I encounter an object S for the fi rst time, and I give it a sense p. The next time I encounter that object, I encounter it as Sp; and if I give it a new sense, q, the next time I see it, I will see it as Spq, and so on.23 But, at the same time that Husserl begins describing these historical sedimenta-tions of sense, he also begins theorizing their foundation in the body and in temporality. In other words, genesis no longer refers to a history of predicates attached to S, but to the immediate production of S as such. This is what Donn Welton considers to be the defi ning characteristic of genetic phenomenology: Husserls emphasis on the most basic aspects of the process of perception in his development of a fully developed transcendental aesthetic rather than on the historical sedimentations of sense. Genetic analysis proper only begins when we move from the consideration of sedimentations of sense to their primal institution in a transcendental aesthetic.24 And because it is this later theory


of constitution that Deleuze will directly take up, it is the one that I want to outline here.

We will take as a guiding thread what Husserl called the doctrine of genesis which he outlined in notes from 1921 titled On Static and Genetic Phenome-nological Method.25 At fi rst Husserl approaches the problem of genesis, as he often does, regressively. Logical judgments presuppose a lived experience, and lived experience presupposes a passivity which produces it (APS 630; cf. E&J 50). Husserl develops his theory of genesis with the hope of fi nally grounding for-mal logic. In Husserls eyes logicians ignore the fact that it is impossible to make judgments without presupposing a subject who makes those judgments and understands what they mean.26 For example Husserl argues that there is no way to assert the truth value of the judgment the moon is round, without recourse to a subject. In order to determine the truth of the judgment, you need a sub-ject fi rst to interpret or grasp the sense of the proposition, its subject, its predicate, and their connection, and then to observe the moon itself, to see that it is in fact round, and fi nally to assert the adequacy of the proposition to its referent. But, how does that subject have this experience of the moon and how does it know that its experience of the moon is accurate? This question motivates Experience and Judgment in its entirety.

Husserl begins regressively by moving from judgments back to their founding experience, and from experience back to its origins in perception.27 But for the doctrine of genesis itself, Husserl sets everything in its proper order.

Accordingly, in the doctrine of genesis, in explanatory [rather than descriptive] phenomenology, we have:

(1) Genesis of passivity that is a general lawful regularity of genetic becoming in passivity that is always there . . ..

(2) The participation of the ego and relationships between activity and passivity.

(3) Interrelations, formations of pure activity; genesis as an active accomplish-ment of ideal objects and as an accomplishment of real generation. (APS 631)

These are the three general levels of genesis which I will describe below: (1) passivity, (2) transition from passivity to activity, (3) activity. Levels one and three both contain several sets of syntheses which move us along the genesis. The fi rst level is made up of passive syntheses; the second level describes the relationship between intensity and affection, and the third level is made up of active syntheses. (Deleuze adopts Husserls notions of active and passive syntheses for his own philosophy in the second chapter of Difference and Repetition and Anti-Oedipus.) To these fi rst three terms of the doctrine, Husserl adds four more dealing with problems of memory (in the form of habitualities) and intersub-jectivity. These seven terms taken together constitute what he calls, following


Leibniz, a monad and its relations to other monads.28 Husserls monad, as opposed to the ego, is nothing more than the entire process of genesis, an incessant process of becoming as an incessant process of constitut-ing objectivities (APS 270). This is a notion of subjectivity which strongly infl uenced Deleuze: the subject as a process of production. When we outline this theory of genesis, then, we are at the same time outlining a theory of subjectivity which comprises three distinct moments (1) perception, (2) affection, and (3) action.

The genesis as a whole moves from an indeterminate encounter with an object in passivity to the constitution of active acquisitions of knowledge. Why? Because, for Husserl, this is the natural direction of thought: the ego is oriented toward the acquisition of knowledge (E&J 103; cf. 198 and APS). Obviously Deleuzes criticism of the fi rst postulate in the dogmatic image of thoughtthat the natural movement of thought is toward truthwould play an important role in a critique of Husserl here, 29 but we are not reading Husserl for the truth or validity of his thought or even as a model to which we can compare Deleuze point by point. We are reading him simply to become acquainted with what genesis looks like.

(1) The fi rst part of the doctrine of genesis, passivity, is the foundation of a theory of perception, and it falls under what Husserl, following Kant, describes as a transcendental aesthetic. It comprises two passive syntheses: the synthesis of time and the associative synthesis, both of which work only in the lowest depths of subjectivity.30 The reason Husserl, and Deleuze in Difference and Repetition, describe these syntheses as passive is that they take place outside of the jurisdiction of an ego. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant presented three syntheses which he claimed constituted actual experience (CPR A12425).31 In the fi rst edition of the Critique, the fi rst two synthesesapprehension and reproductiontook place in the imagination, outside of the understanding. Only the third synthesisrecognitionwas governed by the transcendental unity and spontaneity of the I. In the second edition of the Critique, however, all three syntheses were governed by the understanding and were therefore capa-ble of being actively regulated (cf. CPR B130).32 Husserl and Deleuze do not follow Kant this far and maintain the possibility of a non-intellectual synthesis which operates outside of an I. Deleuze therefore describes a passive synthesis as one which is not carried out by the mind, but occurs in the mind . . .. (DR 71; original emphasis). Because Husserls fi rst two syntheses work outside of the I (Husserl describes this level as pre-I) and are prior to any activity char-acterized by spontaneity or volition, this fi rst general level in Husserls doctrine of genesis is characterized by impersonality and anonymity: passivity.33

The function of these two syntheses in relation to the overall genesis is to produce the objects which will play a role both in our experience of the world and in judgments out of a nonintentional and asignifying sensuous matter or hyletic data.34 The entire genesis begins with the temporal syntheses. For


Husserl, all objectivity and all subjectivity begins with the constitution of a primordial time, and everything which will eventually be produced throughout the genesisthe subject, its world, its beliefs and desiresare produced within the unity of the temporal fi eld (E&J 16466; CTM 41ff.).

In the ABCs of the constitution of all objectivity given to consciousness and of subjectivity as existing for itself, here is the A. It consists, as we might say, in a universal, formal framework, in a synthetically constituted form in which all other syntheses must participate. (APS 171, my emphases; cf. APS 181, E&J 73)

Husserl emphasizes here that the temporal syntheses are purely formal. It is for this reason that they are completely unable to differentiate hyletic data according to content (APS 174).35

This role is fi lled by association which Husserl describes as that mode of passive synthesis founded on the lowest syntheses of time-consciousness (E&J 177). The specifi c function of the associative syntheses is to determine the way in which sense data are connected in immanence (E&J 74). Time provides the form of immanence, but association determines and orders its content. It therefore belongs to the associative syntheses to begin the process of the individuation of objects (individuals) according to their content (APS 17476).36 Association, at this stage of the genesis, does not have much in com-mon with the traditional empiricist or psychological theories of association which we just saw Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty criticize. The syntheses at this level begin their work within separate fi elds of sensory data, with the most basic and meaningless elements of perception. The syntheses begin by combining similar bits of data in a sensory modality (synthesis of homogeneity) or separating dissimilar bits of data (synthesis of heterogeneity). So, for example, if we were looking at a red dot on white paper, the synthesis of homogeneity would connect white bits with white bits and red bits with red bits. After a degree of consistency and form has been introduced to the separate sensory modalities, another associative synthesis combines the modalities in a synaesthetic synthe-sis. Through this series of different levels and types of synthesis, the associative synthesis styles the objects which will populate the life-world. In Husserl, just as in Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze, it is only after these syntheses have fi nished their work that these objects can later play a role in a psychological association.

(2) The second moment of the doctrine of genesis is the famous life-world, the world of intensity and affection. This is the world of experience immediately pregiven and prior to all logical functions, the world in which we are always already living and which furnishes the ground for all cognitive performance and all scientifi c determination (E&J 41; original emphasis). If you are walking down the street, the life-world is your immediate, but not necessarily determinate, experience of the world around you, much of which passes by without you noticing. It forms a background to whatever it is that you might be


paying attention to. This is the world of experience and of ordinary empirical consciousness. It is also the world which the natural attitude distorts. The natu-ral attitude is a garb of ideas thrown over the world of immediate intuition (E&J 4445). For example, Husserl claims that science teaches us that objects have precise spatial and temporal locations, and this might well be the case, but it only arrived at this conclusion by forming rigorously determined judgments. Husserl never contests the fi ndings of science, but only the superimposition of the products of judgmentsits idealizationson the prepredicative founda-tion they presuppose. The natural attitude puts the cart before the horse. The world of experience, in contrast to that of judgment and science, is not yet for-malized into the exact space and time of science. It is always in fl ux or becoming (E&J 4244). Judgment has not yet taken place because its foundations have just been laid. In fact, you could say that in order to fully appreciate the role of the life-world in genesis, one must have done with judgment.37

In relation to the doctrine of genesis the life-world is the pivot between activity and passivity. The life-world has an ambiguous relationship to these two poles. Certainly, every object in the life-world is or was at one point pro-duced in passivity. But imagine that you are going to cross the street without waiting for a walk signal. Your attention becomes fi xed on the passing traffi c, and these objects, the cars, receive the full attention of your ego and become subjects in active judgments enabling you to accurately spot a gap in traffi c and to know that it is big enough for you to get though. But at the same time that you are on the lookout, people are moving in different directions behind you, and while they are present in your periphery, they remain in passivity. They are never actively taken up by an attentive ego which could say, That is my friend Bill. If they were, you would probably end up under a truck. There is thus a part of experience that is active and a part which is passive. There is the truck you are trying to dodge, and there is your friend Bill who, for the sake of your survival, you cannot notice. This is why Husserl describes the life-world as the moment in the genesis where an ego meets the passively constituted objects.38

Husserl describes this relationship topologically. He places the ego on one side and the objects produced in passivity on the other. These perceptual objects are said to obtrude on the ego, and, in proportion to the intensity of the obtrusiveness, what is obtrusive has greater proximity to, or remoteness from, the ego (E&J 77; my emphasis; cf. 150). From this point of view, the fi eld of perception, the life-world, becomes a fi eld of intensities. The greater the intensity, the more allure the object exerts on the ego. The more intense an object, the closer it comes to the ego, eventually bringing the objects and the ego into contact or forcing the ego to turn toward the object. These objects are not yet clearly differentiated, but subsist in the background, as it were, in a muddled mixture of desires, expectations, memories, and intensities.


(3) The third level in the genesis is activity. Husserl thinks of activity as if it were on a continuous scale going from least active to most active, and he splits this progression into two general processes: receptivity and cognition. Receptivity begins with an act of apprehension. Apprehensionsometimes just called receptivityis the lowest level of activity. Here, the ego consents to what is coming and takes it in (E&J 79; cf. 77, 103ff.). It yields to the intensity of the objects given in the life-world, and lets itself be taken in by their allure. But the ego does not just behold the objects.

As a rule, the active apprehension of the object immediately turns into contemplation; the ego, oriented toward the acquisition of knowledge, tends to penetrate the object, considering it not only from all sides, but also in particular aspects, thus, to explicate it. (E&J 104; original emphasis)

Because the ego naturally strives toward knowledge, we immediately leave apprehension and begin explicating the object.

This is the next level of activity. We are still within receptivitybut now the ego begins an explicative synthesis. It is at this point that the process of sense-bestowal (or the constitution of senseboth are translations of Sinngebung) begins to take place. Passivity generated an indeterminate but particular object and presented it to the ego.39 The function of the explicative syntheses is to determine the object further by turning to its singularities. These singularities are going to determine the object in a way very similar to the way predicates determine their subject in acts of judgment. For this reason Husserl talks of a twofold constitution of sense (E&J 114; original emphasis). First, an object substrate is constituted. The ego makes the object into something that can sup-port determinations and that can persist as a theme while it turns its attention to singularities. Second, the singularities themselves are constituted as properties or determinations of that very substrate or theme. Here the ego treats the singularities which it turns its attention to not as individual objects, but as determinations of an object substrate (E&J 114).40 As close as the explicative synthesis is to judgment, it is not yet there (cf. E&J 206, 233, APS 300).

Cognition designates the higher stages of activity, which truly deserve to be called active because they are governed by a deliberate and creative spontane-ity (E&J 19899). It is only from the point of view of this spontaneity that we can speak of a predicative synthesis. Even though, in the order of genesis, it takes us as far as we need to go, the predicative synthesis is somewhat anticlimactic. It simply repeats the explicative one, but it does it with a changed attitude (E&J 208). What has changed? Most importantly, judgment breaks with the process of objectivation or perception. Everything up until now was bound to the immediate intuition of the substrate, and was concerned with the forma-tion of individual objectsapprehended objectivities (E&J 197). Judgment, however, is founded on an act of creative spontaneity. From here, the active ego


can validate or invalidate apprehended objectivities, and it can make both practical and logical decisions regarding these objectivities (APS 92ff.). As it runs back over the terms of the explicative synthesis, it can do so with an eye toward the affi rmation or invalidation of that perception. But judgment is not only a question of making the intentionality of perception patent; it is also, and more importantly, a question of appropriation through which the strivingly active ego appropriates to itself an acquisition, that is an abiding knowledge (APS 95; my emphasis; cf. (E&J 196)).

The predicative synthesis is still an objectifying synthesis, but it no longer produces intuited or apprehended objectivities. It produces categorical objec-tivities, and ideal objectivities, objects which count as acquired knowledge or propositions41 and can play a role in formal logic. At this level, the object is identical and identifi able beyond the time of its intuitive giveness (E&J 198). This is what Husserl means when he describes knowledge as an acquisition or possession: it is essentially iterable and therefore communicable (E&J 19798). The constituted sense becomes fi xed and repeatable. The same representation can be repeated in a variety of contexts, and it can be transmitted between people. Once produced in the predicative synthesis, the representation is ours and all subsequent encounters with that particular object will always take place in relation to our already acquired knowledge. Knowledge becomes a habitualityhowever, even the determinations in the explicative synthesis can sink into passivity as habitualitieswhich is stored away in the monad until it is needed again. Husserl points out that a developed consciousness . . . will hardly be able to have objects given that are not already apprehended in such a logical structure . . . so extensive is its reservoir of representations (APS 296; cf. E&J 12122).

The course of the entire genesis this far has been directed toward and moti-vated by the acquisition of knowledge. The predicative synthesis of judgment ends this process, and my account of the genesis will stop here with it. But the genesis continues in Husserl, and just as receptivity led to cognition, cognition will continue on into the process of conceptualization in which Husserl details the constitution fi rst of generalities of increasing degrees and then the constitu-tion of universals. We could therefore say that, for Husserl, as for Deleuze, the abstract no longer explains, but is itself explainedgenetically.

Unlike the fi rst systematic idea of phenomenologythe reductionwhich Deleuze hardly mentioned at all, the problem of genesis is present everywhere in his philosophy, from the very fi rst book to the last. It is true that in Empiricism and Subjectivity, Deleuze refers to genesis only four times, and that each time he is highly critical of it. But he has in mind there a very specifi c sense of the word genesisthe one we outlined above as the psychological theory of sedi-mented senses. The primary question of Empiricism and Subjectivity, however, is how does the subject constitute itself within the given? (ES 119), how does a subject transcending the given arise out of the given? The given is described as


the collection of things as they appeara collection without an album, a play without a stage, a fl ux of perceptions (ES 23; my emphasis). It is an unorganized delirium (ES 23) of impressions given by sensibility to the imagination very similar to Husserls sensuous hyl. In other words, the question is precisely the phenomenological question of genesis: how does the fully constituted subject arise from the given? Deleuzes answer is that the subject is constituted as the effect of certain principles of human nature which act on this delirium by determining relations between sensations. The function of these principles is to fi x and naturalize the mind, to impose order on the delirium of imagination, to make it constant and settled, to organize the given into a system, imposing con-stancy on the imagination, and in doing so, they make possible representation and consciousness (ES 24; my emphasis). Subjectivity and consciousness of objects, then, is the effect of the action of these principles on the sensuous given (ES 26). Empirical subjectivity is constituted in the mind under the infl uence of principles affecting it (ES 29). Deleuzes unequivocal answer to the question of the transcendence of the subject in relation to the given is that this tran-scendence, along with the subject, is constituted. It is from this point of view that he rejects genesis: [Empiricism] envisages this constitution in the mind as the effect of transcending principles and not as the product of a genesis (ES 31), and each of the other three references to genesis argue that it has to be founded on the constitutive principles of human nature (ES 66, 108, 119). What Deleuze rejects, then, is a psychological genesis. But he does so in favor of a theory of constitution. These words do not at all have a stable meaning, and in Husserls later work, constitution, genetic constitution, and genesis all mean the same thing.

This early preoccupation with genesis is not specifi c to Empiricism and Subjectivity. In the rest of this book, I argue that Deleuze maintains this concern with constitution throughout all of his later works, even if he gives it a different nameactualization (Bergsonism), apprenticeship (Proust and Signs), indi-viduation (Difference and Repetition), genesis (Logic of Sense), process of production (Anti-Oedipus), creation (What is Philosophy?), and so onand even if he doesnt explicitly acknowledge it as a dominant theme. The only way to understand Deleuzes texts is to understand them as a theorization of genesis, and the only way to understand a Deleuzian conceptwhether it be line of fl ight, body without organs, or even, in What is Philosophy?, science, art, and philosophyis to determine its place and function within the genesis in which it participates.

Deleuze and Kant

Deleuzes relationship to Kant will be a recurrent theme in what follows, but here it is possible to settle on the most general relation between them.42


Deleuzes entire engagement with Kant revolves around the problem of genesis, and his philosophy can be read as a rethinking of Kantianism from the point of view of the production of concrete experience. Deleuze considered Kant to be the fi rst phenomenologist, and he gave two reasons for this claim: (1) Kant moved philosophy from an ontology of substance or essence to an ontology of sense; and (2) he discovered the notion of transcendental subjectivity.43 The fi rst point is one that Deleuze maintained in his own philosophy across his life without much modifi cation. His ontology is always an ontology of sense, not of substance.44 It does not ask what lies behind appearances, but how appearances were produced. The second point, however, Deleuze altered signifi cantly.

Kants transcendental was purely formal, and Deleuze continually criticized this aspect of Kants philosophy in the form of two closely related slogans which he usually attributed to Salomon Mamon or post-Kantians in general: Kant was concerned with possible experience, not real, or, Kant was content to substitute simple conditioning for real genesis.45 But, as Jean Hyppolite points out in his narrative tracing the gradual movement toward concrete philosophy of German Idealism, it was not until Hegel that philosophy really reached concrete experience.46 It is true that Fichte, Schelling, and Mamon all made compelling arguments on the behalf of genesis.47 But none of these thinkers founded genesis on real experience as Deleuze claims. That move, rather, defi nes phenomenology, and we fi nd Deleuzes claim in every one of the major phe-nomenologists and throughout much of the critical literature of the time.48 Lyotard emphasizes this aspect of phenomenology. For Lyotard, Kant

only explains the a priori conditions of pure knowledge (pure mathematics of physics), but not the real conditions of concrete knowledge: the transcendental Kantian subjectivity is simply the set of all conditions governing all possible objects in general, the concrete ego is dismissed to the sensible level as object . . . and the question of how real experience enters the a priori realm of all possible knowledge . . . remains unanswered . . . (Lyotard 4445; 53)49

This is a clear summary of the problem: in Kant concrete experience remains unaccounted for. But for Lyotard, the solution consists in a refusal to proceed to explanation. Instead, one must remain with the piece of wax itself, describe only what is given, without presuppositions (Lyotard 33). But as I pointed out above, this insistence on description and the refusal of explanation is character-istic only of static phenomenology. Genetic phenomenology takes a completely different route: it proceeds to explanation.

In The Idea of Genesis in Kants Esthetics, Deleuze again repeats the claimnow attributed only to the post-Kantiansthat Kant held fast to the point of view of conditioning without ever reaching genesis, but this time, he argues that Kant had in fact discovered the conditions of a true genesis in the last Critique (DI 61). Deleuze argues that in the fi rst two Critiques, Kant simply assumes that


the faculties are already there, ready-made, and further, that they are capable of entering into determinate relationships. These relationships are always hier-archical. There is always a dominant faculty under whose supervision the other faculties go about their work.

In the fi rst two Critiques . . . we cannot escape the principle of an agreement of the faculties among themselves. But this agreement is always proportioned, constrained, and determinate: there is always a determinative faculty that legislates, either the understanding for a speculative purpose or reason for a practical purpose. (DI 57; original emphasis)

In the Critique of Pure Reason, for example, the imagination schematizes, but it does so only under the infl uence of the understanding. Were the imagination to be left to itself, instead of schematizing, it would refl ect (DI 59). For Deleuze, the importance of the third Critique, and the reason it discovers the idea of genesis, lies in the fact that it went beyond pregiven faculties and their preestab-lished harmony. Here, Kant begins to study the faculties before any determinate relationships rise up between them and before they have a specifi c function. He discovers a ground where neither the faculties themselves nor their agreement are assumedfree exercise and free agreement (DI 69). Furthermore, Kant discovers here the genetic principle the post-Kantians criticized him for lack-ing: the soul, the suprasensible unity of our faculties, the point of concentration, the life giving principle that animates each faculty, engender-ing both its free exercise and its free agreement with the other faculties (DI 69; my emphasis). For this reason, Deleuze claims that the Critique of Judgment con-stitutes the original ground from which derive the other two Critiques (DI 69). The third Critique ceases to be a simple conditioning to become a transcenden-tal Education, a transcendental Culture, a transcendental Genesis (DI 61; original emphasis).50

But it is precisely from this point of view of genesis that we can no longer talk of an idealism. An idealism is a philosophy that assumes already given or consti-tuted forms. In the fi rst two Critiques, Kant appeals to faculties that are ready-made, whose proportions he seeks to determine (DI 61). In the last Critique, however, Kant is in a position to recognize the genesis of these forms. Insofar as he accomplishes thisin Deleuzes readingthe forms are no longer pregiven, and thus there is no idealism. This is one reason why Deleuze, who takes up Kantianism only at this point, describes his thought as a transcendental empiricism in contrast to Kants transcendental idealism.51 I will suggest at vari-ous points below that Deleuze resurrects almost the entire structure of Kants transcendental subject, except now from the point of view of genesis. Deleuze will substitute for the simple point of view of conditioning a point of view of effective genesis (DR162.) [W]ithout this reversal, the famous Copernican Revolution amounts to nothing (162).


Conclusion

Whether or not we call Deleuzes philosophy a phenomenology is of little importance. What is important and what I am going to argue below is that his thought moves almost entirely within the two coordinates which Fink outlined. The signifi cance of Finks defi nition of phenomenology is that it manages to be very precise without limiting phenomenology to Husserlian notions. Phenom-enology is not synonymous with intentionality or with the solipsistic ego of Ideas I. It is a continuous philosophical project which attempts to explain thought in all its forms (genesis), and which employs a very basic method by which to observe phenomena (reduction). It is not enough to say that Deleuze is antiphenome-nological because there is no absolute consciousness at the base of the genesis or because there is no theory of intentionality. I will argue in what follows that Deleuzes thought does indeed take place entirely under the sign of the reduc-tion, and that it is concerned almost exclusively with the problem of genesis.

Chapter 2

The Logic of Sense

The primary purpose of this chapter is to provide a comprehensive and detailed account of Deleuzes theory of genetic constitution as it appears in The Logic of Sense. The next two parts of the book show how the structure of this genesis informs Anti-Oedipus and Difference and Repetition. This chapter provides the model according to which I read Deleuzes other works. The Logic of Sense is the book in which Deleuze most clearly and directly engages with Husserl. But what I want to study here is not the degree to which Deleuze takes up or rejects spe-cifi c concepts developed by Husserl. Instead I want to show the degree to which the entire conceptual structure of The Logic of Sense directly continues the genetic project of Husserls late work. In order to make this argument it is nec-essary to give a relatively complete picture of The Logic of Sense, and in particular to show the way in which 'Deleuze's concepts all come together to form a con-sistent, if not systematic, theory of genetic constitution.

In order to get at the totality of The Logic of Sense we need, to borrow a dis-tinction from narratology, to separate the story from the plot. In his preface to the work Deleuze described it as an attempt to develop a logical and psy-chological novel.1 The story that this novel tells is the genesis of representation or the way in which consciousness is produced in the interactions between the body and its affections. The plot, or the way in which this story is pre-sented to the reader, completely obscures this story. I give two accounts of this genetic process in what follows: the fi rst is a general account from the top down. The second is a detailed account from the bottom up. In the fi rst half of the chapter I describe the overall structure of genesis by following Deleuzes regressive analysis fi rst from the proposition back to sense and then from sense back to sensation. In the second half I describe the process in greater detail from the genetic point of view, moving from sensation up to sense up to the proposition.

Regression

The three levels of genesis

The genesis I want to describe here traverses three different levels which Deleuze names the primary order, the secondary organization, and the

The Logic of Sense 21

tertiary order.2 Deleuze often imitates Husserls regressive approach to the question of genesis. As I described in the previous chapter, Husserls regressive method begins by describing judgments and then discovering their conditions. Similarly, in The Logic of Sense Deleuze begins with an analysis of the logical proposition, and uncovers its conditions. This proposition defi nes the tertiary order.

Deleuze argues that a proposition has four essential relations, three overt, and one implicit. The three overt and formal relations are denotation, manifes-tation, and signifi cation (LS 12). Denotation expresses the relation of the proposition to an external and individuated state of affairs (datum) (LS 12; original emphasis). It is the relation of the proposition to what it denotes or points to. For example, in the linguistic proposition the sky is orange, the denoted state of affairs would be the actual orange sky. Manifestation is the rela-tion of the proposition to the psychologicalnot transcendentalsubject who speaks the proposition. It refers to the one who says I, the unity capable of saying I (78). Signifi cation is the relation to the concept or to the meaning of the proposition. For example, it refers to the concept you might have of an orange sky even when the sky is blue. Denotation relates to the thing, signifi ca-tion to its meaning or concept, and manifestation to the subject of language. The one who begins to speak is the one who manifests; what one talks about is the denotatum; what one says are the signifi cations (181).

These dimensions of the proposition do not describe the dimensions of lan-guage alone however. The propositions which Deleuze is interested in are not necessarily linguistic or logical propositions. They also describe a certain stage in the genesis of thought itself, or a specifi c moment, close to the end, in the logical-psychological story: consciousness, or rather the preconscious, has no other fi eld than that of possible denotations, manifestations and signifi cationsthat is, the order of language which arises from all that which has preceded(LS 244). The form of the proposition is also the form of an empirical consciousness.

Deleuze is very Husserlian in this. Husserl too treated the logical proposition as a proposition of an active, knowing, predicating consciousness. For Husserl activerather than passiveconsciousness is always preoccupied with judg-ment and its product, knowledge,3 and knowledge is expressed in propositional form. Heidegger, concerned to highlight the degree to which this conception of consciousness and knowledge depended upon a long philosophical tradi-tion, provides a terse summary of this aspect of Husserls thought: Traditionally, knowing was conceived in terms of self-contained and fi nished cognitions for-mulated in assertions, propositions, judgments, where judgments are composed of concepts and complexes of judgments are syllogisms (History of the Concept of Time 77). The proposition represents a fi nished cognition, an assertion, a fully individuated piece of knowledge which is outside of becoming and has a stable


structure which allows it both to be repeated and to function in relation to other propositions or fi nished cognitions.4 What distinguishes Husserland Deleuze with himfrom this tradition, however, is that they both insist on see-ing knowledge in relation to its process of production. They both affi rm and go to great lengths to describe a prepredicative life which extends well beyond the limits of discreet and iterable propositions and which is responsible for their genesis.5

As we saw in the previous chapter, Husserls monad was defi ned as that entire genesis which moved from the body and its passive confrontation with hyletic data all the way to an active, judging ego which apprehended and explicated the objects which had been produced in passivity. This means that Husserls monad has a signifi cant pre-predicative mode of existence. Its experience is not confi ned to the forms of judgment. The subject of the life-world which confronts the objects produced in passivity confronts these objects as intensi-ties, as objects blurred together in relation to both passing experience and to the habitualities of the monads own past experience. When it actively takes these objects up in its spontaneity, it is able to pass judgments about them, or affi rm their predicates. The monad therefore moves from a prepredicative world to the predicative, from lived experience as an uneasy mixture of thought and affection to a conscious thought in which we formulate with certainty prop-ositions regarding everything from the objects in our environment to mathematical truths. And indeed, the possibility of judgment and apodicity rests fi rmly on the foundations of this earlier experience.

Deleuze too makes a similar move, and this is why it is necessary to distinguish in Deleuze, as I did in passing above, between a psychological and a transcenden-tal subject. It is the psychological subject which is manifested in the proposition. But this subject, and the entire tertiary order of the proposition which structures its consciousness, presupposes a prepropositional process of production.

The tertiary order therefore refers to what Deleuze calls secondary organiza-tion. The level of secondary organization is a prepersonal transcendental fi eld which has the function of constituting the tertiary order. Deleuze has many names for this transcendental fi eld: the cerebral or metaphysical surface, the pre-individual and impersonal transcendental fi eld, pure thought and ver-bal representation are among the most common. In Difference and Repetition, he calls it the virtual.6 He introduces it here, however, as sense, the fourth, implicit, relation of the proposition. It is the transcendental dimension of the proposition which has the function of actually producing the entire tertiary order at the same time that it gives it its sense.

The whole order of language is the result of [secondary organization], with its code of tertiary determinations [. . .]. [W]hat matters here is the preliminary, founding, or poetic7 organizationthat is, this play of surfaces in which only an a-cosmic, impersonal, and pre-individual fi eld is deployed [. . .]. (LS 24546)


The a-cosmic, impersonal, and preindividual fi eld to which Deleuze refers is the transcendental fi eld of sense. This fi eld both founds and produces the tertiary order. If the transcendental fi eld of sense is called secondary organiza-tion this is because, as we will see below, its primary function is to provide a fi eld free from the action and passion of bodies so that thought can make sense of what is affecting it by organizing it outside of the determinism implied in these affections. All of this will be discussed in more detail below. What is important for now is simply to see that sense is the genetic element of both the proposi-tion and of the active consciousness which is coextensive with representation.

What is perhaps the most remarkable thesis that The Logic of Sense will develop is that sense itself, the virtual, is produced: There is no reason to repeat that sense is essentially produced. It is never originary but is always caused and derived (LS 95; original emphasis).8 The regression therefore continues. Just as the individuated objects, the concepts, and the subjects of the tertiary order referred to sense as their genetic element, sense now refers to a fi eld of unindividuated bodies, a measureless pulsation, which is responsible for its production.

Individuation in bodies, the measure in their mixtures, the play of persons and concepts in their variationsthis entire [tertiary] order presupposes sense and the pre-individual and impersonal neutral fi eld within which it unfolds. It is therefore in a different way that sense is produced by bodies. The question is now about bodies taken in their undifferentiated depth and in their measureless pulsation. (LS 124; my emphasis)

Sense is produced by bodies. Not the individuated bodies of the tertiary order, but bodies taken as an unindividuated measureless pulsation of matter. Below the transcendental fi eld and responsible for its production lies what Deleuze calls the primary order, the corporeal, schizophrenic mixture of depths. This is a fi eld in which unindividuated bodies clash with one another. In contrast to the formal order of language or consciousness, this measureless pulsation of matter represents the world of sensation. It is because neither the objects which affect us nor the body which is affected are yet constituted that Deleuze employs such inventive language to describe this world of sensation. Unindividuated bodies mix with our own as yet unconstituted body.

Deleuze often describes this depth as the realm in which one either eats or is eaten. To eat or to be eaten, however, is a fi gurative way of describing this world as one of immediate action and passion. To eat is to be active and to be eaten is to be passive, or to endure another bodys action (240). In depth, everything is passion and action (192; original emphasis). This is a very close approximation to the account Deleuze gave of the plane of immanence in Cinema 1. In fact, just as the plane of immanence was characterized there, following Bergson, as the action and reaction of every image on all the others, in all their parts, and in all their facets,9 Deleuze here characterizes the realm of bodily mixture as


one in which a body penetrates another and coexists with it in all of its parts, like a drop of wine in the ocean, or fi re in iron (LS 56). There are not yet, then, any egological coordinates in place. The primary order represents the communication of materiality with itself. It is the world of schizophrenia where Everything is body and corporeal. Everything is a mixture of bodies, and inside the body, interlocking and interpenetration (87). Bodies burst and cause other bodies to burst in an universal cesspool (187; original emphasis). A body, human or otherwise, is here taken only as a pure thing without even consider-ing the possibility that this thing might eventually become the foundation for thought.

The entire regressive movement from knowledge to sense to sensation is encapsulated in the following quotation: From the tertiary order, we must move again up to the secondary organization, and then to the primary order in accordance with the dynamic requirement (LS 246; original emphasis). But because this is a regressive movement, just as in Husserl, we have to reverse the direction in order to account for everything genetically. Therefore, for these three stages, there are two geneses: a static genesis and a dynamic genesis. The basic distinction between these two geneses comes across most clearly in Deleuzes introduction of the dynamic genesis:

It is no longer a question of a static genesis which would lead from the pre-supposed event [i.e., sense] to its actualization in a state of affairs and to its expression in propositions. It is a question of a dynamic genesis which leads from states of affairs to events, from mixtures to pure lines, from depth to the production of surfaces, which must not implicate at all the other genesis. (LS 86; original emphasis)10

In this passage Deleuze clearly articulates the difference between the two gen-eses in terms of the three levels I have just described. A dynamic genesis moves from the primary order to secondary organization, from matter to purity, from sensation to sense. If this genesis is called dynamic, it is because it begins in depth where there is only movement and not time (namely, the movement of bodies which penetrate one another).

A static genesis then takes over and moves from secondary organization to the tertiary order. It moves from sense to a propositional consciousness. Its keyword is actualization. If this genesis is called static, it is because sense is not, like the mixture of bodies in depth, defi ned by movement, but by time, and specifi -cally by the empty form of time which Deleuze describes elsewhere, following Kant, as the form of everything that changes, but which does not itself change. It is, therefore, static.11 These two geneses take their names from their starting points. The dynamic genesis begins in movement; the static genesis begins in a


time without movement. Schematically we can outline the general process as given above.

The entire movement of The Logic of Sense follows these two geneses as it moves from a corporeal depth to a propositional consciousness.

The two modes of time

Primary order, secondary organization, and tertiary order are the three levels of the genesis. There are also two times: Aion and Chronos.12 Much of Deleuzes book builds on the work of Maurice Blanchotso much so that it would not be an overstatement to say that The Logic of Sense is a formalization and systematiza-tion of much of Blanchots thought, even though at times it leaves the context of that thought altogether.13 This is above all true in relation to the two readings of time. Throughout The Space of Literature and The Book to Come, Blanchot describes two kinds of time.14 First, there is the time of ordinary everyday activ-ity which always happens in the presenta reading of time which Levinas described as the time of clocks made for the sun and for trains.15 But in addi-tion to this time, there is also the essential or original time of the work. In this time there is no present, but only an indefi nite past and future which sub-divides the present so that you could not say that something is happening, but only that it has always just happened and is always about to happen. It is the time in which an impersonal thought makes mobile connections between memories and expectations. Deleuze calls the time with a present Chronos, and, within the overall structure we have just traced, this time corresponds directly to the primary order. It is the time of bodies and their mixture in the

Tertiary Order

Secondary Organization

Primary Order

Dyn

amic

Gen

esis

Stat

ic G

enes

is


schizophrenic depths (LS 162, 87). It is the always limited present, which measures the action and passion of bodies as causes and the state of their mix-ture in depth (61). Deleuze renames Blanchots time without a present Aion. In opposition to Chronos, Aion is an immaterial time, freed from the move-ment of bodies. It is, as Deleuze says, the empty form of time (62, 165). This time, like Blanchots time of the work has no present, but infi nitely subdivides the present into a past and a future. Just as Chronos corresponded to the pri-mary order of depths, Aion corresponds to the secondary organization and to the events which populate the transcendental fi eld of the surface.16

If Chronos characterizes the primary order, and if Aion characterizes the secondary organization, what time defi nes the tertiary order? It seems that Chronos has two forms. Its fi rst form is the present understood as the unindi-viduated corporeal mixture of bodies: the primary order. A dynamic genesis begins in this chaotic mixture of bodies and produces a transcendental surface. It is because of this genesis that this surface leaves its materiality behind and becomes incorporeal. In leaving the movement of unindividuated bodies behind, this genesis produces a completely different kind of temporality: Aion. But the genesis does not stop here, and this surface founds a second, static genesis which will in turn produce the tertiary order of the proposition. The static genesis returns us to Chronos, but now Chronos takes on a completely different form. The static genesis returns to a present which has become, thanks to the work of genesis, a denotable state of affairs in view of a physical time char-acterized by succession (LS 184; my emphasis). The Chronos of the depths was defi ned by a physical present which did not pass, a present which was in princi-ple infi nite because, in relation to the immediate action and passion of bodies, you could always extend their present to encompass a bodys causes and effects as far backward and forward in time as you wanted. The Chronos of the propo-sition and its denotable state of affairs, however, is defi ned by succession. It is a present which passes in representation. The difference between the two forms of Chronos comes down to the fact that in the return to matter, matter has become individuated. Since it has well-defi ned limits, it can pass. Whereas the Chronos of depths was unindividuated and defi ned by the violence of bodies acting and reacting directly on one another, here everything is individuated, orderly, and packed into the forms of language.17

By noticing the way in which Chronos appears twice in the order of genesis, we can get a very clear picture of the general gesture and shape of this gene-sisa trajectory which, in the end, looks surprisingly Hegelian: Between the two presents of Chronosthat of the subversion due to the bottom [i.e. pri-mary order] and that of actualization in forms [i.e. in the forms of the tertiary order]there is a third, there must be a third, pertaining to Aion (168; cf. 63).18 The dynamic genesis takes us out of corporeality; the static returns us to it. The fi rst encounter with corporeality is an experience with an unindividu-ated, meaningless, and chaotic matter. When we return to it at the end of the


genesis, we fi nd the same state of affairs individuated in the form of orderly and meaningful representations.19

I hope to have provided in this fi rst part of the chapter the general structure in which the genesis unfolds or, the three major eventsthe three levelsof the logical-psychological story. In what follows I will describe these two geneses in more detail, beginning with the dynamic genesis and then continuing to the static. By the end of this chapter I hope to have described a general model of genesis which informs Deleuzes thought across the rest of his career.

Genesis

The dynamic genesis

The dynamic genesis is the movement from the primary order to secondary organization. It comprises three passive syntheses and, corresponding to each synthesis, three distinct stages.20 In what follows I describe each one of these stages one-by-one after a preliminary account of the schizophrenic depths which defi ne the primary order.

Depths

The dynamic genesis begins in the primary order or the noise of the corporeal depths. As I mentioned above, these depths represent Deleuzes description of sensation at the level of unindividuated bodies and of our own as yet unconsti-tuted body. It is in order to avoid importing elements from the natural attitude and traditional philosophy that Deleuze makes use of such idiosyncratic lan-guage to describe this world of sensation. Above I briefl y described the dynamics of this world: here there is only the movement of fragments which penetrate one another in all their parts and all their facets; everything is immediate action and passion. This is the way Deleuze describes the material depths in the early sections of the book. When he turns in the last third of the book to a systematic description of the dynamic genesis however, he leaves this earlier vocabulary behind and takes up the language of psychoanalysis. Within this new vocabu-lary, the bodies or fragments which clash with one another are called partial objects. Partial objects are material fragmentsbodieswhich exist in the communication of depths (187). To this previous account of depth as a mixture of bodies I would like to add two things, both of which not only clarify the func-tion of genesis in relation to this starting point, but also reinforce the claim that we are dealing with a novel description of sensation.

First of all, there is an ego lodged in the depths which Deleuze calls the body without organs (LS 8889, 189, 203). There is an ego here because one of the bodies which is tossed around in the universal variation of depth is our body.


A tree, a column, a fl ower, or a cane grow inside the body; other bodies always penetrate our body and coexist with its parts (87). In the language of psycho-analysis, this is the body of the infant. The infant participates in the world of partial objects. Deleuze uses the example of the nursing infant to make this point: The introjection of these partial objects into the body of the infant is accompanied by a projection of aggressiveness onto these internal objects, and by a re-projection of these objects into the maternal body (187; cf. 190). Partial objects, in the form of nourishment, are introjected into its body, but, at the same time, the infant projects them back outside of itself. This is simply a transposition of the earlier account of sensation to the language of psycho-analysis. The mechanisms of introjection and projection are simply the mechanisms by which the undeveloped bodythe infantparticipates in the universal com-munication of corporeal depths. The body of the infant is passive in relation to partial objects, but also, through its reprojection of them, it is active. It eats, and it is eaten.

According to Deleuze, this is not a pleasant experience for the ego. It has no control over its affections. It cannot anticipate the objects which will affect it, and, even if it is capable of acting on these objects through a reprojection of the partial objects, its action is little more than a reaction. It is dissolved in them like a drop of wine in the ocean. As Deleuze describes it in his essay on Tournier included as an appendix to The Logic of Sense, here each thing slaps us in the face or strikes us from behind (LS 306). These beginnings express one imme-diate need for the ego and a function for genesis: the transcendence of the given, or the escape from materiality. The ego needs to escape from these con-ditions, and the dynamic genesis which ensues from this state of affairs will provide the means by which the ego can not only escape from its corporeality, but can also hold it at bay.21

This escape from corporeality is made possible by the body without organs. The infants body is not yet a fully constituted body, and at this point in the genesis all that Deleuze says of the ego, the body of the depths, is that it is a simple power of synthesis.22 This power of synthesis is also its means of escape. Even if the ego is lodged in the depths of bodies and communicates in them according to a law of immediate action and passion, it still forms a different kind of mixture. In depth there are two mixtures: one is made of hard and solid fragments which change; the other is liquid, fl uid, and perfect, without parts or alteration because it has the property of melting and welding (189). The fi rst mixture of hard solid fragments is the corporeal mixture of depth. The second mixture describes the body without organs, or the infants body. Here it is attributed the property of melting and welding. In other words, it has the power to synthesize. What it melts and welds are precisely the material particles of the fi rst mixture. As Deleuze puts it, the body without organs is a liquid principle capable of binding all of the morsels together, and of surmounting such a breaking apart . . . (189; my emphasis). Whereas the fi rst


mixture of depths represents a set of distinct fragments which act and react on one another, the body without organs represents the synthesis of these objects, and through its synthesis (melting and welding) it surmounts them.23 Beyond the highly varied and suggestive language, two things become apparent regard-ing the body without organs: (1) it is capable of a synthesis: it synthesizes the partial objects of the corporeal depth which whirl about and explode. (2) But, in so doing, it also becomes capable of surmounting this depth. Its synthesis opens up a route of escape.

The second thing I would like to add to the account of corporeal depths antici-pates the problems of meaning and of language which dominate the tertiary order. These depths are completely meaningless. This is because they represent a pure materiality. In depth the entire world loses its meaning, and the word loses its sense (87). Far from transmitting meanings, words now act directly on the body, penetrating and bruising it (87). This is why the fi rst stage of the genesis is called noise. It treats words as purely physical phenomena: either as vibrations of air which penetrate our ears or as vibrations of light in a series of black marks on a white page which penetrate our eyes. Every word is physical, and immediately affects the body (87). The word is thus just one more indistinguishable member of the universal variation of depths. Its fragments merge with unbearable sono-rous qualities, invade the body where they form a mixture . . . (88).

Here it becomes clear that the corporeal depths are Deleuzes description of our bodys participation in the physical world and what that participation would feel like and look like from the point of view of the body itself. The corporeal depths are the disorganization and fragmentation of physical objects as they affect us, the way in which the object is nothing more, at the tips of our fi ngers for example, than the sensory nerves it excites, or the way in which a sound is nothing more than an activation of the motor neurons in our ear. It is Deleuzes account of what Merleau-Ponty called the world of perception.

Under these conditions, Deleuze says, language, or the formal and organ-ized tertiary order, is impossible. This is because there are many different sounds in the world, but only a few of themthose contained in the alpha-bet and their combinationsbelong to language. The sound of a mouth chewing food and the utterance of a meaningful word are two completely different sounds both of which our mouths can make. It is always a mouth which speaks; but [in the tertiary order] the sound is no longer the noise of a body which eats . . . (181). It is the mouth which speaks meaningful sen-tences that belongs to the tertiary order. But this order has its ultimate genetic foundation in the primary order where it is impossible to tell whether or not the series of sounds which a mouth makes is the consequence of its chewing food or of its uttering a word. It is necessary to process this purely material information in order to fi nd out. As we have seen, in the primary order, the ego has no control over what affects it. All of its actions are reactions. In order for language to become possible in these conditions, it is


necessary for the ego to leave the world of depths in order to fi nd the free-dom and the time to distinguish between the different types of sounds which affect it.24

To render language possible thus signifi es assuring that sounds are not con-fused with the sonorous bodies of things, with the sound effects of bodies, or with their actions and passions. What renders language possible is that which separates sounds from bodies and organizes them into propositions, freeing them for the expressive function. (181)

In order for language to be possible, sound has to become something other than a pure passion and a pure matter. Sounds have to be separated from bod-ies and then organized into propositions. This separation and organization takes place in the transcendental fi eld of secondary organization which pro-vides a time, independent of matter, in which our affections can be progress

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Joe Hughes-Deleuze and the Genesis of Representation (Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy)...

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