2
Understanding the production of “events”
In the previous chapter it was argued that instead of trying to explain
“events” in terms of what they represent, the important task should to
examine the ways in which they are produced. The aim of this chapter, then,
is to explore how it might be possible to think about the “event” in terms of a
production, and specifically how this production can be understood in
relation to the processes, lines and movements that underlie and condition it.
Focusing on these processes, lines and movements means that I will initially
move away from a notion of the “event” as an object or a unitary whole and
instead try to articulate what happens in the very processes of producing such
a notion. One way to articulate these kinds of processes is by returning to
Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism and the plane of immanence, which in
the previous chapter was referred to as a pure flow of life and experience that
underlies notions of subjects and objects, the internal and the external. This
plane consists, moreover, of pre-individual and impersonal elements of
experience, or what Deleuze also refers to as “singularities”. When
developing this notion of experience there is, however, another concept that
can be seen as perhaps even more important. This is Deleuze’s own concept
of the event. As I will try to show in the first part of this chapter, Deleuze’s
concept of the event is radically different from an understanding of the
“event” as an object or a whole. For example, the event does not refer to
what has happened in a particular moment in time, in relation to a pre-given
subject and against an already established background. In contrast to such an
understanding of the “event”, Deleuze’s concept of the event can rather be
understood as a creative and active movement, which is irreducible to a
present moment in time, a pre-existing subject and a given background. As
53
such, it can also be linked to an alternative understanding of time and
subjectivity, as well as to various notions of for example sense, thought and
experience.
Having developed an understanding of Deleuze’s concept of the event
in the first part of the chapter, the second part will then look at how this
concept can be used as a starting point for understanding the production of
“events”. Specifically, this will be done by looking at how the production of
“events” can be understood in terms of a relationship between events and the
“event”. In brief, according to that relationship, events can be referred to as
active and creative movements in relation to which different ideas about the
“event” as an abstract object or a whole are produced.
When developing this understanding of the production of “events” I
will also be referring to two different processes, which Deleuze calls
“actualization” and “counter-actualization”. Whereas actualization is a
process whereby the event is translated into a “state of affairs” or what is,
counter-actualization implies a process of “abstracting” the event from a
state of affairs. Hence, whereas actualization can be said to take us away
from the event as an active and creative movement towards a state of affairs,
counter-actualization goes in the opposite direction and brings the event back
to life. As we shall see, this latter process is crucial because it has the
potential to disrupt and even dissolve the process of actualization, and
thereby also destabilise anything that comes out of it in terms of an
actualized state of affairs.
In relation to the processes of actualization and counter-actualization I
will look at how the “event” can be understood in terms of an outcome of
both of these processes. This implies, then, trying to understand the “event”
as an outcome of translating the event as an active and creative movement
into a state of affairs through the process of actualization. But it also implies
understanding how the “event” is constantly disrupted as well as dissolved
through
the
process
of
counter-actualization.
Hence,
rather
than
understanding the “event” as something that is fully determinable or reaches
a final point of completion, my aim is to see how it can be understood in
54
terms of an ongoing and continuous process of becoming, whose direction
and meaning always remains open to change and transformation.
In order to develop this way of thinking about the production of
“events” further, the third part of the chapter will explore Deleuze and
Guattari’s approach to the role of language in the social field, focusing in
particular on how they write about the relationship between form of
“content” and form of “expression”. In brief, this relationship will be used in
order to think about how the content of the “event” becomes formalized
through different forms of expression. And rather than viewing this
formalization as a process that leads to a final end or product, I will look at
how it can complement an understanding of the “event” as a part of an
ongoing and continuous process of becoming, which remains open to change
and transformation.
2.1 The singularity of events
In The Logic of Sense, Deleuze claims that the event is “always and at the
same time something which has just happened and something about to
happen; never something happening”. 1 In this part of the chapter I will
explore what is meant by this claim. And I will do so by focusing on three
different aspects: time and subjectivity, difference and transformation,
language and grammar. The reason for choosing these aspects is that all of
them in one way or another can be said to enable a reading of the event as a
singularity. As such, the event can also be thought of in terms of an active
and creative movement, according to which there is an encounter with
change, difference and transformation. Crucially, this encounter is always
prior to notions of an individualised and personalised form of being, and
prior to distinctions between the subject and the object, the internal and the
external. This does not mean, however, that the singularity of the event is
somehow “superior” to any of those notions. Rather, it means that the event
has to be seen as an active and creative movement, which is involved in the
1
Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, translated by Mark Lester, edited by Constantin V.
Boundas, (London: Continuum, 2004), p. 73.
55
ongoing processes of creating different kinds of distinctions. For that reason
it also is necessary to take the singularity of events seriously if the aim is to
understand how something emerges or is produced in the first place.
Time and subjectivity
One of the ways in which Deleuze develops his understanding of the event is
through a reading of time in Stoic philosophy. In this philosophy, Deleuze
explains, there are two main concepts of time: “Chronos” and “Aion”.
Briefly, whereas Chronos consists of the present as the constitutive element
of time, Aion can be said to escape the present and only let movements of
past and future remain. “In accordance with Aion, only the past and future
inhere or subsist in time. Instead of a present which absorbs the past and
future, a future and past divide the present at every instant and subdivide it
ad infinitum into past and future, in both directions at once.” 2 Time, in
accordance with Aion, can thus be said to escape the present as a central
reference point in time. Instead of the present, it is the past and the future
that constitute time. And between past and future there is no present because
every instant subdivides the present into past and future. So, rather than the
“now” of Chronos there is the “instant” of Aion.
When linking Aion to the event, the latter has to be understood in
relation to movements of past and future and not to the present. In this way,
the event can also be said to take on the form of a “double question”,
referring to the questions of “what is going to happen, and what has just
happened”.3 There is no underlying purpose of this double question, nor is it
raised because it requires a particular answer. Rather, it can be understood as
an expression of the “agonizing aspect of the pure event”, highlighting the
difficulty of grasping what has just happened but also knowing what is about
to happen. This difficulty can thus be explained by the movements of Aion
and the lack of a stable and present “now”, as a point from which it is
possible to reflect on what has happened in the past and make predictions
2
3
Ibid., p. 188.
Ibid., p. 73.
56
about what might happen in the future. Aion, referring to what is always
already past and eternally yet to come, destabilises the notion of a pure
present and frees the event from a static location in time.
Lacking a pure present, Aion can also be said to express an
“incorporeal” form of time. This means that time cannot be directly linked to
movements and actions of bodies that are already present. Time takes on an
“empty form”, which means that it is always “already passed and eternally
yet to come”, like a movement that “has freed itself of its present corporeal
content and has thereby unwound its own circle, stretching itself out in a
straight line”.4 Following this incorporeal time of Aion, there is for example
no “being” of the subject that can be located in a present “now”. There is
instead only a becoming of the subject. 5 This becoming has neither an
identity, nor does it exist in one place or at one time. It is a movement, “by
which the line frees itself from the point, and renders points indiscernible”.6
So, rather than the point, or the present, the movement of Aion travels
toward a past and a future, it becomes smaller and larger, etc. In his reading
of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass Deleuze describes
this idea of becoming in the following way:
When I say ‘Alice becomes larger,’ I mean that she becomes larger than
she was. By the same token, however, she becomes smaller than she is
now. Certainly, she is not bigger and smaller at the same time. She is
larger now; she was smaller before. But it is at the same moment that
one becomes larger than one was and smaller than one becomes. This is
the simultaneity of a becoming whose characteristic is to elude the
present.7
This notion of becoming thus implies that there is no middle point, or present,
in which the subject can be located. The becoming of the subject consists
4
Ibid., p. 189.
Ibid., p. 8.
6
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia,
translated by Brian Massumi, (London: Continuum, 2004), p. 324.
7
Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, p. 3.
5
57
only of an unlimited movement, in relation to which becoming “produces
nothing but itself”. 8 And it is in this sense that becoming also has to be
understood as “incorporeal”, it is never present as such and it has no direct
connection to an already established body.
As an expression of this form of becoming, the event can be seen a
force or a movement that constantly escapes the present moment in time as
well as the corporeal being of the subject:
Becoming unlimited comes to be the ideational and incorporeal event,
with all of its characteristic reversals between future and past, active
and passive, cause and effect, more and less, too much and not enough,
already and not yet. The infinitely divisible event is always both at once.
It is eternally that which has just happened and that which is about to
happen, but never that which is happening.9
The event can thus be linked to an incorporeal and impersonal becoming,
which is disembodied and always eludes the present. As such, the event also
has to be freed from a point of view, according to which it is possible to
reflect on the meaning of what has happened from a position that is external
to the processes of becoming. The event, in this sense, is essentially nothing
but a movement of becoming, which constantly goes in different directions
and therefore cannot be reduced to a state of affairs or what is.
Difference and transformation
According to Deleuze, it is important to understand the event as something
that is constitutive and active rather than representational and reactive. In this
way, the event is not an “object” or a “thing”, which can be represented from
an external point of view, but rather a force or a movement that creates. This
movement can for example be linked to “thought” or “sense” as an event.
Beginning with the latter, the notion of sense as an event is important in
Deleuze’s philosophy precisely because it can be seen as an expression of the
8
9
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 262
Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, p. 10.
58
productive and creative element of the event. As an event, sense cannot for
example be explained by the objects of perception. That kind of explanation
would merely result in a statement that tries to determine the qualities of an
object by locating it in an external realm. So, for example, instead of stating
that “the tree is green”, the sense event belongs to the verbs: “to green” and
“to tree”. 10 And the reason for this, as Claire Colebrook correctly points out
is that “we see not just what actually is, but also the seen as it might be
remembered, imagined, recalled, repeated, hallucinated”.11 There is in this
way a multiplicity of movements involved in the event of sense, movements
that do not necessarily point in the same direction or add up to a whole. As
such, sense can also be understood as “an incorporeal, complex, and
irreducible entity”, or a singularity, which is expressed in a variety of
different ways without being linked to some kind of whole or “common
sense”.12
Following this understanding of the event, as a movement of
ungrounded difference, it can also be argued that there is a potential for
change and transformation inherent in the event. For example, in relation to
the idea of “thought” as event, Deleuze and Guattari point out that “all of
thought is a becoming, a double becoming, rather than the attribute of a
Subject and the representation of a Whole”.13 In this way, thought involves a
constant process of change and transformation, which has the potential to
bring something new. Consequently, the purpose of thought as event is not
represent or resemble something by locating it in an external realm and then
describe it through the use of language and concepts. Just as sense, thought
refers to something much more complex, which cannot simply be reduced to
a straightforward logic or formula. As Colebrook explains:
10
Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, p. 8.
Claire Colebrook, “The Space of Man: On the Specificity of Affect in Deleuze and
Guattari”, in Ian Buchanan and Gregg Lambert (eds.), Deleuze and Space, (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 2005), p. 191.
12
Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, p. 22.
13
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 419.
11
59
Thinking is difference, disruption and encounter. In recognising this
‘heterogenesis’ of thought, philosophy might then affirm itself, and
move beyond the recognition or representation of an outside, in favour
of thinking the very movement that ‘gives’ the outside. And this means
thought would be an active repetition: each time there is thought there
is the renewal, affirmation and transformation of difference.14
As something that is active and creative the event of thought highlights
the idea of becoming as an unlimited movement with neither beginning nor
end. There is no localisable beginning of this movement of becoming – no
beginning that can be traced back to a fixed moment of the past. Nor is there
a pre-determined goal, a goal that can be said to function as the determinable
end point of becoming. Rather, becoming presents only a fluid as well as
contingent flow of life, going in various directions and creating different
ways of thinking and perceiving.
For Deleuze, an important task is to articulate and make thinkable this
unlimited movement of becoming, in a way that does not fall back on
identity and similarity but rather affirms the active and creative elements of
the event. And in a sense this is precisely what Deleuze and Guattari do
when they introduce the concepts of “deterritorialization” and “lines of
flight”.15 According to Deleuze and Guattari, these concepts should not be
understood as ways of decoding movements and becomings by extracting
them from an already given context. Deterritorialization and lines of flight
highlight movements of becoming as processes without an external
background or context. 16 As such, they cannot be connected with any
opposable terms or systems of representation, according to which
movements and becoming are fixed. There are no oppositions, or beginnings
and ends, only the between:
14
Claire Colebrook, Philosophy and Post-structuralist Theory: From Kant to Deleuze,
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), p. 227.
15
John Rajchman, The Deleuze Connections, (London: The MIT Press, 2000), p. 67.
16
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 305.
60
Between things does not designate a localizable relation going from one
thing to the other and back again, but a perpendicular direction, a
transversal movement that sweeps one and the other away, a stream
without beginning or end that undermines its banks and picks up speed
in the middle.17
Following this idea of movements, deterritorialization and lines of
flight refer to a kind of transformation that lacks any essential characteristics
or dialectical terms. Hence, there is for example no “thing” that then turns
into something else, resulting in an identifiable difference between one
“thing” and another “thing”. Deterritorialization and lines of flight express
something much more uncertain and indeterminate than that, always lacking
a specific content or agency. As movements without a clear beginning or a
predetermined goal they can take on various directions, go in unpredictable
ways and create possible worlds. 18 The event is always marked by these
kinds of movements and transformations, which means that it also stays open
to different kinds of creations and transformations.
The grammar of the event
In the sense of not having a predetermined goal, the event is not a static
element but can rather be seen as something that is ongoing. As such, the
event can also be linked to a particular “grammar”. In brief, the point of this
grammar is to free the event from the notion of an independently existing
object that can be described or represented through language. According to
such a notion, Deleuze argues, language is based on a propositional model
that includes three different dimensions: “denotation”, “manifestation” and
“signification”. 19 With denotation, language is assumed to have a direct
correspondence to a state of things or to what objectively is, which also
means that it functions by asserting something as being either true or false.
17
Ibid., p. 28.
Keith Ansell Pearson, Germinal Life: The Difference and Repetition of Deleuze, (Oxon:
Routledge, 1999), p. 132.
19
Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, pp. 16-26.
18
61
The second dimension of the proposition, manifestation, “concerns the
relation of the proposition to the person who speaks and expresses
himself”.20 This dimension can be seen as primary in relation to denotation
because it locates the subject in a position from which it is possible denote
something in the first place; it is the manifesting “I” who speaks and makes
his/her desires and beliefs known to others. Finally, as the third dimension,
signification is used to draw out the implications and conclusions of a
denoted state of affairs, which means that it seeks to provide generalisations
of particular cases and thereby make them applicable to other cases as well.
The three dimensions of “manifestation”, “denotation” and “signification”
constitute what Deleuze refers to as the “circle of the proposition”21, a circle
that functions as a condition for “truth” by establishing a correspondence to
an externally existing reality that is just waiting to be discovered.
One of the main problems with the assumptions underlying this model,
Deleuze argues, is that they rely upon the idea of representing the state of
affairs as it is. In this way, the propositional model falls into the trap of
representation, assuming a prior distinction between subjects and objects,
according to which the former is supposed to determine the true meaning of
the latter. As such, this model also suggests that states of affairs are always
already static, thereby excluding the potential for change and transformation.
In order to oppose such a view and instead include this potential it is
therefore necessary to move away from the propositional model.
Instead of relying on the propositional model, Deleuze suggests that
language can be thought of in terms of an immediate form of “expression”.
The latter, in this sense, should not be seen as the expressed of a statement
but only as the purely expressed, or the purely expressible: “It is not the
object as denoted, but the object as expressed or expressible, never present,
but always already in the past and the yet to come.”22 Expression does not
correspond to an external reality, the meaning of which is mediated by the
representational function of language. Rather, as an active event, expression
20
Ibid., p. 17.
Ibid., p. 20.
22
Ibid., p. 155.
21
62
creates the meaning of language without trying to uncover the essence of an
object or a thing. In this way, as Deleuze writes: “Pure events ground
language because they wait for it as much as they wait for us, and have a
pure, singular, impersonal, and pre-individual existence only inside the
language which expresses them.”23
According to Deleuze, there is no ontological foundation for language,
which means that it is deeply problematic to use language in order to refer to
something that is present as such. So, rather than using language in this way
it must itself be considered as a movement or a creation of the event. The
event, in this sense, refers to an extra-linguistic force or movement, which
nevertheless has an intrinsic connection to language. The way in which this
connection plays out in its most immediate form is when the grammar of
language takes on the role of affirming the idea of movements without
ground, rather than trying to represent something that is assumed to be
already present. And for Deleuze the most immediate expression of this role
of language is the “verb” as an “undetermined infinitive”:
The Verb is the univocity of language, in the form of an undetermined
infinitive, without person, without present, without any diversity of
voice. It is poetry itself. As it expresses in language all events in one,
the infinitive verb expresses the event of language – language being a
unique event which merges now with that which renders it possible.24
The event of language is thus expressed by the infinitive verb. As such,
language can be linked to the past and future without a present, as well as to
a form of becoming that lacks a particular being and a predetermined goal.
Language, in this sense, has to be thought of in relation to that which is
immediately expressed and therefore lacks any definitive directions.
Expression is nothing but an event or a movement, which has the potential to
create becomings and transformations. As such, it does not correspond to a
23
24
Ibid., p. 189.
Ibid., pp. 211-12.
63
mediating present but is always located somewhere along the lines of past
and future.
Moreover, expression can, just as sense, be understood in terms of a
paradox, which does not follow a calculable logic or formula but always
goes in different directions at once. Sense and expression can also be related
to one another since it is through the purely expressed or the verb as an
undetermined infinitive that sense is articulated. In this way, Deleuze notes,
we “reach a region where language no longer has any relation to that which it
denotes, but only to that which it expresses, that is, to sense”. 25 Sense can
thus be directly related to the purely expressed, instead of for example to the
actions and passions of present bodies. The event of sense takes place on an
incorporeal surface and eludes the depths of bodily interaction. Sense,
therefore, cannot be attributed to “someone” or “something”; it can only be
expressed as a pure event or a pure act, which means that it subsists or
inheres in expression without occupying the space of a particular state of
affairs, and without being linked to a subject or a thing.
Another important concept in this context is “univocity”, which
literally means “one voice” and according Deleuze can be used to express an
ultimate form of Being that defines the essential quality of all events as
impersonal singularities. There is, in this sense, a “univocity of Being” that is
said of all events insofar as they remain impersonal and pre-individual
singularities and avoid being attributed to persons and states of affairs. In
relation to the univocity of Being, events gather together and communicate
with one another whilst at the same time not being comparable to each other.
Because their essential quality is precisely to elude any kind of similarity and
to affirm difference and becoming, the relationship between events is always
characterised by disjunction and divergence rather than sameness and
repetition:
The univocity of Being does not mean that there is one and the same
Being; on the contrary, beings are multiple and different, they are
25
Ibid., p. 31.
64
always produced by a disjunctive synthesis, and they themselves are
disjointed and divergent, membra disjuncta. The univocity of Being
signifies that Being is Voice that it is said, and that it is said in one and
the same “sense” of everything about which it is said. That of which it
is said is not at all the same, but Being is the same for everything about
which it is said. It occurs, therefore, as a unique event for everything
that happens to the most diverse things, Eventum tantum for all events,
the ultimate form for all of the forms which remain disjointed in it, but
which bring about the resonance and the ramification of their
disjunction.26
This idea of the univocity of Being can also be linked to Deleuze’s
reading of Nietzsche’s concept of the “eternal return”, which in the previous
chapter was referred to as a form of repetition that only lets difference return
whilst excluding the same or the identical. As such, the eternal return is a
selective process that prioritises encounters with change, difference and
transformation over the static being of things. The univocity of Being is
crucial for understanding this selective process because it highlights the
ultimate form of events, the differential form that applies to all events
regardless of their divergence. At the centre of difference and divergence
there is univocity, one voice that expresses every single event at once. This
notion of univocity refers, moreover, “both to what occurs and to what is
said”, which implies “that it is the same thing which occurs and is said: the
attributable to all bodies or states of affairs and the expressible of every
proposition”.27 Univocity thus refers to the purely expressed or expressible,
as well as to the very act of an occurrence. But it also refers to the quality or
ultimate form of that which occurs and is said; it is the form of an impersonal
and pre-individual singularity, an event that eludes any kind of attribution to
bodies and states of affairs. It is not what is happening to someone or
something, but rather what happens, a pure movement that stretches itself
26
27
Ibid., p. 205.
Ibid., pp. 205-6.
65
out on a line, pointing towards the past and the future without a mediating
present or corporeal content of bodies.
2.2 Between events and the “event”
So far we have seen how Deleuze’s concept of the event can be understood
in relation to time and subjectivity, difference and transformation, language
and grammar. The event, in this sense, can also be thought of as a singularity,
or as a force or a movement that is active and creative rather than reactive
and representational. As such, it is also a movement that is prior to
distinctions between subjects and objects, the internal and the external.
Against the backdrop of this understanding of the event, I will now return to
the question of how to understand the production of “events”. And I will do
so by looking at how the singularity of events can be used as an alternative
starting point for examining the processes and movements that condition and
underlie the production of “events”.
In order to articulate such a starting point, however, it is first necessary
to understand how the event can be translated into something else in the first
place, or how its singularity can be said to pass over into an actualized state
of affairs. Here, I will address this question by focusing on what Deleuze
refers to as the “double structure” of the event.28 According to this structure,
it is important that the event is always grasped as a double, which means that
apart from seeing it as a singularity it also has to be understood in relation to
the ways in which it is “actualized” and thereby translated into a state of
affairs. This implies, for example, translating the future-past of the event into
a present moment in time, or translating movements of becoming into a
notion of “being”. However, following the “double structure” of the event it
is also important to take into account the process of “counter-actualization”,
This way of thinking about the production of “events” has much in common with Paul
Patton’s article: “The World Seen From Within: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Events”,
Theory & Event, 1 (1), 1997. In this article Patton discusses Deleuze and Guattari’s idea
about philosophy becoming “worthy of the event” by examining “Deleuze’s concept of the
event” and “how this might apply to present social and political events”. In a similar way to
Patton I draw upon Deleuze’s idea of the event as having a “pure” or virtual dimension as
well as being actualized in “particular states of affairs”, which is what the “double structure”
of the event refers to.
28
66
which goes in the opposite direction of actualization. According to counteractualization, the event as a singularity is “abstracted” from a state of affairs,
which means that it is no longer imprisoned in a particular actualization. In
this way, it is possible to understand the relationship between the two sides
of the “double structure” of the event as open-ended and fluid rather than
determinate and static. In this part of the chapter I will explore how these
two processes can be used in order to think about the production of “events”.
The actualization of events
In The Logic of Sense, Deleuze articulates the idea of a “double structure” of
the event in the following way:
With every event, there is indeed the present moment of its actualisation,
the moment in which the event is embodied in a state of affairs, an
individual, or a person, the moment we designate by saying ‘here, the
moment has come.’ The future and the past of the event are evaluated
only with respect to this definitive present, and from the point of view
of that which embodies it. But on the other hand, there is the future and
the past of the event considered in itself, sidestepping each present,
being free of the limitations of a state of affairs, impersonal and preindividual, neutral, neither general nor particular.29
So, according to the “double structure” of the event there are two different
sides of the event. Whereas one side refers to the event as a singularity, the
other refers to how the event is actualized and thereby translated into a state
of affairs. In order to understand this latter side of the event further it is
useful to begin by going back to Deleuze’s discussion of time, and to look in
more detail at how Deleuze elaborates on the second Stoic conception of
time: Chronos.
One way to explain Chronos is by thinking of it in terms of a
succession of instants or cases, which are repeated in the present, to which
29
Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, p. 172.
67
the past as well as the future belongs. The past and the future, in this sense,
do not exist independently of the present but can rather be seen as essential
parts of the present. The present connects different instants or cases by
weaving them together in order to form an impression of a homogenous
movement, which always goes from the past to the future.
Chronos is the present which alone exists. It makes of the past and
future its two oriented dimensions, so that one goes always from the
past to the future – but only to the degree that presents follow one
another inside partial worlds or partial systems.”30
Chronos, then, does not represent a “universal” order of time, but is always
expressed within “partial systems”. According to these systems, the present
“regularizes” time by connecting the future and the past into a seemingly
coherent movement. More specifically, this regularization can be said to
measure the movements of bodies as it fills and limits them by inscribing a
particular corporeal content or matter. 31 In this sense, time is no longer
“empty” but rather “embodied”, and instead of being “incorporeal” it is
“corporeal”.
The process that enables this regularization to take place is also what
Deleuze refers to as actualization. It is important to note, however, that
actualization does not refer to a process of copying something through
representation and resemblance. Rather, according to Deleuze, actualization
has to be understood as a genuinely creative process:
Actualisation breaks with resemblance as a process no less than it does
with identity as a principle. Actual terms never resemble the
singularities
they
incarnate.
In
this
sense,
actualisation
or
differenciation is always a genuine creation. It does not result from any
limitation of pre-existing possibility. (…) For a potential or virtual
30
31
Ibid., p. 89.
Ibid., p. 73.
68
object, to be actualised is to create divergent lines which correspond to
– without resembling – a virtual multiplicity.32
In order to escape the limits that are imposed by identity and resemblance,
actualization has to be understood in terms of a genuine creation. And
according to Deleuze, it is the potential that exists in the “virtual” that enables
this creation to happen in the first place. As we saw in the previous chapter,
the virtual can be linked to the concept of difference “in itself”, the aim of
which is to reverse the subordination of difference to identity. Following this
reversal, difference lacks any form of identity and similarity and can therefore
also be thought of as all there is. “It is always differences which resemble one
another, which are analogous, opposed or identical: difference is behind
everything but behind difference there is nothing.”33
When developing the connection between this notion of difference and
the process of actualization, Deleuze introduces yet another concept:
“differenciation”. Through this concept Deleuze tries to articulate what
happens when difference is no longer sustained as difference “in itself” and
when the virtual or free play of differences (multiplicity) suddenly gives way
to a more systematic play of differences. Differenciation, in this sense, can be
understood as “a second part of difference”, the main function of which is to
actualize the free play of differences. 34 When thinking of this process it is
thus crucial, according to Deleuze, not to see it as a representation of the
virtual but rather as a process that draws upon the potential of the virtual
whilst at the same time moving away from it in order to create something
other, which is no longer directly linked to the virtual. In this way, for
example, the process of actualizing a systematic play of differences does not
in any way resemble the free play of differences, and an individualized or
personalized “Self” does not resemble the pre-individual or impersonal
singularities it incarnates. Thus, it is more useful to think of the free play of
32
Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, translated by Paul Patton, (London: Continuum,
2004), p. 264.
33
Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, p. 69.
34
Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, p. 261.
69
differences and impersonal singularities in terms of a potential that underlies
and enables a systematic play of differences and a personalized “Self” to
emerge in the first place, but without necessarily turning into either of the
latter. According to Deleuze:
Far from being individual or personal, singularities preside over the
genesis of individuals and persons; they are distributed in a “potential”
which admits neither Self nor I, but which produces them by actualizing
or realizing itself, although the figures of this actualization do not at all
resemble the realized potential.35
In this way, the virtual can be said to express a potential that enables the
process of actualization to take place whilst at the same time not being
exhausted by it. Hence, rather than fully “belonging” to actualization, the
virtual remains in the background of actualization. And despite different
attempts to grasp it, through the process of actualization, the reality of the
virtual continues to exist, or subsist, in an actualized state of affairs. So, even
after the latter has been produced, the virtual continues to play a vital role as
a never-ending potential that enables the process of actualization to sustain
itself and to produce and reproduce the “actual”. Actualization, in this sense,
does not lead to a final product that acquires the status of an independently
existing object. Rather, as an outcome of actualization, the “actual” can only
be said to exist insofar as it remains a part of the process in which it is
produced and reproduced. In this way, it can also be noted that actualization
does not lead to anything static but is always guided by encounters with
change, difference and transformation. Because actualization constantly has
to renew itself and because it does not rely on resemblance and
representation, whatever comes out of it must itself be seen as a part of an
active and creative process. Hence, as Deleuze and Guattari point out: “The
35
Ibid., p. 118.
70
actual is not what we are but, rather, what we become, what we are in the
process of becoming.”36
Counter-actualization
According to Deleuze and Guattari, the relationship between the actual and
the virtual is always mutual. This means that in addition to the process of
actualizing the virtual there must also be a process that goes in the opposite
direction, “from virtuals we descend to actual states of affairs, and from
states of affairs we ascend to virtuals, without being able to isolate one from
the other”.
37
Deleuze and Guattari call this latter process “counter-
actualization”, which, in contrast to actualization happens whenever the
event is “abstracted from a state of affairs”. 38 Actualization and counteractualization thus move between the event and a state of affairs, or between
the virtual and the actual, but without rendering the two sides clearly
separable from one another:
No doubt, the event is not only made up from inseparable variations, it
is itself inseparable from the state of affairs, bodies, and lived reality in
which it is actualized or brought about. But we can also say the
converse: the state of affairs is no more separable from the event that
nonetheless goes beyond its actualization in every respect.39
Actualization and counter-actualization can thus be seen as relative
processes. As such, they render the two sides of the actual and the virtual
both independent and inseparable at the same time. And this is precisely why
the event also has to be grasped in terms of a “double structure”. Without
actualization the event would never come into effect in the first place, and
without counter-actualization there would be no force that continues to make
the event live in the body, as a continual and never-ending potential for
36
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What is Philosophy?, translated by Graham Burchell
and Hugh Tomlinson, (London: Verso, 1994), p 112.
37
Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, p. 160.
38
Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, p. 159.
39
Ibid., p. 159.
71
change and transformation. “To the extent that the pure event is each time
imprisoned forever in its actualization, counter-actualization liberates it,
always for other times.”40 So, rather than simply operating on its own, the
process of actualization is always doubled by the potential of counteractualization, which in turn opens up the possibility for more actualizations
yet to come.
In order to understand this potential further it is also important to
consider the disruptive elements of the event. An example of those elements
is “sense”, which according to Deleuze has the potential to disrupt or
undermine notions of “common sense” and “good sense”. Whereas the latter
are based on the idea of subordinating sense to a shared understanding of
what everyone is “supposed” to know or recognise, sense as event unleashes
a singular force of difference, which has the power to disrupt notions of
“common sense” and “good sense”.
One way to explain the disruptive element of sense is by thinking of it
in terms of a “paradox”, which instead of going in one single direction
constantly diverges along separate lines. Returning to Deleuze’s reading of
Alice in Wonderland, he writes: “‘Which way, which way?’ asks Alice. The
question has no answer, since it is the characteristic of sense not to have any
direction or ‘good sense’. Rather, sense always goes to both directions at
once, in the infinitely subdivided and elongated past-future.”41 In this way,
Deleuze links the paradox of sense to movements of past and future as well
as to the lack of a stable and mediating present. Without such a present it
thus becomes increasingly difficult to determine what it means to talk about
“good sense” or “common sense” in the first place. Behind such notions
there is another and much more ambiguous “logic of sense”, which cannot be
reduced to ideas about what is “good” or “bad”, “right” or “wrong”. Going in
both directions at once, sense is an indeterminable element that disrupts and
displaces notions of “good sense” and “common sense”, forcing the latter to
disappear in a cloud of uncertainty, and overthrowing them “from within by
40
41
Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, p. 182.
Ibid., pp. 88-89.
72
paradox”. 42 And even if attempts are made to provide generalizations of
“good sense” and “common sense”, the paradox of sense makes them
impossible to sustain as such, or as static elements of truth and certainty.
In the same way as the actual always has to be understood in relation to
the virtual, notions of “good sense” and “common sense” thus have to be
understood in relation to the paradox of sense. Moreover, the idea of a
present moment in time (Chronos) does not exist independently of, but
always in relation to movements of past and future (Aion). This means that
the temporal actualization of events cannot be clearly separated from the
movements of past and future that are expressed by those events. And
perhaps even more important, movements of past and future can be said to
have the potential to disrupt and dislocate the present moment in time.
According to this kind of disruption, then, the present does not exist as a
“fixed” moment in time but rather as a “measureless or dislocated present as
the time of depth and subversion”. 43 So, rather than representing an
independently existing moment in time, the present only exists as a part of
the movements of Aion. In this way, there is no present “moment” that can
be located in a particular point in time and that forever remains static. Rather,
as a part of the constant movements towards the past and the future the
notion of a present moment in time is always open to a process of change
and transformation. For this reason, Deleuze points out that the present does
not contradict Aion but rather that
it is the present as being of reason which is subdivided ad infinitum into
something that has just happened and something that is going to happen,
always flying in both directions at once. The other present, the living
present, happens and brings about the event. But the event nonetheless
retains an eternal truth upon the line of Aion, which divides it eternally
into a proximate past and an imminent future. The Aion endlessly
42
43
Ibid., p. 133.
Ibid., p. 191.
73
subdivides the event and pushes away past as well as future, without
ever rendering them less urgent.44
So, instead of representing a separate form of time, Chronos always has
to be understood in relation to Aion, which also means that the latter has the
potential to disrupt and refigure the former without ever letting it remain the
same. This point can also be illustrated by what Deleuze describes as the
“agonizing aspect” of the pure event, referring to the fact that movements of
past and future cannot be fixed on a temporal present or in a separate
moment in time, which makes it increasingly difficult to determine what has
happened in the past and to predict what is going to happen in the future
purely on the basis of something that is happening in the present. Before it
even appears as a separate moment in time this “something” is pushed away
by movements of past and future. Nothing remains static and nothing
remains the same. Ideas about what has happened might be repeated an
endless number of times. But these repetitions can neither be cemented nor
result in a static conception of one and the same “thing”. Repetitions
ultimately have the effect of displacing such conceptions, revealing the free
play of differences without a determinable centre. In his review of Difference
and Repetition and The Logic of Sense, Foucault makes a similar point by
referring to the art of Andy Warhol, in which images of car crashes and soup
cans are repeated to the point where they stop being mere copies of one
another and instead emerge as endless variations:
[I]n concentrating on this boundless monotony, we find the sudden
illumination of multiplicity itself – with nothing at its center, at its
highest point, or beyond it – a flickering of light that travels even faster
than the eyes and successively lights up the moving labels and the
captive snapshots that refer to each other to eternity, without ever
saying anything: suddenly, arising from the background of the old
inertia of equivalences, the striped form of the event tears through the
44
Ibid., p. 74.
74
darkness, and the eternal phantasm informs that soup can, that singular
and depthless face.45
The encounter with the soup is not characterised by repetitions of the same
but rather by repetitions of difference. It is consequently this latter form of
repetition, which is concerned with difference in itself rather than with the
idea of tying difference to identity, that enables the singularity of the event to
emerge yet again. The singularity of the event, in this sense, has not
disappeared in these repetitions but remains in the background, as a potential
for change and transformation. For this reason, Deleuze and Guattari also
refer to the event as a “vapour” or a “reserve”, which rather than
disappearing always tends to linger on: “[T]he event is pure immanence of
what is not actualized or of what remains indifferent to actualization, since
its reality does not depend upon it. The event is immaterial, incorporeal,
unlivable: pure reserve.” 46 In this way, there can be no full or complete
translation of the event into an actualized state of affairs. The latter never
exists simply on its own but is always accompanied with a trace of that from
which it emerges: the singularity of the event or the virtual.
Due to the process of counter-actualization, actualization always
includes elements of uncertainty and contingency. Together they illustrate
the ambiguity that exists within the “double structure” of the event. Whereas
one process tries to move away from the indeterminacy of the singularity of
events, the other process constantly seeks to bring the singularity of events
back to life by dissolving the notion of a state of affairs. This ambiguity can
also be understood in terms of the relationship between the “impersonal” and
the “personal”. In one case, as Deleuze points out, “it is I who am too weak
for life, it is life which overwhelms me, scattering its singularities all about”,
and in another case, “it is my life, which seems too weak for me and slips
Michel Foucault, “Theatrum Philosophicum”, in Language, Counter-memory, Practice:
Selected Essays and Interviews by Michel Foucault, translated by Donald F. Bouchard and
Sherry Simon, edited by Donald F. Bouchard, (New York: Cornell University Press, 1977),
p. 189.
46
Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, p. 156.
45
75
away at a point which, in a determined relation to me, has become present.”47
What this ambiguity shows, then, is that there is always one part of the event
that remains impersonal and therefore ungraspable. It cannot be grasped,
actualized or realized because it appears to have no relation to me as a person.
At the same time, however, there is also the part of the event that clearly
seems to belong to me as a person. In this case it is “I” who embody it; it is
within “me” that the event is actualized.
When illustrating this ambiguity Deleuze refers Blanchot’s example of
“death” as event. On the one hand, Deleuze notes, death “has an extreme and
definite relation to me and my body and is grounded in me, but it also has no
relation to me at all – it is incorporeal and infinitive, impersonal, grounded
only in itself”.48 So, apart from having a strong connection to my body, death
can be seen as a force that appears to have no relation to me at all. In this
latter case it is therefore not “I” who dies but always an impersonal “they” or
“it”. The ambiguous relationship between the impersonal and the personal
illustrated by this example is crucial when trying to understand the
importance of events. It shows that the event is not something that “I” can
simply control but rather something in which “I” both disappear and then
again appear. Thus, Deleuze notes that: “Every event is like death. Double
and impersonal in its double.”49
The becoming of the “event”
Returning to the question of how to understand the production of “events”,
one way to address this question would be to analyse the “event” in terms of
the “actual”, or as a product of actualization. The “event”, in this sense, can
also be referred to as “the moment in which the event is embodied in a state
of affairs, an individual, or a person, the moment we designate by saying
‘here, the moment has come’”.50 As such, it can moreover be connected with
the process of moving away from the singularity of events and inscribing an
47
Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, p. 172.
Ibid., p. 172.
49
Ibid., p. 172.
50
Ibid., p. 172.
48
76
actualized state of affairs. What we have then is a notion of the “event”,
located in a particular moment in time, in relation to a well established
subject and against a given background or context. However, following the
process of counter-actualization, there is also a movement going in the
opposite direction, a movement that seeks to disrupt and refigure the place
and meaning of the “event”. When taking this process into account, the
“event” does not simply exist as an independently existing object or a
coherent whole, according to which the paradoxes and problems related to
the singularity of events have once and for all been resolved. The “event”
must also be linked to a process whereby these paradoxes and problems yet
again spring to life and unsettles the “event” as an actualized state of affairs.
The production of “events” can thus be linked to both of these
processes, actualization and counter-actualization, which work both with and
against the notion of the “event” as an independently existing object or a
coherent whole. Whereas one process seeks to establish such a notion, the
other one seeks to destabilise it. Hence, rather than being definite or static,
the “event” remains open to movements and processes, according to which it
is refigured and recreated in different ways. In this way, the “event” can also
be linked to the ambiguity that exists within the “double structure” of the
event, being neither actual nor virtual, neither personal nor impersonal, and
neither present nor absent but always caught up somewhere in-between. As
such, the “event” can also be analysed as something that in itself is
indeterminable and contingent, lacking a fixed essence and meaning as well
as a static location in time. It is therefore necessary to specify what it really
means to talk about the “event” in terms of an “object”. The following quote
by Brian Massumi is very useful in doing so:
When we speak of “an” object or thing, what we are referring to is a
complex interweaving of attributes and contents as subsumed under a
nominal identity (a name). “An” object subsumes a multiplicity that
77
evolves situationally. Every object is an evolving differential: a snow
balling, open-ended variation on itself.51
When thinking about the “event” as an “object” or a “thing” it is thus
necessary to understand it, not as something that exists independently and in
relation to a static location in time, but rather as a part of an ongoing
production, according to which the “object” itself is constantly changing and
transforming in various ways. So, instead of referring to the being of the
“event” as this particular “thing”, it is more useful to think in terms of a
becoming of the “event”. Within this becoming, then, there are two
interdependent processes involved, actualization and counter-actualization,
working both with and against the notion of the “event” as an object or a
whole. The “event” is made up of these processes, as well as of the lines and
movements that define it as a constantly transforming “multiplicity”.
2.3 Language and the social production of “events”
So far in this chapter we have seen how Deleuze’s concept of the event can
be used to think about the production of “events”. The outcome of this
examination is an understanding of the becoming of the “event”, a double
process of producing the place and meaning of the “event” as an object or a
whole. According to this double process, the “event” never acquires the
status of a final object or a complete whole but is always part of an ongoing
and continuous process, which remains open to change and transformation.
In order to develop this understanding of the production of “events” further,
this part of the chapter will now move on to consider how the “event”
acquires a more “formal” status through the use of language in the social
field. This will be done by focusing on one common notion of the “event”,
which is to see it as a breaking point that separates “before” from “after” and
“what is to come” from “what has been”. Such a notion of the “event” might
of course come in various shapes and forms, depending on what happens in
51
Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation, (London: Duke
University Press, 2002), p. 216.
78
the production of a particular “event”. However, what I am interested in here
is not to examine the production of a particular “event” but rather to see how
it might be possible to think about the conditions under which the “event” is
produced as a breaking point.
Form of content and form of expression
When considering the role of language in the production of “events” it is
useful to go back to one particular aspect of the singularity of events that was
discussed earlier in this chapter, which is to connect the event with the purely
“expressed”. It was noted that this event has the power to express
“incorporeal transformations”, which are produced by the verb as an
undetermined infinitive. These kinds of incorporeal transformations are
moreover characterised by the pure line of becoming, which exists
independently of a particular form of being. However, in order to have an
effect on the body and to actually make the corporeal content of the body
transform in various ways, incorporeal transformations must also be
attributed to particular bodies.
According to Deleuze and Guattari, this kind of attribution is made
possible when the expressed ceases to be the purely expressed and instead
becomes the expressed of a statement. In this case language can be said to
function by the ways in which it compels “obedience” and “gives life orders”,
a function that Deleuze and Guattari also refer to as “order-words”.52 Orderwords and statements can thus be said to enable transformations to have an
immediate impact on the body by forcing a certain “corporeal modification”
of it to take place. As an example of this modification, Deleuze and Guattari
refer to the ways in which different age categories are imposed through
statements such as “you are no longer a child”. Although the transformation
from being a child into something else is obviously attributed to a body, the
transformation itself cannot be reduced to an essence within the body, which
is why it also has to be understood as an “incorporeal” transformation.53 So,
52
53
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 84.
Ibid., p. 89.
79
what makes the child suddenly stop being a child and become something else
does not come down to any explicit corporeal factors but rather to the power
of language in the social field to attribute a particular content and meaning to
the body. And it is the order-word that performs this task, through its
immediate effect on the body: “The instantaneousness of the order-word, its
immediacy, gives it a power of variation in relation to the bodies to which
the transformation is attributed.”54 The order-word states that things are no
longer the same as they once were and that consequently, the content of the
body has changed and taken on a new form too.55
In this context, Deleuze and Guattari point out that there are two
different “formalizations” at work: “If in a social field we distinguish the set
of corporeal modifications and the set of incorporeal transformations, we are
presented, despite the variety in each of the sets, with two formalizations,
one of content, the other of expression.” 56 By stressing that content and
expression are made up of two different “forms”, the point that Deleuze and
Guattari make is that the relationship between them is not one of
resemblance or representation. Rather, content and expression belong to
different modes of dispersion, between which there is neither a common
unity nor form. When making this point they refer to Foucault’s claim that
“it is in vain that we say what we see; what we see never resides in what we
say”.57 As two different modes of dispersion, the visible and the articulable,
or what is seen and what is said, have no immediate connection or
resemblance: “Precisely because content, like expression, has a form of its
own, one can never assign the form of expression the function of simply
representing, describing, or averring a corresponding content: there is neither
correspondence nor conformity.” 58 Also, Deleuze and Guattari emphasise
that content should not be understood as something that is prior to
expression, which means that content should not be regarded as a signified,
54
Ibid., p. 91.
Here, bodies refer not only to individual bodies but also to for example a society or a class.
56
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 95.
57
Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, (London:
Routledge, 2002), p. 10.
58
Ibid., p. 95.
55
80
no less than expression should be seen as a signifier. Rather than
representing or resembling one another, content and expression interact with
one another, and in so doing they produce different outcomes. Crucially,
these outcomes never consist of neatly composed lines that correspond to
one another within some coherent whole. They can rather be described in
terms of a chaotic mixture or “assemblage”, in which content and expression
constitute their two different variables.59 These variables can thus be said to
interact with one another, not by representing but rather by intervening and
thereby refiguring each other. This can happen, for example, when a form of
expression intervenes and refigures a form of content, thereby making the
latter modify in certain ways:
The independence of the two kinds of forms, forms of expression and
forms of content, is not contradicted but confirmed by the fact that the
expressions or expressed are inserted into or intervene in contents, not
to represent them but to anticipate them or move them back, slow them
down or speed them up, separate or combine them, delimit them in a
different way. The warp of the instantaneous transformations is always
inserted into the woof of continuous modifications.60
When referring to “modifications”, Deleuze and Guattari are not simply
suggesting that expression constitutes or constructs the content. Rather, they
are referring to the ways in which content and expression interact with and
refigure one another. To illustrate this point Deleuze and Guattari use
Foucault’s work on the prison as an example. The prison, they point out, is a
form of content. And within this content, the bodies of prisoners enter as a
substance, just as the bodies of guards and visitors. However, the prisoners
are not prisoners unless they have first passed through sentencing by a judge.
The sentence itself is carried out as a form of expression, for example by
using concepts such as “delinquency” or “delinquent”, which in this case
“express a new way of classifying, stating, translating, and even committing
59
60
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 101.
Ibid., p. 96.
81
criminal acts”. 61 The term “delinquency” as a form of expression thus
interacts with the “prison” as a form of content, but without representing or
signifying the prison. In this sense, there is no pre-established relationship
between “delinquency” as a form of expression and the “prison” as a form of
content. The connection between the two rather has to be produced. It is
produced by the ways in which the term “delinquency” interacts with the
“prison” and modifies the content of it in a particular way.
Having no pre-established connection, and belonging to two separate
forms of content and expression, “prison” and “delinquency” can also enter
new relations with other parts of society through the production of new
connections. And following Deleuze’s reading of Foucault’s work, these
connections always emerge from the historical formations that define the
conditions for knowledge, or the conditions for seeing and speaking in
certain ways. These conditions, then, do not rely on a prior ground, nor do
they result in a coherent and single “entity”. Rather, according to Deleuze:
The conclusion we can draw is that each historical formation sees and
reveals all it can within the conditions laid down for visibility, just as it
says all it can within the conditions relating to statements. (…) [I]n both
cases the conditions do not meet deep within a consciousness of a
subject, any more than they compose a single Entity: they are two forms
of exteriority within which dispersion and dissemination take place,
sometimes of statements, sometimes of visibilities.62
Content and expression, or the visible and the articulable, can thus be related
to seeing and speaking as two different modes of dispersion. Moreover,
seeing and speaking have their own internal differences, which can neither
be related to a complete whole, nor to a pre-established subject.
Consequently, content and expression are not static forms but always caught
61
Ibid., p. 74.
Gilles Deleuze, Foucault, translated and edited by Seán Hand, (London: Continuum,
1999), pp. 59-60.
62
82
up in different movements, constituting a world that is in a constant process
of becoming.
At the same time, however, there can also be attempts to inscribe a
more established relationship between form of content and form of
expression, constituting what Deleuze and Guattari refer to as a “collective
assemblage of enunciation”.63 Following this “formalization” it might then
be possible to imagine expression and content fitting together as constant
variables of one and the same “thing”. In relation to this “thing”, language is
given a purely pragmatic function, which is to articulate the “true”
relationship between expression and content. However, according to Deleuze
and Guattari, language should never be understood as the means for
communication or information. 64 Not even the pragmatic function of
language can be reduced to communication or information, simply because
expression never re-presents the content. Trying to combine content and
expression, the visible and the articulable, the pragmatic function of
language is nothing but an attempt to bridge the unbridgeable gap between
their respective forms. As Deleuze notes,
statements are not directed towards anything, since they are not related
to a thing any more than they express a subject but refer only to a
language, a language-being, that gives them unique subjects and objects
that satisfy particular conditions as immanent variables. And visibilities
are not deployed in a savage world already opened up to a primitive
(pre-predicative) consciousness, but refer only to a light, a light-being,
which gives them forms, proportions and perspectives that are
immanent in the proper sense – that is, free of any intentional gaze.
Neither language nor light will be examined in the areas that relate
them to one another (designation, signification, the signifying process
of language; a physical environment, a tangible or intelligible world)
but rather in the irreducible dimension that gives both of them as
separate and self-sufficient entities: ‘there is’ light, and ‘there is’
63
64
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 89.
Ibid., p. 85.
83
language. All intentionality collapses in the gap that opens up between
these two monads, or in the ‘non-relation’ between seeing and
speaking.65
Language, in this sense, should not be examined by “tracing” its origins, or
by trying to uncover the “true” connections between seeing and speaking,
content and expression. Rather, language has to be understood as a “map”,
which consists of signs of deterritorialization as well as reterritorialization.66
As such, they are not signs of “things” but can rather be said to “mark a
certain threshold crossed” in the movements of deterritorialization and
reterritorialization.67
It is necessary to say something here about the concept of
“reterritorialization”, which so far has not been discussed in this thesis. This
concept can be understood in a similar way to “actualization”, in the sense
that it refers to a process of “capturing” an unlimited movement of becoming.
As such, reterritorialization can also be referred to as a process of capturing
the movements of deterritorialization by filling them with a corporeal content
and inscribing a particular way of being. 68 It is important to emphasise,
however, that reterritorialization never leads back to an origin or a
foundation but can rather be said to produce the illusion of actually
possessing
an
origin
or
a
foundation.
As
Colebrook
explains,
“reterritorialization occurs when we imagine a subject who was there all
along at the origin of language. We think that ‘man’ invented language,
rather than being one of language’s effects.”69
Furthermore, movements of reterritorialization cannot be clearly
separated from movements of deterritorialization but should rather be
thought of as “relative, always connected”, and “caught up in one another”.70
In this way,
reterritorialization functions as a “complement” to
65
Deleuze, Foucault, p. 109.
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 85.
67
Ibid., p. 75.
68
Ibid., p. 321.
69
Claire Colebrook, Gilles Deleuze, (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 116.
70
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 11.
66
84
deterritorialization: “Deterritorialization must be thought of as a perfectly
positive power that has degrees and thresholds (epistrata), is always relative,
and has reterritorialization as its flipside or complement.” 71 Moreover,
processes of de- and reterritorialization do not respond to any pre-existing
territories. In other words, there is not a territory that then becomes de- and
reterritorialized. 72 Rather, the very notion of territory should always be
regarded as secondary to the processes of de- and reterritorialization, as an
outcome or a product of their correlative movements and interactions.73 It is
also in this way that the formalization of expression and content has to be
understood. Both expression and content have degrees of deterritorialization,
which render their forms more or less deterritorialized and indeterminate. As
such, they also remain open to different kinds of reterritorialization,
according to which they become more or less stable and determinate.
In short, there are degrees of deterritorialization that quantify the
respective forms and according to which contents and expression are
conjugated, feed into each other, accelerate each other, or on the
contrary become stabilized and perform a reterritorialization. (…)
Germany, toward November 20, 1923: on the one hand, the
deterritorializing inflation of the monetary body and, on the other, in
response to the inflation, a semiotic transformation of the reichsmark
into the rentenmark, making possible a reterritorialization.74
Germany, 1923, is thus one example of how there is a deterritorialization of
content (the monetary body), which is responded to by the reterritorialization
of expression (the rentenmark). The latter is not simply a means to represent
or uncover the content. Rather, it is a force that creates a “semiotic
transformation” of the content, the outcome of which is a certain mixture or
assemblage of both content and expression operating in the social field.
71
Ibid., p. 60.
Territories do not only refer to geographical space but also to for example ‘property, work
and money”. See Ibid., p. 560.
73
Ibid., p. 62.
74
Ibid., p. 97.
72
85
Language and “events”
So, how can Deleuze and Guattari’s ideas about the social function of
language be used in order to think further about the production of “events”?
Or, more specifically, how can these ideas be used in order to think about the
relationship between the singularity of events and the “event”? It has already
been discussed how the singularity of events can be linked to the purely
expressed and the infinitive verb. But in addition to this it could also be
argued that the “event” has to be filled with a particular “content” or
“matter”. This content might for example relate to ideas about what has
happened in a particular moment in time, or to the way in which that moment
is attributed to the presence of a body, where the body might be an individual
as well as a collective.
When trying to understand how the content of the “event” is produced
it is also possible to refer to the relationship between incorporeal
transformations and corporeal modifications. As was described earlier, this
relationship is enabled by the function of the order-word, which compels
“obedience” and “gives life orders”. The order-word states that things are no
longer the way they used to be and that consequently “we” too have changed.
In this way, the order-word can also be said to function as a “breaking point”,
which separates before from after, and what has been from what is to come.
This function can be linked, moreover, to the temporal order that follows the
actualization of the event, Chronos, or the time of the “living present”.
Following this temporal order, the future-past of the event is replaced by the
notion of an “event”, which marks a specific moment in time. As such, the
“event” is no longer overshadowed by doubt and uncertainty; it occupies a
more stable location in time, in relation to which it also becomes easier to
answer questions about what has happened and what is going to happen and
thereby fill the “event” with a particular content and meaning. Moreover,
implicit in this process is also the possibility to define the “event” as a
certain “type” of “event”. According to Massumi:
86
The singular is exactly what happens. Other events may follow. Its
happening may prove to have been the first in a series of occurrences
carrying what may well be considered, under systematic comparison,
the “same” accidents. These cease retrospectively to be anomalies,
becoming identifiable traits. On the basis of the shared properties lately
assigned to them, the series of occurrences can now be grouped
together as belonging to a type: a new type (a new form of content for
the propositional system’s expression). The event has passed from the
status of a singularity to that of a particular instance of a general type: a
member of a collection. Propositional systems are type-casting collector
mechanisms.75
The propositional system that Massumi refers to here can thus be linked to
the ways in which expression ceases to be the purely expressed and instead
becomes the expressed of a statement. Implicit in this process is thus a
certain formalization of expression, which amounts to sameness and identity
by assuming a direct correspondence to the content of the “event”. However,
as was explained earlier, there is neither resemblance nor conformity
between expression and content. As two different modes of dispersion,
expression and content consist of two separate forms, the articulable and the
visible, neither of which resembles the other. Their relationship is rather one
of mutual interaction, according to which one intervenes into and refigures
the other. This interaction happens, furthermore, not on the basis of what is
already present but rather on the basis of what is missing, the missing link
between expression and content.
What seems to be missing in the production of “events”, then, is the
link between the singularity of events and the notion of the “event” as an
object or a whole. Something has happened but we do not know exactly what
or how to describe it. Its singularity escapes any pre-fixed notions of a
general type of “events”. This requires a response, a form of expression that
can intervene into and thereby establish a new form of content. In this
Brian Massumi, “Introduction: Like a Thought”, in Brian Massumi (ed.), A Shock to
Thought: Expression after Deleuze and Guattari, (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 22.
75
87
context the order-word emerges as a function that seeks to bring the two
forms together and thereby establish a form of content that eventually
becomes familiar to us and that can be related to in certain ways.
Still, however, the point has to be made that the “event” cannot be
determined as such, regardless of how many attempts there are to do so.
There is no being of the “event” but only a becoming of the “event”.
Previously, this idea was developed by pointing to the processes of
actualization and counter-actualization, as well as to the ambiguity that exists
within the “double structure” of the event, between the virtual and the actual,
Aion and Chronos, the impersonal and the personal. But it is also possible to
make a similar point in relation to the social function of language, or the
formalization of content and expression. Since there will never be a complete
determination or “reterritorialization” of either content or expression, neither
of them can be said to exist as static elements of one and the same “thing”.
So, even though the order-word formalizes the relationship between content
and expression, this formalization is never final or complete, and it always
has the potential to change and take on new variations. This potential can
also be explained by pointing to the excluded middle, which is left in the gap
between content and expression, the visible and the articulable. Because this
gap is always to some extent left open there is also the potential for
something new to emerge from it. So, when thinking about the process of
formalizing the content of the “event” it is necessary to do so without
assigning the “event” a constant or static form. As a form of content, the
“event” always has the potential to change and take on new variations. This
potential can thus be explained by the excluded middle or the missing link
between content and expression, and especially by the ways in which the
form of expression has the potential to dissolve as well as transform the form
of content.
Conclusion
When thinking about the production of “events” in terms of a becoming of
the “event”, the main point is to understand the “event” in relation to
88
different processes and movements. These processes and movements have
neither a pre-determined goal nor can they be said to signify something static
or something that is already present. Hence, their aim is not to uncover
something that is hidden but rather to create and produce, drawing their
power from the singularity of the events as a force or a movement of
ungrounded difference. This movement is mainly productive, but it also has
the potential to disrupt that which has been produced. As such, the “event” is
never static or complete but always stays open to change and transformation,
constantly left with a mark of uncertainty. When thinking about the
production of “events” along these lines it is therefore important to
emphasise that the “whole” never actually exists. Rather, the “whole” can be
seen as something that
always moves to the edge or recedes infinitely into the shadows. It isn’t
an outline or boundary, but an indeterminate fringing. It is not a closure
or framing or subsumption. It is the openness of closed form, form
continually running into and out of other dimensions of existence.76
Lacking the form of a complete whole and a determinable object, the
content of the “event” always remains open to some extent. Hence, there is
always the potential for a new form of expression to intervene, thereby
refiguring the form of its content in a new way. How this plays out might
vary from case to case, depending on what happens in the production of a
particular “event”. So, in order to see how this could play out I will return in
the next two chapters to the example of “9/11” as an “event”, in order to
examine how this “event” is produced and what kinds of lines, processes and
movements condition it.
76
Massumi, Parables for the Virtual, p. 174-5.
89