Ohad Zehavi
What is a Logical Novel? The Import of Literature to Deleuze's Philosophy
Being a philosopher, Deleuze's preoccupation with literature is philosophical in nature. An inquiry into
Deleuze's approach towards literature could start in The Logic of Sense, one of his two seminal
philosophical essays (together with Difference and Repetition), a notion reinforced by the fact that The
Logic of Sense, as Deleuze proclaims in its preface, is an attempt to write a logical (and
psychoanalytical) novel, thus binding philosophy and literature inextricably. And indeed, this
philosophical treatise is abundant with literary references; in fact, it draws as much on Lewis Carroll as
it does on Greek Philosophy. This is not merely a fanciful device: it attests to the crucial role played by
literature in Deleuze's philosophy, a role that cuts across all his major works. In order to fully grasp
Deleuze's unique approach towards literature, one must attend to the implications of Deleuze's literary
readings for his philosophy, best exemplified in The Logic of Sense.
The great import of literature to Deleuze's philosophy relies on the key role language plays in Deleuze's
ontology. Conventionally, language designates objects, manifests subjects, and signifies with concepts,
hence constituting the actual world governed by common sense. But there is a fourth dimension to
language: an incorporeal entity that subsists in the interface of words and things, a surface effect –
Sense, or Event, a veritable becoming escaping the sedentary beings of ordinary language. Great
literature allows Deleuze's philosophy to flee common sense in which propositional language is
entangled, leading to an encounter with visions and auditions at the edge of language, singular events
of becoming.
Deleuze finds in great literature a twofold movement, two coexisting and inseparable moments: a
stutter, causing linguistic catastrophe, and a composition, an assemblage of the elements of a shattered
language – resulting in what might be termed a "composed stutter", an assembled chaos. This
technique, found only in select pieces of prose, breaks with the representational character of language,
embedded in its three static dimensions, rendering present its fourth dimension, the potential becoming
persisting on the surface of words and things. In The Logic of Sense Deleuze follows Lewis Carroll's
portmanteau words to encounter a becoming-little-girl. In a similar manner, he follows Herman
Melville's "portmanteau construction" – which is Bartleby's unique linguistic formula, his "composed
stutter" – to encounter another singular event. This method can equally be applied to Kafka's "minor
literature" and to other literary readings, leading to ever more encounters with potential instances of
becoming.
The proposed model for understanding Deleuze's treatment of literature differs from Jean-Jacques
Lecercle's and Ronald Bogue's writings on this subject on substantial grounds. Both writers downplay
the key place of The Logic of Sense in Deleuze's oeuvre, thereby missing an indispensable piece in the
Deleuzean puzzle. A meaningful account of the unique relation between philosophy and literature in
Deleuze's writing must address the twofold nature of his readings of fiction, extracting from it a
"composed stutter" that is vital to his ontological quest.