1
Questioning the limits of representation
This changes everything. We essentially have been attacked at
home. This will affect everything we do. We are changed
forever.1
The world has changed now out of all recognition because of
this.2
We’ve witnessed a turn in history, and in the way the United
States will look at the world for a long time to come.3
September 11, 2001 will always be a fixed point in the life of
America.4
According to what seems to have become a dominant view, “9/11”
represents an “event” that has somehow changed the world. As such, it can
be seen as a central reference point in time, which separates “before” from
“after”, and “what is to come” from “what has been”. Implicit in this view is
also often a call for a new way of thinking and reasoning. Everything has
Senator Chuck Hagel, in Tony Locy, “‘I Can’t Describe It. It Was Horrible’: Eyewitnesses
to Horror Left Grasping for Words after Attacks from the Air”, USA TODAY, September 12,
2001.
2
Lord Robertson, NATO Secretary General, in Stephen Castle, “Robertson: World Changed
Out of All Recognition”, The Independent, September 14, 2001.
3
Morton Abramowitz, in David Von Drehle, “World War, Cold War Won. Now, the Gray
War”, The Washington Post, September 12, 2001.
4
George W. Bush, “President’s Remarks to the Nation”, September 11, 2002, available at:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020911-3.html, accessed on July 14,
2007.
1
12
changed and no longer can traditional approaches to the order of things be
applied. Different threats are emanating; different fears must be dealt with; a
different war has to be waged; a different form of security is emerging; a
different role of the sovereign state; a different take on the geopolitical map
is necessary. But it also suggests that “we” have changed, and that the United
States has changed because of this. So much has changed and all of it seems
to come down to this “thing”, the “thing” as the “event”, and the “event” as
“9/11”.
However, the question of what this supposed “event” really means and
what it actually refers to can in many ways be seen as highly ambiguous. Is it
the idea of having been attacked “at home” that provides the main content of
this “event”? Is it an “act of war”? Is it images of people jumping out of the
windows from the World Trade Centre? Or is it the experience of running
away from the burning Twin Towers and the Pentagon building? An endless
list of examples could be added to these. And the question is how all of those
examples can be translated into one single and coherent “event”. In other
words, what is it that makes the idea of “9/11” or “September 11” as an
“event” possible in the first place?
One way of addressing this question would be to point to the idea of
representation, and specifically the idea of re-presenting what has happened.
According to this view, “9/11” can be understood as a sign or a symbol,
referring to something specific that has happened in a particular moment in
time. As such, this sign can also be said to provide a common denominator to
which various aspects of what has happened are linked. As a sign or a
symbol, “9/11” represents the unity of what has happened, incorporating
everything into the notion of one single “event” or a coherent whole, which
functions as a starting point for something to come as well as a breaking
point that separates what is to come from what has been.
At the same time, however, the idea of representing what has happened
along these lines can also be seen as highly problematic. For example, how
can it be assumed that the reality of what has happened, whatever it might be,
can be represented by simply referring to the “event”, or to the date of
13
“September 11, 2001”? How can the meaning of this reality, its place in time,
its beginning and end, and its role in a wider context be determined by trying
to place everything within this kind of unity or whole? And how can all the
possible dimensions and aspects of what has happened be mediated or represented in this way? On the basis of these questions it could be argued that
the very idea of representation, and the assumptions underlying this idea
require a more thorough and critical examination. How can representation be
understood as a method for determining the meaning of things? What is the
relationship between representation and general claims about knowledge?
And what are the potential problems and limits posed by representation? The
aim of this chapter is to address these questions. And the overall objective of
doing so, then, is to question the adequacy of relying on a representational
mode of thinking when trying to understand ideas about the “event”.
Moreover, by questioning representation the aim is also to explore the
possibility of thinking “outside” representation, and to see what the
implications of doing so might be for thinking about the “event”.
The chapter is divided into two main parts. The first part looks at how
the idea of representation and its underlying assumptions can be analysed as
well as criticised. The starting point for doing so will be the work of Claire
Colebrook, which considers the emergence of representation as a
philosophical idea but also different attempts to challenge it. According to
Colebrook, whereas the emergence of representation can be traced back to
the onset of modernity, and to the work of philosophers such as Descartes
and Kant, the main critiques and challenges to representation can be found in
the work of philosophers such as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and
Gilles Deleuze, often associated with poststructuralist philosophy. In order to
examine these critiques in more detail the first part of the chapter will also
look at how the respective work of Derrida, Foucault and Deleuze set out to
criticise the philosophical idea of representation.
Whilst poststructuralist philosophy implies a strong challenge to the
idea of representation it can also, according to Colebrook, be said to open up
space for alternative modes of thinking. In the second part of the chapter I
14
will turn to Deleuze’s philosophy in order to see how one such alternative
mode of thinking is articulated and developed. And I will do this by focusing
on
how
Deleuze’s
concepts
of
“difference”,
“multiplicity”
and
“transcendental empiricism” seek to overcome the limits of representation.
On that basis, I will then return to the problem of how to understand ideas
about “9/11” as an “event” in the conclusion.
1.1 A critical analysis of representation
According to Colebrook, the emergence of representation can also be said to
constitute the “threshold of modernity”. 5 As such, representation has two
main aspects or dimensions, one political and one epistemological.
According to the first, representation can be linked to a notion of “selfrepresentation”, which emphasises the need to represent oneself as well as to
be re-presented in order to have an identity, gain recognition, autonomy and
self-determination. The subject, in this sense, needs to be represented in
order to become a “political” subject, since there is nothing that grants it the
status of being a part of a political community unless it is in one way or
another represented.6 According to Colebrook, this idea of representation can
be linked more specifically to the ideals of the enlightenment and to the ways
in which those ideals sought to free the “human” from notions of a “divine
law, ancient right, tradition or heavenly fiat”. 7 The problem with such
notions was that they assumed rights and laws as given outside of human
interaction, which meant that they had to be constituted externally to “man”.
Against such a view, the enlightenment thinkers argued that rights and laws
must emanate from “man’s” ability to represent himself.
If laws are not given externally to individuals, the latter must have the
responsibility as well as the freedom to use their rational capacity in order to
determine the laws. 8 For this reason, the idea of “man” being able to
5
Claire Colebrook, Philosophy and Post-structuralist Theory: From Kant to Deleuze,
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), p. 1.
6
Claire Colebrook, “Questioning Representation”, SubStance, 29 (2), 2000, p. 51.
7
Colebrook, Philosophy and Post-structuralist Theory, p. 3.
8
Ibid., p. 8.
15
represent himself comes down to a view of individuals (“men”) as
autonomous, rational and responsible beings. As such, they are assumed to
have the freedom and right to represent themselves rather than just being
represented. And it is also on the basis of this assumption that the idea of
“representative democracy” becomes so important:
The inextricably intertwined motifs of autonomy and representation are
the promise of modernity. Man becomes autonomous when he
recognises that all external injunctions are human representations; and
democratic representation is possible only for an autonomous self.
Further, subjects become autonomous selves, and institute their
autonomy, through democratic representation.9
What makes this idea of representation particularly “modern”,
according to Colebrook, is the explicit notion of an autonomous subject,
which is also what takes us to the second, epistemological, aspect of
representation. In brief, this aspect can be linked to the assumption that
knowledge only can be given through the subject’s ability to represent the
“world”. Consequently, there is no meaning of the world “in itself”, which is
somehow directly given. The only way it is possible to know something
about the world is through representation. This idea of representation, as a
primary condition for knowledge, has strong connections with Kant’s
philosophy, in relation to which Colebrook makes the following observation:
It makes no sense to claim to know a pre-conceptual world in itself that
would ground our judgments. Any such world in itself would only be
known through our concepts. Knowledge and judgement must
recognize representation as an essential condition. Rather than
regarding our judgements about the world as justifiable by appealing to
some pre-representational real, we have to accept the finitude of our
knowledge.10
9
Ibid., p. 9.
Colebrook, “Questioning Representation”, p. 52.
10
16
In Kant’s philosophy, the finitude of our knowledge suggests that the world
cannot be immediately experienced, and consequently that it cannot be
immediately known. Experience is not related to the thing “in itself”, or the
“world”; it is only related to particular objects, which are given to a
particular point of view. The knowledge of these objects, therefore, has to be
based on a form of experience that is directly linked to a point of view. And
according to Kant this is made possible by the “ordering and unifying power
of the subject”. 11 Hence, it is through this unifying power, i.e. the
representing subject that objects of experience can linked to a process of
representation. Only in that way is it possible to create a basic condition for
knowledge, which consists of representation as a ground for determining the
meaning of things. In this way, representation can also be said to constitute
the necessary limits for knowledge:
Representation marks a limit, a point beyond which knowledge cannot
go: a recognition of the point of view of knowledge. For knowledge’s
very possibility lies in perspective, point of view, position and finitude:
the necessary consequence of the fact that if thought is to know some
thing then it must be placed in a position in relation to that thing.
Because knowledge relates to what is other than itself, it is situated in a
relation, such that what it knows is not immediately present but must be
re-presented.12
Knowledge is thus never immediately given; it always has to be given to a
point of view and through the process of representation. The primary
condition for the possibility of knowledge, therefore, is the very act of
representation, which is performed by the subject. In this way, as Colebrook
notes, the “subject describes nothing other than the way in which the world is
given”.13 In other words, the subject does not refer to a pre-given substance
11
Colebrook, Philosophy and Post-structuralist Theory, p. 28.
Ibid., p. 2.
13
Ibid., p. 208.
12
17
or being in the world but only to the very condition for determining the
content and meaning of things in the world. The subject, in this sense, has to
be separated from externally existing objects because of its unique capacity
to represent those objects.
According to Colebrook, the idea of an independent subject can also be
seen as one of the main problems with representation. For if representation
constitutes a primary condition for knowledge it then follows that the subject
itself must be regarded as an integral part of representation, not as an
independently existing entity, but rather as an effect. However, rather than
seeing it as an effect, representation places the subject at the centre of
discourse, as a ground or a foundation for making knowledge claims as well
as generalizations. The paradox of this underlying assumption is something
that Colebrook refers to as the “error of anthropologism”:
To take what is as a representation is to recognise thought’s
contribution to the world: the world is never given in itself, but as given
is always given in a certain way or according to a logic. To place this
logic within the subject is the error of anthropologism: taking a
particular being or a part of the world as the ground for the world in
general.14
This idea of the subject’s role in representation is also what constitutes a
common point of departure for various critiques of representation. Colebrook
discusses different kinds of critiques in this context. There are, however,
three philosophers that she mainly focuses on: Derrida, Foucault and Deleuze.
Even though their ideas in many ways differ from one another, they can all
be said to share a critical engagement with representation. And for
Colebrook, this engagement is mainly characterised by the critique of origins
and foundations that is often expressed by pointing to the ways in which
representation “comes to stand in for some grounding logic or condition”.15
In order to explain this critique in more detail, and why the idea of
14
15
Ibid., p. 248.
Colebrook, “Questioning Representation”, p. 48.
18
“grounding” should be seen as a problem, I will now look at how Derrida,
Foucault and Deleuze deal with the question of representation respectively.
Derrida: representation and the “metaphysics of presence”
Derrida’s critique of representation focuses to a large extent on the role of
“difference” in representation. In Derrida’s philosophy this includes the
articulation of a (quasi)concept, which he calls différance. According to
Derrida, différance is “neither a word nor a concept”.16 As such it does not
possess a pre-determined content or meaning, and it has “neither existence
nor essence. It derives from no category of being, whether present or
absent.” 17 Hence, Différance does not function in order to represent the
meaning of objects through language, but can rather be said to offer a way to
“account for the active production of language and discourse”.18
To understand the production of language and discourse it is useful to
first look at Derrida’s critique of the work of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de
Saussure. According to Saussure, the role of language can be understood by
the different ways a “signifier” is used to denote a “signified”. While the
signifier stands for the sound-image, the signified is the concept or the idea.19
On this basis, Saussure develops the concept of the “sign”, which he uses in
order to bring the signifier and signified together. And whilst Derrida
recognises the importance of introducing the different elements of the
signifier and the signified, he clearly rejects the introduction of the sign as a
way of bringing them together.20 According to Derrida, this move is deeply
embedded in the tradition of “western metaphysics”, according to which the
aim is to uncover the true meaning of things “outside” language and
discourse. In Saussure’s writing this happens, according to Derrida, by
giving the signified an essentialist quality, as “a concept signified in and of
itself, a concept simply present for thought, independent of a relationship to
Jacques Derrida, “Différance”, in Margins of Philosophy, translated by Alan Bass,
(Brighton: Harvester Press, 1982), p. 3.
17
Ibid., p. 6.
18
David Howarth, Discourse, (Buckingham: Open University Press, 2000), p. 40.
19
Ibid., p. 19.
20
Jacques Derrida, Positions, translated by Alan Bass, (London: Continuum, 2002), p. 19.
16
19
language, that is of a relationship to a system of signifiers”.21 In this way,
Saussure has to assume that there is a reality outside language, which can be
represented by the sign. The implication of this assumption, according to
Derrida, is that the sign becomes yet another metaphysical concept, which
relies on the presence of a “transcendental signified”. 22 But this begs the
question of where the meaning of the signified is supposed to come from in
the first place and how it can be represented. For Derrida, however, there can
be no satisfactory answer to this question, simply because the signified
concept “is never present in and of itself, in a sufficient presence that would
refer only to itself. Essentially and lawfully, every concept is inscribed in a
chain or in a system within which it refers to other concepts, by means of the
systematic play of differences.”23
According to Derrida, then, there is no essential meaning of the
signified that somehow can be discerned through the signifier. There is only
a “play of differences”, which produces different effects of relating the
signifier to the signified. Crucially, within this play of differences, there is no
meaning as such, neither present nor absent. According to Derrida, “nothing,
neither among the elements nor within the system, is anywhere ever simply
present or absent. There are only, everywhere, differences and traces of
traces.”24 And this is also what the quasi-concept of différance refers to: a
play of differences that consists of “traces of traces”, with no original content
or meaning.
Moreover, Différance can be said to consist of two different elements
or forces: “spacing” or “differing” and “temporization” or “deferring”. 25
These elements imply that there is no “being-presence” of things, which then
can be re-presented. There is only a “differing” and “deferring” of presence,
which means that any attempt to unite the signifier and the signified through
the metaphysical concept of the sign is ultimately impossible. It is impossible
21
Ibid., p. 19.
Ibid., p. 19.
23
Derrida, “Différance”, p. 11.
24
Derrida, Positions, p. 26.
25
Derrida, “Différance”, p. 18.
22
20
because there will always be a differing and deferring of presence in the
process of signification, which means that the metaphysical concept of the
sign only can be used to represent that which is present in its absence.
According to Derrida:
The sign is usually said to be put in the place of the thing itself, the
present thing, “thing” here standing equally for meaning or referent.
The thing represents the present in its absence. It takes the place of the
present. When we cannot grasp or show the thing, state the present, the
being-present, when the present cannot be presented, we signify, we go
through the detour of the sign. (…) The sign, in this sense, is deferred
presence.26
The “present” can thus only be said to exist on the basis of a metaphysical
assumption, which itself lacks a foundation. Hence, instead of referring to a
“real” or “pure” presence, Derrida argues that it is only possible to refer to a
“metaphysics of presence”, which symbolises an “irrepressible desire” for
the presence of a signified.27
In order to get away from this notion of presence, Derrida argues that
rather than constantly trying to anchor the true meaning of things in language
we have to accept the constantly misplaced meaning of things. And this can
also be seen as one of the main purposes of différance, as it seeks to maintain
“our relationship with that which we necessarily misconstrue, and which
exceeds the alternative of presence and absence”.28
One of the main implications of this view, it can be argued, is that the
presence and absence of meaning have to be regarded as nothing but effects
of différance.29 In other words, they have to be regarded as effects of the play
of differences, or the differing and deferring of presence. One such effect is
the subject, or the idea of a “being” of the subject. According to Derrida, the
26
Derrida, Ibid., p. 9.
Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, (Baltimore:
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), p. 49.
28
Ibid., p. 20.
29
Derrida, “Différance”, p. 21.
27
21
subject is never present as such; it rather “depends upon the system of
differences and the movement of différance”, which means that it “is
constituted only in being divided from itself, in becoming space, in
temporizing, in deferral”. 30 Consequently, there can be no subject, which
then functions as the true origin for representation. The subject is only an
effect of the play of difference, or the differing and deferral of presence.
Following Caroline Williams, “the concept of effect signals an opening up, a
deconstruction, of all causality to difference; it produces differential relations,
multiple effects”. 31 These multiple effects can, yet again, be explained by
différance as a play of differences, which always lacks formal differences
between already established “things”. Referring to the play of differences, of
traces of traces, of signifiers without a signified – différance highlights the
very impossibility of establishing a ground or foundation for meaning:
There is no essence of différance; it (is) that which not only could never
be appropriated in the as such of its name or its appearing, but also that
which threatens the authority of the as such in general, of the presence
of the thing itself in its essence. That there is not a proper essence of
différance at this point, implies that there is neither a Being nor truth of
the play of writing such as it engages différance.32
So, rather than trying to provide a foundation for the subject, Derrida shows
how the subject is perpetually deconstructed, as an effect of différance.
Hence, the subject should never be conceived of outside the “play of
différance”, which also means that it cannot function as a metaphysical
ground or foundation for meaning.33 Meaning is always constituted through
the production of language and discourse, as an effect of différance and the
play of differences, never by an independently existing subject.
30
Derrida, Positions, p. 29.
Caroline Williams, Contemporary French Philosophy: Modernity and the Persistence of
the Subject, (London: Continuum, 2001), p. 133.
32
Derrida, “Différance”, p. 26.
33
Ibid., p. 11.
31
22
Foucault: representation and the emergence of “man”
In a similar way to Derrida, Foucault criticises the idea of a transcendent
ground for representation. In Foucault’s work, this critique emerges from his
analysis of modernity, and specifically the creation of “man” as a contingent
solution to the problem of truth at the end of the 18th century. According to
Foucault, this period involved a shift in the role of language, a shift that
marked a break between the classical age and modernity. In brief, this break
can be understood in relation to the problem of relating “words” to “things”,
which, according to Colebrook, also can be seen as the main focus of
analysis in Foucault’s book The Order of Things, or Les mots et les choses,
which literally means “Words and Things”. As Colebrook notes, “this,
alongside the English title, raises the question of the relation (the ‘and’ or
‘order’) between words and things”.34
According to Foucault, the relation between words and things
constitutes as a philosophical problem, to which there have been different
ways of responding in different historical contexts. In the classical age, for
example, Foucault notes that the role of language was mainly active, and that
words were assumed to have a direct correspondence to things:
As long as language was defined as discourse it could have no other
history than that of its representations: if ideas, things, knowledge, or
feelings happened to change, then and only then did a given language
undergo modification, and in exactly the same proportion as the
changes in question.35
In this context, Williams notes that “the role of language is to articulate,
reveal and seek out similitude in the order of words and things”. 36 In the
classical age language was thus primarily used to unite differences, by
inscribing an order of discourse that amounted to sameness and identity.
34
Colebrook, Philosophy and Post-structuralist Theory, p. 163.
Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, (London:
Routledge, 2002), p. 256.
36
Williams, Contemporary French Philosophy, p. 161.
35
23
However, this symbiotic relationship between words and things began to fall
apart towards the end of the 18th century. And the main reason behind this
change, according to Foucault, was the increasing complexity of the objects
of knowledge that no longer could be accommodated within the dominant
Western episteme. Foucault refers here explicitly to “labour, life, language”
as the main examples of objects that were undergoing this transformation and
that consequently started to move beyond the scope of immediate
representation.37 The outcome of this transformation was that the relationship
between words and things began to crack, or more specifically that the
objects suddenly were placed beyond the reach of words. As Foucault
explains:
The space of order, which served as a common place for representation
and for things, for empirical visibility and for the essential rules, which
united the regularities of nature and the resemblances of imagination in
the grid of identities and differences, which displayed the empirical
sequence of representations in a simultaneous table, and made it
possible to scan step by step, in accordance with a logical sequence, the
totality of nature’s elements thus rendered contemporaneous with one
another – this space of order is from now on shattered: there will be
things … and then representation, a purely temporal succession, in
which those things address themselves (always partially) to a
subjectivity, a consciousness, a singular effort of cognition, to the
‘psychological’ individual who from the depth of his own history, or on
the basis of the tradition handed on to him, is trying to know.
Representation is in the process of losing its power to define the mode
of being common to things and to knowledge. The very being of that
which is represented is now going to fall outside representation itself.38
Despite the transformation of objects, and despite initially being placed
outside language and beyond an immediate relationship with words, the new
37
38
See Foucault, The Order of Things, chapter 8.
Ibid., p. 260.
24
objects were eventually seen as a new “element” that was “introduced into
the analysis of language”. 39 In this way, instead of being excluded from
language, the new objects changed the very function of language. According
to this change, words could still be used to reflect the meaning and order of
things. However, the way in which they did so was not through an immediate
or symbiotic relationship with things, but rather by being determined by
“man” as a transcendent subject. According to Foucault’s analysis, “man”
was thus invented in order to provide an origin of thought, from which it was
then possible to transcend as well as represent the true meaning and order of
things.
It is important to point out, then, that the idea of “man” as a
transcendent subject is not something that has always existed. It can rather be
understood as “a quite recent creature”, which emerged towards the end of
the 18th century. 40 For this reason it also has to be noted that the idea of
“man” should not be seen as external to the historical context in which it is
produced.41 Nor should “man’s” position be seen as external to the discourse
“he” is assumed to master. Rather, “man” as a transcendent subject has to be
understood as an effect of this discourse, an effect that nevertheless might
acquire the role of a subject. In order to analyse this role it is therefore
important to begin by getting “rid of the subject itself”, as well as to
problematise and question rather than just assume the existence of an
essentialist subject as the natural ground for language and representation.42
Moreover, the important task following this problematisation is to examine
the discursive practices that constitute the subject as a ground. According to
Foucault:
If there is one approach that I do reject, however, it is that (one might
call it, broadly speaking, the phenomenological approach) which gives
absolute priority to the observing subject, which attributes a constituent
39
Ibid., p. 256.
Ibid., p. 336.
41
Ibid., p. 265.
42
Michel Foucault, “Truth and Power”, in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other
Writings, edited by Colin Gordon, (Essex: Harvester Press, 1980), p. 117.
40
25
role to the act, which places its own point of view at the origin of all
historicity – which, in short, leads to a transcendental consciousness. It
seems to me that the historical analysis of scientific discourse should, in
the last resort, be subject, not to a theory of the knowing subject, but
rather to a theory of discursive practice.43
Following this critique of the subject, Foucault also criticises the idea of a
metaphysical outside reality. In the same way as “man” is not external to the
discourse “he” is assumed to master, “things” never correspond to a reality
that is outside discourse. Rather, things always have to be understood as
immanent to the “discursive practices” that produce the specific relations
between “words” and “things”. Foucault thus argues (in a similar way to
Derrida) that the dualistic form of representation as a method for determining
the true meaning of things is deeply problematic. It is problematic because it
has to rely upon the idea of separating between subjects and objects as
independent and pre-established entities. But instead of seeing them as
independent, Foucault’s analysis shows how subjects and objects can be
viewed as mutually constituted, or how they are produced by discursive
practices in different historical contexts.
Deleuze: representation as illusion
According to Deleuze, one way to understand the logic of representation is
by looking at how conceptions of the “general” relate to ideas about the
“particular”, or how generalisations are made on the basis of particular
cases.
44
The connection between generalities (or general laws) and
particulars relies on the assumptions of “resemblance” and “equivalence”,
which render the possibility of examining particular cases by referring to
43
Foucault, The Order of Things, p. xv.
Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, translated by Paul Patton, (London: Continuum,
2004), p. 44.
44
26
their correlative resemblances and status of equivalence under the horizon of
general laws.45
According to Deleuze, by thinking in terms of generalities and
particulars most philosophical ideas can be said to operate within the limits
of representation. Consequently, it is mainly within those limits that concepts
of philosophical discourse are deployed. One such concept, which is central
to Deleuze’s philosophy, is “difference”. In one sense, Deleuze’s
philosophical project is focused on rethinking the concept of difference. But
it also includes a critique of how the concept of difference traditionally has
been used. This critique focuses mainly on how difference tends to be used
in order to represent differences between particular cases of perception, as
well as to make comparisons between those cases. This happens, for example,
by pointing to analogies and resemblances:
As a concept of reflection, difference testifies to its full submission to
all the requirements of representation, which becomes thereby “organic
representation”. In the concept of reflection, mediating and mediated
difference is in effect fully subject to the identity of the concept, the
opposition of predicates, the analogy of judgement and the resemblance
of perception.46
By tying difference to resemblance and analogy its role or function becomes
subordinated to the principle of identity. However, according to Deleuze, this
subordination can only lead to a world of representation, which is based on
nothing but a pure illusion. More specifically, Deleuze refers to this as a
“transcendental illusion”, which means that it relies upon the assumption of
an ontological being that grounds knowledge in relation to a metaphysical
notion of an outside reality:
A good example of this can be found in the philosophical idea of the “moral law”, a
universal law that is established by generalising particular cases on the basis of their
resemblances and equivalences. Ibid., p. 5.
46
Ibid., p. 44.
45
27
Representation is a site of transcendental illusion. This illusion comes
in several forms, four interrelated forms which correspond particularly
to thought, sensibility, the Idea and being. In effect, thought is covered
over by an ‘image’ made up of postulates which distort both its
operation and its genesis. These postulates culminate in the position of
an identical thinking subject, which functions as a principle of identity
for concepts in general.47
Two central themes in Deleuze’s critique of representation can be found here.
The first is what Deleuze refers to as an “identical thinking subject” and the
second is the notion of “identity for concepts”. According to Deleuze, both
of these themes are crucial for understanding representation as a site of
“transcendental illusion”. Specifically, they are crucial for understanding
how the “different” and “disparate” are reduced to mere notions of sameness,
resemblance and common sense. Following such notions, difference has to
be cancelled in favour of a superior form of identity, in relation to which
difference is treated as something that can be qualitatively known. However,
according to Deleuze, difference can never be known as such, which is why
the idea of subordinating it to identity also has to be regarded as deeply
problematic. It is problematic because in order to determine the meaning of
difference, and to make it conform to the requirements of representation, it is
unavoidable to submit thought to some kind of illusory ground.
One such illusory ground relates to the notion of a pre-established
subject who is capable of transcending and representing the meaning of
objects in accordance with an external reality. An example of this notion can
be found in René Descartes’ philosophical statement: “I think, therefore I
am”, which seeks to establish an ontological foundation in the form of a
thinking subject.48 In doing so, there is also an attempt to represent particular
cases, and to make them conform to a general law by positioning an
ontological being of the subject as an ultimate ground or foundation. But
according to Deleuze, the idea of such a ground or foundation should be seen
47
48
Ibid., p. 334.
Ibid., p. 164.
28
as highly problematic; partly because it tries to generalise what it means to
think and what it means to know: “It is because everybody naturally thinks
that everybody is supposed to know implicitly what it means to think.”49
Instead of taking such a generalisation as given, Deleuze problematises
it by pointing to the way in which the thinking subject is placed outside the
world, whilst at the same time having the capacity to make truth claims
about the world. According to Deleuze, this idea is enabled by a particular
“Image of thought”, which seeks to provide an essentialist ground for
knowledge by assuming a “pre-philosophical” element of “common sense”:
Postulates in philosophy are not propositions the acceptance of which
the philosopher demands; but, on the contrary, propositional themes
which remain implicit and are understood in a pre-philosophical manner.
In this sense, conceptual philosophical thought has as its implicit
presupposition a pre-philosophical and natural Image of thought,
borrowed from the pure element of common sense. According to this
image, thought has an affinity with the true; it formally possesses the
true and materially wants the true. It is in terms of this image that
everybody knows and is presumed to know what it means to think.50
According to Deleuze, the very logic of representation relies upon a
traditional image of thought, which despite lacking a foundation functions as
a general ground for thought and knowledge. As such, this ground plays a
crucial role in philosophical discourse, and it provides the basis for
separating the subject from externally existing objects. In doing so, this
ground can also be seen as the basis for thinking in terms of universality:
“The classical image of thought, and the striating of mental space it effects,
aspires to universality. It in effect operates with two ‘universals,’ the Whole
as the final ground of being or all-encompassing horizon, and the Subject as
49
50
Ibid., p. 166.
Ibid., p. 167.
29
the principle that converts being into being-for-us.”51 Following this classical
image of thought it is for example assumed that a relationship between the
subject’s perception and the concepts that are used to describe the objects of
perception can be established, which means that representation is based on
the authority of the subject to determine the correspondence between objects
and concepts:
With representation, concepts are like possibilities, but the subject of
representation still determines the object as really conforming to the
concept, as an essence. That is why representation as a whole is the
element of knowledge which is realised by the recollection of the
thought object and its recognition by a thinking subject. 52
In this way, representation requires the notion of a thinking subject, which
functions as the ground for making truth claims about the meaning of objects.
The notion of a thinking subject must therefore be presupposed in
representation, as must the separation between the subject and an external
world. Representation, in this sense, is always “equivocal”, which means that
it consists of two separate planes: the thinking subject and the outside
world. 53 As Colebrook explains: “transcendence is equivocal: positing a
being that is – the outside world – and a being that knows or represents –
mind or ‘man’.” 54 The latter thus functions as a ground for the former,
enabling “man” to transcend an outside world in order to represent the
meaning of particular objects. But the question, then, is how such a
distinction is made possible in the first place, and how the hierarchical
relationship between “man” and the world or mind and matter can be
explained. For Deleuze, the answer to these questions cannot be found in a
search for origins or foundations. Rather, they require a more radical
51
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia,
translated by Brian Massumi, (London: Continuum, 2004), p. 418.
52
Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, p. 240.
53
Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, translated by Mark Lester, edited by Constantin V.
Boundas, (London: Continuum, 2004), p. 288.
54
Claire Colebrook, Gilles Deleuze, (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 95.
30
approach to thought and experience, according to which the separation
between the subject and the world, and the hierarchical relationship between
mind and matter have to be understood in terms of a production. Later in this
chapter we shall see exactly what this approach to thought and experience
implies, and how it can be used to challenge the limits of representation in
order to think about the “event”. Suffice it to say here that Deleuze clearly
rejects the equivocal and dualistic form of representation, which he sees as
nothing but a pure illusion that relies upon a ground that ultimately lacks a
foundation.
Beyond representation?
Derrida, Foucault and Deleuze can all be said to provide critiques of
representation. And despite the differences between their critiques they all
share the view of representation as something that necessarily has to rely
upon that which is absent: a pure presence, the signified, an autonomous
subject, etc. Representation is thus criticised for lacking an ultimate ground
or foundation upon which it nevertheless seeks to determine the true meaning
and order of things. On the basis of this critique, an important question is
whether we are stuck in the representational paradigm, or whether it might
also be possible to think outside or beyond it. According to Colebrook, the
poststructuralist critique of representation can indeed be said to imply
another mode of thinking, which is evident by the ways in which this critique
often issues in an apocalyptic or utopian projection of a point beyond
representation, a radical homelessness in which thought no longer
locates itself within a totality, logic or scheme. And this freedom from
grounding or totality would also overcome a sense of the world as being
or presence, in favour of a continual becoming, effect, or non-presence.
Against the location of thought within the point of view of a
representing subject, this anti-representationalism strives to think
beyond all subjectivism.55
55
Colebrook, “Questioning Representation”, pp. 48-9.
31
According to Colebrook, the idea of thinking “beyond all subjectivism”
can also be found in the critiques of representation offered by Derrida,
Foucault and Deleuze. Following those critiques, the point is not to analyse
representation from a representational point of view but rather from a
position that itself can be located outside representation. In Derrida’s work,
for example, there is the (quasi)concept of différence as the free play of
differences. And in Foucault’s work, there is the notion of power relations as
something that cannot be represented but is rather “active, ungrounded and
multiple”.56
However, it is in Deleuze’s philosophy that the most explicit attempt to
think outside representation can be found. This attempt relates specifically to
his concept of “transcendental empiricism”, which highlights the role of
different processes and movements, of for example thought, sense and
experience, which are located beyond the level of subjects and objects, and
independently of the ways in which subjects and objects tend to be separated
from one another. These processes and movements can also be linked to a
“plane of immanence”, which refers to a pure flow of life and experience that
lacks any direct correspondence to a transcendent point of view. As such,
this plane constitutes a starting point from which it is then possible to see the
emergence and production of something new:
All processes take place on the plane of immanence, and within a given
multiplicity:
unification,
subjectifications,
rationalizations,
centralizations have no special status; they often amount to an impasse
or closing off that prevents the multiplicity’s growth, the extension and
unfolding of its lines, the production of something new.57
The plane of immanence thus seems to offer a way of thinking about
productions or constructions, not of concrete “things” but rather of what
56
Colebrook, Philosophy and Post-structuralist Theory, p. 165.
Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations: 1972-1990, translated by Martin Joughin, (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1995), p. 146.
57
32
Deleuze refers to as “multiplicity”, which is the “real element in which
things happen”.58 And even though there will always be different attempts to
unify and rationalise things and thereby prevent the lines of a multiplicity
from unfolding these attempts will never result in independently existing
“things”, or in something transcendent that has been released from the plane
of immanence. According to Deleuze, “there’s nothing transcendent, no
Unity, subject (or object), Reason; there are only processes, sometimes
unifying, subjectifying, rationalizing, but just processes all the same”.59
Deleuze’s insistent focus on processes can also be seen as particularly
useful when trying to think further about the “event”, especially if the
purpose of doing so is to challenge the notion of “events” as independently
existing objects that exist in a fixed moment in time. However, this does not
mean that for example Foucault’s concept of power relations is not useful
when thinking about “events”. In fact, there might be very good reasons to
look more closely at this concept later on in the thesis. And in a similar way,
it can be argued that Derrida also offers an interesting way of thinking about
that which happens outside the representational realm. In relation to the idea
of signification, for example, Derrida develops the concept of force, which
does not stem from language itself but rather expresses the “other of
language”.60 However, even though this dimension can be found in Derrida’s
philosophy, it seems to me that it does not figure to the same extent or at
least not as explicitly as in Deleuze’s work. In this way, there appears to be a
limit in how far Derrida goes in trying to conceptualize the “other of
language”, in terms of for example experience and thought. Again, this is
precisely why Deleuze’s philosophy can be seen as so interesting, because it
offers a richer and more thorough alternative to articulate a dimension
“outside” language and representation, not just in terms of an abstract force,
58
Ibid., p. 146.
Ibid., p. 145.
60
Jacques Derrida, “Force and Signification”, in Writing and Difference, translated by Alan
Bass, (London: Routledge, 2001). For a further discussion on the similarities between
Derrida’s and Deleuze’s respective approach to language, see Alan Bourassa, “Literature,
Language, and the Non-Human”, in Brian Massumi (ed.), A Shock to Thought: Expression
after Deleuze and Guattari, (London: Routledge, 2002).
59
33
but more concretely in terms of what really happens there. In the remainder
of this chapter I hope to make this point clearer by looking at Deleuze’s
concepts of “difference”, “multiplicity” and “transcendental empiricism”.
1.2 Deleuze’s empiricism and philosophy difference
In order to explain Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism and its implications
for thinking about the “event” it is first necessary to examine in more detail
his critique of representation. Specifically, what needs to be examined is how
this critique also involves an attempt to rethink some of the concepts that
representation relies upon. As we saw in the previous section, one of these
concepts is “difference”. Here, then, I will look at how Deleuze develops his
own concept of difference and how this concept also can be linked to
Deleuze’s “transcendental empiricism”.
Difference and multiplicity
Going back to Deleuze’s critique of representation, it can be argued that one
of the main aims of this critique is to free thought from the illusion of
transcendence, which Deleuze sees as inherent in representation. For Deleuze,
as long as thinking takes place within a world of representation there will
always be limits imposed on thought, limits that are constituted by a
traditional “Image of thought”. As was explained earlier, this image relies
upon the idea of separating an autonomous subject from independently
existing objects. And following this idea, the superior “I” of the subject
functions as the highest ground for determining the meaning of those objects,
thus constituting the very essence of thinking. In this way, Deleuze notes: “‘I
think’ is the most general principle of representation.”61 In other words, it is
the notion of “I think” that unifies the objects of representation and provides
the foundation for their meaning. And as we saw in the previous section, the
consequence of this unification is that difference is subordinated to identity
and similarity, which means that “difference becomes an object of
61
Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, p. 174.
34
representation always in relation to a conceived identity, a judged analogy,
an imagined opposition or a perceived similitude”.62
According to Deleuze, there are in particular two philosophers whose
ideas have contributed to this understanding of difference: Plato and Hegel.
One of Deleuze’s main criticisms of Hegel’s philosophy is that it forces
difference into a subordinated and negative role. This follows from Hegel’s
view of “dialectics”, according to which difference is affirmed only to the
extent that it reflects upon the identity of contraries and oppositions. As such,
difference is subordinated to identity and “reduced to the negative,
incarcerated within similitude and analogy”. 63 Identity, in this sense,
functions as a higher ground or metaphysical foundation for thinking about
difference. “Difference is the ground, but only the ground for the
demonstration of the identical.”64
According to Deleuze, this way of thinking can also be found in Plato’s
philosophy, and especially when considering the relationship between
essence and appearance, the original and the image, and model and copy in
Plato’s philosophy:
The model is supposed to enjoy an originary superior identity (…)
whereas the copy is judged in terms of a derived internal resemblance.
Indeed, it is in this sense that difference comes only in third place,
behind identity and resemblance, and can be understood only in terms
of these prior notions. Difference is understood only in terms of the
comparative play of two similitudes: the exemplary similitude of an
identical original and the imitative similitude of a more or less accurate
copy.65
The only conceivable differences are consequently those that are already
based on a relationship between the original and the copy. But in addition to
these terms there is another concept in Plato’s philosophy that Deleuze
62
Ibid., p. 174.
Ibid., p. 61.
64
Ibid., p. 61.
65
Ibid., p. 154.
63
35
highlights: the “simulacrum”. Rather than being the imitation of the original,
the simulacrum refers to the imitation of appearances. As such, the
simulacrum is merely a “copy of copies” and lacks any connection
whatsoever with superior “forms”. For this reason, the simulacrum has an
inferior role in relation to the original copies, representing nothing but “bad
copies”. Accordingly, in Plato’s philosophy the aim is to assure the “triumph
of the copies over simulacra, of repressing simulacra, keeping them
completely submerged”, as well as to prevent them from “climbing to the
surface, and ‘insinuating themselves’ everywhere”.66 Plato can, in this sense,
be seen as complicit in the process of suppressing difference by forcing it to
comply with superior forms and hierarchical identities.
Against this suppression, Deleuze seeks to overturn the Platonic world
of representation by reversing the relationship between the original and the
copy. And the way he does so is by giving the simulacrum a completely
different role. Instead of merely seeing it as a “bad copy”, which has to be
excluded from the relationship between the original and the copy, Deleuze
gives the simulacrum a superior role. For Deleuze, overturning Platonism
thus implies “denying the primacy of original over copy, of model over
image; glorifying the reign of simulacra and reflections”.67 Hence, contrary
to Plato, Deleuze finds in the simulacrum a “positive power”, which gives
difference another role than simply being subordinated to identity and
resemblance. Lacking identity of any kind, the simulacrum consists only of
differences, which exist without ever being tied to notions of the same and
the similar:
Simulacra are those systems in which different relates to different by
means of difference itself. What is essential is that we find in these
systems no prior identity, no internal resemblance. It is all a matter of
difference in the series, and of differences of difference in the
communication between series. What is displaced and disguised in the
66
67
Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, p. 294.
Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, p. 80.
36
series cannot and must not be identified, but exists and acts as the
differenciator of difference.68
We are now getting closer to Deleuze’s own concept of difference,
which follows from the simulacrum and the idea of freeing difference from
the constraints that are imposed on it by the relationship between model and
copy. And what we are left with as a consequence of this seems to be the
different and the disparate as such, without any prior connection to identity.
Deleuze makes this point in the following way:
Let us consider the two formulas: “only that which resembles differs”
and “only differences can resemble each other”. These are two distinct
readings of the world: one invites us to think difference from the
standpoint of a previous similitude or identity; whereas the other invites
us to think similitude and even identity as the product of a deep
disparity. The first reading precisely defines the world of copies or
representations; it posits the world as icon. The second, contrary to the
first, defines the world of simulacra.69
What Deleuze seems to suggest here, then, is that by refusing to subordinate
the simulacrum to the relationship between model and copy it is also possible
to refuse subordinating difference to the same and the identical. Following
the simulacrum, it is difference as such that matters, not the original and the
copy, and not identity and resemblance. Identity should therefore no longer
be regarded as primary but only as secondary. More specifically, it is
secondary in relation to a form of difference that does not relate to anything
but itself. In this way, Deleuze develops the concept of difference by
suggesting that difference has to be thought of as difference in itself,
ungrounded and without the possibility of making analogies. 70 As such,
difference can also be described as all there is, which means that it lacks a
68
Ibid., pp. 372-3.
Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, p. 299.
70
See Difference and Repetition, chapter 1.
69
37
general background or context against which it is possible to make
comparisons between separate cases. According to Deleuze: “It is always
differences which resemble one another, which are analogous, opposed or
identical: difference is behind everything but behind difference there is
nothing.”71
In a similar way to how Deleuze seeks to overturn Platonism he also
points to the possibility of reversing the Hegelian system of oppositions by
suggesting that it is not “difference which presupposes opposition but
opposition which presupposes difference, and far from resolving difference
by tracing it back to a foundation, opposition betrays and distorts it”.72 When
thinking difference in itself it is thus crucial to detach it from any ideas about
oppositions, since the latter only have the effect of distorting difference. To
prevent it from being distorted, it is necessary to affirm the disparate and
formless being of differences as such rather than tying them to dialectical
oppositions. One way of doing so can be found in Deleuze’s notion of
“repetition”, which he sees as nothing but a continuous process of repeating
difference rather than the same. According to Deleuze:
Repetition is the formless being of all differences, the formless power
of the ground which carries every object to that extreme ‘form’ in
which its representation comes undone. The ultimate element of
repetition is the disparate, which stands opposed to the identity of
representation.73
Repetition for Deleuze thus expresses a power that eludes any particular
forms. As such, it also disables the idea of representation. Since the latter
relies on the existence of the original as a superior form, which then can be
represented by providing a faithful copy of it, if you take away the original it
makes no sense to provide such a copy. According to Deleuze, the original as
71
Ibid., p. 69.
Ibid., pp. 62-3.
73
Ibid., p. 69.
72
38
well as the copy disappears in the abyss created by repetition as the formless
ground in which everything comes undone.
When developing this idea of repetition, Deleuze draws heavily upon
Nietzsche’s concept of the “eternal return”, which Deleuze refers to as a
selective process that only brings back the different and dissimilar rather than
the same or identical:
The eternal return does not bring back “the same”, but returning
constitutes the only Same of that which becomes. Returning is the
becoming-identical of becoming itself. Returning is thus the only
identity, but identity as a secondary power; the identity of difference,
the identical which belongs to the different, or turns around the different.
Such an identity, produced by difference, is determined as “repetition”.
Repetition in the eternal return, therefore, consists in conceiving the
same on the basis of the different.74
Following the eternal return, the same and the identical will never return; it is
only difference that will return. Difference, in this sense, can be seen as
primary in relation to identity, which means that identity comes after
difference, as a product that emerges from the “formless being of all
differences”. Moreover, Deleuze suggests that “the eternal return is a force of
affirmation”.75 As such, it affirms the different and the disparate instead of
the same or identical, with the latter remaining as nothing but an illusion and
the former lacking any kind of identity, similarity or centre on which it is
organised:
Difference must become the element, the ultimate unity; it must
therefore refer to other differences which never identify it but rather
differenciate it. Each term of a series, being already a difference, must
be put into a variable relation with other terms, thereby constituting
other series devoid of centre and convergence. Divergence and
74
75
Ibid., p. 51.
Ibid., p. 141.
39
decentring must be affirmed in the series itself. Every object, every
thing, must see its own identity swallowed up in difference, each being
no more than a difference between differences.76
When difference is understood in relation to the eternal return it is
possible to see it less as a category than as a process.77 This process involves
the communication between differences, or between the different and the
different, constituting what Deleuze refers to as “multiplicity”. According to
Deleuze, multiplicity does not designate a relationship between the many and
the one; it is rather “an organisation belonging to the many as such, which
has no need whatsoever of unity in order to form a system”.78 So, instead of
an ordered system that is focused on the many and the one, multiplicity
consists of indeterminate differences, which “do not add up to a totality, and
do not refer to a subject”.79 In this way, difference can be said to function as
a primary force, without being tied to a pre-determined direction, a given
place and time, or the being of a subject. Hence, Deleuze argues that
multiplicities “imply no prior identity, no positing of a something that could
be called one or the same. On the contrary, their indetermination renders
possible the manifestation of difference freed from all subordination.”80
Deleuze also suggests that multiplicity has to be understood as “virtual”
rather than “actual”. The virtual in Deleuze’s philosophy is not opposed to
the “real”, and neither is it something artificial or simulated. On the contrary,
the virtual is more real than anything else. And the main reason for this is
that the virtual does not suppress difference in favour of identity, but refers
only to the indeterminate relationship between differences, or between the
different and the different. As it expresses a freer role of difference, the
76
Ibid., p. 68.
Paul Patton, Deleuze and the Political, (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 39.
78
Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, p. 230.
79
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, “Preface to the Italian Edition of A Thousand Plateuas”,
in Gilles Deleuze, Two Regimes of Madness: Texts and Interviews 1975-1995, translated by
Ames Hodges and Mike Taormina, edited by David Lapoujade, (New York: Semiotext(e),
2006), p. 310.
80
Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, p. 231.
77
40
virtual eludes representation as well as a systematic order of knowledge and
regularities.
Transcendental empiricism
By developing the concepts of multiplicity and difference in itself, Deleuze
seeks to overcome a notion of philosophy as something that is mainly
reactive and representational, and whose ultimate goals are to determine the
meaning of things, to find solutions to problems, and to discover the true in
opposition to the false. This latter notion of philosophy suggests that thinking
itself is only possible if it takes place against the background of that which is
already given, and to find solutions to the problems that have already been
presented to us. In this way, as Deleuze notes:
We are led to believe that problems are given ready-made, and that they
disappear in the responses or the solution. Already, under this double
aspect, they can be no more than phantoms. We are led to believe that
the activity of thinking, along with truth and falsehood in relation to
that activity, begins only with the search for solutions, that both of these
concern only solutions. This belief probably has the same origin as the
other postulates of the dogmatic image: puerile examples taken out of
context and arbitrarily erected into models. According to this infantile
prejudice, the master sets a problem, our task is to solve it, and the
result is accredited true or false by a powerful authority.81
The “dogmatic image” that Deleuze refers to here can thus be said to have
the effect of reducing thought to finding solutions, discovering truth and
establishing common sense understandings. But in contrast to this image,
Deleuze’s philosophy of difference and multiplicity has a completely
different aim, which is to discover the active and creative conditions for
thought. Crucially, these conditions are not to be found in representation or
recognition but rather in the very “act of thinking and in thought itself”.82
81
82
Ibid., p. 197.
Ibid., p. 176.
41
In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze writes: “Something in the world
forces us to think. This something is an object not of recognition but of a
fundamental encounteri.”83 The object of this encounter, then, is not referring
to any possible solutions to an already given problem but rather to the
processes by which the problem itself is given as a problem. This requires
that we move away from any kind of external conditions for thought, and
away from the idea of a transcendent regulative ideal, which grants us
knowledge and provides common sense understandings. In other words, we
must abandon the field of transcendence and replace it with a “transcendental
field” or a “plane of immanence”. The “transcendental”, in this sense, refers
to something very different than “transcendence”. Whereas the latter refers to
that which is “external” to experience, the former concerns that which is
directly experienced or given. In this way, the “transcendental” can
paradoxically be said to imply an “immanent” conception of experience,
which seeks to move away from the illusion of transcendence, or the idea of
transcending a reality of the “world” from the viewpoint of an autonomous
subject or a superior “I”. As Daniel W. Smith notes, “transcendental
philosophy is a philosophy of immanence, and implies a ruthless critique of
transcendence”. 84 And as we saw in the previous section, this critique is
directed against the ways in which difference is subordinated to identity, and
how this subordination implies a process of unifying and totalising the
conditions for knowledge.
Against this view, Deleuze articulates a purely “transcendental field”,
which, contrary to transcendence, does not attempt to reflect or represent that
which is outside experience. Rather, it seeks to articulate a form of
experience that is directly given, not to an autonomous and pre-established
subject but only given as such. This notion of experience thus seeks to elude
a superior viewpoint as well as the consciousness of a pre-established subject.
83
Ibid., p. 176.
Daniel W. Smith, “Deleuze, Kant, and the Theory of Immanent Ideas”, in Constantin V.
Boundas (ed.), Deleuze and Philosophy, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), p.
47.
84
42
Instead, it relates to what Deleuze refers to as the “impersonal” and “preindividual” elements of experience:
We seek to determine an impersonal and pre-individual transcendental
field, which does not resemble the corresponding empirical fields, and
which nevertheless is not confused with an undifferentiated depth. This
field cannot be determined as that of a consciousness. (…) [W]e cannot
retain consciousness as a milieu while at the same time we object to the
form of the person and the point of view of individuation. A
consciousness is nothing without a synthesis of unification, but there is
no synthesis of unification of consciousness without the form of the I,
or the point of view of the Self. What is neither individual nor personal
are, on the contrary emissions of singularities insofar as they occur on
an unconscious surface and possess a mobile, immanent principle of
auto-unification through a nomadic distribution radically distinct from
fixed and sedentary distributions as conditions of the syntheses of
consciousness.85
One of the most important concepts according to this idea of a
transcendental field of experience is “singularity”, which Deleuze defines as
the “pre-individual, pre-personal and a-conceptual”. 86 As such, singularity
can also be said to express a realm that is prior to the idea of a unifying or
superior I, and disconnected from a pure consciousness of the subject.
Singularity relates to experience as such, without a pre-established subject
who experiences. As Colebrook explains, “we might say that there just ‘is’
experience, without subjects or objects, inside or outside…a pure flow of life
and perception without any distinct perceivers”.87 So, rather than an already
present subject who thinks and experiences, there is only thought and only
experience.
85
Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, p. 118.
Ibid., p. 63.
87
Colebrook, Deleuze, p. 74.
86
43
Developing this idea of experience further, Deleuze and Félix Guattari
refer to a “plane of immanence”.88 When introducing this plane they seek to
get away from the ontological assumption of having two separate planes,
mind and matter, according to which the former transcends the latter in order
to represent an external material world. So, rather than having two separate
planes, the plane of immanence locates the being of the subject as well as the
being of an outside world on the same plane: a plane that consists solely of
impersonal and pre-individual elements of thought and experience.
Everything thus becomes part of these elements, making the “outside world”
and the “subject” into integral elements of the very processes of thought and
experience. This means, furthermore, that the plane of immanence should not
be put in opposition to something that is assumed to exist externally or prior
to it. For example, it would be misleading to interpret the plane of
immanence as immanent to something or someone. 89 Doing so would
inevitably reintroduce the distinction between the being of the subject and
the being of an outside world and bring us back to the illusion of
transcendence and representation yet again. In order to avoid this illusion, it
is necessary to understand immanence as immanent to nothing other than
itself. In this way, empiricism has to start with experience as such, without a
primary distinction between the internal and the external, the subject and an
outside world.
Singularity can be seen as an element or a force that is prior to ideas
about an individualised or personalised form of being. This means that in a
similar way to the idea of reversing the role of difference in relation to
identity, the singular functions as a reversal of a presupposed ontological
“being” or “unity” of the subject. The implication of this reversal is that the
unity or identity of the subject no longer can be seen as a primary ground or
foundation for experience. Rather, identity has to be seen as something that
is produced as an effect of experience. The singular, therefore, has no unity
or identity, and it cannot be translated or generalised into particular notions
88
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What is Philosophy?, translated by Graham Burchell
and Hugh Tomlinson, (London: Verso, 1994), chapter 2.
89
Ibid., p. 45.
44
of “common sense”. As something that is completely impersonal and preindividual, the singular escapes any such notions.
The representant says: “Everyone recognises that …”, but there is
always an unrepresented singularity who does not recognise precisely
because it is not everyone or the universal. “Everyone” recognises the
universal because it is itself the universal, but the profound sensitive
conscience which is nevertheless presumed to bear the cost, the singular,
does not recognise it. The misfortune of speaking is not speaking, but
speaking for others or representing something.90
In the process of establishing “common sense” understandings,
through recognition and representation, the singular is always in a sense
suppressed. So, in order to release the singular from this suppression it is
important to refuse the generalised notions of “common sense” and instead
let the singular play a different role. In brief, rather than trying to reduce it to
a determinable object of experience, the singular should remain an
indeterminate and indiscernible element of experience. As such, the singular
is no longer allowed to fall back on an external background or context, which
makes it disappear among determinable objects and identifiable differences.
The singular remains singular by eluding any such differences and by
connecting instead with “nondialectizable” differences, or with a form of
difference that can only be conceived of as difference in itself. Singularity, in
this sense, does not possess any kind of unity or identity, object or entity; nor
can it be contained within notions of “common sense” or “good sense”.
Rather, it highlights a completely different “logic” of sense – one that John
Rajchman describes in the following way:
It is a logic of “sense” prior to any established “truth-values” and public
agreements, or prior to “I think” or “we think”, always ramifying or
proliferating in unexpected ways. It is a logic for thinking not in terms
of generalities and particularities, but rather in terms of singular ideas,
90
Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, p. 176.
45
complications and “complex themes” – not in terms of identities and
oppositions but rather of “differences” over which we can’t quantify
and interstices between given distinctions or with what is not yet and
never completely “ontologically determined”.91
Following this understanding of Deleuze’s “logic of sense” it is
important not to think of singularities, or singular ideas, in terms of mere
generalities or particularities. They should rather be thought of as
“complications” or “complex themes”. In this way, singularity can also be
related to “multiplicity”, since it rejects the opposition between the many and
the one and instead highlights a system that affirms the many as such as well
as difference in itself, where the different relates to the different and never to
dialectical terms and systems of opposition. Hence, the singular does not rely
upon a prior identity but can rather be said to provoke the dissolution of
identity. This follows once again from Deleuze’s take on the eternal return,
which only allows the different to return, whilst excluding the same and the
identical. According to Deleuze:
Repetition in the eternal return never means continuation, perpetuation
or prolongation, nor even the discontinuous return of something which
would at least be able to be prolonged in a partial circle (an identity, an
I, a Self) but, on the contrary, the reprise of pre-individual singularities
which, in order that it can be grasped as repetition, presupposes the
dissolution of all prior identities.92
The singular should thus not be confused with either the particular or the
identical. It relates instead to an active and creative process, which enables
experience and thought to encounter something that is yet to be known. And
it is precisely this indeterminate element of thought and experience that is
crucial when trying to understand Deleuze’s attempt to develop a
transcendental form of empiricism.
91
92
John Rajchman, The Deleuze Connections, (London: The MIT Press, 2000), p. 52.
Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, p. 176.
46
At one point Deleuze suggests that the aim of transcendental
empiricism “is not to rediscover the eternal or the universal, but to find the
conditions under which something new is produced (creativeness)”.93 To do
so it is moreover important not to begin with ideas about some abstract unity,
such as “the One, the Whole, the Subject”, which then is given the task of
explaining. 94 Instead of letting the abstract explain, Deleuze argues, the
abstract “must itself be explained”. And one way of doing so is to begin by
looking at the various processes and movements through which the abstract
is produced. Also, it is the very nature of these processes, as something that
is constantly moving rather than static that has to be examined. In doing so it
might then be possible to understand how different kinds of ideas emerge,
and how notions of the Whole, the One, and Identity are produced. So, rather
than taking these notions for granted, Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism
provokes an examination of how they are produced and made possible in the
first place. As such, it can also be seen as an interesting alternative to a
representational mode of thinking. As pointed out earlier, the latter is both
limited and problematic since it assumes a prior distinction between subjects
and objects as it seeks to unveil their nature through the establishment of
“common sense” understandings. Deleuze’s philosophy takes us in a
completely different direction, forcing us to think of very different kinds of
questions. To conclude this chapter I will discuss what some of those
questions might be and how they can be used in order to think further about
the “event”.
Conclusion
The problem set out in the introduction was how to understand ideas about
“9/11” as an “event”. According to those ideas, “9/11” constitutes a central
reference point in time, which separates before from after and what is to
come from what has been. In this sense, “9/11” appears almost like an object
Gilles Deleuze, “Preface to English Edition”, in Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet,
Dialogues II, translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam, (London: Continuum,
2006), p. vi.
94
Ibid., p. vi.
93
47
or a whole, which is located in a particular point in time and placed within a
larger historical context. At the same time, however, exactly what this
“event” refers to and what it means can be seen as highly ambiguous. Part of
the aim of this chapter was to question the idea of representation as a method
for understanding this problem. Following Derrida, Foucault and Deleuze, it
was pointed out that the limits of a purely representational mode of thinking
can be explained by the ways in which it ultimately has to rely on something
that is absent: an autonomous subject of reason, a pure presence, a
metaphysical outside reality, etc. As such, representation can also be
understood as a form of “illusion”.
One such illusion, then, is to think of “9/11” as an independently
existing object or unitary whole, which is used in order to refer to something
specific that has happened in a particular moment in time. It is an illusion
that is based on the idea of an autonomous subject of reason that is capable
of transcending an outside reality and representing the meaning of that reality.
But the question, then, is how it might be possible to think about “9/11” as
an “event” without having to rely on the illusion of representation. One way
of doing so would be to follow Deleuze’s attempts to reverse representation,
through the development of a transcendental form of empiricism. This form
of empiricism implies that instead of starting with the subject/object dualism
of representation, it is possible to think of a “plane of immanence” or a
“transcendental field” of singularities, according to which there is neither a
prior distinction between the internal and the external, nor between the
subject and the outside world. There is only a pure flow of experience
without a pre-established subject who experiences. As such, experience is
also something active and creative rather than reactive and representational;
it eludes notions of resemblance and similarity and affirms only indiscernible
differences, which are not subordinated to identity and express difference in
itself. Hence, transcendental empiricism does not begin with some abstract
unity, such as the One or the Whole, which then is given the task of
explaining. Rather, it is the One or the Whole that itself needs to be
explained, not in terms of a rational unity or totality but as a “multiplicity”:
48
The essential thing, from the point of view of empiricism, is the noun
multiplicity, which designates a set of lines or dimensions which are
irreducible to one another. Every “thing” is made up in this way. Of
course a multiplicity includes focuses of unification, centres of
totalization, points of subjectivation, but as factors which can prevent
its growth and stop its lines. These factors are in the multiplicity to
which they belong, and not the reverse.95
Following this understanding of empiricism it is thus necessary to look
at the ways in which each supposed “thing” is produced, as well as to study
the impact of different kinds of lines, processes and movements. Crucially,
however, this kind of study should not be limited to ideas about the mere
“construction” of “things”. As Brian Massumi has argued, the reason for
rejecting such ideas is that they often tend to favour a static view of culture
and society, rather than emphasising the ongoing processes and movements
from which culture and society continually emerge:
Ideas about cultural or social construction have dead-ended because
they have insisted on bracketing the nature of the process. If you elide
nature, you miss the becoming of culture, its emergence (not to mention
the history of matter). You miss the continuum of interlinkage, feedforward and feedback, by which movements capture and convert each
other to many ends, old, new, and innumerable. Some kind of
constructivism is required to account for the processual continuity
across categorical divides and for the reality of that qualitative growth,
or ontogenesis: the fact that with every move, with every change, there
is something new to the world, an added reality. (…) Perhaps
“productivism” would be better than constructivism because it connotes
emergence. 96
95
Ibid., p. vi.
Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation, (London: Duke
University Press, 2002), p. 12.
96
49
The kind of “productivism” Massumi calls for here thus focuses on processes
as such and not on the static conception of some constructed “thing”.
This way of thinking about processes can in many ways be seen as
“Deleuzian”. In a similar way to Deleuze, Massumi argues that the aim of
thinking and writing is not to “represent” or “describe”, for example by
trying to uncover something that is assumed to be hidden. Rather, the aim
should be to embrace the inventiveness that is embedded in the processes of
thinking and writing. This requires, moreover, a certain degree of
“experimentation”, the aim of which is not to uncover an essence but to
create different ways of thinking about a problem. This can be done, for
example, by inventing concepts or by making new connections and
constellations of concepts. Doing so is crucial in order to avoid mere
repetitions of the “same”, or “applying” the same concepts and the same
constellation of concepts over and over again. Only that which is different
returns and, consequently, the concepts used to think about the different must
also be different. Concepts do not have a pre-determined essence or meaning,
which then can be applied objectively in order to explain something.
Concepts are combined and refigured in different ways because they are
involved in the very processes of thinking and writing.
This idea of concepts can also be found in Deleuze and Guattari’s
approach the role of concepts in philosophy. According to Deleuze and
Guattari, philosophical concepts are not “waiting for us ready-made” but
must always be created and refigured in different ways.97 Only in that way is
it possible to escape the limits of representation and the illusion of
transcendence. The role of concepts in philosophy, therefore, is not to
represent the meaning of “objects” or “things”, which are assumed to exist
externally to language. Rather, concepts must themselves be considered as
active events, which have the potential to open up space for new ways of
thinking. In this way, explanations become more like experimentations and
creations, which, as Massumi argues, will hopefully add something new to
reality. “To think productivism, you have to allow that even your own logical
97
Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, p. 5.
50
efforts feed-back and add to reality, in some small, probably microscopic
way. But still.”98
As was noted earlier, the aim of transcendental empiricism is to explain
the abstract rather than letting the abstract explain. The abstract, in this sense,
is not a universal but a multiplicity, which consists of lines, processes and
movements. Deleuze himself constantly introduces new concepts and new
constellations of concepts in order to explain how different kinds of
multiplicities work and how they are organised. Explaining the abstract is
thus not the same as trying to explain the objective nature of an
independently existing “thing”. Rather, to explain the abstract involves the
creation of new concepts and constellations of concepts, which in their own
unique ways contribute to a way of thinking about that “thing” – not as a
determinable object or a coherent whole but as a set of lines and relations.
It is with this approach in mind that I also intend to create a way of
thinking about the “event”. Going back to the example of “9/11” as an
“event”, this implies first of all moving away from the idea “9/11” as a given
starting point, which then can be used in order to explain what it refers to or
represents. Instead of doing the latter, it is necessary to ask how this abstract
“thing” itself can be explained. In this way, the “event” cannot be treated as a
starting point but has to be seen as a problematic whole, which itself requires
critical examination. And the focus of such an examination, then, should be
on how the “event” is produced, and what sorts of processes, lines and
movements are involved in that production.
When addressing the question of how to understand the production of
“events” it is important to emphasise that the point is not to come up with an
objective way of thinking about that production. Rather, following the idea
of experimentation, the point is precisely to create a way of thinking about
that production. And even if the concepts that are used to do so have been
used in similar ways and in similar constellations before, the point is still to
make new constellations and new connections. Where this leads me is
uncertain, but so it has to be. “If you know where you will end up when you
98
Massumi, Parables for the Virtual, p. 12.
51
begin, nothing has happened in the meantime.”99 Experimentation requires
one to be open towards the unexpected and to follow unpredictable paths,
rather than some calculable formula. Hence, what comes out of this does not
correspond to a pre-determined solution that is just waiting to be discovered.
Rather, whatever comes out of this will be the result of an experimentation,
which can be connected with earlier experimentation and which hopefully
will lead to yet more experimentation.
99
Ibid., p. 18.
52