Deleuze and Guattari

An Introduction to the Politics of Desire

Philip Goodchild

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 1996
• Print ISBN:
  9780803976016
  9780803976009
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781446226230
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This accessible book examines critically the writings of Deleuze and Guattari, clarifying the ideas of these two notoriously difficult thinkers without over-simplifying them.

Divided into three sections - Knowledge, Power, and Liberation of Desire - the book provides a systematic account of the intellectual context as well as an exhaustive analysis of the key themes informing Deleuze and Guattari?s work. It provides the framework for reading the important and influential study Capitalism and Schizophrenia and, with the needs of students in mind, explains the key concepts in Deleuze and Guattari?s discussion of philosophy, art and politics. Definitive and incisive, the book will be invaluable in situating the philosophy of these two major figures within the perspective of the social and human sciences.

PART I

KNOWLEDGE

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1

The Emergence of Desire

People like to say that Deleuze and Guattari have a ‘philosophy of desire’. One may understand this in several different ways. Firstly, it can be taken as a theory of society, culture, and nature, in which everything is produced by a form of concealed sexual desire – where others focus upon language, structure, history, economic production, or power-relations at the foundation of human society and culture, Deleuze and Guattari simply choose desire. Secondly, it can be assumed that manifestations of sexual desire constitute the field of their investigations; they merely choose to address themselves to desire. A third assumption is that desire is a precondition of knowledge for them, so that they can only learn about society and culture insofar as they are driven by their passions to be involved in them – sexuality then forms the basis for epistemology. Finally it can be assumed that the expression of sexual desire, enhanced by a discourse concerning it, is the key to a social and cultural liberation from oppressive power-formations.

In fact, all these notions are somewhat crude caricatures. The concept of ‘desire’ only appears as a main focus of Deleuze and Guattari’s thought in the publications between 1972 and 1977.¹ It functions neither as a universal principle governing the whole of existence, nor as an underlying ground determining the nature of all existence – instead, desire lies outside or alongside existence. To understand the precise and esoteric meaning of ‘desire’ for Deleuze and Guattari, and the importance it carries, it is necessary to trace the emergence of the concept in Deleuze’s earlier work on the history of philosophy. Instead of subsuming desire under conceptions of an objective ground, a specific field of inquiry, a transcendental presupposition, or a sexual practice, it is necessary to observe how desire posits itself as its own, autonomous concept. In Deleuze’s early readings of philosophers, he developed irrecuperable concepts of ‘intensive difference’, ‘becoming’, ‘force’, or ‘exteriority’ that escape previously existing systems of thought – especially the Hegelian dialectic – and combine to produce a philosophy of desire as spontaneous, chaotic, and irreducible emergence. Such concepts only take on their own consistency and force, however, when they are no longer represented in dialectical contrast with their polar opposites.² For an irreducible concept of difference to survive attempts at dialectical or deconstructive recuperation, it must cross a threshold where it begins to posit and think itself. The philosophy of desire emerges through the differentiation of several layers of difference: differences that shape and associate ideas; differences that express feelings and forces; differences that synthesize forces into actual bodies; and differences that are implicated in an entity’s emergence and reproduction of itself. The integrity of desire is only attained when each of these layers of thought, emotion, body, and ontology interacts with the others.

This chapter will trace the emergence of these conceptions of difference through Deleuze’s work on Hume, Bergson, Nietzsche, and Spinoza, respectively. We are not concerned with the accuracy of Deleuze’s readings, nor with whether he agrees with the thinkers described; the aim is to trace the development and meaning of categories to describe the social unconscious, through which the social unconscious grasps life, that will form the basis of Deleuze and Guattari’s mature thought. It is a question of observing the creation of the concepts, and setting them out as a vocabulary, through which Deleuze and Guattari’s thought will become comprehensible. This chapter simulates a philosophical investigation.

Problem 2: Crack open words …

‘How about placing language in a state of boom, close to a state of bust?’ Deleuze stuttered. ‘This is the only way to introduce desire into various fields’ (Boundas and Olkowski, 1994: 25). It seems that a writer, faced with the modulations of intensity of philosophical thought, has two possibilities: either to report the modulation as a content of language, as Nietzsche so frequently reported his own affective states (for example, Nietzsche, 1968: 420), or to place the modulation in the style or mode of expression, as Nietzsche did in the dithyrambic style he gave Zarathustra (Nietzsche, 1961). Deleuze found a third possibility: the performative.

This is what happens when the stuttering no longer affects preexisting words, but, rather, itself ushers in the words that it affects; in this case, the words do not exist independently of the stutter, which selects and links them together. It is no longer the individual who stutters in his speech, it is the writer who stutters in the language system (langue): he causes language as such to stutter. (Boundas and Olkowski, 1994: 23)

At the limits of language, words keep silent in the intervals where stuttering punctuates language. ‘It is not surprising that, strictly speaking, difference should be “inexplicable”. Difference is explicated, but in systems in which it tends to be cancelled; this means only that difference is essentially implicated, that its being is implication’ (Deleuze, 1994: 228). Philosophy is a minor or foreign language that speaks in the intervals. Crack open words, crack open things (Deleuze, 1991b: 115). Crack open ‘desire’ …

Hume

Deleuze studied philosophy at the Sorbonne from 1944 to 1948 where he was trained in the history of philosophy. The curriculum at that time was largely influenced by the ‘three H’s’: Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger. These transcendental philosophies explore the conditioning of human thought and consciousness – by locating it in the dialectical progress of history, by considering the interpretations of phenomena produced by an intentional subject, or by considering the kind of meaning of existence which was fundamentally presupposed in any understanding or knowledge, respectively. Deleuze’s first book, Empiricism and Subjectivity (1991a), first published in 1953 when he was aged 28, was remarkable for choosing as its subject the Scottish empiricist philosopher David Hume. Hume was one of the main predecessors of the Anglo-American approach to philosophy that is closely linked to the methods of the natural sciences; his thought appeared to be triply naive from the Continental perspectives of dialectical history, phenomenology, and fundamental ontology. Firstly, Hume’s empiricist philosophy was aimed at discovering the conditions under which legitimate beliefs might be produced; it was unable to account for the historical progress in understanding that changes human subjectivity through reflection upon its previous states of consciousness. Secondly, it made use of supposedly ‘raw’ elements of impressions from the senses, without examining the way in which their meaning is already shaped by the interests and intentions of the human subject. Thirdly, it assumed a sceptical model of human reason in terms of subjective association and habit that entirely obscured the fundamental philosophical problem of the nature of knowledge and models of human reason themselves.

Deleuze, however, used Hume to escape from these dominant traditions of Continental philosophy.³ For each of these philosophies presupposes that we already live in a meaningful world, and that we can only begin to build knowledge within the context of a pre-given meaning, whether this meaning is produced by history, subjectivity, or fundamental ontology – or, in the terms given by later developments in the Continental tradition, structure, language, society, communication, or culture. Deleuze used various arguments in his works on Hume, Bergson, Nietzsche, and Spinoza to suggest that each of these options already presupposes too much. History, subjectivity, and the meaning of Being are products in consciousness; to take any particular form of these as the starting point for interpretation and understanding fails to attain the underlying level of the processes by which such forms of consciousness are produced. Deleuze’s entire philosophical project was directed towards a level prior to particular forms of consciousness – it therefore concerns something which might be termed the ‘unconscious’. Deleuze wished to understand the processes of life that exist prior to consciousness, and upon which meanings in consciousness are formed (Deleuze, 1983: 103-4). While accepting the historical and cultural formation of consciousness, he turned the Continental tradition against itself by rejecting the Hegelian assumption that any particular ‘meaning’ is active in this process of formation, and can consequently be used as the basis from which to interpret other kinds of subjective meaning. In Deleuze’s thought, the unconscious processes that produce meaning will be of a different nature from the meanings produced – the unconscious is a place of production, not expression (1984: 109); meaning is purely a surface effect. This approach also has a political import: certain forms of consciousness are perpetuated by appealing to established interpretations and meanings embedded in culture; such a culture can be transformed, therefore, by attaining a level of communication unmediated by established meanings.

Deleuze’s reading of Hume attempted to explore this level of the construction of knowledge, meaning, and subjectivity in one and the same process. How is thought produced and regulated? What becomes thinkable through the use of certain concepts? It also differed markedly from those readings prevalent in Anglo-American philosophy: Hume’s epistemology is regarded by Deleuze as inseparable from his social theory. Hume’s main problem was the constitution of human nature, by which a human being can become a conscious subject. Deleuze used Hume to investigate the constitution of meaning, prior to all interpretation. Hume was concerned with the production of the kind of meaning which is not directly given in experience: he replaced the model of knowledge with that of belief (Deleuze, 1991a: ix). Reason, then, works through the inference of probabilities: we may believe that the sun will rise tomorrow, but we cannot know that it will. Hume took as basic the data of sense-impressions, and these are spoken about as though they were entirely separate, independent, and atomistic. Now, the essence or meaning of individual, phenomenal impressions was of no significance for Hume; what is relevant is the way in which these can be associated in the human mind. Questions of meaning, essence, and existence are displaced in favour of extrinsic principles of association. Human nature is able to associate diverse sense-impressions through principles of resemblance, contiguity, and causality: a single idea may then stand in for a variety of sense-impressions, although such general ideas are not any different in nature from the sense-impressions received in the mind (Deleuze, 1991a: 24). We have beliefs based upon previous repetitions: we believe that the sun will rise tomorrow because of previous experience; here, a multitude of sensations is synthesized into a single expectation. Associations of this kind are based on resemblance, contiguity, and causality – these being regarded as rules or principles of human nature. Although such principles determine the form which beliefs may take, they do not tell us which beliefs or associations we actually choose to form. Another input is required – in addition to these principles, the human mind is also subject to a variety of passions. We only form a belief for a specific, practical purpose, determined by a need, interest, or passion (Deleuze, 1991a: 120). Human nature is composed of both the rules governing its reasoning and the passions motivating that reasoning. Each subject will be produced from this nature as a specific set of beliefs and expectations. As such, the knowledge of human nature is entirely practical: it is a morality, concerned with governing or directing the passions. Philosophy is the theory of what we do, not what we are (Deleuze, 1991a: 133).

Hume constructed a parallel between the way in which sense-data are associated in individual minds, and the way in which people associate together in society (Deleuze, 1991a: 32). Hume believed that people are not naturally selfish; they are also passionately sympathetic to those who are closest to them (Deleuze, 1991a: 38). The partiality of such human passions leads to a conflict of interests, and it is the function of culture to reduce this conflict for the mutual benefit of all concerned. Culture extends natural sympathies: in the same way that the associating powers of reason extend our knowledge beyond the evidence of the senses into the realm of belief by moving from habit to expectation, they can also be used to extend our passions by moving from evident customs to social bodies and institutions, of which we are members and in which we take an interest. Such institutions are founded upon the powers of reason to invent and believe; culture is therefore the extension of positive natural sympathies and passions through reason to form institutions. From this perspective, society is founded upon useful conventions, habits, or customs that satisfy various needs (Deleuze, 1991a: 45). In this regard, the two main components in the formation of society are private property, delimiting an area of interest, and values, forming the focus for conversation as opposed to conflict (Deleuze, 1991a: 41–2). Institutions, therefore, objectify collective interest. Consequently, the image of society that emerges is one not founded upon law, contract, or domination, but founded on the imaginative extension and integration of sympathetic passions. Where knowledge organizes beliefs under the constraints of needs, passions, and interests, institutions organize actions and passions under the constraints of reason. The two domains are not quite parallel or isomorphic, but are in reciprocal presupposition and mutual interaction.⁴ This essence of society is entirely positive, based upon belief and invention. Similarly, an image of positive social relations underlies the whole of Deleuze and Guattari’s thought.

Nevertheless, negative and critical aspects do emerge within such a model. In the first place, some passion is" required to maintain a belief in institutions, for a natural tendency of passion is to disinvest its extended form and to return to its local sphere of interest. Culture must produce an institution that maintains a passionate belief in the common good: the State or government takes on this role of the common good as an object of belief, requiring the highest loyalty; it reinforces and revitalizes belief in its existence through the mechanism of exercising sanctions such as punishment, taxes, and military service (Deleuze, 1991a: 50–1). Where other institutions are merely means towards the satisfaction of passions, the State produces the Active construction of the ‘common good’ as an end worth serving. The State then assumes the authority to discipline those who do not serve the common good, and has a critical role in repressing unintegrated passions.

Reason also has a critical function: there is a need to deal with beliefs which are ‘illegitimate’ in the sense that they do not correspond to experience. These may be superstitions, arising from associations that take data to be essentially or permanently related which are in fact only accidentally related, as in astrology. Reason, therefore, does not only have an extensive role in inventing beliefs and institutions; it also has a corrective role in testing such beliefs against experience, or such institutions for their utility. Reason is both extensive and corrective, inventive and critical. In both cases, however, it is the same kind of reason at work – one which is based on habit. Deleuze discovered a paradox in this dual role for reason: a rule based on an imaginative construct is required as a corrective principle by which other rules can be assessed. How, then, will the corrective principle be tested? Hume’s philosophy is essentially sceptical: there is no possibility of any certainty, truth, or knowledge. The only useful reason is practical – reason imaginatively constructs beliefs and institutions for the purpose of fulfilling the passions directing it.

Since corrective principles are habitual, imaginative constructs, reason is capable of generating its own illusions: if a fictional construct can be extended to the whole of experience, it can no longer be corrected. For example, from the mind’s capacity to construct ordered associations, one can construct an image of God as the transcendental unity of associations, the source of all meaning and order, according to a teleological argument. Similarly, from the diversity of passions, one constructs a polytheistic belief in various forces that transcend experience. Likewise, from the continuity of experience, one constructs a belief in the world as a totality (Deleuze, 1991a: 73–4). These transcendental fictions can then be used as corrective principles by which to judge experience; they remain immune to corrective reason themselves because, although they belong to pure fantasy, they are extended to encompass the whole of experience as ultimate criteria. We should also expect to find analogous fictions at the moral level of passions and institutions. The State, however, remains a conventional institution; it can be critically assessed according to whether its sanctions embody the common good, or whether governors use their authority to satisfy their own passions (Deleuze, 1991a: 51). The ‘common good’ as apparent source of all conventions and values, however, which Deleuze and Guattari will later call the ‘socius’, is an incorrigible fiction because it is the complete body of all social meaning. In effect, the transcendental fiction could be any kind of idea or social body having a totalizing function; Deleuze’s work on Hume anticipates a clear denunciation of any kind of totalizing perspective or relation of production at the level of both theory and practice. At the level of theory, Deleuze and Guattari had an empiricist scepticism towards any kind of totalizing metanarrative or metaphysics. At the level of practice, they sought a revolution that escapes from any totalizing socius such as the ‘earth’, the State or Capital, and the social relations governed by these.⁵

Deleuze followed Hume in choosing the priority of practical over theoretical reason; this is a political choice that cannot be validated by theoretical reason. For where Hume avoided transcendentals by choosing to relate human nature to the field of given experience, Immanuel Kant reversed this order of priorities by relating given experience to the transcendental subject necessitated by the unity of apperception, with its a priori categories and judgements (Deleuze, 1991a: 111).⁶ Deleuze did not regard Kant’s move as an error of theoretical judgement. His objection to Kant was primarily political: he regarded Kant’s idea of a transcendental and legislative subject as a historical construct derived from the institution of the State, for it is here that conventions of unity, transcendence, and legislation emerge. The human subject interiorizes a court of Pure Reason, or conventions and values abstracted from their institutional setting (1984: 217–22; 1988: 119–34). The human subject is fashioned in the image of a totalizing and repressive State because it embodies a socius, and is no longer subject to critique and correction. This opposition to Kant must also be taken to apply to the entire post-Kantian tradition of philosophy insofar as it claims to judge or interpret experience from the perspective of a pre-given subjectivity, meaning, history, economic relation, or any other kind of idea or body. Along with Foucault, Deleuze remained sceptical about any kind of ‘human science’ or social and cultural theory which emerges within such a tradition of thought, because it constructs its own object of investigation through its own discursive practice (Deleuze, 1988d: 19).

Deleuze’s return to empiricism may seem naive insofar as it appears to privilege Hume’s atomizing of experience in order to develop synthetic associationism on this ground. Yet Deleuze did not follow any of the routes which Anglo-American thought has taken since Hume;⁷ like Kant, he moved away from a naive notion of raw experience. Deleuze was not content with a simple dualism between experience and the ideas that represent it, nor between sense-impressions and their organization into beliefs. Prior to the active and imaginative work of the conscious human subject that builds on experience, he sought a passive or unconscious field, outside of words and things, through which data are constituted as immediately given in the mind. He found the solution already in Hume. Firstly, the flux of sense-impressions only becomes discernible when it manifests a difference; the fundamental category of empiricism is difference (Deleuze, 1991a: 87). The smallest possible difference is not a quantitative change, neither mathematical nor physical – insofar at it enters thought, it is an idea. The ‘atom’ of sense-experience, therefore, is a difference which exists in the mind. Consequently, it does not exist in some extended field, such as space or time (or history, language, society, etc.), but space and time are constituted by the association of such atoms. Of course, not all ideas give the quality of spatial extension, but all atoms give the quality of time in which they occur. The smallest possible experience is therefore a difference or moment in the experienced passage of time (Deleuze, 1991a: 91–2). So Deleuze’s empiricism is tied not to a naive, atomistic conception of matter or experience, but to time as the basis of both meaning and experience. (Time, here, is not regarded as an empty linear sequence of nows, but is actually constituted in subjectiv...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: Knowledge, Power, Desire
• PART I KNOWLEDGE
• PART II POWER
• PART III LIBERATION OF DESIRE
• Conclusion
• References
• Glossary
• Index