'A Part' of the World: Deleuze and the Logic of Creation Christopher Satoor York University Abstract Is there a particular danger in following Deleuze's philosophy to its end result? According to Peter Hallward, Deleuze's philosophy has some rather severe conclusions. Deleuze has been portrayed by him as a theological and spiritual thinker of life. Hallward seeks to challenge the accepted view of Deleuze, showing that these accepted norms in Deleuzian scholarship should be challenged and that, initially, Deleuze calls for the evacuation of political action in order to remain firm in the realm of pure contemplation. This article intends to investigate and defend Deleuze's philosophy against the critical and theological accounts portrayed by Hallward, arguing that Deleuze's philosophy is not only creative and vital but also highly revolutionary and 'a part' of the given world. It then goes on to examine Hallward's distortion of the actual/virtual distinction in Deleuze because Hallward is not able to come to grips with the concept of life in Deleuze's philosophy. We live in an intensive and dynamic world and the main points of Deleuze's philosophy concern the transformation of the world. Deleuze is not seeking to escape the world, but rather to deal with inventive and creative methods to transform society. Keywords: Deleuze, Hallward, virtual-actual, singularities, differentiation, divergence, creation, dynamism, intensities Deleuze Studies 11.1 (2017): 25–47 DOI: 10.3366/dls.2017.0250 © Edinburgh University Press www.euppublishing.com/dls 26 Christopher Satoor I. Introduction: The Context of the Turn and the Debate In the last ten years, many texts have been released about the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. Most of these texts explicate Deleuze's work in multicultural and interdisciplinary frameworks. The recent trend has been to elaborate how these concrete concepts interact in the world. This has been a successful endeavour in various fields belonging to the Humanities. The academic enterprise, in theory, has given Deleuze studies a more prominent role in the world of cultural and critical theory. It is now possible to attach Deleuze's work to theories of cinema, philosophy, postcolonialism, artwork, literature and gender studies. However, there has also been a backlash against Deleuze's work. For example, Alain Badiou released Deleuze: The Clamor of Being in 1997, which criticised Deleuze's philosophy for being too tied to the abstract. According to Badiou, Deleuze's philosophy is centred on the ascetic thinker. Badiou makes three essential claims about Deleuze's philosophy: (1) it is organised around a metaphysics of the one; (2) it contains the dispossession of the subject; and (3) it requires a creative ascetic exercise (Badiou 2004: 16). These claims have been virtually ignored by the academic community, even though Badiou was starting to make a name in French thought. It was not until Peter Hallward's text, Out of This World, in 2006 that things finally got stirred up. Badiou's text only surveys Deleuze's solitary work; it excludes his co-authored works with Félix Guattari whereas Hallward's critique contains all of Deleuze's oeuvre. Badiou's initial critique of Deleuze lies more on the grounds of interpreting Deleuzian metaphysics in regards to the event. Hallward's maintains a radical thesis, that initially Deleuze holds onto a medieval and theological project, which cuts off all relations with the world and asks its material subjects to get rid of their human essence. Overall, Hallward holds on to the notion that Deleuze's philosophy is dangerous and that it distracts all actual creatures from their world: it culminates in a philosophy of indifference. Hallward states, 'Those of us who seek to change the world and to empower its inhabitants will need to look elsewhere' (Hallward 2006: 186). Although the academic community did not respond well to Hallward's critique, there were few critical responses to Hallward's text. Initially, only a handful of critics responded. However, the debate does not start here. The fundamental attack on Deleuze was that Deleuzian politics was meaningless, singular and has no effect on the world. The recent trend in Deleuze studies is to compare Deleuze's philosophy to theology. Therefore, the debate that Deleuze and the Logic of Creation 27 starts with Hallward is perpetuated by most people working in favour of Deleuze, who limit their studies of his work to its theological dimension. Deleuzians have not adequately answered Hallward's challenge. Instead, they have ignored his claims and proceeded to use theological apparatuses to explain his concepts. Works such as F. LeRon Shults's Iconoclastic Theology: Gilles Deleuze and the Secretion of Atheism (2014), Joshua Alan Ramey's The Hermetic Deleuze: Philosophy and Spiritual Ordeal (2012) and Christopher Ben Simpson's Deleuze and Theology (2012) are now the most used secondary literature on the French philosopher. This gesture not only accepts Hallward's thesis indirectly, it cuts off creativity in a field open to interdisciplinarity. The new literature has been fragmented; it is no longer diverse, but is restricted to solving one function, the theological. While there are still some works being written on Deleuzian politics, it has been virtually abandoned. My present mission is to explain Hallward's position and subsequently defend Deleuze's philosophy from Hallward's critique. One must make a side note that Hallward indirectly 'creates' a new language to describe Deleuze's philosophy that will be used quite frequently in order to accurately present his position. In addition to defending Deleuze, the target of this article is Hallward's logic, which inaccurately interprets the relationship between the virtual and the actual. Hallward misappropriates the real context of what creation is to Deleuze. II. Hallward's Deleuze: Theophany and the Logic of Redemption Peter Hallward states that Deleuze writes a redemptive philosophy in conjunction with his spiritual allies: Spinoza, Saint Paul and Suhrawardi (Hallward 1997b: 6). This redemptive logic is designed to 'save' its readers from a situation depraved by consciousness, representation and 'the other' (6). Redemption from the aforementioned provides an immediate access to a different kind of situation, one that is grounded on an inclusive immanence to itself. Hallward notes that Deleuze's oeuvre explicates our passage from such a contaminated situation (material life) to a purer and more primordial situation. Deleuze's corpus, according to Hallward, begins with an ontological principle, or 'God' (6). This all-powerful force is somehow repressed by its own power of creation. The logic of redemption that Hallward puts forward is one aligned with both medieval and Islamic theology. Spinoza, Saint Paul and Suhrawardi attack our human, specific and worldly forms of difference, in favour of 28 Christopher Satoor another-worldly force (7). If redemption means an act of redeeming or atoning for our mistakes and our sins, Deleuze's philosophy attempts to 'rescue' us from the material world (7). According to Hallward, Deleuze's radical philosophy of immanence must entail a rigorous attack of transcendence and refuse all forms of negation. However, Hallward points out that this very critique of transcendence, posited by Deleuze, obtains its movement through a form of transcendence. This transcendence is the move away from our apparent contaminated situation, which could be called 'the given', and contains our human significance. According to Hallward, Deleuze's 'God' asks us to leave behind our material reality for a singular, inhuman and impersonal, position (6). This transcendence is the propelling gesture of Deleuze's entire project; and one that Hallward feels is quite problematic (8). For Deleuze, Spinoza and Suhrawardi, being is defined by a singularity or univocity. For Deleuze, being is univocal and the one expresses everything of the multiple (humans, dogs, plants, stars). What this amounts to is that 'the real' creates everything it perceives and conceives. There is only one kind of production for Deleuze: the production of the real (8). Humanity is produced and must, in some way, determine the differences between the real and unreal. However, as we have seen, the real is a part of this selfexpressive and immediate reality. The real must be immediate and not a part of the material world. For Deleuze, as Hallward notes, Spinoza, Saint Paul and Suhrawardi conclude that our greatest task is to overcome all of these obstacles. Our true goal in life is to return to a different situation, one that has succumbed to a dangerous escapism. If the real is immediate and primordial then, by definition, it must subsist in all creation. There is nothing in all creation that can separate us from the intellectual love of God. Yet, interestingly enough, we live separately from God. We live as interested and positioned subjects in a world. How we relate to God, in this scenario, is imagined through a form of transcendence that conceives God through the law; and this only brings us closer to a form of sin. Deleuze's solution, like his spiritual allies, is to escape the world; we must get past the specific, the (as-if), and become immediate to God (Hallward 1997b: 9). This amounts to us being 'remade', as if our minds and our whole being were transformed into a medium of God's infinite creations. Hallward sees Deleuze's philosophy in the same light. Hallward draws an analogy from Suhrawardi's philosophy of illumination, which consists of thought being aided by light and magic. In this model, light operates at a level of Deleuze and the Logic of Creation 29 all reality and produces divine, metaphysical sources of knowledge. The human is divided into two formal bodies: one tainted by the material world and the other the soul, which is aided by the light, a light that shelters these intellects in a collective oneness. Thus, it is thought through the light that survives as the reviver and resuscitator of life. The same is produced in Saint Paul, wherein the material world is in constant flux of sin, and one must align oneself with the body of Christ in order to escape the material world (10). According to Hallward, Deleuze uses the term 'the un-thought' or 'non-sense' to describe the same otherworldly body. The multiple is an expression of the one that is determined by its relation to God (Hallward 1997b: 10). All creatures aim to return to the movement towards the light. Like Suhrawardi, we must move towards the one that springs in all forms of life. Hallward feels that Deleuze's notion of freedom in its purest state is a form of obedience. The greater the right, of the one or sovereign, the more perfect unity there will be to establish one united body or substance (13). These aforementioned points, Hallward states, direct us to the elements of Deleuze's real philosophy, which is an exclusive ontology of univocity. Hallward claims that Deleuze does not offer us a critique of representation: 'What he gives us, at best, is a . . . "critique of misrepresentation"' (Hallward 1997a: 534). All of the following shows how Deleuze repeatedly breaks out of all given situations in order to jump into an ultimate monism. This is what Hallward states is the absolute 'monarch' or sovereignty (13). According to Hallward, Deleuze wants us to give up our worldly existence for a theophany. We have no sense of the real nature of things; they have been blocked and concealed from us by our deep-rooted human disposition. What Hallward sees continuously in Deleuze is this redemptive move to save the creature. III. Actual Creatures, Virtual Creatings, Confinement and Escapism Hallward states that Deleuze's philosophy is centred on the idea that being is creation. Creation embraces all features of reality and is the pivotal centre of all of Deleuze's works. If being is creation, being is also essentially differential (Hallward 2006: 24). This process of being differential is precisely what it means to be creative. Since being is part of the absolute creativity in all there is, it must be able to differentiate itself in an infinite amount of ways. This means that the most basic element of being consists, in part, in the process of creating (24). 30 Christopher Satoor Creating, in essence, serves as the reason behind all states of affairs, individuals and events. This makes 'being' the ultimate form behind a chaotic proliferation of unlimited events and creating that become one with creation and nature (Hallward 2006: 27). Every distinct creation creates a new organism, personality, object or experience. According to Hallward, we can describe creation as one act but it proceeds as two unique movements, through creations and creatures. Hallward states that 'Creare is one, we might say it involves both the active creans and the passive creaturum. The creating is implied or implicated within its creator; the creature is an explication or unfolding of the creating' (Hallward 2006: 27). As Hallward explains, Deleuze's logic of creation applies to each case of creating and creation. Deleuze attempts, through the production of creation, to construct the real in and of itself (Hallward 1997b: 16). Differentiated creatures are a part of actual extended forms of being. Yet, their existence is contingent, based upon the material constraints of the world (bodies, organs, situations). These differentiated creations are virtual and intensive rather than extended. Creation retains a primordial, self-differing essence and this self-differing essence can only be conceived in terms of a virtuality which actualises itself. Hallward's main point is that the real creative force between these two facets is only the virtual creating. The creating does not occupy an external position to the creature, but relies on the immanent relation internal to creation and creating (Hallward 2006: 27). This immanent relation between creature and creating arises internally through the creating to the creature. Hallward insists on showing us the relation between creating and creation. There is only one form of 'active' being that is truly alive, and that stems from the virtual creating. It is only the virtual creating that can differ and produce the new and the novel. According to Hallward, no matter how much effort is put into creating a work of art, a scientific function or a philosophical concept, the only thing that matters is the process of creating. Thus, Deleuzian philosophy privileges verbs over nouns to create, to act, to build (Hallward 2006: 43). Therefore, this creating is more pure than an actual living person, place or thing. A creating is not just a novel concept; it is entirely new in itself and eternal. What makes creating new is precisely this immanent and internal spark that creates and manifests change and transformation. In reality, the actual creature is only a simulation of its 'real' identity. The material self is only an optical illusion or effect of what is produced. It is only the virtual-creating that can produce the Deleuze and the Logic of Creation 31 'new' or novel. The real essence of a creature is its de-actualised state or the moment of its virtual-creativity (36). Creation only exists through the form of creatures, and only creatures can think the necessary process in which they are actualised. However, the reality of the situation is quite different. The actualisation and individuation of the actual person is always-only the essential product of a production that is itself necessary and primary to the creature. According to Hallward, the real destiny of the actual creature is to create and invent new ways of dealing with its own material reality. This inventive apparatus of dealing with materiality is precisely the moment where the creature empties everything that constitutes the self, thus dissolving it (Hallward 2006: 38). As stated earlier, creation is a solitary action but proceeds through an inherent dualism – the creating/creature and virtual/actual – and all transformation occurs internally, in the expression which intensifies it in an immanent monism. Essentially, all singular creations exist as multiple entities in one united body. Creating retains a virtual and ideal self-sufficiency that can only be deemed creative if, and only if, it can be incarnated in an existent creature, which then expresses and inhibits its own actualisation. According to Hallward, 'The existence (and resistance) of the creature is itself an internal necessity of creation; and creatural opacity is an immanent and unavoidable obstacle to the expression or development of being itself' (Hallward 2006: 39). The obstacle to which Hallward refers is the constraint of the material world (our bodies, organisation of organs and our habits). Deleuze's philosophy is constantly at odds with the material world. According to Hallward, Deleuze's real work is devoted to creating concepts to loosen the grip of conditions on the creature. It is important to note that Deleuze dedicated two books to Spinoza; and Hallward thinks there is a specific reason for this: Deleuze's philosophy occupies the Spinozist worldview, with some subtle modifications. For example, there is no distinction of the virtual and actual in Spinoza, but Hallward points out key similarities in both thinkers' metaphysics. 'The term "naturans" implies an active, creative feature, while "naturata" implies a passive, created substance' (Hallward 2006: 57). We have seen that only the 'virtual' is active while the 'actual' creature is passive. Spinoza, like Deleuze, seeks to construe nature as a self-creating reality. Every individual is precisely an active modifying facet of this univocal substance. Each singular creating in this model maintains the divine, eternal spark from the nature of God (57). 32 Christopher Satoor To understand this process of a singular creating contained in God/substance is to comprehend how all modifications are a part of the means of expressing the divine essence. Actual creatures are not 'modes' contained in God, but can only refer to certain times and places, which relate to themselves based on their own representation (Hallward 2006: 58). These actual creatures are clearly not active creations but passive selves. They cannot be a part of the means for creating, because they cannot express the one univocal power, they are stuck and caught in their material and disinterested lives (50). What exactly does this mean? Individuated/differentiated/actual creatures suffer from 'inadequate ideas', which are precisely the aforementioned affects. They live material and interested lives. This implies that they cannot take part in nature's divine essence. Materiality implies worldly bondage, limited to temporary existence. For Hallward's Deleuze, virtual creating is the only way that the production of the new can occur. It is only through this type of production that this novel creation has eternal existence that expresses the entirety of this infinite substance, and it is only the virtual-creating that is expressive of the cosmos, or God (57). Henri Bergson, according to Hallward, devoted his entire work to the nature of the virtual. For Bergson and Deleuze, the actual represents the passive subject; its habits, needs and wants. Yet, at the core of this subject, the actual represents the present. The misrepresentation of reality, here, is that although the actual may seem quite solid to us, in reality it is blurred by a materiality that falsely shapes the creature. The virtual is reduced to memory, and it represents the past that fills in the present. According to Hallward, the actual/creature is always guided by an illusion of its real self. The virtual is both immaterial and not-present, but it is seemingly the only real, lasting dimension of reality. It is the only real creative apparatus, while the actual is stuck to a limited perspective of the organism (Hallward 2006: 41). If the actual represents an organised body, the virtual represents an inorganic body that is disorganised and stripped of its material reality. The virtual is aligned with memory and it has no action, sensation or extension. Memory represents a pure form of immediacy and intuition. Thus, memory is disinterested in all present action. It catapults us towards the middle of a pure past or pure recollection. The pure past need not strive to preserve itself; it remains whole within itself. When we reflect on the past, we are not actualising or representing a memory to ourselves. What is occurring is a moment where we are actually delving deep into the past (Hallward 2006: 43). Deleuze and the Logic of Creation 33 Hallward insists on this repeatedly: Deleuze strives for a privileged position that produces its own de-actualisation and de-materialisation to empty the subject (Hallward 2006: 81). The empty subject evacuates the known creature in order to create. This model can only be maintained correctly, in its momentum, as a theophany. Pure memory is powerless and intensive. It shares no feelings or sensations and it contains no self-interest for the creature. Although the actual/virtual cannot be considered separately, the real task of every creature is to counteractualise and reverse its own creatural state confining it to a dematerialised form (43). Actualisation belongs to the virtual and the actualisation of a virtual singularity is constituted by the plane of immanence. This plane is where the creature is properly dissolved and annihilated. The virtual is the subject of actualisation and the plane of immanence is nothing but a process which converts objects into subjects. The 'actual' denotes an existing human being who can think, feel, have sensations and qualities, and embody a life story. The virtual describes characteristics that are not presentable – virtual/creatings are never present or presentable. Hallward's example of this is taken from Deleuze's last work Pure Immanence: An Essay on a Life, in which Deleuze invokes Charles Dickens's character, Riderhood, who has a near-death experience. Hallward states that: The virtual life that lives in Riderhood, remember, is not the actual 'subject who incarnated it in the midst of things [and] who made it good or bad'; it is rather the anonymous spark of life within him, with whom everyone empathises in a sort of immediate intuition or sympathy. Such living is our only genuine subject, . . . to be equal to the events that befall it, i.e. to the creatings that transform it. (Hallward 2006: 36, quoting Deleuze 2001: 28) Virtual differentiation creates what it actualises and this is because what it really 'actualises' never resembles the singularities that it brings to life (Hallward 2006: 37). A creation is a kind of pre-existence that ignores all activity and is the resemblance of real life. As Hallward notes, 'the actual is always constituted, while the virtual is wholly constituent' (Hallward 2006: 37). This is key to understanding Deleuze's philosophy. The virtual is always creative and the actual is always created (37). Virtual-creating is a pure form of creativity in and of itself. It can be seen as a pure primordial energy, which is both the constituent force of its power to create, along with its inexhaustible need for transformation and change (37). The Virtual can only be thought of as a kind of unthinkable abstraction. The 34 Christopher Satoor force of transformation that is possessed within it is none other than a pure intensity that aids both difference/being and the virtual creating that incarnates all things. As stated earlier, the actual is no more than an illusion or ephemeral result of our true immaterial self. The virtual is 'the real' and exists more actually then our material form; and this is predicated on the fact that virtual-creations are fully intensive, while the actual is material and extended. In a manner of speaking, the virtual-creating is intensive, immaterial, unlimited and is always individuating pure forces. The actual is material, extensive, limited and individuated; it is always in a fixed state (Hallward 2006: 42). Virtual creations can be conceived as events linked to quasi-causes. Interestingly enough, Hallward states that an event to Deleuze is free of all normative and personal causality. This means that all events are virtual and, as incorporeal entities, they distance themselves from actual corporeal entities. Creation and events are the same. An event is actualised in a body. However, it also consists of a shadowy, secret form that is eventually subtracted and then added to actualisation. The virtual can be real without being 'actual'. An event exists as a kind of dead time, where what lies at the heart of it is a non-presentable, immaterial, unmoving essence or spark. Such events exist as empty floating entities or 'mean-whiles' where nothing ever takes place. This means that the virtual-event can only be grasped by escaping our subjective perspective. This involves a kind of suspension and dissolution of all actual activity. Hallward recalls Deleuze's example of a battle in which the real event hovers over the battlefield and can only be realised in its pure imperceptible state (Hallward 2006: 42). An event that occurs cannot be part of our world; it must be out of this world. All identity disappears from the self and the world in these virtual events. What replaces 'real' material life is a power to intuit this impersonal reality, which is presented to us, as a new world, beyond the given. This given is material life in flux. However, we must somehow block this flux in its movement and align with the singular (44). All creatures that are able to create and to think must find the necessary means to escape the world, in order that they continue to be creative and thoughtful. Philosophy is obliged to lead us from actual to virtual; or from our world it must then lead us 'out of this world' (Hallward 2006: 44). The goal of this philosophy is not just to leap out of the world into another realm. Since, as actualised material beings, we are alienated and confined to a false identity of ourselves, our escape entails our de-actualisation or 'deterritorialisation', which brings us back Deleuze and the Logic of Creation 35 to the point of virtual-creating previously discussed. This virtual-creating is an impersonal and immaterial existence. The 'real' layers of our human form, such as needs, wants, desire and habits, are part of stratification. To stratify means building material layers that form our representation of this world. According to Hallward, Deleuze asks us to de-stratify ourselves, and to remove the layers of humanity, dismantle the actual creature and destroy the 'organised organism' (Hallward 1997a: 534). We must become a 'body-without-organs' and a 'body-without-others'. Our material body must attain a state where it can remove and de-populate itself from the world. For Robinson Crusoe (deserted on an island), the creative aspect of his existence is the moment where he no longer functions as a human, but as the virtual spark of the island that connects all life to one immanent life (Hallward 2006: 23). Our creatural confinement has to do with our actual existence and our material presence. These obstacles are imposed on the creature by our material constraints. Our task, as creators, is to loosen the grip of the material world and let out the virtual-creating that has been imprisoned inside of us. A creative body is never an actual entity, but is a wholly virtual one. Like Robinson Crusoe, we must learn to annihilate ourselves in order to let the 'eventisland' live thorough us (23). IV. In Defence of Deleuze's Logic of Creation: Univocity and Equality For Deleuze, the idea of becoming-subject involves a rupture. We must fundamentally break the ties that bind a subject to all formal representation. A subject and an apple can only individuate themselves based on an internal form of difference, an expressive, dynamic form. In order to ground difference in an expressive and dynamic form of comprehension, Deleuze needs to disclose a form of difference that is not created through the mediation of representation but understood through an absolute immediacy, a pure contemplation. This form of immediacy or pure contemplation is misrepresented by Hallward. The fallacy of Hallward's critique of Deleuze lies in the fact that we are presented with a Deleuze who embraces all forms of representation, who grounds difference on the negative and who takes advantage of the notion of life. Hallward's critique presents us with man as the centre of all life and our mission as being to become anonymous, imperceptible and de-materialise. If man is to become the centre of all life then why would Deleuze demand the destruction of the subject? The destruction 36 Christopher Satoor of the subject would then signal the removal of man from the world. These two claims do not coincide. Hallward's is far from the picture that Deleuze paints of life. According to Deleuze, difference can only be understood as difference once it can 'differentiate' what pertains to it (Deleuze 1994: 172). What is needed for this process is a singular individuating difference. This may sound peculiar, but what Deleuze has in mind is an entirely differential ontology that invokes the creation of a subject outside of our sensory-motor schema. He aims to present us with subjects who can formally oppose this representational schema on a new ground, that of repetition. What does this mean? In order to prevent us from falling into Hallward's trap of an 'a-subjective', 'a-specific' being, we need to recognise how Deleuze uses Duns Scotus' model of univocity. Since difference cannot be understood through negation and opposition, this newly created 'difference-in-itself' has no formal predicates standing behind it. The shadow of difference will only be repetition, which is the production of the new; the production of new difference. In essence, this means that difference must be its own 'differentiator of difference', or what Deleuze calls 'a dark precursor' that is always in-between the forces of life, pulling them together and creating unities (119). It is easy to get caught up in a thinker's jargon, and most of the problems that stem from accounts of Deleuze are the result of misrepresenting these subtle processes. Hallward, for example, creates the notions of creator, creating and creation in order to understand all the alterations of difference. Yet, by doing this, he often misses steps and blurs the distinctions between fundamental aspects of the philosophy. For now, what we need to do is familiarise ourselves with univocity and Scotus' model of being. The principle of univocity holds that all being is singular and that all entities are unique and resonate the same being within all of reality. Deleuze states, 'Being is univocal and it only has one single voice' (Deleuze 1994: 35). This singular ontology does not mean that all objects and entities are thrown into the same melting pot. Once being is understood as singular, and this univocal principle is actualised, it posits a radical thesis: all individuals, objects and entities should be comprehended as pure intensities. Deleuze sees pure difference as a formal intensity that lies behind difference. When we as individuals are actualised in activities, this intensive stream of individuality is turned into an extensive force. We can call this intensity 'a pre-personal' form of difference. It takes the shape of a potential which is then actualised and individuated. This form of individuation takes a pure potential and turns it into an extensive reality. This means there are two forms of pure difference: one is a virtual Deleuze and the Logic of Creation 37 structure behind an entity and the pre-personal. This is what Deleuze calls differentiation, and it deals with intensity and the intensive (Deleuze 1994: 207). The other form of pure difference is known as the actual. It is the individuation of being. What is important to note is that this notion of intensity lies behind the relationship of both difference and repetition, a difference that creates the new and the extensive. Both of these forms of difference are based on a univocal model. Deleuze states that 'univocal being is at one and the same time a nomadic distribution of crowned anarchy' (Deleuze 1994: 36). It is easy to misinterpret Deleuze's conception of crowned anarchy. Essentially, it should be understood as a set of multiples being expressive of this singular difference that makes up all of reality. Deleuze posits the theorem of monism = pluralism; what he has in mind is a theory of monism that stresses more importance on a pluralism. Each and every individual is essentially made up of this one totality. Each individual is expressive of this whole. Deleuze sees this monism in a different light than the history of monism in philosophy. What he ideally formulates is a monism with a unique variation of the multiple, each multiple possessing its own fundamental perspective of the whole. This is precisely why difference must produce the intensive. We must first be acquainted with life in order to be able to express it. Intensity is understood as a depth of the world, which opens a new space around us, that once actualised can be extensive or extended to be part of this whole. Hallward does not see the model in this way. He presumes that this crowned anarchy must be viewed like Thomas Hobbes's political model of a Leviathan standing over all beings. Since the state of nature is dangerous, it is the Leviathan, a giant, that keeps everyone in their place working towards society. This model makes all individuals fall prey to the rules and regulations of the one, but this one is a determinate totality, meaning everything is fixed in place. In Hallward's interpretation of Deleuze, his monism is a prison for actual creatures. Their mission is to de-actualise and become part of this Leviathan. Notice here, it is the Leviathan that gives us a reality. It is what centres our 'representation' of the world. Thus, Hallward's comparison of the Leviathan and its sovereign reign does not align with the Deleuzian singular and its perspective-based monism. Hallward is still presenting Deleuze's philosophy in the realm of opposition, analogy and negation. These errors of representation form what Deleuze calls the 'black nothingness of difference' (Deleuze 1994: 28). Deleuze differentiates between the colours black and white to express the difference between 38 Christopher Satoor intensity and representation. The colour black denotes the absence of all colours. All we have to do is think of the concept of a black hole which swallows all forms of light. If we cannot think of these colours outside of the black background as being individual intensities or individual differences, than all of them would melt into this black nothingness. What representation, analogy, negation and opposition present us with is a model of the same and the similar. Once we have melted into the same blackness, we are no longer individuated, actualised and grounded on our own unique perspective. All is lost in this ubiquitous self-same law of how things are supposed to appear to us. This is the negation of difference and the individual. This is how Hallward's argument depicts Deleuze: Deleuze, for Hallward, wants to melt everything into the same substance. In this melting of all things there is no room for difference because difference is negated. Hallward's position misrepresents Deleuze, and depicts an internal form of representation. This creates the space to move difference, the singular and the individual into nothingness. This destroys the model of uniqueness, expression and individuality. It reduces all particulars to the same. It also depicts our current societal state. We have a society of unique differences that are moulded according to how the 'one' imposes its structure. Either all individuality is reduced to the same in order to make each of these individuals a profitable outlet that gives back to the system; or they are not conducive to the system as a whole and their differences are not welcomed. The whole is fragmented on the schism of how the multiple should relate to the one. This forced conception blurs the distinction between who produces and who is seen as 'wholly other', creating and fragmenting a system of others that are never visible in the societal whole. Yet, Deleuze's univocal model is better described as an 'undifferentiated white abyss' (Deleuze 1994: 28). In this model, Deleuze makes room for every differential equation. If we look at the colour white as the elemental that exists in all colours, its dynamic spark or expressive intensity is contained in all visible reality. All colours possess a degree of whiteness in their constitution. The fundamental element of difference is what links the multiple with the whole. However, we are taught through the history of philosophy that to differentiate between two things we must not base this knowledge on a creative intensity that everyone possesses. Rather, we are taught to exclude and see reality through the eyes of opposition and negation. The method of equal intensity is how we are to understand univocity; the process of differentiation is what preserves all 'individual' being. Deleuze and the Logic of Creation 39 Crowned anarchy is, therefore, not a sovereign, medieval deity, which stands guard over us and makes us obey the rigid laws of the one. This result fragments difference. Crowned anarchy is like a giant white wall. Now, this white wall is entirely made up of several degrees of intensity that form the concept of white. Yet, there are unique variations and degrees of white that make up the wall. It is this multiple variation of intensity that differentiates between other degrees and forms a cohesive and singular reality. Notice here that each variation of white makes up the one. Each variation has its own unique perspective of the whole. The black nothingness isolates and cuts all the degrees of intensity, and severs difference and the subject. It melts them into the absorption of the one. These multiple perspectives of the one make reality; they add to it, they are part of the dynamic flow and flux of life. When life is severed from its activity, it is no longer active, but a passive subject that is melted into the framework of a false reality. We no longer believe in the world because we are cut off from its relations. The world in which we do believe again is this world built upon a univocal framework. This 'undifferentiated-difference' is the white abyss, where each subject is seen as an 'equal quality' of its infinite expression. This white wall has an infinite amount of attributes and an infinite amount of degrees; each individual reverberates and allows multiple sensations that can grasp all of reality. What univocity can offer us is a fundamental model of difference that is unaffected by representation. The real method behind the univocity of being and the differentiation of difference is to show how singular difference can differentiate among differential entities 'only' when all objects, subjects, animals and entities are seen as an equal part of reality. This essential equality allows the space for all beings to express of themselves in all of 'life'. Deleuze's differential ontology is first and foremost 'a philosophy of life'. This is the real method behind Deleuze. Hallward is right that Deleuze devoted two texts to Spinoza. However, Deleuze's fundamental pursuit, in his Spinozist analysis, is the hidden element of reality, the hidden element behind difference, 'intensity' and how this intensivedifference could become dynamic and expressive. Deleuze's texts on Spinoza are not about a God who can redeem us from the poison of the world, nor is there any logic of salvation built into this framework. It is the concept of 'expression' that Deleuze devotes these two books to. How can we become expressive again? How can we believe in a world that we ourselves cannot express? And so the leading statement of the text is the following: 'We still do not know what a body can do' (Deleuze 1990b: 2010). The real question behind these texts is how can a body 40 Christopher Satoor become an adequate expression of itself and all reality (210)? The real thinker that Deleuze models his metaphysics after is Leibniz. He devoted an entire text to Leibniz's conception of how reality is built by layers, or folds. Each layer or fold is like a line, a reality built upon a neverending series of lines. Each one of these lines or layers forms the identity or perspective of each unique differential being (Deleuze 1993: 8). When a line of intensity converges or is forced to converge on any kind of representational assemblage, this singular line deteriorates and is blocked from expressing its unique perspective on the whole. This process is what Deleuze calls 'reterritorialisation'. If a line can diverge away from the series, if it is allowed to fold and enfold, creating a new series amongst the whole, this process is called 'deterritorialisation'. This is the real process behind life; to create new assemblages and form new series of differential beings. Life must create expressive outlets for these continued processes of divergence. This divergence is called a 'line of flight', and once it frees itself from the convergence of the series, a new difference is produced through the repetition that embodies the series. This is the continued cycle we live in. Difference is first thrown into the face of a converging series, wherein it is blocked, cut off and reduced to representational ambiguities. Or, it can produce differential-being by diverging from the series, thus repeating the expressive-dynamic flow of life. Difference and repetition are the basis of reality. This is the model of being that Deleuze imports from Leibniz. We do not need to go too in-depth into Leibniz's theory, but it is important that we see the close connection between Leibniz's monad and Deleuze differential-singular being. According to Leibniz, a monad is a simple substance that is encased in 'the one' of reality or the universe (Deleuze 1993: 26). If we return to the example of the white wall, each monad, like the degrees of intensity that constitute it, forms all of reality. Each of these simple substances differentiates itself in the whole by dynamically adding in its own perspective. When a line diverges from the series, the repetition of its movement and its divergence creates 'a new difference', an 'extensive difference'. Subsequently, this extensive difference is what adds its perspective on the whole. A newly created perspective, 'singulardifferential extensive', creates the dynamic whole: a pluralism that makes up a monism. Where representation demands recognition, univocity implies an inherent equality that is the basis of all human reality. All living beings are 'a part' of this organic one-all. Each monad, as a subject, animal and plant, is conceived of as a differend (Deleuze 1994: 230). Each monad must actively animate itself from passive difference to Deleuze and the Logic of Creation 41 active difference, from representation to univocal singularity, from intensive to extensive, the move from the convergent series to a divergent actuality. Hallward completely misrepresents Deleuze. Instead of portraying an immediate 'white undifferentiated intensive' that is affected and expressive of an 'immanent' reality, he presents Deleuze bound to forms of representation, melted into the black nothingness. The underlying message of this black nothingness to Hallward is categorised by a God who demands that his subjects become nonliving entities and transcend every human assemblage. Once a univocal conception of difference is actualised and divergent deterritorialisation is affirmed: The body is no longer the obstacle that separates us from thought itself. But it is the movement that we overcome, a false sense of thinking that we shatter, once this is realized, we are plunged into the depths of reaching the unthought that is life, not that the body thinks but now it is free from the obstinate and stubborn world of identity, it is difference which forces us to think what is concealed from thought and reality. (Deleuze 1989: 189) The above quote shows what life is for Deleuze, a life without categories and a body-without-hierarchies. Hallward confuses this conception of the singular. He misunderstands that all life is creation, for Deleuze, and the novel and the new are a part of the dynamic between the convergent and divergent series. V. The Active Subject and the Three Syntheses of the Singular We know that Deleuze characterises the subject by a singular difference and that at the very base of the subject is a form of intensity. Nevertheless, this is still a difficult concept to grasp. According to Deleuze, the subject is part of a tripartite dialectic. Now, Deleuze never uses the word 'dialectic'. We are going to invoke this terminology because these three syntheses of the subject are asymmetrical, meaning they are always occurring at each moment. Each multidimensional layer involved in this synthesis is interacting with several stimuli and being affected and reproducing a new effect. This dialectic is staged between the past, the present and the future. The Humean subject is an empty screen. Like a movie theatre, it is empty until a projector passively shines images upon it. This passive screen lets in these sense impressions, forming a bundle of experiences. This sensuous bundle is what Deleuze defines as a habitual experience of sense data that affect us in our daily lives, forming our day-to42 Christopher Satoor day moments. These moments of habit, or contracting a habit, is what Deleuze calls the process of 'habitus' and this denotes all present experience. Habit becomes the constitutive root of the passive subject but in order for this present to pass or be filled in with context, the past must be able to actively integrate and substitute a complete consciousness. Deleuze invokes the Bergsonian 'pure past' as that which conditions the present, for the present could be nothing without a past that has not passed (Deleuze 1990a: 61). The pure past is a transcendental feature for Deleuze and it is this transcendental feature that gives content and depth to the passive subject. Interestingly enough, this form of pure past is what Hallward describes as empty and what causes friction between the material and the immaterial. However, what Hallward does not grasp is that this pure past is not in some immaterial realm. Time grounds the subject. Time is also the feature that aids repetition and meaning. Time is part of the virtual structure that pushes the convergent series into a divergent series. Deleuze calls this 'recollection-subjectivity and contraction-subjectivity' (53). The present will always be part of the actual subject, but an actual subject without intensity and extensity is nothing other than an empty shell. Yet, something is still required of the subject and there is a missing step. If Deleuze is trying to map out the free-flowing line of flight from passive to active subject, then what is it that animates these polar identities? What is it that connects the potential with the actual? This problem has caused many rifts in Deleuzian thought. What we need to remember is that Deleuze is not 'emptying' out the subject in order to bring forward some dynamic immaterial force. What activates these two forces is the most ambiguous and problematic feature in all of Deleuze's philosophy. This feature is the death of the subject. What we have to keep in mind is that, for Deleuze, thought really maps onto the body and each decade of thought changes the milieu of peoples. We have seen the Humean paradigm and the Bergsonian, but to truly understand the death of the subject we have to jump backwards into the Kantian paradigm. We should keep in mind that death for Deleuze is not how we perceive death today. It is not the end or the destruction of the subject. We need to establish some background in the history of philosophy first before we can begin to understand this idea of the death of the subject. For Descartes, time is held in place by the divine and the mechanistic world is created by God. The world works like clockwork and every part of the body has its place and role. In answering the question of subjectivity, Kant starts off with the same Cartesian problematic. Kant Deleuze and the Logic of Creation 43 uses the 'cogito' as the sole condition that solidifies the subject. Kant explains that this new cogito is a transcendental feature, meaning that it helps the human organism conform to its awareness. This 'I' that helps condition the subject is the main synthesis of all of our experience. It is best described by Kant as the faculties. What we call 'the self' today is part of the transcendental illusion, the illusion that we have a self. Kant agrees with Hume that we are just passive subjects. Those faculties that consist of the 'I' merely synthesise all of our experience, although its function is not really part of the subject. Kant has two functions of subjectivity: the 'I' and the 'self'. However, the 'self' is aided by reason to uphold this illusion, this thing-in-itself. This moment in Kant's philosophy between these two identities is what creates the schizophrenic subject for Deleuze. This rupture in all passive experience forms a fundamental dualism. Deleuze affirms that this sequence in thought creates a global unrest in the universal subject. The schizophrenic 'I' is never consolidated and Hegel's solution to this problem between the world of phenomena and noumena is to create the dialectic of representation, which fragments the subject even further. According to Deleuze, both Kant and Hegel uphold this ironic gesture of death. In order to free our judgements from being passive and empty, Kant creates the notion of practical reason, which makes this illusion of self have the power to create judgements. In addition, Hegel's gesture is to formulate a negative ground to solve the problem of this inherent lack. Deleuze is willing to accept this moment between the schizophrenic 'I' and the illusion of the 'self', but only if another solution is able to fix the problem. Practical reason in the form of judgements cannot help condition the subject. Neither can the negative ground, if habits fundamentally form the constituency of the subject and the past is our access to filling in these experiences with depth. Deleuze is in the same position as Kant and Hegel: something must be able to ground the unconditioned conditions. In other words, Deleuze needs a fundamental synthesis to conjoin this moment of schizophrenia. The Kantian route is to make this empty subject believe in the illusion of the self and the soul, by giving it judgements. However, judgements depend upon the false kind of representation that forms convergent blockages. This form of representation creates an indifferent-difference. The Hegelian path leads to controlling the subject, by letting it be guided by the ground of the negative. Since this ground does nothing but give the subject an objective lack, Hegel's answer is that transcendence must be posited in order to align self-consciousness with a form of absolute knowing. 44 Christopher Satoor The key to answering this solution, according to Deleuze, is that all humans exist among these processes of Humean habits, Bergsonian time and Kantian illusions. However, Deleuze's solution is to dissolve these representational habits and illusory judgements of self, difference must peel back the layers of its passivity. This becoming-intensive is Deleuze's solution. What Deleuze calls the 'death drive' is the moment of freeing these forced representational sedimentations on the body. Judgements, opposites and habits create hierarchies on the subject. Since we go through this continual process between the 'I' and the self, Deleuze states that Nietzsche's eternal return will be our saving grace. Every time we reach this point of tension between the schizophrenic 'I' and the self, repetition creates the production of the new, a new difference, the dissolving of the self. This brings us closer to what really makes the subject, its real actions and real potential, a real new difference. This stripped-down subject is the virtual-body: it is a body-withoutorgans, a non-hierarchised, non-sexualised subject. What is left of the subject is nothing but a series of active larval selves beneath our habits and representations. These larval selves represent the pre-individual singularities and activities that we possess. It is a dynamic self, and a real configuration of difference, because we go through this process constantly. When the cycle is repeated we go back to this state of pre-individual activities. Our goal is to affirm our absolute intensive actuality, we are more than just our habits, and this is why Deleuze calls on Nietzsche's idea of becoming and the eternal return. These larval selves are pure affirmation. They create the multitude that makes us an active being. What makes 'you' you is not your habits, or the way the world is represented to you, but how you 'actualise' your dynamic power, your creative spark, and this is the solution to the dualism between the 'I' and the self; beneath the crude materiality of everything, there is another self, an 'other-self', a multiple of selves that make up the unity of all of our activity. Deleuze claims that 'Underneath the self which acts are little selves which contemplate and which render possible both action and the active subject' (Deleuze 1994: 75). Action is greater than judgements. Life outweighs illusion and simulacra. This statement by Deleuze means that the 'self' is not based on its level of passivity or a crisis of illusion. Rather, it is the essential and dynamic, the intensive and the active self. When we act, and affirm all of the potential living beneath us, this chance, this 'roll of the dice', hands us back over to our lives (Deleuze 2006: 25). Deleuze and the Logic of Creation 45 VI. Constructivism and the Actual and the Virtual Partly what makes Peter Hallward's critique so strong is the logic of theophany that he invokes on Deleuze. Hallward states that Deleuze partakes in a one-all logic. One cannot really deny this framework but there are two points we must address: (1) the one-all does not refer to a unifying totality but to the plane of all thought and life, because Deleuze invokes a philosophy of constructivism and it is centred on the logic of creation; (2) in order to pass off this logic, Hallward makes a category mistake between immanence as the plane of all thought and emanation, a medieval theological concept. For Deleuze, concepts represent fundamental events and literally all events, and concepts, are part of this pre-philosophical plane. Even concepts go through the process of differentiation. Differentiation represents a virtual structure for Deleuze; we must not understand the virtual in terms of virtual reality, but as a moment of a structure or pre-individual singularity awaiting actualisation. These presupposed moments are called problems/structures. The problematic is an intensive field of differentiation, meaning it consists of several pre-individual singularities. Like our larval state, the pre-individual activities have not been actualised and individuated. The real process is to actualise these problematic structures and turn them into life solutions. These potentialities have the necessary means to germinate into life cycles. Deleuze's philosophy maps out these ontogenetic and morphogenetic processes. We must return to the world, return to life, and thus, Deleuze's philosophy is an ontology of life. Hallward is correct that Deleuze has a vital philosophy but his one-all does not refer to a God and his creatures, rather to multiple processes that involve these preindividual potentials in their virtual structure; their convergent state and the movement to their actualisation into a real solution, 'a real life'. The actual signals the divergent series and the production of the new. These virtual/actual multiples make up all of our reality and can be defined as simple problems and solutions. They cannot be reduced to a deity, for a deity is a representation of how the world works. If we look at simple vegetal life, plants form a virtual structure with the earth, there are pre-individual singularities that make up their constitution, and what photosynthesis produces in plant life is the process of intensity, which takes sunlight and turns it into simple sugars feeding the plant. The plant then takes the nutrients and actualises them all over its body and then returns what is left to the soil. This active genesis or 'differenciation' in 46 Christopher Satoor the plant is what Deleuze calls becoming-intense (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 197). This differential ontology starts off with 'differentiation' (virtual structure) and then moves to 'differenciation' (the genesis of actuality). To Deleuze, this is life solving problems and creation and novelty working at every second. So the structure of the virtual-actual is not the fundamental dualism posited by Hallward, but is an asymmetrical synthesis of life. Concepts are formed in the same manner, a problem is posed in a pre-individual state and the concept is created out of thought and actualised as a solution. Descartes created the cogito as a solution to radical subjectivity, and in doing this he solved the problem of medieval subjectivity. Any time this dynamic logic of creation is used – virtual/actual, convergent/divergent, differentiation/differenciation – the outcome is always an 'event'. An event is the individuation and actualisation of differenciation (the incarnation of the actual); Deleuze's point is that we are always-already in a problem. Life is about these fundamental encounters and solving each moment. It is not just the human organism that encounters problem-solving; the forces of life work in this exact way. This is something that Hallward is not able to accept. A thunderstorm, states Deleuze, is a virtual structure, the tension in the ground and the surge of electrical energy in the clouds create the process of differentiation; this is the moment of pre-individual singularities that create the potential that causes this influx of intensity. The actualisation or genesis of the storm is the bolt of lightning; this is the process of differenciation or the actual individuation of the storm. Life works through 'the logic of creation', and our means of problem-solving are created through concepts elaborated through philosophy, art, science and politics. Hallward is not able to accept this kind of creation of the new because he sees Deleuze's philosophy based on a false ground of immanence. VII. Conclusion: 'A Part' of This World In conclusion, Peter Hallward's critique of Deleuze exploits the concept of life. Deleuze's philosophy is one that is based on 'a logic of creation', a vital and dynamic expression of how we as subjects can 'believe' in the world again. The world, for Deleuze, is comparable to an egg. It is an egg that always puts us into a problem and an 'encounter' with life. If the world is embryonic, it is because among its endless possibilities are contained these pre-individual potentialities awaiting Deleuze and the Logic of Creation 47 our indefinite actualisation. If we are always-already in a problem, it is because we are always 'in the world', a world that is bound to the logic of creation, where intensity and difference are united in all activities of life. The production of the new, creation and novelty are occurring at every second, from thunderstorms, to photosynthesis, to procreation. Deleuze's philosophy is a system that maps our becoming-germinal, and this process is not in some other-worldly realm or held together by a God. It is 'we' that determine the flux and flow of all of our actions. Deleuze thinks that by changing the configuration of our understanding, by getting rid of false hierarchies and representations, we can have another chance at becoming a subject and becoming another self that is 'a part' of a dynamic and expressive world. References Badiou, Alain (2004) Deleuze: The Clamor of Being, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, Gilles (1989) Cinema 2: The Time-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, Gilles (1990a) Bergsonism, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam, New York: Zone Books. Deleuze, Gilles (1990b) Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, trans. Martin Joughin, New York: Zone Books. Deleuze, Gilles (1993) The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, trans. Tom Conley, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, Gilles (1994) Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton, New York: Columbia University Press. Deleuze, Gilles (2001) Pure Immanence: Essays on a Life, trans. Anne Boyman, New York: Zone Books. Deleuze, Gilles (2006) Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson, New York: Columbia University Press. Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari (1987) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Hallward, Peter (1997a) 'Deleuze and the World Without Others', Philosophy Today, 41:4, pp. 530–40. Hallward, Peter (1997b) 'Gilles Deleuze and the Redemption from Interest', Radical Philosophy, 81, pp. 6–18. Hallward, Peter (2006) Out of This World: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Creation, London: Verso. Your short guide to the EUP Journals Blog http://euppublishingblog.com/ A forum for discussions relating to Edinburgh University Press Journals 1. 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