t6 A Poetic Dialectic
A truth beginswith a poem of the void, continuesthrough the choice
of continuing, and comes to an end only in the exhaustionof its own in-
finiry. No one is its master,but everyonecan come to be inscribedwithin
it. Everyonecan say:"No, there is not what there is. There is alsowhat has
happened,of whose persistence-here and now-I am the bearer."
Persistence? The poem, forever inscribed and lying stellar upon the
page, is its exemplary guardian. But are there not other arts devoting
themselvesto the fugaciry of the event, to its allusive disappearance,to
what rs unfxedin the becoming of the true?Arts subtractedfrom the im-
passeof the master?Arts of mobility and of the "just once"?What are we
to say of dance, of these mobile bodies that transport us toward the for-
getting of their own weight?What are we to sayof cinema, this Deleuzian
unwinding of the time-image?\What are we to say of theater,in which,
night after night, a pieceis played, alwaysdifferent but alwaysthe same,a
pieceof which one day-the actorsvanished,the setsburned, the director
omitted-nothing will remain? It must be said that these are different
1lfr rypes of artistic configurations,both more familiar and more pliant than
rlli the poem. Moreover, unlike the imperial poem, these configurations a-i-
semble.Isphilosophy as comfortable with thesearts of public passageas it
is in its link-whether of mortal conflict or allegianss-\Mi1h the poem?
from Alain Badiou, Handbook of Inaesthetics,
Alberto Toscano (trans.), Stanford, CA: Stanford
lrlr
University Press, 2005.
S6 Dance as a Metaphor for Thoughr
\X/hy does dance dawn on Nietzsche as a compulsory meraphor for
thought? It is becausedance is what opposesitself to Nietzsche-Zarathus-
tra'sgreat enemy,an enemy he designaresas the "spirit of Graviry." Dance
is, first and foremost, the image of a thought subtractedfrom every spirit
of heaviness.It is important to registerthe otherimagesof this subtrac-
tion, for they inscribe dance into a compact metaphorical nerwork. Thke
the bird, for example.As Zarathustradeclares:'And especiallybird-like is
that I am enemy to the Spirit of Gravity." 1This provides us with a first
metaphorical connection beween dance and rhe bird. Let us say that
there is a germination,or a dancing birth, of what we could call the bird
within the body. More generally,there is in Nietzschethe image of flight.
Zarathustra also says:"He who will one day teach men ro fy will have
moved all boundary-stones;all boundary-stoneswill themselvesfy into
the air to him, he will baptizethe earth anew-as 'the weighr-less."'2It
would really be a very beautiful and judicious definition of dance ro say
that it is a new name given to the earth. There remains the child. The
child "is innocenceand forgetfulness,a new beginning, a sport, a self-pro-
pelling wheel, a first morion, a sacredYes."3 This is the third metamor-
phosis, found at the beginning of Thus SpokeZarathutya-afrcy d1s
camel,which is the oppositeof dance,and the lion, too violent to be ca-
pable of naming as "lighr" rhe earth that has begun anew. It should be
noted that dance,which is both bird and flight, is also everything that the
infant designates.Dance is innocen"., b"."use it is a body before the
It
!ody. is forgetting, becauseit is a body that forgetsits fetteir, it, weight.
It is a new beginning, becausethe dancing g.r,.ri. musr alwaysbe some-
t7
 r8 Dance as a Metaphor for Tbought
thing like the invention of its own beginning. And it is also play, of
course, becausedance frees the body from all social mimicry, from all
graviry and conformiry. A wheel that turns itself, This could provide a
very elegantdefinition for dance. Dance is like a circle in space,but a cir-
cle that is its own principle, a circle that is not drawn from the outside,
but rather draws itself. Dance is the prime mover: Every gestureand every
line of dance must presentitself not as a consequence,but as the very
source of mobiliry. And finally, dance is simple affirmation, becauseit
makes the negativebody-the shameful body-radiantly absent.
Later,Nietzschewill alsospeakof fountains, still within the sequenceof
imagesthat dissolvethe spirit of heaviness."My soul is a leaping foun-
tain," and, of course, the dancing body is always leaping, out of the
ground, out of itself.a
Finally, there is the air, the aerial element, summing it all up. Dance is
what allows the earth to name itself "aerial."In dance,the earth is thought
]rl
of as if it were endowedwith a constant airing. Dance involvesthe breath,
I
the respiration of the earth. This is becausethe central question of dance
I is that of the relation benn'eenverticaliry and attraction.Verticaliry and at-
rl
traction enter the dancing body and allow it to manifest a paradoxical
i1
rill
frltf possibiliry:that the earth and the air may exchangetheir positions,the
-,1
Il
one passinginto the other. It is for all of thesereasonsthat thought finds
rrf its metaphor in dance,which recapitulatesthe seriesof the bird, the foun-
tain, the child, and the intangible air. Of course,this seriescan appear
:,,1 very innocent, almost mawkish, like a childish tale in which nothing may
titil be assertedor assessed any longer. But it is necessaryto understandthat
ltfi[
this seriesis traversedby Nietzsche-by dance-in terms of its relation to
a power and a rage.Dance is both one of the terms of the seriesand the
violent traversalof the whole series.Zarathustrawill sayof himself that he
has "dancing-mad feet."5
Dance lends a figure to the traversalof innocenceby power. It manifests
the secretvirulence of what initially appearedas fountain, bird, child-
hood. In actual fact, what justifies the identification of danceas the meta-
phor for thought is Nietzsche'sconviction that thought is an intensifca'
tion.This conviction is primarily opposedto the thesisaccordingto which
rhought is a principle whose mode of realizationis external. For Nietz-
sche, thought is not effectuatedanywhere else than where it is given-
thought is effectivein situ, it is what (if one may sPeakin this manner) is
intensified upon itself, or again, it is the movement of its own intensity.
Dance as a Metaphor for Thought
t9
But then the image of dance is a natural one. Dance visibly transmits
the Idea of thought as an immanent intensificarion. Or rather, we could
speakhere of a certainuisionof dance.In fact, the metaphor works only if
we put asideevery rePresentationof dance that depicts it as an exrernal
constraint imposed upon a supple body or as the gymnasricsof a dancing
body controlled from the outside. In Nietzsche, the opposition berween
danceand a gymnasticsof this type is nothing short of absolute.After all,
one could imagine that dance exposesan obedient and muscled,body to
otJrgaze,a body simultaneouslycapableand submitted. In other words, a
regime of the body in which the body is exertedfor the sakeof its subjec-
tion to choreography.But for Nietzschesuch a body is the opposite of the
dancing body, of the body rhat internaltyexchangesth. ."rth with rhe air.
\7hat, in Nietzschet eyes,is the opposite of dance?It is the German,
the bad German, whom he definesasfollows: "obedience and long legs."6
The essenceof this bad Germany is the military parade,the aligned and
hammering body, the servile and sonorousbody. The body of beaten ca-
dence.Dance insteadis the aerialand broken body, the vertical body. Not
at all the hammering body, but the body "on points," the body that pricks
the foor just as one would puncture a cloud. Above all, it is the silent
body, set against the body that prescribesthe thunder of its own heavy
strike, the body of the military parade.Finally, dance for Nietzschepoints
to a vertical thought, a thought stretching toward its proper height. This
considerationis obviously linked to the theme of affirmation caplured by
the image of the "great Noon," the hour when the sun is at its zenith.
Dance is the body devoted to its zenith. But perhaps,and even more
pro-
foundly, what Nietzscheseesin dance-bo,h i-"g. of thought and
asthe Real of a body-is the theme of a mobiliry ", "r,
that is-firmly fast"enedto
itself, a mobiliry that is not inscribed wirhin an exrernal
determination,
but insteadmoveswithout detaching itself from its
own cenrer.This mo-
bili.y is not imposed, it unfolds as if"it were as expansion
of its center.
of course,dance correspondsto the Nietzr.h."r, idea of thought
as ac-
tive becoming, as active po*.r. But
this becoming is such that within it a
uniqueaffirmative interioriry is released.
Movement is neither a displace-
rnent nor a transformation, but
a course that traversesand sustainsthe
eternaluniquenessof an affirmation. l
:,tl".iy
stde
consequently, dance designaresthe
of bodily impulse nor so much to be projected onto a Jp".. o,,r,-
of itself, but rather to be caught up in attraction that
j
reshainsir.This is perhapsNietzschet most "rr "ffir-ative
important insight: Beyond the
 Dance as a Metaphor for Thought 6r
6o Dance as a MetaPhorfor Thought

dance of slownessand the mistrust of the thought-body. In this sense,the dancer

exhibition of movemenrsor the quicknessof their externaldesigns,
the heart of these movements. points us in the direction of what the will is capableof learning.
is what testifiesto the force of restraint at
but It obviously follows from this observation that the essenceof dance is
Of course,this force of restraintwill be manifestedonly in movement'
virtual, rather than actual movement: Virtual movement as the secret
what counrs is the potenr legibility of the restraint.
slownessof actual movement. Or more precisely:Dance, in its most ex-
In dance th,.tr.or,.eived, movement finds its essencein what has not
within rreme and virtuosic quickness,exhibits this hidden slownessthat makesit
tukenplace, in what has remained either ineffective or restrained
so rhat what takes place is indiscernible from its own restraint. At the
movement itself.
summit of its art, dance would thereforedemonstratethe strangeequiva-
Besides,this would provide yet another way of negativelyapproaching
that lence not only berweenquicknessand slowness,but also berweengesture
the idea of dance. For the unrestrainedimpulse-the bodily entreaty
precisely what Nietzsche calls and nongesture.It would indicate that, even though movement has taken
is immediately obeyed and manifested-is
to place,this taking placeis indistinguishablefrom a virtual nonplace.Dance
uulgariry.Nietzschewrites that all vulgariry derivesfrom the incapacity
is composedof gesturesthat, haunted by their own restraint,remain in
resistan entreaty.or that vulgariry lies in the fact that we afe constrained
as the somesenseundecided.
ro act, "that we obey every impulse." Accordingly' dance is defined
all vulgariry' Turning to my own thought-to my doctrine-this Nietzscheanexe-
movement of a body subtractedfrom
of the gesissuggeststhe following point: Dance would provide the metaphor for
Dance is in no way the liberatedbodily impulse,the wild energy
the fact that every genuine thought depends uPon an event. An event is
body. on the.onrr".y, ir is the bodily manifestationof rhe disobedienceto
ineffective preciselywhat remains undecided berweeuthe taking placeand the non-
an impulse. Dance ,ho*, how the impulse can be rendered
that it would be a question of restraint, place-in the guiseof an emergencethat is indiscerniblefrom its own dis-
within movement in such a way
any doctrine of dance asa appearance.The event adds itself onto what there is, but as soon as this
rather than obedience.\7e are miles ^way from
Dance offers a supplement is pointed out, the "there is" reclaimsits rights, laying hold of
primitive ecstasyor as the forgetful pulsation of the body'
the re- everything.Obviously, the only way of fixing an event is to give it a name,
-.,"pho, fo, , iigh, and subtie thought preciselybecauseit shows
thereby opposes itself to the sponta- to inscribe it within the "there is" as a supernumeraryname. The event
straint immanent to movement and
"itself" is never anything besidesits own disappearance.Nevertheless,an
neousvulgarity of the bodY.
of dance inscription may detain the event, as if at the gilded edgeof loss.The name
Ve can now adequatelythink what is expressedin the theme
it is what is what decidesupon the having taken place. Dance would then point to-
as lightness.Yes,dance is opposedto the spirit of gravity.Yes,
in the end' what is ward thought as evenr, but beforethis thought has receiueda n4vzs-71111s
gi,r.I the earth its new n"-. ("the light one")-!ut,
extremeedge of its veritable disappearance;in its vanishing, without the
lightness?To say that it is the of weight does not get us vety far'
"br..,.i it- shelterof the name. Dance would mimic a thought that had remained
B"y"lightness"we must understand the capaciryof a body to manifest
by itself' In undecided,something like a native (or unfixed) thought. Yes,in dance,we
self as an uncunstrainedbody, or as , boJy not constrained
own im- would find the metaphor for the unfixed.
other words, as a body in a state of disobediencevis-l-vis its
("obedience It would thereby become clear that the task of dance is to play time
pulses.This disobeyej impulse opposesitself to Germany within space. An event establishesa singular time on the basisof its nom-
a principtt of slowness' The
long legs"), but abo,r. all it i.-".d, inal fixation. Sinceit is traced,named, and inscribed,the event outlines in
"nd slowness of
essenceof lightness lies in its capacity to -"rrif.st the "i"' the situation-in the "there i5"-$s1[ a before and an after.A time starts
of lightness'
the fast.This is indeed why dance provides the finest image to exist. But if dance is a metaphor for the event "before" the name, it
but
The movement of dancecan certainly manifestan extremequickness' neverthelesscannot partake in this time that only the name, through its
affrr-
only to the extent that it is inhabited by its latent slowness,by the cut, can institute. Dance is subtractedfrom the temporal decision. In
that "the will must learn to
mative power of restraint.Nietzscheproclaims dance, there is therefore something that is prior to time, something
be slow and mistrustful." Dance .o,rld then be defined as the expansion
lilrl
lll
t1, 6z Dance as a Metaphor for Thought
li
i pretemporal.It is this pretemporalelement that will be pkyed outin space.
l on the basisof its history and technique, but of dance such as it is given
Dance is what suspendstime within space.
In The Soul and Dance, Yalery, addressinghimself to the dancer, tells
her: "How extraordinaryyou are in your imminence!" Indeed, we could
say that dance is the body besetby imminence. But what is imminent is
preciselythe time before the time that will come to be. Dance, as the spa-
tialization of imminence would thus be the metaphor for what every
thinking grounds and organizes.In other words, danceplaysout the event
before the event'snomination. It follows that, for dance, the place of the
name is taken by silence.Dance manifeststhe silencebefore the name ex-
actly in the sameway that it constitutesthe spacebefore time.
l
The immediate objection obviously concernsthe role of music. How
can we speakof silence,when all danceseemsso strongly subjectedto the
jurisdiction of music?Granted, there existsa conception of dance that de-
1]1 scribesit as the body besetby music and, more precisely,as the body be-
iillrllr
,,rllll set by rhythm. But this conception is yet again that of "obedienceand
ilIil]il long legs," that of our heavy Germany, even if obediencerecognizesmu-
'lrrli sic to be its master.Let us not hesitateto saythat all dancethat obeysmu-
illlr'il' sic-even if this music be that of Chopin or Boulez-immediately turns
rillhll,
it into military music at the same time as it metamorphosesinto a bad
ilrr$llillilt
"-l'lill Germany.
,i,ln,*rlll \Thatever the paradoxes,we must assertthe following: \il[hen it comes
rlr1
urrrt,rr]l] to dance, the only businessof music is to mark silence.Music is therefore
ilr,tl
uqilil indispensable, sincesilencemust be marked in order to manifestitself as
nl|]rjt!
'l 'r,llill
silence.As chesilenceof what? As the silenceof the name. If it is true that
rl dance plays the naming of the event in the silenceof the name, the place
i1 of this silenceis indicatedby music.This is quite natural:You cannot in-
rj dicate the founding silenceof dance except with the most extreme con-
r1
centration of sound. And the most exrremeconcenrrationof sound is mu-
sic. It is necessaryto seethat in spite of all appearances-appearancesthat
would like the "long legs"of danceto obey the prescriptionof music-it
is really dance that commands music, inasmuch as music marks the
,, founding silencewherein dance presentsnative thought in the aleatory
Dance as a Metaphor for Thought 63
welcomeand shelterby philosophy.
These principles are perfectly clear in the rwo texts that Mallarmd de-
voted to dance, texts as profound as they are short, which I regard as de-
finitive'7
I discern six of theseprinciples, all of which relateto the link berween
danceand thought, and all of which are governedby an inexplicit com-
parisonberweendance and theater.
Here is the list:
r. The obligation of space.
z. The anonymiry of the body.
3. The effacedomnipresenceof the sexes.
4. The subtraction fiom self.
;. Nakedness.
6. The absolutegaze.
Let us discussthem in order.
If it is true that dance playstime within space,that it suPposesthe space
of imminence, then there is for dancean obligationof space.Mallarmd in-
dicatesthis as follows: "Dance alone seemsto me to need a real space."8
Dancealone, mind you. Dance is the only one among the arts that is con-
strainedro space.In particular, this is not the casewith the theater.As I
said,dance is the event before naming. Theater, on the contrary, is noth-
ing but the consequenceof playing out an act of naming. Once there is a
text, once the name has been given, the demand is that of time, not sPace.
Theatercan consistin someonereadingfrom behind a table. Of course,
we can provide him with a set, a ddcor, but all of this, for Mallarmd, re-
mainsinessential.Spaceis not an intrinsic obligation of theater.Dance in-
steadintegratesspaceinto its essence. It is the only figure of thought to do
this, so that we could argue that dance symbolizesthe very spacing of
thought.
\7hat does this mean?Once again,we need to reiteratethe eventalori-
gin of any instance of thought. An event is alwayslocalized in the situa-

'li'i ".td
u".tirhing economy of the name. Grasped as the metaphor for the
evental dimension of all thought, dance is prior to the music on which it
tton, it never affects it "as a whole": There existswhat I have called an
evental site.e Before naming establishesthe time in which the event
relies. "works" throueh a situation as the truth of that situation, there is the site.
irlr From thesepreliminarieswe can draw, as so many consequences, what
,rlllril I will call the principles oFdance.Not of dance thought on its own t€rrllS,
And sinced"n".. is a showing of the fore-n ame fl'auant-nom),it must de-
ploy itself as rhe surveyof a site"Of a pure site.There is in dxnss-1he ex-

irrtll
ill
1l
i
i 64 Dance as a Metaphorfor Thought
pressionis Mallarm{'5-"2 virginity of the site." And he adds: "an un-
dreamed-ofvirginity of the site."r0tWhat does "undreamed-of" mean?It
means that the evental site does not know what to do with the imagina-
tions of a ddcor. Ddcor is for the theater,not for dance. Dance is the site
as such, devoid of figurative ornament. It demandsspace,or spacing,and
nothing else.That is all for the first principle.
As for the second-the anonymiry of the body-we rediscoverwithin
it the absenceof any term: the fore-name.The dancing body, as it comes
to the site and is spacedin imminence, is a thought-body.The dancing
body is never someone. About these bodies, Mallarmd declaresthat they
are "neverother than an emblem, neversomeone."1lAnemblem is above
all opposedto imitation. The dancing body does not imitate a character
or a singularity. k depictslfgure) nothing. The body of the theater is in-
sreadalwayscaught up in imitation, seizedby the role. No role enrolls the
dancing body, which is the emblem of pure emergence.But an emblem is
also opposed to every form of expression.The dancing body does not ex-
pressany kind of interiority. Entirely on the surface,asa visibly restrained
intensiry,it is itself interioriry. Neither imitation nor expression,the danc-
ing body is an emblem of visitation in the virginiry of the site.It comesto
the site precisely in order to manifest that the thought-the true
thought-that hangs upon the eventaldisappearanceis the induction of
an impersonalsubject.The impersonaliryof the subjectof a thought (or of
a truth) derives from the fact that such a subject does not preexist the
event that authorizes it. There is thus no cause to grasp this subject as
"someone," for the dancing body will signift through its inaugural char-
acter,that it is like a first body. The dancing body is anonymous because
it is born under our very eyesas body. Likewise, the subject of a truth is
never in advance-however much it may have advanced-the "someone"
that it is.
TUrning now to the third principle-the effacedomnipresenceof the
sexes-we can extractit from th. contradictorldeclarations of
"fp"rently
Mallarmd. It is this contradiction that is given in the opposition that I arn
establishing between "omnipresence" and "effaced." We could say that
dance universally manifests that there are rwo sexual positions (whose
namesare "man" and "woman") and that, at the sametime' it abstractsof
is
erasesthis duality. On the one hand, Mallarmd statesthat every dance
At
"nothing but the mysteriousand sacredinterpretation"of the kiss.'2
th....rt.r of dancethere is thus a coniunction of the sexes,and it is this
Dance as a Metaphor for Thought 65
that we must call their omnipresence.Dance is entirely composed of the
conjunction and disjunction of sexedpositions. All of its movements re-
tain their intensiry within paths whose crucial gravitation unl1s5-xnd
then sepa1x1s5-1hepositions of "man" and "woman." But, on the other
hand, Mallarmd also notes that the dancer "is not a woman."13How is it
possiblethat all dance is but the interpretation of the kiss-of the con-
jun.tio.t of the sexesand, bluntly speaking,of the sexual261-2nd, nev-
ertheless,that the female dancer as such cannot be named "woman," ^ny
more than the male dancer can be named "man"? It is becausedance re-
tainsonly a pure form from sexuation,desire,and love: the form that or-
ganizesthe triprych of the encounter, the entanglement,and the separa-
tion. In dance, these three rerms are technically coded. (The codesvary
considerably,but are always at work.) A choreography organizesthe spa-
tial knot of the three terms. But ultimately, the triple that comprisesthe
encounter,the entanglement,and the separationachievesthe puriry of an
intenserestraint that separatesitself from its own destination.
In actual fact, the omnipresenceof the difference berweenthe male and
the femaledancer,and through it the "ideal" omnipresenceof sexualdif-
ference,is handled only as the organonof the relation beween reconcilia-
tion and separation-in such a way that the couple male dancer / female
dancercannor be nominally superimposedonro the couple man/woman.
At the end of the day, what is at play in the ubiquitous allusion to the
sexesis the correlation berweenbeing and disappearing,berweentaking-
placeand abolition-a correlation that draws its recognizablecorporeal
coding from the encounter,the entanglement,and the separation.
The disjunctive energy for which sexuationprovides the code is made
to serveas a metaphor for the event as such, a metaphor for something
whoseentire being lies in disappearance. This is why the omnipresenceof
sexualdifference effacesor abolishesitself, since it is not the representative
end of dance,but rather a formal abstractionof energywhose .o.rrr. sum-
to_ttt, within space,the creativeforce of disappearance.
For principle number four-subtraction from self--it is advisableto
turn to an altogether bizarre srarement
by Mallarmd: "The dancer does
oot dance."14\7e have just seenthat this female
dancer is not a woman,
but on top of this, she is not
even a "dancer," if we understand by this
sorneonewho executesa
dance. Let us compare this statementto another
one: Dance-Mallarmd tells us-is "a
poem set free of any scribet appa-
ratus."rt This second statement is just
as paradoxical as the first (';The
llllril
LLi
66 Dance as a Memphor for Thougltt
dancer does not dance"), since the poem is by definition a rrace,an in_
scription, especiallyin its Mallarmdan conception. Consequently,the
poem "serfree of any scribe'sapparatus"is preciselythe poem unburdened
of the poem, the poem subtractedfrom itself,just as the dancer,who does
not dance, is dance subtractedfrom dance.
Dance is like a poem uninscribed,or untraced.And danceis alsolike a
dancewithout dance,a dance undanced.\What is statedhere is the sub-
tractivedimensionof thought. Everygenuineinstanceof thinking is sub-
tracted from the knowledgein which it is constituted.Dance is a mera-
phor for thought preciselyinasmuch as it indicates,by meansof rhe body,
that a thought, in the form of its evental surge, is subtracted from every
preexistenceof knowledge.
How doesdancepoint to this subtraction?Preciselyin the manner thar
the "true" dancer must never appearto hnow the dance she dances.Her
knowledge (which is technical, immense, and painfully acquired) is tra-
un,lN1
, ilrrill versed,as null, by the pure emergenceof her gesture."The dancerdoes
rill,ll not dance" meansthat what one seesis at no point the realizationof a pre-
,,trlriil existing knowledge, even though knowledge is, through and rhrough, its
matter or support. The dancer is the miraculous forgetting of her own
flili;,1[; knowledge of dance.She does not executethe dance, but zithis restrained
iflilillil
ilx[4il intensity that manifeststhe gesturet indecision. In truth, the dancerabol-
,r,,1 ishesevery known dance becauseshe disposesof her body as if it were in-
I rllllll uented.So that the spectacleof dance is the body subtracted from every
,"'ll'
,li[/l l
knowledge of a body, the body as disclosureliclosionl.
;il,till Of such a body, one will necessarilysay-this is the fifth principle-
that it is naked. Obviously, it matters little if it is empirically so.The body
of dance is essentiallynaked.Just as dance is a visitation of the pure site
and therefore has no use for a ddcor (whether there is one or not), like-
wise, the dancing body, which is a thought-body in the guiseof the event,
has no use for a costume (whether there is a tutu or not). This nakedness
is crucial. What does Mallarmd say?He saysthat dance "offers you the
nakednessof your concepts."Adding: "and will silently rewrite your vi-
sion."16"Nakedness"is thereforeunderstoodas follows: Dance, as a meta-
phor for thought, presentsthought to us as deuoid of relation to anythirtg
other than itself in the nudity of its emergence.Dance is a thinking rvith-
out relation, the thinking that relatesnothing, that puts nothing in rela-
tion. .Wecould also say that it is the pure conflagrationof thought, be-
causeit repudiatesall of thought's possibleornaments.Whence the Facr
Dance as a Metaphor for Thought 57
rhat dance is (or tends to be) the exhibition of chastenakedness,the
nakednessprior to any ornament, the nakednessthat doesnot derive from
the divestment of ornaments but is, on the contrary, as it is given before
all ornament-as the event is given "before" the name.
The sixth and last principle no longer concerns the dancer, or even
danceitself, but the spectator.What is a spectatorof dance?Mallarmd an-
swers this question in a particularly demanding manner. Just as the
dancer-who is an emblem-is never someone,so the spectatorof dance
rnust be rigorously impersonal.The spectatorof dancecannot in any way
be the singulariry of the one who's watching.
Indeed, if someonewatches dance, he inevitably turns into its voyeur.
This point derivesfrom the principles of dance, from its essence(effaced
omnipresenceof the sexes,nakedness,anonymiry of the body, etc.).These
principles cannot become effectiveunlessthe spectatorrenouncesevery-
thing in his gazethat may be either singular or desiring.Every other sPec-
tacle (and above all, the theater) demands that the spectator invest the
scenewith his own desire.In this regard,dance is not a spectacle.It is not
a spectaclebecauseit cannot tolerate the desiringgaze,which, once there
is dance,can only be a voyeur'sgaze,a gazein which the dancing subtrac-
tions suppressthemselves.What is neededis what Mallarmd calls "an im-
personalor fulgurant absolutegaze."17 A strict constraint-is it not?-but
one that commands the essentialnakednessof the dancers,both male and
female.
\7e have just spoken of the "impersonal." If dance is to provide a figure
for native thought, it can only do so in accordancewith a universal ad-
dress.Dance does not addressitself to the singularity of a desirewhose
time, besides,it has yet to constitute. Rather, dance is what exposesthe
nakednessof concepts.The gazeof the spectator must thereby ceaseto
seek,upon the bodies of the dancers,the objects of its own desire-an
operation that would refer us back to an ornamental or fetishistic naked-
ness.To attain the nakednessof conceptsdemands a gazethat-relieved
of every desiring inquiry into the objects for which the "vulgar" body (as
Nietzschewould say)functions assupport-reaches the innocent and pri-
mordial thought-body, the invented or disclosedbody. But such a gazebe-
longs ,o .ro oi..
"Fulguranr": The gazeof the specratorof dance musr apprehendthe re-
.
lation of being to disappearing-it can neverbe satisfiedwith a mere spec-
tacle.Besides,danceis alwaysa falsetotaliry. It does not possess the closed
 68 Dance as a Metaphor for Thought
duration oFa spectacle, but is insteadthe permanentshowing of an evenr
in its flight, caught in the undecidedequivalenceberweenits being and its
nothingness.Only the flashoFthe gazeis appropriatehere,and not its ful-
filled attention.
'Absolute":
The thought that finds its figure in dance musr be consid-
ered as an eternal acquisition. Dance, preciselybecauseit is an absolutely
ephemeral art-because it disappearsas soon as it takes place-harbors
the strongestchargeof eterniry.Eterniry does not consistin "remaining as
one is," or in duration. Eterniry is preciselywhat watchesover disappear-
ance. \When a "fulgurant" gazegraspsa vanishing gesture,it cannot but
keep it pure, outside of any empirical memory. There is no other way of
safeguardingwhat disappearsthan to watch over it eternally. Keeping
watch over what does not disappearmeans exposing it ro the erosion of
the watch. But dance,when seizedby a genuine spectaror,cannot be used
up, preciselybecauseit is nothing but the ephemeralabsoluteof its en-
,,;lillr counter. It is in this sensethat there is an absolutenessof the gazedirected
rillilli upon dance.
,uritl Now, if we examinethe six principlesof dance,we can establishthat the
iliilniii real opposite of dance is theater.Of course,there is also the milita ry pa-
rade, but that is merely a negativeopposite.The theater is the positiueop-
#ilill'i
'.1]'1 positeof dance.
:;:il; We have alreadysuggested,on a few counts, how the theater counrers
the six principles.'Wehave indicated in passingthat, becauserhe rexr pos-
'i'irl
-lll
sesses the function of naming within it, there is in the theater no con-
straint of the pure site, and the acror is everything but an anonymous
body. It would be easyto show that in the theater there is also no om-
nipresenceof the sexes,but, quite to the conrrary,that what we find is the
ti hyperbolic role play of sexuation.That theatrical play, far from constitut-
ing a subtraction,is in excessof itself:While the dancer may nor dance,
the actor is obliged to act, to play out rhe act, as well as all five of them.
There is also no nakednessin the theater. What we have instead is a
mandatory costume-nakedness being itself a cosrume and one of the
most garishat that. As for the theaterspecraror,the absoluteand fulgurant
impersonal gazeis not required of him, sincewhat is appropriateto his
role is the excitementof an intelligencethat finds itself entangledin the
duration of a desire.
There is thus an essentialclash berweendance and theater.
Nietzscheapproachesthis clashin the simplest of ways: through an an'
Dance as a Metaphor for Thought 69
in the context
dtheatricalaesthetics.Especiallyin the last Nietzsche,and
of modern art com-
of his total rupture with \fagner, the veritable slogan
and decadentgrip
rnandsthat you subtract yourself from the despicable
theatrical (in favor of the metaphor of dance, as a new name given
of the
ro the earth).
Nietzschecallsthe submissionof the arts to the theatricaleffect "histri-
onics." Once again, we encounter the enemy of all dance, vulgariry. To
havedone with \Tagnerian histrionics is to oppose the lightnessof dance
"Bizet" servesto pit the
to the vulgar mendacity of theater.The name
"dancing" music against\Tagnert theatrical music, which is a
ideal of a
music debasedby the fact that, insteadof marking the silenceof dance, it
persistentlyunderlinesthe heavinessof the play.
As the remainder of this book should amply Prove, I do not share the
ideaaccordingto which theatricalityis the very principle of the corruP-
tion of all the arts. This is also not Mallarmd's idea. Mallarmd statesthe
completeoppositeof this idea when he writes that the theateris a superior
art. He seesvery clearly that there is a contradiction berweenthe princi-
plesof dance and those of the theater.But far from endorsing the histri-
onic infamy of the theater, he underlines its artistic supremacywithout
therebyforcing dauce to forfeit its own conceptualpuriry.
How is this possible?In order to understand, we must put forward a
provocative,but necessarystatement:Dance is not an art. Nietzsche'ser-
ror lies in the belief that there existsa common measureberween dance
and theater,a measurero be found in their artistic intensity. In his own
way,Nietzschecontinues ro arrangetheater and dance within a classifica-
tion of the arts. Mallarmd, on the contrary, when declaring that the the-
ater is a superior arr, does not in any sensewish to affirm the superioriry
of theaterover dance.Of course,Mallarmd does not say that dance is not
an art, but we can sayit in his place,once we penetratethe genuine mean-
ing of the six principles of dance.
Dance is not an arr, becauseit is the sign of the possibiliry of art as in-
scribed in the body.
Allow me to provide a brief explanation of this maxim. Spinoza says
.
that we seekto know what thinking is while we don't even know what a
fody is capableof. I will say rhar d".,.. is preciselywhat showsus that the
body is capableof art. It provides us with the exact degreeto which, at a
given momenr, it is capableof it. But to saythar the body is capableof art
does not mean making an "art of the body." Dance signalstoward this
 I /w Dance as a Metaphorfor Thought Dance as a Metaphorfor Thought 7r

artistic capaciryof the body wirhout therebydefining a singularart. To say

s$y to ptove, time and time again, that todayi body is capableof showing
that the body, qua body, is capableof art, is to exhibit it as a thoughi_
itself as a thought-body. However, "today" is never anything apart from
body. Not as a thought caught in a body, but as a body that thinkr. Thi,
the new truths. Dance will dance the native and eventaltheme of these
is the function of dance: the thought-body showing itself under the van-
truths. A new vertigo and a new exactitude.
ishing sign of a capaciryfor art. f'he sensitiviryto dancepossessed by each Thus we must return to where we began. Yes,dance is indeed-each
and every one of us comes from the fact that dance answers,after its own
and everylirrvs-x new name that the body gives to the earth. But no new
fashion,Spinozasquestion:What is a body as such capableof? It is capa-
nameis the last. As the bodily presentationof the fore-nameof truths,
ble of art, that is, it can be exhibited as a native thought. How are we ro
danceincessantlyrenamesthe earth.
name the emotion that seizesus at this point-as little as we ourselves In this respect,it is effectivelythe reverseof theater,which has nothing
may be capableof an absoluteand impersonalfulgurant gaze?I will narne
to do with the earth, with its name, or evenwith what the body is capable
this emotion an (xact uertigo.
of The theateris itself a child, in part of politics and the state,in part of
It is a vertigo becausethe in{inite appearsin it as latent within the fini- the circulation of desire between the sexes.The bastardson of Polis and
tude of the visible body. If the capaciryof the body, in the guiseof the ca- Eros.As we will now set forth-axiomatically.
pacity for art, is to exhibit native thought, this capaciryfor art is infinite,
and so is the dancing body itself. Infinite in the instant of its aerial grace.
u1lrliil
rrtillil What we are dealing with here, which is truly vertiginous, is not the lim-
ill'l,ilil ited capaciryof an exerciseof the body, but the infinite capacityof art, of
,,'util{ all art, as it is rooted in the evenrthat its chanceprescribes.
rnilillll; Nevertheless,this vertigo is exact.This is becauseultimately it is the re-
strained precision that counts, that testifiesfor rhe infinite. It is rhe secrer
ilfilil
ril
i llilrrllr slowness,and not the manifest virtuosity. This is an extremeor millimer-
tlill[h
ric precision that concerns the relation benveengestureand nongesture.
It is thus that the vertigo of the infinite is given in the most enduring
exactitude.It seemsto me that the history of danceis governedby the per-
petual renewal of the relation berweenvertigo and exactitude.Vhat will
remain virtual, what will be actualized,and preciselyhow is the restraint
going to free the infinite? These are the historical problems of dance.
Theseinventionsare inventionsof thought. But sincedanceis not an ^rt,
but only a sign of the capacity of the body forarr, theseinventions follow
the entire history of truths very closely,including the history of those
truths taught by the arrs proper.
Why is there a history of dance, a history of the exactitudeof vertigo?
Becausethe :ruth does not exist. If the truth existed,there would be a de'
finitive ecstaticdance,a mysticalincantationof the event.Doubtlessthis

I is the conviction of the whirling dervish.But what there are insteadare

disparatetruths, an aleatory multiple of eventsof thought. Dance apPro'
priatesthis multiplicity within history.This presupposes a constantredis-
tribution of the relationshipberweenvertigo and exactitude.It is neces'