III.

'DELEUZE'S DIFFERENCE WITH THE DIALECTIC OF IDENTITY' BY MARTIN JENKINS

The following paper is my overview of the thoughts of Gilles Deleuze (1931-

1995). His philosophy can be summed up as an anti-dialectical philosophy of
becoming. In other words, an explanation of how and why things change without
recourse to teleology that can be found in Hegelian Marxism.

Spinoza

Whilst for many Hegel provides the algebra of revolution, Spinoza, for Deleuze,
provides the force of insurrection. For the metaphysician Spinoza, there cannot
be numerous substances constituting reality, there is only one: Deus Sive
Natura (God/ Nature).[1] This one and infinite substance has two aspects: the
creator Natura Naturans (Nature naturing) and the created Natura Naturata
(Nature natured). So, what is created emanates from the Creator. There is no
requirement of an external cause to explain the creating of the created, it
comes from within. Hence there is no transcendent God only an immanent one: an
ontology of immanence.

Particular things or modes of the two infinite attributes of Mind/ Body, are
emanations of the single, infinite Substance. Whilst Spinoza's two categories
of Natura Naturans and Natura Naturata initiated the teleological quest for
their dialectical reconciliation and identity with the German Idealists of the
18th and 19th centuries; Deleuze discerns an alternative to the latter's
philosophy of Identity.[2]

Deleuze's Spinoza

Deleuze's reading of Spinoza continues the theme of one immanent status of

reality that is simultaneously many. The Infinite and generative power of God/
Nature becomes the single power/ force which is expressed, made determinate and
Actualised in many expressions of power or force. The many are expressions of
the One and the One is an expression of the many. Or to put it in other words,
there is difference within the single productive force.

Identity and Difference

The plane of consistence/ single productive power is, to paraphrase Nietzsche,

a monster of energy, without beginning, without end and continuously
transforming itself.[3]

At the micro level, it is chaos or difference: a flux of matter. At the macro

level, it shows definite shapes or structures Deleuze terms assemblages or
demarcated Lines. Juxtaposed to the assemblages of the Actual, is the Virtual.
This can be understood as the potentiality of the chaos or, of difference. It
is juxtaposed to the Actual which is understood as the instantiation of the
Virtual. Both are real although by definition, the Virtual can never be Actual.
The potentiality of the Virtual must not be thought in its Aristotelian sense as
a 'blueprint' of a prior which must always come to be as it is thematised.
Virtual potentiality is unthematised because it is difference. The Virtual
'haunts' the Actual as difference to it.[4]
Difference is a term associated with post-modern or continental philosophy and
linked to thinkers such as Jacques Derrida.[5] Difference is the otherness
inherent to what is Actual preventing a complete, holistic, reflexive totality
that is identical with itself -- as demanded, by German Idealism and its
dialectic of identity. There is an ontological fissure in our understanding of
reality which is other to what is Actualised as beings, text, ethics or
language. This must not be thought as a negation to be negated into a higher
more progressive synthesis. Difference is a non-dialectical happening, event or
possibility. It is Virtual as it disrupts the Actual preventing its closure to
what is new and different.

As Deleuze describes it in Nietzsche and Philosophy, difference is the material

forces of multiplicity, chance and becoming.[6] They exist as active material
forces of Will to Power waiting to break out at every moment from the reactive
structures of what exists as Actualised by previous actions of Will to Power.
They are then, the Virtual within the Actual. Depending on the genetic and
differential make up of Will to Power, it can either overcome itself as active
force -- introducing the new and different, or it can succumb to what is
established. In not being strong enough to overcome itself, Will to Power
cannot be active but reactive -- merely reinforcing what is already in
existence.

In Bergsonism, the Actual present moment that is NOW is infinitely divisible

because of the Virtual presence of multiplicity/ difference in the past which
exists in the present.[7] Unlike the linear conception of time where one
present moment becomes past to be replaced by a new present side by side in an
endless chain, past and present co-exist inside immanent duration. The past is
not a subjective psychological phenomena, it is ontological: it informs the
present. Through action, memory, perception the different moments or multiple
intensities of the Virtual past are brought to bear on the Actual present. They
can change the present. Hence the Virtual difference and multiplicities of the
past can irrupt into the present thereby changing the Actual. Think of how
today, intensive memories of the past have presented themselves before your
conscious present without you 'summoning them'.

Returning to Deleuze's Spinoza, in Expressionism in Philosophy:Spinoza.[8],

Substance is read as productive Force; Attributes are the Virtual and Modes are
the Actual. Nicholas Thoburn writes:

Thus 'Virtuality' is not in opposition to the 'real', it is

rather the reality of creative matter as it exists in
ever new configurations as the base of the real (it
is in opposition only to the fixed determinations of
relations). [9]

Whereas for Spinoza, modes are particular emanations of the attributes which in
turn are emanations of God/ Nature; for Deleuze, the Actuality of modes are past
expressions of the Virtual become Actual. This is the activity of the unlimited
expressive agency of productive Force: i. e. in what exists (Actuality) and
what can come to exist (Virtuality). As Robert Piercey writes:
 So like Spinoza, Deleuze sees expression as a double
movement; the dual process of determination and
Actualisation. The movement from Being (Force MJ) to the
Virtual parallels that from substance to attribute, the
movement from Virtual to Actual parallels that from
attribute to mode. Deleuze's conception of expression is,
at bottom, a slightly modified version of Spinoza's.[10]

Productive Force can either reinforce what already exists thereby maintaining
the Identity of the Actual with the Actual or; it can give rise to difference
that will be expressed as something new and different to the Actual. This
double movement Deleuze identifies in Spinoza and elsewhere, is firstly the
qualitative intensity of forces Virtually creating new ideas, actions which are
then secondly, quantitatively Actualised in new modes. Without the qualitative
intensity of productive forces being greater than what is already Actualised,
the repetition of what already quantitatively exists will prevail. Difference
cannot then irrupt into Actualisation. Difference arises in the Virtuality of
new thoughts or physical movements prior to their Actualisation in acts. As the
potentiality of Virtuality is difference, it is necessarily unthematised. So
when it is Actualised, it will be as difference to that which is already in
existence.

In his later works, the schema of the single productive power is maintained
although reference to Spinoza, attributes etc. is dropped.[11] Here, the single
power is demarcated in Major (or Molar) and Minor configurations of the
becomings of force. In the realm of the Political, the dialectical
reconciliation of oppositional becoming into an Absolute, single Identity is
eschewed in preference for a non-dialectical becoming of difference Actualised
by the Virtual.

The Political: Lines, Major and Minor

What is Actual is segmented into Lines, the most significant being the Molar
and Minor. The Molar Lines are macro, hierarchical, and binary. They uphold the
dominating binary structures of government-governed, male-female, adult-child,
black-white, normal-abnormal and so on.[12] They are supported and co-ordinated
by the State which legitimises them by overcoding with
philosophical-social-political-medical sciences. The Actuality of Molar lines,
is reinforced by the State to maintain domination and hegemony. For example, in
Liberal-democratic societies, the concept of rational subject legitimizes the
concept of citizen. The citizen obeys his/ her own judgements as Actualised by
the State following election times. Thereby, Liberal Democracy is preserved and
perpetuated in its identical sameness. Along with Foucault, Deleuze believes
this analysis of power is too general and insensitive to the Actual operation
of power.[13]

Within the Molar, Lines are molecular lines or movements of power, of force.
These make multifarious connections and transgress existing lines. Contrary to
the vertical, hierarchical Molar Lines, the becomings of molecular movements
are unpredictable, as follows from the nature of power/ force. They are like a
creative 'law of unintended consequences'.[14] Speaking in 1977, Deleuze
remarks thus:

...imagine that between the East and West a certain

segmentarity is introduced, opposed in a Binary machine,
arranged in State apparatuses, overcoded by abstract
machines as the sketch of a world order. It is then from
North to South that the destabilisation takes place, as
Giscard d'Estaing said gloomily, and a stream erodes a path,
even if it is a shallow stream, which brings everything
into play and diverts the plane of organisation. A Corsican
here, elsewhere a Palestinian, a plane hijacker, a tribal
upsurge, a feminist movement, a Green ecologist -- there
will always be someone to rise up to the South. [15]

Molecular becomings can contest the territory established by Molar Lines to

reterritorialise them. So between the old Binary lines of Capitalist West and
Communist East, there were Actualised new movements from under and beneath
those Molar lines already established. Between the Binary Molar Lines of male
and female, there are new becomings of sexuality. Between the Molar Lines of
Government and the governed, there are new becomings of political forces.
Between the Binary lines of proletariat and capitalist have emerged new social
forces which no longer correspond to them. Such becomings or lines of flight
can challenge and reconfigure the existing Lines of how a society and its
component parts are assembled. Change arises through the becomings at the
micro-level. Micro-politics is preferred to macro, global politics.

To tie in with what has been said above, the lines of flight are the Actualised
Virtuality of the productive force which ontologically constitutes reality. They
are multiple and various. Life is lived through Lines. Dealing with Lines,
assemblages of Lines and their creative transgressing is political. In this
sense, at every level life is political.

Politics is active experimentation, since we do not know in

advance which way a line is going to turn. Draw the line
says the accountant, but one can draw it anywhere.[16]

Such movements -- being beneath and outside of the established Lines -- Deleuze
describes as Nomadic.[17] They challenge the established ways of being and
thinking enforced by the overcoding of the State. Movements of lines of flight
are 'war machines' that deterritorialise the sedentary operations of the Actual.

Conclusion

Building on Spinoza's model of the immanent movements of power, Deleuze offers

an alternative to dialectical reconciliation. Difference irrupts the category
of identity to continually create the new and different. There is no end to
history only its undermining by difference. As such, Deleuze continues the
theme emphasised by post-modernist thinkers such as Jean-Francois Lyotard and
Michel Foucault of valorising difference as a device that prevents finalistic
closure and identity in totalising social-political philosophies.[18] At the
same time, this holds open the possibility for the new and different to emerge.

Eschewing revolution on the macro-level, Deleuze prefers a micro-politics where

becomings of difference deteritorialise the existing overcoded divisions of
society with new lines of flight. In other words, there are insurrections
against the conditions of existence as enforced by the State by new, particular
and not general social forces as they arise.[19] In one sense, this could not
offer general social change but ironically, specific piecemeal change leaving
intact, a general repetition and reinforcement of the same. Perversely, the
micro level appears to need the macro level from which it deterritorialises.
Such splitting away, if continuous, offers a trajectory into infinity and
irrelevance. Unless the specific lines of flight join up in a temporary
alliance to escape the global.

On the other hand, it does avoid the scope for totalising tyranny which follows
from Hegelian inspired total revolutions. On the other hand, can one have a
revolution without a revolution?

Footnotes

1. Baruch Spinoza Ethics: Spinoza. Complete Works. Ed Michael L. Morgan Hackett.

2002.

2. German Idealism. The Transcendental Idealism of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

announced problematics which subsequent thinkers attempted to remedy. Johann
Gottleib Fichte (1762-1814) and FWS Schelling (1775-1854) attempted to
cumulatively synthesise incomplete Subjective consciousness with its other,
Objective consciousness into an identity of Absolute knowing. GWF Hegel (1770-
1831) modified this attempt by historicising the cumulative movement of
subjective and objective consciousness. The categories of Hegelian thought were
'turned the right side up' to produce Marxist Historical Materialism. Here the
dialectic of subject and object becomes the historicist dialectic of class
struggle leading to the cumulative identity of global communism and the end of
[pre]history.

Just as Max Stirner attacked the atheist Young Hegelians such as Feuerbach for
being pious God Men -- crypto Christian metaphysicians -- so a Deleuzian
post-modernist could attack Marxism for being a crypto- Christian metaphysics.

3. # 1067. Friedrich Nietzsche. The Will to Power. Vintage Books. 1968.

4. Chapter 2. Todd May. Gilles Deleuze: An Introduction. Cambridge University

Press. 2005.

Chapter 2 & 5. Gilles Deleuze & Clare Parnet Dialogues II. Continuum 2002.

5. See my paper Post-Modernism: What's the Difference? Philosophy Pathways

Electronic Journal # 137. August 2008.
https://philosophypathways.com/newsletter/index.html

6. Gilles Deleuze. Nietzsche and Philosophy. Continuum. 2005.

7. Gilles Deleuze. Bergsonism. MIT Press. 1991.

8. Gilles Deleuze. Expressionism In Philosophy: Spinoza. Zone Books 1992.

9. Introduction. Nicholas Thoburn. Deleuze, Marx & Politics. Routledge 2003.

The author explores the connections between Deleuzian themes and core Marxian
problematics.

10. Robert Piercey. The Spinoza Intoxicated Man: Deleuze On Expressionism. Man
and World #29. 269-281. 1996.

11. CH2 Dialogues II op. cit.

12. Deleuze also terms such structures as Aborescent. These are tree-like in
their structure:

... trees are not a metaphor but an image of thought, a

functioning, a whole apparatus that is planted in thought
to make it go in a straight line and produce famous correct
ideas. There are all kinds of characteristics in the tree:
there is a point of origin, seed or centre, it is a binary
machine or principle of dichotomy, which is perpetually
divided and reproduced branchings, its points of
aborescence. (Dialogues ibid.)

Aborescent thought is characterised by foundationalism, teleology, hierarchy,

the binary, predictability, reflexivity and operation at the macro-level.

13. Michel Foucault (1926-1984) analysed the operations of power at the

micro-level in the constructions of social identities. Global or molar
movements of power are are too distant to be the sole preserve of the myriad
becomings of power. Those 20th century events that have sought radical change
from the molar level have ignored the Actual operation of power and not been
sensitive to the cause of freedom.

14. Such molecular movements in thought and practice Deleuze terms Rhizomatic.
Saul Newman describes it thus as:

... a model of thought [and practice MJ] that defies the

very idea of model, it is an endless haphazard multiplicity
of connections not dominated by a single centre or place but
rather, decentralised and plural. It is thought
characterised by a radical openness to an outside. It
embraces four characteristics: connection, heterogeneity,
multiplicity and rupture. The purpose of the rhizome is to
allow thought to shake off its model, make its grass grow -
- even locally at the margins imperceptibly. It is a form
of thought that rejects binary divisions and hierarchies,
it does not privilege one thing over another, and is not
governed by a single unfolding logic.
P. 105. Saul Newman. From Bakunin to Lacan: Anti-Authoritarianism and the
Dislocation of Power. Lexington 2007.

The author uses the works of Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault and Lacan to promulgate
an non-essentialist, non-humanist Anarchism or post-anarchist Anarchism.

15. P. 98. Dialogues.

16. P. 103 ibid.

17. The war machine operates outside of the Molar power of the State. It is a
rhizomatic movement of multiple heterogeneous connections. It is open to change
and becomings aiming not at synthesis but the new and different.

See Gilles Deleuze. Nomad Thought. The New Nietzsche. MIT 1977.

18. See #5 above.

19. For example, the counter-culture of beatniks, hippies in the 1960's, Punks
in the 1970's. Or New Age Traveller communities of the present; or of
hedonistic 'rave' culture of the 1990's. The internet also permitted a
rhizomatic movement against the molar power of media communications. A myriad
of websites, blogs spots appeared, making new micro connections. Philosophers
could set up their own communications outside of the molar power of established,
sedentary academia.

The new connections of social forces in the 'Anti-Capitalist/ Globalisation'

movement Actualised since Seattle 1999, can be regarded as rhizomatic.

On social change without taking State power see:

John Holloway. Changing the World without taking Power: The Meaning of
Revolution. Pluto. 2002.

(c) Martin Jenkins 2010

E-mail: martinllowarch.jenkins@virgin.net