boundas - review essay - gilles deleuze and his readers - a touch of vountarism and an excess o

Review EssayGilles Deleuze and his ReadersA Touch of Voluntarism and an Excess ofOut-Worldliness

Constantin V. Boundas

May, Todd (2005), Gilles Deleuze: An Introduction, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 184 pages.

Hallward, Peter (2006), Deleuze and the Philosophy of Creation: Outof this World, London: Verso, 199 pages.

A book review, if you will, can be a powerful tease for readers whoanticipate extracting nuggets of insight from its parent source. It can alsobeand often isa way for the reviewer to bask in the glow of a goodwriter or, by the same token, to flaunt his own cleverness and sense ofsuperiority at the expense of a struggling essayist. I never had conclusiveevidence to hold myself immune to either of these temptations. This time,however, I am in a positiontemptations notwithstandingto rendermy services to interested readers, with the satisfaction that comes fromknowing that the pains of composing a review have been fully redeemedby the pleasure of having read two books that made me think long andhard.Mays and Hallwards books are very different from each other,

in scope, ambition, and targeted readership: May chose to write anintroduction to Deleuzean introduction that could be read andappreciated even by those who know nothing, or very little, aboutDeleuzeand he did it with honesty, fidelity to the material he has beenworking with, and with the exquisite transparency and subtlety of his

168 Constantin V. Boundas

style. The result is one of the best introductions to the rhizome-Deleuzewe have had that can be read profitably by beginners and Deleuze-aficionados alike.Hallward, on the other hand, chose to write a book on Deleuze

that, in his words, aims to go right to the heart of Deleuzesphilosophy. His is not an easy reading: his book asks for readerswho have an intimate knowledge of Deleuze. It subjects Deleuzes textsto a hermeneutic scrutiny the plausibility of which demands constantjustification, and repeated appeals to textual evidence whose interpretiverelevance must also be constantly demonstrated and legitimized. But theresult is a remarkable reading of Deleuze, whose structure, close-knitargumentation, and powerful advocacy for its conclusions are seductiveand almost convincing. I say almost convincing, because, although Iam indeed impressed by Hallwards successful identification of Deleuzesmain concerns, his attention to detail, and his challenging deductions,I hasten to add one qualification: the enjoyment that reading his bookgave me was often diminished by the suspicion that was growing inme as my reading progressed that Hallwards encounter with Deleuzewas deeply problematic. I will argue later that the flaw lies in theauthors decision to obstruct the (sometimes) overdetermined and (someother times) underdetermined deterritorializing lines of Deleuze, and toreterritorialize them upon a line of flight of his own making that has theoutside of this world as its telos.I begin with Todd Mays Gilles Deleuze: An Introduction. It takes

courage to write a book like this onecourage and thorough familiaritywith the material. With this volume, Todd May proves that he hasboth. To publish a book on Gilles Deleuze, whose chosen stutteringstyle and theses have proven to be a tough nut for the strongest ofteeth, and to write itwithout cutting corners or sacrificing importantbuilding blocksin a way that allows even those with little knowledgeof Deleuze to understand and savor its contentsis a rare feat. Mayis not a newcomer to the domain of recent French philosophy andto Deleuzian scholarship.1 The present volume shows a maturity ofphilosophical beliefs and a wonderful choice of a mode of expressionand communication that opts for the intelligibility and transparency ofwhat is written. The author wants his interpretation of Gilles Deleuzeto be such that, [it] remains mindful of and oriented toward the onequestion that is never far from [Deleuzes] texts: how might one live?(p. 3). He pursues the transformations of the Socratic question, Howshould one live? from its early preoccupation with a deontology ofliving, supported by the immersion of human life inside an order as

A Touch of Voluntarism and an Excess of Out-Worldliness 169

vast as the entire cosmos, to the How should one act? of the moderns,and the How might one live? question of today. The transition fromshould to might prepares Mays readers for his discussion of Deleuzesimmanence and experimentation, and his relentless opposition to thetranscendence-laden imperatives of the should. How might one live?claims May, ushers in an ethics and a politics of creativityof chanceand necessitywithout the higher authority of an externally imposedobligation to conform.Our times, May argues, show a marked tendency to denounce

ontology altogether because ontological responses to the question,What is there? have been known to generate frames proposing andimposing transcendent limits to creative, new and interesting waysto live. Indeed, Foucaults and Derridas denunciations of ontology,for those reasons, are among the most recent examples. Deleuze, onthe other handand here, I believe, May is absolutely rightdoesnot denounce ontology. (His) works are steeped in ontology (p. 15);they construct an alternative ontologyan ontology of immanencethat allows experimentation, creativity and discovery. Evidently, twotraditional assumptions will have to be abandoned before such anontology gets off the ground: a) that ontology involves discovery ratherthan creation (p. 16); and b) that identity has a logical priority overdifference (p. 17). The resulting ontology will come to rest on Being,conceived as difference in itself, and on time, structured accordingto the demands of the (Bergsonian) dure. Deleuze avoids the riskof mistaking difference in itself for another foundation in a litanyof grounds responsible for the framing act of traditional ontologiesMay suggestsby having difference palpated rather than grasped,conceived or represented: (I)f it is difference rather than the identitywe seek, and the interesting and remarkable rather than the true, thenit is palpation rather than comprehension we require (p. 20). Thedetermined nature of the present along with the determining nature ofthe past (present) are eschewed through the conception of a pure pasta past that has never been present, teeming as it is with differences in avirtual stage. As for the requisite experimentation and creativitythedice throw of chance and necessitythey are made possible throughthe eternal repetition of differences. Perceptively, May points out that theconstruction of Deleuzes ontology requires three intercessors: Spinoza,whose immanence is difference made flesh; Bergson, whose temporalityof duration allows immanence to be born; and Nietzsche, whose spiritof the active and creative affirmation of difference . . . pervades the entireproject (p. 26).


With the help of Spinozas substance, Deleuze denounces transc-endence; begins to articulate his own theory of the virtual; and isable to argue that the virtual/substance exists only in its attributes andmodes, albeit it retains an ontological priority over them. The role oftranscendence, writes May, as he explains the reasons behind Deleuzesopposition to transcendence, is to allow the universe to be explained insuch a way as to privilege one substance at the expense of another, topreserve the superiority of certain characteristics and to denigrate others(p. 31). A successful challenge to transcendence results in an ontologyof immanence that banishes (May maintains) all hierarchy and division(p. 34). The success of this challenge depends on two interlinked thesesboth enthusiastically embraced by Deleuze: the univocity of being (beingis said of its attributes and modes in one and the same sense) andexpressionismneither creationism nor emanationism (substance is notlike a thing that gives birth to other things. It is more like a processof expression {p. 37}.) Substance expresses itself as it modulates itself.The combination of these theses permits Deleuze to inflect his questionabout how one might live, giving it a more general scope: what mightit be to be alive? The answer follows from what has already beensaid: life is everywhere because foldings, unfoldings and refoldings occureverywhere. Life does not have to be organic.The modulation of the one univocal substance is not possible as long

as time is supposed to be the linear succession of now-points and (asis the case with the objective view of time) as long as an ontologicalprivilege continues to be assigned to the present: the linear conceptioncannot capture the process of expression (p. 44) that requires thesubstance to remain within its expression; nor can the immanence ofsubstance be retained, if (as with phenomenological and existentialisttheories of time) temporality is made immanent to consciousness. Onlythe Bergsonian dure can account for the modulation of the onesubstance, because only it offers the three requisites for an ontology ofdifference: a) There is no present that does not actualize the (virtual)past; b) It is the entire (virtual) past that is actualized at any one moment;and c) The (virtual) past that is actualized is real (the past insists) (p.52). This is a difficult moment in Mays book, but, with his usuallucidity, he comes to the rescue of the reader. In Deleuzes ontology, thevirtual and the actual are two mutually exclusive, yet jointly sufficient,characterizations of the real. The actual/real consists of bodies, statesof affairs, bodily mixtures and individuals. The virtual/real consists ofincorporeal events and singularities on a plane of consistency, belongingto the pure pastthe past that has never been present. Without being


or resembling the actual, the virtual nonetheless has the capacity tobring about actualizations without ever coinciding or being identifiedwith them. And May concludes: (T)he Bergsonian revolution is clear:We do not move from the present to the past, from perception torecollection, but from the past to the present, from recollection toperception . . . Duration does not only give rise to the present; it isalso of the present . . . . [But then], if [duration]/difference is immanentto the present, then each moment is suffused by a realm of differencethat lies coiled within it, offering the possibility of disrupting any givenidentity (p. 55).Now, if Spinoza is the Christ of philosophers, as Deleuze maintains,

and Bergson, the Father, then Nietzschewrites Mayis the HolyGhost. The construction of Deleuzes ontology owes a lot to Nietzscheseternal return and to the allegory of the child-god playing at dice throw-ing, provided that the eternal return is correctly understood as the returnof unactualized difference, and the dice throw, as the double affirmationof chance and necessity. This is how May expresses these points: [T]hefuture is not empty. It is full to overflowing . . .What returns are not theidentities that are actualized in the present. What returns is the virtualitythat lies behind and within these identities (p. 61).In order to be constructed and sustained, an ontology of difference

needs also an alternative to the dogmatic image of thought behindthe traditional frames: familiar representation must give way to thejolt of fundamental encounters; recognition (with its concordiafacultatum, good and common sense) must yield to concordiadiscordata; the modeling of thought after solutions must cede its placeto the formulation of interesting problems. (Problems are inexhaustible,while solutions are a particular form of exhaustion {p. 85}.) As forlearning, it should willingly be a long apprenticeship to the art ofpalpationpalpation of a difference that cannot be represented, albeitit never ceases to give itself.On the other hand, an ontology of difference requires a language that

is neither a transparent medium for the representation of thought nor aprison house or an opaque blade in the heart of being. May, therefore,gives us an accurate account of the theory of language that Deleuzeoffers as the desired alternative. Denotation (reference), manifestation(of the speakers moods), and signification (the implications maintainedbetween an utterance and other utterances) attempt to fix the meaningof a proposition, but they do not allow the stuttering of languagethesine qua non of creation and discovery. Only sense can do that. Sense,May says, is expressed in propositions, it inheres in them. But it is


not reducible to the qualities of the proposition that expresses it . . . Itis an event that happens in the proposition but is not the propositionitself . . . The other side of sense faces the world; it is an attribute of thingsor of states of affairs. The event subsists in language, but happens tothings (pp. 101; 102). Deleuze, following a long but maverick tradition,prefers to think of sense as something that is best expressed in theinfinitive form of verbs.Deleuze believes that philosophy (the art of creating concepts) and

science (the domain of functions) are different activities; he has noneed to blend and mix the genresas is fashionable in some circles.But of course an ontology that would choose to ignore the needs ofthe scientific field and a science that would rule out the possibilitiesof certain ontological constructsnot through experimentation andcreation, but rather a priorido not bode well. May, therefore, takesthe time to remind his readers of advances in the scientific arena (stillcontested, but in the process of becoming entrenched) that engagefluid identities, the primacy of the different, and the stochastic. Sciencetoo can think difference. Biologists preoccupation with biological andecological systems rather than with individuals, Simondons discussionsof intensity giving rise to extensity, Prigogines bifurcations, Monodsperception of humans as the product of chance and necessity, areproofs of this.In his fourth chapter, The Politics of Difference, May turns his

attention to what Deleuze has to say about our living with others.Deleuzes task, he writes, is not merely to think the world differently,but to live it differently . . . And one lives among others (p. 116).Experimentation and creation with new and interesting ways of living(even when not presided over by transcendent shoulds) do occur in thecontext of being with othersindeed they require being with others inorder to be actualized. The discussion of issues generated in the courseof living with others belongs to politics and ethics.In this context, May reviews the shortcomings of our liberal political

theory, which is grounded on the primacy of the individual, on lack,needs and their satisfaction, and on molar institutions (the government,the State, classes). Underlying all, one finds a theory of representation,made to invigilate over whether or not our needs and interests areadequately represented, and whether or not the legitimation of theirsatisfaction is brought to rest on the equitable representation of thegoverned. And with that, identity obliterates difference. What Deleuzeand Guattari bring to the table is a new political ontology. Ratherthan beginning with individuals and representation, they start with


machines and machinic thinking. Machinesbeing neither organismsnor mechanismsare defined by the connections they establish withother machines. Changing the connections changes the machine. Tothe extent that there is always more to their parts, machines aredefined by their virtual capacity for being actualized in different waysin different contexts. Machinic connections are productive and theirmodus vivendi is fluid identity. They are not defined in terms of lack andinterestsat least not initially. It is this anti-representational strategy,May argues, that permits Deleuze to develop an intriguing theory ofdesire (productive and affirmative of the real), a preference for the minor(not the small, but the process wherein quantic flows predominate),and for the indispensability of lines of flight {lines of transformationnot a leap into another realm, but a production within the realm ofthat from which [the line] takes flight (p. 128).} The result is anadvocacy for micropolitics (the hunt for transversal connections thatcut across traditional political identities). In this context, May givesus several fine pages as he discusses Deleuze and Guattaris nuancedattitudes towards the State, capitalism, subject groups and subjectedgroups, nomads and sedentaries. And he concludes with the followinglines: Politics is an experiment, not a deduction . . . There is no generalprescription . . . Everything is played in uncertain games . . . Each line hasits own dangers (p. 153).How might one live, then? The concluding chapter of Mays book

extrapolates an answer to this question from an imaginative analysis offour exemplary cases: jazz, the Palestinian intifada, the lessons learnedin urban renewal, and the passionate uncertainties of love and eros.The folding, unfolding, and refolding of . . . life cannot be predicted, heconcludes. [They] cannot be managed by fiat. One can only help fostera diversity of elements and watch what happens from there (p. 165). Anontology of problems, a transversal thinking, and a stuttering languageare indispensable to sustain such living.I strongly recommend this superb introduction to beginners and

sophisticated readers of Deleuze alike. But I feel I should also forewarnthem about three possible weaknesses in Mays endeavor: I contendthat 1) he may have underestimated the extent to which differencein itself guides the construction of Deleuzes ontology; that 2) in hiseagerness to pursue Deleuzes question, how might one live? he mightnot have decisively averted the existentialist and decisionist risks thatloom large behind a certain way of reading Deleuze; and that 3) heseems to have missed a golden opportunity to strengthen Deleuzeshand by neglecting the importance Spinoza carries for Deleuzes ethics


and politics, and by failing to notice the crucial role of the dialecticsof transgression and aristocratic distance that permeate Deleuzespolitical thinking.1) May pays serious attention to Deleuzes statements about

philosophy being governed by the quest for the new, the interesting andthe remarkable: these are fit directives when it comes to the logic ofproblems rather than the deontology of solutions. The solution has thetruth that it merits given the problem and the question whose responseit is. Philosophy is not inspired by truth, but it is not inspired by fictioneither. Instead, philosophy creates a way of seeing the world in whichwe live that disturbs the verities we are presented with (p. 22). Althougha conciliatory tone is struck in this statement, which refuses to choosebetween truth and fiction, it has sometimes been taken as a denunciationof ontology.2 But, in the present book, May heeds Deleuzes claim thatphilosophy is ontology. Of course, he makes it clear that Deleuzesontology is not based on identity and representation; rather, it is afterthe differentiated virtual that differenciates itself in its actualizationsand difference is not a fiction (p. 21). But, on the other hand, Maybeing eager to hold onto Deleuzes experimental and creative flowsin philosophyresolves the underlying tension in statements like this:difference is no more a creation than it is a discovery (p. 22). He doesso without noticing how unhelpful or disingenuous such statements canbe, and without taking the necessary precautions to prevent them frombeing mere expressions of defeat in the face of Deleuzian paradoxes.I am not suggesting that to maintain a balance between creation and

discovery, in reading Deleuze, is disingenuous. I am in full agreementwith May when he attributes the function of palpating differencerather than comprehending, seizing, or grasping itto the concepts thatpopulate Deleuzes ontology. My difficulty with Mays reading is thatI do not find his way of establishing the balance between creation anddiscovery convincing enough. What May seems to miss is that Deleuzesontology relies on his allegiance to a strict parallelism between beingand thinking. To gar auton esti noein te kai einai is as much Deleuzesconviction as it was Heideggers: the same thing is given to be and tobe thoughtexcept that, in Deleuzes case, the same thing is differenceitself. With Deleuze, the parallelism of being and thinking requires thealignment of the thinking and acting subject with the difference thatgives itself over. This is the point of Deleuzes transcendental empiricism(the quest for the conditions of the actual); this is also the sense ofthe chain of the gerundives that structure his transcendental empiricism(sentiendum, memorandum, cogitandum); and this is how becoming


imperceptible succeeds in displacing molar and molecular subjects. Andlet us not forget the passages in Difference and Repetition where thecogitandum seems to go beyond mere palpation.3 Experimenting andcreative subjects are necessary conditions for new ways of seeing,conceiving, acting and, in a word, living, but it is difference that givesitself and directs creation and orientation. The virtual, after all, is real.And it is neither you nor I, but the eternal return that functions inDeleuzes ontology as the principle of selection. Without this alignmentof being and thought, Deleuzes philosophy would be no different fromJean-Franois Lyotards musings about the sublime or Jacques Derridashomage to the messianic venir.It is worth listening to Deleuze again: This power of decision at the

heart of problems, he writes in Difference and Repetition, this creationor throw which makes us descendant from the gods, is neverthelessnot our own. The gods themselves are subject to the Ananke or sky-chance . . . The imperatives are those of being, while every question isontological and distributes that which is among problems (p. 199).There is no room for decisionism here; the one who plays at rolling thedice is not the mighty I but the pre-personal and pre-individual larvalselves that have become-imperceptible. It is the spiritual automatonnot of Leibniz, still capable of formally deducing his ideas from eachanotherbut the spiritual automaton of Artaud and Blanchot thattestifies to the impossibility of thinking that is thought (Deleuze 1989b:166). The spiritual automaton, once the link between man and the worldis broken, testifies to an unthinkable in thought, which would be bothits source and barrier . . . and to the presence . . . of another thinker in thethinker, who shatters every monologue of a thinking self (1989b: 168).2) If the alignment of the being of the AND to the thought of the

fissured I, (as suggested by the evocation of the spiritual automaton),is properly heeded, the existentialist and decisionist temptations that attimes loom large behind Mays words will be prevented from reachingfull maturity. The balance between chance and necessitybetween beinggiven over to throwing the dice without any prior knowledge of thenumber combinations that will come up (chance) and the landing ofthe dice with its specific number combinations (necessity)cannot beDeleuzes last word on the question of how one might live. Oneneeds something more, because the fear of throwing the dice andgiving oneself over to the play, without pretending to know whatcombination of numbers the dice throw will bring about, is not alwaysa symptom of a cowardly or a reactive disposition; it may also bean indication that someone has taken being and living with others


seriously. The insouciance of the child-God playing at dice throwingcannot be seriously advocated if the returned combination were to bringcorpses, apartheids and genocides. The throw of the dice itself may notbe protected by verities or certaintiesnot even by probabilitiesbutmust be embedded in a few guiding principles of intelligibility. The dicethrower, after all, was not born yesterday; there are ways of re-readingthe Aristotelian phronesis that do not have to import the oppression oftranscendence. After all, Deleuze, no less than Nietzsche, opts for anethics (and a politics) of the good and the bad as soon as the morality ofgood and evil is laid to rest. The alignment of being and thought goes along way toward checking whatever residual decisionist initiatives maybe found in the dice metaphor. In the becoming imperceptible of thespiritual automaton, we reach a point where it is no longer importantto say I. In other words, we reach the point where it is not importantto distinguish between creating and discovering. When in the process ofactualization the virtual unfolds what is enfolded in it, and in the processof re-virtualization the actual is once again folded in the virtual, then butonly then who creates and who discovers are moot questions; or, if weinsist in raising the question, lifeoverflowing lifeis responsible forcreation and discovery.In other words, Deleuze needs Spinoza again, as much as he needs a

subtle reading of Nietzsches eternal return. May evokes Spinoza onlyfor the construction of the ontology of the virtual, while totally givingDeleuzes politics over to Nietzsches magisterial presenceand this is anoversight. He is correct in making a prominent place for Deleuzes andSpinozas statements that we do not yet know what a body is capableofwe do not yet know what a body politic is capable of. But, then, itis curious to see him overlook what is crucial: that for both Spinoza andDeleuze, a bodys power increases in its association with other bodiesthat are compatible with it; and that a bodys power decreases in itsassociation with bodies that are incompatible with it. It is an entirephenomenology of the becoming-active of human beings in SpinozasEthics that inspires Deleuzes ethics of joy. Because it is instrumentalin eliminating decisionist overtones, this phenomenology should notbe overlooked in any discussion of Deleuzes politics. Through theformation of the adequate ideas that the affect motivates, it offersa political ontology and a theory of sociability informed by a fewprinciples of intelligibility and a constitutive rule for dice throwing,without which the toss will be blind and irresponsible.3) In the last analysis, the one weakness of Mays excellent

introduction to Deleuze, in my opinion, is in its failure to strike the right


balance between the man of action and the seeror rather to be faithfulto the way that the two resonate together in Deleuze. In my asking fora delicate balance, I follow the analyses of Franois Zourabichvili andJrmie Valentin4 whose works I recommend to the readers of Maysbook. Both have argued that Deleuzes reflections on the political arebest understood after we come to appreciate the simultaneous presenceof two attitudes in his worksubversion and perversionas well asof the role that difference plays between the two, in preventing thesetendencies from ever freezing in an iconic immobility, in contaminatingthe one with the other, and in joining them together in the space of aninclusive disjunction.Mays book handles beautifully the subversive tendencies in Deleuzes

work, namely, the minor, nomadic and transformative forces (of life,politics, thought, artistic creation) capable of escaping the sedentarismand stratification of majorities. But there is another side to Deleuzes(and Guattaris) posture vis vis the politicala posture that Valentinand Zourabichvili qualify as perversea side that May tends tooverlook. Politics, for Deleuze, Valentin writes, is a posture, a matterof perception, the result of a conversion that allows the developmentof a mechanics of resistance to the present (Valentin 2004, 106). Thisposture is the permanent quest for an inner balance (for a liberation of). . . always an in-between (entre-deux) (138): in-between philosophyand non-philosophy; in-between political philosophy and politics;in-between the aristocracy of thought and the becoming-democratic;in-between the chief and the tribe; in-between the near and thefar; in-between a past that has never taken place and a future thatwill never come to be present; in-between subversion and perversion.Zourabichvili says the same thing, but he prefers, with Deleuze, to seethe structure of this perversion in the light of Freuds characterizationof disavowal: It might seem that a disavowal, writes Deleuze, is,generally speaking, much more superficial than a negation or evena partial destruction. But this is not so, for it represents an entirelydifferent operation. Disavowal should perhaps be understood as thepoint of departure of an operation that consists neither in negating noreven destroying, but rather in radically contesting the validity of thatwhich is: it suspends belief in and neutralizes the given in such a waythat a new horizon opens up beyond the given in place of it (1989a:31). In being structurally akin to disavowal, Deleuzes perversion isalways untimely. Untimeliness better equips the political philosopherin her task to resist the present, but also renders Deleuzes politicalphilosophy incommensurable with traditional political thought. This


incommensurability is particularly evident in Deleuzes attempt to drawa delicate distinction between ne faire rien (to do nothing) and fairele rien (make the nothing) and to render the second imperative thecenter of his political postureproblematizing the field of the possibles,without ever articulating a plan in view of a telos.Provided that this aristocratic posture is not confused with hatred for

all forms of democracy, those who presently speak of the aristocraticdimension in Deleuzes thought are right (see Mengue 2003). It maycome as a surprise to Todd May to hear that his reading of Deleuze istoo liberal. But to say, as May does, that the univocity of DeleuzianBeing is meant to eliminate all hierarchies (p. 34) is to overlookthis aristocratic posture. Yet, Deleuze in Nietzsche and Philosophy(1983: 60) clearly approves the superiority of active to reactive forcesand the unalterable and innate order of rank in hierarchy. From PierreClastres writings on primitive societies Deleuze retains the attributionto the chief of an aristocratic distance from the tribe (see Deleuze andGuattari 1987: 35761)the space, in other words, necessary for thechief to exercise his voyance and to ponder the means available forsummoning the new people and the new earththe missing peoplewho give Deleuzes political posture a purposefulness without purpose.It will be a pity, of courseas I maintained elsewhere (Boundas 2005)to read in these summons the messianic aspirations of a Derridean venir: It is the missing people that constitute the space of the politicalbecause and to the precise extent that they are always already missing.And this is not to say that I hold May responsible for the reinsertion ofthe teleological in the space of politics. I only wish that he had madeDeleuzes opposition to telos-inspired politics even more clear throughan unambiguous critique of all decisionist temptations.Time now to turn my attention to Hallwards Deleuze and the

Philosophy of Creation. Hallward begins his book with the assertionthat Deleuzes Being is creation, and devotes the rest of his timeto the exploration of the implications of this dictum for ontology,epistemology, and for the ethics and politics of our being withothers. He ends the book reproaching Deleuze for turning his backon Marxs Thesis Eleven, abandoning the political imperatives forthe transformation of our world, and opting rather for an exo-cosmic ineffectual contemplation. Between the opening assertion andthe concluding reproach, Hallward displays an impressive knowledgeof Deleuzes work, and an enviable interpretive insight (sometimes,brilliance). He composes some beautiful pages, as he goes on to discussthe progressive de-materialisation of medium and message in Deleuzes


assent from art to philosophy (Chapters 5 and 6). But he also displaysa curious blindness that occasionally causes him to misrepresent keyDeleuzian concepts and arguments; to place them in contexts where theirmeaning (or better, their function) hardens and makes them lose theiroriginal subtlety; and prompts him to draw questionable conclusionsfrom premises that are often beyond reproach.But I am jumping ahead of myself; it is time to go back to

the beginning. Hallward correctly designates the Deleuzian Being ascreation, and then rightfully asks that this designation be taken inthe precise sense in which Being is both creating force(s) and createdentitiesboth creating act(s) and resulting creatures (p. 27). LikeSpinoza, Deleuzes ontology revolves around natura naturans andnatura naturata. And like Bergsonin fact, without the ambiguity thatcharacterizes Bergson on the subject of intensityhis philosophy isarticulated around the notions of intensity and extension, or, even moreto the point, around the notions of the virtual and the actual. Being iscreating/creative, natura naturans, intensive and virtual; but Being is alsowhat is created (the creature), natura naturata, extended and actual.The Deleuzian virtual has generated an endless number of discussions

and controversies, and it is to Hallwards credit that he takes the timenecessary to satisfy himself that his readers understand what Deleuzemeans by the juxtaposition/complementarity of the virtual and the actual(see pp. 2754). In Deleuzes ontology, the virtual and the actual aremutually exclusive, yet jointly sufficient, characterizations of the real.Actual/real are states of affairs, that is, bodies and their mixtures orindividuals existing in the present. Virtual/real are incorporeal eventsand singularities in a plane of consistency, belonging to a past thatDeleuze qualifies as pure, suggesting thereby that this past has neverbeen present. Virtual is something which, without being or resemblingan actual x, has nonetheless the capacity to bring about x, without (inbeing actualized) ever coming to coincide or to identify itself with, or tobe depleted and exhausted by, the x (p. 4). The kind of process thatwe find in Deleuzes ontology is not, therefore, properly captured inthe scheme, actual/real actual/real; the correct account of it wouldrather be this : virtual/real actual/real virtual/real (Deleuze 1994:20821). In other words, becoming, instead of being a linear processfrom one actual to another, should rather be conceived as the movementof a virtual tendency through an actual state of affairs towards its re-virtualisation or as a movement from an actual states of affairs througha dynamic field of virtual/real tendencies, to the actualization of this


field in a new state of affairs. This schema safeguards the relationship ofreversibility between the virtual and the actual.5

All that is well-known to those who are reasonably familiar with thework of Deleuze, and Hallwards careful elucidation of these notions andtheir distinction, for the most part, serves the reader well. As he beginshis narrative with assertions that repeat standard Deleuzian positions,the reader has nothing to complain about: Being Hallward says, is theinexhaustible proliferation of creatings or events of creation . . . Creationis one but it proceeds as two, through [the] distinction of creatings andcreatures . . . (T)he creating is implied or implicated within its creator;the creation is an explication or unfolding of the creating (p. 27).But soon trouble pays a visit and difficulties begin to multiply. Theirstarting point is almost inconspicuous. Creation, writes Hallward,is precisely the immanent combination of both creature and creating:the creating is more internal to the creature than any actualinside . . .Nevertheless . . . (i)t is only the creating that differs or produces,and it is only the creating as such that can claim to be properly new(p. 28). From such unproblematic beginnings, Hallward develops the restof his book as a critique of an alleged ontological difference with whichhe, like a present-day Aristotle, saddles Deleuze, his Plato. Accordingto Hallward, unlike Plato, who refrained from lending his ideas animmediate creative force, Deleuze, endows the virtual with this force.A Platonic essence . . . is merely one that allows actuality to resemble itvia imitation, approximation or generalization, rather than one that [likeDeleuzes virtual] directly produces the actual in its unique . . . thisness(p. 123). Hallward, in the sequence, characterizes this creative natureof Deleuzes virtual the way that Aristotle characterized the ontologicalprimacy of the Platonic Forms: hoi de echorisan (those over there,[our former friends] did separate [the really real from the illusorycopy]).6 Now, raising the Aristotelian objection to Platos ontologicaldifference against Deleuze carries with it serious implications that affectkey positions in Deleuzes ontology: for starters, the univocity for thesake of which Deleuze strove long and hard, and the uncompromisingimmanence of his philosophy, (with no concessions to transcendence),will have to be surrendered; and if so, Hallward would be well on hisway to the conclusion that Deleuzes philosophy promotes an ineffectualcontemplation of what is out of this world.Although creatings and creatures jointly constitute Deleuzes real,

or what is createdthe actual, extended and individuated entities, asthey get sedimented (naturatae)argues Hallward, tend to annul thedifferentiated lan naturans that they actualize. They are uncreative,


indifferent creatures, veritable impediments to the creative forces. Beingis creation but . . . creation itself generates internal obstacles to its owncontinuation (p. 79). Faced with creatures, one has to choose betweenaccepting them as the termini of creative acts, depleted from the intensityrequired for creation and, therefore, as creations potential enemies; ortreating them as so many states of affairsveritable occasions for theextraction of the virtual creating force. But, since creating is infinite(es gibt Sein), the depletion of Being within the cosmos is impossible.Ergo, the virtualthe Being out of this world of beingsis, accordingto Hallward, the sole creative agentthe real more real than the real.The main mistake to avoid here is again the assumption that the virtualand the actual enjoy equal power of determination, that creating andcreature reinforce one another in some sort of mutual co-implication.No: the creating literally does what the word says, it creates the creature,which itself creates nothing at all (p. 79).Now it seems to me that Hallwards reading of Deleuzes ontology

underestimates the degree of solidarity that subsists in Deleuzescoordination of the two facets of the realcreating lan and creaturelyresult, the virtual and the actual. In his eagerness to reach his conclusionconcerning the out-worldliness (not the other-worldliness) of Deleuzesontology, Hallward begins with the identification of the actual with theworld (of creatures) and of the virtual, with the creating force, whichis out of this world. In his effort to support his reference to the out-worldly, he goes occasionally too far and makes statements that are indirect contradiction to Deleuzes own. For instance, [t]he virtual alone isreal . . . A virtual creating is the reality that lives in any actual creaturea claim made by Hallward on p. 35 of his book (without the qualificationthat this is what he himself wishes to conclude, and not what Deleuzemaintains)directly contradicts Deleuzes stubborn determination tothink both virtual and actual as real. And the same goes for the followingstatements: [T]he actual is never anything more than an illusory andephemeral world (p. 38); There are only creatings, but some of thesecreatings give rise to the unavoidable illusion of creatural independence(p. 55); The expressive or explicative determination that links theimplicated naturans (the virtual creating) and the explicated naturata(the actual creature) is strictly unilateral and irreversible (p. 57). Onecould easily find at least a dozen similar statements in Hallwards book.Compare now what Deleuze actually says on these issues: Every

object is double without it being the case that the two halves resembleone another, one being a virtual image and the other an actualimage.; but we must carefully distinguish the object in so far as it


is complete and the object in so far as it is whole. What is completeis only the ideal part of the object, which . . . never constitutes anintegral whole as such. What the complete determination lacks is thewhole set of relations belonging to actual existence (Deleuze, 1994:209). Concerning the nature of the (transcendental) illusion of whatHallward calls creatural independence, Deleuze maintains that [t]hereis an illusion tied to intensive quantities. This illusion, however, isnot intensity itself, but rather the movement by which difference inintensity is cancelled . . .Only transcendental enquiry can discover thatintensity remains implicated in itself and continues to envelop differenceat the very moment when it is reflected in the extensity and the qualitythat it creates, which implicate it only secondarily, just enough toexplicate it (1994: 240). Finally, in order to prevent any potentialmisunderstanding regarding the irreducibility of the relation betweenvirtuality and actuality, Deleuze refers to the movement from the oneto the other as perfectly reversible: In fact, there is no virtual whichdoes not become actual in relation to the actual, the latter becomingvirtual through the same relation: it is a place and its obverse which aretotally reversible (Deleuze, 1989b: 69). From these passagesand theyare not the only ones in Deleuzes textsthere emerges a message thatdiffers substantially from the claims that Hallward has made: The virtualand the actual are both real. The explication of the virtual in the actualthat gives rise to the alleged autonomy of the actual is responsible fora transcendental illusionnot just an illusion, as Hallward has it. Theseries over which virtual becoming and actual history preside are totallyreversible.Faced with this evidenceand given that his acquaintance with

Deleuzes writings is second to noneHallward will not be in a positionto withhold reality from what is actual forever, and will be forced tofine-tune his reasons for the ontological comparative (more real than thereal) that he attributes to Deleuze: Even if the virtual is incarnated in theactual, [emphasis mine], he now maintains, the resulting incarnationis not equally virtual and actual . . . The creatural qua creatural isunredeemable . . . There is nothing properly creative to be salvaged fromthe actual or creatural per se, other than the energy released by its owndissipation (p. 78; p. 80). And it will be upon this premise that Hallwardwill build his reading of Deleuze as a redemptive philosopher. Thecreator is trapped within the creature, in a state of diminishing intensity,and only the dissolution of the creature will set him free. Difference istrapped within identity, and only the dissolution of identity will restoreit to its original callingthe call of difference in itself. In this context,


it is once more Hallwards thorough familiarity with Deleuzes textsthat is behind some of his claims, which in being perfectly Deleuzianare also strangely at odds with what he himself maintains elsewhere inhis book. Here is one such statement: After all, the production of actualcreatures is a fundamental aspect of what creation is. The creatural isitself an aspect of creation, rather than its falsification or debasement,or a lower reality that must be transcended. Intensive difference isntsimply cancelled in the system of extension, it also creates the system byexplicating itself (p. 56). But if this is the case, the reader has the rightto ask: what are the grounds for the degrees of reality7 that Hallwardattributes to Deleuze?I do not think that it is necessary to trumpet my surprise at Hallwards

calling redemptive a philosopher who invited us [d] en finir avecle jugement (de Dieu). I find it more profitable, going back to thequotation that I introduced earlier (pages 78 and 80 from Hallwardsbook), to suggest that the quotes around equally in his sentence, (t)heresulting incarnation is not equally virtual and actual, cannot helphim with the point he intends to make: for, how can there be anyquestion of equality, here? The virtual is the domain of problems; theactual, the domain of solutions; the problem differs in nature from everysolution to which it is susceptible, although, to be fair, it is immanentto all solutions, since the closer we come to the determination of theproblem, the more we approximate the problems solution (Deleuze,1994: 1635). Similarly, the notions of richer in reality/poorer inreality have no place here. Attempting to establish equivalence betweenproblems and solutions is a non-starter. Writing, as Deleuze does, thatproblems have the solutions they deserve (in terms of the ways inwhich they are formulated) introduces a very different perspective ofthe relation between problems and solutions than the one that Hallwardintends with his ontological comparative. And when Hallward goes onto write, (a)ll the . . . [c]reatural concern can only become the vehiclefor insight if properly oriented, precisely away from the creatural andtowards the creating (p. 57), his all the samewhich attempts toresolve the tension in his book between withholding reality from theactual and asserting that the actual is not some kind of debased orlower realitycannot bear the weight that Hallward expects it to carry.For, the away and the towards of the last quotation are, given thenature of the question, odologically misleading. The fact that the virtualand the actual differ in nature does not justify either the degrees ofreality ontology that Hallward attempts to read into Deleuzes workor, as we are going to see shortly, the epistemological meliorism that


he seems to hold as a fallback position. Anne Sauvagnargues perfectlycaptures the spirit of Deleuzes position with respect to the actual-virtualrelation in the following: The virtual is neither a reserve of Being priorto the actual nor a potency destined to realize itself dialectically in theactual; rather, it is a reality in solidarity with the actual, in a positionof reciprocal presuppositionthat is, in a position of reversibilitywithrespect to the actual (Sauvagnargues, 2003: 27). I find it strange thatHallward, who is fully aware of the debt that Deleuze owes Spinozasdifference in nature between natura naturans and natura naturata, failsto see that a Spinoza-inspired expressionism presides over the kind of co-imbrication of virtual and actual that Deleuze wants and that Hallwarddistorts. The constant message of Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza(1990b) is that the expressed does not exist outside its expression; thatGods expression is both his manifestation and his self-constitution.Nature as infinite indeterminate potency-in-act is natura naturans; as theexhaustively determinate actuality of this potency it is natura naturata.It seems to me that, in this text, there is a decisive repudiation of anykind of degrees of reality ontology.Hallward, of course, may, at this point choose to remind me

that natura naturata should not be identified with the modal world.Contrary to what you might expect, he writes, the attribute ofextension, when considered as an individuating attribute of substance,involves an indivisible and purely intensive or non-actual spatiality.Actual extensity fails the ontological test that Deleuze associates, afterNietzsche, with the eternal return, since in it difference, the condition ofeternal return, is cancelled (p. 39). In this, Hallward is right, and he hasDeleuze on his side this time.Natura naturata should not to be identifiedwith the durational world of the modes which is finite and divisible; itis the eternal make of the whole universe, infinite, one, and indivisible.But I do not think that these lines lend any support to the degree ofreality ontology (or the melioristic epistemology) that Hallward wantsto attribute to Deleuze. Even if the modal world were a privation inview of the eternal make of the whole universe, (and privation is notat all Deleuzes characterization of it) the out of this world objectionwould not be justified unless and until it could also be shown that allpreoccupation with the virtual offers no assistance whatsoever in ourdealings with the actual.But I do not see how it can be seriously maintained that Deleuze

sacrifices the actual world for the sake of the virtual creating act ina way that would support Hallwards challenge of out-worldliness.Such a challenge will sound plausible only as long as the role that


Deleuze-Spinoza attributes to causality and the quasi-cause issidestepped. And I am afraid that this is precisely what Hallward does.Speaking of Deleuzes view of causality and its role in the expressionismof his ontology, he maintains that all relations between virtual and actualare creativenot causal (p. 41). He then adds that a creating is aneffect that becomes irreducible to its cause and that logics of creationare incompatible with logics of predictable causation or determinationbecause a creating . . . assemble[s] a series of contingently autonomouseffects (p. 41). And he concludes: Rather than seek to understand themechanism of their causation or production, Deleuze emphasizes insteadthe virtual sufficing of the events thus caused.. . . [I]t may be thatDeleuze only evokes causality at all as to drive it down into the chaoticand sterile obscurity of the depths (p. 41).It seems to me that the source of Hallwards dissatisfaction rests

with his conviction that only efficient causality guarantees explanatoryinsight; logics of creation that may be modeled on some mathematicalintuitions or on the behaviour of dissipative structures do not carry,for him, the same explanatory force. If this in fact is the point ofcontention, I am afraid that I do not have the space here to enter into adiscussion on the exclusive disjunction implied in this way of introducingrival scientific paradigms. The only thing that I can do is refer ManuelDelandas book, Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy (2002) andthe immensely helpful bibliographical endnotes that it contains to thosewho would want more on the interaction of causality and creation. Onthe Stoic heritage behind Deleuzes views on causes and the quasi-cause,Delanda says: [T]he Stoics . . . were the first to split the causal link: onone hand, processes of individuation are defined as sequences of causes(every effect will be the cause of yet another effect) while singularitiesbecome pure incorporeal effects of those series of causes; on the otherhand, these pure effects are viewed as having a quasi-causal capacity toendow causal processes with coherent form [emphasis mine]. By splittingcausality this way, Deleuze manages to separate the determinism (ordestiny) which links causes to causes, from strict necessity (Delanda,2002: 207, n. 62).However, if Deleuze cannot be held responsible for an ontology based

on the ontological comparative of the more and the less real, Hallwarkthinks a different stratagem may bring about the conclusion he wishes toestablish: in the absence of an ontological difference between the virtualand the actual, it could still be shown that Deleuze is harbouring anepistemological and an ethico-political one. The formation of adequateideas, and the highest degree of knowledge to which the creature can


aspire, requires, Hallward maintains, removal of the barriers and theelimination of the limits that the creature raises between itself and thecreating act. They demand the dissolution of the creature in repeatedcounter-actualizing processes, the purpose of which is the liberationof Being in its creating dynamism, and the advent of pure thought.Parmenides to gar auton estin te kai einai is true only if we understandBeing as creating, and thinking as pure thought. Deleuzes transcendentalempiricism is the reliable pathway to the Parmenidean identity.A few quotations from Hallward will best demonstrate how he

develops and sustains this epistemological stratagem. To the extent thatDeleuze follows Spinoza in his definition of adequate ideas, he must holdthe view that an adequate idea is one that expresses its cause [;] the more[therefore] . . . an individual understands itself and other individuals asindividuations of God the more its thinking proceeds through adequateideas (p. 31). Given that in Deleuzes philosophy the individuation ofwhat is actual is the result of the creative differenciation of the virtual,then to acquire an adequate idea of the actual is to grasp it as theresult of the virtuala result that retains in itself a trace of the creativeforce of its creator. It is true, Hallward admits, that we must activelyconstruct the means of acquiring adequate ideas, and that, to this effect,experimentation in actuality with what a body can do and a mindcan think (p. 90), is indispensable. Nevertheless, the highest possibledegree of knowingthe one expressed in the Parmenidean dictum, thesame thing is given to be and to be thoughtcan be achieved whenthe experimentation with body and mind successfully ushers in thecontemplation of what is virtual. To think is to allow thought to workthrough us . . . Thinking is never willed or deliberate . . . The [spiritual]automaton is a mode in which thought thinks itself on the sole basisof its own laws . . . Incapable of action, [the automaton] is cut off fromthe outside world (p. 137; p.138). To grasp the virtual involves thesuspension or dissolution of the actual as such (p. 42). To know realityis thus to see through actuality (p. 50). When we truly think, it is Godwho thinks through us (p. 12).Hallward concludes that there is a mystic in Deleuze (p. 86); that

his philosophy is a theophany (p. 4)with the virtual creative lanoccupying the place of God; that his prized contemplation takes as itsobject, not another world, but definitely that which is out of the world(pp. 3, 6, 57); and that his transcendental empiricism designates the flightto this outside as the condition for the reality of the actual world. But thisis like saying that Spinozas third kind of knowledge, to which Deleuzes


contemplation owes a lot, is the flight of a mystic to the out-worldly;and I do not think that this proposition can be seriously maintained.As for the ethico-political argument in favour of Hallwards

conclusion, I will summarize it as follows. If, as Deleuze maintains,the only ethics worth its salt today is the ethics that beckons us tobecome worthy of the event, and if becoming worthy of the eventrather than standing for the resignation to whatever befalls usinvitesan active counter-actualisation of the state of affairs, then the ethicaltelos of the creature is precisely in the extraction of the virtual eventfrom the state of affairs that incarnates it (Deleuze 1990a: 14253).Once again, Hallward chooses to locate in the extraction of the (outof this world) event from the (worldly) states of affairs the redemptivenature of Deleuzes philosophy. Deleuzes philosophy is redemptive, notpessimistic he writes (p. 56). His strategies of extracting the virtualevent, subtracting it from the states of affairs that implicate it, arestrategies of redemption. The goal is less an actual construction thana virtual extraction (p. 91): Deleuzes vitalism is subtractive. The goalis to escape confinement within the creatural without yielding to thetemptation of an abrupt transcendence of the creatural. The goal is tobuild or find that force within ourselves, within the world, that opens aroute out of both self and world (p. 58). And Hallward names correctlythe Deleuzian process by means of which the force within ourselvescan be uncovered. It is the process of counter-actualisation (or counter-effectuation).On the subject of counter-actualisation, this is what Hallward has

to say. If its actualization or effectuation confines a creating within acreature, its counter-effectuation restores it to its fully creative potentialor virtuality (p. 143); and again: Every actual creature will have asits particular task the development of its own counter-actualisation orself-transcendence, the process whereby it may become an adequatevehicle for the creating which sustains and transforms it (p. 6); noticethat [t]he actual is not creative but its dissolution can be (p. 82)and that [t]he process of counter-actualisation is itself . . . creative . . . (p. 125). Counter-actualisation accesses a virtuality that has becomeconsistent, i.e. that has attained a purely creative . . . intensity. It is thisextractive isolation that is properly transformative (p. 44).Hallwards characterization of counter-actualisation is pivotal for his

assessment of Deleuzes ethics and politics, and equally central to hisextrapolation of the melioristic epistemology8 that I described earlier aswell as the degrees of reality ontology that I criticized. Hallward isundoubtedly right in assigning the centrality he does to the process of


counter-actualisation for Deleuzes ethical position. He is equally rightin stressing that this process is creative and in reminding his readers thatcounter-actualisation and becoming worthy of the event go togetherhand in glove. But the accuracy of his reading must once again bequestioned as soon as he places the process of counter-actualisation atthe service of a flight towards an outside of this world that has nothinghelpful to say about the actual. If Deleuze had in mind the kind offlight that Hallward attributes to him, he would not have described therelation between well-formulated (virtual) problems and their (actual)solutions the way he did. He would not have welcomed in Hume and hisethics a kindred spirit and position (see Deleuze 1991: 259) nor wouldhave approved Spinozas recommendations for an ethics of joyful affects(See Deleuze 1998 & Boundas 2003).Finally, from the point of view of its resourcefulness for politics,

Hallward finds Deleuzes philosophy unhelpful in the extreme: Those ofus who still seek to change our world and to empower its inhabitants,he writes, will need to look for our inspiration elsewhere (p. 164).Once again, I choose to interject a few quotations from his book thatwill make his reasons behind this harsh judgement clear. (T)here is noplace in Deleuzes philosophy for any notion of change, time or history,that is mediated by actuality. In the end, Deleuze offers few resourcesfor thinking the consequences of what happens within the actuallyexisting world as such (p. 162). Or again, there can be little room inDeleuzes philosophy for relations of conflict or solidarity, i.e., relationsthat are generally betweenrather than external toindividuals, classesor peoples (p. 162). And one morethis time, inimitablejab: (S)incea free mode or monad is simply one that has eliminated its resistanceto the sovereign will that works through it, so then it follows that themore absolute the sovereign power, the more free are those subjectedto it (p. 139). It is interesting to notice that Hallward reaches thisbizarre conclusion from the correct premise that freedom of the willis not one of Deleuzes concerns. In the context of the extraction of thevirtual creating process, it is the freedom from the will of the actualcreature that must be subtracted, Hallward says, precisely because itis an obstacle to the counter-actualisation processes (pp. 1389). Butthere is more: Deleuze rejects all forms of moral evaluation or strategicjudgement, writes Hallward (p. 163). Preoccupation with the world assuch, let alone a concern with the orderly representation of the things ofthe world, serves only to inhibit any . . . affirmation [i.e. our immediateparticipation in reality] (p. 6). Life lives and creation creates on a virtualplane that leads forever out of our actual world (p. 164).


Summing up, Hallwards complaints that, according to him, justify therejection of whatever Deleuze has to say on the political, leaves me withthe following list: Deleuze knows of no mediation between becomingand history; actual history is at best an occasion for the contemplationof becoming. Actual relations of solidarity and conflict (presumably,the very fabric of the political, according to Hallward) are counter-actualised for the sake of the inclusive disjunctions of the virtual. To lookfor actual relations in Deleuzes work is a waste of time, because, despitea well-entrenched assessment of this work, Deleuze is not a relationalthinker. Consequently, judgements of prudence and strategic counselingshave no place in Deleuze, because what really matters to him is a quickexit from this world (without even the benefit of a utopian thinkinggeared towards another world).Now, earlier in my attempt to strengthen Todd Mays dossier on

Deleuzes political, I alluded to the concordia discordata betweensubversion and perversity that Zourabichvili and Valentin insightfullylocated in Deleuze and Guattaris work. I would very much like toknow what Hallward thinks of it. If I may be so bold as to makea guess, I suspect that he would dismiss the subversive tendencies asineffectual or as momentary concessions to the soixante-huitards andhe would attribute what Zourabichvili and Valentin called Deleuzesperversity to the posture of someone who looks for a quick exit fromthis world of conflict and solidarity. After all, Deleuze is not a relationalthinker.But I see no reason at all to concede the point that Deleuze is not a

relational thinker. Hallward, in support of his point, refers his readersto Deleuzes essays, Michel Tournier and the World without the Others(1990a: 30120) and Immanence: A Life (2001). The elimination ofthe other (as an expression of a possible world) from Robinsons island,Speranza, seals, in the mind of Hallward, Deleuzes acosmic position,and the impossibility of any meaningful discussion of interpersonalrelations. But with this unfair generalization, Hallward misses the factthat the other which Deleuze exiles from Speranza is the other of thephenomenologist and the vacuity that characterizes our hackneyed talkof intersubjectivity. I have argued elsewhere that the message of Speranzais the mutual implication of altrucide and suicide (deconstruction of theother/deconstruction of the Subject-Self) for the sake of the autrementquautrethat is, for the sake of a new way of being (and thinking aboutthe) other (See Boundas 1993: 3243). At this point, one feels temptedto ask Hallward, in the style of Nietzsche: have we really thought whatcompassion (solidarity, conflict) would be between those who express


this autrement quautre? Even if the autrement quautre were to befound at the edges of this world, its relevance to our actual-all-too-actual(?) preoccupations would not be eo ipso null and void. But it is not aquestion of the edges of the world; the Deleuzian virtual autrement iswithin the identity of the actual and the possible, as their ratio essendiand ratio cognoscendi. And I would say the same about the messageemerging from Deleuzes Immanence: A Life. The unloved characterRiderhood, the moment he lingers between life and death, releases aspark of impersonal and singular lifea Homo tantum with whomeveryone empathizes. When next, Riderhood grows warm again, theintensity of the affect that the spark of a life generates tends to be lostin extension. But unlike Hallward, I see, with Deleuze, the potentialityof the spark (despite its propensity for being extinguished in the worldof the extended magnitudes) as the best guarantor of solidarity among(actual) individualsmuch more promising in fact than the reflectingmirrors of the phenomenologist or the romance of recognition withcompeting desires.In view of Hallwards challenge, I do not think that we should

overlook the fact that resonance is also a relation, and that eversince his Difference and Repetition, Deleuze has raised it, alongwith transversality, speed and slowness, to a veritable substitutefor the synchronisation of perceptionsthe expression of choicefor phenomenologists attempting to rethink relations of conflict andsolidarity inside the political (Deleuze 1987: 31; Deleuze 1994: 1403;Deleuze 1987: 25861).With respect to the question of whether or not Deleuze is a

relational philosopher and what it means to be one, I would like torecommend a recently published book, by Paul Bains, The Primacy ofSemiosis: AnOntology of Relations (2006), for its erudite demonstrationthat an ontology of relations subtends Deleuzes semiotic theory inparticular and his theory of multiplicities, sense and becoming in general.In the quotation that follows, Bains captures successfully the placethat the ontology of (external) relations has in Deleuzes philosophy:[T]he univocal ontology of relations . . . seems to have extraordinaryresonances with Deleuzes logic of sense, in particular the concept ofan outside of thought that is not the outside of an external world butrather the externality of relations that allow thought to have a relationwith something that does not depend on it. Relations are external to theirterms, and the issue is not primarily a relation of thought to the externalworld but rather the relation of thought to something other than itself(Bains 2006: 134).


Far from supporting a flight from the world, Deleuzes well-knownformalnot materialdistinction between history and becoming(Deleuze & Guattari 1994: 96) clearly envisages counter-actualisationas a line of deterritorialisation that must be constructed and followedfor the sake of a reterritorialisation with new weapons, new insights,and renewed efforts. Hallward is right in one thing: it is another wayof seeing Combray that the Proustian madeleine evokes (11920). It isanother way of evoking alterity that the intensive reduction of TourniersSperanza suggestsbut this other way is not the annihilation of the othersans phrase.In conclusion, I repeat: Hallwards advice to readers to look elsewhere

if we want to heed Marxs entreaty and change the world rests onan encounter with Deleuze that seems to me problematic. Even ifepistemologically and ethico-politically the Deleuzian philosophy werean askesis enjoined for the sake of the contemplation of the virtual,Hallward would not have proven the inefficacy of this posture unlesshe had also shown that there is nothing in the contemplation of thevirtual that could serve our efforts to reshape the actual. But thisdemonstration is absent from Hallwards book. His distinction betweenworldly and out-worldly presupposes a clear understanding on his part(and a will to share it with the reader) of what is worldly. And, onlyif this (unthematised) presupposition were to be granted, his conclusionabout the inefficacy of the Deleuzian out-worldliness would follow. Buton the subject of this presupposition Hallward remains silent.Two books; two thought-provoking readings of Deleuze, in many

respects diverging from each other, yet capable of being broughttogether, with the intensity of a concordia discordata, around a centralissue that runs through both: the issue of freedom. Hallward is right:Deleuze is not interested in the liber arbitriium (which is not to say thatthe only freedom that he proposes is the freedom from the human).But, on the other handand May is right in saying that Deleuze isinterested in the implementation of his ethicsDeleuze has views ongood and bad ways of living and does not hesitate, as we saw, torecommend counter-actualisation and alignment with the event as themeans to the realization of an ethics worth its name and the conduct ofa life worth living. May and Hallwardeach takes hold of one aspectof the problem. May: the causality of freedom, without which necessityreigns supreme and invalidates well-entrenched ethical intuitions. ButMay mistakes this causality of freedom for freedom of choice and action,tout court. Hallward, on the other hand, takes on the other half ofthe problem: the indispensability of the virtual for the construction of


Deleuzes ethics. But, instead of discovering the causality of freedom inthe movement towards the virtual, Hallward condemns the futility of itsexo-cosmic trajectory. As they stand, their books are incompatible witheach other. But were May to give a more central place to the virtual,the quasi-causal, the necessity that marks the domain of the actual,and a better calibrated reading of the imperative to counter-actualise,the twin problematic of the two causalitiesso central to Deleuzewould surface, free from the baggage of voluntarism and decisionism.Were Hallward to acknowledge the irreducible presence of causality (offreedom and of necessity) in the Deleuzian works, the out-worldliness heattributes to Deleuze could no longer be sustained. In its place, a moresophisticated play of necessity and freedom would come to resta playwithin the real, being at last conceived as a veritable Mbius strip of theactual and the virtual.

ReferencesBains, Paul (2006), The Primacy of Semiosis: An Ontology of Relations, Toronto:University of Toronto Press.

Boundas, Constantin V. (1993), Foreclosure of the Other: From Sartre to Deleuze,Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 24:1, January, pp. 3243.

Boundas, Constantin V. (2003), The Ethics of Counter-Actualization, Concepts,hors-srie 2, pp. 17099.

Boundas, Constantin V. (2005), Between Deleuze and Derrida, Symposium.Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy, 9:1, Spring, pp. 99114.

Delanda, Manuel (2002), Intensive Science & Virtual Philosophy, London:Continuum.

Deleuze, Gilles (1983), Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson,New York: Columbia University Press.

Deleuze, Gilles (1988), Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, trans. Robert Hurley, SanFrancisco: City Lights.

Deleuze, Gilles (1989a), Masochism, New York: Zone Books.Deleuze, Gilles (1989b), Cinema 2: The Time-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson andRobert Galeta, London: Athlone Press.

Deleuze, Gilles (1990a), The Logic Of Sense, trans. Mark Lester with Charles Stivale,ed. Constantin V. Boundas, New York: Columbia University Press.

Deleuze, Gilles (1990b), Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, trans. MartinJoughin, New York: Zone Books.

Deleuze, Gilles (1991), Empiricism and Subjectivity: An Essay on Humes Theory ofHuman Nature, trans. Constantin V. Boundas, New York: Columbia UniversityPress.

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 and Parnet, Claire (1987), Dialogues, trans. Hugh Tomlinson andBarbara Habberjam, New York: Columbia University Press.

Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Flix (1987), A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism andSchizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi, Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press.


Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Flix (1994), What is Philosophy? trans. HughTomlinson and Graham Burchell, New York: Columbia University Press.

May, Todd (1993), Between Genealogy and Epistemology: Psychology, Politics,and Knowledge in the Thought of Michel Foucault, University Park, Penn: ThePennsylvania State University Press.

May, Todd (1994a), The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist Anarchism,University Park, Penn: The Pennsylvania State University Press.

May, Todd (1994b), Difference and Unity in Gilles Deleuze, in Constantin V.Boundas and Dorothea Olkowski (eds.), Gilles Deleuze and the Theater ofPhilosophy, New York: Routledge, pp. 3350.

May, Todd (1995), The Moral Theory of Poststructuralism, University Park, Penn:The Pennsylvania State University Press.

May, Todd (1997), Reconsidering Difference: Nancy, Derrida, Levinas, andDeleuze, University Park, Penn: The Pennsylvania State University Press.

Mengue, Philippe (2003), Deleuze et le problme de la dmocratie, Paris:LHarmattan.

Sauvagnargues, Anne (2003), Actuel/Virtuel, in Robert Sasso and Arnaud Villani(eds.), Le Vocabulaire de Gilles Deleuze, Les Cahiers de Noesis, no. 3, Spring,pp. 229.

Valentin, Jrmie (2004), Politique de lentre-deux dans la Philosophie de GillesDeleuze, Unpublished Doctoral Thesis, Ottawa: Universit dOttawa.

Valentin, Jrmie (2006), Gilles Deleuzes Political Posture, in Constantin V.Boundas (ed.), Deleuze and Philosophy, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,pp. 185201.

Gregory Vlastos (1965), Degree of Reality in Plato, in Renford Bambrough (ed.),New Essays on Plato and Aristotle, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, pp. 119.

Zourabichvili, Franois (1998) Deleuze et le possible, in Eric Alliez (ed.),Gilles Deleuze: Une vie philosophique, Le Plessis-Robinson: Institut Synthlabo,pp. 33557.

Notes1. See May (1993); May (1994a); May (1995) and May (1997).2. May himself, in an earlier essay of his, argued that Deleuze cannot be the thinker

of difference (or the thinker who privileges difference over unity or identity),and in his attempt to support this claim May did refer to this type of Deleuzianstatements. See May (1994b).

3. See, for example Deleuze, Difference and Repetition (1994: 193): Take, forexample, the linguistic multiplicity, regarded as a virtual system of reciprocalconnections between phonemes which is incarnated in the actual terms andrelations of diverse languages: such a multiplicity renders possible speech as afaculty as well as the transcendent object of that speech, that metalanguagethat cannot be spoken in the empirical usage of a given language, but must bespoken and can be spoken only in the poetic usage of speech coextensive withvirtuality. Take the social multiplicity: it determines sociability which cannot belived within actual societies in which the multiplicity is incarnated, but must beand can be lived only in the element of social upheaval (in other words, freedom,which is always hidden among the remains of an old order and the first fruits ofa new.

4. See Zourabichvili (1998) See also Valentin, (2004) & (2006).5. Hallward seems to dispute the reversibility relation between the actual and the

virtual. He writes: The expressive or explicative determination that links the


implicated naturans (the virtual creating) and the explicated naturata (the actualcreature) is strictly unilateral and irreversible (p. 57).

6. Aristotle, Metaphysics XIII, 4: 1078b, 312.7. Characterisation of Platos ontology suggested by Gregory Vlastos. See Vlastos

(1965).8. I use the expression melioristic epistemology, not in the sense that it has

acquired in discussions by, or related to the work of, Carl Popper. By melioristicepistemology I mean any theory of knowledge that offers grounds for believingthat, knowledge is capable of discerning the more veridical from the lessplausible.

DOI: 10.3366/E1750224108000068

boundas - review essay - gilles deleuze and his readers - a touch of vountarism and an excess o

Documents

remarkable reading of

review essaygilles deleuze

todd mays gilles deleuze

book review

intimate knowledge of

hallwards books

easy reading

hallwards encounter