The Literary Element in "Mille Plateaux": The New Cartography of Deleuze and Guattari Author(s): Charles J.

Stivale Source: SubStance, Vol. 13, No. 3/4, Issue 44-45: Gilles Deleuze (1984), pp. 20-34 Published by: University of Wisconsin Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3684772 . Accessed: 18/08/2013 02:18
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

University of Wisconsin Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to SubStance.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 129.15.131.233 on Sun, 18 Aug 2013 02:18:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

in MillePlateaux: Element The Literary of Deleuzeand Guattari The New Cartography

CHARLESi. STIVALE

shocked Twelveyearshave passed sinceGillesDeleuze and F6lixGuattari ofstrucassaulton thesystems with their theFrench provocative intelligentsia in L'Anti-Oedipe: and political turalist, Capitalisme signification psychoanalytic, works untranslated2 and etSchizophrinie I.1 Whiletheir subsequent go virtually have inevitably been judged as outmodedin Parisian circles,Deleuze and thesystem ofschizo-analysis, their most have continued Guattari elaborating etSchizosecondvolumeof Capitalisme development beingtherecent thorough 3 In bothvolumesof thismammoth as entitled MillePlateaux. project, phrinie, as an exemplary well as in the intervening works,4 theyhave cast literature howliterature, ofmachinic modeto demonstrate books, functioning; systems in terms of "rhizomatic" in of such the and writing terms operate functioning in Mille Plateauxconstitutes the focusof thisstudy. analysispresented 5 it was not an role Whileliterary works played important in Anti-Oedipus, mineure thatthe untilthesubsequent entitled Pour une littirature analysis Kafka. in of "machinic" conworks ofa single wereconsidered author thoroughly light The of work seems on the this critical double: one Deleuze hand, cepts.6 purpose and Guattaricontinuetheiranti-oedipal polemic,thistimeagainstcertain ofKafka'sworks;and on theother and psychoanalytic literary interpretations the authors seek to move the termssuggested hand, beyond schizo-analytic inAnti-Oedipus, in to situate themachinic the as well.Thus functioning organic not "minor" existence or"major" literature's vis-a-vis the they onlyposit "great" their viewofliterature as locus ofdesireand of literatures, thereby extending in another thereal; theyalso advancetheir direction: terminology important themolecules oftheexpression-machine function as rhizome (Kafka'sletters, and as lines of flight K, pp. 53-62); as animal-becomings (le devenir-animal) as machine stories, K, pp. 63-68); and finally assemblage (Kafka'sshort (l'agencement machinique) (Kafka'snovels,K, pp. 69-73). a limited While Kafkarepresents exampleof the nextstepof the schizo"to see how, effectively, thevarioustasksof analytic project, simultaneously, schizo-analysis proceed"(AO, p. 382),7 a year later thereappeared a slim
SubStance No 44/45, 1984

20

This content downloaded from 129.15.131.233 on Sun, 18 Aug 2013 02:18:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Literary Element in Mille Plateaux

21

which would reappear in Mille volume curiously entitledRhizome:introduction, Plateauxas its opening chapter. The system called rhizome is the production dimenof the multiple,a productionoccurring"not by always adding a further sion, but on the contrary,in the simplest way possible, by force of moderation, at the level of the dimensions at our disposal, always n minus one (it is only in this manner that the one formspart of the multiple, through being always subtracted)"(R, p. 52). The principal characteristicsof a rhizome are developed at length,8and the authors then referto Gregory Bateson's Stepsto an Ecology ofMind to introduce a key term: "A plateau is always in the middle, not beginning or end. A rhizome is made of plateaux. Gregory Bateson uses the word 'plateau' to designate something very special: a continuous region of intensities,vibratingon itself,which is developed by avoiding any orientation on a culminatingpoint or towards an exteriorend" (MP, p. 32). Deleuze and Guattari define their use of "plateau" as "every multiplicityconnectable with others by superficialunderground stems, in such a way as to formand extend a rhizome" (R, p. 65). Since "the multiple demands a method which actually creates it," the authors refuse to resort to typographical, lexical, or syntacticcreations like "mimetic procedures used in image-books, designated to disseminate or dislocate a unity still preserved in another dimension," but instead use words "which, in theirturn, functionforus as plateaux. RHIZO= PRAGMATICS = MICRO-POLIMATICS = SCHIZOANALYSIS TICS. These words are concepts, but concepts are lines, thatis to say number systemsattached to a particular dimension of multiplicities" (R, p. 65). This concentrated statement sums up the strategic options which Deleuze and Guattari have at theirdisposal in therhizomaticproject: each ofthe termsserves as one of many modes of approach to produce assemblages - strata,molecular - which themselvesconor rupture,circlesof convergence chains, lines of flight stitutediverseplateaux thatusually overlap at various pointsofthe assemblage. From the rhizomatic perspective,the book has neithersubject nor object, constitutedonly by lines of articulation(segmentarity,strata, territorialities), on the one hand, and, on the other, by lines of flight(movements of deterritorialization and destratification).9 These lines and their measurable speeds constitutea machine "orientedtowards those stratawhich doubtless assemblage, make it into a sort of organism, or else a signifying totality,or else a deterto a subject; but it is orientedequally towardsa body minationattributable without which endlesslybreaks down the organism, freesand circulates asigniorgans, and creates subjects to whom it allows no more particles,pure intensities, fying than a name, as the trace of an intensity" (R, p. 50). For example, Deleuze and Guattari referto "Kleist and a mad war machine, Kafka and a fantastic bureaucratic machine" as examples of the book as assemblage, as "a connection with other assemblages, in relation to otherbodies withoutorgans," existing only "by virtueof what is outside and beyond it" (R, p. 50). Furthermore, throughhis inventionof writingas "Open rings,"as "a broken chain of affects, with variable speeds, precipitationsand transformations, always in relation to the exterior,"Kleist's texts are opposed to the "classical and romantic books constitutedby the interiority of a substance or subject" and exist as "the book

This content downloaded from 129.15.131.233 on Sun, 18 Aug 2013 02:18:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

22

CharlesJ. Stivale

as war machine, against the book as State apparatus" (R, 54-55). To oppose writingin the name of such a "unitaryState apparatus," Deleuze and Guattari opt for "Nomadology," and in this regard, they consider America as a truly special case: though revealing tree-domination and search for roots (e.g., Kerouac seeking his ancestors), "everything importantwhich has happened or is happening proceeds by American rhizome: beatniks,the underground,mobs and gangs, successive lateral shoots in immediate connectionwith an exterior." The European conception of the book ("the arborescent search and returnto the old world") is thus opposed to the American conception: "The West is rhizomatic, with its Indians without geneology, its ever fleeinglimit, its creeping frontiers.. . . America has reversed the directions: its Orient is in the West, as if the earth had come full circle precisely in America; its West is the very fringeof the East" (R, pp. 62-63). The authors referto Leslie Fiedler's The Return American to point out geography'srole in American literaoftheVanishing that assert the search for an American code intersectswith other ture; they for "a with searches, recoding Europe (Henry James, Eliot, Pound, etc.); the in the overcoding slave-owning South, with its own downfall and that of the in the Civil War (Faulkner, Caldwell); the capitalistdecoding which plantations comes fromthe North (Dos Passos, Dreiser); but the role of the West, as line of flight, linkingtogetherthe trip,hallucination, madness, the Indian, mental and perceptual experimentation, the shiftingof borders, the rhizome (Ken Kesey and his 'fog machine'; the beatnik generation, etc.)." And in reference to Fitzgerald'sspecification of geographicaldirections, theyconclude that"every to what greatAmerican author formsa cartography,even in his style;contrary connectswiththe real social happens in Europe, he makes a map which directly movements criss-crossingAmerica" (R, p. 70).10 The necessity of map-making exists not only as an underlyingprinciple of the rhizomatic system,it is presented explicitlyas an essential element for be quantified": "the book being understandingthe role of writing,which "should itself a little machine, in what measurable relationships does this literary machine stand with a war machine, a love machine, a revolutionarymachine, etc. - and with an abstract machine which bears them on?" (R, p. 50). The entire introducedin the schizo-analytic strataand terminology project,"multiplicities, segmentarities,lines of flightand intensities,machine assemblages and their different types, bodies without organs and theirconstruction,their selection, the plane of consistence [are] units of measure in each case . . . [which] not only forma quantificationof writing,but definewritingas always the measure of somethingelse. Writingisn'tto do with signifying, but with surveying,mapof worlds to come" role of map-making, This ping-even yet (R, pp. 50-51). the measurable between the machine and other spei.e., relationship literary cificmachines, as well as the abstractmachine, providesboth a particularangle from which one can approach the enterprise of Mille Plateauxand a textual strategy,a map-making itself,to examine the role of writingas the functioning of the literary machine. (For an overview of these "plateaux," see the Appendix in my translation of Mille Plateaux's"Conclusion.")

This content downloaded from 129.15.131.233 on Sun, 18 Aug 2013 02:18:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Literary Element in Mille Plateaux

23

Let us observe, first, that while the thrustof each plateau generallycorrea to sponds particular domain, the progressive insertionof referencesto differentdomains within each plateau reveals the continuous internal functioning of various regimes of signs and multiplicities.For example, the Pragmatic, elaborated in plateaux 4 and 5, returnsthroughoutthe subsequent plateaux as a fundamentalconcern of schizo-analysis.Second and most significantly for our present interests,although the literarydomain seems to be the principal focus in only two plateaux (6 and 8), it is clear thatliteraryreferencesabound in nearly every plateau and that these lines vary in their functionand focus from one plateau to another. Furthermore, since this variation corresponds to what Deleuze and Guattari indicate as "the nature of Assemblages," the literaryelement in Mille Plateauxcan be approached fromthe two axes ofmapmaking: horizontal two segments, one of axis, an assemblagecomprises Along a first ofexpression. theother On theonehand,it'sa machine ofbodies, content, assemblage actionsand passions,a melangeofbodiesreacting on one another; on theother acts and noncorhand, a collective enunciation, of assemblage expressions [enoncis], to bodies. But, along a vertically themselves porealtransformations attributing oriented or reterritorialized, axis,theassemblage has, on theone hand,territorial, whichstabilizethe assemblages, sides, and, on the otherhand,points ofdeterriwhichcarryoffthe assemblage.(MP, p. 112) torialization

I. The Horizontal Axis The principal functionof the literaryelement on this axis is exemplary, i.e., to reveal more clearly the abstract concepts suggested by the rhizomatic systhe avant-garderole ofliterature tem, while substantiating throughits machine and collectivelyenunciated assemblages, both of which vary according to the rhizoanalytic focus on one or several authors and works: 1. "Machine assemblages": Of all the texts chosen to exemplifythis axis, the works of Kafka and Proust appear most frequentlyin Mille Plateaux,with Kafka's works best revealing the cartographic extension of the two axes from the machine assemblage: On theone hand,theboat-machine, thehotel-machine, thecircus-machine, the thetribunal-machine: eachwith itsparts, castle-machine, bodies, gears, processes, all entangled, theroof).On interlocked, uncoupled (cf.thehead ripping through theother ofsignsor ofenunciation: each regime withitsnonhand,theregimes itsacts,itsdeathsentences and verdicts, itstrials, its transformations, corporeal "law."And itis evident thattheexpressions do notrepresent machines: [6noncis] the Stoker's discourse does not describetheboilerroom as body,thisdiscourse has itsownform and development without It is however resemblance. attributed to a body,to theentire boat as body. Discoursesofsubmission to slogans[mots ofdiscussion, ofdemands,ofaccusationand ofpleas. For whatis comd'ordre], whatone aspectconstantly another, paredor combined byone aspectwith places

This content downloaded from 129.15.131.233 on Sun, 18 Aug 2013 02:18:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

24

Charles J. Stivale in theother, ofconjugated or relayed deteralongthesecondaxis,arethedegrees thewhole ofreterritorialization which stabilize and theoperations ritorialization, or deterriat a precisemoment. thelineofflight K, theK-function, designates but whichalso passes by all torialization whichcarrieson all theassemblages, of childhood,of the the reterritorializations and redundancies, redundancies of of . . etc. love, 4, bureaucracy, village, (MP, plateau p. 112)

Deleuze and Guattari returnfrequently to this last machine assemblage, that of Kafka withthe bureaucracy mixed withotherbodies: "One cannot separate in Kafka's work the erectionof a great paranoid bureaucratic machine and the installationoflittleschizo machines, of dog-becoming, ofcoleopter-becoming" (MP, plateau 2, p. 48); regarding passionate love as a "cogito for two," "the cogito itselfbecomes an 'officescene,' amorous bureaucratic delirium, a new form of bureaucracy is substituted for or conjugated with the old imperial in this direcbureaucracy, the bureaucrat says I think (Kafka goes the farthest tion, as in the example of The Castle,Sortiniand Sordini, or the diverse subjectivationsof Klamm)" (MP, plateau 5, p. 165); "IfKafka is the greatesttheoretician of the bureaucracy, it is because he shows how, on a certain level . . the barriers between officescease being 'precise limits,' and plunge into a molecular milieu which dissolves them; at the same time because he has the boss proliferatedinto micro-figures that are impossible to recognize or idenand whichare no more discernible than centralizable:anotherregimewhich tify, coexists withthe separation and totalizationofhard segments[ The Castle,especially chapter XIV]" (MP, plateau 9, p. 261). As forProust, his worksfirst help distinguishmolar masses (or packs) from molecular multiplicities: A packoffreckles on a face,a packofboys,speaking in a woman's voice,a nestful of girlsin M. de Charlus'svoice. . . . Each passes through so manybodies in each other.Albertine is slowly a groupofgirls, extracted from withitsnumber, and not onlydoes an entireunconscious bathe code, hierarchy; organization, thisgroupand thisrestricted has herownmultiplicities that mass,butAlbertine thenarrator, on her bodyand in herlies-until havingisolatedher,discovers love's end renders her to the indiscernible. (MP, plateau 2, p. 49) Later, three moments in the storyof Swann-Odette from Un amorde Swann reveal the relationship of the face, the countryside,painting, and music: a) Odette's face, cheeks, eyes as black holes, linked to Swann's need forassociations; b) this face speeds to a single black hole, Swann's Passion, pulling along all the associations; c) finally,the face is "undone": art reveals to Swann that the Passion is over, art recoversits independence(MP, plateau 7, pp. 228-229). Furthermore,opposing an immanent plane of consistence of variable speed to a transcendentorganizational plane, Deleuze and Guattari first distinguish a group of girls froma lone girl "by speed: she does too many things,crosses too many spaces in relation to the relative time of he who was waiting forher. So the girl'sapparent slowness is transformed into the crazy speed ofour expectation" (MP, plateau 10, p. 332); then, this opposition of planes helps distinsituations of Swann and the narrator: different guish the different planes of

This content downloaded from 129.15.131.233 on Sun, 18 Aug 2013 02:18:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Literary Element in Mille Plateaux

25

jealousy (Odette, Albertine),ofperceptionof music (Vinteuil'sphrase) (pp. 332333). And the body of music furnishesanother mix of machine assemblages, motifs formrhythmic and territorial counterwhereby"territorial facesorcharacters, . For . . Swann the art little melodic Vinteuil's lover, points [form] countrysides. as often a the acts associated with with Odette's phrase poster Boulogne woods, face and character: it's as if the phrase brought to Swann the assurance that the Boulogne woods were indeed his territory, and Odette his possession"(MP, plateau 11, pp. 391-392.)" 2. Collective assemblages of enunciation occur at the otherend of the same axis, thereby continuing to exemplifyrhizomatic concepts: - on the question of style,"not being an individual psychologicalcreation,but an assemblage of enunciation, one cannot keep it frommaking one language into another. . . . We notice that [a few authors we like] are more or less in a situationof a certainbilingualism: Kafka the Czech Jew writingin German, Beckettthe Irishman writingboth in English and in French, [Ghersaim] Luca of Roumanian origin, Godard and his desire to be Swiss. . . . The essential thing is that each of these authors has his procedure of variation, his enlarged chromatics,his crazy production of speeds and intervals"(MP, plateau 4, pp. 123-124); -on the abstract machine of "faceness" (visageite)as an opening up of lines of flight in Chr6tiende Troyes'sPerceval, Cervantes'sDon Quixote, Beckett's Malloy and The Unnameable the 7, (MP, plateau pp. 212-213); Anglo-Americannovel, as opposed to the French novel, "fromThomas Hardy to Lawrence, fromMelville to Miller [in which] the same question resounds,to cross,to leave, to pierce through, to make the line and not the point/conclusion(faire la ligneetpas le point)" (p. 228); - on the cartographicproblem of threetypesof lines (primitivesegmentarity, a hard line of the State apparatus, and a line or lines offlight ofthewar machine; "we cannot one line is good, or that MP, plateau 9, p. 271), necessarily say another bad, by its verynature. The studyof dangers on each line is the object of the pragmatic or of schizo-analysis in so far as it does not propose to repreor symbolize,but only to make maps and draw lines by marking sent, interpret theirmixturesas theirdistinctions.Nietzsche had Zarathustra say, Castaneda had the Indian Don Juan say: thereare threeand even fourdangers, first Fear, then Clarity, and then Power, and finallythe greatDisgust, the desire to cause death and to die, the Passion of abolition" (p. 277). And in the subsequent examinationof thesefourdangers,Deleuze and Guattari call on various authors to supporttheiranalysis: Blanchot (Fear, p. 277), Castaneda (Clarity, p. 278), between Fitzgerald,Kleist (Disgust, the line of death), leading to the distinction fascism and totalitarianism,supported by Klauss Mann's novel Mephisto (pp. 281-282) as well as by J.-P. Faye and Paul Virilio;12 -on the "becoming-cosmic" of the artist, the poet: orevenengender in thehopethey fertilize molecular unleashes populations might thepeopleto come,thattheymight pass intoa peopleto come,thattheymight has ceasedbeingOne-Aloneretired intohimself, open a cosmos. ... The artist buthe has also ceasedaddressing himself tothepeople,ceasedinvoking thepeople

This content downloaded from 129.15.131.233 on Sun, 18 Aug 2013 02:18:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

26

CharlesJ. Stivale
as a constituted force.Neverhas he needed a people as much,but he realizes to thehighest are whatlacksthemost.These pointthatthepeopleare lacking, are notpopularorpopulist it'sMallarm6 whocan saythat theBookneeds artists, thepeople,and Kafka,saying thatliterature is theaffair ofthepeople,and Klee, thatthepeopleare essential, and however are lacking.Thus theproblem saying oftheartist is thatmodern of the in an open earth, depopulation peopleresults and thiswiththemeansofartor withthemeansto whichartcontributes. (MP, plateau 11, pp. 426-427);

- on the philosopheras State functionary thinkers" (Kant), opposed to "exterior (Kierkegaard, Nietzsche; MP, plateau 12, p. 467), and on the distinction between the "method"of a striatedspace (cogitatio as opposed to the universalis) of thoughtin smooth space of Zen, manifestedin textsby Artaud exteriority (lettersto Jacques Riviere) and Kleist ("A propos of the progressive elaboration of thoughts while speaking") (p. 468); - finally, all of plateau 10, on becomings,consistsofnumerouscollectiveassemof enunciation regarding: 1) becoming-intense (child, woman); blages becoming-animal; becoming-imperceptible;and the concept of "hecc6it6."13

II. The Vertical Axis

On the verticalaxis of the Assemblage, fromthe territorial/reterritorialized side to the points of deterritorialization, the functionof the literaryelement is demonstrative: the beyond exemplaryfunctionexplored above, certainliterary cases are chosen to demonstrate the operation of the rhizomatic oscillation between territoriality and deterritorialization: 1. Plateau 8 ("1874, Three nouvelles or 'What happened?' ") is the sole plateau that is explicitlyliterary,where Deleuze and Guattari experimentwith three nouvelles (short stories by Henry James, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Pierrette Fleutiaux) to reveal the essential rhizomatic traitsof the lines which trace the as the genre asking map of writingand beyond. Having establishedthe nouvelle the question "What happened, or what could have happened?" (as opposed to the conte, asking "What's going to happen?"), Deleuze and Guattari display the threetypesoflines existingwithineach nouvelle, lines which correspondto three forms of territoriality: a. The line of hard segmentarity, or molar line, exists foreach of us "where seems accountable or predicted,the beginningand the end of a segeverything ment, the passage fromone segmentto another. This is how our life is made: not only the great molar ensembles (States, institutions, classes), but persons as rapportsbetweenpersonsare segmented, as elementsof an ensemble, feelings in a way that does not trouble or disperse, but on the contrary,in order to guarantee and control the identityof each moment, including personal idenWe tity. . . . Conjugality. An entiregame ofplanified, determinedterritories. have a future,but no becoming" (MP, p. 239). In James's story"In the Cage," the woman telegraphoperator'slifeis segmentedpreciselyby her daily activity, the customers, theirsocial classes (which affect how theymake use of the tele-

This content downloaded from 129.15.131.233 on Sun, 18 Aug 2013 02:18:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Literary Element in Mille Plateaux

27

graph), and by the segmentsof proximity (the neighboringgrocery)and feeling fiance's for the plans future). (the In Fitzgerald's"The Crack Up," Deleuze and Guattari locate an initialtype of line whichreveals that"lifenever ceases to be bound to a progressively harder and witheredsegmentarity" (p. 242), consistingof"big sudden blows thatcome, or seem to come, fromoutside,"14i.e., "economic crises, loss of riches, fatigue and old age, alcoholism, marital break-up, the rise of cinema, the coming of fascism,of Stalinism, the loss of success and talent- preciselywhere Fitzgerald will find his genius" (p. 242). Thus, despite an initial suppleness, this line of hard segmentarityis one which "puts into play large masses" (p. 243). Such a line is located in Fleutiaux's nouvelle "Storyofthe Pit and the Scope""5 as one kind of overseer (surveillant), the "short-seers" those (les courts-voyeurs), who operate with a simple scope and sometimeswith "the terribleray-scope," a laser ray which overcodes everything:"It works in flesh and blood, but is only pure geometry,geometryas State business, and the physicsof'short-seers' traces [are] in the service of this machine." Thus, this firstform"effectively a line which is no longer of writing,a line of hard segmentarity where everybody will be judged and rectifiedaccording to their individual or collective contours" (p. 245). b. James's storyreveals the line of supple segmentation,or molecular line, in the telegraphitself, "a supple flow,marked by quantawhich are like so many little acts of segmentations in action, seized at birth like in a moonbeam or on an intensivescale" (MP, p. 239). The passionate complicitywhich develops between the telegraphoperator and an unknown customerparallels the determined relationship with her fiance, two politics (macro and micro), or "two very distincttypes of relations: intrinsicrelations of couples putting into play well determinedaggregates or elements (social classes, men and women, such and such a person), and thenless localizable rapports,always exteriorto themselves, which concern flows and particles escaping these classes, these sexes, these persons. . . . It is on this line that a present is defined whose very form is that of somethingwhich happened, already, no matterhow close one may be to it, since the elusive matter of this something is entirelymolecularized, at speeds which exceed the ordinary threshholdsof perception" (p. 240). This movement of molecularization appears in "The Crack Up" as subtle, supple micro-ruptures,all the more disturbingin their subtlety:this segmentation differs fromthe hard segmentarity by its rhizomatic, not arborescent, nature. Deleuze and Guattari offer the example of the aging process: "If aging occurs on this [supple] line, it is not in the same way: one only ages here when one does not feel it on the other [hard] line, and one perceives [aging] on the other line only when 'that' has already happened on this [supple] one. At a given moment, which does not correspond to ages on the other [hard] line, one has reached a degree, a quantum, an intensity beyond which one can go no further" As "the second kind [of breakage] (p. 243). Fitzgerald presents it, almost without it but is realized happens your knowing suddenlyindeed" ("The Crack Up," p. 69), or in Deleuze and Guattari's terms, "molecular changes, redistributionsof desire . . . micro-politics"(p. 243).

This content downloaded from 129.15.131.233 on Sun, 18 Aug 2013 02:18:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

28

Charles J. Stivale

The micro-segmentation throughthe "longemerges in Fleutiaux's nouvelle seers" (les longs-voyeurs) whose vision does not overcode, but rather perceives "miniscule movements which do not wait to happen on the borders, lines or vibrationswhich are tracedwell beforethe contours" (p. 245). While "thissecond line is inseparable fromthe anonymous segmentationwhich produced it," the "long-seers""can guess the future,but it is always in the formof the becoming of somethingwhich has already happened in molecular matter,non-localized particles" (p. 246). This movement of the second line can be compared to biology, i.e., to "molecular lines which criss-crossinside huge cells and their divisions," as well as to society,"how hard and overcuttingsegmentsare recut nature." But in Fleutiaux's nouvelle, underneath by segmentationsof a different the supple segmentationis both a subject of politics and of perception"forperception, semiotics, practice, politics, theory are always together"(p. 246). c. The line offlight, of deterritorialization, or abstractlines are reached by the telegraph operator of "In the Cage" when she can go no further, "vibrationswhichtraverseus, the danger of exasperatingthembeyond our endurance" (p. 241). Nothing happened between the operator and the customer,each will go his and her own way, yet everythinghad changed for the operator: she reached a "line which no longer admitted segments at all, which was rather like the explosion of both segmentaryseries. She broke through a wall, she leftthe black holes," her secretdeveloping from"the formof somethingwhose matterwas molecularized, imperceptible,unassignable" to a pure abstractline, "becoming imperceptible oneself, having undone love in order to become capable of loving. Having undone one's own self/ego (moi) to be alone finally, and to meet the true double at the other end of the line. . . . Becoming like everyone, but this is precisely a becoming only forhe who knows how to be no one, to no longerbe anyone. He paintedhimself grayon gray"(pp. 241-242). In "The Crack Up," the thirdline is one ofrupture,explodingthe two others: when the narrator says that his experience led him "to the idea that the ones who had survivedhad made some sortof clean break"("The Crack Up," p. 81), Deleuze and Guattari maintain that "Fitzgerald here opposes the break [both] to structuralpseudo-cuts in so-called signifying chains" and to "subtler,more subterranean connections or stems" (p. 243). The narrator continues: The famous"Escape" or "runaway from in a trapeven it all" is an excursion ifthe trapincludesthe southseas, whichare onlyforthosewho wantto paint themor sail them.A cleanbreakis something that you cannotcomeback from; is irretrievable because itmakesthepastcease to exist.("The CrackUp," p. 81) In other words, Fitzgerald suggests a progressivemovement toward absolute "One is no more than an abstractline, like an arrowcrossing deterritorialization: throughemptiness. ... . One has become like everybody,but in a way in which no one can become like everybody.One has painted the world on him/herself, not him/herself on the world. . . . One has entered into animal-becomings, molecular becomings, finallyimperceptible-becomings" (p. 244). In Fleutiaux's nouvelle, the third line appears only through the ambiguity of the "long-seers,"theirprivileged position "beyond" the vision of the "short-

This content downloaded from 129.15.131.233 on Sun, 18 Aug 2013 02:18:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Literary Element in Mille Plateaux

29

seers" who nonetheless possess the dreaded "cuttingScope" (Lunette ai dicouper) and to whom the "long-seers" must finally answer. Thus, on the supple, molecular line, there is hesitation between two courses, and "one day . . . a 'long-seer'will abandon his/hersegment,will enter a narrow passway over the black pit, will leave on a line of flight,having broken his/herscope, seeking a blind Double who advances from the other end" (p. 247).16 It is clear that these are not simply terms of a literaryanalysis, because forDeleuze and Guattari, "lines ofwritingconjugate withotherlines, lifelines, lines of good and bad luck, lines which bring about the variation of the line of writingitself,lines which are between thelineswritten.. . . We want to show a is as that the nouvelle defined functionof living lines,lines of flesh"(p. 238). These are lines by which we and our map are crisscrossed and traced, lines which language must follow,lines on the hardest of which a signifier emerges and into the lowest of which the subject is born, lines "inscribed on a Body without organs, where everythingis traced and flees, the abstract line itself, with neither imaginary figuresnor symbolic functions:the real of the BwO. has noother . . . it elucidates lines which can be those Schizoanalysis practical object: of a life as well as those of a work of literatureor art, of a society, depending on the particular system of coordinates retained" (pp. 248-249).'7 2. In Plateau 6 ("28 November 19477- How to Make Yourself a Body Without Organs"), Deleuze and Guattari once again return to the puzzling of the Body withoutOrgans (BwO), where concept or, as theyinsist,"practice," "one never arrives,"where"one can never arrive,"where"one has never finished beat and are beaten, look acceding," a limiton which "we sleep, awaken, fight, for our place, know unheard of happiness and fabulous falls, penetrate and are penetrated, love" (p. 186). They draw certain distinctionsbetween types (genres, substantial attributes)of BwO (hypochondriac body, paranoid body, schizo and drugged bodies, masochist body [p. 186]), between two phases of the BwO (one forits fabrication,the other formaking intensitiespass and circulate on it [pp. 188-190]), between an individual BwO and an eventual ensemble of BwO, its uninterrupted of desire, continuum,"thefield ofimmanence the veryplane ofconsistence of desire (there where desire is defined as process of production, without referenceto any exteriorinstance, to any lack which would come up to deepen desire, to any pleasure which would come to satisfy it)" (p. 191). And the literaryelement is evoked as the sole means to exemplify three aspects of the BwO. For example, Artaud's essay, "To do away with the judgement of God," dated 28 November 1947, and Burroughs's Naked Lunch help illustratetypes and phases of the BwO, while Spinoza's Ethicsis hailed as "the great book on the BwO" (p. 190); against the modern priestlyfigure of the psychoanalyst,who opposes the immanentfieldof desire withthreeprinciples - Pleasure, Death and Reality - courtlylove is presented not as lack or as the ideal oftranscendence,but as "a conquered statewhere desire no longer lacks anything, is filled by itselfand builds its field of immanence" (p. 193); Chinese taoist treatises reveal the circulation and multiplicitiesof intensities "an intensive constituting body withoutorgans,Tao, a fieldof immanencewhere desire lacks nothing and henceforth no longer refers to any exterior or

This content downloaded from 129.15.131.233 on Sun, 18 Aug 2013 02:18:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

30

Charles J. Stivale

transcendent criteria" (p. 195); and this region of continuous intensity,or and The Taraplateau, ofwhich the BwO is made, occurs in Artaud's Hiliogabale which humaras, express: as infinite offusion, Matter themultiplicity zero,plane ofconsistence, fusability like forces, wherethereare no gods; principles essences,substances, elements, like producedintensities, remissions, productions; waysofbeingor modalities breaths,Numbers.(p. 196) vibrations, These two works by Artaud also address another problem: "The difficulty of attaining this world of crowned Anarchy if one relies on organs . . . and if one remains closed in the organism, or in a stratumwhich blocks flowsand fixes us on our present world" (p. 196). Deleuze and Guattari assert that the Body without Organs "is not opposed to this organization of organs called organism"(p. 196), which forArtaud was the systemof God's judgment, "precisely the operation of He who makes an organism" (p. 197). They maintain thatthe organismis but one ofthreegreatstratawhichbind us the mostdirectly, the othersbeing signifiance and subjectivation:"theorganism'ssurface,the angle the point of subjectivation or of subjugation" of signifiance and interpretation, And these to strata the Body without Organs opposes "disarticula(p. 197). tion (or n articulations) as propertyof the plane of consistence, experimentation as operation on this plane, . . . nomadism as movement"(pp. 197-198). Therein lies the great tension and movement along the vertical axis between and subjectivation) and destratification stratification (in organisms, signifiance and thisprocess disarticulation, experimentation, nomadism). Furthermore, (by of disarticulation sums up the key methodology of Deleuze and Guattari's project: To installoneself on a stratum, to experiment withthechancesit offers us, to look therefora favorable siteofeventualmovements ofdeterritorialization, of to try themout,to ascertain hereand there theconjuncpossiblelinesofflight, ofintensity tionofflows, to try out continuums segment by segment, alwaysto of new It is a have a little land. meticulous withthe piece by following rapport stratathatwe succeedin liberating linesof flight, flows causingtheconjugated to pass and to flee,elucidating fora BwO. To connect, continuous intensities to conjugate, an entire to continue: and subjective "diagram" againstsignifying We are in a social formation; first to see how it is stratified forus, programs. in us, wherewe are now; to go back through the stratato themoreprofound wherewe are caught;to maketheassemblagerockgently, to make assemblage It is onlytherethatthe BwO is it pass to the side of theplane ofconsistence. for revealed whatitis, theconnection ofdesires, offlows, continuum conjunction a little machineforoneself, ofintensities. One has constructed readydepending to plug intoothercollective on the circumstances machines.(pp. 197-198)18 For Deleuze and Guattari, such was Castaneda's experimentationin Tales renounc"allies," then afterprogressively seekinga "site,"then finding ofPower, "to constructflowby flowand segmentby segmentthe lines ing interpretation, of experimentation, of becoming-animal, becoming-molecular, etc. For the BwO is all that: necessarilya Site, necessarilya Plane, necessarilya Collective

This content downloaded from 129.15.131.233 on Sun, 18 Aug 2013 02:18:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Elementin Mille Plateaux Literary

31

elements, plants,animals,tools,men,powers, fragments things, (assembling of all thatbecause thereis no 'my'bodywithout organs,but 'me' on it, what remainsof me, in alterableand changing forms, crossing threshholds)" (pp. of of the of the liberation lines Tales Power offers flight, example of 199-200). on theBwO, whiledistinguishand unleashing continuous intensities offlows ofthetonal thesubject, God, and his/her signifiance, ingthe"island" (organism, offlows and thenagual ofintensity on the judgment, stratification) (thefreeing if And Deleuze BwO, of animal-and molecular-becoming, destratification). of the stepsof disarticulaon thisdescription and Guattariare so insistent oftherestratification/reterit is to avoid thedangers tion/deterritorialization, or subjects onto"cancerous" oforganisms, BwO like ritorialization signifiance, of of but also BwO of the the the the State, army, factory, "money (inflation), ofthecity, oftheParty, "totalitarian and etc.,"a counter-process engendering not fascist caricatures of the of consistence. It does suffice BwO, terrifying plane thefull BwO'son theplaneofconsistence, and theempty therefore todistinguish a too violent destratification. BwO's on thedebrisofstrata, One must through cancerous still takeintoaccount BwO in a proliferating stratum" (pp. 201-202). to distinguish thecancerous BwO from thefull Justas Artaudattempted ofGod" and especially in his "Letter BwO in "To do away withthejudgment to unleasha flowagainstHitleronto"a map to Hitler," wherehe threatens whichwas nota map ofgeography" ofDeleuze and (p. 202), thecartography and thendeterritorialize, strata territories to discern Guattariseeksto delimit to definearticulations and thendisarticulate. Their use and thendestratify, is thecrucialstrategy ofrhizomatics oftheliterary element and cartography: to revealthenatureoftheintensities tracedon a plane ofconsistence, on the is themilieuofpureintensity, as "theegg [which] BwO defined the diversely as principle and nottheextensio, theZero intensity ofproduction"; as spatium the "block of childhood, becoming, the opposite of the memory of
childhood, . . . the strictcontemporarynature of the adult, of the child and

of the adult, theirmap of comparative densities and intensities, and all the on thismap";as "one variations body. .. nota sliced,shattered bodyor organs
without body, [but] just the opposite: .
.

reasonsoforgans, their indefinite at theheartofa collecwith articles, positive in an assemblageand following tive or a multiplicity, machinic connections on a as what we desire and that BwO"; "desire, operating by whichwe thepowerto annihilate" ofcartography: (pp. 203-204).19Such are the stakes ofeffects, thecontinuity of genres, "theidentity theensemble of all theBwO can be obtained on a planeofconsistence an abstract machine onlyby capable ofcovering theplane and eventracing it,by assemblages capable ofplugging intodesire,ofeffectively their continuous taking chargeofdesire,ofassuring theirtransversal liaisons"(p. 204), accomplished connections, by the use of element. As Deleuze and Guattari theliterary concludein "Introduction: Rhihas for itsfabric theconjunction 'and ... and . zome," just as "therhizome works serve direction torevealthisrhizomatic be,' "certain literary by"moving
and . . .' [in which] there is enough strength to shake and uproot the verb 'to desire, . . . now desiring one's own annihilation, now desiring that which has

. the distributionof the intensive

This content downloaded from 129.15.131.233 on Sun, 18 Aug 2013 02:18:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

32

CharlesJ. Stivale

a logic ofAND, reversing betweenthings, initiating ontology, overthrowing the foundation, the toolsformapcancelingend and beginning," providing flow botha constant ofintensities between making, plotting moving plateaux, "stream or end whichdevoursbothof itsbanksand picks without beginning of the semiotic up speed in the middle"(pp. 36-37), and the creation Pragan overarching of rhizomatics. maticconstituting strategy

NOTES 1. L'Anti-Oedipe: etSchizophrenie, I (Paris: Minuit,1972), translated as Anti-Oedipus: Capitalisme andSchizophrenia, MarkSeem,and HelenR. Lane (NewYork:Viking, Capitalism byRobertHurley, in the textto thistranslation are abbreviated AO. 1977); all references 2. Withsomeexceptions: varioustexts in Language, andSubbyDeleuze and Guattari Sexuality version II, no. 3 (1977), Semiotext(e), III, no. 1 (1978); and (Sydney:Feral, 1978), in Semiotext(e), Rhizome: introduction (Paris: Minuit,1976)hasappearedin translation byPaul Foss and Paul Patton underthesame titlein Ideology andConsciousness, 8 (1981). All references in thetextto thislatter are abbreviated translation R. 3. MillePlateaux: II (Paris: Minuit,1980); all references etSchizophrenie, in thetext Capitalisme are my own translations and are abbreviated MP. 4. GillesDeleuze and FblixGuattari, mineure Kafka.Pourunelittirature (Paris: Minuit, 1975); all references in the textare abbreviated K; Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet,Dialogue (Paris: La Rdvolution Minuit,1977); FelixGuattari, (Paris: Recherches, 1977),and L'Inconscient moldculaire machinique (Paris:Recherches, 1979);GillesDeleuze and CarmeloBene,Superpositions (Paris:Minuit, 1979). 5. For therole ofliterature in Anti-Oedipus, see CharlesJ. Stivale,"GillesDeleuze and F6lix Guattari:Schizoanalysis and Literary 29 (1981), 46-57. Discourse,"SubStance, 6. Deleuze had previously theworks ofProust in Proust etlessignes analyzed (Paris:PUF, 1964), and whilethe original editiondoes not includethemachinic the subsequent revisions concepts, take accountof more recentresearch. (1970, 1971, 1976) progressively 7. The tasksof schizo-analysis are defined in Anti-Oedipus as follows:1) thedestructive task, "a wholescouring oftheunconscious, a complete "the curettage," byundoing Oedipal trapofrepression"(AO, pp. 311, 339); 2) thefirst in a subject thenature, theformatask,"discovering positive tionor thefunctioning ofhisdesiring-machines, ofanyinterpretations" independently (AO, p. 322); and 3) thesecondpositive theinvestments of the task,"whereby schizo-analysis schizophrenizes unconscious desireof the social field" (AO, p. 350). 8. The six rhizomatic are: principles ofconnection and heterogeneity: as opposedto treeor rootmodels,the 1 & 2, theprinciples rhizome connects with aboutconnections with anyother indiscriminately point, bringing anynumber of"regimes of signsor even statesof non-signs" (R, p. 64). This meansthat"a rhizomeneither norarrives, itis always in themiddle, between buttheexpresin-between, begins intermezzo," things, sion"between does not a localizablerelation whichgoesfrom to another one thing things designate and viceversa,buta perpendicular a transversal movement which carries onwardboth direction, one thingand the other" (MP, pp. 36-37); ofmultiplicity: ofa One as subject or object, therhizome 3, theprinciple opposedtoanyconcept "constitutes n-dimensional linearmultiplicities without subjector object"(R, p. 64), and which "are defined or deterritorialization line, theline of flight by theirexterior, by theabstract along whichtheychangetheirnatureby connecting themselves withothers" (R, p. 54); ofasignifying rather thana structure ofpointsin binary relation and 4, theprinciple rupture: in bi-univocal thatis, a centered hierarchical with connecrelation, positions system pre-established "the rhizome is an acentered, non-hierarchical and non-signifying oflines: tions, system," composed ofsegmentarity or stratification offlight ordeterritorialization "as themaximal dimen(dimensions);

This content downloaded from 129.15.131.233 on Sun, 18 Aug 2013 02:18:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Elementin Mille Plateaux Literary

33

in following lineofflight], sionaccording to which, themultiplicity metachangesitsnature, [this morphoses" (R, pp. 64-65); and tracing-mania: sincethelines of segmentarity and 5 & 6, the principles of cartography relatesto a map, to arborescent linesofthetree-image, "therhizome lines of flight are contrary and is alwayscapable of being connected and disconwhichmustbe producedor constructed, and exits,withitslinesof a map withmultiple entrances nected,turned upsidedown,modified; flight" (R, pp. 64-65). to otherfigures ofthebook: on theone 9. Deleuze and Guattari oppose thebook as rhizome or "theclassicalbookwithitsfineorganicinteriority, exists theroot-book, hand, there signifying whoselaw is thatofreflection, "theOne whichbecomestwo,"i.e., binary and subjective," logic This "reality," whichthe authors insistdoes not occur as "thespiritual of the root-tree." reality which are multiply in nature are notdichotomic, butform ramithemselves taproot systems ("roots "constitutes stilldominating and radically"), fiedbothlaterally systems psychoanalysis (thehalluofSchreber), and structuralism, eveninfortreein theFreudianinterpretation cinatory linguistics ofthebookis theradicle-system, mationtheory" hand,thesecondfigure (R, p. 51). On theother rootof "an immediate, or fasciculated onto the principal indefinite root,a grafting multiplicity to the the basic unity.Referring of elaboratesecondary roots" maintaining (R, p. 51), thereby in Nietzsche's ofJoyce's and to the"eternal return" so-called"multiple roots" aphorisms, writings maintains thedualism,"thecomplementhe authorsargue thatsuch a "deconstructive" system and spiritual is endlessly thwarted and ofsubject and object,ofnatural reality reality: unity tarity in thesubject," triumphs acceding"to a higher impededin theobject,whilea new typeofunity in a dimension to thatof or ofoverdetermination, unity,of ambivalence alwayssupplementary its object"(R, p. 52). 10. Deleuze and Guattariare quick to qualify thisgeographic "At the same time, specificity: we are on thewrongtrack withall thesegeographical At an impasse;so muchthe distributions. If it is a questionofshowing better. thatrhizomes also have their own despotism, their own ever morerigidhierarchy, welland good; forthere is no dualism,no ontological dualismofhereand blendor synthesis. . . . It is not a there,no axiologicaldualismof good and bad, no American in history, even less any parquestionof any particular place on earth,nor any givenmoment ticular ofthought. It is a question ofa model,which is constantly setup and dismantled, category and of a processwhichis constantly whichcontinually breaksoff and beginsagain" prolonged, (R, pp. 63-64). For a superb discussion ofschizophrenia and literature written at thesametimeas Anti-Oedipus, see JohnVernon, TheGarden and the in Twentieth Literature and Culture Map: Schizophrenia Century of IllinoisPress, 1973). (Urbana: University 11. Otherliterary machineassemblages to Borges(p. 157), HenryMiller operatein reference (pp. 161, 167, 172, 210), PierreKlossowski (p. 164), and Castaneda (p. 173). 12. J.-P. Faye,Langages totalitaires (Paris: Hermann,1972), and Paul Virilio,Essaisurl'insicuriti du territoire (Paris: Stock,1976). 13. Specificreferences to thesecollective are the following: assemblages 1) becoming-intense (child,woman): V. Woolf,D. H. Lawrence,H. Miller,Proust,Kafka (pp. 338-340; 360-361); V. Woolf,Lovecraft, Melville'sMoby Hofmannsthal, Dick, Kafka, D. H. 2) becoming-animal: Lawrence,V. Slepian, H. Miller,Faulkner,Fitzgerald (pp. 293; 298-299; 304; 308; 316-318; V. Slepian,Hofmannsthal, Castaneda,Lovecraft, Proust, 374-376); 3) becoming-imperceptible: P. Moran,Fitzgerald, H. Miller(pp. 304-307, Kerouac,V. Woolf, Michaux,Artaud, Kierkegaard, of"hecc6it6" is defined: "On theplaneofconsistence, 336-337; 342-343; 345-350); 4) theconcept and a latitude. . . twoelements of cartography. There is a body is defined onlyby a longitude mode of individuation thanthatof a person,a subject,a thing, or a substance. a verydifferent We reserve forit thename ofhecceit6 . . . [where] is in a relation ofmovement and everything restbetween molecules or particles, thepowerto affect and be affected" (MP, p. 318): C. Bronte, D. H. Lawrence,Faulkner, M. Tournier, V. Woolf(pp. 318-321); "hecc6ite" Bradbury, vis-a-vis N. Sarraute, Proust(pp. 327-333). For further disArtaud,H61lderin, Kleist,Nietzsche, writing: cussionof thisconceptof "hecc~it6," see the translation of plateau 15, "Conclusion." 14. F. ScottFitzgerald,TheCrack Up (New York: New Directions,1956), p. 69. 15. Pierrette Fleutiauxin Histoire du Gouffre etde la Lunette (Paris: Julliard,1976).

This content downloaded from 129.15.131.233 on Sun, 18 Aug 2013 02:18:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

34

CharlesJ. Stivale

16. Deleuze and Guattari, in a footnote, linesofperception" in another consider the"three nouvelle de transparence): "The herohas by Fleutiaux,"The Last Angleof Transparency" angle (Le Dernier a molar on wholesand well-cut whichfocuses and clearly on fullness elements, desigperception, natedhollowness thatis coded,inherited, overcoded (it'sa perception bythewalls:don'tsitbeside in a molecular hischair, madeoffine andmoving perception, segmentations, etc.).Buthe is alsoinvolved of autonomous whereholesemergeintothefullness, wheremicro-forms emergeintothe traits, twothings, where between swarms and moves'through cracks. The emptiness, 'everything myriad hero'sdifficulty is thathe cannotchoosebetween thetwolines,constantly one to jumpingfrom theother.Will his salvation come from a third line ofperception, offlight, 'hypothetical perception direction whichopens indicated' two,'theangleoftransparency' merely bytheangleoftheother a new space?"(MP, pp. 246-247). 17. For an articulation linesin a particular see Charles ofthese work, literary J. Stivale, "Lignes deJacques deJulesValles," de Revolte dansla Trilogie French Studies Nineteenth-Century Vingtras (forthdeJules Vallesdansla Trilogie deJacques Entre and "La Signature Vingtras: coming), Autobiographie et Fiction," French Literature vol. XII (University of South Carolina, forthcoming). Series, 18. For a concrete "The PoliticsofYouth see LawrenceGrossberg, exampleof thispractice, Culture: Some Observations on Rock 'n Roll in AmericanCulture,"SocialText, 8 (1984). 19. Further discussion ofthe"Bodywithout and the"planeofconsistence" Organs" maybe found in the translation of plateau 15, "Conclusion."

This content downloaded from 129.15.131.233 on Sun, 18 Aug 2013 02:18:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions