Jo Yueh (K26961118 )

Prof. Yu-Lin Lee

Contemporary Literary Theory: Gilles Deleuze

27 Jan 2009

A Life of Yes:

Reading the Deleuzian Immanence1

What is Life? ““All life is creation,”” Claire Colebrook interprets the Deleuzian

Life, ““but according to its specific or ‘‘singular’’ tendencies”” (““Powers”” 26). Though

briefly, Colebrook still offers three distinct clues in the Deleuzian Life——creation,

singularity, as well as tendency. If ““creation”” can be identified as the primary quality,

or label, of Deleuze’’s notion of Life, ““singularity”” as well as ““tendency”” can thus be

known as two features within the forming process of the Deleuzian Life. Let us begin

from Deleuze’’s so-called ““creation.”” Among more or less resistant or nihilistic

postmodern thinkers (such as Nietzsche, Foucault, Lyotard, Baudrillard, and Derrida,

etc), Deleuze rather represents a philosophy of creation. Here, Deleuze’’s ““creation,””

Colebrook adds, ““is not an act of variation added on to an otherwise stable and inert

life”” but ““[a means] would open us up to new powers of thinking”” (““Power”” 26).

According to Colebrook, the Deleuzian Creation never promises a supplementary to

the Being but equals to the Being, or more correctly, to his Being of Becoming. In

other words, Deleuze ““strives to think life as becoming rather than being”” (Colebrook,

““Transcendental”” 69, italics mine). Bearing the Deleuzian Life of Creation/of

Becoming in mind, this paper thus aims to explore the paradoxical relation between

1
In this short paper, I will briefly review Deleuze’’s two chapters, ““Immanence: A Life”” as well as
““Nietzsche,”” in his book Pure Immanence. After exploring this immanent thinker’’s notion of repetition
with difference by his methods of empiricism (or transcendental empiricism, though I will not name the
term in this paper), a Nietzschean/Zarathustrian Will (or I name it as A Life of Yes) will be examined.

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Tendency and Singularity in Deleuze’’s so-called ““A Life.”” That is, in the constructing

process in such a Deleuzian Life, why does a tendency, or, repetition, still embody a

singularity? If so, what kind of Life does Deleuze propose, or, rather, of what nature

of Life does Deleuze want to remind us?

Deleuzian Empiricism: Repetition with Difference

First of all, as an immanent thinker, Deleuze provides us with a manner of

empiricism by which his idea of Life generates: ““A life is everywhere, in all the

moments that a given living subject goes through and that are measured by given

lived objects: an immanent life carrying with it the events or singularities that are

merely actualized in subjects and objects”” (““Immanence”” 29). In other words, as fluid

liquid or clay is shaped or molded by endless, everywhere containers, the Deleuzian

immanent life signifies double movements in this empirical procedure——the produced,

folded action as well as the producing, folding act. If one names the previous ““folded

action”” as the life, to Deleuze, the ““folding act”” thereby equals to a life. ““[A] life

coexist[s] with the accidents of the life that corresponds to it,”” Deleuze adds, ““but

they are neither grouped nor divided in the same way”” (““Immanence”” 29-30). That is

to say, there are always other, or, multiple lives than the life waiting for any folding

moment; the life is merely the selected, folded one within Deleuze’’s so-called ““index

of a multiplicity”” (““Immanence”” 30). More specifically, such a multiplicity is

““virtuals”” contained in ““A life,”” which ““is not lacks reality but something that is

engaged in a process of actualization following the plane that gives it its particular

reality”” (Deleuze, ““Immanence”” 31, emphasis added). The ““process of actualization””

thus implies the empirical, forming process of the Deleuzian Life. Thus, as for this

incessant, empirical process, John Rajchman here provides us with Deleuze’’s

so-called radical empiricism. To Deleuze, Rajchman claims, the force of such

empiricism ““begins from the moment it defines the subject: a habitus, a habit, nothing

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more than a habit in a field of immanence, the habit of saying I”” (Rajchman 12, qtd).

Whereas endless, repeated actions or a habitus constructs the life, each time of saying

I rather launches the possibility of A Deleuzian Life. In other words, there are two

levels can be examined in this notion——the habitus (Tendency) as well as the

enunciation of an I, or, a Life (Singularity).

Following that, since its singularity will be an outcome of the habitual, repeated

forming process, the developing procedure of the Deleuzian Life can be identified as a

repetition with difference. Another reason is, Francois Zourabichvili proclaims:

““[E]ach force, in a certain way, takes up or repeat the other, at another level.

Each one envelops a ‘‘possibility of life’’, expresses a particular point view on

life, differentiates, in its own way, the indeterminate element of Life and, in its

own way, resolves the problem of ‘‘living’’”” (195, italics added).

To Deleuze, based on Zourabichvili, the ““another level”” of the Deleuzian Life shall

thus be accomplished by two engagements. For one thing, Zourabichvili remarks that,

each force repeatedly tries to settle the identical, ‘‘living’’ issue (195). For another,

since each force ““repeat the same question at various levels, and thus mutually repeat

each other at a distance, reappropriating each other, every time from a different point

of view”” (Zourabichvili 195). Difference, or singularity, will thus be generated

through such a necessary repetition.

“Passage of Life”2: Yes

Since the Deleuzian Life, as Rajchman says, is never as a fixed ““scheme”” but a

flexible ““diagram”” (15), since each repetition of the immanent force has been

““permeated”” with difference, or singularity, such A life will rather as a not-yet,

future-oriented map, or Zourabichvili’’s so-called landscape. ““The landscape,””

2
I use Zouabichvili’’s term, ““passage of life,”” to name this subtitle. To this critic, Deleuze wants to
encourage an involvement rather than ““an echo”” in Life (Zourabichvili 196).

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Zourabichvili remarks, ““is an inner experience rather than the occasion of an echo; not

the redundancy of lived experience, but the very element of a ‘‘passage of life’’”” (196).

As for the Deleuzian Life, in other words, Zourabichvili here exemplifies the

philosophy of a participant (within an indeterminable passage) rather than of an

observer (in front of this landscape, namely). ““To live a landscape,”” Zourabichvili

further encourages, ““one is no longer in front of it, but in it”” (196, emphasis mine).

According to Zourabichvili, a philosophy of IN is thus Deleuze’’s notion of Life. Then,

since Deleuze affirms an involving relation to Life, one is thus ““constituted by

extending beyond ourselves”” (Zourabichvili 197). In other words, neither the role as

an observer nor the life as a subject can be eternally secured. Referring to a life,

Zourabichvili proclaims, ““[creative] violence shatters because it carries the subject

into an a-subjective, that is, a singular and impersonal becoming-other, rather than

shattering by a will-to-shatter or to impose a new, already envisaged, figure of

subjectivity”” (198). That is to say, only through ““a process of ‘‘impersonalization’’”” can

the Deleuzian Life be obtained (Rajchman 14). Such A Life can be regarded not only

as an always-been-shattered but an incessantly-becoming-other subject.

If so, based on this immanent thinker’’s Nietzschean-Foucauldian genealogy, I

propose that it is a life of openness, of ultimate affirmation that Deleuze encourages.

This affirmative force, Deleuze proclaims, ““turn[s] against the reactive forces and

become an action that serves a higher affirmation”” (““Nietzsche”” 83). In other words,

in such an incessantly involving, participating ““passage of life”” (Zourabichvili 196),

for the Deleuzian Life, a Being of Becoming, only endlessly empirical actions (the

Deleuzian Life of Creation, concretely) rather than reactions (resistances or nihilism,

for example) can be taken. In addition, as for the mechanism of such actions, Deleuze

defines that ““[t]he only clever word is Yes”” (““Nietzsche”” 86). That is to say, during

the passage, or the journey of the Deleuzian Life, its unpredictability is similar with

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““the throw of the dice”” (Deleuze, ““Nietzsche”” 87). Encountering with chances, in the

Deleuzian Life, each action and each force shall be based on the affirmative Yes. ““It is

to say yes to what is singular yet impersonal in living,”” Rajchman thus remarks, ““and

for that one must believe in the world and not in the fictions of God or the self”” (18).

Believe in the world, where A Life always brings with different repetitions and chances,

probably is the message which the Deleuzian Life of Creation/of Becoming conveys.

Works Cited

Colebrook, Claire. ““Powers of Thinking.”” Gilles Deleuze. New York: Routledge, 2002.

11-27.

---. ““Transcendental Empiricism.”” Gilles Deleuze. New York: Routledge, 2002. 69-89.

Deleuze, Gilles. ““Immanence: Life.”” Pure Immanence: Essays on A Life. Trans. Anne

Boyman. New York: Zone Books. 25-33.

---. ““Nietzsche.”” Pure Immanence: Essays on A Life. Trans. Anne Boyman. New York:

Zone Books. 53-102.

Rajchman, John. Introduction. Pure Immanence: Essays on A Life. Trans. Anne

Boyman. New York: Zone Books. 7-33.

Zourabichvili, Francois. ““Six Notes on the Percept (On the Relation between the

Critical and the Clinical).”” Deleuze: A Critical Reader. Ed. Paul Patton. Trans.

Tom Gibson. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 1996. 188-216.

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