Date: Mon, 15 Jan 1996 17:59:46 -0500
From: aden-AT-user1.channel1.com (Aden Evens)
Subject: Re: The virtual in D&G


Brad inquired:

>I've been stumbling over the virtual/actual distinction in D&G for awhile
>>now...

I would look most closely at _Difference and Repetition_, though I suspect
that that is what you have done. My understanding of the virtual/actual
thing in that book, is that the movement from virtual to actual is one line
of ontogenesis, from the undetermined, to the determinable, to the
determined. (The other line of ontogenesis is the individuation of
explication.)

Deleuze replaces a traditional modality, where things come to be when
possibilities are realized. The problem with this old model is that it
really explains nothing: possibilities are just like realities except for
the formal and ideal difference which makes them possibilities. There is no
movement in the becoming of a reality from possibility, only a sudden shift
of mode. Deleuze's replacement is a model which attempts to show how things
come to be through difference. One starts with that aleatory point, the
point of chance, which spins off other points, quite haphazardly. These
points relate to each other, and the relations form a structure which
retroactively defines the points themselves, with increasing determination.
This structure is incarnate in the actual as a problem/solution.

In fact, perhaps that last is the easiest way to think of the
virtual/actual distinction: the virtual is problematic, it has the being of
a problem. Virtuality is like a tension which must work itself out. The way
in which it works itself out is the solution, the actual instance, but the
problem inheres in the solution, giving it meaning, and relating the
various cases of solution and the various parts of one solution to each
other.

Sorry, this needs work, but I've got to go to a party.



$$$$$$$$$$$
   Aden
$$$$$$$$$$$



     ------------------