Date:     Tue, 16 Jan 1996 01:24 EST
From: 044724240-AT-UCIS.VILL.EDU
Subject:  Re: The virtual in D&G



Chip,

To jump in here, I would suggest--you won't be surprised by this I'm sure--
that we look to Bergson for a sense of what the determination of the virtual
might mean.  In particular I'm thinking of the famous cone diagram in 
chapter three of Matter & Memory.  There, and throughout chapter four, Bergson
states that the Memories at the most "relaxed" level of the virtual are 
completely determinate (I'm not sure if this is exactly what he says) in the
sense that they are completely distinct and disconnected (i.e., they are
not contracted or associated at all).  Now, on the Bergsonian model, the way
that the virtual gets actualized is always in terms of some actual situation
or physical posture that calls forth a set of resembling images from the 
past.  But in the process of this calling forth, the duration of the 
pure past is contracted, via associational mechanisms--contiguity and 
succesion being the primary ones--until it can occupy the instantaneous
duration of perception/action.  This is of course very basic Bergson, but
if you think of what this entails, it is first of all a process of selection, 
but one that amounts to what B calls a repetition (see MM 162-3).  But of
course (1) each of the multiple repetitions possible between the pure past
and the present of perception/habit introduces a difference in duree, and (2)
the selection that is involved in contraction (namely a selection of the
degree of contraction to which the whole past will be subject) is met with 
another selection, that of perception, in which we eliminate from the whole
complex of images that form the "objective" world all those that do not 
interest our body in terms of its possible action--i.e., Bergson says, we
sketch out a set of virtual actions that our body can take.  

So, with regard to the determinacy of the virtual, it is such (1) as
pure past without any connections, (2) as an intermediate degree of tension
between the plane of pure past and the plane of action, with a corresponding
degree of connectedness and associationality between different elements, and
(3) that of all possible actions sketched out on the plane of perception.  
This last is merely partial, eliminating the majority of elements actually
present, and would seem to be the reason that no actualization of the virtual
can ever exhaust it.  But this doesn't mean that the virtual, either as
pure past or as recollection (i.e., #2) is not determinate.  

Sorry to belabor my present fascination with Bergson, but I think that this
actually clears alot of things up in Deleuze.  

Ed Kazarian

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