Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1999 19:26:59 -0500
From: "B. Metcalf" <bmetcalf-AT-ultranet.com>
Subject: RE: Dialectics


Nathan,

>	I have not said active forces are molar -- I have said it is part of
>the virtual realm which constitutes the molar through actualization.  

Then we agree about that.


>	Become active is not the same as becoming active.  The first
>implies a completion of movement and hence actualization. By the same
>token, forces which no longer are becoming active but which have become
>active (noting that these temporal connotations are significantly altered
>from their everyday use in this thinking), would also be molar.

I don't agree with that.  This may be *similar* to what H is doing.  But it
is not what D is doing.  


>> I see the molecular/virtual event in process of actualization which
>> underlies the molar.  But the intensive-active forces are always
>> molecular.  The becoming active would be the eternal return to the
>> molecular virtual.
>> 
>	Yes, but then what would be the forces which "have become active"?

I still don't know what you mean by "become active".  Active forces are
those which have not become reactive by being separated from what they can
do.  Becoming active, to me, is the eternal return, and that is not molar.  


>> It sounds to me as though you are thinking of this "macro-fold" as
>> something like a dialectical oppositional movement, synthesizing molecular
>> forces into the molar. 

>The actual IS a synthesis of folds, but it is a
>disjuncitve synthesis.  Please do not collapse synthesis and dialectics
>together.

I wasn't.  But I thought you were.  I still suspect you might be
interpreting D's synthesis in a Hegelian way.          


>	It is only not similar because you are treating the synthesis of
>folds as conjunctive.  The disjunctive synthesis is detailed throughout D&R,
>as well as LoS -- in fact, it's in just about every book in some capacity.

I am NOT treating the synthesis of folds as only conjunctive.  

 
>	Again, look at the Leibniz book, I can point you to the pages later.
>That's where Deleuze articulates probably most clearly how perspectivism
>involves perspective upon a rhizomatic field.  There is no normativity,
>because the field has no centre.  The synthesis is not prior in any simple
>way to the perspective, but that doesn't mean the perspective is not limited
>and specific, for if it were not that would introduce perspective as a
>merely subjective phenomenon.  The latter is precisely the way you seem to
>be introducing perspectivism.

No, I am not.  In The Fold p.20 D says, "...perspectivism amounts to a
relativism, but not the relativism we take for granted.  It is not a
variation of truth according to the subject, but the condition in which the
truth of a variation appears to the subject.  This is the very idea of
Baroque perspective."  Do you think this is the same as D's perspectivism?
Are you equating D's perspectivism with that of the Baroque?  

See Cinema 1 beginning at the bottom of page 72.  Deleuze talks about "free
indirect discourse" (which can be roughly compared to Baroque
perspectivism), saying that this form "raises many problems for grammarians
and linguists: it consists of an enunciation taken with an utterance, which
itself depends on another enunciation...There is not a simple combination
of two fully-constitued subjects of enunciation, one of which would be
reporter, the other reported.  It is rather a case of an assemblage of
enunciation, carrying out two inseparable acts of subjectivation
simultaneously...There is no mixture or average of two subjects, each
belonging to a system, but a differentiation of two correlative subjects in
a system which is itself heterogeneous....It is no longer metaphor which is
the fundamental act of language, inasmuch as it 'homogenises' the system;
it is free indirect discourse, inasmuch as it testifies to a system which
is always heterogeneous, far from equilibrium...Free indirect discourse,
however, is not amenable to linguistic categories, because these are only
concerned with homogeneous or homogenised systems...there is no subject
which acts without another which watches it act, and which grasps it as
acted..."  Therefore, Deleuze is not talking about a normativity of
enunciation, but of assemblages of enunciation.  There is normativity in
Hegel's relationality.  That is why I CANNOT call D & H similar. 
 

>> H's relationality still is repetition in the form of the identity of the
>> concept and is therefore harnessed to the possibility of the molar
>> concept.  If you think it is not, then don't just tell me ten times.  Say
>> why.

>	I have told you why 10 times if not more.  I have accepted Hegel's
>final adherence to identity as being what ultimately differentiates Deleuze,
>but have explained how in other ways their thinking is similar, and I have
>explained why this differentiation does not make Hegel's thinking fit simply
>into the category of the possible.  Go back and READ the previous 10 times,
>and you will find the answer to the questions you ask.

I have never heard you explain it once yet.  So could you please (even if
for the eleventh time) explain, 'how does Hegel's relationality not fit
neatly into the category of the possible, given that there is repetition in
the form of the identity of the concept?    


>	And try not to quote the very question in your response to me which
>you immediately bypass:  why can't you accept that D's divisions are not
>exhaustive, and that other thinkers categories need not fit into them fully?

If Hegel's category is something that does not fit Deleuze's divisions,
then don't just say so.  Tell my why.  Only then can I try to answer you.

 
>	It IS a form of synthesis?  How did you get through N&P and D&R
>without realizing that?  The Eternal Return, for example, is SPECIFICALLY
>outlined in terms of the synthesis of time.  It is a disjunctive synthesis,
>but a synthesis nonetheless.

Excuse me.  I misread your previous question.  Of course, there is
synthesis in Deleuze.  But I don't see it as *similar* to Hegel's. 


>> Also, since Paul thinks I am reticent about calling Deleuze's project
>> ontological, I will refer you to D&R p191.  I thought I had made myself
>> clear that I was speaking against ontology as the 'what the thing is'
>> question, which I take to be H's question.   
>> 
>	Well, as I have said several times now, and back in the previous
>exchange, this is not H's question.  I have explained why, so don't ask me
>to explain again.  Suffice it to say, Hegel dismisses that 'what the thing
>is' question in the Preface to the Phenomenology, and his thinking is much
>more akin to the 'how is a thing completely determined' question that
>Deleuze attributes to Leibniz.

Maybe you have explained it before, I don't remember.  Anyway, I do not
agree.   If you want to persuade me, you will have to explain it again.   I
think Hegel does ask that question, and that is why I can't call his
thought in any way similar to Deleuze's.


>	Don't forget to answer the question you have still not answered:  if
>you think there are similarities between Hegel and Deleuze, but not the ones
>I've outlined, tell me what they are.

I think there are no similarities important enough to mention.

Beth