Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 07:00:17 -0500
From: "Charles J. Stivale" <C_Stivale-AT-wayne.edu>
Subject: re: The Empty Square


I was thinking about Steve's question last night, and thinking about the
role that the differentiator takes in _Logique du sens_, shifting and
reorienting/redirecting the series into a new one, I'd say that in Mille
plateaux, the case vide/empty square becomes the "line of flight". A too
quick response, needs development, but the traits of the "line of flight"
tend toward the same functions, and more, as the earlier manifestation as
case vide/empty square.
Having said this, the diagram sounds like another interesting possibility,
and it would be fun to articulate the movement of the line of flight
across/through/within the diagram.
CJ Stivale

At 08:41 PM 1/27/99 -0500, you wrote:
>
>Diagram can be a differentiator, yes, any gap (empty --- non-place) that
>simultaneously connects or links, like e.g. visible and articulable in
>case of a diagram. I wonder if vanishing point belongs here too? Like when
>things go beyond event-horizon that is become pure event? I dont think you
>should worry about what causes what: it's more in a sense of efficient
>causation that D. addressed virtual.
>Inna.
>
>On Thu, 28 Jan 1999, Stephen Arnott wrote:
>
>> Thanks to Paul, Paul and Charles for your most helpful responses. What a
>> great resource this list can be. I haven't had a chance to think about it
>> yet, but anyone got any ideas about what happens to the empty square in the
>> ontology of Mille Plateaux? The "two-fold" aspect, described by the
>> virtual/actual distinction, is still very much in evidence in MP, the
>> Ecumenon and the Planomenon, but what then takes up the role of
>> 'differentiator'? Abstract machine, I guess. Anyway, I suppose all of this
>> is in Charles' book, which hopefully is winging its way to this distant
>> outpost at this moment.
>> 
>> With regard to the Empty square as Event (capital E), I'm still unclear
>> about this. The examples you cite, Gombrowicz's hanged animals (or rather
>> hanged objects, the first is just a stick), Poe's purloined letter,
>> Proust's Combray etc., are then all instances, particulars of a universal,
>> The Unique Event. This means then that all the events in _Cosmos_
>> communicate and are distributed in terms of the hanged objects etc. Is it
>> then a normative universal which states that series can only interact
>> according to this pardoxical element. 
>> 
>> I detect a confusion. The two series of which Paul Bryant wrote, the infant
>> and adult series, their heterogeneity and interrelation by means of the
>> empty square, appearing as a lack in one and an excess in the other - these
>> two series which constitute a structure - cannot be equated with the
>> virtual and the actual. The empty square does not cause the virtual and
>> actual to communicate, but only virtual series which by communicating
>> produce the actual.
>> 
>> Now I'm rambling, but thanks again for your help,
>> 
>> Steve
>> 
>> 
>> 
>
>