Date: Tue, 7 Oct 1997 02:32:36 -0600 (CST)
From: Leonardo Raggo <ac857-AT-sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca>
Subject: Re: Return by Folding3




On Sun, 5 Oct 1997, AM Dib wrote:

> Leo
> 
> i think that Deleuze when he tries to incorporate the baroque term this should 
> not mean a return to the Platonic idea.  Deleuze, if you want, looks at the 
> baroque as a fold itself that would express a movement.  The idea of Deleuze 
> has a vast difference with Plato.  Deleuze's idea is a spinozist one.  All 
> these arguments made against deleuze (see Tod May) that he did not manage to
> solve the problem between unity and difference are somehow misleading.  
> Deleuze's emphasis on the movement of infinity disolves both terms to restore 
> the positivity of the creative force that is taking place.  I find it hard to 
> accept that by resorting to the baroque would mean in the end a collapse of 
> the many to the unity.  

   I agree, and would also point to a certain difficulty of expression
often encountered when trying to tackle some of these thoughts. It's
difficult to express a totality that gives space to differences without
seeming to reduce differences themselves. It is not "unity" or "diversity"
that must be decided between but a thinking of "unity in diversity" with
neither term privileged as such. Some such idea seems to underly the
following (during the process of defining the fold as something to be
"read", an interesting thematic of reading and writing that runs
throughout these sections); 

    "dust or mist, a fold of circumstances ... must have its new mode of
correspondence with the book, the fold of the Event, the unity that
creates being, a multiplicity that makes for inclusion, a collectivity
having become consistent" (p.31).

    It is this idea of a "unity that creates being" that is somewhat
reminiscent of a certain reading of Plato that emphasizes the constitutive
aspect of the Forms and not so much their static reality as universals. (I
will, however, inquire into Deleuze's book on Spinoza (as well as Bergson)
as soon as possible). A page earlier he also says something that seems to
clarify this precautionary move against the assumptions of unity (or
unification); 

  "differentiation does not refer to a pregiven undifferentiated, but to a
Difference that endlessly unfolds" (p.30).

   This is interesting in how a certain language must be contorted, used
to open a counter intuitive space whose unfolding is that "operative act" 
he attributes to Mallarme in an all too brief reference on the same page. 
Such a reference, nevertheless, seems to indicate that Deleuze would not
restrict the notion of what is baroque to an historically closed reality,
but as he suggests is a concept yet to be defined or invented (p. 33). 

   Incidently, il piu' nell' uno - "multitude in unity" - is an old Roman
definition of beauty in painting.

> You have stated clearly the issue of rythmic, dynamic 
> impulses which are expressive of the manifold flux.  The baroque, the fold, in 
> this respect would look as an idea in the middle, a sort of 'thisness', a 
> figuration that is pushed and pulled in multiple directions. Apparently, this 
> is something which our mind is not used to deal with.  Our current 
> machineries are still much affected by a static paradigm.  We are less capable 
> currently to be coupling with the speed of light itself. We should not forget 
> that inscription itself is an enemy which Deleuze bears its burden.  He cannot 
> escape from it, especially when history is taken into account.  The 
> stuttering he does is the only left weapon that could bring the future to 
> become a past. Baroque is a malleable bullet which is identifiable in result 
> of having a risk, all things become read in terms of flows.
> 
> At the end, i do not know..perhaps i missed your point:)
> 
> assaad        
> 

    I don't know: inscription as the enemy? I suppose you mean in so far
as it represents the static putting into place but I find this hard to
reconciale with what Deleuze is developing as the idea that a fold is not
so much seen as it is "read", a shift towards a kind of theory of writing
which is not too obvious in itself but is not simply opposed to
inscription. To read and to inscribe would be dynamic processes, part
of the flow that is "sovereignly developing all things." (p.34).

   Once again these are just preliminary remarks, a holding pattern before
we descend.

Leo Raggo



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