Plasticity or Capacity Remix
This article starts from noticing two very curious shifts within Deleuze’s relationship with both Leibniz and Spinoza that clearly are coming into play in the Fold. In the much earlier work Expressionism, Deleuze spent a great deal of effort to demonstrate a deep accord between both thinkers, who he argued both react against Descartes by developing a concept of expressionism, (Deleuze 1992 323). Indeed Deleuze concludes Expressionism by claiming that it was ‘impossible to exaggerate’ the connection between them (ibid 327). However in the Fold this accord is overthrown. Deleuze remarks only one thesis (relating to the proof of God) links Leibniz with Spinoza ( Deleuze 2006 51and 121). Leading to wonder exactly what has Changed in the intervening twenty years? However, this question , important as it is in itself, is caught up in a second problem. In an interview Deleuze remarks the Fold was a very important book for him because it allowed him to distinguish the Concept from the Affect and Percept (Deleuze 1995 137). This remark is both, all the more interesting because elsewhere Deleuze explicitly links affect, percept and concept with Spinoza’s three types of knowledge (ibid 164-166); and yet all the more problematic in that one looks in vain for these terms within The Fold itself. One cannot therefore ask what has changed in the supposed relationship between Leibniz and Spinoza, without also asking, what is it particularly about the fold that allows Deleuze to tell philosophical concept from non-philosophical Percept-Affect? And why does this move turn Spinoza into both the Prince of and Christ for Philosophers (Deleuze and Guattari 1994 48 and 60)? My argument is firstly that Leibniz holds the key to Deleuze understanding of Spinoza. And secondly this is no static relationship. On the contrary at three key points, progressively richer interpretation of Leibniz trigger in the thought of Deleuze new reading of Spinoza. The Fold, which is of course Deleuze richest account with Leibniz is therefore critical to the advent of the Spinoza of What is Philosophy. However in order that one can understand exactly why The Fold matters so much in this respect, it is first necessarily to go back to the two earlier encounters with Leibniz (and the Spinoza he heralds)
The Leibniz of Expressionism is a curious one for two main reasons. On the one hand, although Leibniz is a perpetual presence throughout the book, many of his key works are never citied (or considered). There is no mention therefore in the index of either the Theodicy or the New Essay or even the Monadology ( Deleuze 1992 p.444), let alone the ‘De Bosse’ letters, which figure so prominently in the Fold.‘Expressionism’ offers no serious engagement with Leibnizianism therefore. It is rather the case that Leibniz exists within the text of Expressionism in part as a foil by which the superiority of Spinoza can be demonstrated and in part as a colleague in the ‘Anti-Cartesian reaction’, to whom one can turn in order to make plain what would otherwise be obscure within Spinoza. However one needs considerable caution in understanding this second point. It is not the case that Deleuze is simplistically ‘applying’ Leibnizan concepts to Spinoza. On the contrary Deleuze’s methodology involves creating points of contact (or indiscernilbity) between Leibniz and Spinoza in the name of the ‘Anti-Cartesian reaction). A reading of Spinoza, is then developed from these point of contact.
The full consideration of all the complexities that are involved in this manoeuvre are beyond the scope of this article. I will therefore limit myself to picking out two inter-related points of contact between the two philosophers, both of which have a peculiar significance in the subsequent development of Deleuze. The first of these points involves the equivalence Deleuze draws in Expressionsm between derivative (and therefore differential) forces, and the ‘capacity to act’; The second point, involves the more general consideration of the nature of derivative forces. My argument in both case is that zone of indescernibility Deleuze tries so hard the establish between the two different philosophers is problematic in itself, and that led Guattari to raise certain objections to it (made in the name of Leibniz). These objection (ironically) led to a series on moves in Deleuze’s understanding of Spinoza, that not only takes him very far from any point of contact with Leibniz, but also leads to a mixing up of concept with affect and percept. A tangle Deleuze only resolves, by retuning to Leibniz in the Fold.
One of the key ‘hidden issues in Expressionisn concerns the possibility of apply an idea synomous with ‘differentiation’ to Spinoza. Deleuze’s problem is that the only place that one can discover this concept in Spinoza is in the tag ‘ the capability to be affected in a very great many ways’. This tag is one that Spinoza applies to the relationship between the body and Mind (Spinoza II/103). Deleuze takes it to be synonomous with Leibniz’s ‘force for suffering’ and therefore explicitly linked to derivative forces and differentiation (Deleuze 1992 p. 223, 228-229). Once this connection has been made, this apparently innocuous tag is transformed into the key proposition by which God’s presence in the world is given. Deleuze argues Spinoza’s substance needs to be understand as the infinite capacity for affection, while individual modes express that capacity in a certain fixed way ( Deleuze 1992, 93-94). The question then is how this fixing occurs. Deleuze argues it can only occur when certain (extrinsic) relation motion and rest come together to compose a form or characteristic relation to which a certain (intrinsic) essence corresponds (ibid 209). Hence the full modal triad runs ‘ a modal essence expresses itself in a characteristic relation; this relation expresses a capacity to be affected; this capacity is excerised by changing affections’ (ibid 233). The Capacity for affection (that is the differential or divine element) is then what hooks up an extrinsic characteristic relation of motion and rest (or form), with the internal ‘power’ of the essence itself (Ibid 218 and 233). From which is then follows that the differential element in any one mode can only be thought as that mode has been said to have already taken on a certain form (ibid 209). This is of course not to say that God is not present in the creation of the form, but merely that that presence does not itself pertains to a certain essence, which only comes into existence (and has an effect) once this form is.
Two further consequence immediately arise from move. On the one hand it defines the point that Deleuze wishes to break with Spinoza. Spinoza’s mistake was (for Deleuze) that failed to adequately detach the capacity for affection from the form in which it was lodged. This failure then meant that Spinoza could not develop a fully fledged theory of the will to power, thought it itself (which would affirm the difference in itself – Deleuze 1983 p.206) On the other hand however the previous point does not (for Deleuze) invalidate Spinoza’s basic set of moves linking a characteristic relation of motion and rest to a fixed capacity for affection, and a certain power. Each Individual Mode is therefore for Deleuze a valid, albeit singular event, within itself.
However that this point a second possible reading of Leibniz intervenes, courtesy both of Logic of Sense, but even more critically Guattari. Writing to Deleuze, Guattari notes that on one hand each individual mode is very restricted in its field of endeavour. It does not (as Guattari notes) ever mess about deterriotalizing itself, ( Guattari 2006 263), but remains in its beefy self-confidence a Mode (amongst others). In contrast the Monad Guattri remarks is if anything too detteritorialized,‘ (259). On the other hand there is the very delicate question of exactly how it is that a characteristic relation ‘fixes’ ones capacity for affection in the first place. Surely it is a illogical to claim the differntial element (which as Guattari point out on the behalf of Leibniz can have no form ,ibid 262), can be ‘physically delimited within a certain characteristic relation of motion and rest? Leibniz therefore, through Guatarri challenges Deleuze’s Spinoza to allow for deterritorilazation.
In order to address this problem Deleuze and Guattari set about developing an alternative Spinoza, who, they now argue far from welding the capacity to be affected into a mode (courtesy of form), in fact provides one with adequate tools to understand each individual contains not only many different affects, but also many different capacities for affection. The full argument (which is first developed in Anti Oedipus, but reaches its climax in Thousand Plateaus) is immensely complex, and therefore beyond the scope of this piece to fully develop. All that will picked out here are two aspects of it that have special relevance to subsequent developments.
Firstly, there is a profound shift on what object helps one understand the nature of the individual best. In Expressionism Deleuze argues that for Spinoza one only can assess the ‘power of the human soul’ (and therefore its essence) if one first understands ‘What a body can do’. The Aptitudes of the body must therefore be the model through which the power (or essence) of the individual understood ( Deleuze 1992 256-257). By Thousand Plateaus is clear that the body itself cannot serve as an image, as exactly what that body is (that is what affects it contains) will widely differ. The Model for the individual is no longer therefore the finite body, but the restless face of the universe itself, taken as a single intense surface, upon whose plan(e) or face all existing individuals are arranged (Deleuze and Guattari 154). Deleuze and Guattari are able to make this move within the orbit of Spinoza because of deep ambiguity with Spinoza’s concept of Nature. Early on in Ethics Spinoza will argue that nature needs to be understood either actively, as it is God or passively, as it is in the Mode ( Spinoza II/72). This is the argument in Expressionism, The face of the universe is the ‘whole of all wholes’ which all relations between existing modes must (as a condition of existence) be constituting (s is restricted to a regulatory role).
However this is not the only conception of nature within Spinoza. In one of the key proposition of immanence Spinoza argues man’s power is a part of God that is (sive) Nature’s infinite power that is (sive) its essence (Spinoza II/213). Nature’ is therefore not merely a single intense individual, but also (as it is active) relates to the relations within God by which that infinite individual is perpetually being composed within existing individual modes. The Plan(E) of composition is therefore a way of thinking both these two aspects of nature in one thought. Individuals are on such a plane as they are within God, and therefore composition differential (and distributative) relations; with all of these relations being themselves indistinguishable from the face of nature itself (Deleuze 1988). The’ Face of the universe’ losses all role of regulation and becomes rather the flat surface upon which all modes are both located and made to resonate within one another. This second take of Nature is then developed as the paradigm case for all individuation. Individuals cease to be single modes (that is single affects), whose capacity to be affect has been fixed by having a certain body and become rather the very shifting ground upon which the individual relation between different affects (which take the place of modes) is perpetually reconstituted. Body therefore shifts to Body without Organs.
Secondly, this move would of course be unthinkable if there was not a separate molar aspect to organism (in which this diversity can be contained). A key claims in Expressionism, that molar form was both distinct from and yet necessary to an individuals capacity for affection (Deleuze 1992 233), is therefore not challenged. In Thousand Plateau it is argued both that that one does not reach the Bwo by ‘wildly destratifying oneself (Deleuze and Guattari 160).; and that, the Body has a BwO of its own, but not one that can be related to the individual whose body it is (Deleuze and Guattari 1988 162-163). Strata might confer form on a body (and thus far is distinct from the BwO), and yet at another level still have a BwO of their own (see Spinoza 2/19 for same distinction).
Hence the claim is made that life constantly oscillates between involve strata and a plane of consistency (ibid 337). One the hand, differentation is that which can be said to be within any one individual as it is within the universe as a whole (ibid 164): On the other hand differentations only comes into play within organism. Individuals are both organism and BwO. No doubt at the time of writing Thousand Plateaus Deleuze imagined that Leibniz could be easily made to agree with both of these hypotheses. In Logic of Sense he had argued for Leibniz, that an individual monad expresses clearly and distinctly only those events in the vicinity of which it is constituted, and which are therefore linked up by its own body (Deleuze 1990 111). In setting up the Body without Organs, Deleuze is therefore merely developing an immanent (and open) account of how an individual monad comes to envelope the events within its vicinity. Hence perhaps the almost palpable shock registered in the first chapter of the fold, when he discovered that Leibniz far from agreeing with either of hypothesis critiques both ideas: There is no individuality in Nature; and Plastic derivative forces are of a different order to elastic ones (while still being nonetheless differential). It is therefore no surprise that much of the Fold concerns working out the exact reason for and consequence of this divergence, nor that in latter work Deleuze would attempt to rework his Spinoza to allow for his new position.. However before this argument can be directly considered it is necessarily to first identify a second zone of indescerniblity set up in Expressionism, and which can also be seen to have an effect of the fold.
The second ‘zone’ of indescernibilty initially set up in Expression, to be considered here, involves the sense an individual can be said to own its own body, and therefore its power. In Expressionism Deleuze claimed that Leibniz and Spinoza make the same basic threefold division of nature into purely extensive parts (relation of motion and rest), derivative force (which composed the momentary inner nature of motion), and essence (which gathers up these momentary inner natures into a certain being – Deleuze 1992 228-229). However, this relatively simple equation is rendered obsolete by the fact that derivative forces themselves involve two quite distinct dimensions. On the one hand there are plastic forces by which every body envelopes both an infinity of other structures (Loemeker 959) as well as an infinity of possible movemenst (Ibid 1003). On the other hand there are elastic derivative forces can operate as an aggregate force to determine some texture or other (Loemeck 1956 1003). It is not enough to simply ‘possess’ derivatives forces, one also has to know exactly what it is that one is possess, and not that possession links back to the body (as matter or texture – Deleuze 2006 41). What makes this fact so significant is that Deleuze’s conception of common notions (or concepts) necessarily involves a necessary confusion in these two aspects of derivative power. A confusion, that moreover if anything, becomes more intense as Deleuze and Guattari develop their position.
In Expressionism common notions clearly come in two forms. On the one hand there are specific notion, that allow one to define ‘common property’ or general function’ between similar bodies ( Deleuze 1992 275), through which the mind itself becomes able to grasp at the nature of the differential elements (the anatomical components) by which its own essence is constituted( ibid 278-9).And thereby allow it to form within itself an adequate idea of its own affect (ibid 283).. On the other hand there are more general common notions, by which any one individual understands both itself and others as a part of wider nature. These notions then provide each mode to affirm the endless possibility of nature itself, where encounter might have always been otherwise (ibid 286). The first type of common notions, clearly involve a sense that plastic force emerges from elastic; While the second type relate to how plastic forces (a body are caught up within the aggregate (elastic) forces of the cosmos itself.
A second quite different theory emerges within Practical Philosophy. Here Deleuze argues that common notions do not relate to the existing construction of any body, but rather are made when individual modes are caught up in fabricating a unity beyond them. Common notions can therefore be said to exist between different individuals (such as lymph and chyle) which have communicated their motions to one another, to such a point that they have reached a point of maximum accord between their two natures (blood, Deleuze 1988 54). Common notion are establish within a ‘unity of composition’ as ideas that are ‘in the whole and in the part alike’ ( ibid 55), and which necessarily which renders each participating part apt to do more things (ibid.54). A set of forces is thereby defined which must operate in-between all the modes within a system ( lymph and chyle remain distinct from the common notion linking them in blood). Thence each such unity of composition is at another level defining the essence of a certain individual. Moreover, the notion (or concept) will thereby comprehend everything that this (composed) individual can do, even while remaining distinct from it. That is to say each concept both encompasses and affirms all the possible variations within itself. The Concept of a bird is not an essence but a ‘compositon of postures, colours and songs’, a set of finite hetrogenous elements components which are traversed by the concept at ‘infinite speed’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1994 20-21). Structure is synmous rhythms by which individuals are composed, even as they compose others (Deleuze 1997 142). Plastic and elastic forces become indeterminable from one another.
Essentially what is at stake within these two different definition of common notions are two different explications of indiscernibility. In the Latter case the indiscernibile is internal to the concept itself; while in the former it relates to the resonance set up between two distinct bodies, which nonetheless share (to a certain degree) a set of pre-individual elements. The notions of expressionism clearly diverge around having a body, while those of practical philosophy define a zone where no such divergence is necessary. The problem with the earlier argument being that it appears to both lock the body within a single event, while also requiring possibility turn on form. Hence the recourse to the second type of common notion (and nature), which as they necessarily involve the communications between distinct individuals, necessarily endorse possibility and differentiation in a single throw.
This move is fully developed with Thousand Plateaus, where Deleuze says he and Guattari tried to developed a concept, which encompassed both territory, and the Cosmos (ritornello, Deleuze 1995 137, ). Every territory is, held together by its most deterritorialized element (its little refrain), with the cosmos itself expressing deterritorization in absolute state. The refrain itself operates by creating a ‘strange’ line of communication between necessarily heterogeneous elements (ibid 326-327, 336 and 349), and endlessly produces common notions. And the cosmos itself exists as the axis within which all these concepts can be directly embraced, and their heterogeneity affirmed (ibid 337 and 345). The refrain therefore in Thousand Plateau’s serves to both ‘naturalize’ the concept, but also defined a sense that individuals were caught up in a disjunct synthesis. However, it is this move that Deleuze implicitly criticises in 1988 (interview cited above), because it only thought the ritornello in terms of a concept, and not therefore in terms of affects and percept, which he and Guattari argue in ‘What is Philosophy’ in fact involve a distinct becoming of their own.
At this point one needs caution before one accepts that the refrain was a simple concept at the time of exposition in a Thousand Plateaus. The refrain surely went beyond the merely conceptual, in that it function as the ‘cutting edge of deterritorialization’ itself (ibid 348) , in which every actualized force was bound up within a virtual. For Deleuze to claim that the refrain was merely a concept (like any other) all along is therefore for him he already be subtly re-negoicating his post-Fold position. It is not therefore enough to ask how the affect and percept pull free of the concept, but one also must ask what does the Fold change about the concept relationship with nature. The reason for both these shifts must surely focus of the critique Leibniz aims at the concept of Nature. This critique has two aspects. On the hand Leibniz clearly critiques the idea that an infinite series is of the same order as the individual parts of it. The contrary is surely the case, as even an infinite series must be composed of the infinity of moves of variation that make it up . On the other hand,there was corrolary that God could therefore choose between these irreducibly different worlds, the best one, and create Monads as the substance which inhabit it (26). Deleuze encapsulates these two arguments by the formula that Monad ‘have a being for the world’. Each Monad, is chosen by God for creation (or not) because the effects (direct and indirect) its events have upon the world , which nonetheless remains virtual, and has no being beyond that actualized within its monads (27-28). However the two arguments that produce this formula are clearly of very different merits. The latter Deleuze dismisses, on the grounds that substance cannot be closed of from the world, and therefore cannot contain within themselves a sense of being-for the world (76-7,83-85,92,157-158) . And yet the former argument if it is taken to apply to events (in themselves), which are then said to be ‘for the world’, is quite a different matter and requires Deleuze to return to the characterization of both Leibniz and events in Logic of sense Deleuze 1990 111-117).
Each event ‘in itself’ presents singularity cut off from its extensions (72),and thought in its hetrogenous state. “ Being the first Man and Living in the Garden” ,could have opened Adam onto very many worlds (Deleuze 1990 115). Each event becomes creative by being ‘for’ other events. That is, it envelopes both public and private, and gives a sense in which the act of taking up the data of another is itself creative (88). Each event therefore creates across other events, and endless reworks what it is for others An events is therefore both a singularity in itself but also the junction point of other events (which are ‘for it’, 69). Moreover Events predate any specific world, in which they are actualized (72). Which is not of course to say that the world itself cannot be an event (92). There is nothing stopping Deleuze claiming that the refrain is a concept therefore. The problem is elsewhere, and comes down a fundamental difference between those elements that constituted the virtual, and those that are constitutes by it (Deleuze and Guattai 1994 155-156). Events constitutes their virtuality as a domain through which they elude all actualization, and enter into a meantime time, where they perpetually begin again once a moment has past( Deleuze and Guattai 1994 158). This is clearly a fully disjunctive virtuality that not only comprehends the event as pure virtuality but also as pure possibility (120); and is quite irreducible to any cosmos (Deleuze therefore accepts Leibniz first argument as it applied to events). To proceed in the opposite direction, is to require a different thing from the virtual (ibid 157). The key difference being that as one actualizes, one splits of virtual from possible, with the latter, being only being defined in relation to actualization. Adams’s sinning implies other possible worlds in which he does not sin and allows God the freedom to choose between these worlds. Each world thereby becomes an eternal object whose virtuality is actualized across a passage of nature, and whose possibility is realized within the flow of matter (90).
The problem with the Refrain is that is fails to honour this distinction, and seeks to define a single paradigm to move from one type of virtuality to the other with undue speed (Deleuze and Guattai 1987 348). However this move only intensives the problem of what affect and percept are, and how they explain the ‘natural world’ when concepts cannot. In the case of the former surely it is significant that his discussion of Whitehead Deleuze pulls out the characteristics of the ‘subjective’, form of prehensions, which he says apply also to Liebniz. Such prehensions are active; involve a becoming that applies to an appetite; and fill themselves with their own inner joy (88-89). Critically these characteristics involve elements which cannot pertain to events as such. Each event gather up both public and private, while these elements relate to the private alone. The problem then becomes how does one understand this ‘other-becoming’. Here Leibniz is of no doubt critical value, in that although he restricted the freedom of events, he still allowed for a personal freedom based on the affect alone. The case of percept the move is more complex. Perhaps the starting point lies in the curious asymmetry Deleuze installs within Leibniz. On the one hand there are individual incompossible virtual worlds each of which is included for all of time in the Monads that actualize it; On the other hand is matter in which myriad possibilities await realization: Adam’s not sinning is still possible in the world of matter, even though it is incompossible with virtual world to be actualized (119) . So that, for Deleuze’s Leibniz at least, the universe of matter, encompasses a far greater diversity than does the soul . The economy of a body, as it realizes a world of out matter, will be distinctly different from the parallel movement in the soul. It will be argued here that it is this difference plays a critical role in not only the development of the percept, but even more critically for key role played by possibility in the account of nature in What is Philosophy. Moreover it is this final move that sees the transfiguration of Spinoza, and the thinker who directly emcompasses the differing worlds of concept and affect-percept. Whence, one might say, the importance of Leibniz lies, for Deleuze the fact that he held down the world of virtual events, and therefore taught Deleuze that other variation also mattered.
Deleuze, in considering freedom makes a very remarkable move. He argues that volitions involve both a certain amplitude of the apperceptive conscious soul, but also a ‘living present which stretches beyond the soul clear zone and reaches into the obscurity and darkness of minutest perceptions (80,102). Each volition must therefore involves only a specific determination at any one moment, but also a sense in which its own a capacity for affection (differential element) is constantly changing (79, see also notes 25 p.79, and 5 p.98). Such an affect effectively overflows individuality in two senses. One the one hand there is a ‘Bergsonian’ aspect in this process. Each soul’s determination will shift from moment to moment, and yet be at each moment compose an indivisible act, which previous determination are comprehended (80-83). On the other hand, what is changing is not duration but rather the flowing point of inflection itself, by which constantly varying pasts and futures are made both to divide from and resonate within one another. Any single desire comprehends both many different micro-perception and desires, and therefore opens onto many different possible worlds, and individuals (79): That is, Adam would not have needed a different desire not to sin, but would have had to decline the desire he had differently. A Monad might be bound to a certain universe, and yet still is free reason within its events as God did before creation (82-83) and thereby able to maximise the possibilities of each event or even to ‘win over’ new events for itself (84).
This move clearly involves a profound of repositioning of the relationship of the capacity for affection has with the affect itself, and therefore the body. In Thousand Plateaus each affect involved a certain fixed capacity for affection, which only varied in-between different affects (on the BwO). However in ‘The Fold’ the distinction between these two elements is eclipsed. An affect directly embraces changing capacities for affection. This move has the further effect that the relationship between body and affect must be in part reversed.. A Body ceases to define the capacity for affection. It is not the ticks body that sets its capacities for affection (Deleuze 1988 125), but rather its perception that defines its body (105). Each individual body ‘exists’ as mine not because it fixed a certain capacity for affection, but rather because the relationship between the natural vibration of matter and the organ (or a body) express in material form a relationship which is analogous that between my minutest perception and my conscious volitions (109).
Hence a profound difference opens up between the way virtual events, and affects relate to a body. Events are actualized in bodies , and yet in themselves remain a pure reserve whose virtuality and possibility can never be exhausted, Events special privilege lies in always being able to start again elsewhere, after the instant of the actualization has passed. Affects by contrast promblematise the body by defining a sense that a power itself envelopes its ‘own’ capacity for affection. Hence, each dominant Monad generates under certain power (126) a body (121). This body is then ‘precarious’, and ones ability own it constantly needs be reworked and re-given (125). To include a capacity of affection within a power is to make that power volatile and hetromorphic. For Leibniz, monads, by necessarily including certain events, stabilize the potential chaos of affects (as Guattari has earlier noted). Once a body exists ‘events’ occur within it as the means by which each dominant Monad can be said to own this body and this world.. An event becomes ‘Caesar crossing the Rubricon’, and not just a (Caesar’s) body getting soaked’ because it is only this Caesar (and this Rubricon) which can clearly express both the event and everything that followed on from it (113), and thereby explains why worlds diverge at this point. God therefore stabilises substances by choosing between specific worlds (sets of events), and creating only those monads, whose affects will resolve themselves particular volitions, and thereby actualize one set of events rather than another. For Deleuze no doubt it was Leibniz peculiar strength that he separated out the domain of affect from concept. His only error was that he thought that this divide necessitated the hypothesis of a God, who was capable of not only straddling each domain but also of stabilising the one with the another. While Deleuze’s own mistake was that he had confused virtual events with affects, even while he noted their differences (Deleuze 1992a 116 and 121). After The Fold Deleuze comes to realise that there is no point jolting both concept (as noumena) and affect (as phenomena) out of the Monad if still mixes them up (Deleuze and Guattari 1994 65). In effect, it is no longer enough to think in terms of concepts, one needs affect (and percepts) as well.
However one needs a great deal of caution about how one understands the connection between pre-individual affects and bodies. It is clearly the case that Adam’s freedom clearly involves the Body. If Adam is genuinely free God must not more need to create separate bodies for each possible Adam than he need create separate affects. And yet, Deleuze stresses this is not a case of simple parallelism but quite a different unity(121). On the one hand each body, as it contains matter, must remain really distinct if inseperable from affects (129, 123). On the other hand, the precariousness of owning a body must be real and very genuine, and very subtly nuanced. Each Viniculm must at any one moment be inseperateble from a clear zone (125). And yet, each perception in this zone is constantly pitched against other thoughts, which are awaiting in the obscurity of the soul for determination (150). Each body must therefore not only involve those things I am, but must define relations with other things I have been or will be. Hence the very carefully nuanced position of dominated (animal) souls within the body. Each such soul is at once obscure to me, and part of my dark zone (122); and yet at the same time is caught up with others (enmasse) in constituting my body and so in expresses my clear zone (123-124). To have a Viniculm is therefore not only to own ‘certain’ changes as ones own, but it is also to open one self up to other changes, both those that one was, or will be and those one merely could have been. It is therefore clear that in possessing a body, a monad envelops more possibilities than can it can ever actualize, or matter itself realize..
And yet, it is not as yet clear what the exact status of this body is. Deleuze will of course argue that a body has no reality beyond the realization of the phenomena within it (138), and is not ‘real’ in itself. And yet, in spite of the lack of reality Deleuze argues that a body is not something ‘vague’ and unreal, but rather a well worked and carefully nuanced hypothesis which involves a relation which is substantial in its own right (126). How one does one grasp such a substantial existence? Additionally, in the context of Deleuze (but not Leibniz) this question is clearly caught within another. Right at the end of the fold (as he brakes finally with Liebniz) Deleuze clearly links up affects (or accords) with having a body (157). The freedom of the affect is therefore bound up with the freedom of the body, and both are opposed to the freedom of the individual. This of course raises the question of how the viniculm-affect freedom operates, and how it inspires the soul with a ‘passive enjoyment’ of itself and its possibility (Deleuze and Guattari1994, 212). The first of these problems is clearly being tackled within the in Fold and I will examine in length, while the second clearly moves one firmly out of the orbit of Leibniz (and will for reason of space only mention briefly).
There are two clear dimensions to the first of these problems. On the one hand what does it mean to say that the body becomes substantial by realizing others (120)?.On the other hand , one needs to understand how this life forces one to rethink the nature of ‘materiality’ that must support this realization.
The body, which is substantial as it realizes phenomena in itself, is animated by a life-force, which it only has as it belong to a soul, and which pitches it in-between all specific individualizations or realities. Additionally, as the phenomena realized, are themselves extremely volatile, that which realizes must do so in a way that could always be enfolding other possibilities. Moreover, the realization effected in the body will clearly not stop just because a phenomena has be ‘realized’, but will rather sweep that reality up in ever new realizations. Hence a body that is never its real, but merely realizing, operates as a living screen or filter (86-87.128) that sifts through the chaotic possibility in matter, and extracts those possibilities by which a specific reality could (elsewhere) be given. Thence the questions becomes how one understands a body as an animated filter which is stretched over the chaos of pure possibility, akin in the same way that the differential filters which constantly actualize virtual (103). This question clearly comes down to how a point of view is contained within a body. This is because such point of view serves as the ‘condition’ by which the subject ‘apprehends variation’. Each such view point envelopes not only changes within a world (21), but looks out onto other possible worlds (26). It serves as mathematical point (or focus) which envelopes a ‘variation’, as that variation enfolds an objectile as the ‘invariant’ of a transformation (22). Thence in terms of the living body, a point of view serves to focus the infinitely enfolded plastic forces (both those realized and unrealized in this world), and resolves them into a certain ‘degree of unity’ as ‘a worm or a plant’ (11-12). It needs to here be noted that each point of view involves a ‘power of arranging cases’ (23) and will therefore naturally arrange within this infinite possibility a certain order of realization. At any one time a certain set of plastic forces will be unfolded (and real), while at the same time there is another (and larger set) all of which could be ‘being realized’ (and are so a part of the bodies ‘realization’. Within this set it yet another set, which is currently folded up within these plastic forces, and within them another… The infinite possibility of matter is thereby converted into degrees of realizations. However the point of view can only provide such unity as there is projected onto it a soul (25), which is through it existing in the body as a presence (12,136). This last point immediately raises the problem of how a point of view can have any status of its own, which remains independent from both the plastic forces it focuses, and the soul that ‘occupies’ it?
To answer this question one must carefully assess the relative positions of the derivative forces and the Viniculm. As discussed above, each dominant Monad provides the principle of unity for viniculm, which is quite unthinkable without it. And yet each monad only has this body specifically for its own, once the body itself has been defined (127-129). From which it clearly follows that each vinculum actively constitutes the sense that a body ‘contains’ the point of view of its dominant monad, Moreover, the body itself is composed of molar elements, in which the elastic derivative forces of matter are constantly folded into statistical masses, and thereby rendered both plastic and collective(130). And yet, these aggregates will only be bound in the body, as they are included with the viniculm of some dominant monad , whose presence is necessary for the viniculm to be substantial (ibid). Plastic forces therefore might be what requires naked matter to become molar (ibid), but do so in the name of a viniculum which will in itself remain quite unlocateble for all that it fixes others (127). That is, the body can only serve as a filter, as it posses a dominant monad which has yet to avail its of its bodies individual unity, and therefore as that body is animated, and yet non-individual. What is more it is surely this paradoxical status that allows it to function as a filter for possibility.in the first place. It is after all only such a life that define condition by which plastic forces are real and yet also realizing, unfolded in themselves, and yet is always enfolding other possibilities, to infinity. ‘.And yet this life force, is clearly not engaged with virtuality but rather pure possibilities it constantly orders. It must therefore be envisaged to function pretty as the ambiguous ‘House’ of ‘What is Philosophy’. This ‘House’ or frame is not to be confused with the Flesh (plastic and Elastic-molar forces). Its role is to endlessly adjust cosmic forces which it makes ‘whirl around like winds’ . In doing to it constitutes the faces of ‘on a dice of sensation’ and thereby participates in the a an-organic life, and a becoming which is orientated around ‘becoming-other’, and within it a ‘universe of possibility’ rather than virtuality. ( Deleuze and Guattari 1994 , 177, 179,180,183,187).
However this last point merely intensifies the problem of exactly what the plastic forces are taken up into the viniculm.. Deleuze argues that the viniculm set up a principle by which matter (and differentiation) can be understood as a having a reality of its own beyond the monad. An aggregation Deleuze argues implies the existence of forces to provide it with an inner principle of its own (132), by which is explained the apparently statistical laws by which aggregates are organized.. This principle will therefore be collective ‘without being for that statistical’ (131), in that it relates to the presence of an individual force which maintains its own identity even as it is given within another body. Such forces will therefore compose an inner principle of outer movements themselves (133), Each such force exists as a tendency which is passes into the next instant (as so it eclipsed) even as it acts (134). Such force is therefore necessarily tied to a heap (or crowd) at all times (135), and therefore only operates as it passes away into another.
Two profound consequences follow from this argument. On the one hand there is clearly a profound shift occuring in Deleuze’s own position with regard to bodies and matter. The external forces being outlined here clearly go far beyond mere relations of motion and rest (of earlier works), as they also include within matter cohesion and texture (6). Matter itself is therefore always folded even as it is matter. Individual units need not be explained as something distinct from matter (that is characteristic relations of motion and rest), but rather relate to the integral properties of matter itself (7).On the other hand, the process by which a viniculum constitutes itself becomes the paradigm case for matter as a whole. The same logic that allows a finite body to exist, will therefore define a paradigm by which each body is related to all other bodies (154-155). And yet, it in being so related each body (plastic forces under the viniculm) will in itself remain something distinct. Whence, the formula in What is Philosophy, where Deleuze and Guattari argue that the house (plastic force) and the Cosmos (elastic forces) can given together ( Deleuze and Guattari 1994, 196-197).
A domain of pure possibly (‘”the possible or I shall suffocate”’), arises within a viniculm whose soul exists within it not as action but presence. Such a viniculm will ceaseless blend and re-blend the sensations it gives to ‘a’ soul in a genuine passive synthesis, whose point of departure is clearly (in terms of What is Philosophy) the artistic rather than conceptual (( Deleuze and Guattari 1994 211-212). Sensation therefore gives a sense by which ‘others’ can be said to be already included within the soul (as the ‘landscape before man’, ibid 169), rather involve a confrontation with external reality. This pre-formism clearly has two aspects. On the one hand, by arguing that elastic matter is necessarily folded as matter is folded when it is taken up in the Viniculm, Deleuze clearly establishes an equivalence between the domains of mind and matter. Each Mind has a clear zone, and an obscure molecular unconscious, which is inseparable (if really distinct) from similar division of particular viniculm and matter in general. Thence nature itself expresses (within the domain of matter) the ‘melodic’ unconscious of the monad itself. That is, it contains within it an infinite kaleidoscope of possible movements (or motifs) which a viniculm can take up into its own peculiar expression (155). On the other hand, the preformist fold (Zweifalt) involves a fold which both serves the one from the other, in such a way that each ‘casts;’ the other forward; while at the same time involving a tension by which ‘each fold is pulled towards the other’ (34). A soul therefore uncovers within the folds of its body that which it is already is, albeit according to its own quite distinctive being.
This last point, clearly leads to the second question identified above, about the exact status of private affective accords and public condition of the monad, to be in a crowd and caught in a melody (157). A question that perhaps needs to be further resolves into three intricately linked other question. Firstly, one needs to ask is there only one way to draw the diagonal line lie between the public and private? Or is diagonal draw in the case of an event (88), different from the line between affects and matter? Secondly there is the profound matter of how one understands affects that over spill individuality, and are inseperable in this from certain relations within in matter. In such a case can a specific Monad be really said to ‘own its own viniculm? Or it is rather ‘internal’ to viniculms, both others but also is own? Music might ‘stay at home’ , but that home has been changes so that one can no longer tell outside from inside (158). This leads to the final very nuanced question about the status of affects within the viniculm. Deleuze is here, at the end of the fold creating a genuine ambivalence by linking private accord into a public crowd . Each affect is both contained within a single framework (it has still a home, and still relates to a point of view) , and yet is also of the crowd and therefore pitched into being ‘of’ the cosmos. From which it follows that the viniculum itself is no longer adequate to explain exactly how each affect can both be folded over into the cosmos and into the framework of a house. What then goes beyond the fold of the viniculm (in which the private and public remain distinct is indeterminable), and inhabits directly the fold where the forces of the cosmos are rendered visible?
The all these question, are clearly developed within ‘What is Philosophy’, which essentially takes Deleuze’s relationship with Spinoza full circle. In Expressionism Leibniz had held all the key insights by which a ‘Spinoza-ism’ could be unwound. Concepts such an expression or the capacity for affect (or division between internal and external worlds) were shameless borrowed from their clear exposition in Leibniz, and applied to Spinoza, where their provenance was all together more problematic. An argument that when queried by Guattari (in the name of Leibniz) had triggered a whole series of moves, which re-configured Deleuze’s Spinoza-ism, away from an understanding the individual as a specific mode of God, and towards understanding them as a Body with out Organs. And yet, from a Leibnizian perspective this move was intensely problematic, in that in involves a necessary confusion to the two sense of derivative forces, plastic and elastic. It is no wonder that this division is the problem the Fold both commences and (in a different sense) ends with. Deleuze finds that he can in the name of concept-events keep his earlier characterization of the world. But that he can only do so if he abandons the direct link between concepts and nature. The World is not a face of nature in which are pecularly in which are contained all concepts (and so which can serve as the paradigm case for all other individuals). On the contrary it is now merely as an event alongside all others (Deleuze 1997 142). The Plan(e) of composition becomes therefore within What is Philosophy the peculiarly domain of Art, which alone reveals the elastic within the plastic , or the infinite within the finite. Moreover, it does from the perspective of affects and percepts, which constitutes a endless passive synthesis of possibility. Perhaps one might say, that Leibniz pecularly role in the thought of Deleuze to the play threefold herald of Spinoza; who is firstly the Herald of expressionism; secondly the herald of Deterritorilasation (via Guattari) ; and the thirdly the fold. Each annunication is progressively more complex than the last, and requires an ever greater Spinoza who to respond to it. That is, it is this threefold synthesis of Leibniz with Spinoza, which sees Spinoza move from being the closest ‘near miss’ in the history of philosophy to Neitzsche (and the eternal return) , through being the supreme philosopher of nature itself , to his transfiguration in What is Philosophy,as the Christ of Philosopers, whose John the bapist no doubt revealed to be Leibniz.