Deleuze: The Clamor of Being by Alain Badiou
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I’ve read this book three times. As long as I’ve been reading post-structuralism, I have pursued an understanding of Deleuze’s work. But only on this last round have I really begun to grasp Badiou’s own work.
Badiou here, presents a Deleuze that is in some respects barely recognizable. Nonetheless, he is able to pull through Deleuze’s rhetorical structure in order to present how he and Deleuze differ and are the same. The obvious difference is their approaches. Badiou takes formalism to be standing on its own, that all is reducable to formalism. Deleuze would understand that content and form are the same; that a given content formulates form but that formulation is only one aspect of the virtuality of that content (this reading is available from Difference and Repetition). This is one way to specify their difference but we can talk about it geometrically.
Said another way this difference is in terms of boundaries. For example, Badiou understands events as being incompossible in terms of time. For Deleuze however, each event also is an absolute reference (a static segment) but the boundaries of that event coexist through their incompossibility. Badiou would negate all the relations that do not appear within the scope of a given event. Badiou would seal that event as an infinite extension that forms a transcendental. So for Badiou, a world qua transcendental is sealed as a complete and consistent entity. While Deleuze has this structure available as well, as seen through incompossibility, his “worlds” are not sealed. His worlds qua folds are in fact, intermixing with each, influencing one another. Given where you are locally, certain relations within the virtual become available, and you experience them in their actuality.
In this sense, what Badiou calls “logic” would be concepts that are always present for Deleuze, although they may be inexpressed. This reading is available for Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, as Kant understood that concepts are only guidelines. The difference is that Kant also took his concepts seriously and tried to ground these ideas in terms of a non-idea, the thing-in-itself. He nailed the transcendental conception down and in this manner both Deleuze and Badiou would avoid Kantian noumenal/phenomenal split because it suggests a singular logic rather than a multiplicity/multitude. A thing-in-itself traps Kant within one world.
So while both Deleuze and Badiou are interested in multiple/mutiplicity the difference in their world/folds lies in how open or closed they believe those relations to be. For Badiou there is less interaction within these worlds than Deleuze. Deleuze would think the substance-relations at their contingency, in a sense, sacrificing consistency for a recognition of the virtual completeness. This is also why Badiou’s book Logics of Worlds: Being and Event II begins to recognize the need for a Deleuzeian “leakiness” between worlds, although for Badiou, the transcendental remains the limit of a worldly domain, even though he recognizes the (in)existence of relations from world to world. So from the view of a given transcendental, a certain relation may not be available.
In this sense, Badiou’s Logic presents many tiny ones, all of which share the same structure of the One. Badiou claims that the One does not exist. And certainly not as a logic nor as an ontological content — though Badiou would insist that each one amounts to the same One in terms of an empty formalism, which is why he can talk about each world’s structure by invoking any given world.
I used to be confused as to why Badiou saw Deleuze as being a philosopher who primarily invokes the univocity of the One, when that seemed to somewhat antithetical to Deleuze’s multiplicities. I see the answer now though, for Deleuze through elan vital talks about a second order of conception. By understanding Deleuzian formalism as being a kind of monad, a form that carries with it seeds of content, Badiou would read Deleuze as necessarily needing a One in order to meld a common domain. In terms of transcendental logics, it is impossible to have phenomenon within a given interaction without there being a whole, a common domain that specifies the absolute infinite totality. Because Deleuze would speak from the interstice between domain logics, Badiou assumes that Deleuze necessarily invokes a univocal One.
I am not certain how Deleuze would respond to this, but let me try. The passages that Badiou references do suggest that Deleuze may agree, although I think that Deleuze would understand the formalism of conception within the virtual as being a derivable non-world that is material process on its own, a vitality that continued chaotic mix of originary essences that contain the seeds of their own localized differentiation. Concepts here are tactical, differenciations (events) always derived from the particularity of the atoms involved.
I do not think that Deleuze would agree to an infinite extension of conception that Badiou would insist on in order to create a transcendental completeness qua world. I do believe that the insistence of a Deleuzian One is possible but gives up too much. Badiou would seek to be rid of Kantian noumenal nonsense, as an academic “left over” of Kant’s conception, when Badiou himself would posit a many worlds of “complete” consistency, a very heavy conception of infinite extension of each brand of logic. For Deleuze this is probably too much; infinite extension is not necessary when we only need to deal with tactical, localized differenciations that arise on their own. This is of course, where territorializing machines and abstract assemblages interact, in the space of many plateaus that would constantly overcode. In these there is no need of One because there is no need to guarantee that machinic assemblages are compatible with each other or that any given assemblage can interact with every other one, because they are not, and they do not need to.
In this sense, Deleuze’s philosophy is on a second order of conception, about the differences and processes inherent within concepts themselves as they self generate. Badiou seems to recognize this when he understands that for Deleuze there is no chance of chance — that Deleuzian concepts like the fold only operate as a way of interiorizing the exterior; the becoming of concepts through their own vitalism. Yet Badiou would want to extend this as another kind of ontology. This is also where I find Deleuze and Badiou differ at their very root; in terms how central they see formalism.
For Badiou class equivalence would mean ontological equivalence. After all, Badiou as a formalist understands content as only being wholly derived from form. For Deleuze, class equivalence is too controlling. He would reject formalist equivalence as he would reject Kant’s transcendental structure as a chimera. Any kind of formalism only captures one kind of plateau/consistency in logic. After all, the entire book Anti-Oedipus is an attempt to get away from the control of metaphysical consistency in psychoanalysis and social structure/planning. Thus, Badiou’s move to equate one rhetorical form with another is a falsity that Badiou himself imposes but reads onto Deleuze. As Badiou later on notes, the eternal return is not a return of the same, it cannot be. But what is it a return of?
Badiou accepts that each Event cannot be the same Event even if it meta-functionally works in a similar fashion as the last. And so it is with eternal returns; that each return is a return of pure difference. Thus, for Deleuze, such a “return” may not mean entirely different worlds, it does mean different slices (folds) that can interact but also may be varying degrees of incompossible with each other in terms of immanence, even as some interact, colliding and recoding one another. In a way, Badiou approaches Deleuzian understanding as he starts to shed the strict boundaries of his transcendental qua worlds and allow them to interact in the non-space inbetween plateaus.
Over all this book is still a good book. Badiou goes very far in grasping and concisely stating Deleuze’s words and thoughts. Badiou seeks to refract on Deleuze the way Deleuze through free and indirect speech refracted on other thinkers. Though I think in this reading there is still too much Badiou, that the torsion of a barely recognizable Deleuze is due mostly to Badiou’s appropriation of Deleuzean concepts but attempting to guide and understand Deleuze in terms of a Badiouian formalism.
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