Notes on: Deleuze, G and
Guattari, F. ( 2004) A Thousand
Plateaus.London: Continuum.
Chapter five. 587 BC - AD70: On Several
Regimes of Signs
Dave Harris
[A theoretical and political critique of various
notions of linguistics, principally
Saussurian. We're going to bring in
referents and pragmatics, and also various kinds
of asignifying and post signifying systems.
The political critique winds its way through a
number of obscure and largely unhelpful examples,
including hefty delirious digressions on the
Jewish religion {the dates refer to the
destruction of the Temple}, and an intervention in
various disputes about psychoanalysis, to show how
sign regimes tend to produce particular political
regimes - for example highly centralised and
codified regimes produce despotic
government. Various resisting or fleeing
possibilities are examined via the usual terms
de/reterritorialization. The theme of
faciality is referred to, although rather half
heartedly and unhelpfully. The paradox of
the subject appears in its familiar form
{Althusser is actually mentioned}. The
answer, ultimately, is to consider the machinic
possibilities that these different regimes
indicate.]
[NB I have used my own working
definition of signifiance to mean the potential to
signify, but this chapter introduces an additional
property, mentioned in the glossary at the front
of this volume: it means signification in the
syntagmatic dimension, over time, building
on horizontal chains of signifiers.
Interpretance is the corresponding apparatus of
making sense in the paradigmatic dimension,
working with leaps across systems of meaning in
the form of metaphor, for example.]
Expressions can be formalized into a regime of
signs or a semiotic system. But there is
also content, which is to some extent independent
of expression. Together, expression and
content form assemblages 'that are not principally
linguistic' (123). Even if we attempt to
explore expressions alone, we encounter an awful
lot of diversity, since there are signs that are
not particularly linguistic [as we saw in chapter four].
Better to base everything on pragmatics as it
works in signifying regimes.
In conventional [structural, Saussurian]
linguistics, signs gain meaning only by referring
to other signs. In a way, specific signs
disappear in favour of the signifying chain.
And signifiance is limitless. Denotation
becomes simply a part of a wider process of
connotation. Indexes and icons [still
Saussure?] have little significance - they
territorialize signs. The sign bit in the
conventional linguistic approach is
deterritorialized. Signifiers dominate the
sign, and what is signified is relatively
neglected - indeed, it is the continuum of signs
in chains which is really the signified. The
specifics of content 'dissolve' (124).
Chains of signification precede actual human
being for Levi Strauss and this is going to show
up in certain pathologies, like paranoia, where
signs assail the person from every direction -
although paranoids still think they can detect a
master signifier behind it all [and this is going
to be the model of the despotic regime].
In this endless chain, nothing is ever resolved,
there is 'infinite debt'. The network of
signs can be circular [in the sense of producing
eternals], where the statement survives its
object, escapes to take its place once more in the
chain, to be used later to be attached to a new
signified. 'There is a whole regime of
roving, floating statements, suspended names,
signs lying in wait to return' (125).
Signifiers therefore offer 'a funereal world of
terror'.
Signs refer to other signs not in one circle but
in a series of them, sometimes spirals [with a
weird example from a group of American Indians
where personal marital betrayal is seen as a sign
of the failure of the entire community, in a kind
of escalation]. Sometimes such escalations
are regulated by religious rituals or a
bureaucracy deciding on their legitimacy.
Some are forbidden, especially at the outer and
inner limits. They are a 'centre of
signifiance'(126), but signs have different
capacities ['speeds'] to deterritorialize.
Nevertheless, in some cases, it's possible to
transgress the limits and to jump from one circle
of signs to another. Paranoids orient
themselves to the despot at the centre, whereas
hysterics are always jumping from one circle to
another. 'Deception is fundamental to the
system'[presumably referring to the attempts to
legitimize particular uses of signs? Also the
ambiguities missed by insisting on using old
signs?]. A signifying regime does the
organizing.
Signifying regimes also have to expand the circles
constantly, providing the centre with newer
examples, to fight off its redundancy. To do
this, requires 'interpretance', where signifiers
are attached to new kinds of signified, which
therefore becomes knowable [that is via metaphor
or analogy in the paradigmatic dimension].
Despotic regimes require priests to interpret, and
deceive by endlessly applying approved signs,
building chains of interpretation.
Signifiers become [collapse into?] signifieds, or
rather the signified constantly recharges the
signifier. This quality of excess means that
it is 'futile' to attempt to break out by just
working on signifiers, since they are always
involved in systems of reproduction of
themselves. The priestly function applies to
psychoanalysts, where the interpretation was
always subordinated to dominant signifiance, to
such an extent, that for some [especially the
later Lacan] there was no need to actually say
anything, encouraging the patient themselves to
jump 'from one circle of hell to the next' (127)
[I wonder if this tendency to reproduce and
reinforce dominance applies to signifiers as in
other fields as well, such as philosophy - this is
implied by the critiques of Kant and Husserl who
use the contaminated term 'transcendental' without
realizing that it will introduce notions of the
normal individual? So only avant-garde
language will break out?] This combination of
signifiance and interpretance produces
'humankind's fundamental neurosis'.
At the centre of signifiance, lies nothing [and
because they have just said that signs are
excessive] 'Lack or excess, it hardly
matters'. However, the sign does have a
substance of expression - 'faciality'.
Language is always accompanied by faciality
traits. The faces 'crystallizes all
redundancies', by associating signs
together. In this way and acts as 'a body'
[after all!] at the centre of signifiance.
Signifiers reterritorialize on the face. Voices
emanate from faces, and this gives a priority to
the oral. The face is the substance of the
signifier, and it 'fuels interpretation'[changing
expressions provide a kind of model?].
Despots rely on the power of the visible
face. Priests reveal the face of god.
When faces cease to be important, 'we can be sure
that we have entered another regime', where all
sorts of deterritorializations, and various kinds
of becoming expose the limits of the signifying
system.
In despotic regimes, the face of the despot or god
can be linked to the body of the tortured or
excluded [with a quote from
Foucault about a tortured assassin as the
inverted figure of the King]. Torture
removes the face, and introduces [nasty kinds of]
becoming-animal, becoming-molecular. There
are other kinds of exclusion as well - exile [both
are illustrated by Oedipus who tortures himself
and then exiles himself]. The scapegoat has
the same function, as a way of removing all the
bad aspects of the despotic regime, everything
that resists the main signs, all that refuses
interpretation. The threat of a [liberating]
line of flight is met with a literal line of
forced flight, 'a tangent to the circles of
signifiance'. [Typically picturesquely] 'the
goat's anus stands opposite the face of the despot
or god' (129). The line of flight completes
the system: the centre which signifies, circles of
interpretation, a crowd of hysterics, a depressive
scapegoat forced into 'headlong flight into the
desert'. This system applies to all
subjected groups, all hierarchies and arborescent
systems, 'political parties, literary movements,
psychoanalytic associations, families, conjugal
units, etc.', although this is an 'excessively
hasty overview'[!]. They all illustrate the
deception and power of the regime of the
signifier.
[There is almost a summary, 129-30]. This
semiotic system is not the only one, nor was it
the first one. There was an earlier 'presignifying
semiotic', operating with '"natural"'
codings without signs. Content is not
regulated or reduced by signification or
faciality, and there are a number of expressive
forms 'particular to content', including dance and
rites. Elements are joined in segments
across several dimensions, but there is no
circularity. Signs deterritorialize when
they meet other territories [peoples?] with other
segments. [With a reference to some French
anthropology], signifiers can be used up not
recirculated, and this is 'the meaning of
cannibalism' for example (130). We can see
in attempts to preserve this semiotic an awareness
of the dangers that are to come 'universalising
abstraction, erection of the signifier,
circularity of statements' and a whole state
apparatus with despotism [echoing some of the
themes of Anti
Oedipus].
There is a countersignifying semiotic,
represented by nomads [but not hunters who do
presignifying semiotic]. This is organized
not so much by segmentation but by 'arithmetic and
numeration', and not the nasty use that we find in
bureaucracies which represent or signify something
else, but 'the numerical sign that is not produced
by something outside the system of marking', which
therefore offers a 'more mobile and plural
distribution' (131). It is a matter of
arrangements, distributions, accumulations,
displayed in breaks and migrations. This is
the semiotics of the war machine directed against
the state. State armies were also organized
numerically, but so were the 'nomads of the
steppes'. We can also see the importance of
numbers in the Bible as an organizational
principle for the migration and subsequent
battles. In systems like this we have lines
of flight which turn against despotism [more on
this below] and the great empires, eventually
conquering them or integrating with them.
There is also the postsignifying regime,
where signifiance is closely connected, uniquely,
to subjectification [more below]. What this
list of regimes of signs shows that there are many
options. They are often found mixed in
particular cases or at particular times.
'Perhaps all semiotics are mixed' both in terms of
content and with different regimes of signs - thus
presignifying systems can be found in signifying
ones, and [thrillingly for activists]
'countersignifying elements are always
present… [but] postsignifying elements are
already there'(132). Mixing of peoples can
bring this mixture, so can different functions
required of a language: we find mixtures in
psychiatric hospitals, where different syndromes
are found in a single patient, or even in ordinary
conversations where 'all of a sudden a fragment of
an unexpected semiotic surfaces'. There is
no evolution. Everything depends on
assemblages, and these can produce social
formations, delusions, or historical events, and
they underpin 'very diverse domains
simultaneously'.
[Then a diversion into controversies in psychiatry
in France]. Particular interest was given to
those who seem to be delusional even though they
were perfectly sane in other respects. These
conditions were described variously as monomania,
for example. There was also 'passional
delusion' driven by a grievance and a desire for
redress, or 'erotomania'. These distinctions
can be used to contrast a 'paranoid - interpretive
ideal regime of signifiance' with a 'passional,
postsignifying subjective regime'. The first
one features radiating circles expanding in all
directions, with individuals jumping from one
circle to another. The second one features a
particularly 'decisive external occurrence', (133)
'expressed more as an emotion than an idea', and
carried into action, producing a succession of
'finite proceedings' rather than a set of
simultaneous circles. The debate had great
importance in the emergence of psychiatry and the
struggle for adequate theory. There was a
particular problem presented by diagnosing madness
in the first place, where some people seem to be
mad in some ways but normal in others, and some
risk of misdiagnosis. Psychiatrists proposed
opposing treatments correspondingly.
Again there are general implications: paranoids
are normally bourgeois and do not need locking up,
'passional redress seekers are most often from the
working and rural classes, or are marginal, as in
the case of political assassins' (134). When
psychiatrists judge between these two types, they
are preserving 'even in [cases of] delusion, the
class based social order', and are helping to
identify [and treat] 'those who sow disorder'.
The paranoid type is associated with despotism,
and the passional with authoritarianism.
Lines of flight are different as well, since
authoritarian regimes are vulnerable to 'a packet
of signs' detaching itself from the circles and
forming its own straight line. Here, the
line receives a positive value, and can be seen as
identified with a people, who can effectuate the
assemblage that normally insurers dominance in
particular conditions. [Even more of a
weasel] 'the map of a delusion...may coincide with
the map of a people' (135), as in the case of the
'paranoid pharaoh and the passional Hebrew'.
The exodus was energized by an authoritarian
subjectivity, and the most immediate kinds of
delusion, taking a linear form against the
network. The 'line of Passion' produced a
series of proceedings.
[While we are here], we can consider the history
of the Jewish people between the two dates for the
destruction of the temple. The ark of the
Covenant itself was only 'a little portable packet
of signs'. The negative line of flights, the
expulsion of the Jewish people was made into the
role of scapegoat as a passion, something
associated with their subjectivity, a lamb,
a sacrifice, something specific to
Jewishness. It combined with nomadic counter
signification, but there was still a nostalgia for
the signifying semiotic, producing a new form of
monarchy and imperial society, the rebuilding of
the temple. For this development, god had
averted his face, and the corresponding Jewish
subject did the same, and 'double turning away'
led to the positive line of flight. The
prophet played a major role, guaranteeing the word
of god as still extending to those who had turned
away - this is why 'Cain is the true man' (136),
under reprieve, but only by placing people in the
debt of god. It is a regime of betrayal [and
forgiveness?], where true men must always betray,
and thus 'fulfill god's orders better than anyone
who remained faithful'. Jonah is another
example, running away, but in doing so fulfilling
god's purpose, first as a scapegoat, and then as a
way of renewing the covenant. Jesus
'universalizes' betrayal, and is betrayed.
It is a common trope for prophets to first refuse
the dangerous mission and then carry out a
particular delusional active passional form.
Personal passional relations characterise
obedience. Faciality traits no longer
discipline signifiance, but actually produce a
line of flight [I'm not at all sure why, except it
might have something to do with the averted faces
of god on the one hand and of human beings on the
other, the one canceling out the other, betrayal
becoming the main way of relating]
What about Oedipus? He represents a
transition from the imperial despotism to a line
of flight, a double turning away of his face and
god's, a 'subjective linear proceeding', of
deterritorialization, a classic example of modern
tragedy, surviving as a form of
postponement. Freud saw in Oedipus the
classic figure, enabling him to combine despotic
and authoritarian regimes, again with a turning
away from faces [literally as well in the
diagnostic encounter]. The mixture of
regimes was particularly sinister - 'the worst,
most underhanded of powers are founded on it'.
Christianity is also a mixed semiotic, with added
postsignifying elements. 'It invents a new
assemblage', still with a notion of heresy, with
orthodoxy as a part of signifiance, but with new
kinds of heresies as total treason [the example is
the Bulgars or buggers! Supported by a
reference explaining that Bulgarians were
originally a sect of buggering heretics for the
French]. [Then a strange delirious section
about figures in England, including Cromwell, and
characters in Shakespeare plays, especially
Richard III, 139]. Colonial expansion by
Christians can also be seen as
deterritorialization implicated with
betrayal. So is the Reformation.
[Obscure stuff referring to 'the strange case of
Maurice Sachs, unreferenced of course].
The Book plays a different parts in the different
regimes. It emits despotic signifiers and
various interpretations of them, but it also
implies deterritorialization, circulation,
movement. There are attempts to counter this
by stressing the oral character of the book.
For passional regimes, the book replaces the face
of god, and has 'become the body of
passion'. It has deterritorialized
characteristics but it also restabilises by
recording things like specific events and
genealogies. Interpretation tends to get
replaced by 'literal recitation', with no
interpretations permitted outside the book [the
Koran is one example, while Christianity manages
to incorporate change in a Bookish way by relating
the two testaments]. Since the book is
passional, it subjectifies [especially after the
Reformation]. The book can be fetishised,
and even avant-garde versions or radical ones are
'still Bibles' (141).
Thus the relation with the subject becomes
crucial, and the subject is able to enunciate or
issue statements. In Jewish thought, god was
interpreted as a subject permitting lines of
flight, while Moses was the 'subject of
enunciation', and the Jewish people were the
'subject of the statement' [exploiting the
ambiguity of the term 'subject'], having to
overcome their betrayal by renewing their
covenant, in a linear rather than circular series
of relations with god. For Christianity, the
infinite itself becomes the 'absolutely necessary
point of subjectification' with the cogito as the
subject of enunciation and the notion of the human
being as the unity of body and soul as the
subject. Thinking also needs to be
constantly renewed. A mind - body dualism
arises from Descartes.
For 19th century psychiatry, various kinds of
madnesses were being distinguished as before, with
passional delusion offering a form of
subjectification - puzzling things out as 'a
veritable cogito'. Monomaniacs have to
follow particular linear sequences, frequently
interrupted by catastrophies.
Subjectification originates in the 'double turning
away' together with betrayal and reprieve as
above. At the individual level, the point of
subjectification can be any episode or instance as
in fetishism, and faces now have this capacity as
well, to serve as a point of departure for a
passional line, as in the irresistible beauty of
the female face[as in Proust again]. Several
such points can coexist in an individual or a
group. Education offers an attempt to
normalise the directions pursued by points of
subjectification 'always moving towards a higher,
nobler one in closer conformity with the supposed
ideal' (143). The subject of enunciation
emerges from points of subjectification, but it is
a subject always 'bound to statements in
conformity with a dominant reality', including a
psychiatric reality.
However, postsignifying can arise from a
recognition of the gaps between the [originating]
subject and the subject of the statement.
This introduces a new sense of individuality,
newer subjects of enunciation. However, the
legitimacy of new enunciations still depends on
agreement to be the subject of the statement
[maybe], just as mental reality has to relate to
dominant reality. Reality itself assumes a
kind of immanent power. There is still an
oddity to this, a 'doubled subject', where
subjects cause statements, but also are part of
them. You only have the power to enunciate by
obeying the statements of the dominant reality,
which you yourself have produced - this gives an
illusion that 'you are the one in command', but is
really a kind of slavery to an ideal self, or to
pure reason. Reason itself is therefore self
interested, and has a passional dimension.
'Althusser clearly brings
out this constitution of social individuals as
subjects' (144), and Beneviste explores the
ambiguity of the 'you' as both object and
subject. However the real point is that
there are no subjects, 'only collective
assemblages of enunciation', one of which is
subjectification, offering a particular regime of
signs. This also helps us think of it as
something other than ideology, because this
assemblage already functions in the economy rather
than having to superimpose itself: 'Capital is a
point of subjectification par excellence'[again
this limiting of the term ideology to mean ideas,
culture --not at all Althusserian]. The
psychoanalyst can be a point of subjectification.
The patient has to [assume the sick role] as a
subject of enunciation, but is also the source of
statements [of their own symptoms], 'growing
increasingly submissive to the normalization of
the dominant reality'. Patients become
better subjects if they anticipate some of the
analysis.
Passional regimes have syntagmatic and
paradigmatic dimensions as well.
Consciousness as a passion is the first dimension,
producing a doubled subject as we saw.
The second dimension also produces a doubling,
however, producing two subjects, concealing their
faces as much as revealing them, connected in a
line of deterritorialization that both unites and
divides them. Passion connects these two,
but there is 'a celibate [cognitive?] side' as
well. With love, the two subjects swap
between enunciating and the subject of
enunciation, but betrayal is ever present.
When it really takes off, the two people involved
become double, constructed both in consciousness
and in substance [something to do with the
connections between the opposite sexes].
When we look at the interactions of couples, we
can see some of these possibilities, including
developing 'a war cogito', or 'despotic
conjugality' (146). They can even become
bureaucratized. These figures are
characteristic of the particularities of doubles,
and they can be traced back to the original line
of passion following semiotic analysis.
Passional redundancy is not just a matter of
frequency or repetition, but the emergence of a
particular signifier for each sign. The
regime constructs 'a kind of "wall" on which signs
are inscribed'. The form of redundancy for
postsignification involves a more subjective
resonance, producing a black hole, where personal
pronouns and proper names attracted and collapsed
the signifiers [maybe], as an ironic consequence
of developing self consciousness. The two
forms of resonance are often combined.
Signifying regimes and subjective regimes
deterritorialize through different
movements. In the first case, the collection
of signs into a system produces a kind of
deterritorialization through frequency, and any
lines of flight are seen as negative. In the
subjective regime, signs break with other signs
[because of passion] and achieves absolute
deterritorialization [something beyond a line of
flight, heading into a black hole?]. The one
can link with the other. However,
subjectification can also limit itself, without
returning to the old regime. This happens
because it is essentially finite and linear,
leading to a repetition of the passion, love or
grievance. This is a segmentarity that
blocks absolute deterritorialization.
It is still limited by the strata,
especially 'the organism, signifiance and
interpretation, and subjectification and
subjection'[just reasserting what's gone before
really]. These prevent us from attaining the
plane of consistency, or the machinic level, which
offers full positivity and
deterritorialization. We have to try to use
a favourable assemblage to orient away from the
strata and towards the plane of consistency 'or
the body without organs'(148) [welcome, old
friend!]. We have to destratify, by opening
ourselves to the diagrammatic, breaking the
existing bonds of the doubles, and experimenting
more, making our lives and passions 'the field of
continuous intensities, an emission of particles -
signs'[more of these in Machinic
Unconsciousness]. We can abolish
subjectification, becoming animal, or becoming
woman, heading for the BWO. We must see
existing forms of subjectification as diagrammatic
redundancies, and swap trees for rhizomes, stammer
in our own language and so on. It seems there are
three types of deterritorialization [as
before]. One is relative compared to the
strata and produces signifiance; another is
absolute but still negative and appears in
subjectification; there is an absolute one on the
plane of consistency or the BWO.
[there is an example of a stammering poem by Luca,
who we have mentioned earlier, page 149…
Do domi not
passi do not dominate
Do not dominate your passive
passions not]
Content still seems to be important, however,
sometimes taking the form of the dominant reality,
but we can still distinguish different semiotics
[and we're going to do this again -if ever there
was a need for an editor! It is pretty much
the same as before. Scratchy diagrams on 150
and 151 are not terribly helpful]. The
semiotics often take a concrete form as
mixed. Every semiotic is mixed and contains
fragments of others. There is no reason to
privilege standard signifying semiotic - 'There is
no general semiology'. Terms can even be
translated from one semiotic to another, because
of the excess of the sign, 'overcoding'.
There can be analogical transformations, important
with presignifying regimes, operating through
symbols; polemical or strategic transformations
with post signification involving memesis or other
aspects of consciousness; diagrammatic, which have
the effect of absolutely deterritorializing
regimes of signs [which only transcendental
philosophers can do?]. Transformational
statements explicitly reuse statements from
elsewhere, but this often leaves 'untransformable
residues'.
Other transformations can take place through
creative translation. We need to focus on
this general 'transsemiotic'(151).
Analogical transformations often involves sleep,
drugs or 'amorous rapture', and these translate
signifying regimes into presignifying ones.
This can be resisted through 'unexpected
segmentarity and polyvocality' [what others might
call the limits and ambiguity of gestures and
expressions]. Creative translation can
include the attempt to transmit Christian meanings
to 'barbarians', or monetary systems into African
commerce. Again there are signs of
modification, as when the music of black Americans
translate English signifiers. It is also
possible to detect in the songs the beginning of
[European] subjectification and
individuation. Faciality emerges as when
white people black up to perform the music, while
black people darken their faces to take back their
songs. Reverse transformations are also
revealing, as when African dances become white
dances through mimesis, retaining cultural power
[with a weird bit about how African dance is
really impersonal and collective -- citing Henry
Miller!].
It is difficult to see whether we are adapting old
semiotics or producing mixtures, or even new
varieties. It is not easy to break with
regimes - so refusing to use 'I' does not break
with subjectification [advocates of impersonal
styles take note] . People sometimes
denounce interpretation, while imposing it [I
think this is a criticism of psychoanalysis, and
experiments in antipsychiatry, 153--the patient is
asked to do the interpretation] .There is a
constant tendency to form 'knots of coincidence'
which easily turn into 'centres of signifiance and
points of subjectification'. Castenada
[again!] shows how the Indian resists easy
interpretation and introduces presignifying
semiotic, 'or even an asignifying diagram'[with a
quote about having to stop the world in order to
see].
This shows that pragmatics has two
components. First, it is generative, drawing
upon mixed semiotics; second it is
transformational translating one regime of signs
into another. The first can be described as
tracing, the second making a map [I must say I
never really got this distinction, unless it just
means working within the system or redrawing
it. It might be the difference between
following learning objectives and having a concept
map]. Whereas the first can offer the
limited creativity of the combinatory, the second
is more profoundly original. [Another
example is how Leninism was transformative, even
though it fell back later into Stalinist mixed
semiotic. They also cite a study of Nazism,
which raises the issue of how widespread the Nazi
regime of signs actually was]. The point is
that there are no invariants that cannot be
transformed, showing that 'language is a political
affair before it is an affair for linguistics'
(154).
Regimes of signs are not just language.
Language as a whole is superlinear when we
consider possibilities, but individual languages
are defined by constants and relations. No
regime of signs is identical with the
possibilities, and nor does it simply
consist of constants. Foucault is mentioned
(155) [maybe meaning this]
to show that regimes of signs can span a number of
languages, or offer a variety within one - they
are 'assemblages of enunciation', and enunciation
is not a linguistic category. Instead,
statements involve 'implicit presuppositions that
cannot be made explicit', but which activate
pragmatic variables, as in 'incorporeal
transformations' discussed above. It follows
that we can't explain an assemblage in terms of
signifiers or subjects, because both relate to
variables of enunciation. Instead,
signifiance and subjectification 'presuppose the
assemblage, not the reverse'. Nor is there a
simple evolution between regimes of signs, since
they offer 'heterogeneous functions or
varieties'. Regimes of signs are defined by
variables internal to enunciation, but external to
the constants of language.
On the other hand, regimes of signs also exceed
language, because it 'formalizes contents', acting
as a machine. These contents are not just
signifieds, nor object that cause subjects to do
things. There is something more profound, an
'abstract machine' at work which produces a
deterritorialization. This abstract machine
is not just language based, like the models of
Chomsky, but something even more abstract - it
does not distinguish expression and content, for
example [and ignore the latter], because it
operates on a plane of consistency which
formalizes both, according to relations with
strata and attempted reterritorializations.
The abstract machine itself has no form or
substance, but distributes the distinction between
content and expression. It is not semiotic
but diagrammatic. It operates 'by matter,
not by substance [where the former is virtual]; by
function not by form' (156). Substances and
forms come later, as expressions or [or of]
content. Functions are not yet semiotically
formed, nor are contents are turned into something
physical. Only matter and functions remain
[and we learn here that, as suspected, 'matter is
a substance that is unformed either physically or
semiotically', operated upon by intensive forces,
including 'resistance, conductivity, heating,
stretching, speed', while the functions operated
as tensors]. Writing operates at this
virtual level [their sort of writing does].
At the diagrammatic level, content and expression
are fully deterritorialized and can be
conjugated. Either content or expression can
produce a 'maximum deterritorialization',
affecting the others because it gets to the
diagrammatic state first. When this happens,
all the other elements cross the threshold into
the diagrammatic and can be conjugated themselves,
'a shared acceleration' (157). Diagrams are
therefore much more abstract than indexes,
'territorial signs' and icons and symbols, both of
which offer only relative reterritorialization.
Abstract machines are not infrastructures nor are
they transcendental Ideas. They represent
something real in the usual sense, but also
construct 'a real that is yet to come, a new type
of reality'. In this way, they are prior to
history, and everything is produced through
abstract machines with 'continuums of intensity',
and conjunctions of effects, including expressions
and contents. This is the 'Real -
Abstract'. It is not undifferentiated nor is
it transcendent. It can be specified with
the use of the proper name or date, which refer to
'matters and functions', even though occasionally
the name of a person can be used to designate
particular conjunctions, as in the 'Riemann
abstract machine' [other examples include the
'Wagner abstract machine']. What happens
here is that an arbitrary line, 'the adjunctive
line' conjugates with a body. Abstract
machines produce diagrams whenever they are
'function directly in a matter'.
At the diagrammatic level, all the plane of
consistency, there are no specific regimes of
signs, but only 'traits and cutting edges', which
are both content and expression, acting as a relay
and producing 'a shared deterritorialization:
particles-signs'. [Intended to be both
content and expression, before the strata
differentiate them, articulate them {actually
'double articulation'}, 158, and formalize
them]. Matter becomes substance, functions
become forms of expression or content, expression
then produces indexes and icons, and content turns
into bodies, things and objects. The deeper
conjugation processes appear only as respective
deterritorialization and
reterritorialization. The language stratum
itself produces a more limited abstract machine
for expression, and this works to offer abstract
[linguistic] terms for content. So strata
'substantialize' diagrammatic matters and produce
their own plane of content and plane of
expression. These are doubly articulated, by
'pincers', in the form of an organising dualism
'that endlessly reproduces and redivides'.
Intensive continuums are broken,
deterritorialization prevented,
reterritorialization turned into merely relative
movement. Particular lines of flight are
assigned a negative value, are segmented, blocked
or plugged, or made to lead into a black hole.
Diagrams are not axiomatic [implications for Badiou?] .
Axiomatic systems also block lines of flight and
subordinate everything to a system [the example is
when particular kinds of indeterminism in physics
were made to conform with physical determinism
after all. Maths as well, it seems].
Again this shows the political constraints even on
science. Making systems axiomatic, semiotic
or physical strengthens strata against the
diagram, but the potential of the diagram remains,
to produce new 'singular abstract machines' [that
is more specific ones]. This is also
apparent in the history of science and maths:
'madness is as intrinsic to [science] as
reorderings' (159). Scientists can often
operate with both, as in the usual discussion of
the politics of science, meaning disputes and so
on operating internally. Science has its own
'internal war machine'. Axiomatics is a
deliberately attempt to discipline it by producing
'a level of coagulated abstraction too large for
the concrete but too small for the real'.
This is 'the "capitalist" level', too.
It is not just a simple dualism between diagrams
and abstract machines rooted in strata.
Virtual abstract machines also have a relation to
the strata and can even be located on
strata. In this way, a language based
abstract machine can be seen as internal to the
stratum of language itself [I think the argument
says it actually then is responsible for the
Chomsky type abstract machines of language].
We can understand this is a constant movement
between capture by the strata and escape.
Strata have to 'harness diagrammatic matters or
functions' (160) to formalize them into expression
and content. Similarly, every regime of
signs can be seen as a diagrammatic affect.
However, abstract machines also have the power to
'extract and accelerate destratified particles -
signs (the passage to the absolute)'.
Consistency is not total but involves
reterritorialization, as when biological strata
evolve through deterritorialization.
Stability of the strata are is never
guaranteed. There are lines of flight at
work and these can be prolonged: through
signifiance, interpretation, consciousness and
passion.
The machinic assemblage contains all these
possible states or modes. One of its vectors
faces the strata, while another faces the plane of
consistency. Forms appear from the first
vector, and forms of content are articulated with
forms of expression. With the other vector,
however these differentiations disappear and what
remains are 'traits of expression and
content'. These can be combined in different
ways producing degrees of deterritorialization and
cutting edges [the latter are now seen
specifically to conjugate].
[While we are pursuing our obsessive
classifications], regimes of signs also have
components relating to pragmatics. The generative
component produces, for example, mixtures of
semiotics, and this can produce abstract forms of
content, as long as we see them as arising from
mixed expressions. The transformational
component works as above. All mixed regimes
presuppose such transformations. Again we
can abstract content as long as we see it as
arising from metamorphosis, and not as entirely
adequate to any particular form of
expression. Then we can refer to
diagrammatic components, where we take the
particles-signs and combine them to produce
'unformed traits'. This appears as a high
level of abstraction, but we also access the real
[at the virtual level]. There is no suitable
language to describe abstract activities like
this, since we could not separate content from
forms of expression. [They might be saying
instead that unformed traits which can be produced
as possibilities show the distance between an
abstract machine and language - but I think the
sentence just before this applies as well].
The diagram produces the more familiar kinds of
specific abstract machines. Finally, there
is the machinic component, showing how abstract
machines appear in concrete assemblages.
Together the components describe 'pragmatics (or
schizoanalysis)… four circular components
that bud and form rhizomes'(161). [Rhizomes
are combinatories here?]
So when we study pragmatics we should study first
of all making a trace of mixed semiotics and their
generative components; making a map of the
transformation of regimes, producing 'budding
along the lines of the tracings'; making the
diagram of the abstract machines that operate in
each case, 'either as potentialities or as
effective emergences'; outlining the 'program' of
the assemblages that actually distribute
everything. [Uninformative scratchy circular
diagram on page 162].
For example, we can take a given proposition, or
verbal aggregate serving as the expression of an
individual or group. We then trace this is
proposition to a state which it corresponds to,
that is identifying the regime of signs to which
the proposition belongs and which provides it with
its 'syntactic, semantic and logical
elements'(162). We then have to identify the
nonlinguistic element, 'or variable of
enunciation' which makes it consistent [with
accepted practice? - There is an example
from Miller again, where individual utterances are
saying 'I love you' have to reflect the collective
notion of love, which has a much broader set of
implications. In other cases, saying 'I love
you' would express manly obligations and relate to
war and force; there are presignifying and
signifying variants, even passional forms].
We then identify any possible mixtures,
translations or transformations in a proposition,
and what might remain as untranslatable. We
can even attempt at that stage 'new, as yet
unknown statements for that proposition', possibly
producing 'a patois of sensual delight'[some
poetic playing with language?]. We can push
this to the limits at which we produce signs which
are without signifiance, and which are nonsensical
[non-logical,non-syntactical etc] We can
include in such language metaphors, various kinds
of becoming, 'real transexualities, continuums of
intensity, constitutions of bodies without
organs'(163).
By experimenting like this we will discover
abstract machines and diagrams, machinic
assemblages and how they work, by producing
relations with reciprocal presuppositions.
We have discovered that there is nothing that
transcends statements, no linguistic universals
which operate at the wrong level of
abstraction. Regimes of signs are not based
on language, and abstract machines contain more
than language. Indeed, language is based on
regimes of signs which in turn depend on abstract
machines and machine assemblages. '"Behind"
statements and semiotizations there are only
machines, assemblages, and movements of
deterritorialization that cut across…
stratification' (163 - 4). Thus pragmatics
is the fundamental element upon which linguistic
analysis depends.
back to menu page
|