Becoming Sexual of the Sexual [1]
Zafer Aracagök
Or should we go a short way further to see for ourselves, be a little alcoholic, a little crazy, a little suicidal, a little of a guerilla—just enough to extend the crack, but not enough to deepen it irremediably? [2]
0.
[1] In a chapter called, "Porcelain and Volcano" [3] in The Logic of Sense, Deleuze describes a crack underneath which there's a volcano ready to erupt at any moment. Considering this crack and also what he confessed in an interview as his practice of philosophizing—that is, taking the philosophers he reads from behind [4]—I would like to introduce some preliminary concerns of this exposition.
[2] Reading Deleuze, for me, is a practice which requires a certain carefulness on various levels at the same time if one is not to reach reductionist conclusions in response to questions such as, "What is immanence?," "What is becoming?," "What is a plane of consistency?," "What is becoming-woman?," "What is a concept?," "What is a BWO?" etc. Despite the fact that Deleuze problematizes such answer-question dialectics, there is still an insistence on a certain appropriation, disappropriation or misappropriation of Deleuzian thought which, in doing so, eliminates the question of the "undecidable." What is less certain or undecidable is whether, when Deleuze writes on other philosophers, he appropriates or disappropriates them by means of producing a critique of the philosophers in question. At such a juncture, it is quite appropriate to ask whether Deleuze identifies with, or properly appropriates, the philosopher he is taking from behind so that his desire is quenched at the moment of satisfaction or whether he continues producing desire so that his liaison with another philosopher will turn into a courtly love affair where both obedience and betrayal will be out of the question either simply because an actual meeting will never occur or will remain always as an event.
[3] The same applies to my affair with Deleuze and Guattari. Without generating a loyalty to either of them, what I will offer here is to take a philosopher, or rather two philosophers, Deleuze and Guattari, from behind in order to lay bare both my and their unquenched desire with respect to the volcano which may be supposed to erupt at any moment, thereby extending the crack to unforeseen dimensions. To achieve the latter, I will first force this volcano to an eruption following some traces in the history and philosophy of quantum mechanics, and what is offered as "complementarity" by Niels Böhr and Arkady Plotnitsky. Can one produce the undecidable between the decidable and the undecidable in a tracing of the concept of "complementarity" in the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari? And, given this position with respect to philosophy, I will seek to show that what is presented by Deleuze and Guattari as "becoming-woman" is a rather problematic issue which they put forward with a certain degree of undecidability and which, therefore, encapsulates, albeit in a cryptic form, other becomings, the most important of which is becoming-queer, or rather, becoming sexual of the sexual.
1. quantum theory
[4] Quantum mechanics presents us with a productive background for explicating some points that remain obscure, undecidable or neglected even by Deleuze and Guattari. I am thinking in particular of what I have mentioned as the undecidable or undecidability, not simply in their text but also in the ways the terms are employed more widely. Most of the time these appear as something which could be decided about or as something which has already been decided although they are passed off as something undecidable. I may be inviting judgements of paranoia in turning to quantum mechanics in connection with desire and the sexual. As we will see towards the end of my article, however, it is perhaps Deleuze and Guattari who get paranoid when it comes to the question of becoming, and especially to the question of becoming-woman. In contrast, I am writing here with no finality, without becoming afraid of being paranoid, even, of getting hysterical.
[5] It was as early as 1900 when quantum physics shook almost all the foundations of classical physics with a claim by Max Planck that radiation, such as light, previously believed to be a continuous phenomenon in all circumstances, can, under certain conditions, have a quantum or discontinuous character. [5] According to the classical view, light behaved as waves; however, in the years to come, especially after Einstein's discovery that light behaved like particles under certain circumstances, the classical view was brought face to face with the impossibility of observing the wave-like and particle-like character of light at the same time something, which did not allow for any visualisation or representation of the quantum phenomena in a proper single picture. It was right here, at this point, that the concept of "complementarity," as it was coined by Böhr, would be used to explain this mutual exclusiveness (in a fashion similar to a Derridaean manoeuvre of maintaining the opposites at the same time), which would come to designate Böhr's overall interpretation of quantum mechanics and, thence, a general philosophical conceptuality.
[6] If the main question was how one and the same object could have such opposite characteristics, wavelike at one time, and particle-like at another, further experiments bore witness to another realisation that "wave-like" and "particle-like" were not even attributes that could be ascribed to quantum objects, because these designations depended on classical concepts which were thus used in order to explain radically new phenomena. In other words, it brought along questions as to whether quantum objects could be thought of at all as "objects." [6] Now classical physics was brought as if face to face with the "unknowable," which is observable or visible only in its effects. The unknowable objects of quantum phenomena were considered to be "efficacities," which were accessible to us only in the effects that can be observed within the concepts of classical physics.
[7] The situation was like that of Kafka's dog in "The Investigations of a Dog" with his question: "Whence does the Earth procure its food?" The food usually comes from above. Sometimes it hangs in the air, and sometimes the food even runs after the dog but still the source that produces the food remains invisible. After the discovery of quantum discontinuity, it might be said that we have all become an investigator dog: the fact that the dog in the story cannot see the source beyond the food points to a radical break between the cause and effect, and its decision to fast, to be weightless, to float in the air (like the food or the soaring dogs in the story) points to the unknowableness of quantum objects which become visible only in their effects. If it wants to get to the source, the dog is left with no choice other than identifying with those weightless objects and with dogs floating in the air. Is this source attainable? Does becoming make us capable of reaching the source? Does becoming-man of a dog make the dog capable of seeing the source? Only if we could picture a model. The model of the model is, however, unknowable. Hence, classical physics was in real trouble: working on the principle of causality, classical physics required, first and foremost, the construction of a model according to which the interaction between natural objects and natural phenomena could be observed, measured, theorised, explained, and verified. However, in quantum mechanics, since only the interaction between the effects of the efficacities and the measuring instruments could be described, it did not allow for a construction of such a model.
[8] As Böhr put it, all this required a renunciation or a revision of not only causality and visualisation, but also, "our attitude towards the problem of physical reality." [7] If the unknowable which was "knowable" only through its effects—that is, still through the concepts of classical physics—then such a situation also required a revision of what constituted this "reality," which hardly obeyed the model of a model, or, rather, the concept of a model according to classical physics. Imagine Artaud's neurotic language, or Mallarmé's crypt—singularities of representation which do not follow any order. Or Nietzsche's dream of getting rid of grammar. In contrast to classical, causal and deterministic ways of constructing models according to models, quantum phenomena proved that such a concept of model did not properly work because in quantum mechanics that which was taken for granted—physical reality as such—was at stake. Consequently, if such a presumption could not be produced, then, without doubt, the construction of a model, even the construction of a model of a model would fail. The situation was like being in a Merzbow concert where you are in front of a wall of sound and the sonics you hear give you only some clues about what lies behind this wall: given that Merzbow does not imitate what he cannot hear but, even short-circuiting the act of hearing, he questions our capacity to hear the things at the heart of hearing, and his failure in representing them.
[9] This approach to "physical reality" foregrounded Böhr's concept of complementarity and his approach to models, copies, or rather, the question of mimesis that it encapsulates. From this angle, quantum theory can be seen as a crisis in representation—models and mimesis which raised doubts about classical methods, the "Platonic" model of a model, by way of which science in general had been capable of representing phenomena as "reasonable." With the rise of quantum phenomena, what is put at stake is the visibility of such phenomena, and hence their representability. In this sense, Böhr is no Hegelian and his concept of complementarity thus also puts at risk the Hegelian notion of "synthesis." The position raised by Böhr assumes the form of a critique of—as we know it from Derrida—a "metaphysics of presence." Considering all these characteristics, it was as if Böhr was underlining a deconstructionist strategy where one cannot produce a synthesis unless one takes the metaphysics of presence for granted. For Böhr, what took the place of synthesis was a concern for this rupture—the abyss.
[10] Böhr can perhaps be considered as a Bataille of the world of physics—a non-Hegelian Hegelian who disrupts any kind of synthesis between opposites: an understanding of the limits without synthesis yet pushing them forward to widen the crack, to make it deeper, yet still knowing by not knowing where to stop. Or, he is Büchner's Lenz five minutes before he starts hearing the noise of silence, or goes mad, or attempts to kill himself. In contrast, a thorough understanding of complementarity means to look at killing oneself together with the impossibility of killing oneself and thus extending it to a life-long project.
2. becoming
[11] Where should we seek the traces of the concept of complementarity in the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari that point to the yawning crack, the complementarity of the decidable and the undecidable in their theory? Their concept of the rhizome may offer us some good openings but it will also be too simple an opening, immediately giving us the opportunity for identification. But, as we said before, our intention is to extend the crack and look at the volcano, the non-identifiable, the non-identitarian, the undecidable, or better, the un-negotiable in the face. And for all these reasons, and perhaps with the intention of becoming-becoming itself, I'd rather concentrate especially on a particular chapter of A Thousand Plateaus, namely, "1730: Becoming-Intense, Becoming-Animal, Becoming-Imperceptible [...]".
[12] The whole chapter about "becoming" can be read as being layered on a presumed opposition between what Deleuze and Guattari call the "plane of consistency" and the "plane of organisation." If the plane of consistency should be understood as a plane where there are no given forms, subjects, structure or genesis and where unformed elements, molecules or any type of particles are related to each other only by means of speed and movement, the plane of organisation is just its opposite in the sense that here we have structure and genesis, which, remaining hidden behind things, produce forms, subjects and organisations. In other words, the plane of organisation is a transcendental plane, the constitutive principle of which lies outside itself whereas the plane of consistency is an immanent one which does not refer to such an outside, or to a transcendental principle in order to produce forms, structures or organisation as in a mimetic relationship between a model and a copy.
[13] According to Deleuze and Guattari, our understanding of nature, and therefore our understanding of animals and ourselves, is determined by two distinct approaches: one of series and the other of structures, but both of them are based on a mimetic vision. Although these approaches seem to be different from each other, in both of them beings develop by imitating one another on the basis of an originary model, and, therefore, in the end boil down to the same plane of organisation: in the serial approach. One proceeds in a linear fashion by resemblances; the other by means of structural analogies.
[14] It is actually in contrast to these approaches, or rather against the determining mimetic factor in each that Deleuze and Guattari offer their concept of becoming. As they put it: "A becoming is not a correspondence between relations. But neither is it a resemblance, an imitation, or, at the limit, an identification." [8]
[15] Moreover, becoming, or rather the becoming-animal, is real. The reality of such a becoming is due not because the one who becomes animal imitates the animal but rather because that which becomes real being is becoming itself. If becoming is the principle of the plane of consistency where there are no forms, subjects or organisations, then becoming cannot have subject or, as they put it, "produces nothing other than itself." [9] Kafka's dog never becomes the food that it wants to become but perhaps it enacts at least the becoming-food of a dog. As Deleuze and Guattari claim:
This is the point to clarify: that a becoming lacks a subject distinct from itself; but also that it has no term, since its term in turn exists only as taken up in another becoming of which it is the subject, and which coexists, forms a block, with the first. This is the principle according to which there is a reality specific to becoming. [10]
Becoming is certainly not imitating, or identifying with something; neither is it regressing-progressing; neither is it corresponding, establishing corresponding relations; neither is it producing, producing a filiation or producing through filiation. [11]
Becoming-animal in that sense is to recognize the multiplicity in animals, the packs they form as against the serial or structural understandings of nature where they are constituted as individuals by means of reducing the differences between species or between members of species to the same. The rhizomic constitution of these packs or the multiplicity does not let becoming-multiple or becoming-animal processes be self-identical or mimetic; on the contrary it produces a "fascination for the outside" [12] where the boundaries encompassing subjects and forms are opened up to multiplicities. This is actually what the famous psychoanalytic case Wolfman illustrates: the call of the wolves in his dream is a call for embracing multiplicities.
[16] On the other hand, for Deleuze and Guattari, multiplicities cannot be defined by the elements that compose them but by their lines and dimensions which are momentarily countable due to their borderlines. [13] In other words, it means we can define multiplicities by the number of their dimensions. Yet, doesn't this definition invite a certain danger, that is the constitution of certain "forms," "forms" of different multiplicities by way of reduction? A practice which is in contradiction with the definition of a plane of consistency? However, as they note this danger soon, they take precautions against it in subsequent pages in the following manner:
If multiplicities are defined and transformed by the borderline that determines in each instance their number of dimensions, we can conceive of the possibility of laying them out on a plane, the borderlines succeeding one another, forming a broken line. It is only in appearance that a plane of this kind "reduces" the number of dimensions; for it gathers in all the dimensions to the extent that flat multiplicities—which nonetheless have an increasing or decreasing number of dimensions—are inscribed upon it. [14]
What is said or reformulated here in face of the "dangers" is actually to present the question of form in such a way as to present it as if it were composed of "broken lines" or as a reduction "only in appearance," which is thus not the same as the concept of form produced on the plane of organisation. Is this possible? Let us be patient, however, before we decide that even this type of formulation requires a mimetic relationship between a model and a copy. In other words, let's see if talking about form not as form but as "broken lines" can save any discussion from yielding to form, and from the necessity of models and copies.
[17] Right after this discussion in the chapter, Deleuze and Guattari introduce two sections one after another entitled "Memories of a Spinozist "I" and "II," as if to support their points about the immanence of this plane with reference to Spinoza. If becoming-animal is the first step in their theory of "becoming," it is solely because the becoming-animal produces good grounds for the theorisation of an "absolute" plane of consistency and a proper passage for man from a static state of being to becoming. Becoming-animal, under the light of dense references to Spinoza, becomes a total immersion into a disorganisation of the body where that body meets its BWO. As we know it from other sources, the BWO for Deleuze and Guattari is that which knows no boundaries as to the organisation of the body, and is a total rejection of its organs and functions. If organisation, as in the case of psychoanalysis (which "killed becoming-animal, in the adult as in the child" [15]), concerns the mimetic in an Oedipal triangle, composition means starting from a zero point where there are no models to imitate.
[18] After these two rigorous sections on Spinoza, it looks as if the crack that was about to yield to a disaster has thus been prevented, and that which has been left suspended as an undecidable has been restored as decidable again by asserting the plane of consistency as an absolute. Now it seems as if Merzbow can continue producing noise, but we should prefer so-called sound artists such as Kim Cascone as the artists of the world of immediacy. However, things become complicated and eventually confused right after this decision in the section that follows. As if all the discussion about the absoluteness of the plane of consistency is undertaken in vain, here, in this section, "Memories of a Plan(e) Maker," we observe Deleuze and Guattari claiming the necessity of the plane of organisation as a counterforce in opposition to the plane of consistency. Now the crack is opened up again, as if the earlier necessity for a model, right before they are to theorise becoming-woman, gets urgent, and they say: "Perhaps there are two planes, or two ways of conceptualising the plane." [16]
[19] And after they define the planes of consistency and organisation, they decide to put them into an opposition as follows:
[...] one continually passes from one to the other, by unnoticeable degrees and without being aware of it, or one becomes aware of it only afterwards. Because one continually reconstitutes one plane atop another, or extricates one from the other. For example, all we need to do is to sink the floating plane of immanence, bury it in the depths of Nature instead of allowing it to play freely on the surface, for it to pass to the other side and assume the role of a ground that can no longer be anything more than a principle of analogy from the standpoint of organisation, and a law of continuity from the standpoint of development. [17]
One wonders: what happened to the "absolute" plane of consistency? And why is this a two-way passage now? One thing for sure: the way they formulate this relationship warns that we should not see it as a Hegelian relationship; that is, it is not a dialectical one but rather it has some affinities with a Bataillian relationship between a general and restricted economy, or shall we say, complementarity? Yet even so, one still wonders if one of these planes plays the role of a ground for the other—of which Deleuze in Difference and Repetition was severely critical. At this point, perhaps we should remember Bataille's reading of Hegel: his moves by means of which he eliminated the synthesis from Hegel and thus unravelled his thought of transgression. Can we say that a similar thing is happening here, leading any synthesis between general and restricted economy to an impossibility? Can we say that this relationship between two planes is not mimetic? Moreover, should we suspect that these two planes are put in a relationship of a model and a copy? Will the investigations of a dog reach a telos? Before deciding about these matters, let us see how Deleuze and Guattari theorise "becoming-woman," which I believe will throw light on these issues and open up for us a way to our theorisation of "becoming-queer," or "becoming-sexual of the sexual" without any synthesis, and thus towards a transgression—an impossibility based on a complementarity of the planes of consistency and of organisation.
[20] According to Deleuze and Guattari, the distinction between molecular and molar is layered onto either a rejecting or an accepting of imitation on the basis of a pre-existing model. Becoming-animal, becoming-child and becoming-woman are molecular becomings because they are not based on imitating such a model. If, therefore, woman, as defined by a certain form with organs and functions assigned to a certain subject, is a molar entity, becoming-woman is molecular because what it requires is not imitation. [18] Becoming-woman is rather "emitting particles that enter the relations of movement and rest, or the zone of proximity, of a microfemininity, in other words, that produce in us a molecular woman, create the molecular woman." [19] But, in the meantime, right in between these two quotations, they also add: "We are not, however, overlooking the importance of imitation, or moments of imitation among certain homosexual males, much less the prodigious attempt at a real transformation on the part of certain transvestites." [20] Strangely enough, although the transformation of the transvestite in question that they accept and promise not to overlook is based on imitation, its importance or its difference gets lost in the text and does not reappear. It is actually in relationship to this not reappearing I would like to raise the following questions: Do they think that the transvestite imitates the "woman" and thus fails to get into the process of becoming-woman? Or is the imitation assumed by the transvestite of a different order: a mimetic one without a model? In both cases, how do we know that he is imitating a woman, and where is this woman and why doesn't she appear as such?
[21] To produce answers to these questions, and also to force the crack to a widening, getting deeper down into the abyss, we should also consider the becoming-woman on the basis of the relationship between plane of consistency and plane of organisation. If, as Deleuze and Guattari say, the body is stolen from us "to fabricate opposable organisms," [21] it results from the preponderance of the plane of organisation over the plane of consistency. The form that we know as, and is signified by the term, "woman," is constituted by the man's stealing the girl's becoming from her, [22] and it is in that sense that the girl constitutes the first sex from whom things are stolen to model her in accordance with the male order upon a plane of organisation. Becoming-woman in this framework connotes a deterritorialisation from the plane of organisation to the plane of consistency, which is not based on any model. In other words, if the plane of consistency is the body without organs, the plane of organisation is the male organising principle which, stealing from the girl her becoming, also constitutes itself as man. And since the identity of this thief is determined by Deleuze and Guattari as man, there is no becoming-man for man. And they support their view by claiming that "'man' constituted a standard in the universe in relation to which men necessarily (analytically) form a majority." [23] Well, everything is fine here insofar as we are satisfied with an analytical determination of the majority as male. Or in other words, let us pretend that, as the male majority which has supposedly accepted being man as a given fact, we all represent the Franco Nero of Fassbinder's Querelle.
[22] However, if we don't accept it and moreover if we reject such a position (a clinical pervert who draws cocks on the walls as if to amplify his masochistic pleasure, his failure to celebrate his success of not-yet-being-a-"man"), and if we are still curious about this thief, we can still ask: doesn't this thief who steals from the girl her becoming also steal his becoming from the boy? And moreover, we can still ask: Who is this thief? And where is he? Don't Deleuze and Guattari presume here that man has completed his becoming-man not only as a statistical determination but also as a sexual becoming, a becoming-sexual?
[23] With these questions in mind, my aim is to shift the argument from analytical or statistical determination by means of which Deleuze and Guattari reserve no becoming-man to man to the question of sexual difference which concerns two basic sexes, simply, man and woman. Man analytically or statistically might have repressed woman and stolen her becoming from her, but there are also things stolen from boys so as to constitute man as such as an analytical majority. And I believe the identity of this thief—if there is one—can be used to answer our questions which have been proliferating in different directions in something of a hysterical fashion.
[24] First of all: as we have seen throughout this exposition, Deleuze and Guattari invite the thought of an opposing plane to the plane of consistency only after they express alarm at the impossibility of talking about form without a model. The plane of consistency, as they discuss it, constitutes a ground for the interaction between two planes; however, its nature should be thought not as a model preceding the forms that appear on the plane of organisation but rather as an image of thought which has no determining power. The difficulty of such a way of thinking, however—as I explained it elsewhere [24]—is not only theirs but also the flaw of thought in general: it is to think without Hegel, or to be able to think without turning the whole theory into a restricted economy. Actually, as we have witnessed before in Deleuze and Guattari, all emanates from our inability to conceive such a formless plane—an undifferentiated one—without considering something that precedes it as its model. And the plane of consistency—much against their theorisation—turns into a model for plane of organisation for the reasons that follow below.
[25] Let's go back to the discussion where "man" potentially becomes the "thief." As they argue, man steals from the girl her becoming, and in this framework, the girl is the first from whom becoming has been stolen. One of the most serious deductions we can draw from this moment in their text is that, in such a moment of stealing, Deleuze and Guattari presume that man as such has always already been formed. In other words, man, having always already been formed as such and at the same time constituting the plane of organisation according to a male principle, steals girl's becoming from her. But, at the moment of this stealing, another thing also happens: if the man is always already formed as "man," he without doubt owes it to the plane of consistency which he must have used as his model, as his rigid model of man—despite the apparent contradiction that the plane of consistency, according to their theory, cannot be used as a model and is formless. This must be so; otherwise man's coming into being as man cannot be explained, that is, without referring to a model. Despite this apparent contradiction, Deleuze and Guattari still insist on not giving the same quality to man so that he can also be seen in a becoming just as in becoming-woman. Moreover, when and how has man become man? For me, the main reason why Deleuze and Guattari cannot give man this quality is because no matter how much they insist on not having a model-copy relationship between the planes, there is actually a model-copy relationship between the two, and becoming-woman also obeys this determination, at the end of which both women and men will analytically be equalised. And if the nature of imitation of the transvestite does not reappear in their text, it is mainly because of this contradiction, which, if taken seriously, would reveal the fact that the becoming they are speaking of by not speaking of it is actually based on a mimetic order where both man and woman imitate something, something like a model which cannot be known as such. And if there's a thief in this sense, this thief becomes a thief not by stealing from the girl her becoming but by stealing the boy's becoming because he—as it were, with a capital H—is blinded by sexual difference, which shouldn't be reduced according to an analytical determination. [25]
[26] It is with reference to this theorisation that I will also claim that what is called becoming-woman in Deleuze and Guattari is always already determined even before one gets into the process of becoming-woman, stolen first by the male order, and then by this transcendental which never totally disappears from their discourse—the discourse which, much against their efforts, fails to preserve it as "undecidable." That is, the analytically obtained preponderance of man over woman cannot be obtained so easily when it comes to sexual difference because the analytical—as it does most of the time—blinds us to sexual difference which can neither be so easily appropriated or disappropriated. It is here at this point I am offering to widen and deepen the crack so that the undecidability between the sexes becomes visible: there is a certain crack between man and woman as far as the sexual difference between man and woman is concerned, yet that they are different means: neither sex originates from an essence; neither of them has an ultimate telos—except perhaps being in a continuous becoming, a becoming sexual of the sexual. And again, if the question of the transvestite doesn't reappear in the text, it is because s/he forces this undecidability to such an extreme that the absence of any essence or telos becomes so destructive, even putting at risk any attempt at theorisation.
[27] Let us imagine a complementary relationship between becoming-man and becoming-woman. . .
- where both boy's and girl's becomings never become what they are ...
- where "man" and "woman" will be conceived as the effects of unknowable efficacities ... just as the radicality of the transvestite's becoming-transvestite.
Should we call this plane the plane of becoming-queer? Or will it still be much too determining, given the fact that we are not talking about finite models? But is becoming-queer to talk about finite models? One wonders ...
[28] Wouldn't calling it a plane of becoming-queer turn it into an impossible project given the unknowability of what woman and man are?
[29] At this point perhaps we can think of another name for this plane: the plane of becoming-sexual of the sexual where that which is hidden behind the forms, behind "man" and "woman," behind sexual difference will never yield itself as a model ... but the difference will be the condition of continuous becomings—that is, sexually.
[30] And what is the name for this plane where the undecidable can be preserved as undecidable?
[31] And not because it is a defendable project but as an impossible project towards being imperceptible.
Notes
[1] A different and shorter version of this article was presented at the opening of the Queer Jubilee, Phag-Off, Rome, IT, 10 April 2007, and published as, "Divenire sessuale dell'identitá sessuale," (Tr. Francesco Warbear Macarone Palmieri), Liberazione, 8 Aprile 2007. A revised and larger version of it is forthcoming in Turkish in Tesmeralsekdiz: "Queer Issue: Taking from Behind," No: 2, Winter 2007.
My special thanks go to Dr. Lewis K. Johnson (Faculty of Communication, Bahcesehir University, Istanbul TR), for reviewing my manuscript and providing invaluable suggestions.
[2] Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense. Ed. Constantin Boundas. Tr. Mark Lester with Charles Stivale. London: Continuum, 2003, pp.158-9.
[3] The Logic of Sense, pp. 154-161.
[4] Actually Deleuze says the following: "I saw myself as taking an author from behind and giving him a child that would be his own offspring, yet monstrous. It was really important for it to be his own child, because the author had to actually say all I had him saying," in "Letter to a Harsh Critic," Negotiations. Tr. Martin Joughin. New York: Columbia U P, 1995, p. 6.
[5] Arkady Plotnitsky, The Knowable and the Unknowable, Ann-Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2002, p. 30 (K&U from now on).
[6] "For example, it may not be, and in Böhr's interpretation is not, possible to assign the standard attributes of the objects and motions of classical physics to the ultimate objects of quantum physics. It may no longer be possible to speak of objects or motions (such as particles, or waves, for example), which, however, does not imply that nothing exists or everything stands still" (K &U, p.3).
[7] K&U, p. 42.
[8] Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. A Thousand Plateaus. Tr. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987, p.257.
[9] A Thousand Plateaus, p. 238.
[10] A Thousand Plateaus, p. 238.
[11] A Thousand Plateaus, p. 239.
[12] A Thousand Plateaus, p. 240.
[13] "A multiplicity is defined not by its elements, nor by a centre of unification or comprehension. It is defined by the number of dimensions it has; it is not divisible, it cannot lose or gain a dimension without changing its nature." A Thousand Plateaus, p. 249
[14] A Thousand Plateaus, p. 251.
[15] A Thousand Plateaus, p. 259
[16] A Thousand Plateaus, p. 265
[17] A Thousand Plateaus, pp. 269-70.
[18] "What we term a molar entity is, for example, the woman as defined by her form, endowed with organs and functions and assigned as a subject. Becoming woman is not imitating this entity or even transforming oneself into it." A Thousand Plateaus, p. 275.
[19] A Thousand Plateaus, p. 275.
[20] A Thousand Plateaus, p. 275.
[21] "The question is fundamentally that of the body—the body they steal from us in order to fabricate opposable organisms. The body is stolen first from the girl [. . .] The girl's becoming is stolen first, in order to impose a history, or prehistory, upon her. The boy's turn comes next, but it is by using the girl as an example, by pointing to the girl as the object of his desire, that an opposed organism, a dominant history is fabricated for him." A Thousand Plateaus, p. 276.
[22] A Thousand Plateaus, p. 276.
[23] A Thousand Plateaus, p. 291.
[24] See my "Decalcomania, Mapping and Mimesis," Symploke, Volume 13, Numbers 1-2, 2006, University of Nebraska Press.
[25] On another level things can be summed up as follows: Initially it seems like the plane of consistency—since it is a "ground"—is offered by Deleuze and Guattari as an unbounded or infinite model on which plane of organisation organises forms and subjects. And, since the model is infinite it doesn't determine the forms as absolutes. However on a second look we can see, as we have seen before, how the multiplicities constituted on plane of consistency—although this is a plane of the undifferentiated—are determined by means of their numbers of dimension. It is actually this momentary reconciliation of shape and form—à la Leibniz—which puts forward the plane of consistency as an infinitely finite model acting behind the plane of organisation. Therefore, much against their critique formerly of the plane of organisation which, as they say, is based on a transcendental principle, the latter also becomes the principle of their theory where plane of consistency is turned into a transcendental behind the plane of organisation.