Deleuze, Guattari and India: Exploring a Post-Postcolonial Multiplicity [1 ed.] 1138607185, 9781138607187

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Endorsement Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of figures
Acknowledgements
List of contributors
Introduction: Deleuze, Guattari, and the invention of the ‘Indian diagram’
Assemblage: Greek Phalanx and Foucaldian Panopticon
Caste and diagram: two brahmin variations
Concepts as multiplicity
Deleuzian ontology: difference, events, and codes
Becoming minor/becoming political
Territorial multiplicities
Notes
References
Part I: Deleuzian ontology: Difference, events and codes
Chapter 1: Deleuzian ontology: Encounter and experimentation
The dogmatic image of thought and the problem of difference
The ‘Univocity of Being’: Dun Scotus, Spinoza and Deleuze
Transcendental empiricism and the virtual
From ontogenesis to plane of immanence
Assemblage and Deterritorialisation
References
Chapter 2: Virtual ontologies: Heidegger, Deleuze and the concept of the event (ereignis, événement) 1
Notes
References
Chapter 3: La Gestothèque in translation: From body techniques to technologies and back
Foreword
Introduction
Culture is not a text but a performance
What happens between the zero and the one?
From body techniques
Towards an archaeology of the gesture
Morphogenetics of theatre
Topology of performance
How does improvisation split the thread of tradition?
Theatre depicted as a communication model
The social life of gestures
The archive of gesture
To technologies
Ghost in the shell
Technology as a post-colonial criticism tool: on time scaling and gesture matter
And back
From a topological point of view to an atlas of gesture
Necropolitics and other perspectives
The gesture access to techno-criticism 19
The matter of gesture
Conclusion
Post-scriptum
Acknowledgment
Notes
References
Chapter 4: Hindustani Sangeet Paddhati and the problem of singularity: A Deleuzian point of view
On the problem of refrain
Elements in a series
‘Point of view’ or on the question of singularity
Notes
References
Part II: Becoming minor/becoming political
Chapter 5: Becoming minor: From literature to cinema
Against the metaphor
Against the interior life
Minor screens
‘The flagrant offence of making up legends’
Notes
References
Chapter 6: Desire, body and capitalism: Dalit literature and becoming political in a postcolonial world
Politics of postcoloniality and dalit literature
Becoming/possessing a body (or the biopolitics of citizenship)
Becoming dalit
Desire, postcoloniality and dalit literature
Becoming political
Capitalism and dalit literature
Conclusion
References
Chapter 7: The un/paralleled universe of Pramod Pati: Deleuzian reflections on Abid, Explorer and Trip
ABID: a rhizomic assemblage of difference
Explorer and psychotropic politics of time
Trip and motion in a deterritorialised landscape
Notes
References
Films
Chapter 8: Bodies, matter and memory: Enfolding and unfolding of virtual and actual experiences in Artist
Assemblage and differently-abled bodies
Virtual past and actual present
Enfolding and unfolding: the ceaseless flow of images
Rhizomatic relations in bodies
Laura marks’ aesthetics of enfolding and unfolding
Multiplicities in singularities and difference in repetition
Difference, disability and repetition
Analysis
Nonlinear temporalities in Artist
Beyond boundaries: Michael and bodies
Movement of bodies in the film Artist
Difference through repetition in Artist
Aesthetics of enfolding and unfolding in Michael and his paintings in the film artist
Conclusion
Note
References
Part III: Territorial multiplicities
Chapter 9: Can ‘territoriality’ be social?: Interrogating the ‘political’ of dalit social inclusion in India 1
Mapping dalit ‘territoriality’
Dalit territories and counter-cultures
Territorial sacralisation and dalit assertion
Dalit territories and the challenge of social mobility
Dalit territories and the ‘political’ of social inclusion
Notes
References
Chapter 10: Deleuze and the third gender identity in India
The third gender: issues at work and a general overview
The TG: a subcultural category?
Deleuze and the Indian context: the legal scenario
Destabilising hierarchies—a feminist analysis
The third gender with recourse to select Deleuzian and Guattarist concepts
Deterritorialisation
Becoming
Recent medical research and the third gender: further observations
Conclusion
Appendix
Notes
References
Chapter 11: Concepts, singularity and nation-ness: ‘Becoming-democratic’ and the question of the political
Notes
References
Chapter 12: Why Deleuze spoke so little about theatre?
Notes
References
Index

Citation preview

DELEUZE, GUATTARI AND INDIA

This book presents a pragmatic engagement between the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari and various facets of Indian society, culture and art. The universal appeal of the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari finds its due place in India with a set of innovative analyses and radical interpretations that reimagine India as a complex multiplicity. The volume brings together scholars from various disciplines and theoretical orientations to explore a wide range of issues and topics in contemporary India, like dalit and caste studies, nationalism, gender question, art and cinema, and so on under the rubric of Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy. This interdisciplinary book will be useful to scholars and researchers of philosophy, anthropology, cultural studies, sociology, postcolonial studies and South Asian studies. Ian Buchanan is Professor at Institute for Social Transformation, University of Wollongong, Australia. George Varghese K. is President, Deleuze & Guattari Studies in India Collective and former faculty at the Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities (MCPH), Manipal Academy of Higher Education, India. Manoj N.Y. is General Secretary, Deleuze and Guattari Studies in India Collective and Visiting Research Fellow at the Global Centre for Technology in Humanities, Kyung Hee University, South Korea.

‘This excellent collection of essays explores Indian cultural phenomena in the light of Deleuzian concepts and throws new light on aspects of Deleuze’s thought. The question “Why?” hovers over the collection: why Deleuze? Why India? Together the essays assembled here provide a compelling case for the fecundity of this encounter. They make essential reading for anyone interested in Deleuze, India and new developments in the humanities’. Paul Patton, Hongyi Chair Professor of Philosophy, Wuhan University, China ‘This is a thoughtful and scholarly volume, applying Deleuze and Guattari not in a blind manner but through a Deleuzo-Guattarian way of philosophizing which is critical and creative. Not only are essential concepts from Deleuze and Guattari clearly discussed but through their application to various dimensions of Indian social experiences, these concepts are further interpreted and enriched, thereby showing how Deleuzo-Guattarian thought is important for contemporary projects of comparative philosophy. It should be of great interest to all those who are struggling with finding new ­vocabulary for the changing contemporary world’. Sundar Sarukkai, Visiting Faculty, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and Founder Director, Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities, India

DELEUZE, GUATTARI AND INDIA Exploring a Post-Postcolonial Multiplicity

Edited by Ian Buchanan, George Varghese K. and Manoj N.Y.

First published 2022 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 selection and editorial matter Ian Buchanan, George Varghese K. and Manoj N.Y.; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Ian Buchanan, George Varghese K. and Manoj N.Y.to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-1-138-60718-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-10847-6 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-21733-6 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003217336 Typeset in Sabon by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)

CONTENTS

vii ix x

List of figures Acknowledgements List of contributors Introduction: Deleuze, Guattari, and the invention of the ‘Indian diagram’

1

GEORGE VARGHESE K. AND MANOJ N.Y.

PART I

Deleuzian ontology: difference, events and codes

19

  1 Deleuzian ontology: encounter and experimentation

21

GEORGE VARGHESE K.

  2 Virtual ontologies: Heidegger, Deleuze and the concept of the event (ereignis, événement)

48

MARC RÖLLI

  3 La Gestothèque in translation: from body techniques to technologies and back

60

ANNE DUBOS

  4 Hindustani Sangeet Paddhati and the problem of singularity: a Deleuzian point of view

89

VIBHUTI SHARMA

PART II

Becoming minor/becoming political

109

  5 Becoming minor: from literature to cinema

111

DANIELA ANGELUCCI

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  6 Desire, body and capitalism: dalit literature and becoming political in a postcolonial world

125

K.V. CYBIL

  7 The un/paralleled universe of Pramod Pati: Deleuzian reflections on Abid, Explorer and Trip

144

SILIKA MOHAPATRA

  8 Bodies, matter and memory: enfolding and unfolding of virtual and actual experiences in Artist

158

THEJASWINI J.C. AND M. SHUAIB MOHAMED HANEEF

PART III

Territorial multiplicities

179

  9 Can ‘territoriality’ be social? Interrogating the ‘political’ of dalit social inclusion in India

181

RONKI RAM

10 Deleuze and the third gender identity in India

199

ARNAB CHATTERJEE

11 Concepts, singularity and nation-ness: ‘becoming-democratic’ and the question of the political

218

SUBRO SAHA

12 Why Deleuze spoke so little about theatre?

238

JEAN-FRÉDÉRIC CHEVALLIER

251

Index

vi

FIGURES

  3.1 Scan of a notebook page © Dubos/Schechner, 2012 63   3.2 Kutiyattam performance, Kerala, India © Anne Dubos, 2015 65   3.3 & 3.4 Towards an archaeology of gesture, tools for analysis © Anne Dubos, PhD, 2013 67   3.5 D’Arcy Thompson, Transformation Theory, 1917. This theory, by simple deformation of the space allows us to go from a diodon to a moon fish 68   3.6 & 3.7 Interaction models, improvisation scene © Anne Dubos, PhD, 2013 71   3.8 Diagram showing the possible gesture repertoires for an actor while improvising © Anne Dubos, PhD, 2013 73   3.9 Cybernetic model, a performance based on a Shannon & Weaver design © Anne Dubos, PhD, 2013 74 3.10 Cybernetic model, the diversification of gestures repertoires in contemporary theatre practice © Anne Dubos, PhD, 2013 74 3.11 & 3.12 ‘Curving’, Improvisation Technologies © William Forsythe and Chris Ziegler: ZKM, 1999/ Graphics by Chris Ziegler (ZKM Karlsruhe) 75 3.13 & 3.14 Recording process, kinect & video © Anne Dubos & Pierre Gufflet, 2015 77 3.15 Time scaling for a data catalogue, a fieldwork notebook page © Anne Dubos 2015 78 3.16 Screenshot of the work in process © Anne Dubos & Pierre Gufflet, 2015 79   8.1 Enfolding-unfolding diagram (Authors) 165   8.2 Differently-abled Michael identifying the paint through smell (Screenshot from the movie Artist)171   8.3 Fine arts students creating portraits (Screenshot from the movie Artist)172   8.4 Michael’s paintings in his studio, created before he lost his eyesight (Screenshot from the movie Artist)173

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figures

  8.5 Fine arts college students creating sketches on a study trip (Screenshot from the movie Artist)174   8.6 Fine arts college students clicking pictures on their trip (Screenshot from the movie Artist)174   8.7 A visually impaired Michael using stencils to get an idea of shapes (Screenshot from the movie Artist)175   8.8 Michael trying to understand the shapes that he draws with stencils (Screenshot from the movie Artist)175

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book was made possible by the initiative of the Deleuze and Guattari Studies in India Collective (DGSIC), which aims to promote the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari in India. As a part of this attempt, a series of conferences were organised on an almost yearly basis from 2015 onwards. The papers collected here are mostly drawn from the second Deleuze and Guattari Studies in India conference held at Mumbai in 2017. This book is the second volume in the Deleuze and Guattari Studies in India series. The first volume was brought out in 2018 as a special edition of Deleuze Studies and was edited by Paul Patton and George Varghese K. As editors we are grateful for all the help we received in putting together this book and giving it a proper shape. The list of collaborators is a long one, especially from within the DGSIC, including international advisors, conference participants, local organisers, paper presenters and workshop participants. Particular thanks are due to Paul Patton, Daniel Smith, Kenneth Surin, Barbara Glowczewski, Janell Watson, Jeffrey Bell, Brian Massumi, Leonard Lawlor, Erin Manning, Anne Sauvagnargues, Emine Gorgul, Eva D. Bahovec, Tatsuya Higaki, Alex Taek-Gwang Lee and Meenu Gupta. The considerable help we received from A. Raghuramaraju and Sundar Sarukkai should be mentioned and acknowledged. From the publisher’s side, Shashank Sekhar Sinha, Publishing Director and Rimina Mohapatra, Publishing Manager of Routledge extended consistent support throughout the preparation of this volume, for which we are greatly indebted. Other in-house support from Routledge came from Antara Ray Chaudhary and Brinda Sen, who persistently followed up while the work was in progress. We are sincerely thankful for their intimations and reminders. Kartikeya Jain and Faustina Johnson happily undertook the much tedious job, especially in this pandemic times, of reading through and correcting the manuscript. They deserve our glowing gratitude.

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CONTRIBUTORS

Daniela Angelucci  is Associate Professor of Aesthetics at University Roma Tre in Rome, Italy. She is co-director of the Postgraduate course in Environ­ mental Humanities at University Roma Tre (Department of Philosophy and Department of Architecture). She is a member of the Scientific Committee of La Deleuziana; and managing editor of the journal Lebenswelt: Aesthetics and Philosophy of Experience. In 2016 she organised the 9th Deleuze Studies International Conference (11–13 July) and Deleuze Studies Camp (4–8 July) in Rome. Her published work includes L’oggetto poetico (2004); Filosofia del cinema (2013); Deleuze and the Concepts of Cinema (2014); Philosophical Essays on Nespolo’s Art and Cinema (with D. Dal Sasso, 2018), among others. Ian Buchanan  is Professor at the Institute for Social Transformation, University of Wollongong, Australia, and has published on a variety of subjects, including film, music, space, the internet and war, among others, across a range of disciplines, including literary studies, cultural studies, communications studies and philosophy. He is the author of the Oxford Dictionary of Critical Theory (2018) and the founding editor of the international journal Deleuze Studies. He is also the editor of four book series: Deleuze Connections, Critical Connections, Plateaus and Deleuze Encounters. Arnab Chatterjee  is Associate Professor of English at the Budge Budge Institute of Technology, Kolkata, India. He is the author of numerous research papers and is interested in gender identity and the way it intersects with the larger concerns of power, capital and glocal issues, and with Deleuzian and Guattarian parameters. He is also a prolific poet and has penned over nine volumes of poetry, the most recent being Footnotes of History: A Tale of the Mahabharata. Jean-Frédéric Chevallier is a theatre director, philosopher, holder of three master’s degrees and one doctorate. For two years, he was a lecturer at the Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris and for seven years he was a professor at the National University of Mexico. He has been a

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resident of West Bengal, India since 2008, where he co-directs, with his wife Sukla Bar, the non-profit organisation Trimukhi Platform and the bilingual journal Fabricate (Fabric of) Art. He is the author of Deleuze et le théâtre: Rompre avec la representation (2015, in French), El Teatro hoy: una tipologia possible (2011, in Spanish) and Deleuze from India (forthcoming in English). K.V. Cybil is Associate Professor at the Department of Humanistic Studies at IIT Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India. He has been associated with the Social Science Research Council, New York (2005), the Indian Council for Social Science Research, New Delhi (2012) and the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi (2013) as part of research fellowships. He is the editor of Social Justice: Interdisciplinary Inquiries from India (2019). Anne Dubos  is a Social Sciences Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS), Nantes, France. She first studied Anthropology, then obtained an MA in Political Sciences and Political Arts (SPEAP) at Sciences-Po Paris, under the supervision of Bruno Latour in 2011. Then she pursued and obtained her PhD in Social Anthropology from the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris in 2013, spending about four years in fieldwork experimentation in South India, collecting and analysing gestures in order to describe movement transmission in Indian theatres. She teaches at the École Nationale supérieure de création industrielle (ENSCI-Les Ateliers) and in the École des Mines de Paris (MINES ParisTech). In 2019, she won the ARCADI prize to develop the project Augmented Gestures which involves performing sound with sensors on stage. M. Shuaib Mohamed Haneef  is Assistant Professor in the Department of Electronic Media and Mass Communication, Pondicherry University, India. His areas of interest include digital media and culture studies, interactivity and agency, convergence practices, affect studies and game studies. He has recently worked on a major research project funded by UGC titled ‘Social Media Ethics: A Socio-technical Approach to the Making of Ethics Among Children and the Youth in Pondicherry and Tamilnadu’. He is also editor of the journal Communication and Culture Review. Manoj N.Y. is the general secretary of the Deleuze and Guattari Studies in India Collective (DGSIC) and was the convenor of the World Congress on Deleuze and Guattari 2020, held at Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi, India. He is Visiting Fellow at the Global Centre for Technology in Humanities, Kyung Hee University, South Korea. Formerly a fellow at Centro Incontri Umani Ascona, Switzerland, he is currently associated with an international research project ‘Critical Postmedia Studies in Asia’ in collaboration with Teikyo University, xi

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Japan and Kyung Hee University, South Korea. He is also a member of the Global Postmedia Research Network. Silika Mohapatra  is Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, India and previously taught at Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of Delhi. She pursued her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from St. Stephen's College, and went on to complete her MPhil at the University of Ottawa under the Canadian Commonwealth Scholarship. She received her PhD from the University of Delhi and her doctoral work is on Object-Oriented Ontology. She is the co-editor of the book Indian Political Thought: A Reader (2010), and the Managing Editor of the international journal Plurilogue. She is also an artist, photographer and graphic designer. Ronki Ram  is Dean (Arts Faculty) and Shaheed Bhagat Singh Chair Professor of Political Science at Panjab University, Chandigarh, India. He has also served as ICCR Chair Professor of Contemporary India Studies at Leiden University, Netherlands and at Ryukoku University, Japan. He is the author of two books in Gurmukhi script, various book chapters and has published articles in journals like Modern Asian Studies, Journal of Asian Studies and Asian Survey, among others. Marc Rölli  is Professor of Philosophy at the Academy of Fine Arts in Leipzig, Germany. Between 2008 and 2011, he was Adjunct Professor for Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Darmstadt, before being appointed Professor at the Department of Philosophy at Fatih University, Istanbul (2011–2015). During the fall term 2011/12, Rölli was Senior Fellow at the Internationales Kolleg für Kulturtechnikforschung und Medienphilosophie (IKKM) in Weimar, Germany. Since 2013, he has been director of the research cluster ‘Theory and Methods’ at Zurich University of the Arts. His recent publications include Gilles Deleuze’s Transcendental Empiricism: From Tradition to Difference (2016), translated by Peter Hertz-Ohmes, and Intrinsic Logic of Design (2016), coedited with Gerhard M. Buurman. Subro Saha  is an international PhD Fellow at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry and is currently completing his doctoral dissertation on caste, materiality and reading from Utrecht University, Netherlands. He is also Assistant Professor at the Amity Institute of English Studies and Research, Amity University Kolkata. Working in the areas of materiality, body and caste, he has delivered many plenary talks in universities, such as the University of Zurich, the University of Malta, Utrecht University, Presidency University and the West Bengal State University. Some of his more recent writings are either published or forthcoming in renowned journals, including Critical Horizons, Journal for Cultural Research, antae, Caste: A Global Journal of Social Exclusion, Sanglap, among

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others. He has received an ‘Honorable Mention’ twice, in 2019 and 2021, for the Bluestone Rising Scholar Award of Brandeis University. Vibhuti Sharma  is an independent researcher who completed her PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies from the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India in 2017. Her PhD thesis, ‘Bhatkhande and the Notion of Abstraction: Critique of a Scientific Consciousness’, explores the development and limits of artistic consciousness informed by a certain scientific impulse in the context of Indian modernity. She has been working on the philosophical and historical ramifications of the relation between science and aesthetics, particularly in the domain of music. Thejaswini J.C.  is a full-time research scholar at the Department of Electronic Media and Mass Communication, Pondicherry University, India. Her research interests include digital art, affective experiences and phenomenology. She has presented papers in national and international conferences. Her doctoral research plan is to understand the affective experiences and intensities engendered during one’s interactions with digital art and installations. George Varghese K. is former faculty at the Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities (MCPH), Manipal University, India. He is the president of the Deleuze and Guattari Studies in India Collective (DGSIC). He has published on the anthropology of Syrian Christians and Viswakarma community of Kerala, including Swarna Keralam: Jathi Prathisandhiyum Agolavatkaranavum (2006). He is the editor (with Paul Patton) of ‘Deleuze in India’ (2018), a special issue of Deleuze and Guattari Studies, and is presently working on a book on Deleuze and anthropology of gold in Kerala.

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INTRODUCTION Deleuze, Guattari, and the invention of the ‘Indian diagram’ George Varghese K. and Manoj N.Y.

This book’s title, Deleuze, Guattari and India: Exploring a Post-Postcolonial Multiplicity, requires some clarification. What is noticeable in the contemporary world is the emergence and phasing out of historical stages at a faster pace than ever in history. The ‘post’, which is the general marker of this phenomenon at present, gets tagged to a wide repertoire of realities that range from literary theory and philosophy to environment and the Anthropocene, not to say economics and politics. Post-humanism, post-modernism, postindustrialism, post-naturalism, post-capitalism, post-colonialism, etc. were all exciting constructions until recently, but only to succumb to rapid expiry amidst the speedy and tumultuous order of things in the world. Hence an extra ‘post’ gets added to the erstwhile ‘postcolonialism’, a concept that was popularly and justifiably used to analyze the post-independent colonies of the Western powers, of which India is a prominent example. The ‘post-postcolonial India’, therefore, represents a new historical phase, as Jean-Luc Racine argues: … but India has clearly entered a new historical phase. From 1947 to the 1980s, it was a post-colonial country, cast in the mould thoughtfully crafted by Jawaharlal Nehru and set on its way, though in slow motion. Today, India is a post-post-colonial country, whose decision-makers believe that the Nehruvian paradigm has to be adjusted to new realities. They have not forgotten the past or its legacy, but they have begun to look with a renewed confidence to the future of a ‘resurgent India’. They believe that globalization is more of an opportunity than a challenge. (Racine 2008: 65) The essays in this book occupy this post-postcolonial milieu of resurgent India and try to respond to certain issues and problems intrinsic to it. The areas they address are diverse, from literature and cinema to dalit and gender identities. Perhaps the uniqueness of their approach is their common theoretical affiliation to the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari. Given the wide impact of Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy around the world, and DOI: 10.4324/9781003217336-1

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G e org e V argh e s e K . and M anoj N . Y .

despite its influence across various disciplines, we still find a major lack of its presence in India. It is not only seminal theoretical works that are lacking in this interface, but even general or introductory volumes. In this context, it must be noted that a serious step in popularising Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy in India was taken up by the Deleuze and Guattari Studies in India Collective (DGSIC) since 2015, through their annual conferences, publications and periodic workshops. This volume is an attempt to supplement the overall DGSIC initiative to promote Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy in India. Introductions to edited volumes generally follow the main ideas in the individual essays with a theoretical gloss and a brief summary of contents at the end. We are forced to tilt from this path here, since certain extratextual and extra-theoretical issues are involved, which we briefly referred to above. The philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari is introduced in India for the first time in a serious way with this volume, along with the preceding volume in the series and that of the comparative and critical approach of Raghuramaraju (2019).1 As the saying goes, the new is always ugly. That encumbers us to clarify certain points about Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy, its potential and destiny in India. First, there is a general lack of clarity in India about what Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy is and its radical difference. Second, owing to the perception that it is too abstract and removed from empirical reality, the considerably myopic question of why it should be read in India and what the modality of its application should be is uncomfortably thrown at specialists and lovers of this philosophy. Third, perhaps the most serious concern, is the general scepticism about the application of Western concepts and paradigms in India, which is still considered to be a form of colonialism by other means. So, this introduction is strategised in such a way that it addresses these problems and questions. Though Deleuze and Guattari are against metaphysical transcendence and ontological universals, their philosophy reveals a voracious probe-head that spares nothing under the sun to be subjected to philosophical thinking. Hence, their untiring ransacking of diverse and even unlikely fields like anthropology, embryology, metallurgy, geology, music, mathematics and so on, for the extraction of philosophical concepts. Deleuze, as Badiou points out, is a ‘thinker-of-all’, in the tradition of the pre-Socratics: Yes, Deleuze will prove to have been our great physicist: he who contemplated the fire of the stars for us, who sounded the chaos, took the measure of inorganic life, and immersed our meagre circuits in the immensity of the virtual. It may be said of him that he did not support the idea that ‘the great Pan is dead’. (Badiou 2000: 100.2) Deleuze and Guattari’s cosmic vision prevents their system from being tethered to a narrow Eurocentric pole or prejudiced disciplinary positions. 2

INTRODUCTION

On the other hand, their philosophy is about flows and rhizomic connections which are unbounded and planetary. Hence, though they have not directly worked on India, the inexhaustible potential of their system could be usefully articulated in understanding India. We have already listed three issues in this regard. In the following part we will tentatively engage with those issues by expanding on two concepts of Deleuze and Guattari: (1) diagram or abstract machine; (2) concepts. Let us start by looking into the diagram/abstract machine.

Assemblage: Greek Phalanx and Foucaldian Panopticon Abstract machine or diagram is an operator behind the ‘deterritorialisa­ tions’ and ‘becomings’ of assemblages. So, what is an assemblage for Deleuze and  Guattari? Assemblages are wholes formed of a particular organisa­ tional principle. The concept of whole that was prevalent in philosophy and the social sciences for a long time was modelled on the organism. It stood for a whole with a certain number of well-defined constituents which are mutually dependent. The whole is marked by relations of interiority. Assemblages, on the other hand, are wholes characterised by relations of exteriority. This means that the constituents in a whole need not be comple­ mentary, and they could be detached and plugged into a different assem­ blage in which its nature of interaction is different (DeLanda 2006: 10). Deleuze gives a pointed definition of assemblage as a ‘[M]ultiplicity which is made up of many heterogeneous terms and which establishes liaisons, relations between them, across ages, sexes and reigns—different natures’ (Deleuze and Parnet 1987: 69). What is crucial to note in this context is that the assemblage transgresses the logic of established dualisms of philosophy and social sciences, like nature-culture, human-animal, mind-body, etc. (Deleuze 2006: 179). On the other hand, assemblages function through symbiosis and disjunctive synthesis, by which any domain can be freely con­ nected to any other. A musical composition can be linked to a bird’s singing, a particular hour of the day is connected to vampire tales, the sexuality of a plant gets coupled with an animal’s dietary behavior and so on. Assemblages are constantly transformed, and this process Deleuze and Guattari call ‘deterritorialisation’ and ‘becoming’. But there is a force or operator behind such transformations, which is called the ‘abstract machine’ or ‘diagram’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 510). The abstract machine pilots the passage of components between different assemblages. For example, the colours and sounds that mark the territorial assemblage of a bird can get deterritorialised and move to the sexual or courtship assemblage with a different function. As such, abstract machines are not formed of substances or formalised functions like that of the assemblages. Instead they consist of ‘unformed matters’ and ‘nonformal functions’, which, in turn, make them abstract and virtual (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 511). An abstract machine 3

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… is defined by its informal functions and matter and in terms of form makes no distinction between content and expression, a discursive formation and a non-discursive formation. It is a machine that is almost blind and mute, even though it makes others see and speak. (Deleuze 1988: 34) An important example Deleuze gives for the functioning of an abstract machine is the prison assemblage/dispositif of Foucault. First of all, how does Foucault’s prison become an assemblage? Foucault’s analysis of the prison in Discipline and Punish falls into a neo-Kantian logic, Deleuze observes. For Kant, knowledge is on the side of the subject and it is a transcendental synthesis articulated through a priories of space and time and categories. It is a form of interiority par excellence. Since the conditions of knowledge are predetermined, knowledge is not a real experience, but only a possible one. Foucault upturns this schema. For him, knowledge is on the side of the object and is a real experience articulated through an a posteriori synthesis. Hence his objects of knowledge become real historical formations like dispositifs of clinic, asylum, prison etc. What is notable in Foucault’s analysis is that he approaches these formations in a Kantian manner as a synthesis, but this synthesis comprises two asymmetric axes: the visible and the articulable (Deleuze 2006: 245–6). Contra Kant, Foucault becomes the philosopher of the exteriority or the outside (Deleuze 1988: 60). Let us come back to the prison here. Prison as a carceral architecture is formed matter which is visible. But the material prison is dependent on the penal law for its functioning. The latter provides prisoners, which, in turn, become the content of the prison. Penal law is a set of linguistic statements or utterances. What Foucault argues is that the visible material prison and the linguistically expressed law have no natural connection. They have different content and expression as well as genealogies and paths of evolution. Their coming together in the 19th-century prison was only coincidental. For Deleuze, this relation between two heterogeneous strands in the same apparatus makes it an assemblage. Ian Buchanan, in an influential book on assemblage published recently, gives another telling example of the interconnection of asymmetric components in the assemblages. Drawing from A Thousand Plateaus, he expands on the assemblage of phalanx, a strategic military formation in the hoplite warfare of the ancient Greeks (Buchanan 2021: 31–33; Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 398–99). Hoplites were citizen-soldiers of the ancient Greek city-states armed with spears, shields, daggers and chest plates. When the soldiers were fewer in number, they were encouraged not to act individually, but in group in the form of a phalanx. The soldiers stayed together closely and created an integrated formation. There are many combinations of such phalanxes with differing numbers of 8, 16, 32 etc. The phalanx resembled an oversized organism that moved deftly through the battlefield, effectively pushing into the enemy lines. Buchanan analyses this formation as an assemblage and 4

INTRODUCTION

calls it an ‘event’, or, more precisely,, ‘several events ramifying one another’. Phalanx, according to him, should be understood as a performative since there are strict rules of behavior to be followed if the assemblage has to be successful. Each individual has to sacrifice his free mobility, stake his life for the one staying behind, and should be ready to step into the place if the one in front falls. If the phalanx as a moving formation is a machinic assemblage of different components like the human, the spear, dagger, the shield etc., it is connected to a collective assemblage of enunciation at another level which Buchanan specifies as militarism. As he clarifies: The first one was the class of content (the phalanx), whereas this is the class of expression (militarism). It has different components, such as courage, honour, valour and discipline and a different hierarchy of values such as the willingness to kill or die for a compatriot and a cause versus self-protection and self-interest, and so on. It is impossible to say which comes first, the phalanx or the conquering intent … an assemblage of bodies and weapons on the one hand and an assemblage of imperial ambition and militaristic society on the other. But what we can say is that something = x – a unifying force, let’s say – is required to bring these two different orders together. (Buchanan 2021: 32) Again, assemblages are never stable formations and they get deterritorialised as time passes. This deterritorialisation is effectuated through the operation of an ‘abstract machine’ or ‘diagram’. Deleuze speaks pointedly of the abstract machine in his work on Foucault. What operates as the abstract machine/diagram in the prison is ‘Panopticon’. The Panopticon is a social technology of ‘seeing without being seen’. In the case of the prison, it functions through a specific architectural arrangement that enables the warden to surveil the prisoners in the cells without them being able to see him. Panopticon as a diagram does not limit itself to the prison, but is coextensive with the whole of the social field. It is a specific strategy ‘to impose a particular conduct on a particular multiplicity’; and as a diagram it can be detached from one substance or multiplicity and plugged onto another (Deleuze 1988: 34, 72). So, for Deleuze, the same diagram of Panopticon moves into other assemblages like the school, factory, asylum or military with due changes in the mode of its effectuation. This change owes to the difference in the material composition of the assemblages. Society, from the viewpoint of assemblage and the abstract machine, becomes a fluid force-field in which the mechanisms of one assemblage move to another, not in a random logic, but as mutations effected by abstract machines. Society, thus, becomes a diagrammatic composition of flows, connections and networks, in which abstract machines move from one node to the other, undoing and recomposing each one. This repudiates society conceived as a structuralist whole, dialectical class formation, or 5

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elite-versus-subaltern model. Instead, it becomes a field that strategises. The strategy of forces that operate in society should be distinguished from the stratification of forms (Deleuze 2006: 249–50). Diagrams of discipline or sovereignty have many forms that change with society. For Western society, two important models that preceded the 19thcentury Panopticon were the Greek diagram of the ancient city-states and the Christian diagram of the Middle Ages. The Greek diagram was a complex one of subjectivation with a peculiar relation between the inside and the outside. It was articulated through the concept of Enkrateia, which means ‘a power exercised over oneself in the power one exercises over others’ (Deleuze 2006: 257). The question is: how could one rule others if one cannot rule oneself? This forms the core of a diagram that circulated with due mutation in the other facets of Greek life such as politics, family, eloquence, games and even virtue, similar to the panoptic diagram of Foucault. Historically, the Greek diagram got mutated and found a new expression in the pastoral diagram of Christianity in the Middle Ages (Deleuze 2006: 251).

Caste and diagram: two brahmin variations The question that remains to be asked now is whether there is an ‘Indian diagram or abstract machine’ in the Greek technology-of-self sense or European panoptic sense? The answer is, definitely, yes. There are a prolific number of such diagrams present in the Indian milieu, as typical of any ancient civilisation. But if there is a master diagram that has shown terrible durability and tenacious conservatism in India, it is the caste diagram. Louis Dumont’s classic study of the Indian caste system, Homo Hierarchicus (1988), has brought out the profound nuances involved in this diagram and the varying forms of assemblages to which it has given rise. The structural method through which he unknots its metaphysical intricacies and social complexities is a variant of the Levi-Straussian structuralism, modified by the concepts of value, hierarchy and encompassment (Graeber 2001: 16–18). Diagrams also get mutated and deterritorialised. ‘One of the more original aspects of the diagram is its being a place of mutations’ (Deleuze 2006: 251). The Dumontian study of caste analyses it as a whole composed of hierarchical and encompassing caste strata whose underlying thread is the purity-pollution opposition. The brahmin and the untouchable are the polar limits of this whole with other intermediary castes placed in between. According to the purity-pollution principle, the brahmin is the purest and the untouchable the most defiled, between whom no transaction or communication is warranted. Sundar Sarukkai approaches this problem differently from the established sociological/anthropological analyses, giving a philosophical twist to the stratification thesis (Sarukkai 2009: 39). In his paper titled ‘The Phenomenology of Untouchability’ (2009), he argues that the untouchability maintained towards the lower castes is only a mutation that occurred to an original brahmin diagram. The original untouchable 6

INTRODUCTION

was the brahmin himself. Untouchability organised the interior scape of the brahmin caste which was paradigmatic of the general model that emerged later. Within the brahmin caste untouchability was a positive value and a sacred principle. Accordingly, the purest and the highest in the hierarchy, the Acharya, was the most untouchable and the other inferior rungs were ordered according to their degree of purity (Sarukkai 2009: 46–7). Later this diagram got deterritorialised from the brahmin caste and duly reterritorialised on the untouchables. Sarukkai argues that, through this movement, the untouchable lower caste was made a Derridean ‘supplement’ to the brahmins. To draw a modern metaphor, the whole movement was an ‘outsourcing’ of impurity by brahmins to the untouchables (Sarukkai 2009: 39). The caste diagram shows other mutations as well. If Sarukkai takes as an example the case of Tamil brahmins (from the Ramanuja tradition) primarily, then Kerala, the adjacent state, reveals another interesting variation (Varghese 2003: 4798). The caste in question is the middle-order artisan caste, namely, the Visvakarmas. Kerala as a whole demonstrates an extreme variation of the caste diagram through the practice of what is termed ‘distance pollution’, which was in vogue until around the 1940s. In this mutated regional form, physical touch is not needed to pollute the brahmin; the lower castes only need to cross a spatial threshold that encircles the brahmin to defile him. With the brahmin forming the solar centre, the warrantable proximity of lower castes to him was fixed according to each caste’s degree of purity. The Nair caste was allowed to come up to 7 feet from the brahmin, Ezhava up to 32 feet, the Visvakarmas up to 24 feet, and so on. The most polluted castes, such as Cheruman, have to keep at least 64 feet and beyond. The interesting aspect of this cartography was that it was not an ‘untouchable’ order only, but an ‘unseeable’ one as well. The Nayadi caste was never supposed to come within visibility of the brahmin. They had to hide behind the bushes or hole up in the wayside pits when the brahmin made his sacred ride through the public roads (Hutton 1969: 80). C.J. Fuller finds the numerically precise layout of caste anomalous and impractical. Nobody can walk around with exact footrules in mind. In fact, the distances relate to places or nodes of importance like the gate of the house, the courtyard or the first step on the verandah. This map also stipulated the distance to be maintained between the other castes, which was deduced from the general model (Fuller 1976: 43). Here touch, which is the critical interpretive category in Sarukkai’s analysis, transcends to assume a more intensified and vicious virtual form. Meanwhile, the Visvakarma artisan caste in Kerala occupied a relatively advantageous point in the pollution-purity map, stipulated to stay at least 24 feet away from the brahmin. More interestingly, the Visvakarmas themselves completely dismiss the caste model which places the brahmin at the top, and instead advance their own alternate caste diagram. According to their genealogy and origin myth, the Vedic conception of the universe was different from the later brahminic version. It was called ‘Visvabrahmam’ 7

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and created by Visvakarma, the demiurge of Brahma, the creator-god. The number ‘five’ was the axial organising principle of this diagram. Accordingly, the cosmos was organised on the principle of five or ‘pancha’. Brahma originally had five faces. He created five groups of the artisan community. There were originally five Vedas, with Pranava Veda being the last one. There were five qualities (panchaguna), five musical instruments (panchavadyam), five practices of Ayurvedic medicine(panchakarma), five diamonds (pancharatna), five sorrows (panchadukham) and so on (Varghese 2003: 4798). Finally, the Visvakarmas, originally called ‘Visvabrahmins’, constituted the fifth caste above the other four ones. But their glory ended with the rise of the present-day brahmins, through the machinations of the sage Vasistha in collusion with a late Vedic king called Sudasana. As a result, the caste diagram based on the principle of five was truncated and replaced by an order based on the principle of four (chatur). Firstly, they chopped off the fifth face of Brahma. From the four parts of his body, four varnas were born. Four dharmas, four arts, four ages, four directions, four crafts, and so on, resulted from this construal. Even the cow came to be worshipped this way, since it has four legs. Finally, the five Vedas were reduced to four, after deleting the Pranava Veda. And the Visvabrahmins, who were the fifth and uppermost caste, were pushed down to the limbo of the untouchables (Varghese 2003: 4797–8). Though the Visvakarma community is present all throughout India, there are variations of intensity in their caste diagram from region to region. Their primordial brahminism and its glory are ardently championed by the Tamil groups in South India, who are also spread out in Kerala. Other castes are sceptical about their claim to brahminism since many of them eat meat and drink alcohol, which is against the brahminic regimen of vegetarianism. Sometimes their reaction to brahmins appear to be absurd, whom some of the diehard Visvakarmas consider a polluting caste. If a brahmin happens to visit their home, they sprinkle a mixture of water and cow dung in the place where he sat after he takes leave. The cow dung and water mixture is considered to be a potent anti-pollutant by Hinduism.2 It is not only the brahmins they consider to be a polluting caste, but some of their fraternal kin as well. For that matter, certain immigrant Tamil Visvakarma goldsmiths in Kerala until recently held their Malayali counterparts as a polluting jati (Theendal Thattan). They refused to take food from them and also found them unfit for entering into marital alliances (Kramrisch 1983: 61; Varghese 2006: 91–2). Like the Greek and European diagrams, the caste diagram, which has been central to Indian ethos throughout all history, has exercised a pervasive influence. Almost everything in the purview of human life like flora, fauna, metals, precious stones, food, daily working hours, crafts, body, colours, geographical regions, directions, rivers, celestial bodies, medicinal herbs and so on are hierarchically graded in terms of purity and pollution central to the caste system. But with modernity, many mutations and 8

INTRODUCTION

reterritorialisations have also occurred. Colonialism and modernity have become two powerful influences (or two diagrams even) that have made serious mutations to this master diagram. Though they have brought in new technologies, new politics and new worldviews, the caste diagram has proven flexible enough to modify itself and successfully reterritorialise upon them. Or, as facts stand, one could also argue that the caste diagram is the dominant mode which has successfully mutated the Western dispensations within its own territory.

Concepts as multiplicity The second aspect of Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy which we want to emphasise in the context of India is their analysis of concepts. For Deleuze and Guattari, philosophy is not about contemplation, reflection or communication, which are established assumptions about the discipline, but about the creation of concepts (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 6). The act of creation is very important, since it is different from invention, fabrication or discovery of forms. Again, the concepts created should always be new. Nietzsche was right when he said that philosophers must no longer accept concepts as a gift, but must make and create their own. They must distrust the concepts not created by them (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 5). Every concept has multiple components and is a ‘multiplicity’. It has an irregular contour defined by the sum of its components, which, in turn, cut and cross-cut each other. A concept is a whole because it totalises its components, but at the same time it is a fragmentary whole as well (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 15). A concept is not a sterile representation, but an intensive multiplicity. Therefore, it becomes a matrix of coincidence, accumulation and condensation of its components. A ‘conceptual point’ constantly traverses these components, both rising and falling within them. It turns out to be a moving equilibrium of differentials. The contrast with science is clear in the case of concepts. Unlike science, there are neither constants nor variables in concepts. We do not isolate a variable species for a constant genus or a constant species for variable individuals. The concept’s components are neither constants nor variables but only pure and simple variations. They are processual and modular rather than constant and extended. For example, the concept of a bird is not derived out of its genus or species but in the composition of its features like posture, colour, singing, movement etc. The bird becomes an ‘Event’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 20). The creation of concepts does not have a set formula or procedure. Sometimes entirely new concepts are constructed, at other times, old ones are reinvented and modified. Univocity or difference are concepts drawn from philosophy itself, which are given a new function in Deleuze’s system. On the other hand, many novel concepts are drawn from other disciplines and reworked. Desiring-machines, intensive spatium, plateau, Body without Organs (BwO), nomadology, smooth space, war machine etc. are notions 9

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drawn from other fields and reconstructed as philosophical concepts. As an example, we may look into the concept of ‘schizophrenia’ in Anti-Oedipus which is explained by Eugene Holland. Originally from psychiatry, this concept was drawn to constitute one pole of the economic, cultural and libidinal dynamics of capital. The other pole is designated by paranoia. Schizophrenia articulates the mode of psychic and social functioning which is both produced and repressed by capitalism. There is a bivalence immanent here. In its positive form, schizophrenia becomes a practice that enables the humans to release the unrealised potentials of joy and creativity that are innate to the psyche. But once the ‘process’ of creative flow is arrested and repressed—which is what capitalism does—schizophrenia becomes an ‘entity’, represented by the madman. Again, concepts can also get deterritorialised and reterritorialised through a unique process in the DeleuzoGuattarian plateau. For example, fascism becomes a psychological concept instead of a political and historical one, while, on the other hand, schizophrenia and paranoia from psychiatry become political terms in their schizoanalysis (Holland 1999: x). Philosophical concepts can be created from any possible domain or discipline. Some of Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts are drawn from ethology, topology, science, embryology, geology, metallurgy, arts and even military science. Cinema becomes another improbable area from which Deleuze has created concepts. The cinema books illustrate Deleuze’s practice of philosophy as a form of concept-testing. He concedes that the cinema books provide a theory of cinema which is not about cinema, but about the concepts that cinema is capable of generating, which, in turn, are related to other concepts belonging to other practices (Taylor 2013: 43). To quote Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta, the translators of Deleuze’s Cinema 2: The Time-Image, … Deleuze does not set out to provide another theory of the cinema. His project is a philosophical one. Philosophy itself is not a reflection on an autonomous object but a practice of creation of concepts, a constructive pragmatism. This is a book of philosophical invention, a theory of cinema as conceptual practice. It is not a question of ‘applying’ philosophical concepts to the cinema. Philosophy works with the concepts which the cinema itself gives rise to. (Tomlinson and Galeta 1989: xv) Here a fair question emerges. What sort of encounter is DeleuzoGuattarian philosophy capable of making with India so that new concepts can be created from it? In the present scenario of global divisions like North-South, Orient-Occident, Third World-First World, DevelopedUnderdeveloped etc., such a tryst must appear dubious. But any form of malice or suspicion towards Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy is unfounded since it holds the proven credential of being highly critical of the 10

INTRODUCTION

conservative trends in Western philosophy and the imperialist tendencies of Western politics. Moreover, the system as such is against molar regimes of power, striated categorisations of culture and narrow notions about gender. Their effort had always been to disrupt the established binaries that have governed Western culture by counterposing rhizomic linkages, molecular becomings and nomadic thinking (Coleman and Ringrose 2013: 15). Concepts and concept-creation also tune up with their nomadic thinking and molecular becoming. As we saw above, the concept of a bird is not derived from its set attributes classified under the species, but from the synesthetic intermingling of its qualities like colour, sound, posture etc. as an event. Again, being events, concepts are expressional configurations that undergo becoming. Becoming, for Deleuze and Guattari, is not something achieved by imitating somebody or some process, or accomplished through conforming to a model. It is neither resemblance, imitation, nor identification (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 237). Instead it is a ‘double-capture’. … it is not one term which becomes the other, but each encounters the other, a single becoming, which is not common to the two, since they have nothing to do with one another, but which is between the two, which has its own direction, a bloc of becoming, an a-parallel evolution … (Deleuze and Parnet 1987: 6–7) Becoming is something that occurs beyond the two terms that are coming together and moving in an entirely different direction. This becomes important in the relation between India and Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy visà-vis concepts. It is not the case of a set of reified Western concepts being applied unilaterally to an entirely different socio-cultural space. Rather, it is a process of co-creation of concepts and mutually complementary philosophical practice. From this perspective, the association of DeleuzoGuattarian philosophy and Indian thought and social space does not become a form of imitation, resemblance or even correspondence, but rather the creation of something new, which is completely outside both, and pivoted on a process of becoming. The essays in this volume are singular projects posited in such a third and in-between space which is outside both the Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy and the Indian ethos. What is attempted above is a brief sketch of a potentially fruitful association between the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari and India. The dimensions discussed in this regard, viz. diagram and concept, could be claimed to have untangled two important nodes to some extent. While the diagram explores an indigenous institution like caste, the concept articulates the wider issue of the legitimacy of a Western philosophy being associated with Indian society and ethos. The latter question becomes crucial as it is posited at the matrix of a set of molar polarities like the West versus the East, Eurocentrism against indigeneity, First World contra the Third World etc. 11

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However, while recognising the facticity of such dichotomies, an attempt is also made to overcome them and open a space of ‘in-betweenness’ which is on neither side. This space is the space of becoming, which expedites the fight against intransigent syndromes like race, class, gender, nation-hood and all that can be placed under this decadent genus. Both this book as a whole and the individual essays in it harbour the spirit of becoming and difference, while also echoing the omnivorous exploratory dynamics of Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy. There is a wide range of areas traversed, including cinema, literature, gender stratification and so on. There are three papers that are not directly related to India, but form a theoretical prologue to the Deleuzo-Guattarian framework. Arranging them into a sequence was another challenge before us. The obvious approach in this regard is to arrange the chapters under themes like politics, art, theatre, literature, gender etc. But a more useful option, we are convinced, is to go by the logic of the concept itself, which is fundamental to Deleuzo-Guattarian thought. So, here we experiment with a new cartography of mapping the papers into different conceptual clusters. They are enumerated as follows.

Deleuzian ontology: difference, events, and codes George Varghese’s chapter, titled ‘Deleuzian Ontology: Encounter and Experimentation’, is an introductory analysis of Deleuzian ontology. Though Deleuze addressed wide range of domains, disciplines and philosophers, the core of his ontology is explicated in Difference and Repetition (1968) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980), with Anti-Oedipus (1972) forming a bridge text between them. The author closely examines the transformation of Deleuzian ontology through these texts, with specific emphasis on the configurations of concepts and their becomings. The analysis starts with Deleuze’s critical encounter with the earlier philosophy and ends with the concepts of topological multiplicities and assemblages. Marc Rölli’s, ‘Virtual Ontologies’, revolves around the theory of event, which forms Deleuze’s central argument in his magnum opus, Difference and Repetition, against the dogmatic image of thought steeped in the representational structure. The theory of ‘event’ becomes pivotal to Deleuze’s concept of ‘transcendental empiricism’, which reconstitutes ontology in terms of the virtual and the actual. The virtual, in turn, exists as a set of differentials charged with an uncontainable intensity. The intensive nature of virtual differentials makes them ‘events’ and their knowledge becomes ‘sense’, instead of representation. To experience the virtual as event, one needs to step back from the actual to the virtual, or, in Deleuze’s terms, to ‘counter-effectuate’ the actual. In her chapter titled ‘La Gestothèque in Translation: From Body Techniques to Technologies and Back’, Anne Dubos encounters the necessity of creating 12

INTRODUCTION

new tools for archiving gestures without fossilising them, in the context of trans-media installations which combine traditional and digital experimentation in the arts. This probe into the vernacular taxonomy and organisation of gestures in Indian theatre and their sustenance over the years invokes the Deleuzian concept of ‘code graft’ in its back and forth (involution and evolution) movement from body techniques to technologies. Based on the division of analogue and digital as proposed by Gregory Bateson in terms of expression and language, the author proposes that the grafting of digital code (Natyashastra) to the analogic (expressions) can augment the performance (Kathakali), contribute to the life, circulation and survival of gestures, and facilitate the creation of innovative designs and techno-human interfaces. A Deleuzian reading of the scientificity of Hindustani classical music is attempted by Vibhuti Sharma in her essay titled ‘Hindustani Sangeet Paddhati and the Problem of Singularity’. Exploring the Deleuze-FoucaultBoulez triad, the author critically interrogates Vishnu Narayan Bhatkande’s attempt to systematise the Hindustani musical system, from the vantage point of music as an intensity, which cannot be reduced to any representation or identity principle. The task of ordering musical knowledge (Paddhati) falls into the philosophical problem of explication of the genesis of method, complicating the method and system division. She uses the Deleuzian concept of refrain to explain the ordering of musical knowledge in terms of organisation (marking out its territory) and repetition. The article reveals the productive unconscious which is at work behind any attempt of systematisation, revealing the differential logic of repetition itself.

Becoming minor/becoming political In her contribution, ‘Becoming Minor: From Literature to Cinema’, Daniela Angelucci explicates the political implications of the concept of becoming minor in literature and cinema. It is argued that the Deleuzian explication of becoming minor in Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature (1986) is subjected to a dense analysis in Cinema 2: Time Image (2000) by forging a relation between minority and the power of the false. The deterritorialisation of language, political immediacy which erodes the difference between the personal and the political, and the assemblages of collective enunciation mark the revolutionary conditions for minor literature and political cinema. Angelucci argues that the incompleteness of Kafka’s writing doesn’t indicate the fragility of the author, but a constant possibility of deterritorialising to invent a missing people. In a similar fashion, the political (minor) cinema of the modern period is also about contributing to the invention of a people, the correlation between the political and the private, and becoming a collective agent, a catalyst. The two cinematographic regimes are made distinct by Deleuze from the vantage point of description, narration and the register of the story in terms of the power of the false. Angelucci argues, that the power of the false becomes the principle of the modern regime of cinema, 13

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the becoming minor of cinema—the minor screens, exemplifying the concept of minority in literature and cinema. In ‘Desire, Body and Capitalism’, Cybil Vinodan expands the concept of becoming political and minor in terms of dalit literature in a postcolonial context, explicating how the question of subjectivity is enmeshed in the collective assemblages of enunciation and differences in political affinities with that of dalit and postcolonial literatures. Contrary to the general practice of relegating dalit literature to the representational paradigm, Cybil attempts to address it as a becoming minor of literature, regaining its political dimensions. In contrast to the postcolonial positioning of the subaltern subject beyond the nation-state (colony), dalit literature problematises the folding of the striated and smooth spaces of the nation-state and society, the micropolitical and the macropolitical, and its ‘legally internalised form of control’. In this becoming minor of writing, specifically in its departure from the celebration of victimhood and in framing a new syntax to problematise the humiliation which doesn’t fit into the normative definition of justice, dalit writing frames the problematic of subjectivity in its desire for a body. Dalit literature envisages an imaginary which is drawn from the assemblages of myths and legends, inventing a past, and draws a metaphysics based on the ‘body’, as the site of contemplation and thought, in its political becoming. In her chapter ‘The Un/Paralleled Universe of Pramod Pati’, Silika Mohapatra explores the cinematic world of Pramod Pati, an ‘eccentric’ filmmaker of the 1960s, specifically through three works of art: Abid, Explorer and Trip. The author argues that the cinematic method and content of Pati offers a Deleuzian alternative to mainstream cinema. Abid is about the deconstruction of a room, into which the artist enters through a door from the floor, and the various interactions individuating the room, making it a multiplicity. This process of rooming rather fits into the movement image of Deleuze, explicating the ontology of difference. In Explorer, the artist explores the dimension of lived time and a mode of visuality through a non-human lens, reversing the platonic division of real and simulacrum. Trip explores the adumbrations of a schizophrenic metropolitan city ‘Bombay’ with no essential singularity; rather, it is argued as becoming a pure affect with multiple strands. This time-lapse video presents the city as a prehending thing, not an enduring or consistent unit, which becomes an assemblage of relations. Pati’s cinematic experimentation can be summarised as, to quote the author, ‘a concoction of Socratic courage and Quixotic fantasy, churned with the speed of American Disco, interspersed with an off-beat tempo’. The next chapter deals with South Indian cinema and its political and aesthetic readings via Deleuze and Guattari. Thejaswini J.C. and Shuaib Mohamed Haneef write about the Malayalam film Artist, which extols the artistic experiences of the protagonist Michael before and after losing his eyesight. This article draws on the idea of the image of thought, the processes of unfolding-enfolding based on Deleuzian aesthetics and the 14

INTRODUCTION

Bergsonian conception of time, to explore the ‘virtual and actual experiences’ in the film—and not relegating it to the realm of representational meanings. The optic and the haptic visuality of the protagonist negate the essentialist notion of the body and assert the corporeality of thought, irrespective of the abled/disabled body.

Territorial multiplicities Ronki Ram, in his chapter titled ‘Can “Territoriality” be Social? Interrogating the “Political” of Dalit Social Inclusion in India’ problematises the politics of social inclusion of dalits in terms of an emerging territoriality in opposition to the segregated dalit neighbourhoods, which reaffirm the territorial discrimination of dalits. The segregated dalit neighbourhoods are organised semiotically, as part of the affirmative actions of civil society and the social reform movements led by upper-caste reformers which focus on the pooling and control of material resources for the community, whereas the social dimension of exclusion in terms of territoriality is retained as it is. Instead of conceiving territory as ‘passive, static, recalcitrant and non-political, bereft of social interaction’, the author takes a Deleuzian position by rethinking it as a process and thus as social in multifarious ways. The metamorphosis of this segregated social space into a site of dalit contestations against social domination and a contestation against the resistance of the upper castes to these social protests bring forth the notion of caste to the centre stage. The existence of this segregation, suggestive of the Deleuzian virtual, comes to the fore (actualises) in the contexts of these ideational and material contestations. The dalit deras emerge not only as spiritual centres but also as sites of non-violent social protest within the segregated dalit territory which function as a process of reterritorialising the defiled territory into a sacred space of self-respect and dignity. Through the Deleuzian reading of this territoriality, the essay explicates a hidden dimension of spatial segregation and affirmation in terms of dalit politics in Punjab. Arnab Chatterjee looks into the phenomenon of legalisation of the third gender identity in India using two key Deleuzian concepts: deterritorialisation and rhizome. Two legal instances are cited, which open up the challenges and problems related to the legalisation of the third gender in India, especially that of the exclusion of the LGBT category. The legal instances cited in this article are: (i) the famous Naz verdict of Delhi High Court which decriminalised all consensual ‘non-penovaginal’ relationships invoking article 14 and 15 of the Indian Constitution; and (ii) the verdict on the writ petition filed by transgender activist Ms. Laxmi Narayan Swami (National Legal Services Authority (NLSA) vs. Union of India and Ors.), which included transgenders in the category of OBC on the ratio of economic deprivation. The author analyses the implications of these verdicts in terms of Deleuzian notions of identity and difference, namely the tripartite division of gender by assigning to it a centre and a margin, and the 15

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exclusionary nature of the verdict which neglects other LGBT communities under the rubric of the third gender. It is pointed out that the new anthropological inquiries into non-European and North American organisation of gender substantiate that any specific attention to one non-normative group results in making other groups invisible. A machinic conception of gender which deterritorialises any configuration to a specific centre is cited as an alternative conception, as disidentification is very relevant in the articulation of democratic contestation. Subro Saha, in his chapter ‘Concepts, Singularity and Nation-ness: Rethinking the Political’, attempts to problematise the concept of nation through Deleuze and Guattari’s understanding of concept and the contingent relations it brings within its constitution. Taking cue from Deleuze and Guattari’s last work What is Philosophy?, the chapter explains how conceptualising is prone to getting caught up in the exclusionary structure of normative/binary categories, foreclosing its potential to take new lines of flight. It is argued that any attempt at thinking the concept can remain partial, especially in cases where normative categories shape the act of conceptualisation, and provokes us to rethink the modalities of ‘conceptualising’ itself in a Deleuzian manner and the relationality between politics and philosophy. In the essay ‘Why Deleuze Spoke So Little About Theatre?’, Jean-Frederic Chevallier explores the reasons for a negative view and perhaps even no thought on theatre from Deleuze. He cites important instances in which Deleuze refers to theatre as an art which has less scope in his dialogues with Claire Parnet, and as a counter-example in Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. There are three occasions on which Deleuze discussed stage practices—as theatre of repetition (Difference and Repetition), minoration (One Manifesto Less) and exhausted (The Exhausted). But these references were not adequate enough to derive a specific Deleuzian thought on theatre, unlike for cinema or literature. It is argued that Deleuze’s negative view on theatre reveals something radical which defines the contemporary stage; the intervention of non-theatre in theatre and drawing an external relation with other arts outside theatre. Thus, the author concludes that Deleuze, in fact, proposes a philosophy of theatre while proposing a theory of multiplicity. As we noted elsewhere, this is the second volume in the ‘Deleuze and Guattari Studies in India Series’ that attempts to strengthen the DGSIC’s efforts to create a wider base for the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari in the region. The advantage of such an initiative is obvious enough, especially in the context of a thoughtless capitalism which tries to foment disruptiveness and parochialism in all possible forms, everywhere. The form it takes in India at present is horrifyingly intricate, and needs to be fought by all means. From the brief analysis we made in the beginning, it becomes evident that Deleuze and Guattari can provide a battery of powerful concepts that can be usefully engaged in this confrontation. But there is an ambivalence that lurks here. We hinted at this question earlier: Can a philosophy from the West be made an ally to fight the problems 16

INTRODUCTION

fomented primarily by a capitalism from the West? How far can it sync with the national identity and integrity of India? Addressing this anomaly, we have also argued that to xenophobically block every intellectual current that flows in from the outside in the name of identity and nationalism would be selfdefeating ultimately. We cannot afford this at the present times. Moreover, the Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy is a time-tested philosophical machine that has razed down many philosophical archaisms and reactionary ideologies of the West. So, the road ahead, we propose, is to make more prolific forays into the Indian situation equipped with the insights and concepts that the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari provides. The contributions made by the authors in this volume are invaluable on that count, and we hope that they lead to further research and meaningful critique.

Notes 1 The preceding volume refers to Patton, Paul and George Varghese K. (eds). 2018. ‘Deleuze in India’ (Special Volume), Deleuze Studies 12(1). 2 This practice was narrated to George Varghese K. by Prof. Visvawani Natarajan from Alleppey during his ethnographic fieldwork on Visvakarma goldsmiths in Kerala in 2001.

References Badiou, Alain. 2000. Deleuze: The Clamor of Being. Translated by Louise Burchill. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Buchanan, Ian. 2021. Assemblage Theory and Method: An Introduction and Guide. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Coleman, Rebecca and Jessica Ringrose. 2013. ‘Introduction’, in Rebecca Coleman and Jessica Ringrose (eds.), Deleuze and Research Methodologies, pp. 1–22. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. DeLanda, Manuel. 2006. A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity. London: Continuum. Deleuze, Gilles. 1988. Foucault. Translated and Edited by Sean Hand. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 2006. Two Regimes of Madness: Texts and Interviews 1975–1995. Edited by David Lapoujade, Translated by Ames Hodges and Mike Taormina. New York: Semiotext(e). Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. 1994. What is Philosophy? Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell. New York: Columbia University Press. Deleuze, Gilles and Claire Parnet. 1987. Dialogues. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. New York: Columbia University Press. Dumont, Louis. 1988. Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and its Implications. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Fuller, Colin J. 1976. The Nayars Today. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Graeber, David. 2001. Towards an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams. New York: Palgrave. Holland, Eugene W. 1999. Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus: Introduction to Schizoanalysis. London: Routledge. Hutton, John Henry. 1969. Caste in India: Its Nature, Function, and Origins. London: Oxford University Press. Kramrisch, Stella. 1983. Exploring India’s Sacred Art: Selected Writings of Stella Kramrisch. Edited by Barbara Stoller Miller. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Racine, Jean-Luc. 2008. ‘Post-post-colonial India: From Regional Power to Global Player’, Politique Etrangere. Special Issue 2008: 65–78. Paris: Institut français des relations internationals. Raghuramaraju, Adluru. 2019. Calibrating Western Philosophy for India: Rousseau, Derrida, Deleuze, Guattari, Bergson and Vaddera Chandidas, London: Routledge. Sarukkai, Sundar. 2009. ‘The Phenomenology of Untouchability’, Economic and Political Weekly, XLIV(37): 39–48. Taylor, Carol A. 2013. ‘Mobile Sections and Flowing Matter in ParticipantGenerated Video: Exploring a Deleuzian Approach to Visual Sociology’, in Rebecca Coleman and Jessica Ringrose (eds.), Deleuze and Research Methodologies, pp. 42–60. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Tomlinson, Hugh and Robert Galeta. 1989. ‘Translator’s Introduction’, in Gilles Deleuze (ed.), Cinema 2: The Time-Image, pp. xv–xviii. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Varghese, George K. 2003. ‘Globalization Traumas and New Social Imaginary: Visvakarma Community of Kerala’, Economic and Political Weekly, 38(45): 4794–802. Varghese, George K. 2006. Swarna Keralam: Jathi Prathisandhiyum Agolav­ atkaranavum. Kottayam: DC Books.

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Part I DELEUZIAN ONTOLOGY Difference, events and codes

1 DELEUZIAN ONTOLOGY Encounter and experimentation George Varghese K. Deleuze’s ontology, developed for a substantial part with Guattari, is elaborated mainly in Difference and Repetition, and in the two volumes on capitalism and schizophrenia, Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus. Deleuze articulates his specific position on ontology and philosophy in the chapter titled ‘The Image of Thought’ in Difference and Repetition (Deleuze 1994: 129–167). We shall build our analysis of Deleuze’s ontology beginning with this forcefully expressed position. First of all, Deleuze distances himself from traditional philosophy’s dogmas and concepts, finding them to be representational and commonsensical. Philosophy, on the other hand, needs to be creative and critical. Therefore, its mode of relating to the world becomes an ‘encounter’ rather than ‘recognition’. What is encountered could be a human, an object or an event, which in turn arouses different affects and emotions like wonder, love, hatred, suffering, etc. All these affects and emotions, dismissed by traditional philosophy as illusional and imperfect, in fact become the worthy building blocks of philosophy. The object of encounter is not ‘a sensible being but the being of the sensible. It is not the given but that by which the given is given’ (Deleuze 1994: 140).

The dogmatic image of thought and the problem of difference It is important to know how Deleuze encountered other philosophic systems in the process of shaping his own ontology. In this regard, as Michael Hardt says, there were ‘proximate enemies’ like Mechanicism, Platonism and Kant, as well as the ‘fundamental enemy’, Hegel, and his dialectics (Hardt 1993: 4). Let us move straight to the fundamental enemy. Deleuze’s signature concept, ‘difference’, is a forceful disavowal of Hegelian contradiction and negation. The Mechanicists, Plato and Aristotle maintained a notion of difference which was fundamentally exterior. This exteriority was taken to its extreme limit of contradiction by Hegel. As he formulates in the Science of Logic Only when the manifold terms have been driven to the point of contradiction do they become active and lively towards one another, DOI: 10.4324/9781003217336-3

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receiving in contradiction the negativity which is the indwelling pulsation of self-movement and spontaneous activity (Lebendigkeit) … More precisely, when the difference of reality is taken into account, it develops from difference into opposition, and from this into contradiction, so that in the end the sum total of all realities simply becomes absolute contradiction within itself. (Hegel 1969: 442) If contradiction becomes the fundamental driving force of reality and its determinations, it is realised through negation. This idea of negation as determination is drawn from Spinoza: omnis determinatio est negatio (Hegel 1969: 113). All determination requires negation, according to Spinoza. Hegel’s determinate being (Dasein) embodies this process quintessentially. In the Science of Logic, being is introduced as devoid of any distinguishable attribute so that it becomes in its essence ‘nothing’, the very concept that is its dialectical opposite. Being and nothing have a problematic relation—they are apparently contradictory but essentially the same in the first movement of the dialectic. ‘Pure being and pure nothing are, therefore, the same’ (Hegel 1969: 82). Their apparent opposition is overcome or sublated in the ‘becoming’, which is the pivotal moment of Hegelian ontology. Through becoming, being (Sein) is transformed into determinate being (Dasein), whose essential nature is the possession of quality (Hegel 1969: 109). Here, negation becomes central. The qualities are determinations in determinate being which becomes possible only through negation. As Hegel puts it, If, on the other hand, reality is taken in its determinateness, then, since it essentially contains the moment of the negative, the sumtotal of all realities becomes just as much a sum-total of all negations, the sum-total of all contradictions …. (Hegel 1969: 113) Negation determines qualities in the determinate being in two senses: contrastively and interactively (Taylor 1975: 234–5). In the static form, all qualities are contrastive. For example, we cannot have a shape like the square without other contrasting shapes like the circle or the triangle. Likewise, there is no black without white, or blue without red. For Hegel, these contrasts are mutual negations. But there is a dynamic form of negation also, which is interactive. The interactive negation is active and causal and becomes most evident in the case of the subject. The fullest realisation of the subject or the return to the self occurs as part of a double negation. In the first movement, the other negates the subject, followed by a second movement in which this negation by the other is negated by the subject. The subject in its most assured form, therefore, becomes the ‘other of the other’ effected through a double negation. For Hegel, interactive negation is 22

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important as its absence would make the subject blank and undetermined. This is most effectively articulated in the master–slave dialectic in the Phenomenology of Spirit, where two unequal self-consciousnesses are pitted opposite each other, and each one’s identity realised qua the other through negation (Hegel 1997: 111–19). For Deleuze, Hegel’s negation and double negation are false, empty, circular and, at best, can serve only the cause of identity, and not difference. ‘Those formulae according to which ‘the object denies what it is not’, or ‘distinguishes itself from everything that it is not’, are logical monsters … in the service of identity’ (Deleuze 1994: 49). Moreover, affirmation through the negation of the negation is a sophistical gimmick. In fact, the first negation only gets conserved and intensified through the second one. The construed affirmation is only a pseudo one, in order to say yes to all that is negative and to all that can be denied. For Deleuze, it is Nietzsche who understands this nuance too well so that for him the affirmation through negation is the ideology of the slave, most appropriately represented by Zarathustra’s ass (Deleuze 1994: 53). Bergson’s criticism becomes equally important for Deleuze. Bergson thinks that Hegel’s dialectics operate with baggy concepts like the One in general, the multiple in general, nonbeing in general, etc. As a crucial upshot, the real gets recomposed with the abstract, and the inadequacy of a general concept recompensed by the inadequacy of another one. Being versus Nothing or One contra Multiple are telling examples. Hence, for Bergson, dialectics is ‘a false movement, that is, a movement of the abstract concept, which goes from one opposite to the other only by means of imprecision’ (Deleuze 1988a: 44). Though Deleuze denies Hegelian negation and its exteriority, he nonetheless incorporates difference as the central driving force of reality in his system. The prime stimulus comes from Bergsonian ontology. For Bergson, once the Hegelian negation was pushed out of the scene, there should be something worthwhile that replaces it as the causa sui of being. Difference came to occupy this space, becoming the interior cause of being that sustains both its necessity and substantiality (Hardt 1993: 5). For Deleuze, this was also the upsurge of a much castigated and misinterpreted category in Western metaphysics. Difference was always held as an inferior and even a ‘monstrous’ category by the Greeks. It represented excess and transgression in contradistinction to the harmony and objectivity of Form. Aristotle’s specific difference becomes its essential tamed form. But this could hardly represent the singularities, events and excesses innate to reality. In effect, difference was deprived of its independence and creativity; it had to depend on another term for making sense or meaning like comparison. It is only in relation to an abstract middle term like ‘being human’ that the difference between two persons or two genders could be drawn. In this framework, different terms become different because they differ in terms of an underlying common nature, quality or property. As Deleuze observes: 23

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… Difference appears only as a reflexive concept … As a concept of reflection, difference testifies to its full submission to all the requirements of representation, which becomes thereby ‘organic representation’. In the concept of reflection mediating and mediated difference is in effect fully subject to the identity of the concept, the opposition of predicates, the analogy of judgment and the resemblance of perception. (Deleuze 1994: 34) The fetter around difference in classical philosophy was finally broken by Nietzsche, Bergson and Deleuze. Difference must be made to stand on its own with independence and dignity. For that, there need to be developed a ‘differenciation of difference’, ‘an in-itself of difference’, as Heidegger’s ontology calls for (Deleuze 1994: 117). Such a notion of difference upturns classical assumptions and converts becoming into being and change into identity. Its varying expressions can be seen in Spinoza, Nietzsche and Bergson. Let us look into each of these philosophers, and see how difference develops through their systems to reach its culmination in Deleuze. We go to Spinoza and Nietzsche immediately below and Bergson later. Spinoza’s philosophy of immanence and expression rejected all forms of metaphysical and theological hierarchies. In their place he proposed a triadic schema of substance, attributes and modes, in which all three become co-equal partners. In Spinoza’s system substance becomes the central axis which is self-caused, independent of beings, and something in itself as well as conceived through itself (Lin 2006: 144). There is only one substance and in its infinite form it is God. God’s very nature is expression which, in turn, becomes an unfolding. This unfolding occurs through attributes which are infinite forms of being. Attributes, in turn, express the divine essence through modes which are at the level of concrete things. Modes are numerical and quantitative. For the ontological monism of Spinoza, there is no hierarchy between these three moments of substance or God, attributes and modes. Their relation is one of ‘complication’ and ‘explication’. ‘Things remain inherent in God who complicates them, and God remains implicated in things which explicate him. It is a complicative God who is explicated through all things …’ (Deleuze 1990b: 175). But this ‘identity of difference’ manifested among the three moments is not foolproof or perfect enough for Deleuze. There is a fissure since it appears that modes are dependent on the substance. The real Copernican revolution occurs only with a reversal in which the ‘substance must itself be said of the modes and only of the modes’ (Deleuze 1994: 40). With such a revolution the much-soughtafter identity of the different, the being of the becoming, and the one of the multiple get established. For Deleuze, it is Nietzsche who provides the means for this pivotal reversal (Somers-Hall 2013: 39). Nietzsche’s concept of eternal return had seminal influence on Deleuze’s anti-transcendent immanence. Eternal return does not signify the return of 24

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an identical and originary being as time unfolds. By contrast, it is the return of a different being each time. The return is ceaseless and what returns is the different. Here what is same is not the being but the very process of returning as such. ‘Returning is the becoming-identical of becoming itself. Returning is thus the only identity, but identity as a secondary power; the identity of difference, the identical which belongs to the different, or turns around the different’ (Deleuze 1994: 41). Eternal return is an old mytho-philosophical notion which states that things return after moving into the past in a cyclical pattern. For the ancients everything moved in cycles, or, in other words, things leave positions temporarily only to return to the same place later. This is observable in the change of seasons as well in the celestial motions. The ancients who thought that things returned also thought that what returned was identical and the same. This return of the identical was observable in the annual return of the seasons and in the circular motion of celestial bodies. In both cases, the return is presented as a law of nature. This idea, in turn, gave birth to the anthropological idea of the ‘wheel of births’, and of the escape from the wheel of birth as the ultimate form of salvation. Note that in all these cases only the identical and the same returned. It is the same star or the same season that returned after a lapse of time. To Nietzsche, this eternal return of the identical seemed illusory and false. He formulated an alternate notion of eternal return with its own difference. For him, it is not the equal or the identical that returned but the unequal and the different. If bodies like stars were held to be perfect by the ancients they should be also confined to definite stationary positions in the cosmos. Then, why should they move out of their positions to describe circular motions? Nietzsche argued that, contrary to our assumption, these bodies are imperfect and it is the drive deriving from imperfection that makes them move towards perfection which appears to be circular. This is also the law behind man’s will-to-power. Will-to-power is also a restless drive that derives from a feeling of lack of perfection, which, in turn, leads the humans towards the acquisition of more power (Deleuze 1983: 72). For Nietzsche and Deleuze, eternal return results from a pure difference in the origin. It is the groundless law of difference which always flows out and remains in that process of discharge without ever getting pacified or suppressed. In that case, the difference becomes the in-itself and the eternal return the for-itself of difference. The eternal return has no other sense but this: the absence of any assignable origin—in other words, the assignation of difference as the origin, which then relates different to different in order to make it (or them) return as such. (Deleuze 1994: 125) In this regard we must be clear about the different senses of the terms ‘the same’, ‘the identical’ and ‘the similar’. The same and the similar in the 25

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eternal return are only an effect of the operation of the system subject to eternal return. What remains ‘same’ is only the difference that returns forever. ‘The same is said of that which differs and remains different. The eternal return is the same of the different, the one of the multiple, the resemblant of the dissimilar’ (Deleuze 1994: 126). Sameness does not pre-exist the eternal return; it is implicit in the process of return itself.

The ‘Univocity of Being’: Dun Scotus, Spinoza and Deleuze Difference, for Deleuze, needs to be made the ontological axis of reality at all levels. This is possible only by making it univocal. In this regard, Deleuze reinvents and incorporates the medieval concept of the ‘univocity of being’ after examining its three important moments: Duns Scotus, Spinoza and Nietzsche. Duns Scotus and Spinoza provide the important theoretical foundation to which we will turn here. The importance of Duns Scotus in developing univocity of being is unequivocally declared by Deleuze: ‘There has only ever been one ontology, that of Duns Scotus, which gave being a single voice’ (Deleuze 1994: 35). Univocity was immediately opposed to ‘analogy’, another influential concept in medieval theology whose chief exponent was Thomas Aquinas. Both analogy and univocity addressed the same question of the transcendence of God and the possibility of human knowledge about him. Since God contained all possible attributes in the infinite sense, how could humans, endowed with limited and finite faculties, understand him? What sort of relation exists between the infinite attributes of God and the finite faculties of humans? Aquinas’s analogical theory argued that the infinite qualities of God cannot be understood directly by humans, but this was possible through analogy in a limited manner. Even though wisdom is a common attribute of God and humans, both do not have the same nature. For example, though God and Socrates are wise, the wisdom of Socrates is different from the wisdom of God. On the face of such an incongruity, it is only by drawing up an analogical linkage between the infinite and the finite could humans understand this relation. But this knowledge would necessarily be partial and incomplete. What is to be noted here is that the relation between the infinite and the finite is unidirectional and hierarchical. Worldly beings and their attributes, being God’s creation, are marked by God’s power and resemblance, while the opposite case of God resembling his creatures is a contradiction. As Aquinas’s example goes, ‘a portrait can take after a man but a man does not take after his portrait’ (Widder 2009: 33). For Scotus, the analogic relation between God and his creatures does not tell the whole story, or is wrongly plotted. For him, the supreme question is the object of metaphysics, and not God as such. As far as metaphysics is concerned, he agrees with Aristotle, for whom the ultimate object is ‘being qua being’. What it means is that the ultimate nature of being with all the 26

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properties belonging to it is that ‘it is’. As the first science, metaphysics is committed to knowing this very state. This task, in turn, becomes complex since ‘being’ is common to everything. Scotus calls this common attribute and first knowable ens commune. From this it follows that the primary object of metaphysics is not God. God is not a common being, but only a singular one. The science that studies this singular being is theology and not metaphysics. The primary object of metaphysics is being as such or ‘being qua being’ (Beistegui 2004: 225). For Scotus, this common being is univocal, and enfolds everything, both God and his creation. Therefore, it is not the analogy between God and his creatures, but the common beingness they share, which becomes the principal object of metaphysics. The univocity of being is transcendental, not generic. A transcendental being is characterised by its indifference to the difference between the finite and infinite. Transcendental predicates can be affirmed of both God and his creatures without invoking a generic unity. When they are associated with God, they are infinite and when applied to the creatures they are finite. So, there is a common sense between God’s wisdom and Socrates’s wisdom, which at the same time does not create an identity or analogy between them (Widder 2009: 36). In effect, the essential in univocity is not that Being is said in a single and same sense, but that it is said, in a single and same sense, of all its individuating differences or intrinsic modalities. Being is the same for all these modalities, but these modalities are not the same. (Deleuze 1994: 36) With univocity there occurred a fundamental revolution in the relation between God, man and all other creations of God. Being came to be no longer thought in the conjuncture of ontologically separated divine and earthly realms. It surpassed all classical dichotomies like finite/infinite, created/uncreated, contingent/necessary, and so on. With Scotus, being became neutral, indifferent and impersonal. Consequently, philosophy was reborn immanent (Beistegui 2004: 239). Deleuze traverses the Scotist path, but with a difference. Though Scotist univocity established an ens commune or a common being, that common being was still associated with quiddities and sameness. For Deleuze, on the other hand, difference should constitute the principle of univocity. Univocal being essentially relates to individuating differences, but these differences do not have the same essence. ‘Being is said in a single and same sense of everything of which it is said, but that of which it is said differs: it is said of difference itself’ (Deleuze 1994: 36). Spinoza constitutes the second moment in the univocity of being. He had clear differences with Duns Scotus in this regard. Firstly, Scotus conceived God’s attributes primarily as propria. Propria, though it qualifies God, is different from an attribute. Propria are just adjectives and do not say anything essential about God. For example, justice, goodness, wisdom, 27

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omniscience, infinite, immutable, omnipresence etc. are propria. More specifically, they are predicated of true attributes like thought and extension (Deleuze 1990b: 50). Secondly, Scotus understood God as a neutralised and indifferent being. He is indifferent to finite and infinite, singular and universal, perfect and imperfect, created and uncreated, and so on. For Spinoza, on the other hand, the univocal Being is something determinate and affirmative (Deleuze 1990b: 67). It becomes identical with the universal, unique and infinite substance designated as Deus sive Natura(God or Nature). Against the Cartesian theory of substance, constituted with distinctions like the ontological, the formal and the numerical (substance, quality and quantity) Spinoza proposed an alternate model divided into substance, attributes and modes (Deleuze 1994: 40). Substance expresses itself in itself and to itself. It expresses itself really, formally and qualitatively through attributes. Each attribute expresses the essence of the substance qualitatively (Deleuze 1990b: 185). Attributes are infinite forms of being which are unlimited, ultimate and irreducible formal reasons. They are common to both God’s essence as well as to modes. Attributes are expressions of God as natura naturans, while at the same time involved in the nature of things or natura naturata which re-express them in the form of modes. Attributes, again, are words expressing unlimited qualities (Deleuze 1990b: 49). Modes, in turn, are essentially quantitative. Each mode expresses God’s essence, in so far as that essence explicates itself through the mode’s essence. Modes of the same attribute are not distinguished by their rank or nearness to God. On the other hand, they are distinguished by the quantity or capacity of their respective essences which always participate directly in the essence of God (Deleuze 1990b: 183). Spinoza’s univocity was aimed at the overcoming of all forms of transcendence, which is something he shares with Duns Scotus. He designed his triadic system of substance-attributes-modes to realise this aim. Transcendence had three important forms before him. The first one was the transcendence of Forms as represented by Plato. The second one was the Christian God, especially as developed in patristic literature and medieval theology. With Descartes the third form of transcendence set in, accompanied by its intricate anthropocentrism. The last one was definitely a more complicated development as compared to the former ones since it had an inbuilt dualism within it. With the concept of cogito, the human subjectivity and its faculty of knowledge was clearly asserted by Descartes; but the guarantee of the apodicticity of human knowledge was still retained by God. ‘This is a dual transcendence, of subjectivity from the world and of God from both the subject and the world’ (May 2005: 28). Spinoza took a radical turn in this context and proposed his alternate theory of immanence and expression premised on the ‘univocity of being’. Univocal being for Spinoza means that the substance of being is one, and also that it is indivisible. There exist no distinctions like different substances, different layers or different levels of substance within being. All forms of 28

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hierarchy and division were removed from being. God produces things within himself. His essence is distributed among attributes and modes, which, in turn, make the very essence that constitute him. For Deleuze a double-univocity is at work here. First is the ‘univocity of cause’, which means that God is the cause of all things in the same sense as he is the cause of himself. Second is the ‘univocity of attributes’, according to which God produces through and in the same attributes what constitute his essence. Hence lies exposed the absurdity of the theological God producing things through moral attributes like goodness or charity (Deleuze 1990b: 103). Again, through a strict parallelism, he refuses the superiority of one series or attribute over the other. There is no superiority of thought over extension or soul over body. This applies to modes also. The mode of a physically drawn triangle within the attribute of extension has no superiority over the idea of triangle conceived within the attribute of thought. Through this ontological unity, Spinoza circumvented any form of intervention of a transcendent God in his system. Parallelism and ontological unity, in turn, have to be understood in terms of immanence and expression (Deleuze 1990b: 109). How is univocity articulated in Deleuzian philosophy, following the line of thought from Duns Scotus to Spinoza? In what sense does it become a philosophy of immanence and expression? The twofold principle of the ‘different/ciation’ and the accompanying ‘dramatisation’ that pervades reality become the equivalent of expression. In Spinoza, expression is the very life of God. God does not produce the world to express himself; his very being is production itself through attributes and modes (Deleuze 1990b: 99). Similarly, difference enfolds the whole of reality at all levels. Difference is not a representational category posited between things or phenomena to denote their disparity. On the other hand, it is the ‘presentational’ concept of the very genesis of the world and being. It is only through difference, which is further split into different/ciation, that reality emerges and takes shape. This emergence through different/ciation is an intensive and dramatic process that involves a multitude of forces and differentials. Deleuze terms them ‘spatio-temporal dynamisms’ (Deleuze 2004: 96). Difference pervades reality and it becomes univocal and ontological. There are not two ‘paths’, as Parmenides’ poem suggests, but a single ‘voice’ of Being which includes all its modes, including the most diverse, the most varied, the most differenciated. Being is said in a single and same sense of everything of which it is said, but that of which it is said differs: it is said of difference itself. (Deleuze 1994: 36) The tumultuous field of genesis teeming with differentials needs a different perspective in order to understand it. We are not addressing here an empirical field with visible and measurable processes, but a dynamic arena that is split up into a transcendental half and an empirical half. We are also 29

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not encountering fully formed objects or individuals but engaging with a complex phenomenon of individuation that unfolds in time through the play of different/ciation accompanied by invisible and obscure spatio-temporal dynamisms. A new method itself is called for, which Deleuze terms ‘transcendental empiricism’.

Transcendental empiricism and the virtual ‘Transcendental’ and ‘empiricism’, both established concepts in philosophy, assume new connotations in the philosophy of difference. ‘Transcendental’ here connotes a field of pre-individual singularities and differentials in contrast to the otherwise well-known usage—to denote transcendent beings and forms as in classical philosophy and theology, or the finite synthetic consciousness of the subject as in transcendental philosophy (Deleuze 1990a: 106). According to Deleuze’s usage of the term, the notion of the empirical also changes, since this transcendental field cannot be experienced in the ordinary way. As Deleuze defines it, The transcendent is not the transcendental. Without a consciousness, the transcendental field could be defined as a pure plane of immanence, because it escapes all transcendence, both of the subject and the object. Absolute immanence is in itself: it is not in anything, nor can it be attributed to something; it does not depend on an object or belong to a subject. (Deleuze 2006: 385) As a plane of immanence, the transcendental field becomes the condition of the genesis of reality or the conditioned. But the relation between the condition and the conditioned is different from their presentation in other philosophies where the conditions of knowledge are predetermined before the act of knowing. For Aristotle, the condition was a logical method, while for Kant it was a transcendental and moral approach. But what is to be noted here is that the conditions construed in both cases resemble the conditioned. In other words, the condition simply becomes the possibility of the conditioned. There is a perpetual reference from the condition to the conditioned and from the conditioned to the condition. From the perspective of transcendental empiricism and genesis, this resemblance has to be broken for the transcendental field to become creative and original. For that there must be a third transcendental condition, the ‘unconditioned’, which, in turn, effects a heterogeneous synthesis of the condition and the conditioned (Deleuze 1990a: 18–9; 122–3; Smith 2007: 7). What is produced through the heterogeneous synthesis and the genetic power of the transcendental field is not the individual, but the drama of individuation. This individuation and its constitutive differences are the object of transcendental empiricism. It is important to note Levi Bryant’s observation 30

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that transcendental empiricism is not simply a metaphysics or ontology, but a methodology of ‘anti-methodology’. Where methodology is subject to the criticism of assuming the nature of the being it investigates in advance—as, for instance, in physics where the variables are already determined in advance as ‘places’—transcendental empiricism proceeds under the force of a ‘sign that can only be sensed’ which ‘engenders thinking within thought’ and which in turn explicates a new domain of experience. (Bryant 2008: 18) Bryant underlines the elusive nature of difference at various levels in the process of individuation, which cannot be captured within the static framework of the empirical method. This calls for a new set of differential concepts which are inventively developed by Deleuze. Paul Patton makes an important observation in this context that Deleuze’s distinct contribution to the philosophy of difference was the formulation of the theory of multiplicities (Patton 2000: 30). Even philosophy itself is a theory of multiplicities for him and Guattari (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 15). Deleuze’s studies in the history of philosophy, such as those on Nietzsche, Bergson, and Plato, are all examples of the metaphysics of multiplicities (Patton 2000: 37). We shall explore the philosophy of difference as a theory of multiplicity at some length here. Deleuzian multiplicity was critically influenced by the Bergsonian version. But another common source for both Bergson and Deleuze was Bernhard Riemann’s theory of ‘manifold’, and his notions of discrete and continuous multiplicities (Deleuze 1988a: 39–40). The manifold was the product of a radically different mathematical system/ practice defined by the multiply interactive and yet heterogeneous workings of different mathematical fields like geometry, topology, algebra, analysis and so forth (Plotnitsky 2009: 192). The most important impact Riemannian manifold had was in the definition of space. Till then it was held that space is an independent physical phenomenon characterised by its metrical structure. Other things come to occupy it in the manner of ‘residential flats’. But Riemann argued that space in itself is nothing more than a three-dimensional manifold devoid of any definite form. It acquires definite form only through the advent of other material contents, which determine its metric properties (Plotnitsky 2009: 203). Deleuze developed his concept of multiplicity on the lines of Riemannian manifold whose quintessential feature is patchiness and the absence of a transcendental embedding space. ‘[Multiplicity] must not designate a combination of the many and the one, but rather an organisation belonging to the many as such, which has no need whatsoever of unity in order to form a system’ (Deleuze 1994: 182). Thus, Deleuzian multiplicity becomes a construct of N dimensions of amorphous properties and random distribution, which is opposed to the traditional essences and unities with N+1 dimensions. 31

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It is also important to take note that for Deleuze any entity is determinable as a multiplicity following Riemann’s theory, whether it is a geometric construct, an empirical object, a physical phenomenon or a state of things (Calamari 2005: 64). A significant aspect of Deleuzian multiplicity is its virtual nature which is a concept borrowed directly from Bergson. The virtual is articulated on a theory of difference, more specifically on ‘different/ciation’. Let us briefly look into Bergson’s theory of difference and multiplicity. (Here we go back to difference which we left with Spinoza and Nietzsche earlier, so as to make a detour into univocity and transcendental empiricism.) Bergson is known for giving primacy to time with respect to space in his philosophical thinking. The logic of this radical reversal according to Keith Ansell-Pearson is simple and clear. Philosophy attempts to think in accordance to the ‘real’ or the ‘whole’. The nature of this real or whole is that it is neither given nor givable. If it is given it could be limited and brought under the representation and logic of space. Since it is about the real as an open and unclosed Whole it can be perceived and intuited only through time and its ever-continuous unfolding (Ansell-Pearson 2002: 11). But the opposite was happening in the history of philosophy before Bergson. It deflated the becoming of reality in time, which is its real essence, at the expense of frozen representations in terms of space in the name of forms, concepts etc. For Bergson, space and time are not two a priori conditions of perception as for Kant, but two forms of multiplicity with their own distinctive features. They are in fact opposed in their essential properties. First of all, space/matter can be divided in an infinite number of ways. Even before the actual division, their divisibility can be visualised in the mind. This actual potential of divisibility, even in something undivided, is what Bergson calls ‘objectivity’. Also, space and matter denote not only what can be divided, but what, in dividing, does not change in kind. ‘The object is characterised by the perfect equivalence of the divided and the divisions, of number and unit. In this sense, the object will be called a “numerical multiplicity”’ (Deleuze 1988a: 41). Again, the number is a model of something which divides without changing itself. In other words, the number and the object have only differences in degree, or these differences, whether realised or not, are actual. On the other hand, duration also can be divided up in its temporal unfolding. It also divides up, in fact constantly. The more important aspect to note is that when it divides up, it is not a division of degree, but that of kind. In other words, duration does not divide up without changing in kind. That is why it is a ‘nonnumerical multiplicity’. In the case of duration there are not several as in the case of the divisions of space or matter in degree, but only ‘other’, as duration differentiates from itself every moment (Deleuze 1988a: 42). When space qua its divisive capacity (even in mind) is called ‘objective’, duration in its potential to be divided is qualified as ‘virtual’. The division of duration, in fact, is only a differentiation of itself from itself every moment. This differentiation is a change not in degree, but in kind, and therefore 32

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total. More importantly, the nature of this total change in kind cannot be predicted in advance like divisions in space which have a uniform metric character. Hence duration is virtual. Deleuze further develops the virtual nature of duration into a very influential concept in his system. The virtual becomes a property of things as much as the actual. As Deleuze explicates: It seems, then, that each thing has two ‘halves’—uneven, dissimilar, and unsymmetrical—each of which is itself divided into two: an ideal half, which reaches into the virtual and is constituted both by differential relations and by concomitant singularities; and an actual half, constituted both by the qualities that incarnate those relations and by the parts that incarnate those singularities. (Deleuze 2004: 100) What is important here is that the virtual half of a multiplicity is not an immaterial illusion, but something as real as the other half of the actual itself. Virtual is constituted of differentials and singularities which are actualised not in a mechanical manner, but in a creatively variant form. We can draw an example from Manuel DeLanda, that of a knife. A knife is either sharp or not. This is an actual property. This property can be physically experienced. But the knife also has the capacity to cut, a capacity that may never become actual if it is not used. And when this capacity becomes actual, say, it cuts something, it cannot be inferred as a property, but only observed as an event (DeLanda and Gaffney 2010: 326). From this simple example we can infer that it is not the physical materiality alone that gives identity to an object or multiplicity, but certain affects and capacities that form a virtual aura around it. But how these virtual differentials will be actualised, and in what form, is a matter of contingency. For example, our knife may be used only many years after its production and it can be used to cut many kinds of things. There is no rule about the time of its use or the kinds of use it is put to unless it is a very specialised knife. Genesis occurs when the differentials and singularities in the virtual are actualised in reality. While the differentials in the virtual are differentiated, their actualisation in reality occurs as differenciation in time. Virtual and its different/ciation raise certain ontological questions, the most important one being the nature of the actualisation of the virtual itself. Classical philosophy conceived the generation of reality under the conceptual couple of possible-real. For Bergson and Deleuze, this model has serious limitations. The materialisation of the possible in the real is grounded on two features: resemblance and limitation. The real is supposed to be an exact image and duplication of the possible. There is no room for change or creative mutation here. But a more crucial flaw lurks here. What in fact occurs is a ‘reverse replication’. It is not the real that issues out of the possible, but the possible that is prefabricated in the image of the real. This error is corrected in the 33

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virtual–actual relationship. While the real is in the image and likeness of the possible it realises, the actual does not resemble the virtuality it actualises. ‘In short, the characteristic of virtuality is to exist in such a way that it is actualised by being differentiated and is forced to differentiate itself, to create its lines of differentiation in order to be actualised’ (Deleuze 1988a: 97). Though Deleuze draws the theory of virtual and different/ciation from Bergson he was not entirely satisfied with it, especially at the way the temporal and spatial multiplicities were dualistically conceived. Deleuze thinks that Bergson always thought in dualistic terms such as quantity and quality, intelligence and instinct, science and metaphysics, mind and matter, space and time, virtual and actual, and so on (Deleuze 2004: 26). Bergson’s notion of matter differing in degree, and time differing in kind resonate with such a dualism. A difference of degree is the lowest degree of difference while difference in kind is its highest form. Deleuze calls the differences in degree and kind in Bergson two ‘false souls’. So, he asks the famous question: ‘[Is] there a difference in kind, or of degree, between differences of degree and differences in kind?’ (Deleuze 1994: 239). Deleuze answers this question by positing another concept, ‘intensity’, which becomes the single unitary and immanent force of which both difference in degree and difference in kind become two expressions. Intensity has three important characteristics: 1) it includes the unequal in itself; 2) it affirms difference and; 3) it is an implicated quantity (Deleuze 1994: 232–7). We will look into its relation to difference here. It is pointless to say ‘difference of intensity’ since intensity is difference itself. More importantly, each difference of intensity is also individuated. The extensive quantities are divisible by their own physical units as distance and can be divided by its own smaller units like metre or centimetre. Division can take place without the change in nature of what is being divided. By contrast, an intensive quantity like temperature cannot be divided by units of temperature. The higher temperature is not composed of lesser temperatures or a higher speed by lesser speeds. We cannot make water at 90 degrees by adding two quantities of water at 45 degrees. They do not add up, but only average out. Similarly, we cannot add up two lower speeds and make a higher one. We can take a different example also here, the case of a moving horse. In the case of a horse moving at different speeds, a qualitative phase transition is discernible. We can divide up the movement of a horse into gallop, trot and walk. But none of these divisions can enter into composition with others. Two walks added up cannot make a trot, a gallop cannot be divided into individual trots (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 483). These are intensive movements and every level is individuated. An intensive quantity may be divided, but never without changing its nature. It is indivisible since no part exists prior to the division and no part retains the same nature after the division also (Deleuze 1994: 239). In the physics of energy, intensity is intimately related to extensity. For example, force and distance in linear energy, surface area and surface 34

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tension in surface energy, pressure and volume in volume energy, height and weight in gravitational energy, and temperature and entropy in thermal energy. It so happens that the intensive becomes the direct outcome of the extensive in all these cases. Intensity becomes subordinated to extensity and the qualities which fill it. Hence the tendency to consider intensity as a badly grounded empirical concept (Deleuze 1994: 223). On the other hand, for Deleuze, intensity is a unitary force in itself constituted of differences and intimately connected with depth. Extensity is enveloped in the depth, and is therefore, primarily an intensive quantity. Deleuze calls it pure spatium. Extensity results when intensity emerges out of the depth of pure spatium and cancels itself under the sign of quality. As Deleuze explicates: Depth and intensity are the same at the level of being, but the same in so far as this is said of difference. Depth is the intensity of being, or vice versa. Out of this intensive depth emerge at once the extensio and extensum, the qualitas and the quale. (Deleuze 1994: 231) DeLanda, who developed a Deleuzian perspective on science, argues for the presence of an intensive spatium behind the birth of space and universe. Quantum physics identifies the origin and evolution of the universe from a unified intensive force. There are four basic forces that unify the universe: gravitational, electromagnetic, and strong and weak nuclear forces. At extremely high temperature these forces lose their individuality and blend into a single and symmetric force. The origin of the universe occurred from such a unified force. As the universe expanded and cooled later, a series of phase transitions broke this original force into the four types of forces mentioned above. As DeLanda points out If we consider that, in relativity theory, gravity is what gives space its metric properties (more exactly, a gravitational field constitutes the metric structure of a four-dimensional manifold), and if we add to this that gravity itself emerges as a distinct force at a specific critical point of an intensive property (temperature), the idea of an intensive space giving birth to extensive ones through progressive differentiation becomes more than a suggestive metaphor. (DeLanda 2002: 27–8) The process by which intensity generates extensity has a four-fold structure: ‘differentiation-individuation-dramatization-differenciation’ (Deleuze 1994: 251). The four-part structure of generation can be observed at all levels of reality. Perhaps the most telling example Deleuze cites is from embryology. We find that beneath the actual qualities and extensities of species there are many spatio-temporal dynamisms or intensities which are the real actualising agents. Embryology shows that the division of an egg into 35

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parts or organs is secondary to the more basic intensive movements within: the augmentation of free surfaces, stretching of cellular layers, invagination by foldings, and regional displacement of groups. There exists a whole ‘kinematics of the egg’ in relation to space and displacements before the embryo is born as an individual. So different types of eggs and their embryos can be distinguished by the orientations, the axes of development and differential speeds of development. This creates a characteristic rhythm for the actualisation of each living being. Each living being actualises its birth within its own identity and difference which cannot be subsumed under the generalities of the species. There are certain movements only an embryo can undergo and endure, whereas its actualised form as an individual cannot. For example, the anterior member of the tortoise undergoes a relative displacement of 180 degrees and it is a tortuous shift by all means. An embryo’s destiny is to ‘live the unlivable’, to withstand such intense movements that can even break the skeleton or tear the ligaments in an adult. That is why every creation does not take place by a schematic possible and its generalised limitation but through the actualisation of a virtual realised through individual creation. ‘Before the embryo as general support of qualities and parts there is the embryo as individual and patient subject of spatio-temporal dynamisms, the larval subject’ (Deleuze 1994: 215). The egg itself is a theatre of forces, and the world in its totality is also one like the egg with its differential speeds, events, and intensities.

From ontogenesis to plane of immanence Deleuzian ontology developed its major lines between 1968 and 1980 with Difference and Repetition (French edition in 1968) and A Thousand Plateaus (French edition in 1980) forming the two limits, and the Anti-Oedipus (French edition in 1972) forming a bridging text in between. (Of course, there are other texts like The Logic of Sense (1969) or Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature (1975) written in between that have a supplementary function.) A viable periodisation of Deleuzian ontology would identify the early period of Difference and Repetition as the ‘ontogenetic’ phase and the later one of A Thousand Plateaus as the ‘becoming’ phase. But for Miguel de Beistegui, who has done extensive work on the various aspects of this period, finds such a strict division unrealistic since the later phase is only a culmination of the earlier one, and not a break (Beistegui 2010: 60). This definitely goes with the spirit of Deleuze and Guattari, who see concepts as multiplicities and books as rhizomes between which transpire many kinds of flows, alliances and spillovers (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 22). For DeLanda, who makes a careful note of the above aspect, Deleuze inevitably changes his terminology in every one of his texts. The point of this terminological exuberance is not merely to give the impression of difference through the use of synonyms, but 36

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rather to develop a set of different theories on the same subject, theories which are slightly displaced relative to one another but retain enough overlaps that they can be meshed together as a heterogeneous assemblage. (DeLanda 2002: 157) Accordingly, what is called the ‘intensive spatium’ in Difference and Repetition, which refers to the virtual continuum formed of multiplicities, has various synonyms and near-synonyms in other works. It becomes ‘plane of consistency’ and ‘machinic phylum’ in A Thousand Plateaus; ‘plane of immanence’ in What is Philosophy?; ‘Body without Organs’ in both A Thousand Plateaus and Anti-Oedipus; and ‘ideal or metaphysical surface’ in The Logic of Sense (DeLanda 2002: 158). For our exploration here, the most important spillover from the early phase to the later one is the concept of the transcendental field-differenciation and a set of related concepts. Anti-Oedipus becomes the point of passage in between. The transcendental field in Difference and Repetition is a virtual space abounding in differentials and singularities which, in turn, get actualised or differenciated. Here ontology becomes genesis, and the transcendental field in which this genesis takes place, the virtual or the intensive spatium. In A Thousand Plateaus this intensive spatium is transformed into a plane, which, in turn, becomes a forked one formed of the ‘plane of organization’ and the ‘plane of consistency’. The plane of organisation is the one related to the development of forms and subjects. It exists only as a supplementary dimension to what it gives rise to in the typical N+1 logic. It is also therefore a transcendental and teleological plane. Again, the plane of organisation can only be inferred from what it develops and from the subjects it forms (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 265–6). Opposed to it is the plane of consistency, which has no structure or genesis. There are only relations of speed, movement and rest between the unformed or relatively unformed particles that compose this plane. It is marked by haecceities, affects and subjectless individuations. Nothing ‘develops’ here, things only ‘become’; they form different assemblages in this process. This plane is again a ‘plane of immanence’ which contains everything, both positive and negative, both creative and destructive; hence it is also a plane of non-contradiction (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 266). The plane of organisation is ceaselessly working on the plane of consistency trying to plug lines of flight, preventing its deterritorialisations, and re-stratifying its embedded layers. Conversely, the plane of consistency is continually breaking away from the plane of organisation, ‘causing particles to spin off the strata, scrambling forms by the dint of speed or slowness, breaking down functions by means of assemblages or microassemblages’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 270). For Deleuze and Guattari, it is the plane of consistency that becomes important. Its primacy is articulated through a deft and radical reinterpretation of the concept of genesis in Difference and Repetition. In genesis, the 37

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intensity of the differentials and singularities in the virtual or intensive spatium move to the surface and get cancelled in extensity. ‘Intensity is difference, but this difference tends to deny or to cancel itself out in extensity and underneath quality’ (Deleuze 1994: 223). But for Deleuze and Guattari, this neutralised state is not the proper object of philosophy or art, though it constitutes the one of science. Science is focussed on the state of affairs and its functions. On the other hand, for the philosopher (and also for the artist) what is important is the experience of the virtual as such and its intensive differences, singularities, becomings and events. It means that there should be a reverse movement from the actual to the virtual or a ‘counter-effectuation’ of the differenciated reality. It is necessary to go back up to the event that gives its virtual consistency to the concept, just as it is necessary to come down to the actual state of affairs that provides the function with its references … The event is actualised or effectuated whenever it is inserted, willy-nilly, into a state of affairs; but it is counter-effectuated whenever it is abstracted from states of affairs so as to isolate its concept. (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 159) The counter-effectuation as a movement to the virtual is an experimentation rather than a mere experience in the layperson’s sense. In Anti-Oedipus such a plane is prefigured in the ‘body without organs’ (BwO) with schizo as its iconic protagonist. BwO is an articulation that has nothing to do with organs as such, but speaks of the process of organisation from a milieu of immanence or destratification. As John Protevi clarifies, The organism and the BwO are limits of the opposed processes of stratification and destratification. There is no such thing as an organism or a BwO. Both are representations of limits of processes. ‘An organism’ is only a representation of pure molar fixity, just as ‘a BwO’ is only a representation of pure molecular flow. The organism versus the BwO is only a de jure distinction. (Protevi 2009: 109) BwO denotes a state of destratification and involution as opposed to evolution and stratification in genesis. As a desiring-machine, the schizo becomes the hero of the BwO. Partial objects are what constitute the schizo’s world and make his desiring-machine function. These partial objects are dispersed in such a way that each part refers to a part in an entirely different machine like the red clover and the bumble bee, the wasp and the orchid, the bicycle horn and the dead rat’s ass (Deleuze and Guattari 1983: 323). Deleuze and Guattari underline that the ‘Partial objects are the direct powers of the body without organs, and the body without organs, the raw material of the partial objects’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1983: 326). In a key 38

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philosophical move, Deleuze and Guattari compare the BwO to Spinozist substance and partial objects to attributes. The latter become different degrees of intensity in the former (Deleuze and Guattari 1983: 326–7). In A Thousand Plateaus BwO and the plane of consistency as isomorphic concepts are brought to a folded relationship. Their relationship is analogised to that of the composer and the composed, the point and the line, the line to the surface, where all have equal power (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 507). Again, the plane of consistency becomes the totality of all BwOs with their partial objects becoming different degrees of intensity. The plane of consistency would be the totality of all BwO’s, a pure multiplicity of immanence, one piece of which may be Chinese, another American, another medieval, another petty perverse, but all in a movement of generalised deterritorialisation in which each person takes and makes what she or he can … (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 157) As the BwO is compared to Spinoza’s immanent substance in AntiOedipus, the plane of consistency follows suit and becomes the same in A Thousand Plateaus. ‘It [plane of consistency] is necessarily a plane of immanence and univocality’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 266). The plane of immanence/consistency is presented by Deleuze in his second book on Spinoza as follows: … a plane of immanence has no supplementary dimension; the process of composition must be apprehended for itself … It is a plan of composition, not a plan of organization or development … There is no longer a form, but only relations of velocity between infinitesimal particles of an unformed material. There is no longer a subject, but only individuating affective states of an anonymous force. Here the plan is concerned only with motions and rests, with dynamic affective charges. (Deleuze 1988b: 128) The plane of immanence or consistency is a plane of nonconsistency in fact (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 266). It is filled with assorted objects and phenomena which have no obvious logical connections. They are but intensive degrees which are equivalent to Spinozist modes. It does not make any difference between natural or artificial things here. Everything is defined by the affects and motions into which it enters, irrespective of whether it is natural or artificial. A body can be anything, an animal, a linguistic corpus, a social body, a body of sound or even an idea. It is defined not by form or function but by a cartographic model of longitude and latitude. The longitude of the body is a set of relations of speed and slowness and of motion and rest. The latitude stands for the capacity of a 39

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body to affect and get affected. In this way one constructs the map of a body (Deleuze 1988b: 127–8). There is a clear difference in the mode of movement and relation in the plane of immanence compared to the movement in genesis that marks the early phase of Deleuzian ontology. In genesis intensive differentials and singularities move from the depth of the intensive spatium to the extensity of the surface where their intensity gets cancelled. On the other hand, in the plane of immanence the mode of both movement and relation is different. There is no one specific or single type of movement or relation here. We shall examine one instance each of movement and relation henceforth. First, we turn to movement. Movement has many modes. It can be a physical movement in space, and also a change of state in time, respectively characterised by the two Bergsonian multiplicities. But there are more complex movements within immanence which are connected to multiplicities and manifolds. In this regard, we shall look into two cases, that of ‘geometric immanence’ and ‘biological immanence’, and their movements which are topological. First, we go to geometric immanence, which is intimately related to multiplicities and manifolds. An important feature of multiplicity is that its N dimensions should not be aggregated and represented by the transcendental dimension of N+1. Multiplicity, in this sense, is immanent in itself. As we noted above, the concept of multiplicity was influenced by Riemannian manifolds. Riemann, in turn, drew many of his ideas from Fredrich Gauss, particularly on the notion of space, which becomes important in understanding the immanent nature of manifold/multiplicity. In a way it was Fredrich Gauss’s theory of curves and surfaces, formulated in the early part of the 19th century, that led to the development of Riemannian manifolds later. Gauss’s ideas on curves in fact had a strong affinity to the concept of immanence. He found that certain objects and figures do not need a transcendental space to embed them. They could be conceptualised as spaces in themselves. Take for example a sphere. Its surface is a space, which, though finite, is unbounded. It does not have an identifiable boundary. So, its surface area cannot be broken up and made to fit into a two-dimensional space or embed it in a transcendental N+I space. On the other hand, the sphere’s surface has to be taken as a space of its own. Its properties have to be characterised in terms of local differential operations, internal or immanent to it. This, in turn, signifies a sort of ‘geometric immanence’ that goes well with the logic of Deleuzian ontology (Holdsworth 2006: 142–3). Manuel DeLanda, through his brilliant interpretation of Deleuzian science, takes the idea of geometric immanence further. The traditional Euclidean approach to geometry focussed on certain properties common to specific sets of figures like the square, triangle or rectangle, and classified them according to these properties. But topology and differential geometry assume a dynamic model; it is about how these figures are affected or not affected by active transformations through movements. In other words, 40

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figures are classified by ‘their response to events that occur to them’ (DeLanda 2002: 18). There is another important development also here. When one group of transformation becomes a sub-group of another group of transformation it becomes possible to envision a process which converts one of the forms into another by either loosing symmetry or by gaining symmetry. For example, a sphere can become a cube by losing invariance to some transformations, or in technical terms, by undergoing a ‘symmetrybreaking transition’ (DeLanda 2002: 18). DeLanda further reveals the working of immanence and topological movements in various geometries, chiefly Euclidean, affine and projective. Euclidean geometry is characterised by angles, lengths and shapes which remain unaltered by certain transformations. However, these properties do not remain invariant in the other two geometries. For example, affine geometry adds ‘linear transformation’ to Euclidean geometry. Under it, the parallelism or the straightness of the lines remains invariant, but not their lengths and angles. Another case is projective geometry, which adds to the rigid and linear transformations the quality of projection. It is like holding a screen in the path of linear light rays and getting a magnified projection on the screen. We can conceive of these three geometries (projective-affineEuclidean) forming a hierarchy and containing each other. In other words, each level possesses more symmetry than the level below it. As we move down the hierarchy, a symmetry-breaking process or cascade produces more differentiated geometrical spaces in a progressive manner. On the other hand, if we go up, this process of differentiation gets diminished. In the upward movement from Euclidean geometry, more and more figures become equivalent to one another, forming less distinct classes. Thus, while in Euclidean geometry two triangles are equal only if the lengths of their sides are equal, in the affine geometry all triangles are the same despite the difference in lengths (DeLanda 2002: 25). This again results in a morphogenetic view of the birth of geometries as in the case of biological evolution. DeLanda points out: Metaphorically, the hierarchy ‘topological-differential-projectiveaffine-Euclidean’ may be seen as representing an abstract scenario for the birth of real space. As if the metric space which we inhabit and that physicists study and measure was born from a nonmetric, topological continuum as the latter differentiated and acquired structure following a series of symmetry-breaking transitions. (DeLanda 2002: 26) The notion of an undifferentiated continuum and its intensive differentiation is highly relevant, for instance, in an entirely different discipline like biology. For Deleuze, the evolution of organism as differential form is theorised from two perspectives. One is based on the static classification of organs and their functions and a comparative study of their differences in 41

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different organisms. The main proponent of this school was Georges Cuvier in the 19th century. For him, the organs have an individuality of their own as definite metric forms that occupy a Euclidean space. Opposed to him was Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire, who conceived of organisms from an intensive topological perspective. ‘Cuvier is a man of Power and Terrain, and he won’t let Geoffroy forget it; Geoffroy, on the other hand, prefigures the nomadic man of speed. Cuvier reflects a Euclidean space, whereas Geoffroy thinks topologically’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 47). Again, Cuvier conceives of organisms in a plane of organisation, structure and genesis, whereas Geoffroy constitutes organisms in a plane of immanence, univocality and composition. The former painted portraits of fixity, whereas the latter composed dances of movement and speed (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 254–5). For Geoffroy there exists an abstract plane of consistency, constituted of molecular elements that can be called the basic anatomical elements. These elements enter into different combinations according to an intensive logic to form different organs, in a process similar to the topological integration of the geometries. This plane of consistency is a BwO out of which individual organs evolve; and these evolved organs eventually go to constitute the different types of organisms. Again, this space is a topological one and the organs form according to intensive processes of ‘foldings’ and ‘re-foldings’. For example, ‘[To] go from the Vertebrate to the Cephalopod, bring the two sides of the Vertebrate’s backbone together, bend its head down to its feet and its pelvis up to the nape of its neck …’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 46). As far as the topological emergence is concerned, an ideal example would be the case of the tetrapod limb, a structure which can take divergent forms. It is originally an undifferentiated continuum in the typical Deleuzian sense, from which emerges diverse forms that range from the bird wing to the single digit limb in the horse to the human hand and its opposed thumb (DeLanda 2002: 68). Again, these foldings and emergences are ruled by speeds and affects typical of a Spinozist world. Coming to the second point of relation in the plane of immanence, this asserts its presence in a number of concepts like desire, multiplicity, rhizome, assemblage, and so on. Since it would be difficult to examine all these concepts in terms of relation, we shall confine ourselves to assemblage.

Assemblage and Deterritorialisation An assemblage is precisely a multiplicity as its dimensions increase and its nature changes (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 8; Deleuze and Parnet 1987: 132). What is the specific definition of an assemblage in terms of relation? It is a multiplicity which is made up of many heterogeneous terms and which establishes liaisons, relations between them, across ages, sexes and reigns—different natures. Thus, the assemblage’s only unity is that of co-functioning: it is a symbiosis, a ‘sympathy’. 42

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It is never filiations which are important, but alliances, alloys; these are not successions, lines of descent, but contagions, epidemics, the wind. (Deleuze and Parnet 1987: 69) An important example of assemblage Deleuze cites is the man–horse–stirrup complex. Three heterogenous components compose this assemblage: an animal, a technical object, and the human. For Deleuze, this assemblage was the most effective war machine in the Middle Ages. What happens in it is that the stirrup provides stability to the knight perched on the horse so that he can tuck the lance under his arm and charge forward with great speed. The assemblage enables the horse’s speed to be transferred to the knight via the stirrup so that the assaulting power multiplies many times compared to the foot-soldier fighting with his hand-clasped sword in a face-to-face combat. There occurs a conversion of animal energy into human energy through the mingling of the disparate bodies in the assemblage. This ‘machinic assemblage’ of bodies is not something left to itself. It is connected to the ‘collective assemblage of enunciation’ as well. The knightly war machine released certain affects and skills in the battlefield which also had its complementary repercussions in the social field. New imaginaries, fluxes and conventions like tournaments, courtly love, knightly exploits and oaths of fealty also came to be co-established in the social scene, forming a heterogenous component of the knightly assemblage (Deleuze and Parnet 1987: 70). There are two important features of the assemblage: 1) On the first axis they are composed of assemblages of bodies and matter as well as assemblages of enunciation or utterance; 2) On the second axis, assemblages are governed by the movement or transformation which Deleuze and Guattari term ‘deterritorialisation’ or ‘lines of flight’. Coming to the first feature, perhaps the best example could be Foucault’s analysis of the prison assemblage, or, in his own terms, a dispositif of power and knowledge (Patton 2000: 44). Why prison becomes an assemblage is due to the fact that it brings together two asymmetric formations. These two formations are the material prison as the carceral site, and penal law as legal statements that sentence prisoners to confinement. One part is physical matter and the other part linguistic discourse; one part is visible and the other part articulated. From the angle of Saussurean semiology, these formations could be conceptualised as signifier and signified, which are complementary counterparts. But for Foucault it is a case of an assemblage of asymmetric components. Their coming together at any historical point or in any social milieu could be imputed to their capacity for forming assemblages (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 66–7). Let us look into the formations in the prison assemblage individually. Prison as the form of content does not directly depend on penal law for its existence and continuity. Its content or signified is the prisoner and a set of disciplinary strategies like panoptic surveillance, ethical codes, drill schedules and corrective practices that surround him. Perhaps the most important 43

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aspect is that it becomes a visual assemblage through the working of an ‘abstract machine’, the Panopticon. As Deleuze puts it in his study of Foucault: Prison for its part, is concerned with whatever is visible: not only does it wish to display the crime and the criminal but in itself it constitutes a visibility, it is a system of light before being a figure of stone, and is defined by ‘Panopticism’: by a visual assemblage and a luminous environment (a central tower surrounded by cells) in which the warder can see all the detainees without the detainees being able to see either him or one another. (Deleuze 1988c: 32) On the other side, penal law is a corpus of linguistic statements, which has its own independent mode of articulation and development through classification of crimes, juridical interpretations, court system and judicial verdicts. In fact, it becomes another assemblage on its own. We notice that the penal law and prison system, as two independent formations, do not establish a necessary relation, but only a contingent one. To cite Deleuze again: Of course, as a form of content prison itself has its own statements and regulations. Equally penal law, as a form of expression, statements of delinquency, has its contents: … And the two forms continue to come into contact, seep into one another and steal bits for themselves: penal law still leads back to prison and provides prisoners, while prison continues to reproduce delinquency … (Deleuze 1988c: 33) The assemblage thus formed contingently need not last long. There are vectors of disintegration working inside it which leads to transformation eventually. Deleuze and Guattari call this process ‘deterritorialisation’, which is the second feature of the assemblage. We shall now turn to this concept. Deterritorialisation is defined as a movement by which one leaves a territory. Assemblages are territorial, but there are always vectors of deterritorialisation working from within. Deterritorialisation is also inseparable from correlative ‘reterritorialisation’. There can be reterritorialisation on anything, like an object, a book, a system or apparatus (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 508–9). In the case of the medieval knightly assemblage, which we examined above, we may notice very subtle forms of reterritorialisation occurring to it later in history. One such space was literature. Cervantes’ Don Quixote, the Renaissance classic, should be the most convincing case of the reterritorialisation of the medieval knightly assemblage in the mode of a caricature. In this book, there occurs a travesty of medieval chivalry in the figure of Don Quixote who fights his mock battles with windmills, and attempts sexual conquests with peasant women and 44

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barmaids. As time passes, this farcical figure also gets reterritorialised. He jumps from the novel to a theoretical text this time, which is Foucault’s The Order of Things. In this text, Don Quixote becomes the key persona who represents the passage of episteme from Renaissance to the modern period (Foucault 1970: 46–50). Assemblages are very much present in the animal world too and due forms of deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation take place there. Assemblages have many forms, such as territorial assemblage, machinic assemblage, collective assemblage of enunciation, and so on. The animal world is noted for three important assemblages which work in their territoriality: infra-assemblage, intra-assemblage and inter-assemblage (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 325). Here also the vector of deterritorialisation is at work, which, in turn, results in specific kinds of reterritorialisations. Infraassemblages are territorial in the sense that a particular colour or sound marks it like a poster or placard over the differentiated territory. Intraassemblage is the next stage which has many affects and functions assembled together. For example, in birds, a territorial assemblage brings together colours, odors, sounds, postures, etc. This assemblage constitutes the physical territory of the bird and the entry of intruders is prohibited. But certain elements in this territory can deterritorialise and move into another assemblage creating an inter-assemblage, which is the next stage. For example, a particular colour that functions as a marker in a territorial assemblage can become a quality of sexual attraction in a courtship assemblage. Here the territorial assemblage deterritorialises into a social assemblage since a partner is also involved in the courtship (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 324–5). The brief investigation made in these preceding discussions in no sense exhausts the multiple planes of Deleuzian ontology, which spreads out into the many texts in his oeuvre, written solo as well as in collaboration with Guattari. Yet, despite its extensions and expansions, the core articulation of ontology occurs in Difference and Repetition and the two texts on capitalism and schizophrenia. Again, countless analyses of it have already been made and many potential ones remain to be actualised. What is attempted here is just one indistinct murmur in the Leibnizian ocean of Deleuze and Guattari studies.

References Ansell-Pearson, Keith. 2002. Philosophy and the Adventure of the Virtual: Bergson and the Time of Life. London: Routledge. Beistegui, Miguel de. 2004. Truth and Genesis: Philosophy as Differential Ontology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Beistegui, Miguel de. 2010. Immanence: Deleuze and Philosophy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Bryant, Levi R. 2008. Difference and Givenness: Deleuze’s Transcendental Empiricism and the Ontology of Immanence. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

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Calamari, Martin. 2005. ‘Riemann–Weyl in Deleuze’s Bergsonism and the Constitution of the Contemporary Physico-Mathematical Space’, Deleuze and Guattari Studies, 9(1): 59–87. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. DeLanda, Manuel. 2002. Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy. London: Continuum. DeLanda, Manuel and Peter Gaffney. 2010. ‘The Metaphysics of Science: An Interview with Manuel DeLanda’, in Peter Gaffney (ed.), The Force of the Virtual: Deleuze, Science, and Philosophy, pp. 325–32. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 1983. Nietzsche and Philosophy. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson. New York: Columbia University Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 1988a. Bergsonism. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. New York: Zone Books. Deleuze, Gilles. 1988b. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. Translated by Robert Hurley. San Francisco: City Lights Books. Deleuze, Gilles. 1988c. Foucault. Translated by Sean Hand. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 1990a. The Logic of Sense. Edited by Constantin Boundas, Translated by Mark Lester. New York: Columbia University Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 1990b. Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza. Translated by Martin Joughin. New York: Zone Books. Deleuze, Gilles. 1994. Difference and Repetition. Translated by Paul Patton. New York: Columbia University Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 2004. Desert Islands and Other Texts (1953–1974). Edited by David Lapoujade, Translated by Michael Taormina. Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e). Deleuze, Gilles. 2006. Two Regimes of Madness: Texts and Interviews 1975–1995. Edited by David Lapoujade, Translated by Ames Hodges and Mike Taormina. New York: Semiotext(e). Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. 1983. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. 1994. What is Philosophy? Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell. New York: Columbia University Press. Deleuze, Gilles and Claire Parnet. 1987. Dialogues. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. New York: Columbia University Press. Foucault, Michel. 1970. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. London: Tavistock Publications. Hardt, Michael. 1993. Gilles Deleuze: An Apprenticeship with Philosophy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 1969. Hegel’s Science of Logic. Translated by Arnold V. Miller. New York: Humanity Books. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 1997. Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by Arnold V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Holdsworth, David. 2006. ‘Becoming Interdisciplinary: Making Sense of DeLanda’s Reading of Deleuze’, Paragraph, 29(2): 139–56. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

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Lin, Martin. 2006. ‘Substance, Attribute, and Mode in Spinoza’, Philosophy Compass, 1(2): 144–53. New Jersey: Wiley Blackwell. May, Todd. 2005. Gilles Deleuze: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Patton, Paul. 2000. Deleuze and the Political. London: Routledge. Plotnitsky, Arkady. 2009. ‘Bernhard Riemann’, in Graham Jones and Jon Roffe (eds.), Deleuze’s Philosophical Lineage, pp. 190–208. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Protevi, John. 2009. Political Affect: Connecting the Social and the Somatic. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Smith, Daniel W. 2007. ‘The Conditions of the New’, Deleuze and Guattari Studies, 1: 1–21. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Somers-Hall, Henry. 2013. Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Taylor, Charles. 1975. Hegel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Widder, Nathan. 2009. ‘John Duns Scotus’, in Graham Jones and Jon Roffe (eds.), Deleuze’s Philosophical Lineage, pp. 27–43. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

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2 VIRTUAL ONTOLOGIES Heidegger, Deleuze and the concept of the event (ereignis, événement)1 Marc Rölli Deleuze’s philosophy seems to circulate around the event. Yet the history of that glittering term in important aspects relates back to Heidegger, and the manifold theories of the event, in particular those of French origin, which stand in the long shadow that Heidegger casts. The following remarks are meant to add profile to Deleuze’s thoughts of the event. This may be a necessary propaedeutic clarification, given the en vogue simplifications of some prominent Deleuze critics that center on ontology (the univocity of being). The event proves to be a problematic category if it is abstractly opposed to deep-rooted habits of thought as a utopian figure of non-identity. Notably, Deleuze, in a central chapter of Difference and Repetition, actually begins philosophy with difference—and thus with an immanent reference to the event.2 Events thus take the systematic centre stage of his thought. Large fields of philosophy, however, cling to the dogmatic presuppositions that are displaced into empirical being and that form an image of thought that is rooted in the logic of representation. Particular empirical opinions are thus simply conserved as proto-opinions or—as it is with Husserl—Ur-doxa: postulates in the moralistic image of thought.3 Thus, events only exist as minorities at the margins. According to Deleuze, it is impossible to think from a safe foundation without presuppositions. It is quite relevant which facts are chosen and elevated to the transcendental level—as prerequisites for a rightful philosophising. To put it differently, for Deleuze, it is important to retain the nonphilosophical presuppositions of philosophy as such—the so-called ‘pre-philosophical level’ (of immanence), which has to be contoured by conceptual means, is exactly that. In what follows, I would like to trace the postulates that control and command the image of thought so vehemently fought for by Deleuze, and how the differential theory of faculties answers to this very problematic. From there, it will be comprehensible what Deleuze means by ‘the event’.

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The discourse of the representative acts according to the formula, ‘Everybody knows, no one can deny’, and thus follows the implicit principle of common sense, sens commun (Deleuze 1968: 130). This principle states that ‘everybody’ is rightfully inclined to the Truth, possesses Truth ‘formaliter’, searches for it ‘realiter’. Following Nietzsche, Deleuze calls this image of thought a deeply moral one, since only the Good has the ability to ground the affinity between the True and thought (Deleuze 1968: 132).4 Its tenacity is based on the constitutive principle of the universality and veracity of the natural exercise of thinking. This claim (to unrestricted validity) is not easily subverted by listing contradictory facts, as long as these can be interpreted as merely extrinsic, marginal factors that deflect thinking from its true nature. Thus, Deleuze criticises the distribution between the factual and the legitimate, as it lies at the heart of the morally instructed self-image of thought, residing on the level of the Lacanian imaginary. In the model of recognition Deleuze does not only find the realisation of the decisive postulate of the dogmatic philosophy of representation, but also of that distribution that defines the conditions of the cogitatio natura universalis in the realm of the transcendental. At this point Deleuze’s 1963 interpretation of Kant—La philosophie critique de Kant—plays an important role. In this text, he links the ‘three critiques’ focusing on the function of the common sense in Kant’s thought (Deleuze 1984: 21–4; 48–50). Common sense takes different shapes, as logical, moral or aesthetic common sense. What is decisive, though, is that in any case (albeit in different proportions) the involved faculties are in harmony and agreement.5 Although aesthetic common sense does not represent an objective harmony of the faculties—in his comments on the sublime, Kant even considers the dissociation of the imagination from the chains of common sense—it constitutes the possibility of their joint labour in the subjective, free and indefinite concordance of thought and imagination (Deleuze 1984: 49). This, as Deleuze states, ‘highest theological principle’ of harmonic correspondence asserts itself in the context of the transcendental analytic of the First Critique in the model of recognition, where the synthesis and the schematism of the imagination are ‘applicable a priori to the forms of sensibility in conformity with concepts’ (Deleuze 1984: 22). In Difference and Repetition, we read: Recognition thus relies upon a subjective principle of collaboration of the faculties for ‘everybody’—in other words, a common sense as a Concordia facultatum; while simultaneously, for the philosopher, the form of identity in objects relies upon a ground in the unity of a thinking subject, of which all the other faculties must be modalities. (Deleuze 1968: 133) The transcendental model which regulates the unity of the self(-awareness) in the harmony of the faculties implies a certain distribution of the empirical and the transcendental and ensures the rightful validity of the 49

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dogmatic image of thought. Taking his cue from everyday acts of recognition, Kant determines the sensible and conceptual structures a priori that are retroactively ‘traced’ as the conditions for the possibility of experience. As Foucault has shown in Les mots et les choses (The Order of Things) (1966), such a regressive practice ultimately misses the transcendental fields (of the unconscious) that precede the empirical givens (of consciousness) as singular, genetic conditions. The immanent determination of the faculties thus does not come into view if—in the course of developing empirical understanding for instance—perception, memory and judgement relate a priori to the identical form of a supposed Same object and thus reflect the similar originary unity of the thinking subject. ‘This is the meaning of the Cogito as a beginning: … it provides a philosophical concept for the presupposition of a common sense’ (Deleuze 1968: 133). It should suffice here to point out the homogenising function of the synthesis of apperception as conceptualised by Kant, which merges the diverging syntheses of imagination into a conceptual whole (Deleuze 1968: 135). Kant’s strategy of the epistemological legitimisation of knowledge grounds itself on the fact of experience, defined as empirical cognition, and strives to present its implicit conditions a priori: a concordance of the faculties which realise their affiliation to a self-identical subject in the determination of a selfidentical object. Thus, according to Deleuze, the everyday banality of experience is repeated and consolidated. The ‘event’, in contrast, presents a radically altered concept of experience. Deleuze finds in Kant’s doctrine of the three syntheses, starting points to advance into the genetic-transcendental structures of a temporally completely determinable subjectivity.6 Yet recognition, according to Kant, controls and regularises its ‘subordinate’ syntheses, and thus their intensive and virtual character is significantly distorted. In direct opposition to the concept of common sense, Deleuze now refers only to the analytic of the sublime in the Critique of Judgment (Deleuze 1968: 146; 320 n. 10). The example of the sublime shows how Deleuze manages to steer clear of the dangers of a negative theology with his radically empiricist approach. Let us state in a first step that sublime is something that exceeds our apprehension. There is something that is ‘too large’, that cannot be recognised, but that makes us think. In contrast to objects of recognition, Deleuze speaks here of ‘signs’ that irritate and perplex us, and that force us to problematise. To say it with Kant, in this case sensations are ceaselessly apprehended and reproduced, since they cannot be subsumed under an idea. We are not dealing here with an experience of the untroubled harmony of the faculties, as is the case according to Kant, for example in the free play of aesthetic reflection in the face of beautiful objects. In contrast, the sublime is an ‘experience of difference’: the imagination always reaches its limits, because it attempts to apprehend a whole that always eludes its grasp. ‘But the point of capital importance’, asserts Kant, ‘is that the mere ability even to think it as a whole indicates a faculty of mind transcending every standard of sense’ (Kant 1790: 102). It is the idea of reason that demands 50

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‘absolute totality’ (Kant 97).7 The failure of the imagination to represent the idea points at a ‘supersensible’ faculty for ideas within us and thus ignites the sublime disposition. Kant and the multitude of his followers conjecture a negative idea of infinity that transcends the realm of the sensible.8 Not so Deleuze, who strives at conceptualising an immanent idea of the sublime feeling that is grounded immediately in the ‘monstrous’ (Kant 1790: 100) and the ‘point of excess for the imagination’ (Kant 1790: 107) which feels like it is ‘in an abyss in which it fears to lose itself’ (Kant 1790: 107). What is decisive for Deleuze is that in the state of the sublime the conflicting faculties are unhinged from common sense. The signs that were at first only sensed thus are not conceptually connected to an experience of wholeness a priori. They make you think, that is, they signal an ideal potential that can be conceptualised as a differential structure of experience. Now it becomes clearer how Deleuze sets off from the classical prejudices of an identifying thinking. The experiential norm of representational logic has to be overridden on the level of validity. Deleuze calls his philosophical project a transcendental empiricism (Deleuze 1968: 143–4). This term does not only indicate the need to add a transcendental dimension to the empiricist position. First of all its project is to develop a—with recourse to Kant— critical, that is, empiricist concept of the transcendental. With regard to the differential form of a faculty that Deleuze envisions, one might speak of its transcendental exercise if it avoids tracing the outlines of the empirical. Put differently: as soon as a faculty acts only on its very own turf and thus apprehends what empirical exercise in the form of common sense cannot apprehend, it acts on the sub-representative level of a truly transcendental field, that is, on the plane of immanence. The new image of thought envisioned by Deleuze is distinguished by thinking thought only with regard to its encounter with signs that perplex and stimulate it, that affect it from the outside and force it to act.9 The initial point of this process is the being of the sensible, of sensations or affects, the degree of intensity of which is the result of passive syntheses of singular points that are not coordinated mentally. The sensations that can only be sensed are not to be classically interpreted as immediate givens of consciousness. They elude representation and thus are the subject not of a simple, but of a radical empiricism. On the other hand, if the sensible with regard to common sense can be defined as the empirical quality of an object that cannot only be sensed, but also represented, memorised or conceived as that self-same object, then the being of the sensible in contrast has to be understood as exclusive, incomparable or a disparate element of the sensitive faculty. ‘It is not a sensible being but the being of the sensible. It is not the given but that by which the given is given’ (Deleuze 1994: 140). From the point of view of empirical sensibility, this paradoxical element is the ‘imperceptible’ that cannot be grasped since it is already concealed or expatiated by extension or quality. Vice versa, this imperceptible in the transcendental exercise of sensibility is exactly that which can only be sensed, since it besets us and produces the sensation.10 51

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The differential faculties of sensation and perception—Deleuze speaks of affects and percepts that do not refer to a common object—mark a gap within thought because they can neither be a priori subjected to the requirements of representation, nor be conceptually mediated. In the realm of the unthought, the unmediated and intensive sensations cavort and signs emerge that make you think ‘from the outside’. Deleuze repeatedly interprets this situation with the introduction of time into thought, initiated by Kant, further developed by Heidegger, which in the last instance leads to a break with the traditional image of human reason grounded in common sense. Below its capacity for self-justification, the flux of experience flows ceaselessly, an inner-temporal flow of becoming that currently differentiates itself and constitutes the ‘point of departure for that which forces thought’ (Deleuze 1994: 141)—whereas recognition limits this qualitative becoming, measures and objectifies it, brings it to a standstill.11 In allusion to Heidegger, Deleuze turns against the torpor of thinking in its abstract possibilities and exemplifies a necessary relation to an outside, in the face of which it makes its appearance or recovers from its natural fatigue and narrow-mindedness. ‘It is alarming that we still do not think’—because the incompetence or difficulty of thought ‘is not a de facto state … but a de jure structure of thought’ (Deleuze 1994: 147). Is Deleuze here discarding—either in a ‘vitalistic’ manner, or because of too close a proximity to Heidegger’s mysticism of being—the enlightening potential of reason in relying on a non-conceptual difference between the sensible and the intelligible that—against appearances—sacrifices the concrete dispositions of experience? The insistence on immanence—does it not lead straight into the ‘swarm of appearances’ Kant talks of, into delirium and chaos that are playing their tricks below the established orders, into the zone of indiscernibility: disconnected and indifferent difference of the different? Here all doubts are cast, and here it becomes clear that the Deleuzian philosophical project aims at nothing less than the transformation of rationality. Focusing on the concept of the event, I will clarify in what follows to what extent Deleuze avoids on the one hand the positions that an all-too scholarly and positivistic trust in rationality lead to, and on the other hand a holistic, romantic belief in the inanity of the subject (or in its dependence on a transcendent instance). I begin by expanding the hitherto incomplete structure of experience as the structure of differential faculties. This is because ‘it is apparent that acts of recognition exist and occupy a large part of our daily life: this is a table, this is an apple, this the piece of wax, Good morning Theaetetus’ (Deleuze 1968: 135). Yet, how does the apparent match with the new image of thought described above, that Deleuze sees—with Nietzsche—as a viable alternative to nihilism? Does it suffice to say that Deleuze reconstructs the fact of experience with regard to immanence? Is the differential structure only another way to think experience? Do we—according to a common cliché—only perceive what we already know? For Deleuze, the problem is much more complex: the virtual structures (of the in principle separate faculties) and the actual 52

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experiences (of the in fact colluding faculties) are entangled in a peculiar manner. First of all, we have to state that Deleuze’s structural approach is of a genetic type. There is no structure without actualisation.12 However, since the process of actualisation is based on reciprocal syntheses of its structural elements and thus necessitates a principle of reciprocal determination, Deleuze says that it takes place in a field of individuation, that is, within experience (Deleuze 1968: 246–54). ‘What cannot be replaced is individuation itself’ (Deleuze 1994: 258). Individuation is that what dramatises differences in intensity—and it does so within the context of temporal and spatial syntheses that express the relevant processes of subjectivation as actual forms of selfaffection. It has to be noted, though, that what Deleuze repudiates is the invalidation not of individual differences, but of individuating differences: and this is where his ongoing critique of romanticism (of Nietzsche’s ‘first Dionysus’, the indifferent nature of Schelling, Schopenhauer’s metaphysics of the will, the pure deterritorialisation of drug addiction, Pollock’s de-figuralisation, pure chaos in contrast to chaosmos) is rooted.13 The event should by no means be mistaken for an undifferentiated groundlessness. In the second place, the ontology of difference is not based on the individuating processes (of the actualisation of virtual structures of immanence) only with regard to the philosophy of time—thus resisting any naive vitalism—but is also simultaneously and directly aimed at power relations. Just as actualisation is—in contrast to the actual—constituted virtually, so are the microphysical power quanta (following Foucault) in their relational field. When Deleuze and Guattari develop their ‘generalised pragmatics’, they are refusing the naïve opposition of representations and lines of flight by inventing concepts that think forces of deterritorialisation in micro-structures. As a pragmatic basic term the collective assemblage substitutes the concept of structure and allows for the distinction between stratified power relations and free relations of immanence even in the field of the virtual. There are thus two levels of collective assemblies that are both virtual-real. On the one hand, there are the relations of immanence of criss-crossing lines of flight, on the other hand the already segmented and stratified power relations, e.g. the pragmatic ‘regimes of signs’ that determine the exchange and the (actual) referential relations between content and expression. Deleuze proceeds similarly in his book on Foucault, when he traces back the two fields of the visible and the articulable to a dispositive that does not follow a representational logic, an assemblage of conditions that regulate its interrelations as relations in power constellations (Deleuze 1988: 47–93).14 And it is here that the critique of structuralism as it is mapped out in A Thousand Plateaus (2004) finds its actual motive. The critique aims at the fact that the concept of structure is not sufficient through which to think power relations that regulate the exchange between propositions and states of affairs, between discourses and actions, etc. In fact, the Logic of Sense had already elucidated that propositions and things were connected structurally in such a way that the expressed is simultaneously also an attribute of the state of 53

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affairs (Deleuze 1990: 22). This is the sense of a sentence, whereas its meaning merely points to an extrinsic referential relation that depends on various conditions. The Logic of Sense, however, correlates sense and event directly, whereas A Thousand Plateaus exerts the concept of the speech-act which testifies to relations of seizure and the real social contexts of activity in which the expression of a sentence is embedded. In the second step, it thus becomes clearer that Deleuze is not engaged in a metaphysics of the event. Events are experiences of the virtual that, by definition, happen within a particular temporal and power-relational context. Thus, they are situated pragmatically (in the sense of a logic of the multiple or of associations), but are not conceived as ontologically abstract or vitalistically indifferent. The difference between apprehension and perception is in principle valid only on the level of the virtual, whereas in the actual, mediations emerge and consolidate and are more or less regulated in the ‘dispositive’. Third, Deleuze turns away from the vogue of postmodern models of thinking the event in so much as he vehemently repudiates a fixation of philosophical thinking on the identifying concepts of the metaphysical tradition. Thus, his philosophy is not marked by a form of anti-hegelianism—notably, Žižek has been trying to sell this really old hat again of late (Žižek 2004: 45ff). To the contrary, Deleuze develops a theory of the concept that a priori insists on the essential difference between the conceptual and the a-conceptual. Since the publication of his book on Nietzsche, Deleuze has made it clear that the seductions of dialectics had to be brought to a halt by an alternative conception of difference. His rethinking ultimately aims at replacing the negative determination of difference that makes possible the spiritual embracing of being and appearance, and instead locate a starting point in the empiricist idea of a self-differentiating difference. That implies, however, that Deleuze is simultaneously doing two things in the beginning: he constructs a concept of difference, and he also does so on the condition of a difference between the conceptual and the a-conceptual, the philosophical and the non-philosophical. Elucidating the concept of difference, thus, Deleuze thinks the self-differentiation of the a-conceptual—the affects and percepts that can only be sensed—provided that concepts can only be thought, i.e. on the condition of a de jure difference of the faculties that makes it impossible to think the essential being of the a-conceptual within the concept (and thus to subordinate the sensible, etc. in the concept). Differences emerge from temporal modifications that continually ‘make themselves heard’ in the passing of the present and the accumulation of the past, and in the radical imminence of a future that has not yet dissolved into the present. Something makes itself heard, stands out from a background it cannot get rid of. Difference remains unilateral, as a difference that is thought, elevated into the concept, and thus lends consistency to the infinite speed of the immanent process. Deleuze starts with immanence in the invention of his concepts. They answer to the passive syntheses of the sensible, to the a-conceptual signs or the virtual modes of repetition. ‘The concept speaks the event, not the 54

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essence or the thing—pure event’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1996: 21). Precisely because concepts are events themselves, in so much as they configure, they enable us to think immanence through them. Of course, there is a volume of examples in the history of philosophy on how the nature of concepts can be corrupted. In What is Philosophy? Deleuze and Guattari discuss in detail the conceptological illusions which pass concepts off as metaphysical essences, empirical abstractions, or propositional functions (Deleuze and Guattari 1996: 135ff). In general, however, concepts are structural multiples that have to be produced and that refer only to themselves (that is, to their both fragmentary and indivisible conceptual composition). Thus, their (virtual) consistency is due to the processual variations of their non-discursive traits: they are defined not by reference concerned with an extensional relation to a state of affairs of things or bodies.15 The event is ‘counterrealised’ in the concept, or brought into a virtual consistency. This consistency is virtual-real, yet not actual-possible, because the conceptual traits are not doubles of empirical ones and are not functions of experience, but interpret those genetic realms of experience that due to their differential status can only be adequately conceptualised if the concepts express their own specific (quasi ‘spiritual’) constitution in an unstinted manner. What is of relevance here is that concepts do not refer to objects they determine, but—to say it with Hegel—have their object only within themselves. They survey [survoler] the realm of the empirical, but they do not emerge from a privileged source of perception: concepts are arranged alongside the other singular faculties. Their virtuality takes recourse to the transcendental exercise of reason: the reality of a way of thinking that is not intentionally directed, but that grasps points of actualisation or provides perception filters that separate the remarkable from the unimportant. Thus, concepts are interrelated with the ideal totality of experience—an interrelation that is not dogmatically predetermined, but has to be always produced, if one does not want to cater to the prevalent power structures (Deleuze 1988: 108ff). It is quite telling that Alain Badiou finds the ‘splitting’ between the virtual and the actual—the origin of Deleuze’s concept of difference—‘enigmatic’ (Badiou 2000: 52). It thus seems as if the ontology of the One-all or of univocity is completely absorbed in a metaphysics of the event that sacrifices the determination of actual multiples and differences. However, Badiou misses the actual problem and the hotspot of Deleuze’s philosophy—on the one hand the immanent process that makes differences, and on the other hand thinking this immanence that only succeeds if it can also think the difference between thought and its outside—i.e. the immanence as a field of affects and percepts that can only be sensed or perceived, but not thought (or thought only as such). According to Badiou, the introduction of difference already equals the introduction of equivocity, and thus the problem of dualism—supposedly inherited from Bergson.16 Against this, it has to be noted that for Deleuze, to talk of differences makes sense only on the level of the virtual, and thus on the level of the processes of actualisation. Insofar as the actual is thought of as 55

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being involved in these processes, it is indistinguishable from them. It is distinguishable, however, if thought of as being separated from these processes, in the discourse of representation. Actual multiplicities are mere empirical multiplicities in a pre-existing gridded, ‘striated space’. Between these two discourses there is a very palpable conditional relation, insofar as the actual states of affairs, due to their relation to the processes of actualisation, are determined virtually, i.e. structurally, in the diagram of power relations, in the structure (or assemblage) of temporal and spatial dynamics. In this respect, Deleuze is not doing ‘pure’ philosophy: the virtual multiplicity always already contours itself against actually existing discourses and lived reality. Badiou aggrandises himself by presenting his position as one of coequal opposition to Deleuze’s position. As some kind of ‘trader of concepts’ Badiou offers a barter to the logics of difference and of the event—and completely misses the fact that his theory is a conceptually totally different story. I conclude: the problematics of the event point to the virtual processes of becoming of experience, which can be adequately thought in concepts of a philosophy of immanence of temporal syntheses. From the perspective of a radical temporalisation of thinking, the one subject of occidental tradition disintegrates into a multiplicity of de jure separated faculties that communicate only via their difference. This disintegration—necessary from the perspective of a time-bound philosophy—is accompanied by the equally necessary self-affection qua hetero-affection. That means that the self-relation of time generates a virtual correlation of experience (mémoire souvenir) that is permanently open to the future, and is thus fragmented. It also means that the ideally separated realms entertain factual relations that derive from the given conditions of actualisation. The repetitions are lived through, they permanently produce effects of subjectivation. The ‘space of experience’ of the virtual, however, cannot be explicated and brought to awareness as such. Affects, for instance, can only be sensed as intensities, they resist the harmonious collaboration of the faculties that produce a selfsame object for a self-awareness. The virtual is de facto not independent from the actual. One cannot ‘break through’ to the regions of the virtual directly—they open up only in contrast to the actual. The virtual is not actual and cannot become so without effacing itself as virtual. The virtual cannot be actualised, only counter-effectuated. Thus, the factual rarity of events becomes clear: the affiliation of consciousness to the realm of actual objects of experience conceals the being of the unconscious that insists, unnoticed in the virtual mode of implication in the present. The event happens, when consciousness fades, when it becomes permeable to its genetic backgrounds. In such a moment, the present is being hollowed out: it is beset by a drift into the virtual regions of future or past. The present is nothing: always already passed, always imminent, the present marks an experience of non-happening, a loss of presence and control in the face of the timelessness of a situation affected by the—panic or joyful—expectation that it is going to happen … 56

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It is no longer time that exists between two instants; it is the event that is a meanwhile [un entre-temps]: the meanwhile is not part of the eternal, but neither it is part of time—it belongs to becoming. The meanwhile … does not come after what happens; it coexists with the … time of the accident, but as the immensity of the empty time in which we see it as still to come and as having already happened … All the meanwhiles are superimposed on one another, whereas times succeed each other. In every event there are heterogeneous, always simultaneous components, since each of them is … within the meanwhile that makes them communicate through zones of indiscernibility, of undecidability: they are … modulations, … singularities of a new infinite order. Each component of the event is actualised or effectuated in an instant … but nothing happens within the virtuality that has only meanwhiles as components and an event as composite becoming. Nothing happens here, but everything becomes … (Deleuze and Guattari 1996: 158)

Notes 1 The following text picks up and develops lines of thought presented in my essay ‘Virtuality and Actuality,’ in Deleuzian Events, Hanjo Berressem and Leyla Haferkamp (eds.), pp. 72–85. Berlin: Lit, 2009. 2 The third chapter The Image of Thought is the centre of Difference and Repetition. Trans. Paul Patton. New York: Columbia UP, 1994 (France 1968), 129–67. Immediately from the beginning of the chapter, Deleuze is concerned with a new beginning to thinking of difference radically opposed to the paradigm of representation. 3 Cp. Deleuze and Guattari on ‘the opinion’ and its phenomenological revival in: Deleuze/Guattari. What is Philosophy? Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell. New York: Columbia UP, 1994 (France 1991), 144–50. 4 See also the author’s: ‘Friedrich Nietzsche. Jenseits von Gut und Böse.’ in: Von Platon bis Derrida. Eds. G. Gamm, E. Schürmann. Darmstadt 2005, 238–56, in particular 242–5. Already in his book on Nietzsche, Deleuze had emphasised three main theses or presuppositions de jure of the rationalistic image of thought, with emphasis on Descartes’ Discours de la méthode: first, the thesis of the truthfulness of thinking (sincere nature of thought, good will of the thinker); second, the thesis of the obstacles external to thought that divert it from the right path (the error as the essential feature of the negativity of thought), third, the thesis of the sufficiency of the method by which deficiencies of knowledge can be corrected, and the effects of alien forces be warded off. Cp. Nietzsche and Philosophy. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson. New York: Columbia UP, 1983 (France 1962), 103ff. 5 In Difference and Repetition Deleuze sums up the crucial keynote of his Kant study: ‘While it is true that in general all the faculties collaborate in recognition, the formulae of that collaboration differ according to the nature of that which is to be recognised: object of knowledge, moral value, aesthetic effect … Far from overturning the form of common sense, Kant merely multiplied it’ (Difference and Repetition, 137).

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6 In this concern with utilising the syntheses of the imagination for a time-philosophical interpretation of the finality of existence Deleuze is definitely following Heidegger. However, as early as 1963 he defies the mystification that Heidegger is effecting with his intonation of the abysmal. The abysmal that Heidegger’s thought is orbiting only repeats Kant’s problem of mediation that necessarily has to mystify the bridging of the structural opposition between intuition and thought, precisely because the necessity of such a ‘middle term’ is a result of the faulty presentation of the problem. Cp. (Kant’s Critical Philosophy 18). 7 For Kant, only ideas of reason are sublime, are the reason for the feeling of the sublime (cp. Critique of Judgment 94–8). ‘Therefore the feeling of the sublime in nature is respect for our own vocation … and this feeling renders, as it were, intuitable the supremacy of our cognitive faculties on the rational side over the greatest faculty of sensibility’ (106). 8 ‘Still the mere ability even to think the given infinite without contradiction, is something that requires the presence in the human mind of a faculty that is itself supersensible’ (Critique of Judgment 103). 9 It is true that in Difference and Repetition Deleuze does not call for a ‘new image of thought’ but of a ‘thought without image’ that realises itself through the ‘complete destruction’ of the (imaginary) image of thought (see Difference and Repetition 147). Yet, even if it is true that thought does not presuppose itself (imaginary), it nevertheless has to enforce another distribution between the factual and the legitimate, i. e. to create another pre-philosophical plane. This is why Deleuze already in his books on Nietzsche (1962) and Proust (1964) had called for a new image of thought that would constitute itself with the critique of the dogmatic image. Cp. (Nietzsche and Philosophy 103–10). 10 Cp. (Difference and Repetition 236–7). Already in the first edition of Proust et les signes (1964) Deleuze goes beyond the Nietzsche-influenced remarks on the image of thought by interpreting the active and reactive ‘forces’ with his difference-philosophical reading of the Kantian doctrine of the faculties and applying it to their arbitrary or involuntary use. It is the sensible signs that force reason, mind, memory, or imagination to move—the imperative emanating from them is reflected in the involuntary reaction of the provoked faculties. 11 See (Difference and Repetition 141). According to the paradox of the inner sense stated by Kant, my existence is determinable only phenomenally. For Deleuze, there is no way to argue for a priori identifying of the active determination of the ‘I think’ with the indeterminate ‘I am’ in the framework of a synthesis. 12 This explains itself also in the aspect of ideal time that relates structures to processes of structuring that are reflected in the variable arrangement of its differential relations (cp. Difference and Repetition 210–1). 13 Quite early Deleuze had already pointed out the romantic aspects of an all-too abrupt turning-away from the world of appearances—which in the case of Nietzsche marks his break with Schopenhauer (cp. Nietzsche and Philosophy 10ff.). In the final chapter of Difference and Repetition, Deleuze sums up: ‘Where one no longer says I, individuation also ceases, and where individuation ceases, so too does all possible singularity. Since groundlessness lacks both individuality and singularity, it is therefore necessarily represented as devoid of difference. We see this with Schelling, with Schopenhauer, and even with the … Dionysus … of the Birth of Tragedy: their groundlessness cannot sustain difference. However, the self in the form of passive self is only an event which takes place in pre-existing fields of individuation’ (Deleuze 1968: 276). 14 ‘This is the whole of Foucault’s philosophy, which is a pragmatics of the multiple’ (84). See also Krause, Rölli: ‘Die Subjektivierung der Macht. Zu Begehren und Lust bei Deleuze und Foucault,’ in sinn macht unbewusstes. unbewusstes macht sinn. Ulrike Kadi, Gerhard Unterthurner (eds). Würzburg 2005, 192–229.

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15 ‘The concept is an incorporeal, even though it is incarnated or effectuated in bodies. But, in fact, it is not mixed up with the state of affairs in which it is effectuated. It does not have spatiotemporal coordinates, only intensive ordinates. … And the Stoics carried to its highest point the fundamental distinction between, on the one hand, states of affairs … in which the event is actualised and, on the other, incorporeal events that rise like vapour from states of affairs themselves’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1996: 21/127). 16 What he does not see is that the (differentially determined) virtual can itself determine the actual (differentiated according to a representational logic) precisely because it underlies it: difference marks the distinguishability of the two realms—they are only indistinguishable insofar as the result of actualisation cannot be separated from the movement of the actualisation. Thus, the time-image to which Badiou refers presents an ideal mode of the ‘échange perpétuel du virtuel et de l’actuel’: in the normal case of representation the actual dominates, in such a way that it has to have, to a large extent lost its connection to the virtual. The problem of representation for Deleuze, then, in general consists in the fact that it marginalises its implicit (ontological, amoral, micro-political, pragmaticpower-theoretical etc.) conditions—and that it thus consolidates itself.

References Badiou, Alain. 2000. Deleuze: The Clamour of Being. Translated by Louise Burchill. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 1964 (2003). Proust and Signs, Translated by Richard Howard. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 1983. Nietzsche and Philosophy. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson. New York: Columbia University Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 1984. Kant’s Critical Philosophy. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 1988. Foucault. Translated by Sean Hand. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 1990. Logic of Sense. Translated by Mark Lester and Charles Stivale. New York: Columbia University Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 1968. Difference and Repetition. Translated by Paul Patton. New York: Columbia University Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 1968 (1994). Difference and Repetition. Translated by Paul Patton. New York: Columbia University Press. Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. 1996. What is Philosophy? Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell III. New York: Columbia University Press. Foucault, Michel. 1966 (1977). The Order of Things. An Archeology of the Human Sciences. London: Tavistock. Kant, Immanuel. 1790 (1914). Critique of Judgement. Translated by John Henry Bernard. London: Macmillan. Krause, Ralf and Marc Rölli: ‘Die Subjektivierung der Macht. Zu Begehren und Lust bei Deleuze und Foucault,’ in sinn macht unbewusstes. unbewusstes macht sinn. Ulrike Kadi, Gerhard Unterthurner (eds). Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann publ. 2005, 192–229. Žižek, Slavoj. 2004. Organs without Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequences. New York and London: Routledge.

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3 LA GESTOTHÈQUE IN TRANSLATION From body techniques to technologies and back Anne Dubos Foreword Technically speaking, mobile technology (current multi-touch and motion sensing systems) now allows capturing of a large scope of gestures and movements that can be used to interact with different media (such as smart devices: mobile phones, computers, tablets, etc…). Yet the common use of gestures remains limited to few well-known strokes such as swipes and pinches. The use of hand or body movements is even rarer. Several issues can be invoked to explain the difficulties in including abundant gestural input into interactive systems. First, the choice of possible gestures with which to interact with a system is generally imposed by manufacturers and even patented by them (Prévieux 2014). Only a few systems let users propose, offer, record, make and create their own catalogues of gesture. Secondly, there is a scarcity of proper methodologies for observing and conceiving gestures in the engineering fields. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the ability of technology to enlighten (Bitbol 2016) throughout philosophical concerns such as the question of ‘digital and analogic’ and the ‘code graft’ proposition of Gilles Deleuze. To quote Deleuze: Bergson tells us, why it is not working? Why is it wrong, and why is there, again, the same kind of misinterpretation on the movement? It is because the movement always takes place in between two positions. It is always done in the time of the interval. So that for one movement, you may take the nearest possible immobile cut; there will always be an interval, as small as it may be. And the movement will always take place in this interval. It is a way of saying that movement is always done in the back. It is done in the back of the thinker. [ … ] It is always happening in between two cuts, so that you might multiply the cuts; it is not by multiplying the cuts that you will reconstitute the movement. [ … ] 60

DOI: 10.4324/9781003217336-5

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There is the step of the horse, and the step of the man, and the step of the tortoise. And it is not even worth unrolling movement on the same line of a homogeneous time.1 Deleuze insists on the Bergsonian distinction between time and duration. According to him, the perception of movement is actually happening in a perception of duration. And its measure happens in a universal time-lapse. It is impossible to know anything of a butterfly’s life while observing a dead butterfly pinned to an analytic frame, remarks Bergson (Bergson 1934). Therefore, the scientific effort to record any gesture is impossible, for the only reason that movement cannot be captured in a frame neither applied to any movement perception nor gesture analysis. Later, in the same communication, Deleuze explains something even more complex about movement, time, measure, and relativity: Movements are irreducible to one another. It is precisely for this reason that Achilles overtakes the tortoise. If Achilles overtakes the tortoise, it is for the very simple reason that his unit of movement, named ‘the bound of Achilles’ has no common measure—and not because there exists a common measure—with the small step of the tortoise. [ … ] These are qualitatively different movements. These are two different durations. One can interrupt the other, one can seize the other, and they still do not consist of common units. [ … ] What is Bergson telling us here? He tells us that all [ … ] movements are divided [ … ]. But they are not divided according to an abstract homogeneous unit. In other words, each movement has its own divisions, its own subdivisions, so that a movement is irreducible to another. [ … and if] I unify all the movements, and I no longer understand the movement itself. At that moment, Achilles cannot catch the tortoise.2 If Achilles cannot catch the tortoise, it is precisely because they do not share any common measure of time or a perceptive field. As an anthropologist, my work targets the mapping of this specific gap: the in-between space or the interval beyond the standard ‘arts & science’ paradigm. And because there is a threshold lying in between two categories— the two ‘cuts’ of the Deleuzian paradigm—I will tend to argue through a process where ideas crystallise into concepts at the intersection of anthropology, performing arts, and digital technology. Through this process, I intend to discuss the philosophical point that Deleuze made about image and movement: what is happening between zero and one? In order to follow the demonstration, one has to first consider that the explanation, made for a cinematic purpose, has been inherited by motion capture and other movement capture techniques. By extension, this also concerns the categorical approach of thinking of the object that ‘takes 61

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effect’ (in other terms, becomes efficient) in most technological tools in use since technology uses encryption (code) as a language. This language is made out of categories. Categories charged with their own epistemological ghosts. My intent is to demonstrate how it does so.

Introduction Culture is not a text but a performance The subtitle of my chapter announces a there and back movement: from body techniques to technologies and back. This choice invokes the famous article written by Richard Schechner, From Ritual to Theatre and Back (1988). Schechner refers to Victor Turner’s Rites de Passages, which exposes the limen as a threshold for any performance. Limen is crucial in the sense that this passage ‘transforms’ reality. Limen, in the context of social life, marks its rhythm through rites, by marking invisible but crucial gates such as births, marriages or funerals—the specific moment of the rite occurs in between two states of being. A vast branch of anthropological research tends to describe the threshold as a ‘perilous’ moment of transformation (Turner, Piette, Hamayon, Fuller, etc.). In his Performance Theory, Schechner’s ‘back’ marks the feedback or the ability to return from one category to another. He traces the evolution of the rite, take the example of birth, to theatre, i.e., the staging of a birth, to a social ritual. He explains how the audience gathers in a theatre, such as it does traditionally for a mass, and how the collective effect of performance is a powerful tool for individual and social transformation. What interests me here, through the use of this term ‘back’, is the twoway movement (the involution and the possible evolution) of gesture. The use of the term ‘back’ in my own title focuses precisely on the capacity for a digital gesture (a gesture made into an object, such as a photograph, a video piece, a film, a motion-capture data set, etc.) to be turned again (back) into a gesture—to be performed. Therefore, my interest focuses at the point where the digital gesture turns back into a performance (Figure 3.1). To pursue the demonstration, it is necessary to underline the fact that the analytical approach of the phenomena (the gesture) combined with a teleological perspective is a significant and meaningful opening for both performance studies and anthropology—as both focus on the schemes of presence and action—and finally, for man and machine interaction. In return, the technological approach feeds back into both—the performance and the anthropological field through a common question: Is there any way to encapture the ‘inner movement’ of life? And how does one discretise it? The origin of La Gestothèque is to be found in the study of Indian theatres. La Gestothèque is, above all, a conceptual tool. My objective was never to edit a simple library of gestures to store the customs of the people of the world in action, but to understand the particular vernacular systems 62

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Figure 3.1  Scan of a notebook page © Dubos/Schechner, 2012

used in Kerala to transmit performance traditions. How can gesture patterns survive for several hundred years? And what are the local traditions of organisation and taxonomy? La Gestothèque therefore became a tool with which to criticise invisible post-colonial rules of movement of the bodies and the capturing of time and energy of people through the use of technology. The concept takes its origin in the extensive fieldwork I conducted in South India, during the ten years of my doctoral research. While my doctoral dissertation questions the ways in which traditional body techniques evolve when transmitted from one body to another (such as children, old people, contemporary dancers, young drama actors, etc.), my research focused on what happens to the initial shape of the gesture during the transmission. On a global scale, my aim was to understand the feedback effects of cultural policies on the theatre practices. What helps model certain cultural forms, certain patterns of gestures?

What happens between the zero and the one? ‘What happens between the zero and the one’ was the very first question that oriented my post-doctoral research. It concerns the transduction ability of data processing. While talking about painting techniques, Deleuze speaks about the possibility of ‘code graft’ (La voix de Deleuze: 1983). The metaphorical adaptation of technical discretisation3 for analysis is significant in understanding the problem of representation of time and duration. Referring to the anthropologist Gregory Bateson’s ideas, Deleuze ruminates that, ‘in a way it is possible and desirable to graft code onto analogues, 63

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to increase the power of the analogue’.4 But what constitutes the analogue and the digital here? Gregory Bateson’s terminology refers back to human interactions.5 According to him, the expression of emotions refers to an analogue signal, while language refers to a digital code. A relationship is expressed through various ‘analogical’ markers, such as blushing, sweating and trembling, while a ratio between sign and meaning is expressed through a coding system: in other words, language is code. It relates ideas, concepts and objects, to specific signs—words. And because language is a code, it is encrypted into fragmented signals, which we can read through various cybernetic models (Bateson, 1972). In order to illustrate this problem, I will first try to explain what Deleuzean ‘code graft’ could mean through the analysis of various case studies. I will then try to show how the ancient theatre treatise, the Natyashastra, coded performance rules into repetitive norms to imbue the tradition with the capacity to survive. Finally, I will investigate how ‘grafting digital code to the analogic’ could help in conceiving new designs and potential man-machine interactions. I will articulate this proposition through three moments of argumentation: From body techniques, which traces my research fieldwork in India; To technologies, which narrates my encounter with digital technologies; And back, which explains my return from the experiment.

From body techniques Theatre forms of Kerala are sung and danced. The performances are guided through ‘traditions’. All gestures are precisely designed and performed in patterned sequences. Performance is taught by dipping into various repertoires of gestures such as mudras (hand gestures), karanas (body postures) and navarasa (facial expressions). In this sense, the work of these repertoires is crafted through long and patient hours of training. My initial research question is: what are the changes a gesture passes through, in the making of a piece? One of my first research goals has been to study the transmission of body techniques in a learning context, as it takes about 12 years for a Kathakali dancer to master his art. Early in the morning at four, the work starts with eye movements. Then rhythm (talas) and singing are taught. The postures of the body (karanas), the vocabulary of the hand language (hasta mudra) and the facial expression (navarasa) are encoded to combine text, rhythm and narration. The precise repetition of the exercises through peculiar sequences preserves its tradition. Considering the expression of performance per se, the actor works according to the theory of expression described in the sixth Chapter of the Natyashastra (Nāt ỵ aśāstra, n.d.;).6 The rasasutra is dedicated to the study of navarasa. Rasa, in Sanskrit, literally means ‘juice’, ‘taste’, or ‘flavour’. According to the rása theory, entertainment is a desired effect of the

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performance in order to transport the audience into a parallel reality into wonder and bliss (the rasa). This experience is supposed to be the essence of consciousness, it reflects spiritual and moral questions carried by the Vedas. The word navarasa derives from nava: nine and rasa: flavour. Aimed at training the face movements of the actors, the emotions are codified as an ensemble of nine: Adbhuta (the marvellous), bhayanaka (the terrible), hasya (the comic), bibhatsa (the odious), karuna (the pathetic), raudra (the terrible), shringara (the lover), vira (the heroic) and shanta (the peaceful). If the navarasa are supposed to represent all the possibilities of human expression on stage, then the navarasa are somehow ingredients that must lead to the experience of ‘taste’. The rasa are the emotions that only the poet or the spectator can taste through the ‘cup’ of the actor’s body in performance (Bansat-Boudon 2004) (Figure 3.2). On the other hand, and according to Grotowski’s metamorphosis theory, one can acknowledge that Indian theatrical performance operates many changes from various levels: First, the narration is encrypted into bodies in various ways—through various codes (navarasa, mudra, karanas) and through various patterns of arrangement that are both rhythmic (another digital coding system) and expressive (as an analogic flow). Second, from a cultural perspective, performance alters the performer who changes his nature of being while he is on stage. Third, the audience that receives the theatre is experiencing a transformative experiment. Theatre in all its forms

Figure 3.2  Kutiyattam performance, Kerala, India © Anne Dubos, 2015

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is ritual. It is efficient. It transforms both the perception and the experience of reality of its audience. Interestingly, one can further observe in Indian theatre practices that the transformation process operates at various levels. For example, in Kathakali the face exercises (navarasa) become a base from which to interpret the global body performance. Likewise, the hand gestures can be extended to the whole body says Mee, ‘When a performer does the mudra for “snake”, he simultaneously shows the snake and is the snake’ (Mee 2008: 152). Codification is a technique that helps the efficiency of the performance in many aspects. I will tend to show how it also favours its survival. Towards an archaeology of the gesture The study of the history of theatre in India highlights the variety of body techniques used by actors. Outside of cultural depiction and social interaction boundaries, my research approaches the dimensions of space and time— From one school to another, one can observe variability and evolution in acting techniques. In other terms, from Tamil Nadu to Northern India, each school has its own style for performing the navarasa. A part of my research aimed precisely at describing the variation of styles. For that purpose I worked on a method that I termed ‘archaeology of gesture’ (Dubos, 2013). Video provides a specific access to body technique analysis because it allows tracing both poses and movements. In order to collect theatre plays of Kerala I used the video camera to document my fieldwork. While manipulating the images gathered, I discovered that the video-encoding algorithm7 creates ‘key frames’. The key frames are arbitrary poses in between movement flows. At first, I used them to extract still images of the videos and underline, through time-framed graphic analysis, the body postures and other signs of the stage design. Inspired by experimental archaeology, I then started working on some kind of ‘story board’ for the drama action, made out of the key frames provided via the encryption process. I therefore drew on the key-framed poses and behaviours, and traced elements of scenography that could be used to embed gesture apparition. I later imposed patterns and analysed gestures in various schemes (primitives) according to their shapes and significations. These went toward depicting the fact that these primitives8 are some kind of icons that help the audience following the play (Figures 3.3, 3.4). According to Adam Kendon’s gesture analysis theory, one can classify gesture according to three vast categories: deictic gestures that are pointing gestures, phatic gestures, that are in themselves meaningless but mark the flow of communication, and iconic gestures, that represent elements depicted in the discourse (Kendon 2004). I then aimed at tracing the relationship of the iconic gestures to their root. I researched, for example, the possible origins of the postures and signs that I could read from the images. I found the gesture of supplication inherited from medieval times 66

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Figures 3.3 & 3.4  Towards an archaeology of gesture, tools for analysis © Anne Dubos, PhD, 2013

performed in a Malayalam9 version of Othello (Schmitt 1990).10 From that very aspect, I then worked on a phylogenetic diagram of local practices, proceeding to a study of the variation of the figures of execution. How do gestures live and circulate? This question became the main orientation of my research (Dubos 2013). 67

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Morphogenetics of theatre Considering that schools were some kind of ‘epicentres’ for gesture origination and production, I was looking for factors of variation in the transmission of the tradition. Noting how Madhu Margi is acknowledged for his excellence as a performer all over Kerala and abroad, what made this specific dancer (Madhu) from that peculiar school (Margi) interpret this part of the Ramayana (while Hanuman enters Ravana’s garden) in a unique manner? And, moreover, how would this particular dancer be known as ‘an expert’ in the role of Hanuman? Inspired by Paula Richman’s work (Many Ramayanas, 1991), I explored both morphodynamic and structural problems. In her collected essay book, Richman suggests that there are as many versions of Ramayanas as the number of Hindu communities from southern India to Bali.11 According to her, there is no ‘actual’ version of the epic. The multitude of the versions and the richness of variation is the foundation for both the vividness and the survival of the tradition. Interestingly, if the tracing of epics is rendered possible though language analysis and philology, what are the difficulties of tracing theatre plays and gesture patterns? Dancing, singing, costumes, expressions and texts: Indian theatre traditions are total art pieces. How to document them? (Figure 3.5). A reading of D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson, a pioneer of mathematical biology, helped my quest for answers. In his seminal book On Growth and Form, the author describes the process by which patterns and body

Figure 3.5  D’Arcy Thompson, Transformation Theory, 1917. This theory, by simple deformation of the space allows us to go from a diodon to a moon fish

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structures are formed in plants and animals, through description of the mathematical beauty of nature and the mathematical basis of the forms of animals (Thompson 1917). Using a great variety of examples, Thompson points out correlations between biological forms and mechanical phenomena.12 He develops the ‘Theory of Transformations’, where he shows that the various shapes of related species (such as of fish) can be presented as geometric transformations. In the context of Indian theatre analysis, the Thompsonian exploration of natural geometries in the dynamics of growth and physical processes could have been applied, for example in local dynamics of gesture evolution. It can contribute to the process of figuring out possible ways to explain gesture evolution. This approach remained incomplete as it considers the shape of the gesture as a ‘finite’ object much like a picture—a key frame in the flow of tradition—how then do we conceive of the gesture as a dynamic thing, a being or matter that is evolving each time it is performed or transmitted to another body? Topology of performance One can try to represent the problem of a gesture as a topological one: approach gestures as freely evolving living matter — ‘the gesture happens in the back of the people’, says Deleuze (Deleuze n.d.). It is for that reason that I searched for answers in René Thom’s mathematical theory of catastrophe.13 Thom’s theory aims at shaping the simplest continuous dynamic model that can generate an empirically given morphology or a set of discontinuous phenomena. The term ‘catastrophe’ refers to the place where a function suddenly changes its form. The advantage of this theory is that it takes into account functions having singularities, or, in other words, sudden variations (Thom 1991). According to Thom, there are only seven possible forms of catastrophes for all equations, according to a certain number of input parameters. Each of them receives a name that correlates with its form (such as the fold, the wrinkle, the tail, the hyperbolic umbilicus, the elliptic umbilicus, the butterfly, the parabolic umbilicus). If one considers performance as living matter, Indian theatre, when related to Thom’s theory could be represented as animated livings, movings, growings, and as encountering ruptures or catastrophes. Another question still remained: what were the breaks in history that changed tradition into something else—something contemporary? I demonstrate that the collective improvisation changes not only the shape but also the structure of the theatre in itself. How does improvisation split the thread of tradition? My fieldwork focused on the analysis of diverse theatre companies. Kavalam Narayanna Panikkar is one of the most famous names in the contemporary Malayalam theatre scene because he is one of the founders of what is called 69

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the Roots Theatre Movement. Passionate about indigenous culture, his theatre never ceases to question its roots, adapting various vernacular gesture repertoires for his own creations. In order to allow the reader to appropriate the ambience of his theatre I will describe a scene scaling time into action patterns before coming back to the Deleuzian explanation of time perception and encoding of action. On each rehearsal day, Kavalam sits cross-legged on one of the plastic chairs. Mohini, his assistant, directs the whole group of actors and musicians. She conducts by striking a wooden stick on a brass cymbal (cengila) that she rests on her lap. Kavalam beckons to Anil (the singer). Anil intones the first stance. He is sitting on one of the three low tables of the performing space, counting, on his phalanxes, the beats of the raga he sings. The srutibox is placed on the same table right beside him. Mani enhances the rhythm with hand clapping. Using a percussion instrument to mark the measure, whether it’s cymbals, chopsticks, claps or any other object, those who do not perform in the rehearsal participate in the whole-body orchestra. The two actors, Biju and Saritha, are facing each other on stage. Biju enters the scene, his hands raised to the hips. Saritha looks destabilised: Biju’s character is a feminine version of a clown. Mohini and Rekhu try to avoid laughing. Biju continues to behave as a clown; he advances drawing half-circles with his arms, with nodding of the head. Saritha tries to follow him. It seems hard to take her seriously. Kavalam interrupts the scene. He asks Anil to return to the previous sloka. The tone of the song evolves. Saritha is now approaching Biju. She advances delicately towards him. In return, Biju approaches Saritha who raises her hand to prevent him from getting closer. Biju hesitates. Kavalam stops the actors, unsatisfied. He advances towards them to suggest the placements he wants them to adopt. The director emphasises the importance of space management in the narrative: each gesture draws a map whose traces reveal the scene. None of them should be superfluous. ‘Let’s get back to it!’, he says, turning back to his seat. Theatre depicted as a communication model Theatre can be analysed in various ways. According to Yves Winkin’s reading, I sought to model the scene much like a system of communication organised by many signal dynamics in order to understand what makes it ‘flow’ and how we technically improvise (Winkin 1981). First, the observation reveals that the actors work without script. This means that the structure of the score is flexible: a great deal of freedom is left to the actor. In other words, to write his score, the director ultimately ‘blocks’ certain positions. The action units are then spun into narrative sequences. Kavalam has retained the traditional roles of the group of creative artists—the text is sung by the musicians and played by the group of actors-dancers. The action chain is thus composed of two groups—actors and musicians—and the play emerges from the complex and collective creative game that consists of the double work of improvisation by the actors and musicians (Figure 3.6 & 3.7). 70

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Figure 3.6 & 3.7  Interaction models, improvisation scene © Anne Dubos, PhD, 2013

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Those diagrams try to show the possible connections and the multiple layers of relationships of the people acting together in a rehearsal. The shapes of the lines indicate the nature of the relationships between the partners, and which actions are embedded into groups: actors, musicians or directors. If one schematises it, on can see that the group is composed in the following manner: a group of actors (composed of a woman Saritha and a man: Biju), a group of musicians composed of three men (Anil, the singer, Mani and Pramod), a director (Kavalam), an assistant director (Mohini). In detail, the group of musicians is composed of Anil the singer, who implicitly gives orders to the rest of the group of musicians who ‘follow’ him, in terms of rhythmic composition. Anil works from the traditional singing base Sopanam Sangheetam that he modulates in improvisation in response to what he perceives of the choreography of the actors. His song is itself a complex system of communication (timbre, tones, rhythm and tessitura), which obeys identical rules of compositions as those used by the actors. In that sense, the actors receive a complex and hierarchical message linked from Kavalam’s aesthetic intention to Mohini’s percussions, to Anil’s song to the global percussions of the other musicians. If we now model the action as a communication diagram focusing on the time aspect, one can see that Anil is constantly adapting his song to the actor’s answers. In other terms, time scaling is extended or shrunk according to the actor’s need. Therefore, we come back to our first Deleuzian question: what happens to the gesture’s life? And what could happen to its observation in metrical (universal) time? The social life of gestures As I worked on different kinds of models in order to analyse the gesture/ perception/representation process of theatre, I tended to show that ‘repertoires of gestures’ are like a toolbox that the actor holds at his disposal for performing. Each repertoire of gestures is like a ‘database’ that one can articulate in relation to those of the others. Speaking in terms of the gesture’s life, gestures travel through human bodies. Because the members of the Sopanam troupe have travelled extensively—Kavalam and Sopanam have been invited to participate in many international workshops—they have been exposed to many theatre traditions such as No, Kabuki, Greek tragedy, mime, etc. Hence, we distil the idea that the source of information is no longer exclusively extended to the gesture tied, in a single style of theatre (a unified whole), but can be composed of several gestures (a complex set). In order to represent the problem of the diversity in the actor’s repertoire of gestures in sets and sub-assemblies, I have simplified the representation of ‘possible gesture repertoires’ modelled on the repertoire of gestures of classical theatre, as shown in the figure below (Figure 3.8). 72

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Figure 3.8   Diagram showing the possible gesture repertoires for an actor while improvising © Anne Dubos, PhD, 2013

Various genres of repertoires are represented here, while the actor is at the centre. For example, the repertoire of the ‘western classical theatre’ is subdivided into ‘tragedy’ and ‘ballet’, and ‘the repertoire of oriental classical gestures’ is divided into Noh and Kabuki. While improvising, the actor is at the centre of a multiplicity of repertoires of possible gestures, from which he can compose a sequence of gestures or actions. And each gesture is embedded in a decision-action process which can be modelled as a Kuhn tree (cf. game theory14). Moreover, while improvising the actor is free to borrow gestures into any repertoire of gesture in his possession. That makes it a complex game to answer for the other. From a historical point of view, the ability of decisionmaking in creation in contemporary theatre is now given to the individual. The actor’s creative potential has thus been transformed. He is no longer the simple executor of a unique inherited code but is the composer of a complex message from multiple sources of information (Figures 3.9, 3.10). Comparatively, while traditional theatre could have been modelled as a Shannon and Weaver signal stream, contemporary theatre multiplies the sources and augments the gesture repertoire capacity: improvisation becomes 73

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Figure 3.9  Cybernetic model, a performance based on a Shannon & Weaver design © Anne Dubos, PhD, 2013

Figure 3.10  Cybernetic model, the diversification of gestures repertoires in contemporary theatre practice © Anne Dubos, PhD, 2013

a tool for individual empowerment. In other words, while the artist is now acknowledged as a potential of free action, the traditional artist was more constrained by the traditional rules of execution. The archive of gesture After all kinds of investigations into the time scaling of improvisation and gesture archaeology, I was still never satisfied by the mere tools of video, photography or drawing analysis. To be able to study a gesture, one has to take into account at least four dimensions—x, y, z and time. To observe rotation at least, one needs time in addition to the three former dimensions. This is how I turned my interest towards the use of technological tools for a new series of experiments.

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Figures 3.11 & 3.12   ‘Curving’, Improvisation Technologies © William Forsythe and Chris Ziegler: ZKM, 1999/Graphics by Chris Ziegler (ZKM Karlsruhe)

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To technologies As I wanted to model the process of tracing the danced gesture, I was inspired by the work of the choreographer William Forsythe. From his own body techniques and choreography, Forsythe developed a remarkable dancing experimental data device. Improvisation technology is meant to help the dancer-watcher to understand his body gesture articulation and how the choreography can be traced back. Forsythe, for example, explores his self-choreographed gesture repertoire out of a glossary where he names gestures (body patterns) for their shapes— such as curves, lines, circles, etc (Forsythe 1999). Extended to movement, Forsythe multiplies his vocabulary to verbs of action: curving, circling etc (Figure 3.11 & 3.12). In terms of idiosyncratic gesture analysis, William Forsythe’s tool brings a sparkle to the field of anthropology of gesture. For instance, his tool could be used to map any kind of body technique at various scopes and scales. For my own practice, William Forsythe’s works opened the gates of an experimental anthropology field, where archives could both be considered as a record as well as a creative tool. Ghost in the shell Exploring the art of creation and the possibilities of an in-vivo documentation of body movement via the process of video mapping and tracking, my first aim was to trace the ‘shell’ of the body-movement during the performance. In other terms, I aimed at capturing the trace of the gesture that lasts in between two performances, in-between two cuts, such as has been expressed in the Deleuzian initial proposal. In 2014, I therefore started a two-year collaboration project with the digital artist Pierre Gufflet. I asked Pierre to help me design a documentation tool, in order to extract imprints of the performing bodies. We expected to generate a library for emotional diversity analysis. Our documentation process began with the navarasa practice at the Thrissur School of Drama (Kerala). For that purpose, we installed a face capture lab in a room of the school. Our cabinet was made out of a large piece of dark cloth, a fan and a neon light. We had a double set of cameras: a kinect and a digital camera. A total of 22 performing arts students collaborated and contributed to our data collection. Working on a very low budget, we involved the low-tech experiment (we used a kinect 1, already obsolete at that time and a regular video camera). While the kinect encoding allows infrared recording and traces a three-dimensional map of the body movement, the regular video recording was used for a comparative data collection towards a gesture catalogue (Figure 3.13 & 3.14). While comparing the two sets of image blocs (video versus kinect), our aim was to compare the two processes of documentation itself: What does technology bring to the analysis of the face movement?

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Figures 3.13 & 3.14  Recording process, kinect & video © Anne Dubos & Pierre Gufflet, 2015

Technology as a post-colonial criticism tool: on time scaling and gesture matter The image generated by the kinect reduces information to a digital ratio. The student faces recorded became something other than mere human faces. Looking like sculptural bodies, the spectral forms encrypted via the kinect tool process allowed us to perceive other dimensions of the performance. Dynamic, rhythm and motion were given as the mere objective, as on the video, the focus is on expressions, micro-movements and mimicry techniques. It seems that the kinect operates some kind of specific role (I borrow a term from the agency theory here on purpose). Interestingly, the ‘visual filter’ for me, acts as a post-colonial criticism device. Regarding the data collection and the recording process, we had two different choices when it came to measuring the movement of the face while it was performing an emotion: (a) If we believe that gesture is a pose, the measurement of time has to be done sequentially. But, then, another question emerges: where does the gesture start?

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(b) If we believe that a gesture is a movement, the capture has to start in between the performance of two emotions (to be able to capture the variation). But then, how to store the data, as taxonomy allows only things to be decrypted as single (non-related)? In other terms, how can we store a mid-sringrara mid-karuna emotion set? After long discussions and several designs encompassing various capture possibilities and considering the engineering and the data management versus the philosophical point of view on time and memory, we decided to consider the gesture as movement (and not as a pose). Therefore, we needed to split the time of capture into a ‘liminal’ frame. That meant that we needed to start our recordings in between the nine emotional poses. One should remark that if stillness seems to contribute to create a meaning of the gestures—because our understanding of it occurs in that suspended time of the ‘epochè’—movement is actually what creates a gesture. If one does not move, there is no gesture. Whereas the time of Indian performance is made out of both—postures and movements (Figure 3.15). The sketches drawn on my notebook question time measurement through various representations: on the left page (reproduced here above), the sketch shows how the emotion performance via the navarasa exercise tends to create a movement, like a flow. There is a rhythm to the exercise set that allows

Figure 3.15  Time scaling for a data catalogue, a fieldwork notebook page © Anne Dubos 2015

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the traditional actor to maintain his ‘energy’, the dynamic, throughout the whole process. On the top right page of the notebook, I designed the first possible model for the capture, wherein time is scaled in piece 1 for the first rasa, 2 for the second rasa, and so on. In the centre of the right page, the sketch demonstrates ‘how to move from one rasa to another’, turning back each time, to shanta, the peaceful. That means that there is no other articulation of emotions than from the peaceful to laughter and from laughter to the odious back to the peaceful, then to the terrible to the peaceful, etc. Finally, on the bottom right, the sketch represents how to measure time ‘in between’ two rasa, according to the various possibilities and subtle levels of change in between two emotions (Figure 3.16). Pierre and I decided that it was actually the transition (the limen) that was interesting in the data collection of the performance. This point is very crucial in terms of gesture analysis, because as long as the performance of a rasa lasts in a specific time for the performance—the rasa evolves as a moving mask.

Figure 3.16  Screenshot of the work in process © Anne Dubos & Pierre Gufflet, 2015

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Gesture is not a pose, nor an icon. It is not a ‘digit’. Gesture in the Indian theatre tradition is, in itself, a ‘code graft’: an icon activated through various emotional streams. Finally, to loop back to René Thom’s catastrophe theory, what are the impact factors one can analyse concerning the gradual change of the navarasa practice? What are the factors that alter its original shape to lead to variation? One can roughly say:15 Colonisation, electrification, television, and the influence of cinema, the media and telecommunication such as the Internet and archiving campaigns for the performing arts. All these factors have altered the shape of the gesture itself in various feedback effects (Dubos 2013). To pursue the third part of this chapter, my question will now focus on the impact of technologies on theatre practices themselves.

And back One must think of gesture analysis taxonomy in terms of an ‘organogenesis’ (Stiegler 2015).16 The classification of gesture must be flexible to be able to host its evolution and potency. And, moreover, the point of view of the person who describes it is crucial, because from the performer to the gesture execution, to the gesture capture, to the scientific definition of the gesture— there are many categorical boundaries to cross for a mutual understanding. The word gestothèque in itself is problematic because, when it is used to indicate a library for gestures, it questions the measurement of time and space. As gestures are nothing else than a pattern perceived through the eye of the observer—gestures are cultural objects—they therefore should be considered as a convergence of viewpoints. And to give it a ‘fair’ epistemological definition, one needs to build a two-way stream definition (Schechner 2014)—both emic and etic (Sardan 2015).17 In other words, representation patterns differ when moving from the performer to the scientist’s perspective. Because if I (as a scientist), with ‘my’ (western, so called etic) perception of time and my instruments of measurement, determine what is the emic definition of gesture (from the point of view of the eastern performer), we have to deal with an unfair epistemology—where the annotated, measured, and encapsulated time of perception is produced by the motion capture machine from the western point of view. Moreover, if ‘I’ come to believe that the mechanical time is universal and, moreover, consider its order to be true, then I deny any other ability of perception of time. In such terms, all vernacular history would be denied as subjective while the ‘scientific’ scope would be identified as objective. And here we are, back to the Achilles and tortoise problem: ‘A movement is irreducible to another movement. A step of Achilles is absolutely irreducible to a tortoise’s step’. One concludes that besides the perception of time and the measure of movement, there are no common gesture measurements. 80

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From a topological point of view to an atlas of gesture Categorical orders always pose the problem of boundaries. Speaking of gestures: Shall we enter gestures from the body zones of emission? Are there any face gestures? Are there any foot gestures? And moreover, in terms of recording technology, what could be the entry levels of La Gestothèque? Time, shapes, axes (angles) of perception? And how does one tag the categories in the vernacular if they have no translation? One has to admit that French vocabulary is ill-equipped to describe gestures while one can easily remark on the amazing richness of Sanskrit for the purpose of expressing, not only the variation of emotions, feelings and expressions and their complex process of transformation, but also their articulation in various coding systems (such as mudra, karanas or navarasa). From another perspective, when one speaks in French of a ‘gesture’, we think at first of hand gestures. But the Indian theatre traditions show that one can measure and localise gestures originating from various body parts (such as face and feet gestures). Moreover, one has to consider that gesture definition and categories accepted in French are determined by an indistinct, but underlying code of ‘politeness’, where the pedestrian moral code would encourage the socalled ‘well-educated’ people not to move. As the maxim quotes precisely: ‘the imbecile laughs, the witty man smiles’. In France, large gestures are culturally attached to a lack of education or dumbness. If language itself carries categories, here again, gesture policy is a strong tool of power and social control.

Necropolitics and other perspectives If the coding system from gesture to language has to be analysed as a peculiar relationship, relevant to the gesture’s life and death, the term necropolitics is very relevant in enhancing the Gestothèque core problem. Achille Mbembe was the first scholar to explore it in depth. Necropolitics is often discussed in the context of the use of social and political power to control people’s lives (Mbembe 2003). Mbembe described necropolitics as more than a mere right to kill (Foucault’s ‘droit de glaive’), but a right to expose other people (including a country’s own citizens) to death. He uses the examples of slavery, apartheid and colonisation to show how different forms of necropower over the body reduce people to precarious conditions of life. His definition also includes the right to impose social or civil death or the right to enslave others, and other forms of political violence. In the contemporary context, where people spend many hours sitting in front of their computers, hurting their backs, necks, damaging their family relationships to be able to answer some ghosts of technocracy, computer technology, in its precarious way of capturing bodies’ attention and the time of millions of people, it could be assimilated to a necropower.18 81

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While necropolitics is a theory that analyses contemporary forms of subjugation of life to the power of death, it forces some bodies to remain in different states of being located between life and death. Moreover, if one considers the massive deforestation and mining for resources that technology involves, the term seems peculiarly appropriate in the discussion about the capturing systems we all evolve inside. The gesture access to techno-criticism 19 Moving forward to a techno-critical approach of gesture analysis, the French artist Julien Previeux edited ‘a catalogue of gestures to come’ in order to criticise patenting policies of the techno-industries (What shall we do next?, video art 2014). According to him, contemporary industries do not simply patent the technical objects nor technological model but the human gesture shape itself. This noticeable movement from human creativity to appropriation by techno-industries is very interesting: if some human gestures are now properties of the industries, gestures are treated in some ‘economic market’, where, in order to be efficient, the industries start modelling gestures, sequence them, in patterns (shapes) and time. Therefore, technology shifts from the deontological approach of humanity to the private domain. One can even wonder: what will happen to ancestral theatre traditions? Will they soon be patented? ‘What shall we do next?’ the question asked by Julien Previeux alerts us on praxeological fallouts, from day to day actions to a potential augmented future. One should consider it seriously. The matter of gesture The motion capture technology points towards the gesture itself as an object in matter. Long exchanges with the French anthropologist Albert Piette while I was finishing my PhD inspired most of my research about what it means to be human (Piette 2011, Piette & Dubos 2013, Dubos 2019). And here, I want to cite one of his pieces, Rays. I quote: Talking human presences and in motion, it emerges, to attempt an analogy with physics, as sonorous and visual halos. [ … ]. The man is a radiant presence, an exo-actant raysman, creating and carrying his halo with rays. They may reach or not reach another presence with variable, point-like or lasting intensities. The rays hardly touch and not completely the other presences. (Piette 2014) The very question discussed by Albert Piette is how to represent human presence.20 And what could be the nature of that presence (ontological)? In other terms: how can we capture it? The following questions are simple 82

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consequences of the shift between the phenomenological paradigm to the ontological one: Does the image of a living body represent life? Furthermore, readings of cultural variation and multiple parameters of embodied cognition ask how the body could be engaged in the production of knowledge itself (Ramachandran 2003). Reading reports on the enactive theory shows that proprioception (so called kinesthetic sense) is a sense that we mostly forget when talking about perception. Nevertheless, it is one of the first senses engaged in the process of embodied cognition. Kinesthetic sense is very interesting considering that it cannot be located in the body, as it is a combination of a collective of organ sensors that create a sense of standing, sitting, cold, on the back, etc. Once again, one should consider that the skin is our first contact with the world and our first gate to understanding. We indeed sense (heat, cold, wind, caress) much before we can see anything of this world. The mother’s womb is a blind space but the infant learns. The primary sense organs of touch and movement are located throughout the body—in every cell. Touch is emphasized in the skin. Movement is emphasized in the proprioceptive and kinesthetic receptors in the joints, ligaments muscles and tendons, the interoceptors of the organs, and the vestibular mechanism of the inner ear. Movement and touch develop simultaneously. Touch is the other side of movement. Movement is the other side of touch. They are the shadow of each other. (Cohen et al. 2012) According to the science of movement, La Gestothèque should rely on an atlas of the living body, rather than on an anatomy which is already a kind of museification of the dead body. Considering that the body is not an object—it is a subject in progress—gesture modelling can also be reversible. It is a powerful tool for social empowerment. Studying how gesture can be captured in new ways, developing technologies from new paradigms, enriching it from new points of view conveyed through indigenous categories and language would balance the inequality of technocratic power.

Conclusion Returning back to our initial question: How can we analyse (discriminate or cut) a gesture? Gilles Deleuze speaks about a possibility of ‘code graft’. Aiming at inventing new artistic languages (Deleuze 1983), one can postulate this way: In order to encode human movement, the perception of this movement needs to be split into small pieces (digits) that we call ‘gestures’. But to keep in touch with living matter—in other words, a sense of life—we need to ‘graft’ an analogical value onto the digital code. Therefore, how, by enriching the language of the machine, could we also imagine changing perspectives? 83

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Reformulating the Deleuzian issue, what is happening between the zero and the one? In other terms: Is the universe blinking? Or are we blinking from one to zero? I do believe that any researcher nowadays, in an ecofeminist-post-colonial context should question the point of view from where scientific enquiry is made. One further needs to recall that techniques and technologies have their own point of view. Technologies are developed by groups of scientists who are communicating and thinking in specific languages. Technologies are ‘smart’ tools: they are equipped with their own methodologies, which entertain the myth of universal objectivity, while they are in fact mere emic points of view on reality. Therefore, the real question that La Gestothèque raises is the criticism of humano-centrism. The perception of gesture should be turned from the human experience towards its very first environment, whether it is cultural, biologic, natural or social. However, most of the methodological processes are techno-centred. They start from the paradigm imposed by technology in order to reach the human through some ‘interaction design’ process. Therefore, most of the gesture-design processes are tuned in the direction of human to technology. The need to address this issue becomes more urgent when one considers the invasion of technology into our social sphere: In 2018 there were upwards of 3.3 billion smartphones in circulation on the planet. Most of the smartphone applications are only designed for eyes and hand gestures. The screen is compulsory to validate the use of the smartphone when commands are mostly connected to hand gestures. This epistemology of the technical object is in fact inherited from the Cartesian assumption of the cogito ‘I think therefore I am’, updated to the technocrats’ powerful enhancement ‘I possess a smart(phone) therefore I am a man’. The technology of ‘smart devices’ is sold as an empowerment tool for the individual to the collective. All while we use ‘personal computers’ that are built on a slave trade hardware business and deep mining that destroys our primary forests with no return. Human time is now counted through technological assistance. Finally, the very interesting aspect of the Deleuzian reading of the gesture and measurement problem is the vastness of its exposure. This reading helps to understand how the ancient theatre treatise (the Natyashastra or the Hasta Lakshana Deepika) coded performance rules into repetitive norms to give to the tradition the capacity to survive. It can also help to understand how grafting codes, in many ways, could deliver new designs and possible human-machine interactions (Dubos et al. 2017).

Post-scriptum While ‘the language of code is articulation: it is digital. We can articulate the modulatory flow; we can graft code,’ says Deleuze, one can observe that diagrams are very well-known figures of Indian traditional arts (kalam, 84

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mandalam, dance steps, talas, are all diagrammatic). The people of India are voracious users of technologies, and they are also very much ahead in using it in the sense of algorithmic thinking, developed in mathematics, chess games, or Indian music. I believe that technological fields would seriously improve for the best if Indian engineers, designers, students or artists, could be inspired to develop new technological knowledge, based on vernacular knowledge. Emancipated from western epistemological cartesian ghosts, they could produce new grafts for knowledge to bloom and bring to the world some new paradigmatic perspectives on humanity, sciences, art and technologies. The ultimate truth of our personality is that we are no mere biologists or geometricians; we are the dreamers of dreams, we are the music makers. (Tagore 1952: 12) If science is seeking truth, and technology is a tool in this quest, it should be conscious of the aporia that the functionalists remind us of, that ‘a step of Achilles is absolutely irreducible to a tortoise’s step’.

Acknowledgment I wish to thank my dear friends Daniella Kostroun and Jan Schacher for their reading and encouragement. I also wish to thank Frederic Bevilacqua for his support and the development of collaborative processes and ideas on ‘smart’ technologies. Rustam Singh is another fellow I need to thank for his company. And finally, I would like to thank Alain Supiot and Pierre Musso for the very kind attention they gave to my febrile steps towards my own ecology of thoughts.

Notes 1 The voice of Gilles Deleuze, Courses at Vincennes, 10 November 1981. 2 Ibid. 3 In applied mathematics, discretisation is the transposition of a continuous state (function, model, variable, equation) into a discrete (or discontinuous) equivalent. This process is generally a preliminary step to the numerical resolution of a problem or its computer programming. 4 ‘D’une certaine manière il est possible et souhaitable de greffer du code sur de l’analogique, pour augmenter la puissance de l’analogique,’ G. Deleuze, on Cinema, Vincennes, 1983. 5 The anthropologist Gregory Bateson in his Steps to an Ecology of Mind, says that a relation (love or friendship) is expressed via ‘analogic’ means, while ratio is coded through language. 6 Attributed to Bharata, in the 4th century AD. The Natyashastra is the treatise for music, theatre and dance. 7 The H264 is a format for compressing video. By default, it generates a keyframe every 75 frames.

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8 The word is sourced from a scientific background where primitive is opposed to generated. The 24 basic mudras and the navarasa as fixed forms of gestures can be considered as primitives. In this case, primitive of gestures behave as ‘key frames’ for the performance. They act as ‘icons’ for the eye of the spectator who is able to recognise a sign charged with cultural meaning. Perception and cultural backgrounds are conveyed, to give a sense of things. 9 Malayalam is the language of Kerala. Its speakers are called Malayalis. 10 See Dubos, 2013, chapter 20 ‘othello, Le Bal des Icônes’ for details. 11 The ancient Indian epic that narrates Rama’s life. 12 Perhaps the most famous part is chapter XVII, ‘The Comparison of Related Forms’, where Thompson explored the degree to which differences in the forms of related animals could be described by means of relatively simple mathematical transformations. He, for example, described numerical relationships between spiral structures in plants and their relationship to the Fibonacci sequence. 13 René Thom was a French mathematician. The theory of catastrophes was highlighted in 1972 following the publication of his book, Structural Stability and Morphogenesis, which marks the arrival of mathematics in a previously unformalised field. 14 For example, Guerrien 2010. 15 I detailed the precise arguments in my doctoral dissertation (Dubos 2013). 16 The concept of organogenesis has been explained and developed by the French theorist Bernard Stiegler in a colloquium that happened at the School of ‘Arts Déco’ in Paris, 2015. The aim of the colloquium was to: “rethink a new political conception of art and design as an alternative to the control and instrumentalisation of affects by a capitalism that has become cultural. General organology, defined as the science of instruments, places the question of technique at the foundation of research in art and design. The ambition of this conference was to reflect on the development of an organogenesis intended for the practice of the artist and the designer, defined both as the genesis of the artefact, and the genesis of social and psychosomatic organs by the reconstruction from the techno-aesthetic environment.” https://www.ensad.fr/actualites/lorganogenese. 17 Emic and etic refer to two kinds of viewpoints by ethnographers on fieldwork: ‘The emic approach investigates how local people think’ (Kottak 2006), how they perceive and categorise the world, their rules for behaviour, what has meaning for them, and how they imagine and explain things. ‘The etic (scientist-oriented) approach shifts the focus from local observations, categories, explanations, and interpretations to those of the anthropologist. The etic approach realizes that members of a culture often are too involved in what they are doing to interpret their cultures impartially’ (Ibid.). 18 I do not even speak of the hardware of the computer centres, that enslave many people, damage forests, soils and destroy large ecosystems for technology ‘needs’. 19 The difference between a simple tool (a hammer) and a digital tool (a smartphone) is that the ‘smart’ tool (device) has its own way of ‘thinking’. That means that it is rooted to some kind of representation of reality built by a designer (in the sense of a conceptor). And this design (conception) is actually a linguistic adaptation: the coding smart system is a ‘language’. But the philology remains obscure. And the obscurity is now supplied by algorithm. Who is able to understand algorithmic logic? 20 Dubos and Piette 2013.

References Bansat-Boudon, Lyne. 2004. Pourquoi le théâtre? La réponse indienne. Paris: Mille et une nuits. Bateson, Gregory. 1972. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Bergson, Henri. 1934. La Pensée et le Mouvant. Paris: Felix Alcan. Bitbol, Michel. 2016. Une autre allégorie de la caverne, entre ombres et lumières (transposition platonicienne d’un débat en philosophie de l’esprit). https://www. academia.edu/22064025/UNE_AUTRE_ALLEGORIE_DE_LA_CAVERNE_ ENTRE_OMBRES_ET_LUMIERES_transposition_platonicienne_d_un_débat_ en_philosophie_de_l_esprit_. Cohen, Bonnie Bainbridge, Lisa Nelson and Nancy Stark Smith. 2012. Sensing, Feeling, and Action: The Experiential Anatomy of Body-Mind Centering. Northampton: Contact Editions. Deleuze, Gilles. n.d. Cours à Vincennes — La Voix de Gilles Deleuze, Université de Paris-8. http://www2.univ-paris8.fr/deleuze/. Deleuze, Gilles. 1981. Différence et repetition. Paris: PUF. Deleuze, Gilles. 1983. L’image Mouvement. Paris: Minuit. Dubos, Anne. 2013. ‘Quelle voix pour quel théâtre? Fabrication des corps et des identités. Pour une étude du mouvement dans les théâtres contemporains au Kérala’, PhD dissertation, EHESS, Paris. Dubos, Anne. 2019. ‘Intensitométrie’, in Romain Lajarge and Marie-Christine Fourny (eds.), Les sans mots de l’habitabilité et de la territorialité. Grenoble: UGA Éditions. Dubos, Anne, Frédéric Bevilacqua, Joseph Larralde, Joël Chevrier and Jean-François Jégo. 2017. Designing Gestures for Interactive Systems: Towards Multicultural Perspectives. Mumbai: Interact India. Forsythe, William. 1999. Improvisation Technologies: A Tool for the Analytical Dance Eye. ZKM, Karlsruehe (Centre for Art and Media Karlsruhe) digital arts edition: special issue, Deutsche Tanzarchiv Köln SK Stiftung Kultur (DVD). Guerrien, Bernard. 2010. La Théorie des Jeux. Paris: Economica. Kendon, Adam. 2004. Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kottak, Conrad Phillip. 2006. Cultural Anthropology: Appreciating cultural diversity. New York: McGraw Hill Education. Mee, Erin. 2008. Theatre of Roots: Redirecting the Modern Indian Stage. Kolkata: Seagull. Mbembe, Achille. 2003. ‘Necropolitics’, Public Culture, 15(1): 11–40. Nātỵ aśāstra, Ancient Encyclopedic Treatise On the Arts, Dated to Between 200 BCE and 200 CE, n.d. Piette, Albert. 2011. ‘La piste de Dieu, sa façon d’être présent’, in Humains, nonHumains, Paris: La Découverte. Piette, Albert and Anne Dubos. 2013. ‘Le voile du croire. Entretien avec Albert Piette’, Théo Rèmes. Enjeux des approches empiriques des religions, Université de Genève, 5. http://journals.openedition.org/theoremes/500; doi: 10.4000/theoremes.500. Piette, Albert. 2014. Détails et singularité, Méditation pessoanienne. Science de l’existence et destin de l’Anthropologue, sous la direction de Piette Albert. Éditions Matériologiques, 2014, pp. 7–19. Prévieux, Julien. 2014. What Shall We Do Next? Conceptual artpieces series, online. http://www.previeux.net/html/videos/Next.html, http://www.previeux.net/html/ videos/Next02.html. Ramachandran, Vilayanur S. 2003. The Emerging Mind: The Reith Lectures. London: Profile Books. Richman, Paula. 1991. Many Ramayanas: The Diversity of Narrative Tradition in South Asia. Los Angeles: University of California Press.

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Sardan, Jean-Pierre Olivier De. 2015. Epistemology: Fieldwork and Anthropology. Paris: Palgrave. Schechner, Richard. 1988. Performance Theory. New York: Routledge. Schechner, Richard. 2014. ‘About Rasaesthetics: An Interview with Richard Schechner’, By Ann Dubos. Little Heart Movement. http://www.littleheartmovement.org/?p=1356 (accessed April 19 2015). Schmitt, Jean-Claude. 1990. La raison des gestes dans l’Occident Médiéval. Paris: Gallimard. Stiegler, Bernard. 2015. ‘L’organogénèse, pour un nouveau paradigme de la recherche en arts’, Paper Presented at a Conference. Paris: ENSAD. Tagore, Rabindranath. 1952. Creative Unity: Collected Poems and Plays of Rabindranath Tagore. London: Macmillan Publishing. Thom, René. 1991. Prédire n’est pas expliquer. Paris: Champs. Thompson, D’Arcy. 1917. On Growth and Form. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Winkin, Yves. 1981. La Nouvelle Communication. Paris: Seuil.

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4 HINDUSTANI SANGEET PADDHATI AND THE PROBLEM OF SINGULARITY A Deleuzian point of view Vibhuti Sharma

Michel Foucault’s relationship with music, says Gilles Deleuze in his conversation with Claire Parnet, was a complete ‘secret’. Foucault himself did not talk much about music. The obscurity or the enigma of this relationship could lie in Foucault’s incapability, as he himself points out, of being contemporaneous with the world of music (Foucault 2000). Yet if we were to argue that this secrecy was the result of an intense localisation, then we would have to place such a localisation in his encounter with the musical world of Pierre Boulez; a world which contributed with extreme rigour to the aesthetic debates on the problem of the ‘formal’ in 20th-century music. What Foucault is witness to in Boulez’s musical works is the pure necessity of an encounter that dismantles any notions of a ‘universalising aesthetic’ or an ‘ideal kinship’ of forms. In a short but passionate reading of Boulez in his essay ‘Passing through the Screen,’ Foucault talks about this exercise of musical thought and art to create its own conditions of establishing communication between various elements of artistic creation (ibid.). According to him, the crux of musical thinking or the aesthetic object, for Pierre Boulez, lies in the disregard of prior categories of form or totalities such that various intensities move or rather ‘pass’ or ‘punch’ through fixed modules in order to form new multiple relations with each other. In other words, music is understood not as a form but an intensity that can create unknown relations with other modes of artistic expressions, including other forms of music also understood as intensities. For Foucault, it seems that the singularity of this intensity, which is not a sayable and representable category was better preserved as a secret. If Foucault’s encounter is characterised by the unsayable, on the other side lies Deleuze and Guattari’s not-so-secret relationship with music. Their creative exercise of philosophically capturing this encounter again takes us

DOI: 10.4324/9781003217336-6

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to their discussion on the works of the French composer and writer Pierre Boulez. The fundamental question that Boulez poses in his work is that of the relationship between the literary text and the musical text and it is in examination of this relation that these philosophers present new concepts to talk about art. Deleuze identifies in Boulez’s work a strong refusal of any sort of an identity principle and notes how the sounds detach from the characters and names to which they are attached in order to become ‘independent “motifs”’ which infinitely transform themselves in time’ (Deleuze 2006: 292). For Deleuze, these autonomous motifs, or ‘musical entities’ as Boulez called them, inhabit the space of the art work as free-flowing singularities that cannot be generalised as particular variations of a single system. The fundamental idea behind these singularities is that they oppose any point of reference to a given identifiable system and instead produce so many different and singular moments of systematisations. The repetition of these singular ‘musical entities,’ according to Deleuze, is not subsumed under the logic of the same; in other words, they do not represent a general identifiable system of music. On the contrary they make possible a form of repetition which is constitutively determined by difference—an ‘original difference’—which is the core of every act of repetition. For Deleuze, it seems Boulez’s music expresses the intensity which carried within itself the virtuality of entire systems or, in other words the singular, irreplaceable moment of systematisation. A virtuality which is perhaps the secret of actualisation of any system. These quick introductory references are not to be taken as proposing, however rhythmic the image might be, a Deleuze–Foucault–Boulez triad. Instead what they aim to do is to orient us to think about how music and philosophy are brought into the neighbourhood of each other. In the two cases cited above, the important question is not about the relation and the expertise with which the philosophers conceptualise a theory of music or the way in which the musician sets his music to philosophy. Instead the exercise here is to settle down at that ‘extreme point’, at that threshold between knowing and not-knowing about music from where thought produces its own means to think of what ‘passes’ between different domains in an encounter. Hence for Foucault, Boulez’s work is a lesson in understanding the role of thought in what one does. Instead of culling out a concept of music or a theory of music it is music’s own thinking that fascinates these philosophers. For Deleuze, what establishes echoes between music and philosophy is the setting into motion of elements such that they are not subsumed within a logic of representation. Referring to philosophy as an ‘unvoiced song’, he notes that philosophy has the same feel for movement that music has. And hence for him it is not a question of applying one to the other, but rather of one thing folding into the other: ‘fold by fold’, he writes, ‘like Boulez and Mallarme’ (Deleuze 1995: 163). With the same feel for movement, this chapter brings a specific moment in the history of north Indian classical music into the neighbourhood of 90

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Deleuzian thinking. What it attempts is not to interpret or theorise the problem it poses though his philosophy; instead the attempt is to extract certain concepts and relay1 them through our particular context and see how it enables us to introduce a reading of Hindustani music that is displaced onto an unfamiliar territory; an unfamiliar reading whose necessary motive is to give it a new life; a life that stirs up conventional modes of thinking and takes it towards something that lies outside it.

On the problem of refrain This chapter will open up the debate around the standardisation of Hindustani music with reference to the works of Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande, a musicologist who was writing in the first half of the 20th century. Between 1910 and 1932, Bhatkhande published four volumes of Hindustani Sangeet Paddhati in Marathi. These texts are meant to serve as a methodical explanation of the theory of ‘Hindustani Classical Music’ that he had put together in an earlier text in Sanskrit, called Srimallakshaya Sangitam.2 These texts exemplify the idea of a scientific foundation of music that Bhatkhande underlines in his project of systematisation. And the word that he constantly uses to express his desire for a system or a scientific approach towards music in Hindi is paddhati. It is with this idea of a ‘Hindustani sangeet paddhati’ that he undertakes the task of ordering musical knowledge. Paddhati seems to give some direction to the components of Hindustani music to organise themselves. In other words, the theorisation and standardisation of different concepts is underlined by the desire to have a system of music. Hence every attempt of Bhatkhande emphasises and reiterates the importance of having a paddhati—a Hindustani Sangeet Paddhati—which one needs to follow in order to understand music in a systematic way and which simultaneously lends music a consistent structure. It becomes the ground on the basis of which these elements are regulated, different musical aspects are recognised and the content of Hindustani music is marked out. We could say that Bhatkhande makes paddhati the central reference point with which variable components of music can be tied into a coherent framework. The word paddhati, etymologically, can be understood as moving between two ends: one being process or method and the other being system. That is, we can argue that the systematic detailing of paddhati as process also announces, simultaneously, the emergence of a system which must surpass this very procedural operation and become a body of formal knowledge that pre-empts the procedure. So there is already an assumption in Bhatkhande that there is an end or a system which one now needs to objectively explain or display; the paradox, however, being that such an objective display entails a process which also constitutes that system. It is from the point of view of such a paradoxical double movement that this chapter proceeds in its investigation of the relation between the operation of knowledge and Hindustani 91

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music (as the object of this operation) keeping paddhati in the centre as its concept-word. We will argue that this ordering of musical knowledge, where paddhati is now understood as both a process and system, complicates the discourse of scientificity or the imagination of a structure for music that Bhatkhande underlines in his works. Within the two meanings of paddhati, we will begin by proposing that one way of understanding paddhati can be through the idea of a ‘refrain’ which denotes the marking out of a space from the forces of variability and chaos. In a song, for instance, a musical phrase or tune as a refrain functions to give a sense of order, point of stability and a point of return from the improvisations or variations that work as embellishments to a song. Similarly, we are proposing that the idea of paddhati in Bhatkhande’s works can be read as the drawing out of a space of order from the disarray and chaos that he finds the music practice in. Two basic characteristics that we wish to stress here through this musical metaphor of refrain is the idea of (i) organisation and (ii) repetition. The theoretical principles that Bhatkhande foregrounds pertaining to the grammar of music, concept of time, fixing the musical scale, frequency of notes and so on all converge towards a specific idea of paddhati. So a fixed paddhati of/for Hindustani music becomes the principle for distribution of various elements that form the content of Bhatkhande’s formalisation. In other words, it becomes the force that weighs down and establishes the discourse of music. This implies that to outline a specific structure to understand music, through the idea of paddhati, the effort is to locate its not yet fixed and uncertain ‘centre’ around which the elements can be organised and through which the system can be identified as such. In order to establish this indeterminate point of localisation, conceptualisation of paddhati as both method and system involves gathering the disparate musical units to further assemble them within a clearly identifiable boundary. Paddhati is the drawing out of a space that lends an arrangement to the disorderliness that exists. This movement towards marking a specific territory is what constitutes the aspect of organisation in paddhati, if we are reading it through the concept of the refrain. But while giving it its ‘territory’, or, in other words, producing the system’s territoriality as an identifiable feature, paddhati has to constantly regularise the movements of the different components that make the system. Thus, in order to produce the system as a clearly delineated space, paddhati has to make manifest its territory by giving the components common qualities or identifiable markers. In the same way that we understand how ‘territory’ is never the givenness of a space but the act of territorialising, similarly Bhatkhande’s system is never the givenness of a structure but the act of systematising the system. It is this act of systematising that paddhati captures, through its movement from organising disparate elements to giving them a particular identity under which they are now arranged. Moreover, we know that a territory never exists in isolation. It always exists in relation to that from which it is moving away. Hence 92

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with territory or territorialisation there is always already the concept of leaving another territory (deterritorialisation) and of forming a territory elsewhere (reterritorialisation). In order to resist this danger of destabilisation, paddhati as a refrain marking out its territory, has to constantly reproduce its systematicity as identical with itself. In other words, the system itself has to be represented. This question of representation brings us to the second characteristic of the refrain, which is repetition. Repetition immediately brings to mind the act of performing the same action again. That is, when an act or a statement repeats, something identical to itself is produced. This is to say that we recognise that which repeats itself through this identification that repetition allows of a particular phenomenon. So subsumed within an identity, repetition often denotes a repetition of itself, of the same. Identification makes the representation of a particular object possible and thus the sameness that it circumscribes keeps the forces of difference or chaos outside the model that it seeks to establish. In this regard, identity implies that there is a repression of difference. This can be elucidated through certain examples. Under the master signifier of something like theory which has to be made real, Bhatkhande identifies various pedagogic techniques and principles under which different components of Hindustani music can be standardised. For instance, he utilises certain mnemonic techniques like the lakshangeet or sargamgeet3 in order to establish the general order of a raga,4 an order of symmetry that can keep out those interpretations that are not sanctioned by a textual authority. So, it becomes a recognising principle which when remembered and repeated traces out the contours of a raga. Bhatkhande’s paddhati, by abstracting general principles from the particular practices, operates through such an idea of representation and identity such that differences, which threaten the orderliness of a system, can be kept out. Paddhati as law or norm imposes this logic of uniformity on the concept of Hindustani music. It is almost as if it is the compulsion of scientific reason to think through the negation of difference in particular and produce the neutralised general. This insistence on paddhati as a coherent and stable structure within which the components of music are bound through a common logic resonates the idea of territorialisation as outlined above. The scientific rationality of Bhatkhande’s paddhati brings together different elements of his theorisation, thus lending Hindustani music a stability and something which can now be recognised through linguistic signs. Like a refrain that organises elements around a stable centre, paddhati outlines the space of reason where different components of music can now be justified and validated. And it is not simply a question of an external application of structure to music, or of a systematic arrangement from outside to haphazard music practices. Rather music, from its own materiality, builds a wall of consonance, as it were, to mark out a systematicity of the system. From its own materiality, it arranges units that can lend themselves to a scientific practice 93

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of Hindustani music. So paddhati then has its own internal temporality, along with the spatial dimensions that it demarcates for itself. Such a reading, therefore, foregrounds a topological understanding of the scientific desire or the theoretical ambition of paddhati; paddhati with its own spatial and temporal coordinates. To think of a process as a consistent unit which demarcates its own corresponding space and holds this space through a uniform rhythm is to think of it as that which constantly moves towards its own closure by subsuming itself within identity. Bhatkhande’s paddhati has to constantly repeat itself and reaffirm its identity in order to prevent itself from falling into chaos. The standard musical units, like the lakshan and sargam geet mentioned above, are utilised as quick recognising principles that can immediately bring to mind the systematicity of music practice. They represent the system and insofar as they are utilised as mnemonic techniques to invoke the systematicity of paddhati, they effectuate a repetition of the same which gets perpetually reiterated through these units of the system. These techniques therefore enable resistance to haphazard practices by being directed towards the idea of a permanent memory that a scientific musical mind should develop. To enforce such a principle of uniformity that can constantly affirm and represent a given identity implies that difference needs to be kept out. To organise space, the conceptualisation of paddhati involves a selection and arrangement of units such that those which threaten the sameness and the coherence of the space can be eliminated. Thus, thinking of difference seems to offer a constant threat to this articulation for a consistent musical structure as the system seems to hinge on this constant repeatability. Let us consider the repetition of embellishing notes in the elaboration of a raga. Called alankarik swar in Hindustani music, apart from the 12 notes that are identified and fixed in the musical scale, subtle use of these microtones brings out the nuances of the melodic arrangement. While these microtones are accepted within the scale, the distribution of these notes and their frequencies has been the subject of much debate among different researchers and despite going through elaborate mathematical calculations, Bhatkhande himself does not seem to conclusively arrive at a standardised system of reading these notes (Bhatkhande 1966). From the point of view of practice, Bhatkhande clearly explains that the place of these notes while singing will always differ. The particular use of these notes is thus often left to the aesthetic choice of the individual performers. At the same time, from the perspective of textual validation, their use according to the will of the performer does not imply that it can bypass the rules of the system. From the point of view of theoretical procedures, these notes are identified within the musical scale but they remain asymmetrical to the standardisation. This means that these notes are not intrinsic to the system. In other words, as embellishments, we can argue that they do not comprehensively represent the system internally. When added to a raga which is sung according to the established norms, these embellishing notes are expected to add to the 94

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beauty of the system, a system which is already harmonious and a totality in itself. So these notes can be seen as functioning in a curious way if we consider the fact that the system, in claiming scientific perfection, does not need any extraneous support because insofar as it is perfect it is also beautiful. So, it stands as a decorative aspect to the already beautiful perfection of the system. As an embellishment it does not simply augment beauty but also signifies to the beauty of the system. At the same time, if these notes were only a signifier of beauty that act to signify the perfection of the system they would naturally be caught in a relation of causality. These embellishing notes then would only be the effect of the all-necessitating causality of the system. But we have already underlined that these notes are not caught in any necessary relation to the system (that is, they are not constitutive of the normative order of the system) but can be made compatible as far as the aesthetic decision of the performer goes. Being produced as a consequence of a particular physical arrangement of notes they have a physical causality which is not necessarily the causality of the system. In other words, they do not necessarily exist in relation to an order of symmetry that is central to the causal process of the system. So, they produce a gap, a dissymmetry in the system. Each time these notes are reproduced within a melodic arrangement, they are not produced as identical. The placement and the frequency vary, which is not to imply the uniqueness of artistic creativity but to point out how structurally embellishing notes are disparate units which introduce a disequilibrium in the process while the overall effectivity of the system remains intact. They maintain pure relations of externality to the system, but when they are brought into proximity to other units of the system, they produce an effect that accentuates their presence, even as the system also manages to harmonise this excess. As embellishments, they do not increase the beauty of the system because that logic is based on the presumption that the system is incomplete such that these notes occupy a place of lack. Instead they form a series of fluctuating signifiers of beauty which both overflow the symmetry and are made compossible within the signified system. This dissymmetry is not to be read as a negative principle of the system, or as that which threatens its repeatability. It rather directs us to think about another order of repetition which belies any representation. The challenge now is to think of paddhati as operating under different orders of repetition that serve to preserve an overall identical concept on the one hand and on the other, which also preserve difference that the system confronts in its every repetition.5 This duality in the repetition begs an understanding of paddhati as not moving towards its own foreclosure, like we foregrounded in our discussion on the refrain. Rather, it becomes that which carries the possibility of opening itself to discontinuity; to liberate itself from identity. Note that the logic of repetition does not imply that the general is repeated in the particular only to be subsumed under the logic of an identity which is that of the system. Paddhati has to now witness its own movement towards an opening up to differential and singular variations of 95

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its own elements—an ‘original difference’.6 An idea of variability in a system does not necessarily reflect a contradiction but poses a positive articulation of difference. So instead of an imagination of an enclosed or circular space, we shall now trace a spiral path which resists the former idea of returning home and introduces an idea of ‘nomadism’. We began by taking up the problem of refrain which finally leads us to understand what it means to repeat an ‘original difference’ when we talk of Bhatkhande’s system. In other words, how can we imagine the conceptualisation of Bhatkhande’s system as not a mere performative act of producing identity but as a dynamic space which opens itself up to the infinite variations of its own elements? Rather than thinking of a system which seeks to protect its territory through producing norms, regulations and logics of generality, can we now imagine a system which has to re-articulate itself anew opening up like a refrain to its own newness? Before we enter into a detailed analysis of these questions, we would like to reiterate that our concern is not to oppose the closure of Bhatkhande’s system (through its rules, laws and principles) to the openness of music in performance. We will instead rigorously confine ourselves within the closed space of Bhatkhande’s system in order to imagine how the system itself generates lines of fracture and discontinuities while constituting its systematicity; the lines of variation that lie masked when the system repeats its systematicity through different orders of resemblances and identity—these would be our hidden points of departure which do not allow the system to revel in its own consistency. What is it that is external to the system while happening within its own contours? How are we to understand the system’s own moment of exposure to it. To this extent, the disjunctive possibility of the system cannot be separated from the systematicity of the system. Therefore, the task that lies in front of us in this chapter is to be attentive to ways that make it possible for the system to find a voice through which it can articulate the fragility of its own formalisation. Like paddhati signified ordering and a system for us in this section, the later sections of this chapter will now be an exercise in thinking how paddhati also carries the possibility of moving against its own limiting lines of order and forces that impose definite boundaries, hurling it out into the open.

Elements in a series We know that a scientific system establishes itself by defining for itself an object—an object of science—that will be identical to itself. That is, it determines a stable object which in its regularity carries a resemblance. So Bhatkhande’s musical object of knowledge is meant to represent its own stability or systematicity through the different parts that make the whole. The synthesis that the system seeks to maintain in view of an idea of Hindustani music proceeds by giving a certain value to the disparate musical phenomena. Taking contemporary practice of music as his reference, he 96

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sets a norm according to which the stability of Hindustani music can be demonstrated. The process of systematisation thus establishes itself by selection and rejection of components, by identifying positive and negative values with respect to his idea of scientificity. The process proceeds by identifying contradiction between elements that oppose the scientific order. The consistency of the whole is therefore maintained by showing how one should synthesise the differences and overcome this contradiction. Let us consider the following example to elucidate our point here. The kind of musical accomplishment that Bhatkhande poses as antithetical to his idea of systematic and non-ostentatious singing, he identifies in the musicianship of Hassu-Haddu Khan. The unreasonable showmanship in their presentation of taan7 is what irks Bhatkhande.8 Most musicians, he feels, hide their lack of proper knowledge of a raga by singing taans in a completely unrestrained manner, according to their whimsy. The boisterous presentation of the taan, he believes, might leave the naïve listeners mesmerised and in awe, but in reality it points at a complete lack of proper training and theoretical understanding of a raga. At various occasions in his writings, he makes a point about resisting such a profuse celebration of one’s own musical capabilities.9 On the other side of this musical gauge, Bhatkhande places vocalists from Udaipur, Ustad Zakiruddin Khan for instance, whose style of singing he thinks should serve as a model for musicians.10 Therefore, it is not difficult to say that the system of music that he conceptualises constitutes itself through an identification of contradictions like Hassu-Haddu Khan, in this case, against which exemplars like Ustad Zakiruddin Khan of Udaipur can be posed. The system establishes itself through an identification of opposites so that a selective operation of components that satisfy or which can contribute to the scientificity of the system can be justified. So, this is one way of looking at the problem of negation of Hassu-Haddu Khan—that by creating binaries the system affirms itself by negating the other. But this relation of negation which overcomes or negates its negativity in order to affirm itself, that is, the opposing tendency which functions through negating the other, gives a dialectical structure to this process of standardisation. The style of singing, through the oppositional logic of rejection and hence exclusion, bears the example of orderliness of the system. Which implies that this logic is subsumed under a logic of identity; an identity which then confirms the normative demands of the system. Now the other way of looking at this problem is to disregard the overcoming of the opposition or the subsumption of aberrant cases in order to represent a general idea of the system. Against an enforcement of the norm or the thetic violence of the law (rationalised by a logic of identity), we can look at how the system in its repetition of systematicity affirms or intensifies the distance between two points of reference. This means that instead of understanding the enforcement of norm as an overarching idea, we move to an understanding that a norm acquires its status of a norm only in the act of its enforcement. That is, what Bhatkhande sets as a norm or a principle 97

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does not exist by virtue of any substantial reality of its own but only in the moment of its correction of that which appears as a transgression to the norm; a correction that cannot but include a point of reference to that which differs or transgresses. The rule, therefore, exists in being different to its ‘other’—its exception—because the rule comes into being only at the moment when it can identify that which is not according to the rule—that which is an error or an anomaly. In other words, a rule becomes a rule when it can identify an error in order to exclude it from the system. But the paradox of the situation lies in the fact that which is deemed incorrect is so in accordance to the rule. That which is not according to the rule has to be identified and marked so according to the same. The two are thus always to be recognised in relation to each other and consequently are affirmed at the same time in the recognition of their being different. Therefore, it is the distance between two examples or the intensification of difference that can be seen as the condition for the system to arrive at its systematicity. So instead of excluding or negating Hassu-Haddu Khan owing to their anomalous position with respect to Bhatkhande’s discourse, we can think of their presence in terms of the distance they produce from someone like Zakiruddin Khan (who occupies a prominent position within Bhatkhande’s system). To bring our above discussion to a conclusion, what we are trying to suggest is that paddhati not just be identified in placing different concepts and principles on a vertical axis from the perspective of their relation to an idea of scientificity that Bhatkhande imagines. It is rather to bring these various examples to the surface where each communicates with the other through the distance that separates them; each becomes a point of reference to the other, each example opens out to the other (instead of excluding the example that does not add to the identity of the concept of ‘paddhati’) and creates what we can identify as a network of resonances. Thus, instead of progressing by logical contradiction between systematic and non-systematic units of musical knowledge, the idea is to introduce a vitalism in order to replace any idea of essence of a system with an identification of a ‘series’11 having intervening units of knowledge as singularities. Using the idea of a serial constitution of a structure, we are trying to argue that the musical components that make up Bhatkhande’s system are distributed by a logic of difference. Given their differential relations, the singularities diverge from each other for difference implies divergence. At the same time, they also converge upon the system as they stand in relation to the structure that Bhatkhande develops. We have argued that instead of exclusion of musical phenomena that are not representative of the system, each of Bhatkhande’s examples which he uses to demonstrate his paddhati can be viewed as opening up to another example (which carries the reference or stands in relation to this previous phenomena and this carries on with each element). In this context we can then argue that there is an infinite proliferation of these musical elements, each passing through the other and in the process qualifying the idea of paddhati. There are, however, two problems here. Firstly, the 98

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idea of infinite proliferation can very easily be linked to an idea of adjectivisation where adjectivisation can be seen as the proliferation of theoretical qualifiers in Bhatkhande’s system that signify the theoretical reality of the system. In other words, the demand to eliminate disorderliness in musical practice and to liberate music from its unsystematicity leads to a proliferation of signification of the system. In adjectivisation, each qualifier can be substituted with the other and in this way the signification can keep moving in order to ultimately qualify the master signifier, that is, Paddhati. And this directs us to a circular movement of signifiers as in their progression they refer to the totality of the music system, encapsulated in the word paddhati. So it is this totality of the system that gets infinitely affirmed. Contrary to this, we are talking about an infinite proliferation where the signifiers of the system relate to each other by affirming the difference among themselves. And here is our second problem, a challenge which involves understanding the paddhati which is signified not as a static centre of totality. Instead it is signified in the movement of the series, expressed in the distances through which elements or signifiers relate to each other;. This means that if the series is constituted by a logic of difference then the elements converge on that very logic of difference. So the convergence is simultaneously a divergence. And since paddhati now traverses through the series in the affirmed distances and differences this means that paddhati is not the centre of a system but the very movement of the system’s decentering. We thus have two simultaneous series. First, there is the signifying series that is constituted through the proliferation of a finite number of musical examples, which are elaborated in the order of language and symbols (notes). And then there is the signified series which comprises of elements of knowledge of Hindustani music which increase progressively with time as the system accumulates more and more examples to demonstrate its scientificity. But at any given time the knowledge which is otherwise progressive presents as a totality, organising the available set of signifiers into an organised knowledge system. We will propose that Bhatkhande’s system can be studied as the correlation of these two different series which are made of singular elements. So, on the one hand, let us consider various standardising procedures such as lakshangeet, sargamgeet, raag niyam, Time-Theory, thaat-classification, also musicians (following or not following the system) and other elements as musical signifiers which are of the order of language. Apart from Bhatkhande’s use of language that signifies an adjectivisation of theory, these musical examples also proliferate within his musical system. These stand as different examples of Bhatkhande’s system only when they all share a common relationship with that system. Like the signifying signs of language they are elements of the signifying series insofar as they are distinct from each other as concrete examples of the same system. Hence they are all dispersed within the space of Bhatkhande’s system, each relating differentially to the other or opening up signification to other musical phenomenon. But at any moment they are all given together as different examples of the 99

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same system which cannot, like the signifier in the order of language, exist without a differential relation with another signifier. This is what we would call the series of musical signifiers. On the other hand, there is the signified series of scientific knowledge of Hindustani music which is known, but which also increases step by step, progressively. Bhatkhande’s lifelong quest to acquire more knowledge of Hindustani music, for which a scientific system could be articulated and which he kept emphasising all his life can only be explained by this paradoxical problem of knowledge which is floating,12 which is total and lacking at the same time.13 Which is to say that when Bhatkhande works towards transforming music from its empirical disorderliness to a thought-object, it is not simply a question of unsystematicity of the real being given an order that can be identified in a musical object of knowledge. The scientific proposition for Hindustani music—of music as a knowledge-object—presupposes an idea of scientificity of which Hindustani music is seen as capable. It involves an articulation of scientific condition that will come to designate music, but paradoxically the recognition of the scientific object is also the telos—the final moment of Bhatkhande’s project of science. That is, paddhati as a process will lead to a future where Bhatkhande’s project of science will fulfill itself; thus, science is the teleological end. So the determination of the scientific object of music that is presupposed through various signifiers is always carrying the incompleteness of the object because it has its end only in a future which is yet to come. A scientific object of music is determined in the proposition for a scientific basis for music but that object is still unrecognisable. Thus, the present moment of this passage from what ‘music is not’ to what ‘music will be’ is reflected in this proliferation and lack. Musical knowledge in such a case is neither a reflection of the real nor is it yet the essential thought-object—the ‘concept’ of music but that which is infinitely incarnated in the relations and interactions between the two series. In this sense, knowledge—musical knowledge—constantly questions its own arrival in the series, and always exists at a point where it is neither a purely abstract doctrine nor a purely empirical application of theoretical practice. It is the two series together that form the field of problematic—the field of problems that Bhatkhande’s theoretical practice reveals and identifies, which is, in other words, his system. Through the various relations among the terms of each series and also through the asymmetrical relation between the two series, Bhatkhande’s system manages to articulate itself as a structure. As we argued before, however, the relation between the two series is always informed by a paradox where the signifying series moves through an excess of signs which we can clearly understand through the abundance of musical examples Bhatkhande keeps accumulating over the years, making them available in his texts to make his system known. This production of an excess of signifiers is even demonstrated by what we have called adjectivisation or proliferation of different signifiers leading to the same knowledge-object. It is as if through an overproduction of signifiers they are 100

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displacing each other trying to arrive at the correct occupant to inhabit the empty place they leave in their wake, but there is only ever an emptiness of place which displaces the place itself. On the other hand, the signified, the scientific knowledge of Hindustani music that demands to be made comprehensible, is always present but without a fixed place where it can be situated. Being constantly driven out, displaced, this knowledge moves step by step towards that which it lacks; as scientific knowledge which is knowable but always as a lack, ‘non-situated given’, an unknown known. But these two series are not two different things. They are the two uneven sides of the same system which Bhatkhande constantly strove to outline all his life. It is then our contention that the most crucial moment of that system is the sense that paddhati generates. Paddhati seems to be that converging point where the signifying series and the signified series converge. However, paddhati itself does not belong to any particular series because it is present in both of them. As a signifier, it is always present as an excess in that series. Everything is part of paddhati but at the same time paddhati as scientific knowledge is what is constantly searched for and desired. In Bhatkhande’s effort to systematise, the meaning of paddhati is not merely displaced. Rather, paddhati offers the very condition for the entire system to displace itself constantly around itself.14 ‘Being absent from its own place,’ (Deleuze 2004b: 60) paddhati expresses the sense of the system in its entirety but also in the immediacy of its taking place which is to say in its eventness. Paddhati is thus like a hinge—an aleatory point which sits between two series—such that, on the one hand, it opens up to the outside, thereby allowing thought to get pulled into the empirical reality. While at the same time, the outside also interjects into the domain of thinking, providing the substance for thought. In other words, Bhatkhande’s paddhati traverses his entire system which is always constituted of the two series expressing itself both as a lack and an excess. Paddhati here is the scientific object of music or the object of knowledge, but also paddhati as a word which signifies the scientificity of the system. It is what circulates within the two series and through which these series communicate with each other asymmetrically. Paddhati is the point at which the two series converge because in itself paddhati is nothing but the condition of their difference, their divergence. Paddhati is in this sense what Deleuze would call their ‘differentiator’ even as it moves completely immanent to both the series at the same time. To reiterate a crucial point in our argument: paddhati, on the one hand, expresses the proliferation of musical signifiers in the first series. On the other hand, paddhati always realises itself in a lack, the incapacity of the scientific model which is presented as an emptiness that needs to be constantly fulfilled. It thus stands at the threshold in Bhatkhande’s systematisation where excess musical signifiers constantly fail to fill in the incompleteness of the knowledge system which he calls scientific. It is through an overproduction of signifiers and the lack of the signified that the structure maintains continuity, trying to find an ever new paddhati, so that the system can re-produce itself continuously 101

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through an infinite number of new possibilities. This play of disequilibrium where every moment of realisation of paddhati is also the moment of its displacement from itself gives Bhatkhande’s system a new identity every time it is articulated. However, paddhati, which gives the system its identity is also what is missing from that very identity. In other words, that which makes Bhatkhande’s system recognisable—paddhati—is also what renders it unrecognisable.

‘Point of view’ or on the question of singularity Each signifier that qualifies Bhatkhande’s system, together with the signified, can be seen as a singularity, each individually repeating the totality of the system by repeating nothing but difference itself. Each singularity is thus a ‘point of view’, where it carries the essence of the system, the totality of paddhati, in itself. So, as we have hinted, Zakiruddin Khan is a point of view on the system in so far as he expresses the idea of scientificity in its totality. And by this logic it excludes and negates the existence of that which is not compatible with the idea of scientificity that it expresses. In Deleuze’s universe of thinking, this can be understood through his explication of Leibniz’s system of Monadology. A monad in Leibniz, as Deleuze explains, is subject to ‘exclusive rules’ from which is derived the notion of incompossibility15 where each monad can be comprehended in the other only as long as they are compatible. Thus, central to Leibniz’s structure is an idea of ‘pre-­ established harmony’ where the points of view converge to a particular idea of the world that is contained in and expressed through them in its totality. So Hassu-Haddu Khan would not make a converging monad in Bhatkhande’s system—in its incompatibility with the pre-given commonness of science, it lies outside the world that constitutes paddhati. In other words, from Leibniz’s perspective of Monadalogy, paddhati will include only those points of view that are compatible with the idea of science that Bhatkhande’s system advocates. According to this rule, Hassu-Haddu Khan is excluded from the converging monads on account of expressing a divergent moment in the otherwise converging series. To be a point of view to Bhatkhande’s system, it is necessary to be compatible with the idea of scientificity that each monad that makes Bhatkhande’s world presupposes. Till now our effort has been to understand Bhatkhande’s system from the perspective of both convergent and divergent series. In the idea of divergence we have tried to analyse how different points of view are affirmed through the distance that separates them. Thus, incompatibility, instead of being defined by divergent moments which can then be excluded, becomes the very basis for these points of view to relate to each other, communicate with each other through the affirmative logic inherent in their separation.16 And thereby, we tried to determine how paddhati constantly moving between these singular points of view, communicating with each other, performs a constant displacement from its own identity. 102

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Naturally, the question that arises here is: What constitutes the unity and totality of all these multiple points of view if they are neither identical with each other nor do they share a tangible common ground which would suggest a pre-given system? These points of view cannot also be seen as parts of an organic whole which evolves eventually into a system that Bhatkhande conceptualises. In this, we cannot define unity as being the telos of an organic evolution of the system, nor is it possible to collect all the points of view as suggestive of a pre-given harmony or unity. But before we go into this problem of unity we have to pose another question: With each point of view carrying its essence within itself, we have to ask ourselves as to what can be the possible definition of such an essence that cannot be abstracted from the view point? And it is here that the idea of ‘style’ as described by Deleuze can help us in understanding this problem (Deleuze 2000). According to him, style is not that which gives unity to a work of art or a body of artists. It is instead born when in the absence of all styles (which otherwise suggest or describe individual or historical consciousness), all emphasis is given to ‘explication’. Style is nothing other than the concentrated force of explication or interpretation where each point of view exhausts itself in explaining what essence it carries as a ‘sign’. In other words, style is that moment of interpretation when a singular point of view opens itself up as its own essence. This serves to explain that essence does not lie in any subterranean region of a pre-given system or in the profound depths of consciousness but lies ‘contiguous’ to the point of view which carries it. The essence is present ‘alongside’ the point of view which it saturates and overwhelms by its absolute presence. Therefore, it is through the idea of style that we can understand the individual relation of musicians as different points of view to Bhatkhande’s system. As we discussed above, however, such an idea of style is not an idea of individual interpretation but an interpretation which is synonymous with the rigour of explication and which is impersonal. Which is to say that it is not a particular (personal) interpretation of a general system, but a singular interpretation of the essence of point of view—an essence which saturates itself yet lies contiguous to it. We have also already seen how every point of view carries its unique signature which is not the imitation of any model but refers only to itself (and carries the model within itself). In their singular style they all try to explain their own viewpoints without referring to anything outside it. It is because their style saturates their points of view on the basis of the rigour of their explication that they are completely closed from anything outside these very viewpoints. Every viewpoint as style is therefore rendered strange from all other viewpoints and all models that they might claim to be interpreting. In their singular style, they do not interpret any pre-given model but only explicate the essence of their singular point of view. Now, if a point of view is completely self-referential and if its essence is that which style explicates and which stays contiguous to the point of view, then what constitutes its unity or totality? Why do we not see all these 103

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points of view collapsing in the multiplicity of a chaos? What is it that assures the communication between points of view which are so diverse and without an opportunity for communication? It is here that we can suppose that if unity does not lie in any pre-given model or an organic evolution or even in the idea of a conscious subject, then what gives unity to such rigorous moments of explication must be the ‘effects’ they produce. It is the effects that resonate from viewpoint to viewpoint, traversing each closed, self-referential and total viewpoint with their singular style. They can be understood as lines of force or lines of experiments that do not exist as part of an already given architecture, but are produced in the very materiality of each sign. So every effect that each point of view produces is a unity but not a unification. That is, each resonator produces a singular effect which should not be confused with the very movement of resonance which passes from one resonator to the next. In this sense it is not something which produces a unified system of resonance rather which slides or cuts through as a diagonal from effect to effect. It is this movement or what Deleuze calls ‘transversality’ that gives the points of view a unity without totalising them into a model or a system. So this takes us back to our earlier problem of paddhati, not as a system, not even as a teleological process or method, but as tranversality of the force which gives Hindustani music its unity. Bhatkhande’s system can now therefore be explained as an absence of system in so far as it passes as resonance through infinite planes of these real moments of its interpretations; a resonance which is irreducible to any of these resonators. So, every resonator is a point of unity where it exists as a point of resonance between every plane which the diagonal is cutting through. The system has the power to unify all these viewpoints without totalising them into a model, without suppressing their differences from each other. Bhatkhande’s paddhati can then be seen as that ‘additional dimension’ which always makes possible its interpretation without unifying or totalising objects or subjects. We can thus conclude that the infinite zones and planes that the transverse line cuts through thereby makes us aware of the reality of the system as something more than itself. This is to say that these multiple ‘effects’ that are actualised within a system are not to be understood as those which elude the scientific consciousness or which pose a resistance to Bhatkhande’s idea of systematicity. These operate at a level that could be likened to what Foucault would call a ‘positive unconscious’ of the system: ‘a positive unconscious of knowledge: a level that eludes the consciousness of the scientist and yet is part of scientific discourse, instead of disputing its validity and seeking to diminish its scientific nature’ (Foucault 1973: xi). So as an unconscious, it does not point towards the ‘negative side of science’ where let us say implicit in the idea proposed in the anecdotes would be a disturbance or a confrontation to the idea of scientificity defined by Bhatkhande’s system. Instead of these negative qualifications, we can understand these points of view as the ‘productive’ unconscious where determination by Bhatkhande 104

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of the scope of scientific knowledge of his system also reveals the many possibilities that can destabilise this structure. If the scientific discourse carries the imprint of Bhatkhande’s mastery, as if it were his signature, the productive unconscious actually produces a richness that goes against his very mastery. Hence, the ‘positive unconscious’ might not be what Bhatkhande is in control of, in the sense of it not being produced by his consciousness. But this does not in any way imply that it is not part of him.

Notes 1 Foucault and Deleuze often talked about the concept of ‘relay’ which would displace the hierarchical relation between theory and practice based upon a concept of representation. They would talk of ‘theoretical action’ and ‘practical action’ which form networks through relaying with each other. See ‘Intellectuals and Power: A Conversation Between Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze’ (Foucault 1977: 206–7). 2 Bhatkhande composed several Sanskrit couplets which encapsulated incorporated the theory and history of ragas prevalent in the practice of Hindustani music during his time. This text called Srimallakshya Sangitam was published in 1909. Bhatkhande constantly refers to it in his writings. See Bhatkhande 1974: 38. 3 Lakshangeet is a composition defining the chief features of a raga and Sargamgeet is a composition made with the key identifying phrases and note-names of a raga which serve to give a clear picture of the melodic framework or the progression (chalan) of the raga. These compositions are central to Bhatkhande’s pedagogic project as, when sung or remembered, they bring into practice immediate associations about the basic structure of the raga. Presented in a condensed, simplified form and with textual sanction, they are understood as specifically suited for students beginning their training in music. 4 A central concept in the Indian music system, raga can be defined as the basic melodic arrangement of 12 notes which provide the framework for its further elaboration according to certain established rules. 5 Deleuze talks about two orders of repetition. One he calls static repetition and the other dynamic. The dynamic process operates as if veiled, enveloped within the external effect of symmetry that static repetition produces. It signifies a different order of repetition that resists assimilation into the overall effect of stability to overcome identification with any representative concept. Thereby it creates its own distinctive space that ‘maximises difference’ within repetition by repeating an ‘internal difference which it incorporates in each of its moments, and carries from one distinctive point to another’. An assertion of the co-existence of these orders of repetition can either imply that difference remains subsumed within the external order of repetition that assimilates all differences to represent the homogenous concept. However, it would be wrong to reduce the idea of repetition to this assumption. Because what becomes extremely important to note here is that to think difference is not to identify difference externally in the sense that it helps us outline a schema of heterogeneity of objects represented by a concept. The articulation of difference is not simply to be understood as that which opposes the problem of identity and hence which can be schematised from the outside according to the concept of difference. It does not pre-exist itself in the sense that static repetition would be understood as already carrying the trace of the dynamic process that constitutes it. Difference instead is an intensity that erupts unknown to its own object, that is, an enunciation that still trembles and stammers in actualising what is different. So this dynamic order of

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repetition is not given to a recognition of differences as such. It rather carries singularities that arise in its interstices and move from one distinct point to another. Hence the idea of ‘internal difference’, a singular idea of difference that remains immanent to the dynamic process and is not mediated by representation. This means that the two orders are not reducible to each other. They coexist in the sense that dynamic repetition is essential to the constitution of static repetition; it is its ‘constitutive cipher’. But the order of differences cannot be reduced to a quality that different objects possess and which is then manipulated in their representation by a concept. The attempt instead is to make repetition witness its otherness, to a difference that exists singularly as an excess to the concept. To understand this concept of difference, see Difference and Repetition by Gilles Deleuze (2004a). 6 The idea of original difference comes from Deleuze’s idea of a concept of difference as distinct from conceptual difference. While the latter is subsumed under a logic of identity, the former is difference in its pure state which is the condition of possibility of being. As Deleuze remarks, ‘Being is Difference’. For a detailed discussion on the concept of difference in philosophy, see Difference and Repetition by Deleuze. 7 Taan is a technique used in vocal performance which includes singing different note patterns together in a fast tempo and is often improvisatory. 8 In his short essay, ‘khayal-gayan ke kuch sthool niyam’, Bhatkhande writes at length about the systematic approach and the restraint which should be essential in the gradual elaboration of a raga through embellishments such as the taan. He writes, ‘The vocalists are distinguished and are singing long (lengthy) taan, in the same way understanding that it must be an obscure raga, I am never one of those who get pleasure out of these things. Haddu-Hassu Khan became very famous, but they did not match this up with new raga(s) they created. Hundreds of their compositions are famous even today, but their music was unworldly. Singing haywire combinations of taan- I don’t see anything praise worthy in this’ (my translation) (Chinchore 1966: 454–6). Bhatkhande joins many musicians of his time in criticising Hassu-Haddu Khan who were believed to have ‘little correctness in their ragas’. Believed to be following the style of taan-singers (leaving behind the style of their father (Natthan Peer Baksh) and uncle), they were referred to as ‘rang-bhariye’ by singers of their time: ‘RangBhariye [means] kuraage, panchrange [deficient in raga, and multi-coloured]. They did not sing the pure form of ragas. Elements which are absent in the rules of the ragas, notes to be omitted, and irrelevant categories (mel) would enter into the rendition of their ragas. They did not pay any attention to maintaining the notes of the ragas. That is why everybody called them rang bhariye’ (Khan 2012: 72). 9 Bhatkhande writes, ‘I don’t feel any admiration when I hear that some musician has a formidable style of singing. I would really appreciate if the compositions are old and part of a traditional (gharana) repertoire along with a singing that following the old style of gradual movement from a slow to fast rhythm seeks out new, different ways of elaboration’ (translation mine). See Bhatkhande, Bhatkhande Smriti Grantha, p. 456. 10 Bhatkhande notes, ‘But in my opinion, the singing of Udaipur vocalists was more pleasurable. According to me, their style of singing is an exemplar for our vocalists. These vocalists are famous in their area and they are indeed worthy of this fame. Even though they only sang compositions of popular raga for me, they demonstrated the initial stepwise elaboration in three different tempos (fast, medium and slow) in an impeccable manner’ (Bhatkhande 1975: 259; translation mine).

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11 For a brilliant understanding of the problem of series in philosophy and how it replaces a master discourse of the general and the particular, see Gilles Deleuze, ‘Thirty-Second Series on the Different Kinds of Series’ in Constantin V. Boundas (ed.) and Mark Lester and Charles Stivale (trans.), The Logic of Sense, London: Continuum, 2004. 12 A ‘floating signified’ implies a word like ‘something’ which is given by a signifier but is not known unless you point to it. 13 The antinomy that connects the two series dictates the idea that while the signifying series is always constituted with ‘more’ than necessary, the signified series would always have ‘less’ than what it required. It is because the two series refer to each other on the basis of such an asymmetrical relation of perpetual disequilibrium that the structure that they together constitute fails to have any essence or center. Or perhaps put more precisely, the essence of the structure that they constitute is always already in the process of decentralising itself. Deleuze develops this idea of a series independent of language as part of his entire mode of thinking difference through which he also tries to explain the structuralist problem of the signifier and the signified, mobilising Strauss’s idea of the antimony between the two. See ‘Eighth Series of Structure’ in Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, pp. 58–61. 14 In this sense, we could relate paddhati to our earlier idea of a refrain where it constantly repeats itself, but only to produce a difference with each repetition. Paddhati as a refrain is constantly displaced in every moment of its realisation. 15 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz proposed the concept of ‘compossible’ and ‘incompossible’ in order to problematise the simple logic of possibility for existence of things. According to him, a thing exists not simply because it is possible, but exists in so far as it is compatible with the existing world. Deleuze explains this through the idea of Adam the non-sinner. It is not that Adam the non-sinner is contradictory. He could have been possible but in another world. He is not compatible with the existing world. But his incompossibility with the present world does not deny his very possibility. Leibniz uses the concept of incompossibility to exclude events from his conception of a theological order of the world. Deleuze on the contrary uses this concept to affirm the idea of difference and incompatibility. For a detailed understanding of this idea, see ‘Twenty-Fourth Series of the Communication of Events’ in Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, pp.194-201. 16 This relationship of positive separation between singularities is pertinent to our understanding because it demands a new thought or a new formalisation of music which does not allow us to reduce incompatibility to contradiction. Examples that reflect limitations or variations that a system is unable to contain within itself cannot simply be seen as anti-system. For instance, there are a number of anecdotes which recount how certain musicians through their empirical practice constantly challenged the idea of standardisation that Bhatkhande emphasised in his understanding of melodic arrangements. These anecdotes could very simply be judged to be placed outside the system that Bhatkhande conceives on account of their non-discursivity. That is, in the challenge that they pose to the system they could be judged as articulating moments of crisis of the discourse. But the point here is not of the inability of a theoretical structure as being unable to supply meaning for an empirical singularity. Instead, the challenge is to place these singularities, these points of view (Bhatkhande’s point of view vis-a-vis a musician’s point of view), in the neighbourhood of each other where they are linked only by their difference. And where it is only in the resonance of this difference that they are communicating with each other.

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References Bhatkhande, Vishnu Narayan 1966. ‘Raag gayan main shruti ka mahatv’, in Prabhakar Chinchore (ed.), Bhatkhande Smriti Grantha, pp. 451–4. Khairagarh: Indira Kala Sangeet Vidyalaya. Bhatkhande, Vishnu Narayan 1974. A Short Historical Survey of the Music of Upper India. Baroda: Indian Musicological Society. Bhatkhande, Vishnu Narayan 1975. Hindustani Sangeet Paddhati Vol. 1. Hathras: Sangeet Karyalaya. Chinchore, Prabhakar (ed.). 1966. Bhatkhande Smriti Grantha. Khairagarh: Indira Kala Sangeet Vidyalaya. Deleuze, Gilles. 1995. ‘On Leibniz’, in Negotiations: 1972–1990. Translated by Martin Joughin. New York: Columbia University Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 2000. Proust and Signs: The Complete Text. Translated by Richard Howard. London: The Athlone Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 2004a. Difference and Repetition. Translated by Paul Patton. London and New York: Continuum. Deleuze, Gilles. 2004b. The Logic of Sense. Edited by Constantin V. Boundas, Translated by Mark Lester and Charles Stivale. London: Continuum. Deleuze, Gilles. 2006. ‘Occupy Without Counting: Boulez, Proust and Time’, in David Lapoujade (ed.), Two Regimes of Madness: Text and Interviews 1975– 1995, pp. 292–9. Translated by Ames Hodges and Mike Taormina. New York: Semiotext(e). Foucault, Michel. 1973. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Vintage Books. Foucault, Michel. 1977. ‘Intellectuals and Power: A Conversation Between Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze’, in Donald F. Bouchard (ed.), Language, CounterMemory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews by Michel Foucault, pp. 206–7. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Foucault, Michel. 2000. ‘Pierre Boulez, Passing through the Screen’, in James Faubion (ed.), Aesthetics, Method and Epistemology, pp. 241–4. New York: Penguin Books. Khan, Alladiya. 2012. Alladiya Khan: My Life. Translated by Urmila Bhirdikar and Amlan Das Gupta. Kolkata: Thema.

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Part II BECOMING MINOR/BECOMING POLITICAL

5 BECOMING MINOR From literature to cinema Daniela Angelucci Against the metaphor In Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature (1975), Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari define minor literature as a literature that a minority constructs within a major language (and not literature written in a minor language): a literature that produces new and collective enunciations, directly speaking to a new people, a missing people. So, the artist, the writer, because of his/ her minor and weak position, can create a people who never existed, a people to come. In this sense, in an aesthetical-political perspective, ‘becoming-minor’ is one of the most important concepts proposed by the authors. First of all, the work of Kafka is a perfect example of a literature able to escape any interpretation—the question is not to search for archetypes, or to remember, to evoke the ghost through free association. It is not ‘say that this means that’, neither it is to identify a structure (Deleuze and Guattari 1986: 7). According to the authors, there is no big difference between the archetype, the ghost, the structure or the significance—what matter are the ‘protocols of experience’, the states of desire, which are opposed to the fixity of the solutions designed by psychoanalysis or structuralism. Kafka’s novels or stories are machines—neither structures nor ghosts—and are only apparently unitary, being made up of moving contents, by materials coming in and out. If the machine of The Trial (1925), that of justice, is instantly recognisable, in the novel Amerika (1927) we note the presence of multiple machines, for example the ship and the hotel, while the machine of The Castle (1926), with its multiple inputs, is fragmented and segmented. ‘Desire,’ they write, ‘evidently passes through these positions and states or, rather, through all these lines. Desire is not form, but a procedure, a process’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1986: 8). The writings of Kafka are capable of achieving a continuous experimentation, always open to new ‘lines of flight’. I would like to emphasise the concept of line of flight, which replaces the idea of autonomy and responsibility of a strong subjective entity with its definite identity. ‘The problem is not that of being free but of finding a way out, or even a way in, another

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side, a hallway, an adjacency’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1986: 7–8). The traditional idea of freedom is substituted here by the ability to take a side step, to take a way out. It is a constant possibility, inherent in the very idea of ‘machine’ itself, another concept proposed by the authors in their 1970s books—Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus—as an evolution of the concept of structure, inherited from structuralism and now abandoned because it was too static. In this sense, the authors are sharply against all the psychoanalytical interpretations of Kafka’s Letter to His Father (written in 1919 and published in 1952), which lays itself open to readings founded on Freud’s Oedipus complex. According to Deleuze and Guattari, such readings are just a paradoxical magnification, a perverse use of the Oedipal triangle, so exaggerated as to lead to a ‘deterritorialisation’. The grotesque relationship of Kafka with his father turns out to be an expansion of the comical limits, and eventually liberating. In this perspective, Deleuze and Guattari strongly reaffirm a non-archetypal idea of the animals featuring in the writings of Kafka, since giving a mythological or imitative interpretation, or seeing in the animal a replacement of a familiar figure, inevitably leads to a ‘reterritorialisation’, that is a closure in a fixed territory. The animal tales are stories about the ‘absolute deterritorialisation’, about ‘becoming animal’, a key concept in the texts of the two philosophers: To become animal is to participate in movement, to stake out the path of escape in all its positivity, to cross a threshold, to reach a continuum of intensities that are valuable only in themselves, to find a world of pure intensities where all forms come undone, as do all the significations, signifiers, and signifieds, to the benefit of an unformed matter of deterritorialized flux, of non-signifying signs. Kafka’s animals never refer to a mythology or to archetypes but correspond solely to new levels, zones of liberated intensities. (Deleuze and Guattari 1986: 13) And this even though there is always the danger of a reterritorialisation, a return to Oedipus, which Deleuze and Guattari identify, for example, in the ending of The Metamorphosis, with the failure of becoming animal of the protagonist Gregor Samsa, that is with his death and the consequent renewed happiness of his family. If these are the contents of Kafka’s work—non-signifying machines and becoming animal—what is their form? That of a minor literature, which ‘doesn’t come from a minor language; it is rather that which a minority constructs within a major language’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1986: 16). According to the authors, minor literature is characterised by three main elements. In the first place, the deterritorialisation of language. In the case of Kafka, a Jew from Prague, it is a continuous flight of language from itself, made 112

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evident by the oscillation between possibility and impossibility of the use of the German, a ‘double bind’ which finds solution only in the transformation of the German into a minority language: a German influenced by the Czech language, which produces syntactically incorrect sentences, accompanied by an insufficient vocabulary. Think then—Deleuze and Guattari say—of Black English, think of the whistles, the chirps, the coughs of the characters and animals present in Kafka’s stories, but also of the stereotypical and poor French in some of Jean-Luc Godard’s films. Minor, then, is not the dialect or the language spoken by a minority, but rather the treatment of an even greater language, the becoming that runs through it, changes and forces it into a creative use. Secondly, the minor literature is characterised by a connection of the individual to political immediacy. In it, ‘everything is political’: background, a historical-political context against which the characters' stories stand out, is simply absent, contrary to what happens with ‘great literature’. Here, the individual is immediately a political fact, and this is precisely because of the weakness of minor literature, the scarceness of space and resources: ‘The individual concern thus becomes all the more necessary, indispensable, magnified, because a whole other story is vibrating within it. [ … ] Kafka’s solitude opens him up to everything going on in history today’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1986: 17–18). So, the Oedipal phantasm too, evoked from the family in the writings of Kafka, becomes immediately a bureaucratic, political issue. Finally, everything takes a collective value. In minor literature the author is forced to connect to ‘collective enunciation’ just because he/she can never be a great master able to stand out beyond the community to express himself/herself and his/her views. Because of his/her fragility, the author expresses another ‘potential community’. This is what Deleuze and Guattari call ‘assemblage (agencement) of collective enunciation’, that is the continuous transition between the individual and the political, between the author and the characters. So, instead of the traditional categories of narrator and narrated, we see continuous assemblages: the letter K in Kafka’s writings is in fact neither the author nor the character, but rather a collective agent. In Kafka’s story ‘Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk’, the protagonist, with her lack of talent, whistles and screeches instead of singing, and she will be the spokesperson, so to say, of the liberation of her people, the multitude of mice. ‘It is unlikely that Josephine really sings; she only whistles in a way that is no better than any other mouse, perhaps even worse, but in such a manner that the mystery of her nonexistent art becomes even greater’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1986: 5). Deterritorialisation of language, connection of the individual to a political immediacy, and collective assemblage of enunciation—these three features indicate the fact that the adjective ‘minor no longer designates specific literatures but the revolutionary conditions for every literature within the heart of what is called great (or established) literature’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1986: 18). Therefore, even those who have the ‘misfortune’ to be 113

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born in a country with a great language and a ‘great’ literature must find the way to deterritorialise them, to finding his/her point of ‘underdevelopment’. Abandoning a symbolic use of language means finally to counterpose a minor or intensive use of language to it. It is worth dwelling on this adjective, as anyone acquainted with the texts of Deleuze knows how much importance it carries in his thought. In physics, intensity is the quantity whose value depends only on the properties or the state of the bodies or of the system, rather than on their size. In philosophy, intensity can be defined as the same substance considered from the perspective of pure quality, rather than quantity. In The Logic of Sense (1969), Francis Bacon: Logic of Sensation (1981), The Fold (1988), and Anti-Oedipus (1972, with Guattari), but also practically in all his texts, Deleuze tirelessly proposes concepts whose only aim is that of describing an experience of pure intensity: the virtual experienced for itself, or the body without organs, which is a field where feeling is completely replaced by organisation. The very possibility of an experience of intensity, in which the real gets manifested in its purest form, is therefore placed in the liminal states, in the experiences of vertigo, in artistic practices that allow a view of the unthinkable, just like literature which uses a minor language. In order to unleash the creative use of poverty, of the fragility of a minor language, making it the subject of an intense or intensive experience, it is necessary to free language of the signification and to avoid that kind of language that becomes an instrument of representation. In such sense, Kafka’s Metamorphosis is ‘the contrary of metaphor’ and Kafka himself, in his diaries, complains about the difficulty of avoiding metaphors (Deleuze and Guattari 1986: 22).

Against the interior life In Kafka’s expressive and literary machine, letters, short stories and novels are recognised as three different components that, despite being crossed by transverse communications, are all steps forward in the path towards an ever more absolute deterritorialisation of language. The letters written by Kafka necessarily maintain the duality of the dialogue—the duality of a subject of enunciation and a subject of the statement—becoming the media where the message seems to prevail on movement itself. The stories, with their animals whistling, rustling and peeping, connect two movements of deterritorialisation: the becoming animal of the human and the becoming human of the animal, a becoming whose multiple assemblages avoid every symbolism. However, even the stories run the constant risk of presenting themselves as too cohesive, clogging their flow and finding a reterritorialisation. When the story seeks a way out of a closed area, this is something different, because something new that worked inside them finds a larger space to grow—a space all dedicated to the ‘incompleteness’—in which the point of the novel consists. In other words, it is precisely to avoid any 114

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metaphors that Kafka turns to those kinds of endless stories that are his novels. In this case, the machine is no longer mechanical and reified; instead, it is incarnated in very complicated social assemblages that, through the employment of human personnel, through the use of human parts and cogs, realise effects of inhuman violence and desire that are infinitely stronger than those one can obtain with animals or with isolated mechanisms. (Deleuze and Guattari 1986: 39) Understanding the denial of a servitude to metaphor and signification also means approaching the writings of Kafka by giving up the idea of an intimate writing that speaks of the anguish and the inner life in its tragic components. As it is clear from his letters and diaries, Kafka himself has always resisted such an interpretation. According to Deleuze and Guattari, the incompleteness of Kafka’s novels does not indicate weakness or impotence, but rather an unstoppable and joyous flow of life, the manifestation of a ‘laughing’ author, who does not consider writing as a refuge but as a line of flight, a rhizome. It’s just Kafka’s laughter, unstoppable and clownish, that realises the key feature of minor literature: that is, its immediate link with politics. To affirm desire and joy even in death, and refusing the opposition between life and art are, in fact, the political and social goals of the minority. For the same reasons, Deleuze and Guattari refute any ‘Kantian’ interpretation of the process, according to which the law is unknowable and purely formal, good in itself and transcendent. Although Kafka invites a similar reading, as the authors admit, such solicitation is intended to call into question the very equation of law with an intimate court and of guilt with inner feeling. Justice, guilt and punishment are the novels’ themes set to be placed in question, disassembled and reassembled, and again linked in an unbroken experimentation. The continuous passage from one element to another—the number of characters, the postponement of the trial, and the change of room—just serves to disseminate the series on a superficial, horizontal, immanent level. The law regulating mysteriously the story of K (narrator-narrated) is unknowable not because it is hidden in the transcendence that is at the top of a hierarchical pyramid, but rather because it is ‘always in the next-door office’, contiguous and moving, ‘full of desire’. This path of assemblages is, in fact, properly, a plane of immanence, a field whose only purpose is that of the proliferation of desires. This is not ‘a desire-lack, but desire as a plenitude, exercise, and functioning’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1986: 56). In this flow, which Deleuze and Guattari define a real ‘machinic assemblage’, the law remains mysterious not because it hides a transcendent principle, but because it erects falsehood to universal rule. The appearance in Kafka’s book of the conceptual character of the ‘power of the false’ will be decisive, years 115

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later, in the cinema books, particularly in characterising the time-image of modernity. Here this concept allows us to locate the law and justice, as well as the criterion of truth and falsehood, beyond good and evil. Refuting the interpretation of Kafka’s law as some sort of Kantian moral law also means, in a sense, to propose a Nietzschean Kafka. The desire about which we are talking can be at the same time paranoid law or immanent movement, and it is difficult to distinguish guilt from innocence given the inescapable intertwinement between the two, as becoming is created in its very making. So, there can be a movement that reterritorialises desire in an enclosed space, a prison, a cemetery, and a desire that runs through all the linkages without being captured by anyone. In this regard, Deleuze and Guattari reject the reconstruction of Kafka’s Trial that places the execution and the death of the protagonist K in the last chapter, in order to advance the idea that it is indeed a previous dream of K. Being revolutionary in Kafka never results, then, in explicit social criticism. Being revolutionary rather means disassembling and the re-assembling a whole series of processes and machines, which are connected and re-connected in order to destroy every regular and smooth operation. Among the terms of the series that proliferate in Kafka’s novels, Deleuze and Guattari identify some series that appear special in their being able to increase the connections of desire: women, always ‘anticonjugal and antifamilial’, sisters, servants, and prostitutes function as connectors, they mark the beginning of a new fragment of the machine, or alternatively indicate the end of it; a series of doubles, homosexuals, policemen and brothers come next, followed by a series of artists, who often blow up all connections. These points of contact between two segments of Kafka’s literary machines—points often characterised by strong sensible qualities—are not simply aesthetic impressions or poetic moments. Kafka’s is an anti-lyricism, an anti-aestheticism that always voted to ‘kill the metaphor’. In fact, Deleuze and Guattari do not arrive at the definition of Kafka as an artist, but rather as a ‘bachelor machine’ (Duchamp), at once solitary and connected to all the machines of desire. With no family, no conjugality, the bachelor is all the more social, social-dangerous, social-traitor, a collective in himself [ … ] A machine that is all the more social and collective insofar as it is solitary, a bachelor, and that, tracing the line of escape, is equivalent in itself to a community whose conditions haven’t yet been established. (Deleuze and Guattari 1986: 71) The pages about the ‘connectors’, that is those intensive points within the series which create contact between the segments at the limit of the same series, highlight the complexity of the machine concept, referring to its segmentarity, on the one hand and to its continuity, on the other. In the last chapter of the text, the problem is addressed through a description of the concept 116

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of assemblage (agencement). The assemblage is divided into segments—which are themselves assemblages—but at the same time it creates a way out, ‘blocks of deterritorialisation’, passages from one fragment to another one. The criteria for assessing the success of an assemblage speak to its ability to avoid a transcendent law, the flexibility and speed of its segments, its attitude in taking a line of flight, and the ability to create a new machine—not abstract but immanent. Above all, however, machinic assemblage is defined by Deleuze and Guattari as an assemblage of desire and collective enunciation, at once erotic and social. It is imperative to stress the political implications of the concept of minority. First, the literary machine is desire as access and movement, because it assembles and disassembles as a result of the exercise of desire, as fullness and vital flow. Therefore, and above all, the machine is a collective assemblage of enunciation, since the statement never refers back to a single subject or to a duality. In fact, as said, the artist does not have an individual function but she writes for a general community, even if that community is yet to come. In virtue of being lonely, unmarried, and minor Kafka produced new and collective statements. The fact that immanent justice, the continuous line, points or singularities are active and creative becomes evident in the way they assemble (s’agencent) and form a machine in turn. This always takes place as part of collective conditions, although minor, the conditions of minor literature and politics, even if each of us had to discover in himself or herself an intimate minority, an intimate desert. (Deleuze and Guattari 1986: 86)

Minor screens In the last part of Cinema 2: Time-Image (published in 1985, ten years after the book about Kafka), the theme of minority is taken up again, this time associated with the possibility of a political cinema in modernity. In his two texts on cinema Deleuze outlines a historical and theoretical distinction between a classical regime, spanning from the birth of cinema to the Second World War (in Image-movement, 1983), and a modern regime, born in the post-war period: if the film of the classical age presents time indirectly, that is through movement, action and narration, modern cinema, described in the second volume, it has as its main feature the abandonment of a linear plot in order for a pure optical image to emerge, connected directly to time and thought.1 Shortly before considering the issue of political cinema, Deleuze resumes the theme of the assemblage that had occupied the last chapter of the book on Kafka, now applying it to cinema and continuing the investigation on the structure of the artistic machine, whether literary or cinematic. In classical cinema, images are concatenated so that each interruption, each cut, is 117

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subordinated to the flow of the plot. Here, each cut becomes an agent for the progression of the plot and is always presented as the last image of a series, or the first image of another one. In modern cinema, ‘the image is unlinked and the cut begins to have importance in itself’; the interstice, no longer forms part of either or the two series nor is it a gap to fill (Deleuze 2000: 213). Recovering the language that characterised the book on Kafka, we could say that the connectors between the segments that make up the films of modernity are all special, creative, intensive. In the machine of modern cinema—using the term ‘machine’ in the same way in which Deleuze spoke of Kafka’s literary machine, that is as a mobile structure made of assemblages—‘if the cut no longer forms part of either of the two series of images which it determines, there are only relinkages on either side’ (Deleuze 2000: 215). We might then ask, then, what the features are, of this new image, and how its minority becomes apparent. The first characteristic of modern political cinema is that of ‘missing’ people, as people no longer exist. That is, if in classical images people, although oppressed or not aware (think of Sergei M. Eisenstein’s films), have been represented, in modernity after the war, after Hitler and Nazism, the national consciousness gradually disintegrates with the result, the potential—not depressive but revolutionary—that the people should rather be sought, reinvented. This applies to the West, which has to produce changes within the mainstream, and of course it is even truer for the exploited and colonised nations. Art, especially cinematographic art, must take part in this task: not that of addressing a people, which is already presupposed there, but of contributing to the invention of a people. The moment the master, or the coloniser, proclaims ‘There have never been people there’, the missing people are a becoming, they invent themselves, in shanty towns and camps, or in ghettos, in new conditions of struggle (Deleuze 2000: 217). Kafka—trapped between the possibility and impossibility of writing in German—gave up the linguistic richness of the great literatures and wrote for a community to come, inventing his people-to-be. In the same way, the new state of crisis of modernity produces conditions of struggle, especially creative ones. Second, in modern political cinema there is no classical correlation between the political and the private. There isn’t any articulated connection so that, through the individual events, there can be an awakening about the political situation, as was the case with classical images.2 Here, as in minor literature, the private is immediately a social fact, in an interpenetration that allows different levels, different phases and even different ways to communicate via the explosion of violence, in that in cinema, ‘everything in a trance, the people and their masters’ (Deleuze 2000: 219). The lack of people follows the impossibility of a classical scheme in relationships and social evolution: the ego is shattered, the people multiply, and there isn’t any 118

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positive following a negative one, or vice versa, but rather a series of films (by Pierre Perrault, Glauber Rocha, Youssef Chahine) where fragmented situations, without private or socio-political mediation, are made visible. In modern political cinema, the absence of a people that already exist, and the immediacy of contact between the private and political produces the third variation of its minority. Like Kafka, who is not in a position to be superior to his community of reference and cannot generate individual statements that represent an entire community, minor cinema—thanks to its weaknesses, the absence of a people, and the crushing of the identities that collapses the public–private distinction—is a collective agent, a catalyst. The collective statements, produced by the new images, are not the truth about the people shown, but neither are they a fiction invented by a talented personality similar to the poet of the ‘great literature’. The collective value of the political cinema of the modern age eventually is one with the ‘right to making legends’: There remains the possibility of the author providing himself with ‘intercessors’, that is, of taking real and not fictional characters, but putting these very characters through the conditions of ‘making up fiction’, of ‘making legends’, of ‘story-telling’. The author takes a step towards the characters, but the characters too take a step towards the author—double becoming. Story-telling is not an impersonal myth, but neither is it a personal fiction—it is a word in act, a speech act through which the character continually crosses the boundary which would separate his private business from politics, and which itself produces collective utterances. (Deleuze 2000: 222) This appears clearly in some of the films by Jean Rouch about Africa, in which we see an almost literal becoming-other of the characters, even if the director is not African, exactly by virtue of this weakness alone, that is, of being a foreigner (and beyond the criticism addressed to it by the Senegalese director Sembène Ousmane, who blames the Africanists and the ethnologists of ‘[looking] as if we were insects’ [Cervoni 1965: 1033]). The most revolutionary reaction to the absence of a people is the way such absence gets narrated. Becoming minor because without people, and therefore immediately social, that is collective, modern political cinema eventually reaches, like all images of modernity, the power of the false, especially when it tells a minority (a people missing or a multitude of people) in a film that it is not fictional. One example of this kind of cinema is India Matri Bhumi, a film Deleuze does not mention, shot in India in 1957 (and released in 1959) by Roberto Rossellini. The director describes his personal encounter with India through a child-like gaze. It is neither a documentary, given that Rossellini barely includes any information on India’s customs, nor a film of fiction, but 119

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rather a work full of personal and poetic impressions, very far from a methodical analysis. As is often the case with Neorealism, the actors are not professionals; the script is thin, and relatively unimportant. As with Paisà (Rossellini’s masterpiece of 1946), India Matri Bhumi is structured around a series of narrative blocks, with each linked to a main topic. There are four episodes: the first one is about an elephant driver who decides to marry a girl; the second about a technician who has worked for seven years for the construction of the Irakud dam and now has to move; the third one is about an old farmer who lives a contemplative life and rescues a tiger; finally, the last one is about a monkey that has to take care of herself after the death of the man with whom she lived. The episodes are preceded by some minutes of footage of a crowd in Mumbai, which is described as a continuous flow, a multitude of human beings and animals. What is the ‘minority’ status of this film? First of all, it is in the style: poor, weak, voluntarily not spectacular, ready to accept all the mistakes and the randomness of life. In particular, we can observe the ‘minority’ of the third episode, that of the farmers who rescues the tiger, prompting her to run away from the hunters. During this episode there are frames in which the spectator can see that the tiger is actually in the zoo by night, even if the moment of rescue film takes place in broad daylight. Rossellini does not even try to cheat, to harmonise the scene through the editing; rather, he directly offers some poor and ‘minor’ images to the viewers. Because of his weakness, as a director and a foreigner to India, Rossellini invents his own Indian people, and establishes a relationship of becoming with them. There are a lot of fragmented situations, a multiplied people, and everyone is simultaneously individual and political (for example, the short story of the old farmer narrated in the third episode immediately assumes a social value). Rossellini takes the right to make legends upon himself. To recall a quotation from Deleuze, the author provides himself with ‘intercessors’, putting these characters under the condition of ‘making up fiction’, taking a step towards the characters while the characters take a step towards the author.

‘The flagrant offence of making up legends’ Dealing with the concept of becoming-minor and specifically referring it to cinema means making clear and deepening the connection between minority and the concept of the ‘power of false’ via the idea of ‘intercessor’. Recalling the three features of minor political cinema, we can say that it invents a missing people, it puts people and their masters ‘in trance’, and through it the author provides herself with ‘intercessors’. I believe that the real meaning of such a description of minor cinema can be understood from the pages immediately preceding those that deal with minor political cinema, that is, the decisive Chapter 6 of Time-Image, titled ‘The Power of the False’. Here, Deleuze articulates the difference between the two cinematographic 120

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regimes—classical and modern—along three lines corresponding to as many registers, that is description, narration and story. In the first place, from the descriptive point of view, classical cinema presupposes the autonomous existence of its own objects, independently from the depiction operated by the camera, in order to build a sensory-motor situation in which the character acts or reacts within the bounds of the circumstance they experience. With the crisis of the action-image, description replaces what is being filmed, constituting the object itself, which the subject observes and registers but of which he/she is no longer an ‘agent’. The autonomy from a specific environment qualifies these objects as pure optical and sound situations, separated from any possible reaction and lacking any motor extension. From a narrative perspective, in classical cinema the development of the linear scheme of perception-action guides the plot, which maintains in this way a presumption of truthfulness, even in dreamlike situations. Once the linear scheme is abandoned, modern narration gives life to characters moving into a pure optical situation in which the anomaly of movement becomes the rule. The general consequence of this immediate exhibition of temporality is that time in itself, chronic and no more chronological, jeopardises the very concept of truth. The norm of the new falsifying narration of crystalline cinema displaces the narrative veracity and the sensory-motor concatenation of movement-image. The power of the false—not a criterion of evaluation or merit, but simply the intimate motive of modern cinema— becomes thus the general principle of the new cinematographic regime. What is missing is the undeniable element at the basis of every truthful narration and, in general, of the regime of movement built on action: namely, the system of judgement, that is, the possibility of identifying a character and individuating its coherent and bonding features. Finally, there is the register of the story, that is the relationship between subject and object, where ‘objective’ stands for what the camera sees and subjective indicates the point of view of the character. Even here crystalline cinema unhinges the element of truthfulness, that is the encounter of the two points of view, thus making any definite and unmistakable identification impossible. In modern cinema, the camera adopts an inside view, which simulates the manners and point of view of the characters in a mimetic relationship, so that the objective and the subjective images blend together and contaminate each other, thus becoming indistinguishable. In this description of the style of modern cinema, neither subjective nor objective, Deleuze reprises some pages by Pier Paolo Pasolini in Cinema of Poetry, in which, writing about the directors Michelangelo Antonioni, Jean-Luc Godard and Bernardo Bertolucci, Pasolini talks about the possibility of a ‘free indirect subjective’, that is the exact moment in which the objective and the subjective images blend together and contaminate each other (Pasolini 1988). This cinematographic figure of speech allows for the ‘possibility of making pseudostories written with the language of 121

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poetry’, with an ‘irregular and provocative freedom’ (Pasolini 1988: 184; italics mine). Here’s a quotation where Deleuze reprises Pasolini almost literally: The story no longer refers to an ideal of the truth which constitutes its veracity, but becomes a ‘pseudo-story’, a poem, a story which simulates or rather a simulation of the story. Objective and subjective images lose their distinction, but also their identification, in favour of anew circuit where they are wholly replaced, or contaminate each other, or are decomposed and recomposed. (Deleuze 2000: 150) It is also possible, here, to appreciate the echoes of the book on Kafka, and its idea of decomposing and recomposing in new assemblages. Furthermore, it is evident now that the idea of the intercessor has to do with the free indirect subjective. Such a relationship between author and characters lies at the basis of the right to make legends. If Deleuze locates the origin of this transformation of the subject–object connection in Fritz Lang’s as well as in Welles’ films, it is even more interesting to observe it in the cinematographic genre which more than any other aspired to the truth: namely, documentary films. In investigative films from the 1970s—like the documentary films shot in Québec, by Pierre Perrault and the cinéma-vérité produced by Jean Rouch—the old schemes are progressively abandoned and the reality is depicted beyond the truth– fiction dichotomy as well. From the 1970s on, in fact, even in reportage and investigative cinema the relationship between the subjective and objective point of view underwent a progressive modification, aligning with cinémavérité in its search for an authenticity going beyond the truth–fiction dichotomy. An exemplar circumstance of this cinematographic genre—in particular, Deleuze makes reference to Perrault and Rouch—is that in which the camera catches the characters in real and daily situations, but with the aim of showing their reaction to the camera’s presence, which is emphasised as to invite an interaction from their behalf. In this way the reality–fiction alternative becomes obsolete, because the authentic effect on reality as described by the film is produced and created by cinema itself. The goal of the criticism against fiction was the abandonment of the model of truth underlying it, that is the attainment of a pure ‘story-telling function’ through which a certain group, by re-telling itself, becomes other than itself without betraying itself and being false; the power of the false offers to the real character, as well as to the director, the possibility to invent, creating her story into ‘the flagrant offence of making up legends’. Cinema should not fix the identity of a character, real or fictitious, through its objective and subjective aspects, but rather catch the becoming of the real character when she starts to ‘make fiction’ herself, when she enters ‘the flagrant offence of making up legends’, contributing in this way to the invention of its own people. 122

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The character must first of all be real if he is to affirm fiction as a power and not as a model: he has to start to tell stories in order to affirm himself all the more as real and not fictional. The character is continually becoming another, and is no longer separable from this becoming which emerges with a people. (Deleuze 2000: 152) There is an important Italian tradition of this kind of cinema, documentary and fictional at the same time, first of all that of Rossellini, which I have discussed already. An example of the development of characters as intercessors, selected from contemporary Italian cinema, can be that of Gianfranco Rosi with his last film Fuocoammare (Fire at Sea) nominated for the Oscars in the Documentary category in 2017. The film is set on the Italian island of Lampedusa, in Sicily; that is, one of the points through which migrant boats arrive into Europe. The director Rosi, after a year on the island with its inhabitants, depicts life in this place, knowing closely the island’s empty space, characterised by the expectations of the migrant boats and full of echoes of disasters, of shipwrecks. The film features some of these encounters—one with the boy Samuele and his slow daily life, his anxieties and his problems. There is the encounter with Bartolo, a doctor who dedicates himself completely to migrants, and who has to certify their deaths on a daily basis, participating with compassion in a situation unimaginable for him until then. The encounter between the two characters, real and not scripted, happens by chance and appears as a kind of miracle, a miracle enlightened, encouraged, but not caused, by the camera. The other meeting, of course, is that of the ships of migrants with its cargo of human lives. Rosi made two trips, each for 20 days, on the ship of the rescuers. During the second one, he closely filmed death and disaster. However, this is not an investigative film because the director does not document or report, but rather chooses to describe his waiting, his relations with the rescuers and with those arriving, waiting for his own encounter with the tragedy. In a central scene, a man who has arrived in Italy from Africa sings all the adventures of his painful travel, in a sort of ‘rap-gospel’, literally making a ‘fabulation’ of his actual story. Rosi uses this song to speak of his own feelings, finding in the character a real intercessor, to say that perhaps the new people—literally missing, literally having to invent—is that one produced by the encounter between the Italian people and the migrants.

Notes 1 For an introduction, see Angelucci 2014; Deamer 2016. 2 To stay within Soviet cinema, think about the film Mother (1926) by Vsevolod I. Pudovkin.

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References Angelucci, Daniela. 2014. ‘Deleuze and the Concepts of Cinema’, Deleuze Studies, 8(3): 311–413. Translated by Silvano Marchetti. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Deamer, David. 2016. Deleuze Cinema Books. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 2000. Cinema 2: Time-Image. London: Athlone Press. Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. 1986. Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature. Translated by Dana Polan. Minneapolis-London: University of Minnesota Press. Cervoni, Albert. 1965. ‘Une confrontation historique en 1965 entre Jean Rouch et Sembène Ousmane’, France Nouvelle, 1033: 17–19 Pasolini, Pier Paolo. 1988. ‘Cinema of Poetry’, Translated by Beverley Lawton and Louise K. Barnett, in Louise K. Barnett (ed.), Heretical Empiricism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

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6 DESIRE, BODY AND CAPITALISM Dalit literature and becoming political in a postcolonial world K.V. Cybil The history of dalit literature is integrally tied to the growth of a postIndependence dalit assertion in the state of Maharashtra (in the erstwhile province of Bombay), to the backdrop of the formation of a dalit literary conference in 1958, later culminating in the formation of the Dalit Panthers in 1972. Its rise can be conceived as a moment that crystallised not just the becoming political of literature and art but a moment that saw the writer or the artist becoming the milieu, the people. For example, in the work of a writer like Anna Bhau Sathe, the labyrinthine domain of dalit literature becomes the experience of a singular moment as it captures creative flows, conveyed through an image—the figure of a working-class carnivalesque hero, a renegade from school as a child, a communist worker, a writer, an artist and a dalit, who established the parameter of politics-beyond-­ representation for writing, thus momentarily turning a classical medium of literature (like Marathi) into a minor. The writer, here, becomes a singularity, an assemblage, a desire, a memory which is affective of all the various forces that join to form the milieu of literature in India. As literature, dalit literature has seldom been understood as a transformation in the literary experience of the majority, or as becoming minor of writing itself. It has been understood merely as a constituency of literary representation for the depressed, scheduled castes and tribes, the untouchables etc., by equating the word dalit with a government-defined term, effectively excluding it from all notions of the political.

Politics of postcoloniality and dalit literature To explore the understanding of the political in dalit literature, I will begin this chapter with a critical comparison of dalit literature and postcolonial literature, which so far may not have been sufficiently done given the essentialist assumptions regarding the politics of liberation and the eschatology surrounding the former. As we will see, it is on the question of the political in relation to the postcolonial that their differences and similarities make an appearance. DOI: 10.4324/9781003217336-9

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V. S. Naipaul, the Nobel laureate and an icon of postcolonial literature, devotes a chapter to his meeting with dalit poet and one of the founders of the Dalit Panthers, Namdeo Dhasal and his wife Mallika in his book, India A Million Mutinies Now (1990). His exposure to the poetry of Dhasal and also the autobiography of Mallika which brings him to their house makes an attempt to take stock of the grim reality of untouchable life witnessed around him. He praises Dhasal for his poetry voluminously, and is careful to note the circumstances in which he brought it to existence. Naipaul has only praise for the love shared between Dhasal and Mallika and is careful to record the distance between their actual social locations. Mallika though born to a Muslim father and a Hindu mother has retained many of her upper caste mother’s mannerisms. Her husband on the other hand, born an untouchable (into the caste of Mahar), continues to live a life that has little to do with the safety of a middle class home, something alien to him in his entire life. Dhasal’s ailing mother is nervously glued to the television if the next round of news is going to be about her son who had several times already been subject of bad news for her for his political activism and conflicts with the state, the local police in particular having arrested him on many such charges. Naipaul records his image of Dhasal’s mother who had suffered a nervous breakdown and effectively captures thereby to his satisfaction (although helped by an interpreter) the scenario of an Ambedkarite assertion first recorded by him in the streets of Mumbai, the city which he visits in 1988. Namdeo Dhasal, on the reverse when he reminisces (in an obituary for his acclaimed bilingual Marathi writer and friend Dilip Chitre published in the newspaper DNA 11 December, 2009) about his meeting with Naipaul— at Falkland road (a red-light area in Mumbai) where Dhasal lived—when Naipaul was invited to attend a function, and was received by Dhasal’s colleagues (activists of Tiraskrit Nari Sangathana, an organization he helped found for the sex workers) holding traditional Hindu lamps or arti, writes that he fled the scene apparently coming under some misunderstanding about the occasion. Naipaul’s own recollection (Naipaul 1990) suggests that it was his reaction to the media reporters gathered at the location which made him flee or retreat to the privacy of a tea stall on the street, before his interpreter-friend who accompanied him found their way through the crowd of reporters to Dhasal and Mallika to wind up the reception which was notified in the newspapers of the previous day and concluded with press reports and photographs of Naipaul attending the reception on the next day. But, Dhasal compares this incident with another one when he and Dilip Chitre fought off an African youth trying to create trouble in Dhasal’s neighbourhood. Dhasal complains of Naipaul for his apparent failure to connect to Dhasal’s reality despite his claim to global fame as a postcolonial writer. This incident is suggestive of the social strata to which postcolonial literature is connected and its benign treatment of caste. It was recalled again 126

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when in an obituary to Dhasal (written by Pratik Kanjilal in The Indian Express on January 17, 2014) Naipaul’s misunderstanding was attributed to his expectation to find in Dhasal an Indian version of Black assertion. Naipaul indeed also wrote that Dhasal’s poetry took him by surprise as it was written using words and expressions that Dalits and no one else used. Equating subalternity with the categories of the poor, black and female in the first world, Spivak (1988: 280) has also maintained that under postcolonial conditions, ‘the necessary stratification of colonial subject constitution in the first phase of capitalist imperialism makes “color” useless as an emancipatory signifier’. As a writer himself, Dhasal perhaps wanted to prove the insensitivity to the difference between dalit and postcolonial forms of literature from a writer like Naipaul. Spivak distinguishes a western subject from a postcolonial subject, whereby the former is a striated subject, enjoying access to movements because of other reasons—‘strong passport’, ‘hard currency’, etc. (Robinson and Tormey 2010). But her concept of the subaltern gives us no instruments to detect the movement of the subalterns. The voice or silence (position) of the subaltern ‘is not characterised by true representation or self-presence. Rather it concerns original production, an expression of the primacy of desiring-production over social production’ (Robinson and Tormey (2010: 24). Arif Dirlik critiques postcolonial theory saying that it is to a large extent the success story of mobile academic careers transformed into a vibrant and highly marketable yet critically reflexive theory (Noyes 2010: 58). So, postcolonialism may be expected to situate the subaltern subject in a politics beyond the frontiers of nationalism and hence may also be said to represent a futuristic community across nation-states. Dalit literature is also premised on a politics, but it may not be located where the politics of the subaltern is presumed to be, that is beyond national frontiers or across the borders of nation-states. A dalit critique of the nation may suggest a ‘folding’ of the smooth and striated spaces Deleuze and Guattari (2004b: 524) write about: ‘smooth space and striated space—nomad space and sedentary space—the space in which the war machine develops and the space instituted by the State apparatus—are not of the same nature’. Striated and smooth spaces according to dalit literature are anchored to the frontier; to a legally internalised form of control (as opposed to postcolonialism that may be expected to represent a politics, a movement beyond the frontier of the nation state or nationalism related to ‘passports’, ‘hard currency’, etc.); the fold of the touchable and the untouchable body in the Constitution of India. Dalit literature reveals this folded subjectivity of the exterior within, which straddles both striated and smooth spaces of the postcolonial state/society (socius), and yet distinguishes itself from postcolonial writing that announces a form of politics freed from the constraints of a nation-state as merely an erstwhile colony. In staking this claim, one has to acknowledge that 127

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The complex interplay between micropolitical and macropolitical levels of society constitutes an intricate movement that Deleuze names “folding”, which might be thought to supplement the more common Western political philosophies that maintain a privileged focus on macropolitical justice, often excluding or suppressing the relevance of micropolitical care. (Bignall 2010: 97) A postcolonial approach to dalit literature is likely to discard the autonomy of dalit literature from being labelled as such, and also likely to discard its ability to become political, not in a liberal sense of the term, but in the actual sense of the term depending on whatever milieu it operates within. The politics of dalit literature is inextricably entangled with an experience of becoming minor literature. In the numerous languages spoken in India, literature has been an expression of the national imagination since its very conception. The nation-state in India, by ordaining language as a political expression of people, aroused a lot of interest in the creation of a space for literature as a creative expression of language itself. Dalit literature, by creating a milieu for the socialising of literature among these languages introduces a unique intersection, inventing in literature the identity of a writer; which is a quest essentially, not of identity, but a process of writing (this is one of the main reasons why there is a raging debate on who can write dalit literature—a dalit or/and if a non-dalit, then who?). This quest for becoming a dalit through writing or becoming political through becoming a writer creates similar flows in literature that assembles a unifying signifier in imagining the dalit as a body; not of the givens or the beginnings, but of becomings. What Deleuze says about modern cinema becomes relevant while discussing this transformation of dalit subjectivity into the quest for a body. He says modern cinema beckons the creation of a body for the time image. It no longer is just the body of classical cinema, which was guided by a sensory-motor complex that the modern cinema articulates in the form of a desire. It is the desire of a body that is caught in the complex cycles of becoming (Deleuze 2005a: 182–207). The same may be said of the body in Dalit literature that it ‘is the simultaneous experience of the impossibilities of escaping or inhabiting one’s own body’ (Kumar 2013: 184). Dalit subjectivity in literature is not something to be absorbed into ‘a general grammar of victimization and injustice’ (Kumar 2013: 184). For instance, C. Ayyappan has titled one of his stories as Prethabhashnam (Malayalam), translated into English as ‘Spectral Speech’ (1998). This story narrates the vengeance of a young girl who gets raped and murdered by her employer’s son at whose house she was a maid. She re-enters the plot transformed into a spirit while possessing her assailant’s sister’s body and gradually pushes the family towards destruction. Ayyappan’s narratives express dalit subjectivity as form of a desire that, through indirect speech or possession (spectral speech), tries to express itself 128

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and denote a desire; that of becoming (in this case through possession) a body through spectral speech.

Becoming/possessing a body (or the biopolitics of citizenship) According to the Indian Constitution (Article 17), the practice of untouchability (a customary practice that determines spatial distancing between people on the basis of degrees of pollution emerging out of their caste positions; spiralling down to removing one’s body from touch and sight in public increasingly as one goes down the ladder of caste hierarchy) is banned and any discrimination based on this practice can be considered a crime and is liable to punishment. The sociality emerging out of this clause, according to the Constitution, can be said to constitute a class of citizens whose boundaries are defined by the ambiguity of its relationship with the mass. This ambiguity stems from a theory of transgression that the liberal philosophy of the Constitution has formulated. The ‘body’, for the law, is a line of separation between the Citizen and Untouchable. The separation of the body implied by this clause in the Constitution of India has no doubt help replace a language of discrimination by one of affirmative action. Yet it left the body as a field of transgression represented in the regime of law, marking the desire of its freedom from the milieu of its stigmatisation (the caste system) a new image of thought conceived as such in Dalit literature. This ambiguity surrounding affirmative action came to the fore in the debate over supplementary legislation passed by the Parliament in 1955 called the Protection of Civil Rights Act (substituted in 1989 by the SC/ST Atrocities Act). In its original form it was titled the Untouchability Offences Bill 1954, which was strongly opposed by B. R. Ambedkar in the Parliament as it carried in its title the word untouchability, even as the intention of the Bill was to support the Rights of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. In his response to the member who tabled the Bill, Ambedkar said ‘I don’t know why he should keep on repeating untouchability and untouchables all the time. In the body of the Bill he is often speaking of Scheduled Castes. The Constitution speaks of the Scheduled Castes and I don’t know why he should fight shy of using the word Scheduled Castes in the title of the Bill itself’ (cited in Narrain 2021). This shows how the word untouchability, as used in the Constitution, was instrumental in creating a legal discourse through the isolation of a subject by incorporating it into a form of social desire. In such cases, it signals the establishment of an axiom, distinct from a colonial or a feudal regime that existed prior to this or simultaneously. The feudal and the colonial regimes supported the caste system or a structural logic of society based on the separation of the pure and the impure (Dumont 1970). An axiomatic control of the caste system was signalled by the insertion of untouchability clause into the laws concerning the protection of dalits. This point is highlighted in Ambedkar’s dissatisfaction with the Untouchability Offences Bill 1954, which 129

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Gives the appearance that it is a Bill of a very minor character, just a dhobi not washing the cloth, just a barber not shaving or just a mithaiwala not selling laddus and things of that sort. People will think that these are trifles and piffles and why has parliament bothered and wasted its time in dealing with dhobis and barbers and ladduwallas. It is not a Bill of that sort. It is a Bill which is intended to give protection with regard to Civil and Fundamental rights. Dalit literature, which was born in 1958, was premised on an escape from this axiomatic that established the customary law of caste as an inner and internalised form of control which is performed or played out on the body of Citizens. This axiom presupposes violence as an expression of domination from which the body of the perpetrator is removed and only the victim is revealed. In its original form as a Bill introduced in 1954, the punishment for such a transgression was recommended to be very light such that ‘no grievance shall be left in the heart of the offender’ (Narrain 2021). The reason certain commentaries [for example, Kumar (2016: 53) writes, ‘ … the practices of untouchability may well remain unintelligible to the victims and, one may add provocatively, even to the perpetrator’] on dalit literature presume that the perpetrator could be innocent of transgression because the caste system is unintelligible to them is because this invisibility of the perpetrator is written into the law as an axiomatic. It is the attempt to escape from this victimhood which is critical to any understanding of dalit literature. The post-colonial approaches centred on the concept of the subaltern fail to account for this form of control, of the social desire or the caste system which was internalised by the laws pertaining to untouchability. Sarankumar Limbale’s novel Hindu (2010) offers a fine expression of the nuances of becoming a body (escaping the body of transgressions arising out of the axiom, in its mutual reversibility of legal subjectivity and immunity from caste stigma). The protagonist of the novel is a dalit who is driven into an unethical career in his government job, succumbing to the attractions of greed and lust induced by contractors and middlemen. In the end, he is pushed to a point where he is exposed to an emptiness within himself, from which his self opens into a huge crevice, a desire for meaningful existence, in the form of a hijra (a transvestite). The Hindu is, after all, a word that answers in the form of a hijra for a dalit, indicating his/her double; a product of the centuries-old exclusion from the caste system. This novel illustrates the folded subjectivity of dalithood—hijra as a being outside of the caste barriers just like the dalit; but is also a subject constantly in search of new beginnings as also of becoming political.

Becoming dalit Dalit writing was conceived within the precepts of Marxism, Socialism and Buddhism as is obvious in the works of its early protagonists like Raja 130

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Dhale, Baburao Bagul and Namdeo Dhasal (Murugkar 1991). Within the circumference of these ideas it is voicing the unheard. While most contemporary writing on dalit literature tries to create an ideological space to make itself heard, dalit literature surprises everyone by producing unknown assemblages from the past in the form of history, myth, legend of a people that creates the imaginary of a multitude, a mass—its very future. Wakankar (2010) terms it an addressing of pre-history while making a departure to the modern; a specific process of becoming political by a dalit subject. The responsibility of creating and not inheriting a past, exploring the lines of evolution that created the dalit subjectivity of un-freedom, its different forms with changing times, and indicating the markers of the future are some of the traits that dalit literature has so radically evinced since the time of Phule and Ambedkar. Hereby dalit literature defies the rules of transgression, the modus operandi for civil society as a whole in India that is premised on a confirmation of the untouchable as a legal subject. This defiance of the limits that define transgression is what is observed in the creation of a smooth space—of becoming political—of the haptic senses, to make visible the invisible mass of people that is missing in the nation. The act of literature for dalit writers may be thus envisaged within their becoming political. It is only in the creative process that the politics of a dalit is expressed, especially when it is treated merely as a mass, and neither as a class nor as a caste. Becoming a dalit is therefore at once a creative process as much as it is a political process. The dalit movement sought to integrate the processes of law with the collectives or assemblages of dalithood. It also created a people’s metaphysics in the process, centered on the body as the site of contemplation or thought. Anna Bhau Sathe’s story Buddhachi Sapath (2011a) has a group of children swearing an oath in the name of Buddha, that they will tolerate no violence on their body by the punitive elders and flee their village to the city of Mumbai to fulfill their oath. He inverts, yet repeats the Buddhist principle of non-violence as a firm resolve, not for practicing it in everyday life ascetically, but in not allowing violence to dictate the rule or harm the self, and the oath is not taken by a nation or community but of a people who are missing, the children—the people of the future. Anna Bhau Sathe also became the vanguard for the creation of an art (loknatya or people’s theatre) out of tamasha, the village theatre of Maharashtra, one that affected the senses of a different milieu from that of interior Maharashtra. In the villages tamasha’s themes are embedded in metaphysical thought made easier for circulation (Sathe 2011b). Taking its rustic version filled with prayers, parodies and skits on gods/goddesses and the village rulers, he created an entirely different version that dealt with the realities of workers’ lives in Mumbai during the peak of deprivation and pinnacle of strikes. Most importantly, he performed it on the streets, in the thick of demonstrations, defying attempts to repress it by the state (it was 131

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banned by the Home Ministry) as an art form by capturing its power in a new form, a new appearance, i.e. loknatya or people’s theatre (Mitra 2014: 102). This happened during the peak of agitation for Samyukt Maharashtra (1956–60) in Mumbai and is now the stuff of legends, marking the transformation of the untouchable to the dalit and the dalit to mass, all of them—as legends—simultaneous cycles of transformations repeated every day before the eyes of the people in the city through print and social media, organisations, citizens’ groups, journalists, activists, students, researchers etc. The creation of a platform for dalit writing was taking place against the backdrop of the creation of a Marathi nationality and the creation of a separate state for Marathi-speaking people, Maharashtra. The first Dalit Literary Conference (2 March 1958) held in Bombay was held two years before the formation of Maharashtra state after prolonged campaigns including those by the Communist party, a platform for many of Anna Bhau Sathe’s writings and performances. Although initially opposed by the ruling Congress party, they had to eventually cave in and concede to a division of Gujarat and Maharashtra with Bombay as a part of the latter. Majhi maina gavatil rahili (or ‘My beloved is left behind at home’) was a ballad that was popularised by Anna Bhau Sathe to articulate how Bombay city longs for its countryside to be united into a single state. Its recent appropriation into a nostalgic tune reminiscent of the days of the Samyukt Maharashtra Movement, often with overtones of revivalism, reveals the decline of the workers’ collectives of textile mills in Mumbai as well as the Lal Bawata Kala Pathak, an organisation for communist politics through street performance. The latter is now defunct and tamasha, which formed the vortex of this type of performance, is also banned in Mumbai today. Yet the reason Anna Bhau Sathe is remembered despite the lack of ‘merit’ or grandeur often presumed to be the mark of an author in all classical literature in any language in India is because he himself thought of his writing as the becoming minor of the Marathi language and literature itself.

Desire, postcoloniality and dalit literature If on the one hand we are comparing dalit literature with postcolonial literature to bring out some of its allied perceptions on politics, on the other hand, we are comparing the works of Deleuze and Guattari as affective of postcolonial desire and dalit literature. Deleuze and Guattari’s possible encounter with postcolonialism apparently begs the question of their focus and location of critical engagement (subjective or social, individual or collective). Deleuze and Guattari would consider it to be the causal force of desire itself, which has caused the actualisation of problematic forms of existence in or out of the erstwhile colonies. Their concept of desiring-production has the capacity to negotiate the space between the subjective desires considered as important by postcolonial theory and the material 132

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conditions of production considered important by Marxist theory (Patton and Bignall 2010: 11–12). Deleuze and Guattari have been accused of creating a theory that can make the postcolonial subject silent and absent, because of the impersonal immanence of subjectivity suggested by them and the subsequent critique of representation which negates the role of ideology in shaping postcolonial reality (Spivak 1988). Deleuze and Guattari’s concerns, it may be argued, were more in the nature of affecting reality. In his work on cinema Deleuze says the filmmaker is not representing but creating a people. Citing the case of Palestine, Pisters (2010: 209–10) also reveals a concrete instance of Deleuze making a statement of politics when he writes, ‘The Palestinians— tossed aside, forgotten—have been called on to recognise the right of Israel to exist, while the Israelis have continued to deny the fact of the existence of a Palestine people’. Many of the contentions raised against Deleuze and Guattari’s relevance to the study of postcoloniality point to the inadequacy of their concept of the political. Spivak has consistently maintained this in her criticism and has also cited Derrida’s politics of deconstruction as central to her own project of understanding the politics of the postcolonial subject. Yet she fails to register the tension between the epistemological grounding of postcoloniality and the chronological thrust of globalisation. The political effectiveness of a postcolonial subjectivity stems from the same and hence one can argue that Deleuze and Guattari’s conception of nomadic thought describes the postcolonial desire and their notion of a politics of assemblages, its geographical materialism (Noyes 2010: 43–4) and that such a politics is representational in the sense that a map is representational (Noyes 2010: 45). In conceptualising dalit politics, as a postcolonial movement, it is a movement that succeeded a colonial politics of representation with a politics of utterance; of language with writing and of signs with images. The first Dalit Literary Conference of 1958, which was expected to converge the creative talents of dalits in order to prove the function of writing as a creation of assemblages in the form of literature, soon extended itself in multitudinous ways, becoming the voice of the illiterate, and the map of a new milieu of creativity. It created several other writers’ conferences in its wake, of the dalits working in the form of monads, in remote villages and different states of the country, literally for the production of writing. So the word ‘post’ in postcolonial raises a tension in Dalit literature because it does not merely surpass a liberal theory of representationthrough-elections, but creates a people that were missing, progressively marginalised or excluded from the avenues of parliamentary politics, literacy and ideology. In so doing, the act of rising above the chaturvarna or the customary law of caste, in turn, exerts a force against any confinement of their desires to the territory of language, bringing them into affinity with deterritorialised monads of creative, literary assemblages active elsewhere, in many different tongues. Several of Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts, 133

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especially the war machine (2004b), can be directly used in the context of a dalit, postcolonial subjectivity contingent to events like the rise of the Dalit Panthers which not just reterritorialise the impersonal and representational, but also the political. Spivak has pointed out that ‘postcolonial’ is a term that disengages the subject from the colonial, that observes the native subject as a raw, indigenous one and the nationalist, that looks at the native subject as a sanskritised, hyper-refined one charged with ideas or symbols of historic agency derived from an atavistic reading of ancient texts like the Bhagvadgita (Spivak 1999). Many recent attempts to overcome this bring out the rebellious content in dalit literature that militates against the chaturvarna. This is one recent development that has risen out of an appreciation of the spread of dalit writing in the form of a war machine into various languages (Satyanarayana and Tharu 2011, 2013). For example, C. Ayyappan, When he began writing in the late sixties, the category of dalit writing was not available to writers and readers in Kerala … the past decade, however has seen the emergence of distinctively new idioms of Dalit politics … and this has also generated a new cultural politics. (Kumar 2013) The actual dimension of postcoloniality emerging in Deleuze may be seen in his writings on Foucault (Chow 2010: 62–78). Facing off the criticism that Foucault’s history or archaeology closes off the rest of Europe from the inside, Deleuze argues that Foucault’s studies on madness, delinquency, etc. which earned for him the name of a thinker of confinement can actually lead to a misinterpretation of his global project. Deleuze argues that for Foucault confinement refers to an outside and what is confined is precisely the outside. Deleuze claims that, ‘Foucault is uniquely akin to contemporary film’ and that Europe’s visibility in Foucault’s works is none other than the visualisation of a space of confinement (Chow 2010: 62). Postcolonial studies can benefit from Deleuze’s take on Foucault and instead of focusing on apparatuses of European exclusion, make explorations into the transformative potential of Europe’s encounter with the rest of the globe (Chow 2010). For example, Foucault says about famine, Outside the western world, famine exists on a greater level then ever; and the biological risks confronting the species are perhaps greater…but what might be called a society’s ‘threshold of modernity’ has been reached when the life of the species is wagered on its own political strategies. (Rabinow 1984: 265) Famine folded at the meeting of the west and the outside is also a thought echoed in Ambedkar, albeit in a defensive fashion, when he claimed that 134

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historically beef consumption by the dalits is a pointer to their survival strategies in a hierarchical society (Ambedkar 1948: 102). Ambedkar’s defense echoes the tinges of postcoloniality in Deleuze’s observations on Foucault, in suggesting that arriving at the doorsteps of the (bio)political through a modern language of representing famine, epidemics, natural disasters, etc. that affect the dalits the worst (also because they have been attributed widely to divine interventions for strengthening the shackles of caste bondage) in the population of a country like India is/was its encounter with its own confinement in the caste system. Ambedkar’s revisiting of the history of beef consumption in India was the opening of a dalit threshold to the world at large, the threshold of modernity, productive of desire though not of status, of politics repeated at a crucial point in the making of a history of India notwithstanding their confinement within it. A dalit subjectivity which negotiates the space of encounter with the other expresses itself through writing about a feeling of shame that struggles to escape its reterritorialisation in the form of caste. The quest for a milieu from which to express the feeling nonetheless is strikingly similar to the postcolonial subject in comparison with a dalit subject. Connections perceived in art forms, literary objects, plays, playwrights, performers of different kinds etc. are also strikingly similar in both Deleuzian and dalit approaches to literature. Michel Leiris’ journal on Ethiopia (L’Afrique fantôme, 1934) and Louis Malle’s film on India (L’Inde fantôme 1969–70) are examples for production of desire in a colonist subject before the native other or indigenous subject (Bewes 2010: 163–83). A study of shame comes through in both; the former expresses through writing what the latter does through cinema. Though treated as a ‘reversing of gaze’, which is a popular trope in postcolonialism, in exploring shame as a productive desire in postcolonial literature, it is laying open a field of connections (Bewes 2010). Gleanings from Deleuze’s own writings on the third world in Cinema 2 (2005b: 205–7) or on Geophilosophy in What is Philosophy (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 85–116) can lead one to doubt if thinkers Deleuze and Guattari were not tuned in already, not merely to a condition of postcoloniality, but also its deterritorialised fringes expressed in the form of the ‘fourth world’, the ‘excluded’ and the ‘marginalised’. The instance of dalit literature can be treated as one such expression of the minority, which, owing to its political nature, forces the elements of the majority into reassembling itself as a political mass. It is a milieu, a medium, that circulates a series of writers, artists, painters, intellectuals, etc. drawn from within the minoritisation of different literatures in India.

Becoming political Dalit literature as becoming political of the untouchable, of becoming dalit (Zelliot 1996), nonetheless retains an essence or a pre-history prior to the 135

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act of becoming as the modality of its departure to the political. The efforts of dalit expressions of the political to capture the future of a nation as well as its provenance, as belonging to a time which is not chronologically reckoned shows a rare kind of exclusivity not seen in most other forms of literature, including postcolonial literature. Technologies of deification and the practice of dalit literary politics point out the infinity of exclusivity in dalit writing manifested as a pre-history; as repeated encounters with an original meeting with god (Wakankar 2010). It is commemorated in material forms such as the kabir vani (poetry) or/and the dalit critique of the nationalist-secular understanding of Kabir. It leaves dalit literature at the doorsteps of a mahasamnvay, a people’s gathering beneath the cult of vithal, a pastoral deity of the warkari (pilgrims of Pandharpur, temple of vithal) sects in Maharashtra. Here subalternity is represented as dalit-ness in the context of questioning an understanding of religion that exempts all religions except Christianity as historic religion (Wakankar 2010). However, it must be acknowledged that while theoretical focus on the space of intellectuals and their relation with the state, with the intellectuals inhabiting the cusp of modernity, makes a definitive treatment of dalit religiosity possible, extending the question to dalit literature itself or its tension with postcoloniality especially in its relevance to dalit politics beckons for more. Recent commentaries on dalit literature announce a departure from the approaches of post-coloniality and bring the question of the politics of dalit literature to literature per se. One of the relevant premises of post-colonial theory is to rethink the ‘center’ from the peripheries; the West from the perspective of the non-west, nationalism from those that nationalism has rendered homeless or stateless: disciplines, modernity, history and other so-called universal or global categories from non-western locations and narrations. Thus, Dalit writers and activists are much more concerned with deconstructing Hindu and Brahmanical knowledge than with deconstructing colonial knowledge. Dalit histories prevent the consideration of a subaltern voice as a question arising exclusively in the coloniser–colonised framework: they fracture this binary setting (Zecchini 2016: 59–69). Dalit literatures also counter the pitfall of trying to speak for, mediate or become the authorised spokesperson of the voiceless. They have often leveled such criticism against the subaltern studies collective and against Gayatri Spivak. She herself criticises Foucault and Deleuze for confiscating a voice that is not theirs, but her work on the dalits and tribals is largely based on the writings of the upper caste Bengali writer Mahasweta Devi (Zecchini 2016: 69). The issue is the definition of the political. Homi Bhabha defines vernacular cosmopolitanisms of migrants and diasporic minorities circulating between cultural and national traditions as a minority perspective, a ‘difference within’ that questions and fractures a number of mainstream narratives (Zecchini 2016: 58). The minority only discovers its political force and its aesthetic form when it is articulated across and alongside communities of difference, in acts of application (Zecchini 2016: 73). 136

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However, for dalit literature, treated in its politics as becoming minor, its engagement with vernacular cosmopolitanisms can be seen only as that conflictual process by which new identities are propelled into being by moving the pre-existing shape of diversity, justice and legitimacy (Pandian 2016: 28). A consequence of such policies could also be the efforts by the political elite to disallow the articulation of such identities. Such policies of proscription have been addressed as a politics of closure by Stuart Hall and David Held (Pandian 2016: 28). In the period from the early twentieth century to the present day, caste-based mobilisation in India has faced—and continues to face—a danger of such politics of closure (Pandian 2016). The politics of becoming minor for dalit literature implies an escape from the politics of identities. This may involve a continuous deconstruction of democracy as a concrete set of practices, instead of valorising it as an ideal (Pandian 2016: 32), amidst the threat of a caste-based politics turning into a narcissistic politics with no room space for thinking the other (Pandian 2016: 54). What looks like orthodoxy is tolerant, what looks like modern is intolerant as per Kumud Pawade whose Sanskrit education was positively looked upon by a traditional Brahmin Sanskrit scholar and negatively by a Professor of Sanskrit (also a Brahmin) (Pandian 2016: 37). Identity politics has to render the bewilderment about the incoherence of the identities as part of itself (Pandian 2016: 37). Dalit literature perceived here as political to the extent of causing bewilderment and incoherence to the domain of politics itself yet allows for a transition for literature from a representative to a non-discursive form in its creative becomings of art. Becoming political hence arrives with a questioning of identity politics for dalit literature, having unshackled the dominant forms to which art itself was bound as a norm of creativity. It has been noted that dalit literature portrays the violent reduction of life to a bare minimum—a life of mere survival, a life which grows on the joothan (leftovers) of others. The loss of this life is not mournable. It is in this context that the very act of writing becomes political … through writing or reading, otherwise denied to Dalit communities, they acquire a life of “thought and intellectuality” and refuse the denial of their freedom’ (Kumar 2016: 55–6). Writing and reading in the case of dalit literature presents itself as a separation; denial of a denial in striving to reach the limits of expression. Writing is therefore a crossing of the limit of literature itself and rather than acting as if reading and writing were practice of language, it beckons a fusion of the sign with the image, of the literal with the figural as also of the inside and the outside.

Capitalism and dalit literature Deleuze and Guattari who accept Marx’s critique of capitalism as basic to their arguments nonetheless make significant departures from it. Thus, we can see that on the question of class, revolution, etc. they reach far more 137

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drastic positions than most other scholars. The difference here is mainly that Deleuze and Guattari address the problems of capitalism as derived from an intertwined dis/order of exploitation of labour and repression of desire. Accordingly, their Marxism is characterised by their critique of Freud and psychoanalysis. Their main arguments may be summed up as follows. To begin with, they compare the segmentary primitive and ranked society with imperial, feudal, over-coded, caste society and with the decoded, decoding class society of capitalism (Deleuze and Guattari 2004a: 211). Emergence of caste in feudal society is the initial marker of the institutionalisation of state in history. Under capitalism, a state creates abstraction of power from the body and alienates power. The central problem of capitalism is with classes and ‘classes are the negatives of castes and statuses; classes are orders, castes and statuses that have been decoded’ (Deleuze and Guattari 2004a: 275). Capitalism decodes caste and also rank to give rise to a society of the limit, a socius—a social desiring machine—which is open to all forms of inscriptions, a limit that is held within the body without organs. That the schizophrenic inhabits this limit is Deleuze and Guattari’s famous hypothesis in Anti-Oedipus. That psychoanalysis has built schizophrenia as a myth into the unconscious of capitalism representing the body—as the territory and organism of—as a new form of illness is one of their conclusions. The limits of capitalism inhabited by the body and the body that inhabits the limits of capitalism are in this reckoning the site of constant production and anti-production. The constant reversing roles of alienated labour and abstract desire, of the ceaselessly exploited worker and the schizophrenic leads to what Deleuze and Guattari call, ‘the death instinct’ which ‘lays hold of the repressive apparatus and begins to direct the circulation of the libido. A mortuary axiomatic’ (Deleuze and Guattari 2004a: 370). In postcolonial conditions of desiring-production (as described by Patton and Bignall 2010: 11–12 and discussed above), I would like to argue that the socius or the social desiring machine can recode caste only through this ‘mortuary axiomatic’ (Deleuze and Guattari 2004a: 370). Ambedkar’s shock and surprise at why the word untouchability continues to haunt a law pertaining to civil rights was not mistaken (see above). Dalit literature, in its creation of a political mass, strives towards creativity at every step of its writing through annihilating this mortuary axiomatic of capitalism. It reinvents itself in circulating flows of desire that are individual and anti-Oedipal. It emerges as a nomadic war machine that annihilates the body of caste, which with the internalisation of law has transformed itself into part of a capitalist socius. Ambedkar speaking on behalf of the drafting committee of the Constituent Assembly of India had pointed out how the body of caste as the embodiment of social and economic inequality will inevitably turn political, but not without a sign of concern/worry that whatever be the political achievements 138

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in terms of such a turn will nonetheless face a threat in terms of regressing to an inescapable limit. On 26th January, 1950 we are going to enter a life of contradictions. In politics we will have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality. We must remove this contradiction at the earliest possible moment or else those who suffer from the inequality will blow up the structure of political democracy which this assembly has so laboriously built up. (cited in Kaviraj 1975) Persistent concern about opposition to equality in political life was being forged despite his opposition to the persistence of inequality in social and economic life is a point hard to miss in Ambedkar’s ironic words. In Deleuze and Guattarian terms, it was a signal towards the death instinct that lay in wait to harness the repressive apparatus if the libido is not guided correctly. What is at stake here is the notion of the constituent power (Antonio Negri) (Lemke 2011) which dalit literature in its persistent call for the annihilation of caste re-enacts as the molar histories of oppression, subalternity, marginality as the micropolitics of becoming people, the mass or the multitude, thus bringing the nation into existence, while radically dissenting from its liberal ethos. One can cite Deleuze and Guattari here: If minorities do not constitute viable states culturally, politically, economically, it is because the State-form is not appropriate to them, nor the axiomatic of capital, nor the corresponding culture. We have often seen capitalism maintain and organize inviable States, according to its needs, and for the precise purpose of crushing minorities. The minorities issue is instead that of smashing capitalism, of redefining socialism, of constituting a war machine capable of countering the world war machine by other means. (2004b: 522) This will be in the nature of defining future struggles because capitalism incites divisions and struggle between the classes. Yet what it begets by implication are the ‘masses’ that do not have the same kind of movement, distribution and objectives and do not wage the same kind of struggle. Attempts to distinguish mass from class effectively tend toward this limit: the notion of mass is a molecular notion operating according to a type of segmentation irreducible to the molar segmentarity of class. Yet classes are indeed fashioned from masses; they crystallise them. And masses are constantly flowing or leaking from classes. (Deleuze and Guattari 2004b: 235) 139

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This movement is itself comparable to that of the sexes which ‘imply a multiplicity of molecular combinations bringing into play not only the man in the woman and the woman in the man, but the relation of each to the animal, the plant, etc., a thousand tiny sexes’ (Deleuze and Guattari 2004b: 235). A parallel hypothesis may be thus attempted on the castes in postcolonial India, which are in no way comparable to classes, but being part of the socius, decoded and decoding in the same way as classes, begin leaking at the limits of society or the socius. As observed earlier, capitalism is an axiomatic because There is no living desire that could not of itself cause the system to explode, or that would not make the system dissolve at one end where everything would end up following behind and being swallowed up—a question of regime. (Deleuze and Guattari 2004a: 371) Capitalism, unlike segmentary or despotic societies, does not establish a regime, but instead an axiom. This is what we saw with the internalisation of the prevention of untouchability which redrew the boundaries of the social in the erstwhile colony; with the body/corpus as its limit. That dalit literature, as it was conceived in the 1950s, was a mass that crystallised from this socius, can be one of our tentative conclusions.

Conclusion A Deleuzian and Guattarian approach to art may be read in terms of the transition from structure to serials and from tonal to the atonal in their perception of the work of art. It has erased the discontinuity between forms of art and the conditions or the milieu that creates them. Deleuze argues through his works that a unified singular aesthetic experience is conveyed through literature as in works of art like painting, summarised in his own transformation as a philosopher of sense to sensation. ‘It is in literature, on literature and through literature that Deleuze encounters the problematic of non-discursive art’ (Sauvagnargues 2013: 5). Though beginning with Proust and Signs (2003a) which appeared in French in 1964, in a perspective that looks at literature as ‘disjunctive synthesis’—not a return to the one, but a disjunctive differentiation that proceeds by bifurcations and transformations, and not by fusion and identity of the same—Deleuze reaches a new level with Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature(2003b), which he co-authors with Guattari (1975) in French. His collaboration with Guattari produced a novel interest in literature based on writing as a form of creativity that led to the formation of collective assemblages. Such a thought was already immanent in Deleuze as much as in Guattari (1995: 5) when he says, ‘it is impossible to judge such a 140

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machinic evolution positively or negatively: everything depends on its articulation within collective assemblages of enunciation’. In the period of his collaboration with Guattari it may be claimed that he makes a theory of nonliterary art, a semiotics of art. In his work on cinema, Deleuze is involved with taxonomy and classification of images and signs without reducing them to statements. A further movement in Deleuze’s perception of art comes through his encounter with Artaud. Here art is introduced as political in function, related to ‘a pragmatic ethology of modes of social subjugation’ (Sauvagnargues 2013: 10–13). Herein the artist is involved with historical struggles and ‘the literary machine is taken over by a revolutionary machine to come … there is nothing great or revolutionary except the minor. To hate all literature of the masters’ (Deleuze and Guattari 2003b: 32–48). For literature, this presents a new conception of the political that reinvents the sign as a figure and writing as performance. The immanence of the written word in a distinct socio-political milieu snatches from it the representative allocation of meanings assigned in a discursive fashion. Dalit literature was always immanent within major literature blazing the trail towards its becoming minor eventually, and also turning a molar literary class into a molecular and political mass. This transition could be marked only through an act or performance of writing and that was what dalit literature did to literature on the one hand, and undid at the same time to politics as a site-of-representation by earmarking the untouchable; the dalit body of becomings as the site of politics itself. ‘Minorities,’ write Deleuze and Guattari, Of course are objectively definable states, states of language, ethnicity or sex with their own ghetto territorialities, but they must also be thought of as seeds, crystals of becoming whose value is to trigger uncontrollable movements and deterritorializations of the mean or majority … there is a universal figure of minoritarian consciousness as the becoming of everybody and that becoming is creation. (Deleuze and Guattari 2004b: 117) When Anna Bhau Sathe (2011a) wrote Mee Katha Kasha Lihito (‘How I write a story’), he vouched for this fact in his fiction. He claimed that his characters are all chosen from the milieu in which he also becomes a writer. Apparently, while meeting them and writing about them, he is producing cycles or flows of metamorphosis thus becoming the people through his writing.

References Ambedkar, Bhimrao Ramji. 1948. The Untouchables, Who Were They and Why They Became Untouchables. Aurangabad: Kaushalya Prakasan. Ayyappan, Chinnadurai 1998. ‘Spectral Speech’, Translated by V. C. Harris, Indian Literature, 183: 43–7.

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Bewes, Timothy. 2010. ‘“Another Perspective on the World”: Shame and Subtraction in Louis Malle’s L’Inde Fantome’, in Simone Bignall and Paul Patton (eds.), Deleuze and the Postcolonial, pp. 163–82. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Bignall, Simone. 2010. ‘Affective Assemblages: Ethics Beyond Enjoyment’, in Simone Bignall and Paul Patton (eds.), Deleuze and the Postcolonial, pp. 78–102. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Chow, Rey. 2010. ‘Postcolonial Visibilities: Questions Inspired by Deleuze’s Method’, in Simone Bignall and Paul Patton (eds.), Deleuze and the Postcolonial, pp. 62– 78. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix 1994. What is Philosophy? New York: Columbia University Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 2003a. Proust and Signs. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix 2003b. Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 2005a. Cinema 1. London and New York: Continuum. Deleuze, Gilles. 2005b. Cinema 2. London and New York: Continuum. Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix 1975. Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix 2004a. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London and New York: Continuum. Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix 2004b. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London and New York: Continuum. Dumont, Louis. 1970. Homo Hierarchicus: An Essay on the Caste System. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Guattari, Felix. 1995. Chaosmosis: An Ethico-aesthetic Paradigm. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Kaviraj, Sudipta. 1975. Constitution and the Social Structure. Secular Democracy. New Delhi: Quami Ekta Trust. Kumar, Ravi Shankar. 2016. ‘The Politics of Dalit Literature’, in Joshil K. Abraham and Judith Misrahi-Barak (eds.), Dalit Literatures in India, pp. 39–58. Oxon and New York: Routledge. Kumar, Udaya. 2013. ‘The Strange Homeliness of the Night: Spectral Speech and the Dalit Present in C. Ayyappan’s Writings’, Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences, XVII(1 and 2): 177–91. Lemke, Thomas. (2011). Biopolitics An Advanced Introduction. New York and London: New York University Press. Limbale, Saran Kumar. 2010. Hindu. Translated by Arun Prabha Mukherjee. Calcutta: Samya Books. Mitra, Shayoni. 2014. ‘Dispatches from the Margins: Theater in India Since the 1990s’, in Ashish Sengupta (ed.), Mapping South Asia Theatre: Essays on the Theaters of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka, pp.64–102. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Murugkar, Lata. 1991. Dalit Panther Movement in Maharashtra: A Sociological Appraisal. New Delhi: Sangam Books. Naipaul, V.S. 1990. India: A Million Mutinies Now. New Delhi: Rupa & Co. Narrain, Aravind. 2021 Radical Constitutionalism: Towards an Ambedkarite Jurisprudence, https://indianculturalforum.in/2021/04/21/ambedkar-and-radicalconstitutionalism-arvind-narrain/ accessed on 22-06-2021.

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Noyes, John K. 2010 ‘Postcolonial Theory and the Geographical Materialism of Desire’, in Simone Bignall and Paul Patton (eds.), Deleuze and the Postcolonial, pp. 41–62. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Pandian, Mathias Samuel Soundra. 2016. ‘Caste and Democracy: Three Paradoxes’, in Joshil K. Abraham and Judith Misrahi-Barak (eds.), Dalit Literatures in India, pp. 26–39. Oxon and New York: Routledge. Patton, Paul and Simone Bignall (eds). 2010. Deleuze and the Postcolonial. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Pisters, Patricia 2010. Violence and Laughter: Paradoxes of Nomadic Thought in Postcolonial Cinema in Simone Bignall and Paul Patton (eds.), Deleuze and the Postcolonial, pp. 201–220. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Rabinow, Paul. 1984. Foucault Reader. New York: Pantheon Books. Robinson, Andrew and Simon Tormey. 2010. ‘Living in Smooth Space, Deleuze, Postcolonialism and the Subaltern’, in Simone Bignall and Paul Patton (eds.), Deleuze and the Postcolonial, pp. 20–40. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Sathe, Anna Bhau. 2011a. ‘Buddhaci Sapath’, in Asok Chousalkar and Randhir Shinde (eds.), Yugantar Madhil Anna Bhau Sathye Yanche Sahity. Kolhapur: Sramik Prathishtan. Sathe, Anna Bhau. 2011b. ‘Marathi Lok Kala: Tamasha’, in Asok Chousalkar and Randhir Shinde (eds.), Yugantar Madhil Anna Bhau Sathye Yanche Sahity. Kolhapur: Sramik Prathishtan. Satyanarayana, Kola and Susie Tharu (eds). 2011. No Alphabet in Sight: New Dalit Writing from South India Dossier I: Tamil and Malayalam. New Delhi: Penguin. Satyanarayana, Kola and Susie Tharu (eds). 2013. From Those Stubs, Steel Nibs Are Sprouting: New Dalit Writing from South India Dossier II: Kannada and Telugu. Noida, UP: Harper Collins India. Sauvagnargues, Anne. 2013. Deleuze and Art. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1988. ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ in Cary Nelson and Larry Grossberg (eds.), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, pp. 271–313, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1999. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present. London: Cambridge University Press. Wakankar, Milind. 2010. Subalternity and Religion: The Pre-history of Dalit Empowerment in South Asia. Oxon and New York: Routledge. Zecchini, Laetitia. 2016. ‘No Name is Yours Until You Speak It’, in Joshil K. Abraham, Judith Misrahi-Barak (eds.), Dalit Literatures in India, pp. 58–76. Oxon and New York: Routledge. Zelliot, Eleanor. 1996. From Untouchable to Dalit. New Delhi: Manohar Publishers and Distributors.

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7 THE UN/PARALLELED UNIVERSE OF PRAMOD PATI Deleuzian reflections on Abid, Explorer and Trip Silika Mohapatra

An atom is an image which extends to the point to which its actions and reactions extend. My body is an image, hence a set of actions and reactions. My eye, my brain, are images, parts of my body. How could my brain contain images since it is one image among others? External images act on me, transmit movement to me, and I return movement: how could images be in my consciousness since I am myself image, that is, movement? And can I even, at this level, speak of ‘ego’, of eye, of brain and of body? Only for simple convenience; for nothing can yet be identified in this way. It is rather a gaseous state. Me, my body, are rather a set of molecules and atoms which are constantly renewed. Can I even speak of atoms? They are not distinct from worlds, from interatomic influences. (Deleuze 2013a: 66) In the late 1960s, Pramod Pati, a maverick heading the animation unit at the Films Division of India, met with artist/cartoonist Abid Surti and said he wanted to make a film.1 At the time, Surti was experimenting with his house, a one-room flat that he had turned into his canvas. He had no money to buy a canvas, and so the artist came to inhabit the painting rather than being outside of it. Every fragment of the room—walls, ceiling, floor, windows, etc., along with its possessions such as fan, cupboard, utensils, and chairs— merged into one seamless entity, breaking conventional notions of space and dimension in art. This form of living-in was an anti-thesis of the average everydayness of ‘living with’ a work of art—something that hangs on the walls as an other. Pati asked Surti to recreate this form in the Films Division studio and thus one of India’s first animation films, Abid, was born.

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The five-minute documentary was released in 1972 and used the technique of pixilation where stop-motion animation was crafted using a human being instead of a puppet. It shot the moving human frame-by-frame instead of generating motion out of a rapidly moving series of photographs or drawings. The result was an object of pop-art that was unstable, unpredictable and sudden. The movements and shots were highly curious, even whacky, with composer Vijay Raghav Rao’s experimental music creating an undertone of mysterious performativity, making the film nothing short of an intriguing hallucinatory experience. Pati’s experimental method was first seen in his film, Explorer (1968), a collection of sensory motifs, imageries and symbolisms. It showcased the drives and dispositions of the youth juxtaposed with everyday life and its paradoxes. The style was distinctive in its use of rapid mishmash of frames generating a sense of shock and excitement often through titillating vulgarity and radical subversion. The most iconic moment in Explorer occurs when, for a split second, the screen reads ‘F*ck Censorship’. In that micromoment, in the midst of a disarray of shots, the film wins a political battle against its own producer, the Films Division, and marks a definitive moment within a seemingly tangled collage. This chapter explores the cinematic power in Pati’s filmmaking, through a study of his method as well as the content of his films, often eccentric, political, kinetic, imaginary, edificatory and un/real, by using the Deleuzian lens. In doing so, three films, Abid (1972), Explorer (1968), and Trip/Udan (1970), will be treated as philosophical lab material.

ABID: a rhizomic assemblage of difference We’re tired of trees. We should stop believing in trees, roots, and radicles. They’ve made us suffer too much. All of arborescent culture is founded on them, from biology to linguistics. Nothing is beautiful or loving or political aside from underground stems and aerial root, adventitious growths and rhizomes. (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 15) In A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Deleuze and Guattari allude to the idea of bringing ‘something incomprehensible into the world’ (1987: 378). Abid is an example of such an incomprehensibility; an act of creation of concepts, perhaps hitherto meaningless, through a cluster of percepts and affects. We see artist Abid Surti deconstructing a room across a series of very fast-paced frames. This deconstruction isn’t simply art in its representational form, as a translation of thought into images. It is, rather, a locus of interactions: Surti interacts with the room, the room interacts with Surti; the room and Surti interact with us, at times synchronously, at times asynchronously. 145

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The film opens to reveal a simple, unadorned closed room, with three walls, a floor and a ceiling all painted white. Two things stand out in these first few frames, as the room emerges from darkness. The first is a piece of writing on the right wall from the seventh chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament, a part of the Sermon on the Mount. It reads: ‘and to him that knocketh it shall be opened’. At first, the writing seems curious because of the conspicuous absence of windows or doors on the walls. It is then that the second element of the room strikes, and one witnesses on the floor what seems like a door and this is followed by the distinct sound of knocking. It is from that floor-door that the artist first emerges. In an interview from 2005, Surti said: So finally we came upon the concept of the artist coming from the floor, from the earth, so the door is on the floor. The door opens and the artist comes out and in the end the artist goes back, to the earth. So when this concept came, the whole concept of the room changed. So the traditional idea of a room was broken. (Surti 2005) But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more immaterial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection. (Proust 2005: 54) In dismantling traditional notions of structure, the film allows for a physical space to undergo radical redesign. The room is an assemblage, and an ever-collapsing constellation. It isn’t any particular ‘this’ or ‘that’ and is in constant defiance of an essential definition. It becomes through a series of acts and relations, its individuated self being a product of this difference. Abid appears to be a classic example of Deleuze’s moving image. But it is so not because of the ability of a mobile camera to produce locomotion. It is a case of a canvas in motion. Here, the perspective remains constant, with the camera fixed at the same place throughout the film, without the slightest change in its position. However, everything that exists in the room—be it the artist, the puppets or the paintings, are imagings of the movement which makes the room what it is. Objects like the fan or the wall posters are not definitive in any singular moment that could present them in their completeness. They are rather in continual movement, and even an assembly of these would only partially describe an object. And so, the room is not a noun, but a verb. The room itself is kinetic, perhaps more aptly room-ing rather than room. It is in this sense an image of movement, as much as each 146

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of its individual transient elements constitute movement. Abid is hence the instantiation of an ontology of difference. Each portion of matter can be conceived as a garden full of plants, and as a pond full of fish. But each branch of a plant, each limb of an animal, each drop of its humors, is still another such garden or pond. (Leibniz 2000: 291) By reversing the matter concerning essences, this five-minute film does not give us objects from the beginning. The inquiry into what the cosmos is like, if Pati’s characterisation of the room in Abid is seen as such, is one that refuses to be answered at once, not only because of the finitude of the perceiver, but more so owing to the differentiated and evolving character of the contents of the cosmos. The canvas is a clean slate, which then slowly evolves into becoming what it is, or what it must. It is a living organism—a contiguous living system. The space presented to us in Abid is both simple and composite. It could perhaps be said that the room is composite without any possibility of reduction. It is simple, when seen as inextricably linked to what happened within it, none of which can be extracted from the room to have a simpler understanding of it. No one frame represents the room to us in a state that could be seen as more fundamental than the others, not even the blank frames at the beginning or the author-less room at the end. And yet, it is composite in the sense of it having multiple elements, each of which are related to one another, thereby forming an assemblage. In the final paragraph of the book Symbolism: Its Meaning and Effect, Alfred North Whitehead says, the ‘major advances in civilisation are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur’ (1927: 88). Wreckage is but a fundamental law of existence. Whether or not objects are enmeshed in a linear temporal order, they are constantly subject to the interplay of fixity and motion. Between any two points ‘A’ and ‘B’ on a collection of frames, the object O is, at the same time, both similar to and different from its alternate manifestation, either in the past or in the future, even when it appears to be superficially identical, or radically different. The narrative of the ceiling fan in the film, situated oddly on the right wall, is curious and illustrative. It starts out as an ordinary fan, composed of three elongated blades and a circular middle. Soon, Surti’s face, half-darkened and half-visible, donning black eyewear is stuck on it by Surti himself. He then paints each of the blades in eye-popping designs and colours, before it begins to spin, the moving image of an actor or an agent. But before long it appears physically at rest again, though perceptually in motion, having transformed into a witnessing subject that is at one time both an agent and an observer. As Surti’s alter-ego, it observes the circus of life as the room is constructed and deconstructed, raised and collapsed. It has the appearance of constancy, the illusion of an unchanged ‘I’, that is but only trickery. We see 147

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the ‘real’ Surti staring at this for some time, as if in state of rapt self-consciousness. A second alter-ego makes its appearance on Surti’s palm, as a face of Surti’s features is painted onto it. This is simultaneous with Surti’s own mutating face being constantly daubed and smeared with a variety of hues and strokes until we don’t know which one is the original Surti. This is perhaps only an indication of there being no original, one Surti. Pati’s experimental method constructs these philosophical ideas without jargon. It is a celebration of multitude, with motifs of molten time and upside-down bodies. In this time-lapse biography, we see Surti slowly populating the room with his art. But they exist in a fluid form, incessantly appearing and disappearing in a spectrum of effervescent ingenuity. In the end the room is left with five giant palms, as the artist exits the scene through the floor. Pati does not give us a detailed and exhaustive representation of Surti or his works. This unique style of documenting an artist’s life consciously denies us a coherent sense of who the artist is, and yet it gives us glimpses of various moments/frames as slices of time, and slices of an indivisible world, that allow us to construct some form of meaningfulness, even if non-definitive. Like Deleuze, he denies the possibility of solid, fully formed, completely real bodies. All objects are to him temporary assimilations and aggregates, including the artist. Abid is an experiment that displays a conscious abandonment of structured frameworks. It does not attempt to normalise ideas in accordance with dominant forms of thinking, and in doing so rebels against rational hegemony. The moving image of the room is unconstrained. And it does not intend to be communicative, contemplative or reflexive. Rather, in Deleuzian spirit, it is creative. Abid is a rhizome that captures multiplicity and allows for a free-flowing expression and interpretation. It moves in unpredictable ways, with sudden shifts through a plurality of layers, exhibiting no imperative to abide by articulated structures of power. This is why the door is positioned on the floor, the point from where the artist emerges and exits. Deleuze’s books on cinema (Deleuze 2013a, 2013b) express this sentiment in their argument that life, art and films transcend identifiable pre-given human categories. In the end, it is perhaps not about a Surti at all or his ownership over a body of work, but rather a complex, non-linear conglomerate of events in the world, a visual democracy, a rhizome.

Explorer and psychotropic politics of time To articulate what is past does not mean to recognize ‘how it really was’. It means to take control of a memory, as it flashes in a moment of danger … In every epoch, the attempt must be made to deliver tradition anew from the conformism, which is on the point of overwhelming it. (Benjamin 2005 [1940]) 148

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Pati’s Explorer is an expression of art’s political vocation through cultural archiving. It expresses revolutionary social change punctuated with paradoxes arising out of the binary of tradition and modernity, making it the locus of divergence. This seven-minute motion picture problematises the individual and collective identities of a people at the cusp of the avantgarde, in particular, the life of urban Indian cities in the 1960s. Free from pressing commercial concerns at the Films Division or any unyielding compulsion to adhere to specific norms/forms of filmmaking, Pati could harness his creative potential and produce films of subversive intoxicating freedom. Explorer is the articulation of this emancipation. The first frame of Explorer presents an idol of a Hindu god against the soundscape of a crying infant, rapidly melting into the image of a man reading sacred verses. Soon the sacred gives way to the profane, with Pati showing us a chaotic cluster of bodies and faces, which on close inspection turn out to be a group of euphoric young men and women dancing to the silent rhythm of rock-and-roll. Here, as for Deleuze, the schizophrenic delirium lays bare the material processes of the unconscious (see Deleuze and Guattari 1987). Explorer is a visual polemic hiding secret memos in-between an assortment of erratic sounds and visuals. It is more explicitly a multilayered event, a dense network of symbolisms. As images of the movement of time itself, it leaves clues of embryonic memory, and youthful fantasy. It plays with notions of a normative past, together with fleeting icons of present abodes and future aspirations. The image of time, however, isn’t a spatialised clock-time, but rather of time lived through bodies. It therefore couldn’t be presented in discrete moments of isolation. The film expresses authentic temporality as something that flows, stretching slowly like a reverie, making the experience of watching it nothing short of a hallucinatory phenomenon. Cinema here presents a mode of seeing through a non-human lens. In this form of perception, it is free of any obligation to adhere to pre-existing hierarchies, and is thus able to facilitate the creation and transformation of philosophical concepts pertinent to contemporary life. It self-imaginatively creates itself, as a symptom of various forms of social, political and intellectual struggles. It is an instrument of ideological class action, in the fight between the dogmatism of the past and future hopes and desires. An example of this is a very powerful shot from the film which shows the juxtaposition of the word ‘om’ in Devanagari script vis-à-vis the ecstatic, and yet haunting image of a dancing boy. Explorer is a face-off between the mortal desires and divine injunctions, with recurring stills of gods/goddesses and sombre godmen alongside close-ups of rapturous human faces. It impresses upon us the need to create new tools of thought, by becoming such a tool. The oddity of the background music, embodying a multitude of tonal frequencies and sound structures—peculiar, recursive, uncanny, non-­ contiguous, overlapping, high-pitched, disorderly, sporadic, punctured and loopy—points to a ruptured body, much like life itself. There is no 149

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possibility of uniformity or homogeneity. The narrative itself is non-linear, and the music, which is more foreground than background, exemplifies this asymmetry. Explorer is an example of repetition of difference expressed through temporal discontinuum; a series of patterns giving expression to it. We see a shot of a flowing river, reminiscent of Heraclitus’ famous dictum: no man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man. If the film is the macrocosm, then the unassuming river shot is the microcosm, a surreptitious message, a cryptic clue to the nature of existence. Explorer abounds with such cryptograms—a buzzing bee, the flickering window blinds, flame going in and out of focus, euphoric dance, imperative speech, recurring chants and maniacal laughter. The images in the film are not replicas or copies—but symbols of the reversal of Platonism. Rather than being faint caricatures of a more substantive reality, they are intentionally creative and transformative agents. The passage of seven clock-minutes encloses a complex labyrinth of lived time. The pace of the shots, wild and reckless, gestures at the sheer incapacity of exhaustive articulation, conjoined with the irrational desire for such an articulation. We see an impatient clustering of stills and moving images, as if meant to express as much as can be said, while being self-conscious of all the strata that remain veiled, concealed, distorted and disguised. 1968, the year Explorer was made, was a time of political and cultural turbulence not just in the Indian subcontinent but also throughout the world. The world was witness to social conflicts, political rebellion and violent repression. The geopolitical tension arising out of the Cold War marked alternate forms of warfare and propaganda campaigns that polarised the world. India was struggling with its own territorial wars, like those in Naxalbari. And the Vietnam War had left the collective consciousness battered. With scientific innovation and technological growth becoming the site of power assertion, there was an amplification of the cultural paradoxes of societies struggling with change. Explorer was made in this world; and perhaps that is why the recurring images of war and struggle are inescapable. Moreover, it chooses to become a tool of political warfare by carefully crafting soundless indignation towards film censorship alongside scandalous images of porn magazines and unclothed women. The bud disappears when the blossom breaks through, and we might say that the former is refuted by the latter; in the same way when the fruit comes, the blossom may be explained to be a false form of the plant’s existence, for the fruit appears as its true nature in place of the blossom. The ceaseless activity of their own inherent nature makes these stages moments of an organic unity, where they not merely do not contradict one another, but where one is as necessary as the other; and constitutes thereby the life of the whole. (Hegel 2008) 150

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The augmented fluidity of historical manifestation is expressed through imagined binaries. They exist in a context of mutual negation and assimilation. The manner in which objects exist is dialectical because they are confronted with opposites, and it is through a series of negations (both internal and external) that they unravel themselves, as Hegel’s celebrated example illustrates. Explorer is a manifestation of this and showcases it in a short series of frames which reveal the reiteration of the words: Ramayana, Parayana; Kuran, Puran.2 The movement from the self to the other, and vice versa, back and forth, happens through the course of the film. The exchange is violent and inventive. In the spirit of Deleuzian becoming, there are no moments of stability in Explorer. There is no ‘is’ in either Pati’s modus operandi or in the content of the film—the film becomes, as history becomes, as individuals become, as collectives become. It is by coming face to face with contradictions that objects have the possibility of transformation. The connectedness of being poses to every form of existence challenges that it must overcome. The actor/object then becomes a hero-warrior, fighting the battle of the future, both against its past self and against other objects, seeking to endure and to manifest as something new. Hegel argues that a building can’t be treated as finished on the mere laying of its foundation. Similarly, the acorn seeks to become the oak, and when we want to see an oak with its massive trunk and branches and foliage, how can we be satisfied if shown an acorn instead (Hegel 1977)? The possibility of the oak, however, rests in the negation of the acorn, just as the unfolding of the future desires to be faced with a contradiction. Explorer is an example of such a contradiction, of the peculiar modes of being that belong to an age and generation acting upon its successor. It presents a decentralised politics of contemporary history, never really giving a definitive answer as to how the system of affect will play out, revealing the assorted details of the paradox nevertheless.

Trip and motion in a deterritorialised landscape Trip (1970) or Udan uses the technique of pixilation to capture a series of time-lapse videos. It is an archetype of transitiveness that uses the city of Mumbai (then Bombay) as its storyboard. The city is schizophrenic, its identity a matter of the culmination of a series of conceptual constructs. The apparent coherence of its character is a product of a superimposed mould; and engendering a Husserlian phenomenological epoché/bracketing would reveal only multiple strands, which never return to an original or essential singularity. Husserl says that perception is the unfolding of an aspect of the object and a manifold of such appearances constructs the unity of sense. It proceeds in a flow of series of phases, with each of these phases synthesised to compose the unity and harmony of the perceptual object (an image), which 151

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is thereby constituted. But the manner in which perception unfolds genuinely reveals only one profile of the object at a moment. It is the series that gives us a sense of illusory completeness. For Husserl, the experience of an apple is an object-giving act quite apart from the list of qualities it now seems to possess. We can toss the apple in the air, view it from numerous angles, observe it in various degrees of sunlight, describe it in moods of euphoria and in crippling depression, but for us it remains the same apple in all these cases. To use Husserl’s famous technical term, there are countless ‘adumbrations’ (Abschattungen) of the apple. The apple itself is not obtained by adding up all the different surfaces and profiles it can display; rather, the apple is there from the start as an enduring unit that exhibits numerous different facets at different times. (Harman 2011: 173) To take another example from Husserl, in the perception of a table, what we actually (genuinely) have is the view of the table ‘from some particular side’. But obviously, that is not all that there is to the table, the table has still other sides. It has ‘a non-visible back side, it has a non-visible interior; and these are actually indexes for a variety of sides, a variety of complexes of possible visibility’ (Husserl 2001: 40). This remarkable feature is central to perceptual experience. The other immediately non-visible sides of the table are co-present as horizons of possibility in the act and this gives a sense of unity in the perception of a ‘table’. Yet nothing can ensure that the back of the table will not spring into the mask of a clown. This is why, though we expect something from perception, it may or may not get fulfilled. The world has the ability to surprise us. Trip is a story that gives us adumbrations of a metropolitan city. The first set of time-lapse frames present a cluster of railway tracks, with trains appearing and disappearing as the sun sets and shadows engulf the earth. This is followed by a rapid series of pictorial representations of the sun, reflecting the passage of time, that keep reappearing between various image sets. A group of similar time-lapses create the film—a parking lot with cars restructuring the space, a dhobi ghat with realigning laundry, a beach transformed by human occupation, and streets displaying a kaleidoscope of traffic. The city is not presented in terms of an ordered temporal narrative, but rather through a disarray of moving images without an interior or core. Trip is pure affect, and the deliberate insertion of illogical sequencing extracts from it any form of consistent localisation. Documentation of reality/phenomena, in this case the city of Mumbai, is usually arrived at by bifurcating existence into ‘subjects’ and ‘objects’ or ‘knower’ and ‘known’. The city then becomes the point of intersection—of how the subject perceives/interacts with objects. Trip, however, transforms this way of looking at things and instead gives us a set of interactions 152

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between various objects that continually transform one another, with the human object being only one such entity. The perspective of the camera is post-human, and frees the city from numerous forms of territorialisations. But to be post-human is not to find a new victim of subjugation. It is not to create another form of marginalisation. It is rather an exercise in elevation of all actors. The world is made up of actors or actants (which I will also call ‘objects’). Atoms and molecules are actants, as are children, raindrops, bullet trains, politicians, and numerals. All entities are on exactly the same ontological footing. An atom is no more real than Deutsche Bank or the 1976 Winter Olympics, even if one is likely to endure much longer than the others. (Harman 2009: 14) All events and human/non-human actors in the film are aggregates of one kind or another. They are not simple entities. They are complex, and come in all shapes and sizes: a train is an actor, a shadow is an actor, the Gateway of India is an actor. And what makes the discourse about actors different from the traditional concept of subsistence is that there is no question of endurance. Actors are not eternal, and it hardly matters that they aren’t. These actors come together for various purposes, but there is no predictability in how they alter, adapt and interact. This is why most of Pati’s films have a shocking element to them. Each actor in the film has a trajectory, but these are not pre-determined. They come into being and unfold in uncertain ways. Much like Whitehead’s ‘actual entities’ (1978), Trip reveals organisms that ‘become’, and cinematic atoms that evolve and transform. They are encapsulated processes. Whitehead says that in Cartesian language ‘the essence of an actual entity consists solely in the fact that it is a prehending thing’ (Whitehead 1978: 41). To him: [E]very prehension consists of three factors: (a) the ‘subject’ which is prehending, namely, the actual entity in which that prehension is a concrete element; (b) the ‘datum’ which is prehended; (c) the ‘subjective form’ which is how that subject prehends the datum (Whitehead 1978: 23). A close look at these lines, particularly the distinction between (b) and (c), points to the fact that the subject’s prehension of the datum is different from the datum itself, and this could be used as an analogy for how actors are essentially withdrawn and visible only though the sensible form, as in cinema or an image. Something is always lost in translation. There always exists a mismatch between what is transmitted and what is received. The act of filmmaking points to a form of information loss that is inevitable in any attempt to translate. The moving image shows us its incompleteness, and continues to be elusive. The actors are always something more than what can be perceived or described. The peculiarity of the camera’s point of view can’t be abandoned. However, this point of view reveals 153

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a multiplicity of other points of view. The finite lens discloses the infinitude of perspectives. Human involvement in the unfolding of this image then becomes only incidental, or at least one among many others. The city is milling with things/events, ranging from laundry to shadows, and Trip celebrates the vitality of the multitude instead of crumbling under the imperative to find an underlying-something, either in terms of form or content, with a definitive description. This reveals a disinterest in practices of reductionism. No object or event may be reduced to one simple, homogenous and undifferentiated characterisation. Just as Abid revealed that there is no one Surti, Trip reveals that there isn’t one consistent Bombay. It creates local heroes, by picking out seemingly random spots throughout the city, to showcase a set of interactions that constitutes the fluidity of this urban landscape. If we can ostensibly point to such a city, it is because of this assemblage of relations. It has a multitude of components, none of which are stable or constant in their relation to other components. Every relation in this system of interaction represents the creation of a brand-new assemblage. Some of these may be short-lived, and temporary while others exist for longer. But they create new assemblages nevertheless, which are not seamless wholes. Also, none of these assemblages may be reduced to tinier micro-particles or material forms, and so they retain their peculiar character as well as magnitude. This is how Trip forces us to rethink notions of subjectivity, agency and mastery. The world is not a solid continent of facts sprinkled by a few lakes of uncertainties, but a vast ocean of uncertainties speckled by a few islands of calibrated and stabilized forms. (Latour 2005: 245) Trip takes on a Latourian dimension by empowering a variety of actors, and taking them seriously. In his writing, Latour often gives us lists of particular objects (called Latour’s Litanies), thereby establishing their autonomy and unique personality as opposed to them being victims of undermining. Examples of such lists are as follows: ( a) Fish, trimmed hedges, desert scenery (b) ‘Le petit pan de mur jaune’, mountain landscapes in India ink, a forest of transepts (c) Lions that the night turns into men, mother goddess in ivory, totems of ebony. (Latour 1993: 205) Trip similarly offers us Pati’s visual litanies—criss-crossing wires, tracks, speeding coaches, shadows of electricity poles, and windy clothesline. Using a slogan from ANT, you have ‘to follow the actors themselves’, that is try to catch up with their often wild innovations in 154

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order to learn from them what the collective existence has become in their hands, which methods they have elaborated to make it fit together, which accounts could best define the new associations that they have been forced to establish. (Latour 2005: 12) Reality then appears to be a network that works through multiple feedback loops. Katherine Hayles speaks of the network as that which ‘operate[s] through a dialectic of pattern and randomness’ (1999: 285). A multiplicity of bits and their interactions creates and sustains the network. Each of these bits is an object that both gives and receives feedback. It contains within itself the ability to resist contextually, or give in. Trip discloses a similarly complex and volatile network of associations, that continues to remain an open clearing. Rather than conceiving the city in the form of a pre-existing, pre-determined and static organisation, Trip reveals motion/change to be the form of the city, where even the slightest displacement means a revised system of relations and therefore the continuous constitution of new structures. Pati’s three films, Abid, Explorer and Trip, are imagings of the metaphor of difference that appears as a recurring motif in his art as montage. His cinema compels us to revisit theorisations regarding notions of space, time and existence, and reveals a post-human form of seeing. They transform philosophical thought, by becoming creative tools of difference. Deleuze believed: ‘Cinema itself is a new practice of images and signs, whose theory philosophy must produce as conceptual practice’ (Deleuze 2013b: 287). Even if with partial success, his films strove to fulfill this mandate. A revolutionary artist for his times, Pati reinvented cinematic method in India through his eccentric films in the 1960s and 1970s. His work is a symbol of refreshing postmodernity; the characteristic experimental technique resisting traditional methods of storytelling, while at the same time rewriting the function of cinema, and challenging not just cinematic but also societal/ structural norms. His style can only best be described as a concoction of Socratic courage and Quixotic fantasy, churned with the speed of American Disco, interspersed with an off-beat tempo.

Notes 1 Born in Cuttack, Odisha in 1932, Pramod Pati was one of India’s pioneering filmmakers. He studied cinematography in Bengaluru, and was subsequently awarded a fellowship by the government to study puppet animation in Prague, Czechoslovakia, where he trained to become India’s first animator. He then joined the Films Division of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, and made several films through the 1960s and 1970s, such as This Our India (1961), Perspectives (1966), Explorer (1968), Trip (1970) and Abid (1972). In 1974 he was given the National Film Award for Best Educational, Motivational, Instructional Film. He passed away in 1975. Abid Surti is a National Award-winning author, an artist, cartoonist, journalist, environmentalist and playwright.

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2 Valmiki’s Ramayana is one of the lengthiest ancient epic poems composed in Sanskrit, literally meaning Rama’s journey. Parayana may be broken down into the roots para meaning ‘the other’ and ayana meaning ‘direction/path/ journey’. As such, the Islamic religious text the Quran is believed to be a revelation from God. Purana refers to the vast body of ancient Indian literature (composed primarily in Sanskrit) that has influenced the philosophy and practice of Hinduism.

References Benjamin, Walter. 2005 (1940). ‘On the Concept of History’, Translated by Dennis Redmond,  https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/benjamin/1940/history. htm (accessed January 10 2019). Deleuze, Gilles. 2013a. Cinema I: The Movement-Image. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. London: Bloomsbury. Deleuze, Gilles. 2013b. Cinema II: The Time-Image. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta. London: Bloomsbury. Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Harman, Graham. 2009. Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics. Melbourne: Re.Press. Harman, Graham. 2011. ‘The Road to Objects’, Continent 1(3): 173. Hayles, Katherine. 1999. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. 1977. ‘Preface’, in Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by Arnold V. Miller with analysis of the text and foreword by John Niemeyer Findlay. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. 2008. Reading Hegel: The Introductions. Edited by Aakash Singh Rathore and Rimina Mohapatra. Melbourne: Re.Press. Husserl, Edmund. 2001. Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis: Lectures on Transcendental Logic. Edited by Anthony J. Steinbock. London: Kluwer. Latour, Bruno. 1993. The Pasteurization of France. Translated by Alan Sheridan and John Law. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press. Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-NetworkTheory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. 2000. ‘Monadology’, in Roger Ariew and Eric Watkins (eds.), Readings in Modern Philosophy: Vol. 1. Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz and Associated Texts. Indianapolis: Hackett. Proust, Marcel. 2005. Swann’s Way, in In Search of Lost Time Vol. 1. Translated by Charles Kenneth Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D. J. Enright. New York: Vintage. Surti, Abid. 2005. Interview with Abid Surti by Shai Heredia, http://experimenta.in/ texts/interviews/abid-surty/ (accessed January 10 2019). Whitehead, Alfred North. 1927. Symbolism: Its Meaning and Effect. New York: Capricorn Books. Whitehead, Alfred North. 1978. Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology, Edited by David R. Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne. New York: Free Press.

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Films Abid (1972), dir. Pramod Pati, Films Division, Government of India, available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkVbOjyR9qU (accessed August 28 2018). Explorer (1968), dir. Pramod Pati, Films Division, Government of India, available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asQ9TgvEKvI (accessed January 10 2019). Perspectives (1966), dir. Pramod Pati, Films Division, Government of India. This Our India (1961), dir. Pramod Pati, Films Division, Government of India, available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_oS1fNhOcg (accessed 26 June 2021). Trip/Udan (1970), dir. Pramod Pati, Films Division, Government of India, available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8H1RS4aeKw (accessed January 10 2019).

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8 BODIES, MATTER AND MEMORY Enfolding and unfolding of virtual and actual experiences in Artist Thejaswini J.C. and M. Shuaib Mohamed Haneef ‘The tree is already the image of the world, or the root the image of the world-tree …’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1972: 5) The image of a tree is arborescent in nature and embodies strata. It is capable of producing master narratives that categorise bodies. The DeleuzoGuattarian approach negates the use of the arborescent image of a tree to reject territorialisation of bodies and entities. Deleuze and Guattari offer an alternative way of organising life in which the roots and taproots are constituted as an image in contrast to the tree accounting for multiplicities, connections and becomings. The propositions of Deleuze and Guattari, that the becoming of bodies constitutes reproduction of new bodies and that each body has its own capacities to produce difference, find theoretical fit and resonance in disability studies. The mode of inquiry concerning disability studies thus deserves to be premised on the Deleuzo-Guattarian rhizome and the root image. Deleuze (1981) has offered an equally powerful articulation of image as that which cannot be circumscribed by denotative or connotative sign systems. The connection between the image and the real is far removed from representation. The image–real continuum has esoteric linkages and the image can only imply meanings in this process. Baudrillard (1994) said that images are more real than the real in that the real elides the image. However, much before thoughts could be culled out from memory and perception framed the idea or thought itself becomes an image. In that sense, images are imperceptible, causing movements and becoming. Images negate meanings ascribed to them, or the representational categories elicited from their visibility. The absence of physical visibility of images does not mean that the images are shorn of material attributes. The material attributes instead are implied and emerge in multiplicities through multiple connections.

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DOI: 10.4324/9781003217336-11

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This chapter, drawing on the idea of image of thought, seeks to examine how the differently-abled protagonist in the Malayalam film titled Artist (2013),1 perceives reality in the absence of visibility. Further, it explores the unfolding-enfolding processes between Michael and his artworks. Michael was an art student, but he dropped out of academics and started living together with another fine arts student, Gayathri. In an accident, Michael loses his eyesight. The film narrates the story of Michael before and after losing his eyesight, with a special focus on his artistic practices. This chapter looks at his artistic practices which are an unfolding of the involuntary enfolded memory of his past, before the loss of his eyesight, into his percepts and affect-filled creations after becoming differently-abled. The chapter also looks at Michael’s body as an assemblage of the abled and differently-abled bodies constituted through the emergent characteristics of a network of bodies.

Assemblage and differently-abled bodies Deleuze and Guattari (1972) uses the term ‘assemblage’ to detail how fragments can create images. The world we live in contains several images and together they constitute another image. He perceives movement as a continuous flow of images instead of seeing things as discrete elements or points. Leibniz has termed this the ‘monad’, wherein singular images can be zoomed in to focus on a single facade of an image. Lurking underneath each of these facades are several other images and potentials. The continuity of the facade with other underlying images extends to infinity and, as such, ever more images are added to the world of image every moment. The continuous explosion of images obscures and stymies the representational mode of signification. This is the page of becoming or in-forming defying form. However, it is never a one-way formation. A human body is also an image and an image is also a body. In disability studies, each person with impairment can be seen as an image and underneath this image lies an array of potentials capable of producing affective capacities. Thus, a visually challenged person is an image containing several images or bodies that impinge on each other, producing multiplicities. In this process, the stratification or categorisation of the differently-abled as those with lesser skills is challenged. Thus, the whole process is seen as two simultaneous acts, what Deleuze (1993) has termed as enfolding and unfolding. From a Spinozian perspective, body is not about being and it is not defined or delimited by its material boundaries. Hence, in Spinozian philosophy, the body has to be understood in terms of its capacity to affect and get affected. Massumi (2002: 3) recognises affect as passing of the threshold of various conditions and capacities that a body is in than it was the moment before. A threshold, to him, is between a body and the vagueness that surrounds the situation. He proposed the word to denote the openness surrounding the present’s boundary condition. When a body moves, there is 159

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always an opening which precedes uncertainty. In the movement to the uncertain, the body interacts with other bodies, and these interactions produce affective experiences. Overboe (1999: 18) noted that the devaluation of differently-abled people has a long history. Quoting Wendell (1996), he argued that the differently-abled heroes in fiction always give an idea that they can ‘overcome’ disability, which further devalues them as disabled. Deleuze (1968) outlines the need to transcend categorisation of and hierarchies among bodies. Bodies formed and in-forming with capacities are not concrete. They are always in a flux. They move through the world and interact and intermesh with other bodies. For instance, the differently-abled body functions with a set of capacities each person has and are broadcasted through it (Massumi 2002: 3). In that sense, each body is an assemblage possessing different capacities in different spatio-temporal contexts. To refrain from understanding differently-abled bodies as bodies with limited capacities, it is essential to employ the Deleuzian diagonal approach which helps in looking at the body where its differences are another way of being. Neither the capacities of the able body nor that of the differently-abled body gets prominence here. Neither the former nor the latter get placed in hierarchies or get devalued. Instead, all the bodies are seen as bodies with difference, difference in fragments. This chapter predicates its analysis on this Deleuzian ontological position which deals with bodies beyond categorisation.

Virtual past and actual present Time has been perceived or understood as having a linear trajectory. This linearity of time was restructured by Bergsonian philosophy which considers past, present and future as co-existing and mutually contributing phenomena. In his book titled Matter and Memory (1896), Bergson identified past memories and future possibilities as virtual image and present perception as actual image. According to Bergson (1896), these three states of time are not disconnected, discrete phases but emerge from a continuous stream of temporal multiplicity. Explaining the interconnections between the three dynamic temporalities, he argues that the lived time is what produces the experience. Lived time is the particular moment where past, present and future commingle to actualise the image. People use recognition, recollection and correlation mechanisms in lived time to experience and understand images and thoughts. The actualisation of the real image arises from the recollection of past experiences and encounters with memory from the virtual past. Bergson (1896) further argued that perceptions without memory and memory which doesn’t get actualised as image are difficult to experience. Deleuze (1989), drawing on Bergson, argues that time is not a passive medium within which a subject experiences an objective world. Time acts through its forces and is hence non-linear and dynamic. By this nature, the actions of time involve multiplicities which can be actualised by systems 160

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and mechanisms that cannot be predetermined. Thus, experience is foregrounded in the dynamics of time that is non-linear. He further argues that time is ‘open’ since it defies any attempts to specify its movement. Hence, he proposed the idea of time as nonlinear and noted that the western concept of linearity is an error (Bhowal 2017). Bergson (1896) has used the term durée to explain the moment of experience where image gets actualised. Here ‘image’ doesn’t mean only the visually perceptible image; rather, it can be anything experienced through the senses. Following his notions on image, Deleuze (1989) identifies the whole world as a piece of image. However, for Deleuze, there are no images which exist as separate entities, rather they are all connected. Before delving into an experience, the virtual gets actualised. Even this virtual potential is never a singular entity but they are monads in the Leibnizian sense. The potential resides enfolded at different points and each point explodes into multiple pathways establishing connections with every other point/ image/body around. As bodies move, interact and increase their virtual potential, life gets filled with intensities. Drawing from Leibnizian and Spinozian ideas, Massumi (2002) argued that body is all about this potential to affect and get affected. Inspired by Bergson’s idea of time, Deleuze (1989) explains how the virtual and actual coexist in his concept of time-image in his book Cinema II. He further delineates the potentials of the virtual. Rather than being the former present or recollected past, the virtual integrates the present and actualises the lived experiences. Thus, he argues that, past is not simply the former present and memory is not the recollected past. Thus, according to Deleuze, the past and memory have a potential to change the present and future. When it comes to art, it is in fact another world—another possible world which is actualised on the canvas. Dealing with abstract art, O’Sullivan has raised some fundamental questions that an artist would ask in the process of art-making; these are, ‘what should I draw’ and ‘how should I draw’ (O’Sullivan 2005: 6). He indicated that the question of ‘what’ hinges on the aesthetic plane where the virtual is actualised. The virtual potentials are existent on the canvas and in the artist’s own body. The work of art gets actualised when both bodies interact in the lived time. At the same time the question of ‘how’ deals with the technical plane that is about the medium, material, style and brush stroke. The question of ‘how’ deals with the materialisation of the artwork which constitutes the realisation process. In Deleuzian ontology a painting is not created as a representation of something nor is it a mere copy of any object, rather the whole work of art is seen as an event—an event of actualisation of the virtual. However, virtual doesn’t mean the virtual memory of the human body alone. It includes the virtual potential of any body around. Even the canvas is a space abounding in potential. A blank canvas, for Deleuze, is a greater space of potentials. The canvas can enfold a range of emotions and experiences. It is purely connected with how an artist interacts with it. Other than the bodies of 161

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artists and the canvas, there are several bodies which may act in this confrontation—like the studio room, the particular paint that the artist chooses to work with etc. The work of art emerges as these bodies commingle, intermingle and intersect with other bodies. However, a painting does not reach finality when the artist completes working on it. It is one of the interstices in the continuous flow of movement whose origin lies in the virtual. The painting thus emerges and grows into multiple forms and meanings evolving continually in its process of becoming. Layers of images, thoughts and bodies add to the work as it moves through space and time, thereby stepping out of and transgressing the representational regimes of meaning making practices. As the viewer interacts with it, the painting unfolds stories, affects and potentials in it and there are an infinite number of folds in each imperceptible image.

Enfolding and unfolding: the ceaseless flow of images When I look at a painting for some time I begin to see images beyond the lines on the canvas. When I began to make films, my only desire was to produce those non-static images that I had seen behind closed eyes. (Dasgupta 2017: 5) Deleuze explained that the concept of the fold is not a singular ontology or event but one which inheres in many events and folds (Deleuze 1993). The universe is an image containing a world of images or folds. The sign of an image, in a Peircian sense, does not represent the real but one that enfolds and becomes another image and this other image flows from one to the other in continuity. As the image enfolds, it goes back to the world of images. An image is the explicit, unfolded, or an apparent form of a virtual that is implicit, enfolded, or latent; a single image may be the explicit form of an entire virtual universe. (Marks 2000: 194) In other words, the act of perceiving an image is also its unfolding, which is the moment of actualisation of the virtual. The actualisation of the virtual occurs when thoughts are retrieved from memories and other virtual archives. These virtual attributes may be known or unknown to the body. Deleuze explains how one connects with the virtual and ‘unthought’ through cinematic images: The simplest way of stating the point is by saying that to unfold is to increase, to grow; whereas to fold is to diminish, to reduce, to withdraw into the recesses of a world. Yet a simple metric change 162

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would not account for the difference between the organic and the inorganic, the machine and its motive force. It would fail to show that movement does not simply go from one greater or smaller part to another, but from fold to fold. When a part of a machine is still a machine, the smaller unit is not the same as the whole. (Deleuze 1993: 9) It can thus be interpreted that enfolding and unfolding are a series of movements defined as differentiations. A film or an image or a body does not constitute a singular space but many spaces folded into many other folds. The process of unfolding cannot be seen as a natural one or as an unconscious act. There has to be interventions for the image to unfold and perceptions to emerge. The virtual potentials of architecture get unfolded as you inhabit it, move through its passages, perform, engrave on its wall, or decorate it with an artwork. Interventions lead to the actualisation of the image and that moment of experience where the image is actualised, constitutes lived time (Bergson 1896). There are several other folds inside this unfolded/actualised image and the recursive unfolding of images constitutes a continuous flow of images, which is a never-ending process. In the above given example of the architecture, the wall with an artwork is not an endpoint of unfolding; rather, the process continues in and through further interventions. When a visually challenged person enters this architecture and touches the wall and experiences the artwork, the architecture unfolds to her/him in different ways, which is another moment of actualisation. Even the smallest unit or a part unfolds in multiplicities and there are an infinite number of other folds inside. Finite dimensions have infinity within. Further, every fold, which appears to be a limit, folds continuously. Thus, the perception of image is a continuous act in a growing infinite series of images. Drawing on Bergson, Deleuze argues that time is multiple and is conceptualised as the productive enfolding and unfolding of subjectivity. Multiple time frames lead to the production of multiple subject positions. Deleuze conceptualises not present but a living present in which ‘past and future are embodied in present affects’ (Robson and Riley 2019). For example, the experience of seeing a painting is simultaneously a living present, where the image get actualised, and also constitutes an affective and embodied time that allows memories and future imaginings to be experienced in the present. In other words, the painting unfolds, through parallel time frames, and the viewer enfolds the aesthetic experiences as a virtual past to actualise the painting.

Rhizomatic relations in bodies Even though Deleuze talked about the thought of the artist that gets unfolded as a painting, the perception of the painting is not contained within a singular thought (Deleuze 1992). A thought is not singular since 163

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singularity inheres in its multiplicities. Multiplicities can be adduced drawing on the Deleuzo-Guattarian concept of ‘rhizome’. Rhizomes are not singularly rooted, but multiplicitously interlinked and ever-growing (Goodley 2007: 149). Deleuze and Guattari used the term rhizome to include the best and worst. They say, The rhizome includes the best and the worst: potato, couch grass or the weed. (Deleuze and Guattari 1972: 7) Rhizome postulates how things are connected and how such multiple connections negate dominant binary categorisations. Categorisations and stratifications lead to territorialising which limits the bodily potentials. In art, the artist is a part of rhizome, connected with and to every other body and everywhere. The artist’s body, which in itself is made of many other bodies, and virtual potentials are not pre-given but formulated through their connections. Through the multiplicitous rhizomatic connections, bodies become generative, moving and interacting with other bodies and producing a mosaic of experiences and subjectivities. Further, bodies, through their flow, keep emerging, unfolding and enfolding to formulate variant assemblages. Deleuze discussed the flow and movement of sensations interpenetrating bodies. In Cinema II, he mentions how the filmmaker’s style allows us to interact with multiple layers of the film content apart from unfolding of cliché images (Deleuze 1989). In his work Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation (1981), Deleuze shared the same thought saying that Bacon was trying to capture invisible forces which can climb on flesh. Taking Bacon’s paintings as examples, he identified that it is not the figures in paintings that narrate any violence; rather, it is the sensation on the canvas. Therefore, there is no pre-given meaning to be unfolded, it is a bloc of sensation to affect and get affected. Gopalan, citing Deleuze, mentions how Deleuze demolishes the conventional approaches to studying art (Gopalan 2011:18). Deleuzian philosophy focuses on the process of becoming and the multiplicities involved in it. Therefore, it is a call for rhizomatic blossoming and assemblages (Gopalan 2011). In the contemporary art scenario where there are more abstract works, one can see the form of immaterial fold too. Apart from the folds of paint, strokes and canvas, there are folds even in figures and forms. They can be seen as immaterial folds, which also unfold and enfold sensations and affect. Though they are not visually perceptible, they are filled with potentials. The affect unfolded can limit the capacities of a body or can celebrate and facilitate them. This implies that affect is rooted in both sadness and joy. Sadness can be connected with hatred, anger, envy or antipathy and limit our potential to act, which can later be a reason behind the lesser intensities bodies exhibit. 164

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Laura marks’ aesthetics of enfolding and unfolding Grounded in Deleuzian thoughts, Laura Marks (2010) developed the enfolding and unfolding aesthetics. She termed Deleuzian thinking as a creative process which deals with the production of subjectivity. While profoundly endorsing that interventions lead to the actualisation of images, she inserted the process of mediation between images and the universe of images (Figure 8.1). According to Marks, an image is a captured experience (Marks 2010). The events that occur are momentary, passing in a flash and leaving no trace—unless they are ‘captured’ as information or image. The universe of images contains all possible images in a virtual state, and certain images arise from it, becoming actual. Expanding the idea of the virtual getting actualised, Marks (2010) has pointed out that mediation occurs at every moment. She further identified this process of mediation as produced by another layer, which in her essay is termed as plane of information. It is the plane between the image and universe of images. It is ‘a plane through which the semiotic process passes before images can arise’ (Marks 2010: 6). Marks (2010) also talks about the ceaseless flow of images and its different manners of enfolding and unfolding. In art, along with the material folds, there are immaterial folds like sensations or affects enfolded in the work. Neither the material nor the immaterial fold can stay in isolation, since in each fold there are several folds enfolded.

Figure 8.1  Enfolding-unfolding diagram (Authors)

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Multiplicities in singularities and difference in repetition The movements of a single body through the threshold never happens because there are many other bodies impinging on each other and make differences according to the way a body unfolds. Marks used the term ‘manners of unfolding’ to elucidate her idea that the way bodies unfold is not always the same. According to Marks, it may sometimes unfold through the threshold to the next level/moment directly from the infinite (Marks 2010). But at the same time, there are many conditions that can intervene and filter images as ‘information’. O’Sullivan (2005) expanded the Deleuzian view on art, arguing that the essence of any artwork is difference. For O’Sullivan, difference in art allows viewers to experience another world, which remains closed to them until they interact with a work of art. Hence ‘another world’ is folded in through the means of the artist. We are forced to unfold these worlds, that is, to think, when we encounter the work of art. Thought here is that process which comes after the encounter (thought is the ripples produced by this encounter). We might say then that art is like a ‘cut’; it shakes us out of our habitual modes of being and puts other conditions into play. (O’Sullivan 2005: 4) O’Sullivan (2005) further brings out the idea of abstract painting to this concept and examined how it is connected with an experience of another world. Encounters with art result in its unfolding. He further stated artwork is produced in the interactions and encounters between canvas, artist, viewers, material resources of the artwork etc. Analysing the works of Richter, with a special focus on its functional values, O’Sullivan has noted that art does not represent the world, rather, it is a combination of pictures of the other, or pictures of a possible world. To him, art remains a possible world in two senses: art is the actualisation of a set of virtualities; and art as a newly replenished actual world, caused by the conjoining of external forces outside the boundaries of canvas and the art itself. However, the actualised artwork is not the representation of the virtual. It has differences since it is in the movement and movement produces affect.

Difference, disability and repetition In A Thousand Plateaus (1972), Deleuze and Guattari are concerned about the stratification of the subject based on binaries such as abled/disabled. They oppose rigid segmentarities and subsequent territorialisation of subjects that are imposed by binary discourses. To transcend a stratified body or to evade (en)closure into a single organism, Deleuze and Guattari (1972) offered the notions of becoming, Body Without Organs and rhizome. The differently-abled body needs to be understood on the basis of the subject it 166

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generates through its movement and not on the subjectivity imposed by a set of hegemonic discourses. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari, differently abled bodies functions as molecular entities (1972). The disabled is a differential trait of bodies and it enfolds a world of images and thoughts depending on its movement, interaction with other bodies and the affect it produces. The enfolding occurs as a result of the disabled body remaining a Body without Organs. Further, according to the Deleuzian idea of difference, there is no absolute copy of any body. Since all bodies are in movement and are in a process of becoming, they are not the same in the next moment. Bodies that coexist with other bodies exhibit differences from time to time eliminating the existence of a fixed body (Deleuze 1968). On this ground, the concept of disability should be replaced with the idea of the differently-abled. People are differently abled in one or the other sense. Thus, the whole discourse is not a rights-based one, but a call for maximising and appreciating the differences. Deleuze also emphasised on this point arguing that the equality of being is located in difference. The difference in repetition is perceivable in each body and therefore in art as well. In terms of material body, there is a dominant notion that bodies have material boundaries. But Deleuze did not see the material boundaries as real boundaries. Bodies bleed into, conjoin with and traverse across other bodies, thereby negating boundaries (Deleuze and Guattari, 1972). Further, he argued that what a body is or what it becomes is determined by the context where it gets actualised. The existence of a painting or a person is ascribed to what message it conveys or how the person acts. It is through the act a human subjectivity is produced or the artwork gets actualised. Hence, bodies are always in the process of in-forming and becoming.

Analysis Nonlinear temporalities in Artist The film Artist (2013) follows a non-linear style of narration which, in itself, instantiates restructuring of structures. A film cannot be construed as a separate text in Deleuzian ontology as its actualisation (Deleuze 1989) involves retrieving thoughts from the virtual past, movement of time across the moments etched in the film, the coexistence of present, past and future within the film, their interactions with the moment of experience encountered watching the film in the present by the viewer, and the materiality of the screening facility inhabited by the viewer. Further, the temporality of a non-linear film and its narration is antithetical to the clock time. It starts from a particular point and moves back and forth with an unpredictable teleology or ending at the place where the film started. The film Artist starts at a point where Michael and Gayathri are in a live-in relationship, and the film’s linear narrative is disrupted when its temporalities 167

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are cut to travelling back to the past, when the two were not so familiar with each other. This act of going back and forth occurs repeatedly, breaking the presupposed systematic and normative flows of continuity and rhythm. The time continuum in which the film prevails finds its explanation in Bergson’s philosophy of time, by which the past and future are coterminous with each other. If the film is viewed as a single image or body, the life stages through which the characters move exist parallelly but are connected to each other in a rhizomatic fashion. It is evident that a moment from life cannot be severed from other moments and these moments cannot function in isolation.

Beyond boundaries: Michael and bodies The adding and layering of the virtual to each present moment enriches the affective experiences of the bodies. The culling out of experience from the virtual and adding to its actual moment is an ongoing and continuous process. The continuity of the interaction between the virtual and the actual resists fixing of bodies into defined material boundaries. Michael, at the beginning of the film, had an able body, in the sense, a body without considerable difficulties. In the dominant discourses, such bodies are always perceived as a complete or perfect body. In the philosophy of linearity, a body is stratified and considered perfect, ossifying it as a ‘being’ and thereby requiring no further becoming. However, in this film, Michael becomes differently abled as he moves through life. Predicating on the linearity principle, Michael retrogrades to the socially constructed imperfection from perfection. However, his movements through life are not characterised by linearity and causality. His process of becoming is rhizomatic as he traverses through varied moments during his different stages of life. Though the visual impairment hampers him from art practices, he later overcomes it and emerges as a different subject performing as an artist with different potentials and capacities. This continuous flow and movement of bodies is what Deleuze termed as rhizomatic movements (Deleuze and Guattari, 1972). The non-hierarchical movements and interlinks are visible and operational in all the bodies. On the one hand, the perceptible body of the artist Michael inheres in multiple capacities taking in the world of image through senses other than seeing. This perceptible body has many lines of flight through which it unfolds an imperceptible virtual repertoire of memories, thoughts and images, all of which move with affective intensities. The differently-abled body on the screen demonstrates different potentials from sensing, to recollecting, visualising, actualising images etc. However, neither the perceptible body nor the imperceptible images occupy a determining position, thus causing the bodies to move in non-hierarchical trajectories. On the other hand, the body of the canvas is not a two-dimensional construct but is laden with multiple dimensions, views and perspectives. These multiplicities are borne out of the continual shifting and movement of the 168

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various components and a constellation of bodies that constitute the canvas, which include material resources, the body of image created on it, memories which feed the production and display of paintings and the artist body. The canvas is thus a space with multiple spatial and temporal potentials. But the potential capabilities differ from time to time. Both material and the nonmaterial bodies of the artist, the canvas, and the co-bodies perform in nondetermined ways and create a whole new map of movement altogether. Disability is not delimiting but performs as an enabling force for a body to function with a particular repertoire of capacities. It is not deformity but a renewed form(ity) that the body grabs from the outside. From the many choices laid out, the body chooses to be one which Michael enters into or a body which occupies Michael or a body that is co-constituted through interactions between Michael, the artist and other bodies. As Massumi stated, thresholds make distinctions between body and space, inside and outside; these thresholds swarm around us and one has to choose the way to reside in the inside–outside continuum at different points (Massumi 2002). The liberal array of choices that bodies are gifted with makes life different. The choices one makes get enfolded and form a part of the virtual past. Subsequent choices made in the next moment retrieve part of the perception from what has become the virtual past in the previous moment. The film presents multiple choices to the artist protagonist and the choices live outside of his consciousness. The act of latching on to a choice and following a trajectory may not happen always with an awareness of the cause. In the film, as a text, Michael had the choice to leave a little early, which may have saved him from the accident. Even if he met with an accident, he had a choice to be left alone there on the road, without being noticed by anyone, which may have ended up in his death. Bodies abound with such choices. The assemblage of the actions performed by all characters in the film render it a sense of coherence achieved through the intermingling of different bodies. All bodies (characters) are replete with choices and the virtual choices of the film unfold to get actualised through performances of bodies from the multiple choices. What determines the next moment is this choice, and choices are made with virtual potentials, which is again not singular but multiplies as it is in rhizomes. In the act of passing through the threshold and in experiencing movement, Massumi noted that bodies affect and get affected in that moment of experience (Massumi 2002). In one of the scenes in this film, the differently-abled Michael works on a painting assuming that he is using the best quality paint. However, he detects that the paint is of poor quality. He takes in the world through his multiple senses sans vision. Further, he realises it bodily and through interactions with other bodies in the environment. Paint ceases to be an object of vision and emerges as a becoming subject in collusion with Michael’s past memory, his present discomfort working with it, his brush strokes and the movement and flow of the brush on the canvas. It is in the density of these acts and against the backdrop of multiple bodies 169

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and affective potential, the perception of the paint assumes significant meanings. Paint thus produces and contributes to the experience of the body of Michael. As Marks postulated in her aesthetics of unfolding and enfolding, paint as much as brush and other entities constitutes the information layer which mediates the experience (Marks 2009). Movement of bodies in the film Artist To Deleuze, paintings are not representations or mere copies of an image (1981). He looks at paintings as bodies that enfold sensations. Interactions with paintings result in the art flowing out of the canvas and getting enfolded in and with a viewer. What is drawn on the canvas or the sensations enfolded in it are a combination of events in the real world and the virtual past. An event is a moment when particles and forces come together to form an assemblage and actualise a set of virtualities. Thus, paintings enfold a world of images different from the real world and the viewer encounters a possible world that the painting offers and does not offer. In the film Artist, the paintings of the differently-abled Michael constitute possible worlds. The possible worlds exist outside vision as well as inside vision to the artist. In much the same way, the painting created by the artist, irrespective of the sensory interactions, constitutes a possible world in multiple ways. The possibility of permutations and combinations of what the image could be on the canvas establishes that art is not representational. Despite traces of memory and prior experiences impinging the artist, the art produced defeats representational schema. There are elements contributing to it at the moment of creation. The scene which shows his first completed painting after the accident annihilates the semiotic representational meaning that could emerge out of the painting. Michael unfolds his thoughts and potentials on to the canvas. From the next moment, what unfolds from the painting is not what Michael first intended. The image explodes into multiplicities carrying different meanings. Likewise, the painting through interactions with the bodies of viewers engenders new meanings, new capacities and affective intensities. Gayathri would have read it in her way, falling back on her virtual past even as Michael explains to her the painting dredging up his virtual past. Apart from the paintings of Michael, other bodies also enfold images and these bodies encounter a movement of sensation. His experiences enfolded when he was able-bodied and later as differently-abled, they unfold in different ways as he interacts with other bodies in the environment. The different manners in which both the enfolding and unfolding of images occur can be substantiated by what Deleuze called difference (1968). The scenes which show Michael reading books from the campus library and capturing images from the places he visits are ways of enfolding images, when he had eyesight. The film also shows Michael sensing the 170

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Figure 8.2  Differently-abled Michael identifying the paint through smell (Screenshot from the movie Artist)

size and figure of things and even the flow that paint can make on canvas (Figure 8.2); through smell and touch the differently-abled Michael enfolds images. While the process of enfolding is common to both bodies of Michael, the way in which the senses were deployed to make sense of the world of images operated differently. The relevance of difference can be seen in the movement of sensation. Michael experiences his own potentials and he talks eccentrically about art when he had eyesight. But later, when he becomes differently-abled, he is seen trying to experience things which are mostly available in front of his eyes. Here, the body is different and therefore the sensations are too. In the absence of his vision, his artistic practices are oriented towards proving to himself that he is an artist. One of the fundamental questions that comes up in this situation is: How can the distinction between the two types of body be made? In a Deleuzian sense, there are no structures that classify or categorise bodies in the world of image. They are all different from one to one, and from one moment to the other. In this film, the able body is a part of Michael’s virtual past. Therefore the existence of virtual past in the present reinforces the existence of the able body. This is apparent in many scenes in the film. In one scene, Michael expresses that he can paint since he has everything in him (he himself becomes a virtual repertoire), everything he had seen and experienced before. Those images in memory, which are associated with the abled body of Michael, also contribute to the display of his artistic practices after losing eyesight. The moment he smells and realises flow and quality of the paint, the virtual able body also acts. This emphasises the Deleuzian idea that there is no fixed entity and therefore no organic individuals. Everything is constantly moving, changing and becoming. 171

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Figure 8.3  Fine arts students creating portraits (Screenshot from the movie Artist)

Difference through repetition in Artist The idea of difference is well portrayed in the film’s title song. About 10 fine arts students draw the figure of a model who is sitting in front of them, from the same space and time, yet all their works are different, from colour selection to the medium chosen. As Deleuze noted, even in the process of repetition, the copies produced are new and original, albeit with some differences (1968). These differences occur because there lies the potentiality of the virtual past and possible future. In the scene where the fine arts students are creating the portrait of the model (Figure 8.3), the virtual past and memory of each student is different. Therefore, they enfold the model’s image in different ways and then unfold on the canvas as several new originals. The difference in repetition does not happen only when the bodies are different (Deleuze 1968). It happens even when the bodies are grouped into sameness, an assumed sameness constituted under the veneer of indiscernible difference, which is filled with intensities of affect and becomings. From a Deleuzian standpoint, differences are contrasted to the generalisation of the sameness. In the film, there is a remarkable and stark difference between the figures in Michael’s paintings created by him before and after losing eyesight. Michael’s paintings created from campus and from his apartment when he had sight are shown in the film (Figure 8.4). They are more figurative or surrealistic. The forms and shapes are clearer and sharper in those paintings. Here, the layer of information (Marks 2009) which prefigures image, when Michael could see, allows him to see through multiple fragments. On the other hand, the potential of the information layer after losing eyesight offers different methods of enunciating and appropriating images. Laura Marks introduced the information layer as a mediating plane between the world of images and the actualised image (2009: 92). When the visually abled Michael draws on his canvas, it is the perceptible information that mediates the actualisation process. He looks at the spatial relations between 172

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Figure 8.4   Michael’s paintings in his studio, created before he lost his eyesight (Screenshot from the movie Artist)

figures and colour combinations whereas the differently-abled Michael’s paintings are more abstract in nature. After the accident, the visually perceptible information layer is missing and therefore fails to create a realistic form. In the meantime, affect grows very intense with the result of sensation filling the surface. Aesthetics of enfolding and unfolding in Michael and his paintings in the film artist A film, a painting or any such material body appears to be a single image, but it doesn’t exist in singularity. There are multiple folds, all of them enfolded inside (Deleuze 1993). In the film, the incidents, characters, their affective intensities and emotions, which are seen on the screen, are enfolded before and actualised in front of us as a whole, as a film, or as an image. Apart from the cliché images a viewer sees on the screen, there are more images and intensities enfolded in every film, like the works of everyone in the crew, starting from the light boy, to the capital, the market demands and many more. In that way, a film can be seen as a text to identify the aesthetics of unfolding and enfolding (Marks 2009). In one of the scenes in the film, fine arts college students go on a study trip to visit historical sites. The students create paintings and click pictures of the monuments that they see (Figure 8.5 and 8.6). Through these actions, they enfold new experiences, produce new images and new combinations of colours taken in through analog paintings and digital photographs. In another scene in the second half of the film, Michael says that he can paint despite being visually differently-abled, as he claims that whatever he has seen is present in his mind. This indicates that the images in his mind are generative and stem from his virtual potential and are images he has 173

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Figure 8.5  Fine arts college students creating sketches on a study trip (Screenshot from the movie Artist)

Figure 8.6  Fine arts college students clicking pictures on their trip (Screenshot from the movie Artist)

enfolded from many places before losing eyesight. They get unfolded and actualised in the interaction with other bodies. However, for the visually differently-abled Michael, the unfolding happens through non-visual modalities. Every individual is in-forming with an infinite number of such fragments or folds (Deleuze 1993). In another scene, the visually impaired Michael is using stencils to make shapes on the canvas which is a new manner of unfolding and enfolding after losing eyesight (Figure 8.7 and 8.8). Earlier shapes were enfolded by the artist Michael and unfolded on the canvas through his optical sense. Though the enfolded shapes are present in his thought, it is difficult to unfold the same with his new body. Therefore, he uses stencils to unfold his

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Figure 8.7   A visually impaired Michael using stencils to get an idea of shapes (Screenshot from the movie Artist)

Figure 8.8  Michael trying to understand the shapes that he draws with stencils (Screenshot from the movie Artist)

image of thoughts on the canvas. Here stencil constitutes the information layer which shapes the images. Like with stencils, he sometimes measures the distance with his hands. When Abhi, the mutual friend of Michael and his wife Gayathri, suggests that Gayathri give the Prussian Blue colour paint tubes to Michael instead of a range of colours, she initially hesitates to do so. Believing that visuality is the only mode that unfolds images to a person, Abhi argues that Michael will not recognise it since he is visually challenged. Here in their conversation, Michael is mentioned not as a normal artist, but as an artist with a visually challenged body. Such perceptions prevalent in dominant discourses pave the way for an ocular centric world. 175

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The scene in which Michael unveils the first painting to Gayathri, after he becomes differently abled, is an instantiation of unfolding. The painting unfolds and reveals itself as an organic image to Gayathri. Further, Michael points out that the figures and symbols assembled in the canvas and explain what he has conceptualised. As the Leibnizian idea of monad explains, there are always multiplicities in singularities and everything we perceive as single is actually an assemblage. Marks pointed out that beneath every point there is a valley of folds (2009). Each plane is composed of several folds and each fold unfolds to another plane. In the scene where Michael realises that he was provided with one single colour to paint, Michael expresses his outburst saying that ‘it was all different colours in my mind’. While the paintings he created were made of Prussian Blue, in Michael’s sensation, it unfolds in multiple colours. Thus, the paint, which is also a part of the process, constructs the actualised images different from Michael’s sensation. In the climax, the audience enfolds the clichéd images by celebrating his inability to see, which reveals to him that he has used only the blue colour. In addition, the artist’s visually challenged body and viewer’s affect towards the disabled status also get enfolded in the audience, together with the actualised image. Reacting to a question from the audience he says that he chose the single colour (it was not his conscious choice) as a colour of betrayal and that it is the world around him. This new philosophy on the colour blue was enfolded by Michael along with his new virtual past, the virtual past of being betrayed resonates with the Deleuzian philosophy of movement and becoming.

Conclusion The film Artist illustrates how it is a medium marked by ruptures. The ruptures of the narrative, the multiple bodies within it, and the interlacing of these multiple bodies privilege the film with the process of becoming, rather than it merely being consigned to representational meanings. The interrelations between bodies, that of the film, the viewer, the protagonist, paint, portrait, artworks, and other bodies result in affective experiences. Deleuze (1981) insists on bodily presence for experiences to occur. In other words, experiences cannot be analysed overlooking bodies and its capacities. The multiple bodies in the film Artist are continuously moving. The movement renews the body and therefore neither the artist Michael nor the canvas are the same at any point. Grounded in the Deleuzian concept of becoming, bodies are understood as ever-changing and evolving (1968). The moving bodies are themselves mediating and conveying more than what anatomical bodies could do. Michael, the colours, his vision, haptic sensation, paintings and other bodies continually discharge affect transcending narrow bodily immanence.

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Drawing on Spinoza, Deleuze an Guattari (1972) focussed on what a body can do and negated the essentialist notion of what a body is. Michael’s twin states of engaging with the world of images through ‘optic visuality’ and later ‘haptic visuality’ (Marks 2002), after he loses eyesight in the film narrative, establish that thoughts are corporeal irrespective of the body being able or differently-abled. Michael continues to work as an artist and the body does not become an obstacle in pursuing his career. The dependency on his soulmate Gayathri for painting is one of the many interrelationships between bodies in Michael’s life and this is further disrupted by his capacities to smell paint and allow his sensations and affect to help him in comprehending the world when he was coaxed to believe that he was given multiple colours to paint. In all of these situations, Michael, paint, colour, vision, painting, sound, music among others continually evolve into what Deleuze (1989) calls the ‘becoming of bodies’. All these bodies in the film Artist mediate themselves through their own materiality. When Michael starts painting after losing his eyesight, he visualises through his haptic visuality touching the memory deeply entrenched within the past of his life when he had vision. The layers and trajectories added on bodies in movement are understood as layers of information which mediate the experiences (Marks 2009). The enfolded virtual past gets unfolded through the information layer. In Artist, the differently-abled body is an added layer on Michael’s previous bodies. The conjunction of the two bodies makes a new body filled with new capacities and affective potentials. When the new body of Michael unfolds his virtual past on canvas, the sensations of the differently-abled body flow into the canvas. Further, the bodies around Michael enfold his sensations along with their affect towards Michael’s differently-abled body. From a Deleuzian perspective, difference is materialised through repetition (1968). The identification of bodies, their interactions, potentials, capacities and affects are repetitions across all forms of bodies—the abled and the differently-abled. Repetitions are not copies as Deleuze does not deal with what is repeated but the act of repeating. While bodies are reproduced, each body occupies and mediates its own experience and difference through its materiality and interrelations with other bodies. Further, the absence of a material and corporeal body negates the possibility of any kind of strata. Therefore, like Michael through his ‘abled’ and ‘disabled’ temporalities, it can be interpreted that any body, in and of itself, is differently abled.

Note 1 Artist is a Malayalam film released in 2013. The film was based on the novel, Dreams in Prussian Blue (2010) by Paritosh Uttam, and directed by Shyama­ prasad. The film won several major awards, including the Kerala State Film Award and Filmfare Award. All stills from the film are used here with the permission of director Shyamaprasad and are acknowledged with gratitude.

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References Baudrillard, Jean. 1994. Simulacra and Simulation. Translated by Sheila Glaser. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Bergson, Henry. 1896. Matter and Memory. France: University Press of France. Bhowal, Sanatan. 2017. ‘Lawrence’s Concept of Time: A Deleuzian Reading’, Time and Temporalities, 48. Dasgupta, B. 2017. ‘I Need My Solitude, I Need to be with Myself’, The Hindu Sunday Magazine, 6 August 2017, 5. Deleuze, Gilles. 1968. Difference and Repetition. Translated by Paul Patton. London: Bloomsbury. Deleuze, Gilles. 1981. Francis Bacon. London: Continuum. Deleuze, Gilles. 1989. Cinema 2: The Time-Image. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 1992. ‘Postscript on the Societies of Control’, October, 59: 7. Deleuze, Gilles. 1993. The Fold: Leibniz and The Baroque. Translated by Tom Conley. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. 1972. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Brian Massumi. London: Bloomsbury. Goodley, Dan. 2007. ‘Becoming Rhizomatic Parents: Deleuze, Guattari and Disabled Babies’, Disability & Society, 22(2): 145–60. Gopalan, Ravindran. 2011. ‘Singing Bodies and “Movement” Images in a 1937 Tamil Film’, Journal of Creative Communications, 6(1–2): 15–33. Marks, Laura. 2000. ‘Signs of the Time: Deleuze, Peirce, and the Documentary Image’, In Flaxman, Gregory (Ed.). The Brain is the Screen: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Cinema (pp. 193–206). London: University of Minnesota Press. Marks, Laura. 2002. Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Marks, Laura U. 2009. ‘Information, Secrets and Enigmas: An Enfolding-Unfolding Aesthetics for Cinema’, Screen, 50(1): 86–98. Marks, Laura. 2010. Enfoldment and Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art. Cambridge: MIT Press. Massumi, Brian. 2002. ‘Navigating Movements’, http://www.bing.com/cr?IG=E765­ 33CFF6A642ED806D79F31BB509D0&CID=106EDC1825386AF81DFDD6CA 243E6B4D&rd=1&h=KF-LqCjvHqviJf29byv2zW0QKYY3rZErcf0L8CcVwRk& v=1&r=http%3a%2f%2fwww.brianmassumi.com%2finterviews%2fNAVIGATI NG%2520MOVEMENTS.pdf&p=DevEx,5062.1 (accessed August 2 2017). O’Sullivan, Simon. 2005. ‘From Possible Worlds to Future Folds Abstracts, Situationist Cities and the Baroque in Art’, Art Encounters Deleuze and Guattari, 36(3): 121. Overboe, James. 1999. ‘Difference in Itself: Validating Disabled People’s Lived Experience’, Body & Society, 5(4): 17–29. Robson, Martine and Riley, Sarah. 2019. ‘A Deleuzian Rethinking of Time in Healthy Lifestyle Advice and Change’, Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 13(4): e12448. Wendell, Susan. 1996. The Rejected Body: Feminist Philosophical Reflections on Disability. London: Routledge.

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Part III TERRITORIAL MULTIPLICITIES

9 CAN ‘TERRITORIALITY’ BE SOCIAL? Interrogating the ‘political’ of dalit social inclusion in India1 Ronki Ram Territory plays an important role in the critical understanding of the phenomenon of dalit assertion in India (Guru 2011: 36–42; Ilaiah 2005; Ram 2016a: 32–9; Rawat 2013: 1059–67). The word ‘territory’ is derived from territorium (generally referring to land comprising a village, town, city or district), which in turn is linked with two main etymological hypotheses about its origin. The first traces its lineage to the Latin word terra (dry land) + -orium (place), thereby assigning a geographical/sedentary meaning to territory. The second hypothesis linked territorium to the word terrere (to frighten) that describes territory as a ‘subjective product, which cannot be inferred from mere characteristics of any objective physical environment’ and ‘a place from which people are warned off’ (Mubi Brighenti 2006: 67). It resembles Deleuzian and Guattarian ‘functional component’ of territoriality, which gives birth to territories (Deleuze and Guattari 1987). Since territory is not merely a geographical/physical product, its existence can be revealed only practically through a socially experienced interaction, often leading to encounters. It is the very social interaction that is eventually ‘stretched out’ as territory/space. While conceptualising ‘space’ in tandem with ‘time’, Massey recognises that both are ‘inevitably and everywhere imbued with power and meaning and symbolism’ (Massey 1994: 3). She further adds that ‘the spatial is an ever-shifting social geometry of power and signification’ (ibid.). Territory is often presented as passive, static, recalcitrant and non-political bereft of social interaction (Massey 1994). The conceptual divorce of social interaction from spatial structures hides the crucial underlying dimensions of territoriality. The basic concept, thus, like in ethology, is not territory but territoriality (Mubi Brighenti 2006: 67). Territoriality can be defined as ‘a habitus of action and, above all, of reaction’ (ibid.). It does not reveal itself on its own, nor does it transmit a ‘constantly visible behaviour’. Its existence remains hidden

DOI: 10.4324/9781003217336-13

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until a cospecific (a member of the same species) displaying a type of behaviour that is considered intrusive makes its appearance. In short, territoriality is [can also be] virtual: it is a disposition to act—or better, react—according to given patterns (generally, aggressive/defensive patterns) under given circumstances. (ibid.) In the present study, territoriality refers to all sorts of actions/reactions that take place between the inhabitants of the mainstream upper-caste neighbourhoods (referred to as ‘pinds’ in this chapter) and the segregated ghettoised dalit localities/territories. The territoriality of a Pind and its periphery remains invisible until encounters, both ideational and material, occur between the inhabitants of these two spaces—Pind and dalit territory. Dalit territory personifies the existence of two diametrically opposite socio-spatial reasonings and realities of protest and resistance. The continuous simmering of social protest within segregated dalit territory against the structures of domination, on the one hand, and the stubborn resistance unleashed by the upper castes against the social protest by dalits, on the other, has once again catapulted caste onto the centre stage: as a kind of anticounter-territoriality. ‘Anti-’ in the sense of questioning/resisting spatial apartheid by the upper castes, and ‘counter’ in the sense of offering alternative visions of space-place embedded in the dalit sense of territoriality.2 This, in turn, set the pace for the emergence of new dalit territoriality objectified in the form of a radical dalit movement against social exclusion. Dalit counter-culture and native religious heritage provided the source material for this new dalit territoriality. How a dalit sense of territoriality generates sociospatial consciousness and empowers the socially excluded to challenge the oppressive social structures has not been studied so far in the fast expanding field of critical dalit studies. This chapter attempts to fill such gaps in dalit literature while exploring the emerging patterns of dalit assertion within the segregated dalit territories in the contemporary state of Indian Punjab. This essay is divided into four parts. The first problematises the phenomenon of dalit territory/territoriality. The second part weaves a narrative of how dalit territories are being transformed from condemned sedentary spaces of poverty, disease and filth into rousing sites of contestation and social mobility. This is based on the premise that inmates of dalit territories, while drawing inspiration from their segregated spaces, native heroes and spiritual mentors not only challenge the traditional structures of social domination but also find ways to empower themselves while confronting their tormentors. The third part problematises the challenge faced by the dalit on the way to social mobility. What distinguishes dalit struggle in their segregated territories from that of the mainstream civil society and the state’s affirmative action, on the one hand, and from that of the other dalit endeavours particularly rooted in religious conversion and cultural assimilation, on the other, is critically explored in the fourth section. 182

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Mapping dalit ‘territoriality’ Dalit territory has often been perceived as devoid of social mobility (Ilaiah 2005). It is also considered as a submissive site of despair, dependence and helplessness (Pal 2016). Such viewpoints are based on the assumption that ‘(t)erritory has been traditionally imagined as almost the opposite of mobility’ (Mubi Brighenti 2014: 1). But territory is not an object and cannot be defined simply as space (Mubi Brighenti 2006; Mubi Brighenti 2010: 56–7). On the contrary, territory ‘defines spaces through patterns of relations. Every type of social tie can be imagined and constructed as territorial’ (Mubi Brighenti 2010: 57). Spatial structures characterised by social interactions, with multiple and mutually antagonistic dimensions, can be equated with territory. The concept of territory, argues Mubi Brighenti, needs to be investigated, ‘not simply as a specific historical and political construct, but more radically, as a general analytical tool to describe the social sphere and, ultimately, as a social process in itself’ (2010: 57). Territory is, thus, social in numerous ways. Some territorial settings of community living are socially considered as cursed and segregated. While others are paraded as blessed and guarded against the inhabitants of the segregated ones. It is in this critical context that territory is being considered as having Both expressive and functional components. Expression marks the emergence of a territory, given that a territory appears when some qualities and properties emerge from an environment. Without quality and property, or better without quality as property (such as a signature, a specific way of marking), there would be no territory. (Mubi Brighenti 2010: 58) In the case of dalit territories, the graded caste hierarchy (functional component of territoriality) segregates the lowest castes into separate living spaces: ‘expressive component of territoriality’ (Mubi Brighenti 2010: 57–8). Within the asymmetrical structures of the rural agrarian economy, the segregated dalit territory stands nowhere near the privileged mainstream villages dominated by upper castes. All public utility centres, like schools, colleges, post offices, banks, health centres, anganwaris (child day-care centres), ration-depots, panchayat ghars (offices of the elected village governing bodies), offices of the co-operative societies etc., are established within the wellguarded spatial boundaries of the mainstream villages (Pal 2016: 102–7). Since territories are established ‘as a semiotic device and as part of a plan to control resources’, dalit territories are severely deprived of all such essential public utility facilities. For all these facilities, dalits had to visit mainstream villages where they are hardly welcome. What makes these two segments of mainstream and segregated territories distinct and antagonistic is their ‘specific territorial endeavour’ (Mubi Brighenti 2010: 58). Dalit territoriality is the product of intersecting social relations that takes place amidst highly 183

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exploitative social structures embedded in the agricultural economy of Punjab. It is not the territory/space on which social interactions take place; rather, the very social relations themselves that produce territory underlined with distinct space, place and time ingredients (Massey 1994: 263). The uneven and generally exploitative plinth of dalit–upper-caste interactions, at the crossroads of encounters between landless dalits and landowning farming communities, led to the emergence of bruised dalit territoriality. Dalits were historically deprived of land ownership rights in Punjab (The Land Alienation Act of 1900)—a functional component of the territorialisation process. Under the informal local customary law, popularly known as razat-namas, even the plots in dalit territories, where they were allowed to build only kachcha (mud) houses, were legally registered in the names of the local dominant peasant castes. The land on which dalit territories were raised were declared as the ancestral property of the dominant peasant castes (based on my field notes). The village land was mostly divided among the agricultural castes. Since dalits were confined within segregated territories, they were not considered part of the mainstream villages at all. Though razat-namas and the Punjab Land Alienation Act of 1900 were declared null and void through the concerted efforts of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, the chief architect of the Constitution of independent India and the ‘messiah of the downtrodden’, dalits remain landless and continue to live in their segregated territories (for details see Ram 2017a: 54–7). Since ownership of land in Punjab is considered an index of social status, landlessness among dalits severely affects their status. With no ownership of agricultural land, dalits are left with no alternative but to augment their social status through the potent agency of counter-religious formation. Given the Sikh-dominated culture and the thick concentration of dalits in the state, the strategy of counter-religious formation assumes a critical importance. It has led to the formation of a separate dalit religion (Ravidassia Dharm), which, in turn, led to the sacralisation of dalit territories (Ram 2012a: 689–700; Ram 2016a: 32–9). The embellishment of dalit territories, dotted with impressive structures of Ravidass Deras, represent the emerging contours of rising dalit assertion in the form of counter-culture and alternative dalit heritage—akin to what Deleuze and Guattari have called de/reterritorialisation continuum of the territorialisation process. The rise of new dalit assertion in the form of counter-culture and alternative religious heritage has not only reterritorialised dalit ‘territory’ into the ‘social’ but also challenged the ‘political’ aspect of dalit social inclusion as well. This chapter intends to articulate how dalit segregated colonies have been coming up as new sites of dalit assertion while challenging and negotiating at the same time the agency of social inclusion in India. Under the neoliberal regime, the most sought-after avenue of government jobs—until recently the mainstay of some sections of the dalit population—is shrinking very fast (Shah 2017). Moreover, this truncated dalit space has turned into an arena of both caste contestations and political patronage of social 184

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difference (Ram 2013: 1–29). The shrinking number of vacancies in the public sector and the resulting frequent inter-caste clashes have convinced the historically marginalised lower castes that the only viable strategy is to seek their emancipation, on their own terms. This awareness, in turn, also acts as a catalyst for the articulation of an alternative sense of territoriality, anchored in what some critical geographers have described as a ‘progressive sense of place’ or the ‘contemporaneous co-existence of others’ (Massey 1994; Massey 2005). In a society where religion and the ‘social’ are intricately intertwined, the former often takes precedence over the latter. It is in this context that dalits are busy converting their segregated territories into strongholds of the ‘dalit counter-public’ to generate rich tangible and intangible sources for their upward social mobility. Territory, argues Mubi Brighenti, does not only ‘guarantee access to resources, it can also become a resource in itself—most notably, a resource for identity formation’ (Mubi Brighenti 2010: 66). This critical process of identity-based dalit social mobility, in turn, re-territorialises dalit territoriality into a ‘progressive sense of place’.

Dalit territories and counter-cultures Dalit territory refers to segregated dalit spaces often situated on the southwestern margins of rural villages in India, the direction in which the wind blows and the sewage of the villages flows. The villages in contemporary Punjab are invariably divided into two segments: upper-caste neighbourhoods, popularly known as pinds, and the lower-caste neighbourhoods, contemptuously called chamarlees, thathees or vehras (hereafter dalit territory). In Tamil Nadu (South India), they are known as ceris while pinds are called uurs (Heering 2013: 48; Racine and Racine 1998: 7). Dalit territories are also known as jati muhallas, bastis or vastis (Rawat 2013: 1059), apne-apne pinjare—spatially marked prisons of caste identity (Namishray 2006 [1995]), dalitwaadas, ‘sudra’ waadas (Ilaiah 2005: 114–17), hulgeris, maharwaadas, chamar tolas and harijanwaadas (Guru 2011: 41). Gopal Guru also called them bahishkrut while comparing and contrasting them with puruskrut bharat—privileged Hindu middle-class neighbourhood (as referred in Rawat 2013: 1064). Pinds and dalit territory are two spatially distinct social domains with their respective worldviews and discourses.3 Occupations, water sources (wells and handpumps), shrines, pilgrimage centres, cremation grounds, chaupals (community halls) and popular narratives separate them from each other. Their communicative languages, festivals, songs, satires, heroes, gods and goddesses, parameters of morality and immorality, eating habits, beliefs and faiths are also dissimilar (Ilaiah 2005: 5–35). Dissimilarities between them have more to do with the distinct nature of their respective space, which, in turn, also determines its territoriality. Pinds, the basic unit of the Indian social life and often characterised by some as ‘self-sustaining’, ‘little republic’ or ‘complete republic’, are known for communally integrated life. They have been and continue to be what 185

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Ambedkar perceptively called ‘a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow mindedness and communalism’.4 For Ambedkar, it was ‘the working plant of the Hindu social order, where one could see the Hindu social order in operation in full swing’. While arguing differences between pinds and territories, he emphasised that the latter is not a case of social separation, a mere stoppage of social intercourse for a temporary period. It is a case of territorial segregation and of a cordon sanitaire putting the impure people inside the barbed wire into a sort of a cage. (Ambedkar 1948: 21–2) For dalits, pinds constitute the dominant/oppressive ‘other’. The inhabitants of pinds are known as ‘the major community’, irrespective of their numerical strength. Whereas the inhabitants of dalit territories, despite their being in large numbers, would always be treated as a ‘minor community’. The inhabitants of the pinds revered their elders as wise men/women as per the moral tradition of rural life. But this moral norm does not apply to the elders of the dalit territories. The latter are not treated at par with the elders of the pind. Even the children of the landowners of the pinds call the elders of the dalit territories by their nicknames (based on field notes). Taking a clue from Joothan, the autobiography of Om Prakash Valmiki, Valerian Rodrigues writes, ‘Names were clearly distorted such as kiran became kinno, Radha Devi became radhiya’ (Rodrigues 2015: 15). The inhabitants of pinds do not want the ‘minor communities’ of the dalit territory compete with them in terms of status and prestige.5 The ‘major community’ of pinds laid down the social code of conduct for the ‘minor community’ of dalit territories—what to and not to eat and wear, the physical distance dalits are supposed to maintain from the dominant upper castes, the kind of houses they should have, the language they should converse in, and the names they should adopt (Ambedkar 1989). The social code of conduct was so severe that even after seventy years of India’s independence common social bonds between pinds and dalit territories still seem to be a distant dream (Nayar 2012). It is in this context that pind and dalit territory emerged as two distinct and mutually antagonistic social domains separated by exclusive caste relations. Pind personifies possession of land, wealth and pride. It belongs to those who own land within its territorial domain. In the rural community life of pinds, possession of land and social status are coterminous. Anyone who does not own land cannot claim to be a real pindwala (the one who belongs to the pind). Although dalit territories are situated within the legal jurisdiction of the mainstream villages, their inmates, deprived of land ownership rights, were not considered the real pindwalas. Thus, the pind belonged to the landowning castes only. Though some non-landowning castes were allowed to live within the well-guarded spatial boundaries of the pinds, they 186

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happened to be only ancillary castes, traditionally linked to the landowning castes. These artisan castes (carpenters, blacksmiths, potters, barbers, water carriers and tailors), contemptuously known as nikki-minni jat (lower castes) or kami-kammin (ancillary working castes), historically used to draw their fixed share from the periodic crop yields grown in the land of the pind and were considered as second-class citizens. The traditional justice system based on gram panchayats was highly discriminatory. The gram panchayats were dominated by the influential families of pinds. Dalits in these territories were invariably denied justice by such upper-caste-­ dominated grassroots bodies. Thus, for all practical purposes the inhabitants of dalit territory, and to a large extent the artisan castes, used to depend on the landowning communities of their respective pinds. Though both the artisan and dalit castes depended on the landowning communities, the living conditions of dalits were the worst. They were historically excluded from the pinds and continue to be so even today. Their relationship with the inhabitants of pinds has traditionally been that of manual workers who did not have any interpersonal social relationship with them. Even the children of the pinds did not mix with those of the dalit territories. While articulating the difference between ‘Brahmin waadas’ (mainstream villages) and ‘Sudra waadas’ (dalit territories), Kancha Ilaiah writes that friendship between the children of dalitbahujans and Brahmins is censored (Ilaiah 2005: 2–3, 9, 17). In his own words: ‘Upper’ castes speak of dalitbahujans as ‘ugly’. ‘Sudra’ is an abusive word; ‘Chandala’ is a much more abusive word. ‘Upper’ caste children are taught to live differently from dalitbahujan children, just as they are taught to despise and dismiss them. (Ilaiah 2005: 9) The only interaction that dalits could have with the inhabitants of the pinds was through their manual wage labour: Dalitbahujans could enter these ‘upper’ caste streets and colonies only as servants, milk vendors, vegetable vendors, tapimaistries (supervisors of construction work), carpenters and so on. They were the sellers of the skills, and the so-called upper castes, who were themselves unskilled, were the consumers. By and large, the dalitbahujans live in slums. They were debarred from doing anything that would allow them to improve their socioeconomic position or reach the level of the Brahmin-Baniyas. (Ilaiah 2005: 65–6) Moreover, dalits were not allowed to have any say in determining the rates of their fixed wages. They had to accept the wages arbitrarily determined by the landowning castes (Ambedkar 1989: 22). It is in this context that pind and periphery come face to face in open confrontation, when dalits raise 187

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their voice for better wages and equal share in the local structures of power. The current spate of social boycotts of the dalits by the dominant landowning castes in various villages of contemporary Punjab is a case in point (Ram 2012a: 652–3). In fact, what made dalit territories dependent on pinds was the total control exercised by the latter on the economic, religious and cultural lives of the former. Dalits of a periphery were never allowed to possess any amount of land, however small it may be, and were forced to perform hard labour within their hereditary low-paid occupational divisions for the comforts of the pindwalas. They were condemned to perform all sorts of jobs, such as disposing of the carcasses of dead animals, skinning and preparing the hides for leather works, sweeping the streets of the upper-caste neighbourhoods, removing animal and human excreta, cutting the umbilical cords of the newly born, doing the preparation for funerals, beating drums on different ceremonial occasions, making brooms, weaving and washing clothes, picking cotton in the scorching sun, and performing heavy manual jobs on the farms of the dominant castes. The intensive manual labour jobs were performed by dalits under the patron–client relationship, popularly known as the jajmani system (Gould 1964). Under the jajmani system, dalit women had to clean the cowsheds and make pathians (dung cakes) for the hearth of their jajmans (landlords). In return, they were given a few chapattis (a sort of bread), buttermilk and some fodder for their cattle as a meager wage in kind. Further, what made them most vulnerable was their total immobility from their territorial jajmani limits as far as employment opportunities were concerned. Under the oppressive rural political economy, dalits were not allowed to work for landlords belonging to another pind, and this deprived them of bargaining for a better wage deal. Even within their territorial jajmani limits, dalits were not allowed to work for those landlords with whom they were not tied under this labour system. Yet another interesting feature of the pind–periphery matrix is that a thin geographical line separates these two exclusive territories. Dalit territories begin where the houses of the upper castes cease to exist. In fact, what matters most is not the physical distance, but the social distance that separates them rather sharply. The upper castes do not share their rituals, ceremonies and various other community festivities with dalits (Ambedkar 1989: 22). They do not invite dalits in marriages and other social gatherings in the pinds. Dalits and their territories are also derided and mocked in the popular discourses and songs of upper castes. They are often couched in a language, which is aggressive and taunting. The patronising and non-cognitive categories of dalit names and adjectives used in the narratives of uppercaste neighbourhoods often present dalits as ‘good for nothing’ (Guru 2011: 40–1). Dalit neighbourhoods too have their distinct discourses. Woven around painful memories of historical discrimination, dalit discourses were hardly articulated in written form. They were circulated only through 188

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word-of-mouth. Though circulated in a limited form due to the severe scarcity of writers among dalits, these discourses, stashed in the memories of the ex-untouchables, argued Ilaiah, keep dalits spellbound (Ilaiah 2005: 6, 13). They reveal the usual antagonistic relationship between pinds and territories, which is now being captured graphically in popular dalit songs and graffiti in contemporary Punjab. Dalit territories compliment varna (fourfold hierarchical division of Hindu social order) ideology (Rawat 2013: 1064), which facilitates the perpetuation of Brahminical hegemony over dalits. The social code of the varna ideology did not allow dalits to claim any share in the local structures of power. It is only recently that some of the dalits have started converting their territories into radical sites of dalit assertion. Many dalits, who have been able to escape the oppressive jajmani system of manual agricultural labour, have gone into various non-agricultural professions. Their entry into government jobs, state and central legislatures, and, in some cases, even corporate business (Kapur, Bhan, Pritchett, and Shyam Babu 2010: 39–49; Kapur, Shyam Babu, and Bhan 2014) have transformed the texture of dalit neighbourhoods. Dalit territories are now no longer ghettoes of mud houses and thatched huts littered with dirt and filth. Instead, impressive and sprawling houses decorate them. In addition, liberal remittances by the dalit diasporas have further tremendously improved the living conditions in the peripheries. The surroundings of the territories are no longer buried under the heaps of waste and dirt; streets are made of concrete; many homes have in-house toilets, sewage and water facilities. Public and private transport system connects them with the towns and cities. The historical dependence of dalit territories on pinds and the current emerging radical assertion within the former, on the one hand, and the consequently strong resistance shown by the latter, on the other, is what brings these two distinctly asymmetrical rural settings into direct confrontation. The mushrooming of Ravidass Deras within segregated dalit territories testifies to the Deleuzian and Guattarian episteme of ‘three movements/vectors in the territorial process: deterritorialization, reterritorialization and territorialization’ (Mubi Brighenti 2010: 63–5). The ‘three movements episteme’ of territorial process identifies any territory as an act or a mode of processual, eventual and directional entities against the object–subject ontic of territory. ‘A territory’, argued Mubi Brighenti (2010: 63), ‘is something one makes vis-à-vis others as an inscription upon a specific material’. In other words, territorial formation processes move uninterrupted. Demolition of a territory leads to the creation, at the same time, somewhere else, of another territory. Deleuze and Guattari argue that [o]ne cannot deterritorialize from some relations without concurrently reterritorializing on some others. It is this double movement of deterritorialization and reterritorialization that evokes the primitive movement of territorialisation, which otherwise tends to be 189

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taken for granted, perceived as a degree zero of territory, as nonmovement. These three territorial movements proceed together precisely as movements, or directional vectors. (Mubi Brighenti 2010: 63–4) Given the above-mentioned Deleuzian and Guattarian episteme of ‘three movements’; pinds and dalit territories appear to be entering into ‘an epochal struggle’ in contemporary times (Muralidharan 2006: 4; Thirumaavalavan 2004). What makes this struggle different and novel is the non-violent nature of the dalit movement. The Ad Dharm movement of the early 1920s, Ambedkar’s movement beginning in the early 1940s, and later on the Bahujan Samaj Party in the 1980s all played an important role in peacefully politicising dalit territories to ask for their due share in the local structures of power. Apart from a few violent incidents, by and large the dalit movement in Punjab has remained peaceful. Throughout the hundred years of its existence the dalit movement in the state has preferred constitutional measures over violent means and stood as a guard for the continuity of the Indian Constitution, which provided them with opportunities to get rid of their historically degraded social existence. The following section explores the genesis of the non-violent nature of the dalit movement in the state and the critical role it played in the emergence of radical dalit assertion in the territories.

Territorial sacralisation and dalit assertion The emergence of dalit Deras within segregated dalit territories, what Deleuze and Guattari called ‘refrain’, i.e. the coming together of rhythms and melodies into a territory, has not only emancipated dalits from their forced social opprobrium of defiled territoriality but also reterritorialised them into a sacralised space of dalit self-respect and dignity (Deleuze and Guattari 1987; Mubi Brighenti 2010: 64; Ram 2017b: 52–78). Dalit Deras, in fact, can be presented as structural forms of counter-culture and dalit heritage (acts of imagination) that perform the role of what Mubi Brighenti called territorialising through ‘myths and narratives’ (Mubi Brighenti 2010: 58). Such structural manifestation of dalits acts of imagination makes them obvious and visible working entities (Mubi Brighenti 2010: 58). Dalits/lower castes are territorial entities. Since ‘territorial practice is an imaginative mechanism whereby someone is initially recognised as an intruder or insider (or any other equivalent qualification) in relation to one’s territory’ (Mubi Brighenti 2010: 58), dalits considered themselves natives/sons of the soil and the upper castes/Aryans as the intruder. To quote Mubi Brighenti further, It is imagination that enables classification, distinction and recognition. Rather, recognition and separation of two basic types of cospecifics (members of the same species) is what the territory is all 190

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about. Selective inclusion and exclusion combine into series to form an ordering mechanism that becomes the basis for the formation of social groups. (Mubi Brighenti 2010: 58) In the case of the Indian caste system, dalits are bracketed within the socially excluded sections of society and the upper castes distance themselves from dalits while denying them access into their mainstream neighbourhoods. It is in this context that dalit Deras have not merely come up as centres of spiritual gatherings for dalits, but also expanded into epicentres of nonviolent dalit social protest while reterritorialising and sacralising hitherto condemned and segregated dalit territories into sacred space (Ram 2007; Ram 2008; Ram 2009a; Ram 2016a). They are, in fact, a clear manifestation of the growing distinct dalit identity within these spaces. In the background of the ‘expressive component’ mode of the territorialisation process, Ravidass Deras have formulated their own sacred scriptures, religious symbols, ceremonies, prayers, rituals and messages of social protest, what Deleuze and Guattari innovatively called ‘rhythmic characters’ and ‘melodic landscapes’, against the oppressive structures of caste domination in the agrarian society of Punjab (Mubi Brighenti 2010: 58). Their distinctiveness also lies in the fact that they neither take refuge in any established theology nor do they imitate the dominant socio-cultural ethos of upper-caste society. On the contrary, they proudly distinguish themselves from the mainstream religious systems and contest the hegemony of the upper-caste neighbourhoods over the dalit territories. The fabulous architecture of some of the dalit Deras provides immense prestige to dalit neighbourhoods, where until recently poverty, squalor and filth used to be a common sight.

Dalit territories and the challenge of social mobility Distinct dalit territories gained sudden notice after the murder of one of the top priests of the Ravidassia community at a Ravidass temple in Vienna on 24 May 2009.6 After this incident, Ravidass Deras, primarily led by Dera Sachkhand Ballan, on 30 January 2010 publicly announced Ravidass Dharm as a separate dalit religion (Arsh 2012: 15). The declaration of a separate dalit religion has led to a confrontation between the Sikh religion and the Dera Ballan-led Ravidass Deras. The main source of contention, however, lies in the emergence of a separate dalit identity based on distinct dalit religion as a challenge to the existing hegemonic Sikh identity. At a still deeper level, dalit Deras strike sharply at the political economy of religious organisation in Punjab. Since dalits constitute almost one-third of the total population of the state, their sheer numbers make a big difference. As some of them have improved their economic conditions at home and also carved a niche for themselves abroad, their numerical strength is considerable. This 191

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is evident in the vast quantities of offerings being received at various Ravidass Deras in Punjab and abroad (Ram 2008; Ram 2009b). It is in this context that the landless dalits, who were historically deprived of land, can be seen building their unique sacred territory in a cutting-edge competition with the long-established religious territory of the landed communities as a portable vehicle of their upward social mobility. The large following of Ravidass Deras may also have serious political implications for the religion-dominated electoral politics in Punjab. Thus, the mushrooming of Ravidass Deras in the segregated dalit territories does not only symbolise assertion of a separate dalit identity, it also sharpens the underlying contradictions between the landed/dominant communities residing in pinds and the landless/lower castes living in dalit neighbourhoods. It is in this volatile context that the bhakti-based method of non-violent social protest as devised by Guru Ravidass assumes critical importance (Cf. Omvedt and Patankar 2012: 7–13). The peace appeal made by the priests of Dera Sachkhand Ballan to its enraged followers after the Vienna episode is a case in point.7 Since all socio-spiritual activities within Ravidass Deras revolve around the teachings of Guru Ravidass, deeply soaked in universal love and peace, it inculcates a sense of lasting faith in the minds of a large number of Ravidassias about the non-violent social protest for the emancipation and empowerment of their lives within segregated territories. Though the dalit struggle has remained non-violent throughout its long history, it has nothing to do with the Gandhian struggle of Satyagraha nor the flat promises of sanskritisation—another non-violent path of upward dalit social mobility. Non-violent dalit struggle has its roots in the sacralising process of the segregated dalit territories on the bases of social protestBhakti teachings of Guru Ravidass (Ram 2016a).

Dalit territories and the ‘political’ of social inclusion To date, the dalit emancipation process has gone through many phases involving varied state and civil society interventions. The civil society interventions can be further bifurcated into initiatives from within the dalit territories and by the upper-caste social reformers. As far as the latter are concerned, the main focus of such measures has primarily been on helping dalits improve their material conditions to some extent, without decimating the oppressive social structures of caste hierarchy and the territorialised segregated dalit spaces. However, the initiatives from within the ghettoised dalit territories were always aimed at seeking self-respect and dignity and to build an egalitarian social realm free from the fetters of oppressive caste barriers. Jyotirao Phule (1827–1890),8 C. Iyodhee Thass Pandithar (1845– 1914), Ayyankali (1863–1941), Erode Venkata Ramasamy, popularly known as Periyar or E.V.R. (1879–1973), Dr. B.R. Ambedkar (1891–1956), Swami Achhutanand Harihar (1869–1933) and Babu Mangu Ram Mugowalia (1886–1980) were among the most prominent radical leaders 192

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who emerged from the lower castes. Along with the material uplift of the downtrodden, they strongly emphasised the urgency of social emancipation and empowerment of dalits. Their main concern was to liberate dalits not only from the scarcities of economic resources to be able to lead a comfortable life, but also from their demarcated social existence, while empowering them to make their segregated neighbourhood socially mobile. In other words, their central objective was to generate dalit consciousness through the articulation of counter-culture based on alternative dalit discourse and heritage by eventually standing up against their tormentors and reclaiming their long-lost rich heritage and socio-religious space. Phule (2002), in his seminal work Gulamgiri (Slavery), emphasised the need for developing a counternarrative to fix the hegemonic supremacy of the minority upper castes on the vast but segmented majority of lower (Shudra) and lowest (Ati-Shudra) castes in India. He attacked the oppressive social structures of caste hierarchy ‘as both mischievous and wicked and something engineered by the Aryan invaders to consolidate their preeminence’ (Doctor 1997: 115). He also rejected the varnashramadharmabased principle of purity-impurity and sacred office of priesthood as a necessary mediator between god and man/woman. Influenced by Thomas Paine’s doctrine of ‘Natural Rights’, Phule strongly advocated that all lowercaste people have inalienable rights like the upper castes, and that they can enjoy the bounty of ‘Natural Rights’. He emphatically rejected and ridiculed all those sacred and legal books popularly referred to in religious discourses in Hinduism, which categorised society into Aryan and nonAryan and denied Natural and Human Rights to the latter for no reason but their low-caste birth. In his alternative dalit narrative, Phule projected lower castes as indigenous people who had their own distinct cultural heritage—ethos, ceremonies, prayers, kathas (stories), heroes, gurus, rules, traditions, auspicious dates, festivals, symbols, folklores and religion—chiselled over centuries before the invasions of the marauding Aryans. The narrative further reiterates that the invading Aryans ‘conquered the indigenous people through force, treachery and use of religious propaganda. The nine avatars of Vishnu were seen as different stages of the Aryan conquest’ (Omvedt 1971: 1973–4). The very formulation of an alternative dalit discourse can be posited as a strategic move towards the reterritorialisation of segregated dalit territories (Mubi Brighenti 2010: 57). In order to liberate (deterritorialise) dalits from the fetters of social exclusion, they need to be territorialised afresh (reterritorialised) on the bases of their native religion and long-discarded cultural heritage. What counts here most is not the segregated territorialised dalit space per se, but the relationship between dalits and upper castes that were built through such segregated territories (Mubi Brighenti 2010: 55). Phule’s alternative dalit discourse aimed at a fresh territorialisation of dalit space. It was rooted in cultural and ethnic traditions of native people, 193

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who were incarcerated within the territorially segregated boundaries, superimposed by the varnashramadharma, caste structures and sacred books. The enslaved natives continued to be segregated by Brahmin elites ‘whose dominant position in the caste system and religiously justified monopoly of knowledge underlay their power’ (Omvedt 1971: 1972). For Phule ‘[t]he masses, from peasants through untouchables and tribals, were the original inhabitants of India, “sons of the soil”; the elite and particularly the Brahmans, the irani-arya-bhats, were seen as aliens …’ (Omvedt 1971: 1973). The main objective of such an innovative and highly critical antiBrahmin narrative was to empower the socially and territorially segregated natives and to establish their sovereignty under the egalitarian rule of BaliRaja, a mythical king of the natives, who ruled over the land before the arrival of the invading Aryans (Omvedt 1971: 1974). This narrative further reiterates that dalits should not be afraid of their so-called forced low-caste social status; rather, they should turn it into an identity catalyst and deploy the same to contest the hegemony of the dominant castes (Ram 2017b: 60). The central thesis of this narrative depicts the natives of the region as the rulers of the land who were stripped of their rich cultural heritage by the alien Aryans. The Aryans, goes the narrative, forcibly snatched from the natives almost everything worth possessing and reduced them to slaves/ untouchables. They erased their geographies while wiping out the tangible cultural heritage of the natives, deprived them of their history, and consequently pushed them into oblivion—ultimately detaching them from their religion, culture, heroes, gurus and glory (Ram 2016b: 373). Babu Mangu Ram Mugowalia, a revolutionary of the Ghadar movement and founder of the Ad Dharm movement, took this alternative dalit narrative to the doorsteps of the dalits in Punjab. He exhorted them to establish their own distinct dharmik (religious) identity based on a separate dalit religion. This narrative stirred and inspired them, particularly the chamars, to rebuild their mythically rich and long-lost cultural heritage through the establishment of a separate dalit religion—Ravidassia Dharm. Phule-Mangu Ram’s alternative dalit narrative distinguished itself from the mainstream civil society and the state’s affirmative action, on the one hand, and the lower castes’ previous endeavours, particularly rooted in religious conversion and cultural assimilation, on the other. It neither aimed at helping the lower castes through state’s affirmative action nor motivated them to follow in the footsteps of the upper castes’ cultural traditions and sacred booksbased rituals. It also guarded them against common practices of religious conversion for escaping the drudgery of caste-laden life. On the contrary, it aimed at restoring the lost glory of the native religion of the lower castes. This unique dalit social mobility model led to the establishment of various Ravidass Deras in Punjab, which attracted a large number of lower castes into their fold. In Ravidass Deras, with their own sacred scriptures, religious symbols, ceremonies, prayers, rituals and messages of social protest (re-territorialisation processes), provide dalits with exclusive social and cultural 194

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space. It has generated a sense of confidence in them and provided them with an opportunity to exhibit their hitherto eclipsed dalit identity (Ram 2016c: 192). They distinguish themselves from the mainstream religious systems and contest the hegemony of the upper-caste neighbourhoods over the dalit territories. They lend the most sought-after recognition to dalit territories. Though affirmative action helped some dalits acquire upward social mobility, it has also led to social protests among the middle-class sections of the upper castes who allegedly feel discriminated against in the merit-based competitive system. Affirmative action got normalised despite opposition from the mainstream civil society for no other reason, perhaps, but political expediency. Since Scheduled Castes (SCs also known as dalits) constitute 16.2 per cent of the total population of India (2011 Census of India), no political party can dare ignore them. It was perhaps for the electoral value that the government policy of reservation for them continues to exist even after 72 years of India’s independence. As mentioned above, though the reservation policy did help some lower castes, it failed to bring about structural changes in the discriminatory social structures at the grassroots level. Dalits continue to live in segregated territories in the vicinities of mainstream villages in the vast rural settings of the country across the regions. It is in this crucial context that dalit territoriality assumes the form of the ‘social’ in direct contradistinction to the mainstream-inhabited spaces dominated by the upper castes across the length and breadth of India. The ‘social’ of the dalit territorialities started getting organised under the alternative narratives articulated by the intermittent dalit movements from Phule onwards. In contemporary India, the alternative dalit narrative of territoriality has become the most appropriate agency for upward social mobility for dalits. It is aimed at the revamping (re-territorialisation) of the hitherto condemned segregated dalit neighbourhoods while exhorting dalits to generously invest in their monumental heritage and architectural infrastructure projects for a separate dalit religion (Ram 2012a: Singh 2016). The revamping of dalit territories does not merely mean the physical renovation of the segregated dalit spaces. It is, in fact, all about assigning a new and empowered meaning to dalit sites of contestation—what is proposed as the ‘social’ of territoriality in this chapter.

Notes 1 This is a revised version of a paper originally presented at the TISS International Conference titled ‘Aesthetics and the Political in Contemporary India: Deleuzian Explorations’ held at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai (February 16–17, 2017). I am grateful to Barbara Glowczewski, Sanjay Chaturvedi, and P.S. Verma for their brilliant comments and suggestions. My sincere thanks to Andrea Mubi Brighenti and Doreen Massey, whose seminal works on space inspired me to critically explore the vexed question of dalit territoriality in India. Last but not least, my thanks to Parthasarthi Mondal and George Varghese K. for their motivation and Seema, Sahaj and Daksh for keeping me free on the

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home front. For all the views articulated in this piece, however, I alone am responsible. Caste names are used in the chapter for academic analysis. Any offence caused by such an exercise is deeply regretted. 2 In conversation with my colleague Professor Sanjay Chaturvedi. 3 For details on differences between the social universes of the pind and dalit periphery see the following literary (Punjabi) and other sources: Ambedkar 1948; Kalarmajri 1998: 22, 47; Kalarmajri 2002: 5; Kalarmajri 2011: 84; Ambedkar 1989: 19–26; Ambedkar 1994; Pettigrew 1978: 44; Ram 2012b: 252–6; Singh 1977: 70; Veera 2008: 9, 36, 72, 92–3. 4 For diametrical opposite views of Gandhi and Ambedkar on pinds see Jodhka 2002: 3343–53. 5 Based on personal interactions with the inhabitants of dalits territories. 6 For details see: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/05/24/world/AP-EUAustria-Temple-shooting.ht (accessed on May 25, 2009). 7 Jag Bani, May 26, 2009. 8 Phule (Jotirao Govindrao Phule, also known as Jyotiba Phule) belonged to the Mali (gardener) caste. In the traditional Hindu caste hierarchy, it falls in the category of the Shudra castes.

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Ram, Ronki. 2013. ‘Caste, Neo-liberal Economic Reforms and the Decline of Social Democracy in India’, Punjab Journal of Politics, XXXVII(1–2): 1–29. Ram, Ronki. 2016a. ‘Sacralising Dalit Peripheries: Ravidass Deras and Dalit Assertion in Punjab’, Economic and Political Weekly, 51(1): 32–9. Ram, Ronki. 2016b. ‘Religion, Identity and Empowerment: The Making of Ravidassia Dharm (Dalit Religion) in Contemporary Punjab’, in Knut A. Jacobsen (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Contemporary India, pp. 371–83. London and New York: Routledge. Ram, Ronki. 2016c. ‘Structures of Social Exclusion, Dera Culture and Dalit Social Mobility in Contemporary East Punjab’, Contemporary Voice of Dalit, 8(2): 186–95. Ram, Ronki. 2017a. ‘Internal Caste Cleavages among Dalits in Punjab’, Economic and Political Weekly, LII (3): 54–7. Ram, Ronki. 2017b. ‘The Genealogy of a Dalit Faith: The Ravidassia Dharm and Caste Conflicts in Contemporary Punjab’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, 51(1): 52–78. Rawat, Ram Narayan S. 2013. ‘Occupation, Dignity and Space: The Rise of Dalit Studies’, History Compass, 11(12): 1059–67. Rodrigues, Valerian. 2015. ‘Indian Democracy and the Reconstruction of Dalit Self: Contemporary Dalit Writing’, Man and Society, 12: 7–22. Shah, Ghanshyam. 2017. ‘Neo-liberal Political Economy and Social Tensions: Simmering Dalit Unrest and Competing Castes in Gujarat’, Economic and Political Weekly, LII(35): 62–70. Singh, Indera Pal. 1977. ‘Caste in a Sikh Village’, in Harjinder Singh (ed.), Caste among Non-Hindus in India, pp. 66–83. New Delhi: National Publishing House. Singh, Surinder. 2016. ‘Dalits in Punjab: Cultural Assertion and Heritage Reconstruction’, South Asia Research, 36(3): 356–76. Thirumaavalavan, Thol. 2004. Uproot Hindutva: The Fiery Voice of the Liberation Panthers. Kolkata: Samya. Veera, Madan. 2008. Nabbran di Ibaarat (The Text of Rebels). Chandigarh: Lokgeet Prakashan.

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10 DELEUZE AND THE THIRD GENDER IDENTITY IN INDIA Arnab Chatterjee The third gender: issues at work and a general overview Any legal declaration regarding the issue of gender identity and the granting of special privileges to a specific group must take into account the rather sensitive issue of identity itself and formulate policies accordingly. Since identities are always in a state of flux, an issue that is reinforced in Deleuzian explorations with respect to gender as a concept, there are reasons to see how they are subject to the greater forces of globalisation, market dynamics, the discipline of gender studies per se and others. More research is needed when it comes to the possible clinical bases of the constantly shifting terrain of gender identity. This holds true even for the inclusion of transgender (TG) studies and courses in curricula in various universities that are still anchored in mainstream women’s studies and feminist modules, thereby relegating LGBT studies to the rear. What emerges is the need to address trans/gender problems with recourse to cultural studies and the concomitant issue of gender minorities that seek equality within larger paradigms of justice and egalitarianism. The TG: a subcultural category? Ken Gelder, in Subcultures: Cultural histories and social practice (2007), provides an important parameter to the study of subcultural categories, and marks an advance on Dick Hebdige’s Subculture: the meaning of style (1979). While Hebdige’s work focuses mainly on the analysis of youth subcultures after the 1950s and says practically nothing about the subcultures before this time, Gelder focuses on the subcultural types of which he probably had a first-hand experience in Australian cities like Melbourne. His viewpoints may be extended for the purposes of this essay and may help us better comprehend the ‘subcultural’ status of the TG peoples further and the strategies they may adopt to cope with the status quo. According to Gelder, there have been subcultural types since the Elizabethan period, manifested in the existence of an ‘Elizabethan underworld’, a haven of thieves, prostitutes, pimps and the like. Gelder opines that subcultural types

DOI: 10.4324/9781003217336-14

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are known to inhabit a ‘subcultural geography’ of their own and that each of these subcultures creates its own territory, a set of places and sites (with some of them lasting longer than others) through which it gains cohesion and identity. He stresses the fundamental fact that ‘subcultures have been around in one form or another for quite some time. But they have been chronicled by others for a long time too: documented, analysed, classified, rationalized, monitored, scrutinised, and so on’ (Gelder 2007: 2; emphases added). Without any express intention to delve deep into the notion of subcultures that Gelder popularised, this essay will try to drive home the fact that the TG people hitherto occupied a subcultural position prior to the verdict by the Supreme Court of India in the nation, while highlighting society’s perception of their existence as one residing on the fringes of civilisation. Thus, in Gelderean terms, they are a ‘subcultural’ category, fit for Deleuzian and Guattarian analyses, caught up in a strange matrix of powerlessness and new rhizomatic possibilities. The penultimate issue, then, is not a neat, tripartite division of gender into ‘categories’ but the emerging understanding that any efforts at categorisation would ultimately fail. If we tend to live in an era of knowledge and a datadriven economy, as it is often assumed, it has to be understood that issues of deprivation and the concomitant violence resulting from the same is not merely a transgression committed on the deprived, but that this violence is a ‘condition’ in itself (Mishra 2017: 152). This is why Deleuzian explorations are so germane today. In an era where feminist scholarship is not yet too eager to take stock of TG issues, which are still taken to be just as an ‘offshoot’ of mainstream feminism, Deleuzian ideas enable one to take into account what happens at the periphery than at the centre. In this specific case, it helps reveal mechanisms through which invisible groups with competing and contradictory claims even within a seemingly monolithic entity would seek to establish connections with larger forces to legitimise their presence.

Deleuze and the Indian context: the legal scenario Gilles Deleuze is a theorist of change and metamorphosis. In works that persistently challenge a ready-made, ‘tailored’ version of reality, Gilles Deleuze (1925–95), along with the psychoanalyst and semiologist Felix Guattari (1930–92), contributed to contemporary notions in gender studies, humanities and various strands of social theory. It has come to be increasingly felt within the critical commentary surrounding DeleuzianGuattarian thought that there is a strong utopian impulse in the ideas popularised (and problematised) by Deleuze. Thus, his concepts should be recognised as striving to discover new possibilities of life and levels of existence. Deleuze shares an affinity with Michel Foucault when it comes to the enunciation of powers that determine our way of looking at the world per se. This chapter, in consonance with Deleuzian notions, would like to trace the same in the recent order of the Supreme Court of India to ‘legalise’ the 200

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third gender. It shall question the very basis of this tripartite division of gender, keeping the ideas of Deleuze and Guattari as ready points of reference, and would like to show how such ‘neat’ divisions can be problematised with recourse to Deleuzian explorations in reference to larger forces like language and globalisation. As Don Kulick points out in connection with the permeable nature of identity vis-à-vis the larger forces of globalisation and identity politics in face of the reorganisation of human capital and the production process: The transgressive and anxiety-inducing quality of transnationalism is a characteristic shared by a range of other social phenomenon, two of which are transgenderism and language. One of the many things that transgendrism ‘does’ in social and cultural life is affirm the permeability of gendered boundaries. By doing so, it highlights the contrived, contingent, and contextualized nature of the ‘male’ and the ‘female’. (Kulick 1999: 605) In 2012, a writ petition was filed by a transgender activist named Ms. Laxmi Narayan Tripathy seeking recognition for self-identified gender of persons either as male/female/third gender, based on their choice. In a pathbreaking judgement, the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India recognised the identity of those peoples who identify themselves as outside the ‘established’ norms of the male/female binary and seek to assert an identity of their own. This was a culmination of a long struggle for equal opportunities vis-à-vis human dignity and to record one’s own gender in government documents like driving license, voter card, ration card etc. The judgement was pronounced in National Legal Services Authority (NLSA) vs. Union of India and Ors., a writ petition of a civil nature bearing no. 400 of 2014 of the division benches presided over by Justice K.S. Radhakrishnan and A.K. Sikri. The judgement then sought to cover transgendered peoples under the umbrella term of ‘OBCs’ or Other Backward Classes, perhaps rationalising it through the idea that economic deprivation in a gendered community may also be considered a benchmark of underdevelopment and backwardness. Yet the issue of reservations in government jobs is still debated and is yet to see proper implementation even after the new law passed by the Parliament called the ‘Transgender Persons Protection Rights’ in 2020 has come into force that explicitly stays away from the earlier verdict to extend reservations. This has garnered much adverse criticism. It may be observed that the court’s attempt then to uphold the dignity of the transgendered peoples is based on ideals of human dignity and freedom enshrined in Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. It stipulates that a person has the right to choose his/her own sexual orientation as s/he likes to. In 2014, the Court also upheld the right to dress and appear as one wishes to, under Article 19, section 1 of the Constitution of India, subject to the 201

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restrictions enunciated in article 19, section 2 (‘Lawyers Collective’ 2014). However, the Court also clarified that the same does not cover other entities normally brought under the umbrella term ‘transgender’—gays, lesbians, bisexuals and others. However, as of now, the Government has still not acted as per the dictates of the top Court, but has only asked for further clarifications regarding what it means by the nomenclature ‘third gender’. The Supreme Court has again clarified that its verdict stands and that extending facilities to include employment opportunities, protection against persecution from police atrocities and the like will not be extended to the other entities normally brought under the term LGBT (those identifying as lesbian and gay, for instance). Maintaining a distinction between gender identity and sexual orientation, the Court observed that gender identity refers to a human being’s deeply felt internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not be coterminous with the sex assigned at birth. This includes a personal sense of one’s body which may involve a freely chosen modification of bodily appearance or functions by medical, surgical or other means and other expressions of gender, including dress, speech and mannerisms. This identity, then, has to do with a person’s selfidentification as a man, woman, transgender or other category. Sexual orientation is an individual’s physical, romantic and/or emotional attraction to another human. Each person’s self-defined sexual orientation and gender identity is important to his/her personality and is a fundamental aspect of self-determination, dignity and freedom and, as reported, no one shall be compelled to have sex reassignment surgery (SRS), sterilisation or hormonal therapy as a requirement for legal recognition of their gender identity. However, in view of the latest verdict passed on 10 January, 2020, a trans person would be needed to prove one’s transness by producing a certificate, either through a medical examination involving a psychological test or by other means. This is directly at loggerheads with the NLSA judgement that sought to guarantee rights to the trans community even without recourse to such examinations, thereby upholding Article 21 of the Indian Constitution that explicitly prefers not to discriminate anyone on the basis of one’s gender orientation. The present ruling even goes to the extent of penalising crimes against the trans community much less than those directed against the cisgender category. This just brings home the fact how legal judgements and frameworks are repressive in nature, thereby always in a move to ‘fix’ fluid gender identities time and again. Analogous to this decision to protect the rights of the TG is the famous Naz verdict. Until this decision, passed by the Delhi High Court in 2009, all ‘non-penovaginal’ relationships by consensual adults was considered a criminal offence under Section 377 the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and could mean a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. The Naz decision that decriminalised consensual, same-sex relationships invoked the Fundamental Rights chapter, especially Articles 14 and 15, which states that no person shall be discriminated before law on the basis of religion, 202

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caste or their sexual orientation. The IPC 377 considered gay relationships as a criminal offence and denied those that practiced them the status of full individuals with rights and human dignity. The historic decision in 2009, however, held the view that no person can be denied the right to life due to his/her sexual orientation and this greatly benefited the entire LGBT community as a whole. Till now, they had been denied civic amenities and the right to dignity and life as enshrined in Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. This extended a host of rights and facilities hitherto denied to the LGBT community that had never found expression in any legal decision so far and the community itself was coming to be increasingly considered a ‘subcultural’ category. Also noteworthy is the term ‘LGBT’ that the court first used in this context; this term has not been used by any other court. In this context, the comments of S.K. Babbar in her paper ‘The SocioLegal Exploitation of the Third Gender in India’ are noteworthy: In 1968, Robert Stoller, while writing on trans-sexuality began using the term ‘sex’ to refer primarily specifically to the biological traits and the term ‘gender’ to refer specifically to the degree of femininity and masculinity exhibited by a person. [ … ] With specific reference to India, around 2008–09, the state of Tamil Nadu introduced a transgender welfare policy [ … ] It has its own segments, making the group heterogeneous and this is very often overlooked. What enhances the heterogeneity is that the differences and contradictions exist not just between identities, but also within them. (Babbar 2016: 13–14, emphases added) Locating Deleuzian-Guattarist Thought Within the Indian Context: Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the rhizome may help us ‘locate’ this recent decision to legalise the third gender in India—the Deleuzian rhizome may roughly point to a significant development outside of any pre-established path or plan. The rhizome, according to Deleuze, like its botanical namesake, may not have a main branch or stem per se, but is an offshoot from an already growing structure. Thus, ‘A rhizome ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 7, emphases added). After having endured deprivation of every conceivable kind, the third gender in India has finally been given a legal status and has established a connection with the dominant social, political and economic parameters of the day. This legalisation testifies to a paradigm shift in the ‘organizations of power’ that Deleuze speaks of in a somewhat Foucauldian mode, since the dominant feminist discourse has hitherto been that of the inequality between the male and female and the resultant binary oppositions. However, the predominant ‘gaps’ in this Court order, especially the one that renders other LGBT communities unable to 203

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receive the benefit of this verdict, leaves matters, as it were, open to Deleuzian and postfeminist analyses. Anup Batra in an insightful article entitled ‘Women and BecomingWoman: Deleuze and Feminism’ is quick to point out that as all human subjectivity is essentially ‘gendered’, one has to exit such a system due to the ‘[ … ] danger of romanticising the suffering of a minority group, [ … ]’1 (Batra 2002: 65, emphasis added). Batra points out that though men have been always the pivotal point of discussion as regards the white, Western humanist discourse, women, too, have often been in privileged positions when it comes to real change and transformation.2 Somewhere along this established binary lies what we designate by the umbrella term ‘LGBT’. Thus, there is a radical possibility for transformation at the molecular level, or, at the level of those ‘particles’ or tendencies that refute alignment with the established norms ordering social reality and perception. Thus, the UNDP India Report, 2012, entitled ‘Legal Recognition of Gender Identity of Transgender People in India’, explicitly problematises this issue of gender and identity formation from a socio-legal point of view. The report adroitly points out that the legal recognition of TG people is also critical for the right to contest and to vote in elections. The Election Commission has given the term ‘other’ under the gender category in voter identity cards and indicated that hijras can vote or contest under this category. However, as the report opines, the legal validity of this executive order is not clear. Hijras have contested elections in the past. It has even been documented how the victory of a transgender woman who contested in an election was not considered valid since that person contested in a seat reserved for women and, according to the judgment of the Madhya Pradesh High Court, the person was not a woman. However, there have been other cases of transgenders contesting elections as women. Since none of these candidates won, there has been no cause for any other court to pronounce on the problem of whether hijras are ‘women’, to be able to contest from women-only constituencies (Chakrapani and Narrain 2012: 7).

Destabilising hierarchies—a feminist analysis The term ‘third gender’ used in the Indian context is an exclusionary verdict that neglects other LGBT communities. Moreover, the identification of a third gender on the basis of one’s self-perception as either a man, woman or transgender leaves room for ample discussion with recourse to post-feminist analysis and Deleuzian explorations. Seen from Deleuzian perspectives in one way, such a tripartite division itself is symptomatic of the way our modes of perceiving reality are repressive—considering a division in gender identity and assigning a centre and a margin to sexual entities is a part of this overall 204

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reduction of the human intellect as one that perceives only in terms of binaries. Thus, it becomes clear that the heart of the matter is not an overall need to compartmentalise gender identities, but the urgency for justice in a semiotic system wherein there are competing claims to it; a system where ‘there can be serious differences between competing principles of justice that survive critical scrutiny and can have claims to impartiality’ (Sen 2009: 10). There are contradictory ramifications within this category of gender itself— the epithet ‘third’ does not seem to be a very reliable guide, even as it seeks to encompass all the groups within this said category of gender. The primary problem that is often encountered is between what constitutes male to female sex (MtF) after SRS and what constitutes female to male (FtM) after the medical procedure. According to the Williams Institute, UCLA School of Law, gender-queer individuals suffer higher rates of discrimination than gender-identified individuals, pointing to the various divisions within the LGBT community itself. Thus, pointing to the rather problematic compartmentalisation of human beings into the binary of ‘man’ and ‘woman’, with the associated conception of a ‘third gender’, it has been pointed out: As Evan Towle and Lynn Morgan point out, the very concept of a ‘third gender’ is a recent Western anthropological invention ‘produced by a society just beginning to grapple with the theoretical, social, political, and personal consequences of non-dichotomous gender variability’, and is applied for Western reasons for nonWestern cultures—particularly by postmodern queer and gender theorists in order to appropriate cross-cultural understandings and expressions of gender to shore up their own political viewpoints. (Krul 2013) Excepting the state of Tamil Nadu in India, as mentioned in the UNDP India Report, none of the Indian states still has a clear-cut policy for the transgender people. Tamil Nadu, through its Transgender Welfare Board (TGWB), has made provisions for the change of name and gender in the official gazette and the provision of an identity card for these aravani people. The card specifies birth name, name after the change of gender, permanent address and the membership number. The card does not provide information indicating the gender of the person as ‘other’, as voter identity cards may do, but is considered a separate card in its own right. This card has enabled many transgender people to open bank accounts and even get passports. But there have been problems with the SRS model: In some states, post-SRS medical certificate issued by qualified SRS service providers was helpful for some transgender individuals in getting ID documents in new/self-assigned gender followed by SRS. Presently, passports are given as ‘female’ based on post SRS medical certificate or self-reported transgender and ‘emasculation’ status 205

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although there are no written guidelines from the Union government for the process of providing passport for transgender people. Thus, male to female sex change in official documents appears to be possible only for post-operative transsexuals, leaving out preoperative TG people (waiting to undergo SRS), TG people who are medically unfit for surgeries, and self-identified TG people unwilling to undergo SRS—all of whom might want to change their gender in the official identity documents. (‘UNDP India Report’ 2012: 10) Since the SRS procedure is itself complex and costly and even includes much post-operative risk, many self-certified transgender people, due to reasons like poverty, may not benefit from this procedure which lists the gender of the person on a card and the name before the surgery and after it. Moreover, publication of the names of such people in Gazette notifications may reveal their past and leave them open to stigma, thereby questioning the viability of the SRS procedure and, eventually, the model itself. Moreover, according to the new 2020 ruling, SRS is mandatory to acquire a trans status, which contradicts the principles and policies for the LGBT community laid down by the 2014 verdict. In their exciting essay Language, Embodiment and the Third Sex”, Hall and Lal remind us of the essential fact that a division of gender identities into the male/female binary is itself not feasible. They argue that when feminists in the 1970s and 1980s started to question the naturalisation of gender by showing how masculinity and femininity are socially created, cultural anthropologists began to question the same dichotomy by demonstrating how gender and the related category of sexuality are often constructed in non-Western cultures. But, as the authors point out, The research of earlier anthropologists was suddenly validated by a new feminist agenda inspired by social constructionist theory, leading to a resurgence of anthropological studies [ … ] that was interpreted as not adhering to European and North American organizations of gender—e.g., gender variant groups among the Igbo in Nigeria, the xanith in Oman, the berdache in Native America, [ … ] the mahu in Tahiti, and the hijra in India. (Hall and Lal 2009: 170) The authors are quick to point out that recent feminist and LGBT scholarship has taken cognisance of the basic fact that there are ways in which attention to one ‘non-normative’ group may render other forms of gender identities invisible. Hall points out that the nature of the discourse on the comparatively well-researched hijra group somehow compels feminist scholarship to overlook other categories of such non-normative, binarydefying groups like the kotis in India.3 Thus, as the authors point out, the 206

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compartmentalisation of gender as male, female and ‘others’ assumes that the notions of gender performativity, spearheaded once by Judith Butler, are relatively stable, at least for the first two categories, and that there are no problematic, overlapping, grey areas within each category. However, as Butler herself adroitly points out in Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex (1993), although discourses that mobilise identity categories tend to promote identification in the service of a political goal, it is possible that the persistence of ‘disidentification is equally crucial to the rearticulation of democratic contestation. Indeed, it may be precisely through practices which underscore disidentification [sic] with those regulatory norms by which sexual difference is materialised that both feminist and queer politics are mobilised’ (Butler 1993: 4). The second approach to TG people and their change of sex is through what is known as the gender dysphoria approach. In this model, the doctor diagnoses whether the subject is a victim of gender dysphoria, which is taken to be a medical disorder in which the person’s self-perception does not match with his/her already assigned identity at birth. The doctor, only after diagnosing the same, considers it ‘fit’ for the person to undergo the SRS procedure. The major problem with this model is that gender dysphoria is seen as the sole criterion for TG people to undergo medical and hormonal changes, and it assumes that these people have a ‘problem’ that needs to be cured in its own right. The WPATH (World Professional Association for Transgender Health) version 7 clearly underlines the processes through which SRS may be sought as there are implications of irreversible changes after the procedure. Opposed to the gender dysphoria ‘disorder’ model is what has been called the ‘Self-Identification Model’. In this, transgender people have the right to determine their own gender that may not correspond to that assigned at birth. Any one above 18 years of age can get his/her ID changed after seeking governmental help. This model has been recently followed in Argentina.4 For gender change, the person concerned need not be ‘diagnosed’ with a GID (or gender identity disorder). Moreover, recent research in the language that TG peoples use gives us ample scope for linking the third gender identity with the semiotic systems in which they are embedded.5 This rhizomatic interconnection of the said gender with larger forces like language that is itself socially conditioned is interesting: Speech and language are serious and continual concern for MTFs— phonetician Deborah Gunzburger goes so far as to say that for some MTFs, a pre-occupation with language ‘verg[es] on obsession. No academic discussion of MtFs and their needs is complete without a word about language’. (Kulick 1999: 607) But differences between MtFs and FtMs are seen in light of the fact that while there have been ample studies about how the former use ‘feminine’ 207

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language and other non-linguistic skills to ‘pass’ as a woman, virtually little or no documentation is available when it comes to the latter’s use of language in meaningful socio-cultural settings. Kulick cites the case of the 19th-century hermaphrodite Herculine Barbin, which was popularised by Michel Foucault. It was during a Catholic confession that it came to light that Barbin was not a woman, hitherto considered so socially and thus ‘romanticised’ as such, but a man, when her love for another girl came into the limelight. Nine years later, she committed suicide. Vincent Carpazano, who recently presented a re-reading of Barbin’s memoirs, notes that this was a failure on the part of the society to assign a proper (gender) discourse to her, or a failure to provide an appropriate ‘vantage point, an identity’, or a ‘genre’ (as quoted in Kulick 1999: 611). As Deleuzian explorations would be at pains to show, however, there is no such fixed plane of identity and the play of larger semiotic forces always creeps in. This again takes us to the rather troubled terrain of gender identity—if there are only three genders, as the recent verdict in the Indian context seems to demonstrate, then concerns may be reasonably raised regarding the condition of the other ‘invisible’ gender entities lying at the fringes.7 And what implications would this social codification of the ‘third’ gender entail vis-à-vis equality between the sexes that recent postfeminist agenda is keen to achieve? How viable would the very endeavour be, to define identity in terms of difference only? Compartmentalisation of identities or, to be precise, even of a particular self, is often ‘contextualised’ and context-laden (Showers and Hill 2008: 1181): There are several models of self-structure that highlight specific features of how self-knowledge is organized and examine their association with aspects of well-being, [ … ] All models of specific structural features allow for contextualized multiple selves, and most imply that individuals define their own multiple contexts for their identities. (Showers and Hill 2008: 1182) Donna Haraway, in her insightful analysis of the image of the Cyborg in the essay ‘A Manifesto For Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s’, comments that since the Cyborg, a cybernetic organism and a gift of modern science, is situated at the intersections of man and machine, it does not participate ‘in the traditional mythologies that have defined the West’ (Haraway 2001: 2267) and is a creature that belongs to a post-gender world. For, as Haraway seems to be pointing out (and this is firmly situated within the discourse of body studies in general), the only way to escape from the traditional constricting categories thrown upon the body in general and the female body in particular is to create a radical ‘category’, a cybernetic organism that cannot be made complicit with the forces of surveillance and the patriarchal order. This approach reinforces the notion of a state of flux in a somewhat Deleuzian mode and 208

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thereby escapes a static, constricting system of tacit gender binaries and shows how some feminist ideas already, in many ways, assimilate DeleuzianGuattarist parameters.

The third gender with recourse to select Deleuzian and Guattarist concepts Deterritorialisation To return to Deleuze, the implications that such developments can have with recourse to both Deleuzian and Guattarist theory can be best interpreted with the concept of ‘deterritorialisation’—how social as well as cultural identities constantly shift and are in a state of constant flux in a globalised order. Coupled with this, central to the claims of Deleuze and Guattari, and running through most of their work is the idea of the machine. The concept of deterritorialisation that, as Colebrook points out, informs much of Deleuze and Guattari’s work, is related to the concept of the ‘machine’. Because a machine has no subjectivity or ‘organising centre, it is nothing more than the connections and productions it makes; it is what it does. It therefore has no home or ground; and is in a constant process of deterritorialisation, or becoming other than itself. (Colebrook 2002: 56; emphasis in original) In Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari distinguish between what is called relative deterritorialisation and absolute deterritorialisation—while the former is followed by reterritorialisation, the latter gives way to a ‘plane of immanence’. Arjun Appadurai, in his insightful ‘Disjuncture and Difference: Deterritorialization’ (1990), is keen to point out that deterritorialisation has been one of the key forces in the globalised order of today through which lesser powerful groups like the working classes are made to interact with more affluent communities. Thus, there is ample possibility for the third gender to profitably mix with the dominant social order of the day, creating meaningful channels for the expression of its own interests that it can finally undertake. This may moreover result in re-territorialisation wherein the TG would construct a discourse of resistance and even symbiosis with the dominant semiotic system that may result in the design of a new power structure, culture or even social practices.6 While it has already been pointed out that the process of compartmentalising gender into three sections comes with its own problems of perceiving reality as ‘fractured’ and thus betrays the workings of our repressed psyche, yet such a tripartite division often entails an investigation of the larger semiotic and socio-linguistic ramifications surrounding such a gender parameter. If gender is performative, then the very idea of gender or a gendered identity is subject to this process of deterritorialisation. As the essay by Hall and Lal 209

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shows, gender itself is subject to the intense investigation of the overlapping areas within itself that criss-crosses with larger fields of power, the ‘body’ and linguistics. As they point out, studies have shown how the modern, educated Indian middle class is more attuned to gay and lesbian identities due to recent trends in globalisation and that there does not seem to exist any corollary between their sexual orientation and backwardness. While the Supreme Court of India has extended facilities to this group, other transgender entities, like the kotis, have not been taken into consideration. The prime difference between the two, as the authors opine, lies in the fact that while the hijras often engage in genital mutilation and use discursive bodily practices like loudly clapping,7 the kotis primarily relish their status as licentious people who are at pains to show the former as ‘penis-less ascetics’ (Hall and Lal 2009: 166–70) and thereby caricature the same. Moreover, hijras are known to live in intentional communities with a wellestablished guru–chela network (the master–pupil system), but this does not seem to be the trend with other TG communities. Under such conditions, this distinction between gender and the nomenclature ‘third’ entails not merely taking into account three separate gender identities, but also the ‘machinist’ interconnections between them. Sexual orientation is uniquely linked to the larger economic forces and entails taking into account factors as diverse as ethnology, body studies and the market. This very idea of a totalising presence is central to Guattarist thought—in the approach of contextualising an issue in its globality (Genosko 2002: 4). This mode of deterritorialisation with respect to the seemingly fixed nature of gender identity is reflected in the American Psychological Association’s (APA’s) manual, ‘Terms Related to Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity in APA Documents’, which says that ‘Due to the developing understanding of constructs, shifting usage of terms, and contextual focus of these documents, the definitions vary somewhat’. The said manual categorically seeks to define various terms like ‘cisgender’, ‘transsexual’, ‘genderqueer’, etc., though it is wary of any clear-cut categorisation of gender that constantly tends to slip in. Seen in this way, Deleuzian deterritorialisation can now be introduced into this discussion of third gender identity and it can be shown how gender identities, in a state of constant flux even within each category, are interconnected like a ‘machine’ with other forces that need to be taken into account and problematised, thereby creating a new territory of critical investigation. The tacit compartmentalisation of gender seeks to ‘establish’ a defining centre to the ever-changing, fluid nature of identity and, since the entire life process is itself a machine in Deleuzian terms, such an endeavour will always be in a state of becoming, a concept that this chapter will now turn to. Becoming ‘Becoming’ in Deleuzian terms may refer to the entire process of flux and fluidity that characterises identity. According to Deleuze, becoming is what 210

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characterises the life processes: ‘All beings are just relatively stable moments in a flow of becoming-life’ (in Colebrook 2002: 125). He is one of those relatively few philosophers who resisted the binary oppositions that have characterised structuralist thought. Deleuze is more interested in flux and change; how ‘bodies, commodities, money, finance, matter, ideas, language’ are socially structured and ‘what kinds of practices and forms of agency do such structuring and unstructuring really produce and in the service of what’ (Parr 2015). Social codification seems to be at the heart of Deleuzian thought. Since gender identity more or less ‘started’ with the precondition that the male would be the logos—the centre of attention, and that woman would be defined as a lack, Deleuze steps out of this vicious circle to show how the idea of becoming is of paramount importance, rather than being. So, the only alternative for us, as he points out, is to escape this starting point and become a woman, to be in a state of flux, as all existence always is.8 How the recent legal authorisation of the third gender in India has influenced the LGBT community’s modes of self-perception can be gauged from the data given that, inter alia, perceives the legal decision within the Deleuzian parameters of the body and cultural processes at work (see Case 1).

Recent medical research and the third gender: further observations Katharine J. Wu, in an interesting article (2016), seeks to provide a medical peek into the possible genetic codification of TG people and how the genetic identity of one group ‘slips’ into another, or is deterritorialised, giving way to new levels of self-perception. She asks if, first and foremost, gender identity is genetic or not, since with most traits involving identity, there is often some environmental influence at work. One way for scientists to test whether a trait is influenced by genetics is twin studies. In 1995 (Zhou et al. 1995) and 2000 (Kruijver et al. 2000), two teams of researchers decided to examine a part of the brain called the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BSTc) in trans- and cisgender men and women. The BSTc functions in moments of anxiety, but is, on average, twice as large and densely populated with cells in men compared to women. Both the teams discovered that male-to-female transgender women had a BSTc more closely resembling that of cisgender women than men in both size and cell density, and that female-to-male transgender men had BSTcs resembling cisgender men. These differences remained even after the researchers took into account the fact that many transgender men and women in their study were taking oestrogen and testosterone during their transition by including cisgender men and women who were also on hormones not corresponding to their assigned biological sex (Wu 2016). Along somewhat similar lines, it has also been observed that being TG is not a conscious decision and more than 40 per cent of people who assumed this have tried to kill themselves at some point in their lives (Henderson 2017, emphasis added). 211

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Similarly, investigating the possible clinical and especially genetic basis of gender dysphoria and the fluid nature of gender identity per se, Daniel Klinck and Martin D. Heijer, in their article entitled ‘Genetic Aspects of Gender Identity Development and Gender Dysphoria’, point out how Bentz et al. studied the gene SRD5A2 V89L SNP in 100 MtF and 47 FtM transsexuals using 755 men and 915 women as controls and found that carriage of the mutant ‘SRD5A2 Val89Leu L allele’ is not significantly associated with FtM and MtF transsexualism. The SRD5A2 was refuted as candidate gene of transsexualism (2014: 36, emphasis added). The authors, after providing a robust literature on the possible mutation of various genes, acknowledge the basic fact that owing to the enormous ‘complexity of gender identity development’, it is unlikely that any one (medical) factor would be solely responsible for gender dysphoria, pointing to the other possible reasons that may be the result of social codification and differences in psycho-social development. Though they emphasise the need for more research on the human genomic model, they nevertheless concede the complexity and the various ramifications in the division of gender in neat compartments. This is a fact that the recent order by the highest court in the Indian scenario has probably not taken cognizance of. The above remarks bring home to us the fundamental fact that human identity is not only a product of social encoding (or ‘interpellation’), but is itself an outcome of the way a particular human subject perceives oneself. What this broadly means is that while gender identities may be a unique product of greater forces like the market and trends in the globalised worldview, they may also veer between what one is usually accustomed to think in socially meaningful situations and what one really views oneself to be, that is nevertheless context-laden. Thus, as Cantor and Kihlstrom point out, a ‘person’s self-concept in reality consists of multiple selves, distinct identities that are represented by organised bodies of both declarative and episodic knowledge’ (Showers and Hill 2008: 1181). Thus, the heart of the matter is whether gender identities can indeed be compartmentalised within the matrix of legal parlance when there exists considerable fluidity in matters of self-perception.

Conclusion The issue of a gendered identity is not only of importance today because of the concomitant agenda of justice that may go along with it, but also because of the essential fact that in an era where identities are in a constant state of flux and metamorphosis, any endeavour to define them as a stable entity would necessitate bringing into limelight issues that would immediately negate such a possibility. Hence the need to look into the ‘porous’ issues in gender identity and search for possibilities in their diverse manifestations in a post-theoretical and post-humanist era that would put our received notions to a radical test. Deleuzian-Guattarist notions help us problematise such a fluid identity and examine how they can be analysed 212

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with recourse to such critical parameters. This would help social theorists, scientists and legal practitioners cast their net wide and avoid any monolithic understanding of gender as a socio-critical and cultural parameter.

Appendix Male-to-Female Trans community perspectives: Illustrative quotes for asking for legal recognition as woman or as ‘third gender’/’transgender’ Case 1. ‘Not biological females’ Female is one such [sex/gender] which is gifted by god and people like us just like that one can’t become female by undergoing surgery. We can’t become ‘complete female’. … Female is one who is capable of giving birth to a child and this is not possible by people like us. So we cannot be recognised as female. (A hijra community leader) Case 2. High possibility of getting separate social protection schemes If we get recognition as women, we will get only the reservation meant for women. Only if we get recognition as ‘TG’, we can easily get [trans-specific] schemes and benefits from the government. (A MtF transperson) Case 3. Perceived lack of acceptance by biological females Let us say if my ID card states I am a female. In case I have to travel in a plane or something then after seeing the ID and then [airport security] looking at me - there may be some problem like ‘This person looks like a hijra how come this person’s ID says ‘female’. (A hijra community leader) If we get recognition as women, whether it would be possible for us to mingle with other women and work [at work place]. Would women accept this? They might look at us differently. Some might be afraid of us. (A non-operative MtF trans person) Case 4. Legal recognition as woman and, Case 5. Self-identification as a woman Legally, I would like to be recognised as a woman. We were born males, but as we grew up our behaviour, desires and dreams began to change. We have thus changed our sex to live like a woman. Therefore, I would like to be considered as a woman. (A postoperative MtF TG person) 213

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Case 6. Sufficient to obtain equal rights as that of a biological female We need to be identified as a woman. All the rights given to a woman, then need to be given to us too. That should be okay for me [sic.]. (A MtF trans person) [‘UNDP India Report 2012: 23]

Notes 1 The minority group referred to denotes entities lying on the fringes of the male/ female paradigm, mostly belonging to the LGBT community. Postfeminists strongly oppose favouring any gendered class or section and strive for the general equality of the sexes, with people like Sandra Bems advocating the idea of gender schema theory and androgyny test that seem to question this division of gender into ‘clean’ categories. See Bem’s (2008) The Lenses of Gender: Transforming the Debate on Sexual Inequality to understand how schemata and cultural assumptions tend to reinforce gender identities and how one can act to either accept such assumptions or be gender-subversive and reject them. Bems contends that we can ‘reframe the debate on sexual inequality’ so that it concentrates not only on how the male/female difference is perceived but also on how it has been later transformed into a veritable weapon towards female disadvantage. 2 bell hooks (1984), in her Feminist Theory: From Margin to Centre, points out that the emerging feminist agenda ought to be to end sexist struggle in general and that does not favour any particular race, class or section. The equality of the sexes vis-à-vis voting rights and inheritance of property have already been achieved, and postfeminists, especially ecofeminists like Vandana Shiva, are keen to extend feminist agenda to the equation of exploitation with respect to Nature, women and people living in the third world nations. 3 The kotis are distinct from the hijra group in India. While the latter often go to the extent of practicing genital mutilation and loudly clapping their hands to reinforce a gesture that has widely been associated with hijras historically, the former lead licentious lives, are effeminate boys or men, may take on same-sex relationships by assuming the role of the female gender, and desire to be a penetrated member in sexual intercourse. Kotis may perform sexual favours for men through prostitution, and do not live like the hijras in ‘intentional communities’. Local equivalents are durani (Kolkata), menaka (Cochin), meti (Nepal) and zenana (Pakistan). 4 Cf. ‘Impact of the Gender Identity Law in Argentinean Transgender Women’ by Ines Aristegui (2017) that also details an ambivalent attitude towards the legal status of transgender women in Argentina. 5 Research has been conducted on what language MtF and FtM TG people use and whether they are attuned to using certain pronounced lexical features. This may pave the way to an understanding of a different queer language and the associated poetics of oppression and resistance. See the article ‘Trans-people, Pronouns and Language’ by Juliet Jacques (2013), which is an investigation into this still relatively unexplored area. 6 New practices may include the order from the judiciary in the Indian context to design new toilets for the TGs and to include them as ‘OBCs’ (or Other Backward Classes) in government records and gazettes. The Kochi Metro in Kerala, India has already started employing TG people.

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7 The hijras or ‘Indian Lady Boys’ clap their hands in order to gain attention and also as a discursive bodily practice that strives to show the ‘beaten’ nature of their existence. The words ‘hijra ko de re’ [‘please pay the hijra’] as a linguistic signifier that signifies the already separate ‘territory’ that they occupy and the ‘intentional communities’ in which they live. 8 This idea of Deleuze can be applied profitably given that attempts to bring gender within a definable framework would entail taking into account contexts as diverse as the market forces, globalisation, the media, consumer culture, and the social schemata at work. Cf. ‘What it means to be transgender in India in the 21st century is vastly different, depending on context’ (The Better India 2017, ‘The T in LGBT’).

References Appadurai, Arjun. 1990. ‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy’, Theory, Culture and Society, 7: 295–310. London: Sage. Arístegui, Inés, Pablo D. Radusky, Virginia Zalazar, Marcela Romero, Jessica Schwartz, and Omar Sued. 2017. ‘Impact of the Gender Identity Law in Argentinean Transgender Women’, International Journal of Transgenderism, 28(4): 1–11. UK: Taylor and Francis. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15532739.2017. 1314796 (accessed March 14 2018). Babbar, S.K. 2016. ‘The Socio-Legal Exploitation of the Third Gender in India’, IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 21(5): 12–18. Poland: International Organization of Scientific Research. Batra, Anup. 2002. ‘Women and Becoming-Woman: Deleuze and Feminism’, in Cecile Lawrence and Natalie Churn (eds.), Movements in Time: Revolution, Social Justice and Times of Change, pp. 65–75. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholar’s Publishing. Bems, Sandra. 2008. The Lenses of Gender: Transforming the Debate on Sexual Inequality. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’. New York: Routledge. Chakrapani, Vidhya and Arvind Narrain. 2012. ‘Legal Recognition of Gender Identity of Transgender People in India: Current Situations and Potential Options’, UNDP India Report. http://www.undp.org/content/dam/india/docs/HIV_and_ development/legal-recognition-of-gender-identity-of-transgender-people-in-in. pdf (accessed July 14 2017). Colebrook, Claire. 2002. Gilles Deleuze. New York: Routledge. ‘Definitions Related to Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity in APA Documents’, APA. 2017. https://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/sexuality-definitions.pdf (accessed June 2017). Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus. Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press. Gelder, Ken. 2007. Subcultures: Cultural Histories and Social Practice. New York: Routledge. Genosko, Gary. 2002. Felix Guattari: An Aberrant Introduction. New York and London: Continuum. Hall, Kira, and Zimman Lal. 2009. ‘Language, Embodiment and the Third “Sex”’, in Dominic Watt and Carmen Llamas (eds.), Language and Identities, pp. 166–78. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

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Hebdige, Dick. 1979. Subculture: The meaning of style. London & New York: Routledge. Henderson, Leslie P. 2017. ‘Check the Science: Being Trans Is Not A “Choice”’, OZY. http://www.ozy.com/pov/check-the-science-being-trans-is-not-a-choice/69726 (accessed June 16 2017). hooks, bell. 1984. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Centre. Brooklyn, New York: South End Press. Haraway, Donna. 2001. ‘A Manifesto for Cyborgs’, in Vincent B. Vincent Leitch, William E. Cain, Laurie A. Finke, John McGowan, T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting and Jeffrey J. Williams (eds.), A Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, pp. 2266–98. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Jacques, Juliet. 2013. ‘Transpeople, Pronouns and Language’, New Statesmen. http://www.newstatesman.com/lifestyle/2013/01/trans-people-pronouns-andlanguage (accessed May 10 2018). Klinck, Daniel and Martin D. Heijer. 2014. ‘Genetic Aspects of Gender Identity Development and Gender Dysphoria’, in Baudewijntje P.C. Kreukels, Thomas D. Steensma and Annelou L.C. De Vries (eds.), Gender Dysphoria and Disorders of Sex Development, pp. 25–51. New York: Springer-Science. Kruijver, Frank P.M., Jiang-Ning Zhou, Chris W. Pool, Michel A. Hofman, Louis J.G. Gooren and Dick F. Swaab. 2000. ‘Male-to-female Transsexuals have Female Neuron Numbers in a Limbic Nucleus’, The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 85(5): 2034–41. Krul, Matthijs. 2013. ‘A Program for the Destruction of Meaning: Identity, the Body, and Trans Narratives’, Notes and Commentaries. http://mccaine.org/2013/09/30/aprogram-for-the-destruction-of-meaning-identity-the-body-and-trans-narratives/ (accessed June 12 2017). Kulick, Don. 1999. ‘Transgender and Language: A Review of the Literature and Suggestions for the Future’, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 5(4): 605–22.  http://www.engagingvulnerability.se/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/transgender-and-language-pdf.pdf (accessed January 5 2017). Lawyer’s Collective. 2014. ‘Supreme Court Recognizes the Right to Determine and Express One’s Gender’, http://www.lawyerscollective.org/updates/supreme-courtrecognises-the-right-to-determine-and-express-ones-gender-grants-legal-statusto-third (accessed September 23 2015). Mishra, Prem Anand. 2017. ‘Patriarchy, Women and Making of Women Body Image’, in Pratyush Vatsala (ed.), Human Rights Regime, pp. 151–65. New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House. Parr, Adrian. 2015. ‘What is Becoming of Deleuze?’ Los Angeles Review of Books. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/what-is-becoming-of-deleuze/  (accessed November 12 2017). Sen, Amartya. 2009. The Idea of Justice. New Delhi: Penguin Books. Showers, Caroline J. and Virgil Ziegler Hill. 2008. ‘Compartmentalization and Integration: Evaluative Organization of Contextualized Selves’, Journal of Personality, 75(6): 1181–1204. New Jersey: Wiley Blackwell. http://citeseerx.ist. psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.537.362&rep=rep1&type=pdf (accessed May 18 2017).

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The Better India, 2017. ‘The T in LGBT’, http://www.thebetterindia.com/82412/ transgender-india-lgbtq/ (accessed May 16 2017). Wu, Katherine J. 2016. ‘Between the Gender Lines’, SITN. http://sitn.hms.harvard. edu/flash/2016/gender-lines-science-transgender-identity/ (accessed March 22 2017). Zhou, Jiang-Ning, Michel A. Hofman, Louis J.G. Gooren and Dick F. Swaab. 1995. ‘A Sex Difference in the Human Brain and its Relation to Transsexuality’, Nature 378(6552): 68–70.

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11 CONCEPTS, SINGULARITY AND NATION-NESS ‘Becoming-democratic’ and the question of the political Subro Saha In one of my recent papers I had attempted to explore what the reading of Deleuze and Guattari can offer in the context of India which, in other words, is actually a question of exploring the role of situating Deleuze and Guattari Studies in the context of India without reducing the specificity of each in terms of an-other (Saha 2019). In this chapter I attempt to extend that approach towards exploring specifically what Deleuze and Guattari can offer us for examining the role of conceptualisation. At a time when debates are triggered towards the urgency of re-conceptualising democratic values (not only in India, but also in different parts of the world), the task becomes essential firstly to examine what such acts of conceptualisation call for. Therefore, situating Deleuze and Guattari Studies in the present context unavoidably takes a political character. However, there’s also another question that needs to be explored with caution: does the reading of Deleuze and Guattari acquire a political character because of being situated in the present context, or is it that Deleuze and Guattari’s views are essentially political in themselves? To explore this in relation to the role of conceptualisation therefore calls for exploring an elementary question, i.e. if the act of conceptualisation is always already political? Exploring these concerns, while simultaneously situating them in the contemporary Indian context, calls for carefully analysing the following concerns: what does it mean to conceptualise nation-ness and democracy? how does conceptualising as an act acquires a political character? and, in such acts of conceptualising what is the role of singularity? The chapter examines these concerns through the lens of Deleuze and Guattari’s views on concept, however, without trying to look for any messianic ‘synthetic’ solution. As Adi Ophir reminds us, history of western philosophy had been for many generations haunted by a tendency to ignore a thorough examination towards the nature of the concept as philosophical reality, and among the

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few limited attempts we can trace a tendency to think of it as a given knowledge or representation that can be explained by the faculties able to form it (abstraction or generalisation) or employ it (judgment) (Ophir 2018: 59). This makes it clear that within Deleuze and Guattari’s aversion towards the representational/referential function of concept lie an attempt to answer this long continuing problem of addressing the nature of the concept as philosophical reality without necessarily relying upon a metaphysical plane of transcendence. Regarding the tendency to think concepts as a form of metaphoricity and/or referentiality, Paul Patton also reminds us that the ‘concept’, in Deleuze and Guattari’s view, does not play a metaphorical or referential function. He reminds that their insistence on machinic becomings is not a metaphor for something else; their use of machine is literal in the strict sense and therefore their concept of machinic assemblage should also be taken in that way: In A Thousand Plateaus, in the course of describing the physical, organic, and semiotic stratification of an unstratified, deterritorialized plane of consistency on which the most disparate kinds of things and signs freely circulate and collide, they insist that this metaphysics does not rely on a metaphorical use of words: ‘There is no “like” here, we are not saying “like an electron,” “like an interaction,” etc. The plane of consistency is the abolition of all metaphor’. (Patton 2010: 20) As Deleuze and Guattari emphasise, the concept is not given, it is created; it is to be created. It is not formed but posits itself in itself—it is self-positing (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 11). Extending this character of the concept Adi Ophir emphasises another aspect i.e., the performative dimension of the act conceptualisation in the creation, circulation, regulation, disruption and re-creation of concepts, and the discursive concealment of that performative dimension so as to make concepts appear universal and singular (Ophir 2018: 59). The discursive role in regulating the act of conceptualisation and production/circulation of concepts therefore call for examining the unavoidably political side of concept. As the concept is never singular in a foreclosed way and remains always entangled with other directly related concerns, examining the political role of concept also calls for examining the role of conceptualisation as an act as well as what the concept of singularity stands for. With such focus, turning towards a conceptualisation of the issue of ‘becoming-democratic’, that has acquired, in present times, an extremely urgent political concern not only in India but also in many other parts of the world, calls for addressing the relations and interactions between the planes of generality and specificity. Addressing questions regarding the efficacy of Deleuze and Guattari studies for examining sociopolitical issues of India, or using western theories for Indian contexts, take us back to the same old concern: what can philosophy offer for the ‘doing’ 219

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of politics? On a different and more specific level within the reception of Deleuze and Guattari studies, this concern also remains linked with the debates concerning whether to consider Deleuze as a political thinker? Essentially calling for a critical engagement that realizes how such questions remain shaped by the continuous negotiations between planes of specificity and generality, at an elementary level, addressing such issues call for a thorough examination of (i) what a concept is, and (ii) what role acts of conceptualisation play in the shaping of concept. As Ophir reminds us, A concept is neither given nor created but, rather, performed or played in the act of conceptualization. This play both invents and discovers the concept, both lets it appear and gives it existence, and in doing this it also blurs the distinction between what is given and revealed, and what is invented and created. (Ibid.: 59) Engaging with the tendency to think the concept in terms of a pure transcendental form, Ophir reminds that such tendencies haunted the history of western philosophy since the time of Plato’s reception of Socrates’ dialogues (ibid.: 60). Such tendencies to think the concept as a pure form also shapes the tendency to think the act of conceptualisation as a metaphorical function: concept as form reflecting reality, concept as idea representing material existence, and so on. In such views, such as concept as reflection or representation, the tendency is not only to think concept as a teleological function but also to keep apart form and content, path and objective of conceptual inquiry. Such views on the metaphorical function of concept also shapes the later attempts to think of concept as a mental apparatus of cognition consisting of definitional patterns—a unit of mental representation, a linguistic-perceptual capacity, a cognitive tool, etc.— for understanding reality. Such tendencies, which Ophir traces back to the Kantian privileging of the mind, I submit, takes reality as transcendental which acts of mental (re)cognition enable to define or engage with. For Ophir, such privileging of mental (re)cognitions in framing the definitional networks of concept ignore the role of mediation (linguistic, social, ontological and so on); though the ‘linguistic turn’ brings back the emphasis on the linguistic dimensions of concept, yet it too (especially Wittgenstein) ignores the ontological and performative significance of the concept (ibid.: 60–1). Thinking the concept and its relation with acts of conceptualisation therefore calls for examining the continuous interactions between their mediated characters as well as their irreducible performativity. At a time when increasingly exclusionary tendencies in different parts of the world are trying to limit acts of conceptualisation according to certain dominant hegemonic frameworks, approaching an examination of the character of concept and acts of conceptualisation acquires an urgent necessity for realising their openness, mediations and performativity. (Re-)turning to Deleuze and Guattari’s 220

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views on concept and philosophy, as developed in their collaborative work What is Philosophy?, therefore not only enables us to realise the inseparable relations between philosophy and politics but also offers us a reminder at the present times where conceptual thinking and the doing of philosophy are increasingly facing pressures from hegemonic exclusionary frameworks. While engaging with the concepts of nation-ness and democracy, it can be helpful here to turn towards a section from Deleuze’s Dialogues (with Claire Parnet) that Paul Patton also uses to remind us of the volatility of the concept: ‘It is never a matter of metaphor; there are no metaphors only conjugations’ (Patton 2010: 21). The questions that Paul Patton point to here emerge as helpful for us not only in the conceptualisation of ‘concept’ but also for conceptualising nation-ness, democracy, philosophy, politics and so on, without necessarily conceptualising them through a frame of metaphoricity/referentiality: what is at stake in this hostility towards metaphor? and, what relationship has this to their conception of philosophy as the creation of ‘mobile’ concepts? (ibid.: 21). These can further lead us to enquire, what can their rejection of representational image of thought offer in the conceptualisation of nation-ness and democracy? Connecting with the contemporary tendencies to frame the concepts of nation-ness and democracy according to certain dominant modes of exclusionary thinking one can also turn towards Deleuze’s views on the ‘dogmatic’ image of thought (as elaborated in Difference and Repetition) that tends to regulate the flow of concept according to certain specific frameworks. This is where Paul Patton reminds the division between an apprentice-function that has been trained to think only in limited way, and the philosopher-function, whose task is to create concepts that cannot be confined/foreclosed within any singular functional framework (ibid.: 22). I submit that this is where the performativity of the concept acquires significance in three ways: (i) the performativity of the concept as a noun that can appeal/signify in unpredictable ways; (ii) the performativity of conceptualisation as an act that remains irreducibly linked with dispersed entanglements; and (iii) the dialogic interactions happening continuously between point (i) and point (ii), thereby enabling the ceaseless re-configurations of the concept in newer forms and through shifting trajectories. What I propose, in other words, is to emphasise on the co-constitutive interactions between the concept and acts of conceptualisation: while concepts in their existing forms enable conceptualisation as an act and that act essentially requires ‘mapping’ of the concept in all its multiplicity, yet the act of ‘mapping’ not only remains incomplete but also adds something more to the existing concept, thereby simultaneously enabling its transformation into not-yet-anticipated forms. The act of conceptualisation, in its capacity to produce and map concepts, also has a suspending potential which enable the reception of the existing concept in one’s own terms, and this is where the (trans-)formative capacities of the concept and conceptualisation lies that cannot be foreclosed into 221

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certain exclusionary frameworks. Though in a different context, one can here turn towards the suspending potential of aesthetic imagination (as well as why it becomes necessary in the present times) that Spivak talks about in her book An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization: … Any trick to train them into a mental habit of othering rather than merely provide them with tools to describe … in the othering of the self and coming as close as possible to accessing the other as the self. (Spivak 2012: 112–13) This suspending of the self in terms of the other, I submit, is also the essence of conceptualisation, both in the (re-)creation of concepts as well as in the reception of existing concepts in their mobile capacities. Trying to frame a concept and/or acts of conceptualisation according to dominant, exclusive frameworks therefore aims to foreclose the volatility and movement of the concept. With such awareness when we turn towards one famous sentence from Anderson’s Imagined Communities—where he defines ‘nation-ness’ as ‘ … the most universally legitimate value in the political life of our time’ (Anderson 1991: 2)—we need to realise the creative potential of imagination in creating, internalising and identifying with the concept of nationness as well as the institutions, legality and political forces that tend to contain, universalise and/or limit the flow of such imagination within certain frameworks of normativity (this is where Anderson talks about the role of newspapers, maps, books etc. in organising the imagination of nation-ness in a specific way). However, such organising/regulation of the imagination do not foreclose the eruption of different (not always normative) concepts of nation-ness that doesn’t always fit harmoniously with the existing frameworks of conceptualisation. Exploring this from a Deleuzian perspective helps us understand how nation-ness remains operative as a constitutive ‘concept’ that shapes the everydayness of everyday existence, however, never in a foreclosed way. Nation-ness operates as a ‘concept’ in the Deleuzian sense of the term that is multifarious yet has a certain sense of constitutive singularity, abstract yet always remains linked with the concrete, absent yet always present. Some have conceptualised it as an ‘imagined community’ (ibid.), while for some others it has a certain fluidity like narrative textuality or a space of hybridity.1 Even such conceptualisations have been also questioned and forced into reconsiderations as, for example, in Anderson’s case, the question ‘whose imagined community?’2 raised a new set of questions which remain always problematic, in terms of finding specific, absolute answers in relation to the multitudes and fragments that shape the conceptualisation of ‘nationness’. The tendency to situate the imagination of nation-ness within a plane of universality that can continue to function irrespective of all individual (spatial, cultural, temporal etc.) differences leads towards a search 222

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for a plane of singularity. However, this tendency to establish a universal framework for conceptualising nation-ness serves as a paradox since if the ‘people’ stand for multiplicity and the task of democratic nation is to celebrate multiplicity then again how can multiplicity of the ‘people’ be reduced to any singular category of the nation-ness. The focus on the singularity of experience comes to shape the question of difference and normalises the thinking of nation-ness in its universality, distinctness and uniqueness (thus normalising ‘difference’ within a framework of binaries such as us/them, East/West and so on). However, the thinking of singularity also comes to be shaped through a relational process and as such the thinking of difference also remains operative not without contingencies. To take as an example, the thinking of singularity of nation-ness from an Indian perspective too is shaped by a similar play of specificity and difference, where the qualifier ‘Indian’ emphasises a certain element of difference and uniqueness, and yet the question of nation-ness brings it closer to the generalisations that affect the conceptualisation of any nation. As it is with the Deleuzian ‘concept’, here too the play of the particular (Indian) and general (nation) remains operative in continuous negotiation, shaping the singularity of nation and nation-ness. The thinking of ‘nation’ as a singular, unifying plane remains always linked with its internal constitutive multiplicities, and the same applies to the conceptualisation of India as a ‘nation’. The thinking of India as an independent nation has always involved an attempt to come out of the colonial influence where, quite paradoxically, the exteriority symbolised by the ‘post’ colonial (as coming out) remains entangled simultaneously with the interiority of the embodied structures of Western modernity shaping the thinking of liberation and ‘post’ itself. As a ‘concept’, I propose, it is this continuity between the exterior-interior that shapes the thinking of a singular post-colonial nation (where the hyphen has been used strategically by many thinkers to reflect such continuity and negotiation). In the context of India, as Chatterjee notes, the nation-making project has always remained fragmentary and incomplete (Chatterjee 2010). The constitution of a nationalist consciousness that is distinctly Indian has always involved a two-way, mutually dependent process: to get rid of the colonial influences (both material and ideological), and to claim a distinct character as a symptom of difference. Thus, the emergence of the nationalist consciousness in nineteenth century colonial India was crucially shaped by the constitution and separation of spaces: us/them, home/world, spiritual/material, traditional/modern and so on. Even the anti-colonial resistances in colonial India had always been multifarious in their approach since the same concept of nation(alism) appealed differently to different sections, as examples like the Chauri Chaura3 incident reflect clearly. The different stages Chatterjee describes as shaping the nation-making project—the moment of departure, the moment of manoeuvre, and the moment of arrival, as he calls them4—though focused on the constitution of a distinctly singular 223

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concept of ‘nation’, were always haunted by internal contradictions that had always problematised the thinking of Indian nation as an absolute singularity. However, despite its multiplicities, fragments and contingencies, nation remains operative also as a constitutive concept whereby it also shapes the thinking of other concepts (such as duty, patriotism, citizenship, democratic rights and so on). As such, though a concept, nation sometimes also operates as a plane in the shaping of other concepts. As it is with Deleuze that the concept and plane remain operative in a mutually dependent relation, in a similar way, I propose, nation too remains connected to the thinking of location and space in a co-constitutive way. The conceptualisation of space has always been linked with the conceptualisation of women’s bodies (as the ability to ‘contain’), and the association of the two shapes not only the concept of nation but also that of chaos, cosmos, universe, world, regions, cities and home5 as the space that contains. Such a co-constitutive relation between nation and space thereby enables the conceptualisation of ‘nation’ as ‘motherland’ where the concepts of both ‘nation’ and ‘mother’ come to constitute each other in terms of normative expectations. It is through such relational processes of constructing the realm of the normative that categories come to be constituted for judging the ‘ethical’ considerations and the question of duty (be it of mother-ness or of nation-ness). As it is with many other nations, in the case of India also the conceptualisation of the nation comes to be seen through that of a mother. As Sugata Bose notes, the thinking of nationness and the emergence of nationalist spirit during 19th-century colonial India remained crucially linked to imagining India as the mother in chains (of colonialism) calling to its children for freedom (Bose 1997: 50–75). Conceptualising nation-space as the womb of the mother that gives birth to and nourishes its children thus enables the conceptualisation of India as ‘Bharatmata’ (Mother India) and ‘matribhumi’ (motherland). The thinking of nation-ness in its singularity comes to be shaped by an organisation (therefore, framing) of the continuity of experience, and it is in relation to this that the bringing together of nation-image and nation-time shapes the thinking of continuity of experience. The visualisation of the concept of nation (as, for example, the image of ‘bharatmata’, or cartographic imaginations) operates as an attempt to bring the concept within the domain of presence where the visible would mark the unavoidable facticity of the nation in terms of its identity. Therefore, in attempts to frame a singular category of nation-ness, as scholars like Romila Thappar, Partha Chatterjee, Sudipta Kaviraj among many others have repeatedly emphasised, a careful selection and emphasising of only certain aspects of history is used to train the imagination only in certain specific ways; however, that never means that the history of the nation has no other sides apart from the ones that are stressed for hegemonic reasons. We can refer here to one significant point that Romila Thapar mentions, using Eric Hobsbawm, in her 2016 JNU lecture on nationalism: history is to 224

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nationalism what the poppy is to the opium addict (Thapar 2016: 184). This is where she asserts how there’s an increasing tendency in the present times to frame history according to certain dominant frameworks: Nationalism emerges as a concept or an idea in modern times as a response to historical changes … History is essential to a national ideology but it has to be a shared history that binds people together. History has to be the bond. It cannot be a history dominated by only one identity because nationalism doesn’t exist only on one identity. It has to be all inclusive. (ibid.: 185) This is where, regarding the inclusive potentials of nation as concept, we can recall Deleuze and Guattari’s emphasis on ‘nationalitarianisms’ (and not any singular dominant characteristic of ‘national’ as universal): ‘The history of philosophy therefore is marked by national characteristics or rather by nationalitarianisms which are like philosophical opinions’ (emphasis added) (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 104). It is in this process, I submit, that the thinking of progressive teleological time comes to acquire a constitutive role that shapes the thinking of alterity, development and futurity. Thus, while the thinking of the singularity of nation-image comes to be constituted through maps, cartographies, pictures, depictions and so on that attempt to locate the spatial existence of nation, on the other hand the thinking of the continuity of nation comes to be shaped by the thinking of time as linear progression. Mapping this production of the nation-image in certain specific ways therefore also means producing the universality of conceptualising nation-image in certain specific ways. This is where Deleuze’s emphasis on minoritarian becomings can offer a different trajectory for conceptualising the nation beyond the existing hegemonic versions of the dominant nation-image. In the Indian context, this is an approach that comes closer, though it was not directly inspired by Deleuze and Guattari’s views, to the existing attempts like the subaltern-studies project or writing history from below. The thinking of nation-ness as an experiential category always involves the bringing together of nationimage and nation-time within the framework of progressive time, where though the nation-image and nation-time remain operative within its specificity they also remain dependent on a unification at the level of generality in terms of thinking an experiential continuity of nation-ness. In totalitarian regimes, regulating the conceptualisation of nation-ness therefore requires regulating how the concept of nation is produced and circulated, and this where conceptualising nation-ness from minoritarian becomings disrupt the control of majoritarian regimes. A brief extract of some of the unavoidable concerns in present India from Gopal Guru’s JNU lecture can offer us a crucial reminder of the ignored minoritarian existences within any totalitarian majoritarian regimes, and they remind 225

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why conceptualising minoritarian becomings acquire such significance in present times, especially when intellectuals arguing for minoritarian rights are facing increasing legalised harassments, trolling and violence every day. As Guru reminds, The right-wing forces use extraterritorial loyalty as the negative criterion to define who is a nationalist … But they do not want to factor in the ontological reduction of the Dalits … Within this ‘Bharatvarsha’ or ‘Parishkrut Bharat’ (sacred India) there continues to be a Bahishkrut India (‘quarantined India’), to use Ambedkar’s expression … its stand on territoriality as the core criterion of defining nation is backed by self-authorized assertion, while it completely lacks moral stamina to critically reflect on the predicament of ‘Bahishkrut Bharat’ or quarantined India. (Guru 2016: 26) This reminds us that the thinking of singularity of nation-ness, when seen from such minoritarian perspectives, insist on the irreplaceability of each and every ‘one’, moreover, even as each and every ‘one’ also remains always already a ‘singular plural’, and as such is always with-in-among many others (Kaiser 2015: 1). Singularity of nation-ness, thus understood, resists generalisation and as a concept remains always operative with certain openness, not foreclosure. Singularity is therefore ‘produced, not given in advance, and its emergence is also the beginning of its erosion’ (ibid.: 6). By including heterogeneity within each and every ‘one’, singularity as a ‘concept’ thus undermines or destabilises unified, homogenous notions of collective and subjective identity. Operative in an iterable movement, singularity as a concept remains always tied up with a simultaneous being-with, and thus, though singular, yet remains simultaneously ‘singular plural’ (to use Jean-Luc Nancy’s understanding of the term from Being Singular Plural). Any attempt at thinking the singularity of nation-ness within a dominant framework therefore continuously produces its own deterritorialising (and therefore reterritorialising) possibilities and thus can never be contained within any framework of closure. Acts of conceptualisation, I submit, remain always open to disruptive potentials when placed against any dominant tendencies to regulate thinking, and that is why we have seen at different junctures of history how the rise of totalitarian regimes have emphasised on regulating conceptual thinking; and since philosophy, literature, and the humanities more broadly, deal with the training in conceptual thinking these are also the departments that have suffered most during the rise of such totalitarian regimes. Similarly, we also need to keep in mind the unavoidably political background of Deleuze and Guattari’s views on philosophy and the concept. As Ian Buchanan and Nicholas Thoburn rightly point out, Deleuze was already politically active before meeting Guattari, and similarly it is wrong to point that Deleuze’s 226

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writings before Anti-Oedipus were detached from politics or political concerns (Buchanan and Thoburn 2008: 1). As they remind, subsequent (and in many ways consequent as well) to the Events of May 1968 strategic thinking faced obstacles in many ways and the challenge of Western Marxism was to re-assert the importance of thinking in shaping political practices,6 and this was a challenge that Deleuze and Guattari also addressed in AntiOedipus and their subsequent works (ibid.: 2). Besides, they also remind that Deleuze’s views on politics mostly differed from otherwise popular or fashionable trends of contemporary politics: he had an aversion towards group activity, a distaste for public intellectual as playing a leader-function, he never joined the Communist Party, remained outside the two dominant schools of French theoretical and political practice, and so on (ibid.: 3). However, that doesn’t mean Deleuze kept himself at distance from contemporary politics: he was involved with Foucault in the Prison Information Group, signed petitions and wrote a number of interventionist articles for various urgent political concerns of his time that ranged from opposing Israel’s forceful colonisation of Palestine, the bombing of Vietnam, the firing of politically active homosexuals from academic faculties, human rights violations in Iran, the imprisonment of Antonio Negri and the repression of Italian Autonomia, the extradition of the Red Army Faction’s lawyer Klaus Croissant and the 1990–91 Gulf War, among others (ibid.: 3–4). As Buchanan and Thoburn remind, if political sensibility is understood as a restless composite that calls for or gestures towards different worlds then it also reminds continuously of the complex difficulties of escaping the existing ones (ibid.: 6). Therefore, they assert that any such gesturing towards alterity remain shaped by a degree of betrayal, if one attempts to resist cliché and closure and remain open to the inadmissible, and (re-)conceptualising ‘politics’ is also not an exception to this process (ibid.: 6). Therefore, in their view, … it would be a mistake to reduce Deleuze’s political thought to a circumscribed ‘Deleuzian politics’ or to the elaboration of a particular political practice, agent or subject. Deleuze and Guattari’s proposition that ‘everything is political’, that ‘politics precedes being’, needs to be taken seriously, offering perhaps an extension to new levels of complexity of Marx’s casting of revolutionary politics at the level of the social rather than the ‘mere’ political. (ibid.: 6–7) When Deleuze and Guattari take up the question of concept in relation to the thinking of philosophy they engage, therefore, not only with the contemporary political interventions on strategic thinking but also with the long continuing debates on the political role of philosophy and acts of conceptualisation. This is a reminder that Nicholas Thoburn also offers us, using Paolo Virno’s statement that ‘If nobody asks me what political action 227

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is, I seem to know; but if I have to explain it to somebody who asks, this presumed knowledge evaporates into incoherence’ (Thoburn 2003: 139). Thoburn reminds that this is a problem within any attempt to conceptualise alterity and/or undetermined worlds which cannot fully escape a certain degree of uncertainty. If politics is necessarily subject to a form of ordering – ‘a stratification of forms and potential around the question “what is to be done?”’ (ibid.: 139) – it also reminds us that such attempts at ordering had occurred as much through dogma and ressentiment as by experimentation and creation, and, in Thoburn’s view, ‘Deleuze’s work is in many ways attributable to a similar desire to radically rethink politics away from orthodoxy and dogma, and to address, in his own particular way, the question of “what is to be done?”’ (ibid.: 140). When seen from such perspectives, conceptualising the question ‘what is to be done?’ therefore acquires simultaneously a political and ethical necessity where the one cannot be replaced by the other. Such working of the ethico-political embrace therefore calls for a continuous ‘unworking of work that is social, economic, technical, and institutional’ (using Nancy’s views), where Thoburn reminds that in such unworking Nancy excludes the separate mention of politics because any such act of unworking is already a political practice and, in a similar way, Deleuze and Guattari also omit the field of ‘politics’ from What is Philosophy? For Deleuze, politics is immanent to life, across the realms of art, science, and philosophy and has no autonomous properties. It is the process of invention and creation, at least inasmuch as invention is the process that flees molar stratified forms of identity and relation and calls forth a ‘new earth’. As such, politics is simultaneously a problematisation of forms of identity and equivalence, and a process of invention, creation, and becoming across the social. (ibid.: 141) Such thinking of the political as a continuous becoming without essentially following any singular dominant framework of thinking the political as a specific category (therefore his aversion from group activity, distrust in the public-intellectual, refusal to join the Communist Party, and so on) comes closer to what Derrida asserts in a different context about ‘messianicity without messianism’7 (Derrida 1999: 253). Such messianicity doesn’t rely on a specific messianism of a singular messiah-figure or framework for its working, rather through its own immanent (un)working it enables the eruption of the unanticipatable. Such opening for the unanticipatable, through a continuous dialogue with the different (instead of foreclosing it), functions as an essential opening for the working of the ethical within the political. Regarding the necessity of hosting such inclusive possibilities within the thinking of nation-state one can also turn towards Judith Butler and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s co-authored Who Sings the Nation State where, while exploring the nuances of the question of futurity, Spivak reflects 228

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on such possibility of thinking ethics and politics in their separate specificities, not as opposed terms, but in an intimate embrace of the ethico-political. Such bringing together of philosophy and politics in an embracing condition of the ethico-political, as Spivak hints, therefore may initiate a movement towards a futurity of ‘the unrealisable’ (Spivak and Butler 2007). In a similar vein, conceptualising democracy too calls a continuous ‘unworking’ of the existing frameworks of function within the democratic: in other words, democracy is not a fixed, rigid framework, rather as a concept it is always open to even the most dissenting voices, and therefore, a democracy is always in the process of ‘becoming democratic’. This is why, as Paul Patton reminds, Deleuze and Guattari’s views on ‘becoming-democratic’, despite their commitment to social theory and their preference for minoritarian movements, is included alongside ‘becoming-revolutionary’ as one form of contemporary resistance to the present (Patton 2008: 178). For Paul Patton, therefore, … the appearance of ‘becoming-democratic’ in What Is Philosophy? represents a new turn in Deleuze and Guattari’s political thought. It renders explicit the reliance upon some of the political values that inform democratic constitutional politics that was implicit in their earlier work. As such, it does not imply any fundamental rupture in their approach to philosophy or to politics. (ibid.: 178) This makes it clear that Deleuze and Guattari’s ideas on philosophy are directly political, whereby they attempt to emphasise on the necessity of enabling an environment for conceptual thinking (instead of closing it by dogma) in keeping alive the democratic vein within politics. To use Paul Patton’s words, … philosophy is above all a way of acting upon our experience of the world … philosophy is inherently critical of the present in which it takes place… We thereby ‘counter-actualise’ them in the sense that we are able to see them differently or to see them as they might become rather than as they currently are. In this manner, new concepts function as conditions of change by informing the deterritorialisation of existing structures and their reterritorialisation or the emergence of new ones. (ibid.: 178–9) The multiple ‘machinic assemblages’ that shape democracy as a unifying plane thus also carry the possibility of being transformed through the movements of its own progression. Nation-ness as a concept remains functional thus as a ‘chaosmos’, whereby the question then becomes one of thinking when, under what conditions, and how much an assemblage can be pushed; and democracy functions as the immanent plane that enables such 229

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movements. Regarding the plane of immanence it also needs to be reminded that, for Deleuze and Guattari, ‘the plane of immanence is neither a concept nor the concept of all concepts’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 35), it is rather like ‘a section of chaos and acts like a sieve’ (ibid.: 42). Immanence does not mean immanent to a transcendent; rather, it functions as a hosting together of disparate elements in a way that cannot be reduced into absolutely singular, discernible framework. This indiscernibility functions as the condition of undecidability and therefore keeps alive the openness of the plane to host the disparate concepts without reducing their multiplicity and differences. Such views on immanence also enable us realise Deleuze’s ontological commitment to conceptualisation as an essentially performative dimension in the phenomenological sense of continuous becoming and a rejection of the transcendental philosophical traditions that had seen conceptualisation as a referential/metaphoric function. However, since democracy functions as the only hope for change of majoritarian structures of oppression, that which breeds a continuous hope for justice, Paul Patton notes that in Deleuze and Guattari’s later works on democracy one can also trace the latent workings of a normative turn, whereby they also seem to incline towards the necessity of some regulatory form or order that can shape the otherwise unregulated play of pure immanence, and that is where they seem to stress on the significance of the constitutional form of democracy: Constitutional principles of right are necessary to protect individuals and minorities against majority opinions. In Rawlsian terms, the normative framework of democratic politics is provided by the political conception of justice that ultimately rests … The political conception of justice is immanent in the sense that it is derived from no higher source of authority. It is historical in the sense that it is subject to change as the considered convictions of the people change. (Patton 2010: 186–7) At the same time, even if one accepts a normative turn within later Deleuze, that never means a preference for universal (and thus transcendent) but rather the example of ‘sieve’ comes as a regulator; however, that is also open to change its own modalities of regulation whenever/if required. Such openness characterises democracy as a plane of transcendence, as it is reflected in Deleuze and Guattari’s emphasis on ‘becoming-democratic’. Besides, if one sees the democratic nation as an assemblage in the Deleuzian sense, then it should be kept in mind that Assemblages are thus always at risk, and the working of assemblages is therefore not one of following a set of rules but rather of engaging in cautious experimentation, a continual process of trial and error, a continual learning. (Bell 2016: 64; emphasis added) 230

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At the same time, as Ian Buchanan reminds us, assemblage can also be seen as a simultaneously constituting and constricting ‘category’ (Buchanan 2015: 382–92) if it is detached from its (trans)formative openness, and the same remains with the case of conceptualising democracy, be it as a virtual space or as a plane of assemblages. This constricting possibility of the assemblage, when it comes under the regulatory regimes of majoritarian forces, was also a caution that Deleuze and Guattari were aware of, and therefore were critical of democracy and its settlements with capital where behind the abstract identification and categorisation of ‘citizens’, ‘people’ and ‘rights’, democracy often eludes the role of capitalism in controlling everyday life, in sustaining and continuously reproducing the class differences. A machinic reproduction of democracy that has settled comfortably with the majoritarian reproduction of capitalistic control also reproduces the similar reconfigurations of capitalistic divide (the poor remaining poor and the rich becoming richer). Such democracies therefore fail to change the flow of distribution of capital and thereby such democracy needs to be continuously questioned in order to enable its continuous (un)becoming. It is in such questioning of the tendencies of liberal democracy and its sustaining (and legitimisation) of capitalism that Deleuze and Guattari’s views on politics comes closer to, as Nicholas Thoburn argues, despite having significant differences, to Marx’s views of capital (Thoburn 2003). At the same time, the conceptualisation of democracy in its abstract hope for equality and justice also holds the suspending potential that enables change from oppressive forces; in its valuation of ‘choice’ democracy therefore also cultivates hope. Therefore, as Thoburn points, democracy composes a plane of axiomatised molar subjects in relations of equivalence such that democratic politics is ‘a kind of grid’, a way of understanding and perceiving that directs all events and problems into its unifying and totalising framework (Ibid: 142). However, when the flow of democracy gets determined (or even, to a large extent, stunted/shunned) by the hegemonic majoritarian controls, turning towards minor politics acquires immediacy to recover the flow of democracy, and it is in such phases that the ‘becoming minoritarian’ (which also has to face violence and resistance from majoritarian forces) comes alongside ‘becoming democratic’ and ‘becoming revolutionary’ at the same time. Such becomings therefore initiate the movement, within a democracy, towards the opening of ‘a new earth and people that do not yet exist’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 108), which, according to Thoburn, suggest that ‘This people and earth will not be found in our democracies. Democracies are majorities, but a becoming is by its nature that which always eludes the majority’ (Thoburn 2003: 3). As Thoburn reminds, minor politics arises not from an emerging autonomy, but from cramped and complex relations that offer no easy or inevitable way out, and are packed full of disagreements, tensions, and impossibilities, and it is through such continuous becomings that the strange joy of enabling a path for the yet-to-come is hosted within politics. Thoburn, therefore, cautions us that even though such an approach 231

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might sound like some embarrassing utopianism or teleological thought, in Deleuze and Guattari’s politics it has a particularly functional effect: ‘Rather than a deferral of political practice or the affirmation of a teleology, it is a mechanism for the continual … an affective condition that is able to live with, even be nourished by, its incompleteness, its difficulties, and its “impossibilities”’ (ibid.: 148–9). I submit this negotiation, movement and affirmative hope is the essence of conceptualising democracy, and ‘becoming democratic’ calls for a continuous cultivation of such capacities to conceptualise and trans-form the dispersed politics of everyday life. In creating concepts the philosopher produces an assemblage that both problematises the presupposed identity that makes representational thought possible while simultaneously allowing for the emergence of new individuated identities, and hence paving the way for newer conceptual possibilities (Bell 2016: 67). Politics also calls for a questioning of the existing relations, to invite newer understanding, to call for newer concepts and futures. When seen from this perspective, politics, with its focus on changing existing structures, also calls for the creation of concepts that are utopian in the sense of ‘other places’.8 As Deleuze and Guattari assert, ‘So long as there is a time and a place for creating concepts, the operation that undertakes this will always be called philosophy, or will be indistinguishable from philosophy even if it is called something else’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 9). When seen in this relationship with philosophy, which remains an indispensable and integral component of the effort to think, the borders separating philosophy from politics seem to blur slowly. In the same way, the debate concerning whether to consider Deleuze a political thinker or a philosopher9 (Patton 2000: 1) seems to feed on such categorical specificities that limits the concept of ‘ethics’ itself in terms of doing philosophy and doing politics, and led thinkers to even view two absolutely different types of Deleuze as, for example, Žižek does between ‘Deleuze proper’ and ‘Guattarised’ Deleuze (Žižek 2004: 20).10 When seen in relation to the earlier view of ‘becoming’ as proposed in A Thousand Plateaus, where Deleuze, in the context of thinking politics and the minoritarian, asserts they are not something ‘given’ but involve ‘becoming’—‘Even blacks, as the Black Panthers said, must become-black. Even women must become woman. Even Jews must becomeJewish’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1977: 321)—this makes clear that the thinking of ‘ethics’ also involves such continuous becoming. In other words, ‘ethics’ too is not given but becomes ethics, and in the same way, I propose, nation-ness and politics also involve such a continuous process of (un) becoming that cannot be limited within any singular, dominant framework. Such a view not only enables us to recognise the assemblages that shape the process of becoming but also the continuous play of continuity and rupture that shapes it, and as such the thinking of ‘two’ different ethics (of doing philosophy and politics), like the thinking of two different Deleuzes, emerge as always already connected with each other. The task of the philosopher is to enable us realise the capacity of conceptualisation as an affirmative 232

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action that has the potential to suspend the present, and this task remains always political. It is for this reason that Deleuze and Guattari present philosophy as the creation of concepts that are ‘untimely’—which they use in the Nietzschean sense of ‘acting counter to our time, and thereby acting on our time and, let us hope, for the benefit of a time to come’ (Patton 2000: 3). That is why Paul Patton argue that in a constitutional state where by exploiting abstract concepts like ‘citizen’, ‘people’ or ‘rights’ majoritarian forces regulate the mobility of conceptualisation for certain hegemonic interests, a training to realise the transformative capacities and ‘anexactitude’ of mobile concepts acquire more urgent necessity to think a world that is in constant movement (Patton 2010: 23): Philosophical criticism of this kind is only effective to the extent that it connects the absolute deterritorialisation expressed in the concept with the forces of relative deterritorialisation already at work in the relevant field. When this occurs, philosophy ‘becomes political and takes the criticism of its own time to its highest point’. (Patton 2008: 179) However, as mentioned earlier, criticism of the majoritarian formations may not always be welcomed and under totalitarian regimes may be treated with hostility and violence, and therefore assertion of minoritarian rights are often suppressed as non-normative. Under such regimes, becomingminoritarian then paves way for ‘becoming-democratic’ in a manner that often verges towards ‘becoming revolutionary’. Acts of conceptualisation that enable such movement, and questions the majoritarian formations, therefore challenge the ‘considered’ opinions that determine the nature and limits of public reason within the politics of liberal democracies and, as Paul Patton reminds us, in such situations becoming-democratic acquires the urgency of counter-actualising what passes for democratic society in the present and challenges existing opinions about what is acceptable, right or just with the aim of extending the actualisation of democracy within contemporary societies (ibid.: 189–90). Dissent and difference are a symptomatic reminder of the presence of the ‘other’ within a socio-political community and recognising the presence of the other is the essential function of democracy. However, recognising the other also demands recognising the volatility and multiplicity of the ‘other’, instead of reducing the multiple into a categorical framework. Conceptualising democracy, in other words, essentially calls for recognising the ‘other’ in all its volatility and multiplicity. That is why Deleuze and Guattari place the concepts of ‘becoming-democratic’ and ‘becoming minoritarian’ in opposition to that of ‘being majoritarian’, where not only the concepts of ‘democratic’ and ‘minoritarian’ question the ‘majoritarian’, but ‘becoming’ also in its phenomenological openness continuously forces the ‘being’ to negotiate its presence beyond categorical fixities. This is where one needs to realise that democracy as a 233

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concept is never an exclusionary categorical framework, but rather is marked by a continuous inclusivity of the ‘other’, and that is where the concept of ‘becoming-democratic’ acquires its phenomenological significance. In present times, when we are witnessing the rise of violent, majoritarian, exclusionary frameworks in different parts of the world that attempt violently to suppress dissent, reduce the ‘other’ according to certain hegemonic frameworks, cut support from development of conceptual thinking or frame them only according to dominant models, Deleuze and Guattari’s emphasis on ‘becoming minoritarian’, ‘becoming-democratic’, and the necessity of realising the importance and openness of conceptual thinking offer an urgent reminder for the present situation of India. In other words, I humbly wish to push a general point here for the purpose of consideration: at a time when totalitarian forces control the choice of voicing opinions, where a majoritarian framework of Hindu nationalism dominate all questions of nation-ness, where the democratic framework sustains capitalism in its utmost force, where existing models of Marxist politics are not able to address labor questions infrastructurally, when citizenship no longer remains a right to be asserted, where dissent is seen as sedition, where acts of conceptualisation gets determined and chained through hegemonic majoritarian interests only, what can a reading of Deleuze and Guattari’s views on ‘minoritarian becomings’ and ‘becoming democratic’ offer? This is where a training in realising the suspending potentials of conceptualisation in favor of ‘becoming-democratic’ and ‘becoming minoritarian’ acquires a political character that remains functional in intimate embrace with the ethical.

Notes 1 Bhabha notes how the complex strategies of cultural identification and discursive addresses function in the name of unitary and unifying concepts like ‘the people’ or ‘the nation’ that make them the immanent subjects of a range of social and literary narratives. However, the concept of ‘nation’ remains always operative in a certain ambivalent manner. As he notes in the introduction of Nation and Narration, ‘Nations, like narratives, lose their origins in the myths of time and only fully realise their horizons in the mind's eye’. For further details, see Nation and Narration (London and New York: Routledge, 1990) and ‘Dissemination: Time, Narrative and the Margins of Modern Nation’ in The Location of Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1994). 2 This is the title of Partha Chatterjee’s essay where, referring to the ways Western scholars view the history of Indian nationalism and also how Anderson views it, Chatterjee suggests that there is a tendency to homogenise the fragmentary, multifarious side of the history of nationalism and thus seems to continue the orientalist discourse in a different manner. For further details, see ‘Whose Imagined Community?’ from the book Empire and Nation (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2010) and ‘Anderson’s Utopia’ (http://www.jstor.org/stable/1566381). 3 The incident tells us about how a group of protesters participating in the Noncooperation movement attacked and burned a police station in the Gorakhpur district of the United Province, British India on 4 February, 1922. Shahid Amin dissects this incident to show how the concept of ‘Mahatma’ appealed to them

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differently and how they understood the concept of nationalism in a different manner compared to the elites. The essay was part of the Subaltern Studies Collective project whereby the focus was to re-present the failures, gaps, lack and absence shaping history and to reveal the politics operating in constructing identity and ‘consciousness’ itself, and a coterie of thinkers strategically contributed to this approach, notably Ranajit Guha with Chandra’s death, Dipesh Chakrabarty addressing the Eurocentrism in writing history, Shahid Amin with the Chauri Chaura case, Sumit Sarkar with Kalki Avatar, Partha Chatterjee with outcasts of ‘nation’, and Gayatri Spivak with the figures of Bhubaneshwari Bhaduri, Draupadi, Jashoda, and Rani of Sirmur. For further details, see Shahid Amin’s ‘Approver’s Testimony, Judicial Discourse: The Case of Chauri Chaura’. 4 The moment of departure shapes the attempt to counter the colonial orientalist view with the assertion of the spiritual superiority of India while retaining the promise of development that Western modernity promises. It can be summed up, in Bankim’s language, as an attempt ‘to unite European industries with Indian dharma’ (Chatterjee 2010: 45; emphasis in original).The moment of manoeuvre comes with the arrival of Gandhi and the focus on reconciling the peasant consciousness with the rationalist forms of an ‘enlightened’ nationalist politics. The moment of arrival comes with independence and the arrival of the newly achieved identity as post-colonial ‘nation’, the Nehruvian nation-making project, and the challenge to reconstitute a legitimate state ideology that would balance with this moment of arrival. 5 Bachelard, in his famous book Poetics of Space, notes that it is the sense of security, belongingness, and emotional attachment that transforms a concrete room into home, and all these qualities have been stereotypically associated with the feminine. Therefore, Sue Best asserts, ‘For many male writers, most notably Gaston Bachelard in The Poetics of Space, the house is a woman—a warm, cosy, sheltering, uterine home. Bachelard explicitly refers to the ‘maternal features of the house’ while also implicitly conjuring images of the house as the realm of perfect maternal care’ (Best 1995: 182). For further details, see Best, S. 1995. ‘Sexualising Space’, in E. Grosz and E. Probyn (eds.), Sexy Bodies: The Strange Carnalities of Feminism, pp. 181–94, London and New York: Routledge. 6 One can recall that such questions of ‘theory’ and ‘practice’, specifically concerning the question of experience, also formed a major area of debate within contemporary Marxism. As one small example, one can turn towards the chapter ‘On the Materialist Dialectic’, where Althusser emphasises the necessity for conceptual training that would enable realise the possibilities of real political change, and points out very poignantly about the necessity of making a Marxist theory out of Marxist practice (not just the opposite direction), and the difference between any casual knowing and the making of a rigorous epistemology out of an existing practice that can change or transform the existing practice (Althusser 2005: 162–71). 7 Talking about the functioning of nation-time, Das reminds of the difference between messianicity and messianism that Derrida draws referring to Benjamin’s views: messianism, Derrida reminds, remains linked to ‘the memory of a determinate historical revelation” and “a relatively determinate messiah-figure’, whereas messianicity excludes these determinations and constitutes itself in a different register where messianicity can function without messianism (Das 2017: 29). 8 When Deleuze and Guattari assert that the aim of philosophy is the creation of new ‘concepts’ that have not yet been thought of and in that sense the task of philosophy is ‘utopian’, it should be remembered that they do not mean so in the conventional transcendental or metaphysical sense. The term ‘utopia’ if one recognises the etymological connections that came into existence from the Greek

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‘ou’ (‘not’) and ‘topos’ (‘place’), however mistakenly the Greek ‘ou’ was taken to be Greek ‘eu’ (‘good’) and thus the term came to be associated with ‘good place’. Their concept of utopian also remains linked with the exploration of otherness as well as the paradoxes of such exploration. 9 Paul Patton, for example, begins the first line of his ‘Introduction’ to the book Deleuze and the Political by drawing upon this consensus and making the assertion about how Gilles Deleuze has been, for a long time, not considered as a political philosopher since he has not written about commonly considered political thinkers like Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke or Rousseau. Even when he has written on philosophers who are rated as political thinkers, such as Spinoza or Kant, he has not engaged with their political writings, and nor does he address political issues such as the nature of justice, freedom or democracy. Drawing from this assertion, Patton thus from the very beginning makes it clear that his approach to present Deleuze as a political thinker would attempt a re-evaluation of the very concept of doing politics. 10 Tracing Žižek’s reading of Deleuze, Audrone Žukauskaite, in his essay ‘Ethics between Particularity and Universality’, not only attempts to show how Deleuze’s earlier and later works remain inextricably linked, but also questions the conceptual structures that leads such a reading that splits Deleuze (Žukauskaite, 2011: 188–207).

References Althusser, Louis. 2005. For Marx. Translated by Ben Brewster. London and New York: Verso. Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London and New York: Verso. Bell, Jeffrey A. 2016. Deleuze and Guattari’s What is Philosophy?: A Critical Introduction and Guide. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Best, Sue. 1995. ‘Sexualizing Space’, in Elizabeth Grosz and Elspeth Probyn (eds.), Sexy Bodies: The Strange Carnalities of Feminism, pp. 181–94, London and New York: Routledge. Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The Location of Culture. New York and London: Routledge. Bose, Sugata. 1997. ‘Nation as Mother: Representations and Contestations of “India” in Bengali Literature and Culture’, in Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal (eds.), Nationalism, Democracy and Development: State and Politics in India, pp. 50–75, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Buchanan, Ian. 2015. ‘Assemblage Theory and Its Discontents’, Deleuze and Guattari Studies, 9(3): 382–92. Buchanan, Ian and Nicholas Thoburn. 2008. ‘Introduction: Deleuze and Politics’, in Ian Buchanan and Nicholas Thoburn (eds.), Deleuze and Politics, pp. 1–12, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Chatterjee, Partha. 2010. Empire and Nation. Ranikhet: Permanent Black. Das, Anirban. 2017. ‘Sexual Difference in a Different Religiosity: Writing the Nation in “My Life”’, philoSOPHIA, 7(1), 23–44. Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. 1977. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Mark Seem and Robert Hurley. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. 1994. What Is Philosophy? Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell. New York: Columbia University Press.

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Derrida, Jacques. 1999. ‘Marx and Sons’, in introduced by Michael Sprinker (eds.), Ghostly Demarcations: A Symposium on Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx, London and New York: Verso. Guru, Gopal. 2016. ‘Taking Indian Nationalism Seriously’, in R. Azad, J. Nair, M. Singh and M.S. Roy (eds.), What the Nation Really Needs to Know: The JNU Nationalism Lectures, pp. 184–96, New Delhi: Harper Collins. Kaiser, B.M. 2015. Singularity and Transnational Poetics. London and New York: Routledge. Ophir, Adi. 2018. ‘Concept’, in J.M. Bernstein, Adi Ophir and Ann Laura Stoler (eds.), Political Concepts: A Critical Lexicon, pp. 59–86, New York: Fordham University Press. Patton, Paul. 2000. Deleuze and the Political. New York and London: Routledge. Patton, Paul. 2008. ‘Becoming-Democratic’, in Ian Buchanan and Nicholas Thoburn (eds.), Deleuze and Politics, pp. 178–95, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Patton, Paul. 2010. Deleuzian Concepts: Philosophy, Colonization, Politics. California: Stanford University Press. Saha, Subro. 2019. ‘Reading the Question of Nationalism with Deleuzian “Concept”’, Journal for Cultural Research, 23(3): 273–87. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 2012. An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty and Judith Butler. 2007. Who Sings the Nation-State? Language, Politics, Belonging. Calcutta: Seagull. Thapar, Romila. 2016. ‘The Past as Seen in Ideologies Claiming to be Nationalist’, in R. Azad, J. Nair, M. Singh and M.S. Roy (eds.), What the Nation Really Needs to Know: The JNU Nationalism Lectures, pp. 184–96, New Delhi: Harper Collins. Thoburn, Nicholas. 2003. Deleuze, Marx and Politics. London and New York: Routledge. Žižek, Slavoj. 2004. Organs Without Bodies: Deleuze and Consequences. New York: Routledge. Žukauskaite, Audrone. 2011. ‘Ethics between Particularity and Universality’, in Nathan Jun and Daniel W. Smith (eds.), Deleuze and Ethics, pp. 188–207. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

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12 WHY DELEUZE SPOKE SO LITTLE ABOUT THEATRE? Jean-Frédéric Chevallier It is a well-known fact that Gilles Deleuze did not like theatre very much. At least in the last years of his life, the French philosopher showed little interest in the performing arts. He expressed this clearly on one occasion to his student turned friend Claire Parnet: ‘I don’t go to the theatre, because theatre lasts too long, it’s too disciplined, and well … it doesn’t seem to me [ … ] that it is an art very much in scope with our time’.1 In other words: theatre is slow,2 schoolish, outdated and boring. There are numerous occurrences where Deleuze cites theatre as a counterexample, that is, as what is necessary to avoid at all costs. For instance, in Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari insist constantly on the fact that the unconscious is not a theatre of representation of neuroses but a factory that produces desires. The authors indeed draw a stark conclusion: they repeatedly denounce the ‘whole theatre put in the place of production, a theatre that disfigures this production’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1984: 305).3 But before reaching these cruel conclusions, our philosopher had taken a non-negligible amount of time to reflect on the stage practices. This happened on at least three occasions:4 the introduction to Difference and Repetition (1968), specially the section ‘The Real Movement, the Theatre and the Representation’;5 the essay ‘One Manifesto Less’,6 which accompanies a text by the Italian director Carmelo Bene (in Superpositions, 1979); and, finally, ‘The Exhausted’,7 which follows a series of brief pieces by Samuel Beckett (Quad, 1992). In the first, Deleuze proposed to speak about a theatre of the repetition, in the second he referenced a theatre of the minoration and in the third he outlined a theatre of the exhausted.8 And there is no doubt that the theoretical notions he shared there (physical and spiritual movements, repetition, difference, relation, minoration, variation, combination, disjunction, openness) invite reflection on contemporary theatre to a vivifying displacement: a call to apprehend it in a more inventive way. Reading these three short texts, we measure ‘the new distributions which [Deleuze’s philosophy] imposes on beings and concepts’.9 But ‘these new distributions’ do not lead to the development of a thought in its own right. If there are indeed three moments when Deleuze reflects consequently on the theatre, these three moments put together, end-to-end 238

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(theatre of the repetition + theatre of the minoration + theatre of the exhausted) or combined in different ways ((minoration + repetition) + exhausted), do not give a Deleuzian thought on theatre in the same way as there is a Deleuzian thought on cinema (The Movement-Image and The Time-Image) or a Deleuzian thought on literature (Proust and The Signs and Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature).10 And even, at the end of the third essay (‘The Exhausted’), the philosopher being more interested by the possibilities offered by the video screen, his reflection on the stage potentialities ends up turning short. Worse still: we are not only facing a sort of non-thought, but we also have here a focus in which the ‘no’ plays the main role. It is striking how much Deleuze insists on the negation when analysing the theatre. As if the urgency would be always to withdraw: it is necessary to remove this or to subtract that (the concept and hence the representation that mediates the relation between stage and audience in Difference and Repetition), to neutralise these (the meaning of the text and its conflictual structure as well as the director’s vouloir dire in ‘One Manifesto Less’), to exhaust those (the ‘I’ of the actor, his intent to communicate as well as the potentiality of the space in ‘The Exhausted’11). Deleuze adopts a very different attitude when dealing with cinema, literature or painting. With a film (Jean-Luc Godard), a book (Franz Kafka) or a painting (Francis Bacon), one goes, without too much complication, beyond negation and thus liberates thought and opens oneself towards new positivities.12 On the contrary, in the theatre, it is not that easy to get rid of the ‘noes’.13 But we may wonder whether this apparent non-thought about theatre, on the one hand, and this thought of the ‘no’ in theatre, on the other hand, would not designate a theoretical posture about performing arts much more alive—and vivifying—than what it looks at first glance. By accumulating negations, doesn’t Deleuze tell us something else, something much more radical and which would have to do with the peculiarity of what is now at stake on a stage? Perhaps, while stockpiling noes, is he hinting at something deeply disturbing for the analysis of today’s theatre… Let’s start with a simple question. What is there, behind the negation? For example, when Deleuze writes that, in theatre, ‘it’s a question of inventing [ … ] dances, leaps’,14 we shall understand first that we are no longer entirely on a theatre stage: strictly speaking, dance and acrobatics are not theatre. Although, today as yesterday, the distinction is not really operative (there is, for example, both dance and acrobatics in the production of Inferno directed by Romeo Castellucci at the Avignon Theatre Festival 2008, as there are mentions of both in Nāt.ya Śāstra, the ancient Sanskrit treaty on performing arts15), this assertion does point in any case to a kind of nontheatre that could be at stake in the theatre practice itself. In other words: in theatre, the non-theatre intervenes. When Deleuze was explaining that ‘theatre is real movement, and, from all the arts it employs, it extracts real movement’,16 he pointed out the fact that the theatre takes its materials outside of its own boundaries, borrows 239

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here and there from other arts which are not theatre. Here already the ‘no’ ceases to be a pure negation to become the sign of an externality. And if we read Difference and Repetition again, not considering only the two sections of the introduction we mentioned before but the entire essay, we realise that Deleuze never stops returning to theatre. The main thread of the book can be summarised simply: it is no longer possible—because it’s inadequate and ineffective—to represent differences (later called singularities17). If we look at them, if we want to see and experience them, enjoy them and rejoice in them, we shall ask ourselves the question of ‘how’:18 how to do so? In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze wonders if repeating differences contributes to increasing each of them. While exploring this possibility, he is continuously brought back to the concrete case of the theatre. The fact that two sections of the introduction deal specifically with theatre is not a sufficient reason to explain these constant returns to the question of the stage. It is rather as if, throughout the analysis (on the possibility of repeating the difference), Deleuze noted, at the same time and by small touches, sprinkled here and there, what each step of his analysis gave him to think regarding theatre. At least it is in this way that I explain the periodical appearance of a paragraph or two, sometimes just a few phrases, in which new proposals for theatre are exposed—and this, I insist, while the rest of the time, the text deals with completely different matters. In particular, after reminding that the function of art today is to ‘show the difference (going) differing’, Deleuze makes an unexpected statement: Difference must be shown differing. We know that modern art tends to fulfil these conditions: in this sense it becomes a veritable theatre of metamorphoses and permutations. A theatre where nothing is fixed, a labyrinth without a thread (Ariadne has hung herself). The work of art leaves the domain of representation in order to become ‘experience’, transcendental empiricism or science of the sensible.19 Let us consider first what doesn’t cause any trouble. Art abandons representation; it becomes a set-up, or, better said, a dispositive, a composed machine for sensible experience, a direct experience without any intermediation: there is neither story, nor message, nor sign to decipher.20 Let us continue with the problems that can be dismissed easily: formulations and expressions that undoubtedly need to be updated. Remember we are in 1968 only. It is certain that the later Deleuze will not speak in terms of ‘metamorphoses’ (he will say ‘modifications’ and ‘variations’) nor of ‘transcendental empiricism or science of the sensible’ (he will prefer to say ‘logic of sensation’). As for Ariadne’s thread,21 let’s simply remind ourselves of the idea of an interruption of the logico-narrative and sensori-motor links as it happens in modern cinema.22 In an art piece, there are no preestablished rules to put in relation one element of the composition with another, to compose with this one together with that one. 240

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The problem here is something else. It is double. On the one hand, when the work of art succeeds in showing the ‘difference (going) differing’, it can be called ‘veritable theatre’—and note that Deleuze emphasises the word ‘theatre’. On the other hand, this theatre is a ‘theatre where nothing is fixed’. The least we can observe is that, for someone who has been said not to hold the theatre in high esteem, these are two statements which give the stage practices very high responsibilities—as if, finally, theatre would be a suitable place for the variation that never ceases to vary, intersecting flows, introducing cuts, never installing fixity. Let us try to understand what it is all about. We can first understand the notion of no-fixity remembering that in Difference and Repetition, Deleuze proposed that difference be converted into an element referring to other differences that do not identify it, not fix it but differentiate it even more. He added: ‘Each term of a series, being already a difference, must be put into a variable relation with other terms, thereby constituting other series devoid of center and convergence’.23 For example, in Essay on Seasonal Variation in Santhal Society,24 the performance we presented in India from March 2016 to March 2017, when a young man pours water on his head, the arrival of a little girl who seeks to get hold of the pitcher introduces an ‘other term’, keeping active the ‘variable relation’ within the same series (pouring water over the head carrying a pitcher with hands) and working to make the latter diverge until it is transformed into another series: carrying a pitcher with hands. Similarly, the gesture of a second boy who lifts up the little one ensures that, while finding how to continue, the movement of the series carrying a pitcher with hands diverges again and thus escapes fixity; carrying with hands becomes then a third series. And when a fourth performer slides behind the other three to put a towel on the shoulders of the first, a fourth series begins: the series of the hands only.25 We need also to have in mind this first assertion by Deleuze: ‘from all the arts it employs, theatre [ … ] extracts real movement’.26 That means: the theatre integrates this or that if—and only if—this or that carries movements.27 The theatre integrates only that which, by integrating it, brings movements. The ‘all’ in the expression ‘all the arts’ is obviously not to be understood in a Wagnerian way, for the notion of ‘total theatre’ refers precisely to what we no longer want: the idea of a totality and what follows this idea—totalitarianism. And to pretend to integrate everything—‘all’, the whole thing—would not mean anything. What would this whole thing be? No, what must be understood in the Deleuzian idea of ​​an integrative theatre is that the stage has nothing of its own. At least it is without anything fixed, since what it integrates, in fine, are movements from other fields. The theatre owns nothing but its own capacity of integration. This is the second way to understand the notion of no-fixity.28 What is characteristic of theatre activity is this power (the possibility as much as the force, the potentiality) of integrating this or that without necessarily making this and that becoming theatre. Obviously it would be possible 241

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to make theatre out of it: a book spoken by an actor would no longer be a book—even in the case where the actor does not ‘act’ the text but simply speaks it. But it is also possible to give a text to read to one or more spectators, aloud for the assembly or in a low voice for himself (that has happened to me) and, in this case, the book (basically a printed text) remains a book.29 Similarly, a film projected during a theatre performance can remain a film— as in El Automóvil gris where Claudio Valdés Kuri played precisely with the fact that the old silent film showed on stage was not theatre.30 Theatre can thus integrate very different elements without making them become theatre. Here is a power neither literature (a novel about theatre is a novel), nor the cinema (a film of a theatre performance is a film31) nor painting have. It is perhaps this unusually wide spectrum of possibilities that explains why Deleuze speaks of a ‘real theatre’ as a paragon of the contemporary art gesture. On stage, the combinatorial game is played with extreme variability—extended and yet not assigned to a predetermined way of operating integration, nor to a particular material to be integrated. It may seem contradictory to speak of appropriation because, at the same time, it is asserted that the theatre has no elements of its own that define it specifically. If we say again that in theatre ‘nothing is fixed’, if the book or the film is not specific to the theatre and if, consequently, the theatre has nothing of its own, how can it come to possess something? We must not lose sight of the fact that theatre is nothing but ‘that which presents’32, here and now. In other words: this appropriation takes place in the present moment when theatre is being made, shown, seen; it takes place for these presentations, for that show, for this dispositive showcased tonight. And the appropriation operated by the stage for a given performance does not allow us to conclude that the elements which the theatre has appropriated for this particular performance are elements of the theatre in general. Imagine a huge elephant belted with lot of red ribbons crossing the scene. For a particular theatre performance, it should be possible to get something out of it—‘real movement’, as Deleuze terms it. But who, from this concrete case, would reach the conclusion that the elephant thus harnessed is a specific and fixed element characterising the theatre in general? The example is almost absurd. Nevertheless, the reasoning applies to all the materials which come to be part of a specific theatre composition. In our Essay on Seasonal Variation in Santhal Society, eating Chinese noodles or pouring water over the head are not theatre-specific activities. They do not belong to it. The projected video of a Santhal lady dancing or the broadcasted music track by French band Louise Attaque are not theatre properties either: one can watch the video at home on the web, listen to the song in the bus in Paris. And, after a dry rehearsal, we once used the table from the play to celebrate a birthday—proof that this table was not, either, a specific element of the theatre. It’s where the ‘noes’, the negations we noticed before, make sense: it is about not to generalise. What Deleuze calls minoration is basically a hunting in which the hunted prey is the fixity.33 242

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In fact, if nowadays certain performing art works seem free of tension, more relaxed, uninhibited, lighter than a few years ago, this is precisely because they have waived the obligation to use such or such an element supposed to be imprescriptible to make a theatre piece. Because today some stage artists truly want this ‘nothing’ which, Deleuze suggests, defines the singularity, the uniqueness of the theatre practices. In The Fold, we find a confirmation of this strange hypothesis. Deleuze posits that the ‘extensive unity of the arts forms a universal theatre’.34 The adjective ‘extensive’ again refers to a distance. Not only can the theatre go very far to get the elements to integrate, but these elements can also be derived from practices far removed from one another: video art and everyday life in our Essay on Seasonal Variation in Santhal Society, man climbing and dog training in Inferno by Romeo Castellucci; 3-D interactive animation technology and erotic literature in Jean Lambert-wild’s Orgia.35 Deleuze continued: Perhaps we rediscover in the modern informal [art], a similar taste for a setting ‘between’ two arts, between painting and sculpture, between sculpture and architecture, that seeks to attain a unity of arts as ‘performance’, and to draw the spectator into this very performance.36 The reader will have understood: this nothing (this ‘informal’) that today defines performative theatre,37 is a ‘setting ‘between’—the theatre becoming (or becoming again, I do not know) to be an art of weaving with a large mesh (the extensive). The spectator is taken in it because now he is a participant of it.38 In this way, we pass from the Art Theatre (with Stanislavski as its archetype39) to a ‘theatre of the arts’, ‘the living machine of the new system: [ … ], an infinite machine of which every part is machine’,40 where ‘there is also a need for mechanics as well as materials working in a strange understanding, in a connection more than in a hierarchy’.41 Today we witness emancipated theatre performances where stage and public operators (for the spectators are then and obviously part of it) propose ceaselessly unusual and nonhierarchical arrangements. If, for an example, the play Les Égarés by Pierre Meunier concludes with a magnificent dance in which the audience no longer distinguishes between the movements of the metal scaffolding and those of the actors as all are suspended and all oscillate terribly, it is because, this time, for this specific performance, the relation between scaffolding and human body as well as the nature of the combination (suspensions from the grill, rapid oscillations) potentialise (that is to say, open) the here and now of the spectator.42 Similarly, if the choreographer Va Wölf evokes ‘lights that move and dance with the dancers’,43 it is because it is obvious to him that what matters now is to compose without preconceived ideas regarding the quite heterogeneous origins of what he is combining. These stage artists take part in a different dynamic, a dynamic in which the external and common referents 243

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are both absent and useless,44 and which allows the immediate connection between present singularities. And more: by doing so, these stage artists participate in a dynamic that favours the production of unexpected links between distant singularities. In the sound walks organised by the collective Mu at the festival Paris Quartier d'été 2007, the spectator walks in the very bourgeois 16th district listening (using a mp3 player received at the beginning of the walk) a montage of sounds, voices and music taken from the much less bourgeois 18th district.45 And it is neither the 16th nor the 18th district that matter, but the unprecedented links (without any pre-established reference) which, in an extensive way, are then woven. Few years back, with Try Me Under Water, we offered the audience a nocturnal wandering in the countryside bordering Borotalpada Santhal village in West Bengal, intervening the landscape sometimes through evanescent actions (girls swinging under a banyan tree, passing cycles, rays of light drawing line across the vegetation, bodies entering the shadowed water) and sometimes through more spectacular set-ups (a multitrack video projection in the middle of a lake, a huge fire rising from a 10-metre hole carved in an open field).46 And such an unusual combination happened to deepen in unexpected ways the contemplative experience of each member of the audience. Now the question is: would we have been able to make it without fully playing the combinatory game the author of Difference and Repetition proposes? So finally, if ‘philosophy is the theory of multiplicities’,47 then we should recognise that Deleuze did indeed propose a philosophy of the theatre, insofar as what he analyses of the stage gives us to think the multiplicity necessarily at stake in today’s performing arts practices —to foresee the pressing need we have of such a multiplicity. At the end of ‘One Manifesto Less’, Deleuze suggests a ‘simpler, more humble formula’, without uttering it altogether. It is about a theatre of ‘a free and present variation’.48 Perhaps here is the expression that we have to use to name the theatre doing, to designate an activity that combines a multiplicity of materials but has nothing permanently of its own, neither elements nor rules, and which encourages a desire to constantly extract other movements and combine them again. And if we want to continue reflecting on a theatre without anything its own, then we would have to broaden our problematic. It would not be about the theatre alone but about the theatre together with cinema, literature, painting, music, etc.—the theatre, I repeat, as an a-centred combinatorial device that seeks, continues Deleuze, ‘uncovering presences under representation, beyond representation’ so that the open combination itself is a ‘presence acting directly on the nervous system, which makes impossible to set-up a representation or even to keep it at a distance’.49 In my view at least, it is to this task that, beyond the apparent negations, beyond also the comfortable rigidities, we have to continue to work: 244

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towards an integrative theatre of present and free variations, a theatre that only increases our desire to be, here and now, deeply and vividly alive.

Notes 1 All translations from French are by me. I refer sometimes, especially when the quotations are longer, to other English published translations. [‘C for Culture’, DVD L’Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze, Claire Parnet, Pierre-André Boutang, Paris, Éditions Montparnasse, 1996]. In the wellspring of 1988, Deleuze saw, at Théâtre de l’Aquarium (Cartoucherie de Vincennes, Paris), Jeu de Faust by François Tanguy. The philosopher was by then already sick. Is this the reason why—despite Tanguy’s high-quality performance—he never mentioned it in the Abécédaire interviews recorded during the following winter? 2 Cinema does not use the same velocity of variation as theatre. See Gilles Deleuze, ‘One Manifesto Less’, tr. A. Orenstein, The Deleuze Reader, ed. C.V. Boundas, New York, Columbia University Press, 1993, p. 215. 3 See also in Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, pp. 24, 49, 54–5, 86, 97, 113, 271, 298, 306–8, 316. And there are texts in which the word ‘theatre’ and its derivatives (among other ‘theatricality’ but also ‘drama’ or ‘comedy’) are used in a more relaxed and general way: it does not induce any particular specification, still less a radical dimension. See, for example, ‘Shame and glory: T. E. Lawrence’, in Gilles Deleuze, Critique et clinique, Paris, Minuit, 1993, p. 148, 149, 155, 156. 4 On three occasions at least because the communication entitled ‘The Method of Dramatization’ (1967, pp. 89–118; re-published in Gilles Deleuze, L'Ile desert and other texts: Textes et Entretiens 1953–1974, Paris, Minuit, 2002, pp. 131– 62; in English: Desert Islands and Other Texts, tr. M. Taomina, New York, Semiotext(e), 2004, pp. 94–115.) could also have been considered. In it, Deleuze hints for the first time at the possibility of a sort of becoming-theatre of the philosophy. However, I did not retain this communication because in it Deleuze takes up problems which will be further developed in Difference and Repetition—a book on which he was then working and which was to be published soon after, in 1968. Similarly, the chapter ‘The New Harmony’, in The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque could have been considered too. If this were the case, we would add the idea of a theatre of deployment or theatre of unfolding. But, despite the fact that in The Fold, Deleuze’s analysis about deployment displaces the reflection and by doing so re-activates the questioning on performing arts, references to theatre, although important, remain allusive and intermittent. Cf. Gilles Deleuze, Le Pli. Leibniz et le Baroque, Paris, Minuit, 1988, pp. 164– 89. In English: The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, tr. T. Conley, London, The Athlone Press, 1993, pp. 121–37. 5 In Difference and Repetition, there are altogether almost ten pages in which the philosopher reflects mostly on theatre, since the term appears for the first time at the beginning of the previous section: ‘Program for a Philosophy of Repetition according to Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Péguy’. Cf. Gilles Deleuze, Différence et répétition, Paris, P.U.F., 1968, pp. 13–22. 6 Gilles Deleuze, ‘Un manifeste de moins’, in Carmelo Bene, Gilles Deleuze, Superpositions, pp. 85–131. 7 Gilles Deleuze, ‘L’Épuisé’, in Samuel Beckett, Quad, Paris, Minuit, 1992, pp. 55–106. 8 Cf. in French: Jean-Frédéric Chevallier, Deleuze et le théâtre: Rompre avec la représentation, Besançon, Les Solitaires Intempestifs, 2015. In English: JeanFrédéric Chevallier, ‘How to Pass from one Image to Another? Deleuze on

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Godard’s Montage Strategy’, Fabricate (Fabric of) Art, no. 1, Kolkata, Trimukhi Platform, 2015, pp. 146–51. 9 Gilles Deleuze, Logique du sens, Paris, Minuit, 1969, p. 15. In English: Logic of Sense, tr. M. Lester, C. Stivale, London The Athlone Press, 1990, p. 6. 10 We can make this claim more strongly. For an example when it’s about Kafka, links are built with Kleist, Céline, Proust, etc., consistent and lasting links [see Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Kafka. Pour une littérature mineure, Paris, Minuit, 1975, p. 49, 52, 57, 59–63, 100, 128] while Carmelo Bene is considered all alone, that is without allies and without alliances almost: it is alluded once and at the turn of a phrase to Grotowski and Bob Wilson, that’s all [see Gilles Deleuze, ‘L’Épuisé’, op. cit., p. 94]. The situation is quite similar with music. Though Deleuze announced in a 1990 letter [‘Lettre-préface’ in Mireille Buydens, Sahara, l’esthétique de Gilles Deleuze, Paris, Vrin, 2005, p. 8] his plan to analyse music in details, there are finally very few studies on it: mostly the lecture on ‘The Musical Time’ [a version titled ‘Make audible forces non-audible by themselves’ has been published in Deux régimes de fous. Textes et entretiens 1975–1995, ed. D. Lapoujade, Paris, Minuit, 2003, pp. 142–6; and then a more complete one in Lettres et autres textes, ed. D. Lapoujade, Paris, Minuit, 2015, pp. 240–4] and the chapter ‘Of the Refrain’ [De la ritournelle] in A Thousand Plateaus [Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, tr. B. Massumi, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota, 1987, pp. 310–50]. But nowhere does Deleuze use music as a counter-example. 11 Cf. the chapter ‘L’épuisé c’est l’autre’, in Jean-Frédéric Chevallier, Deleuze et le théâtre: Rompre avec la représentation, op. cit., pp. 71–112. 12 Here is a decisive contribution of continental contemporary philosophy (Gilles Deleuze, his ally Félix Guattari of course, but also Jean-François Lyotard, Gianni Vattimo, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Rancière and others) towards the arts: to have insisted on the relationship between ideology and representation and underlined the need, in order to get free from the former (ideology), to think of practices that do not participate in the latter (representation). When Deleuze and Guattari call to ‘make the representation take flight’, to operate by the art its ‘dismantling’ [démontage], it is because they know that this ‘experimentation’ (‘not a representation […] but an experimentation’)—since not ideological—is ‘a process much more intense than any criticism’ [Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Kafka. Pour une littérature mineure, Paris, Minuit, 1975, p. 85, 88, 89]. It is a change in Deleuze’s thought as in 1953, it was still about ‘a sharp critique of representation’ [Gilles Deleuze, Empirisme et subjectivité, Paris, P.U.F., p. 13]. And Lyotard, re-reading Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus, will emphasise the fact that ‘re-presentative re-placement of performance’, because it reproduces the dynamic of this (the signifier) is worth that (the signified), nourishes the capitalist exchange ideology and thus obliterates what theatre stage could invite to produce freely [Jean-François Lyotard, ‘La dent, la paume’, in Des dispositifs pulsionnels, Paris, Galilée, 1994, p. 98; see also pp. 21–56]. 13 Somehow it is as if it was more difficult in theatre than in other arts to answer the question: how, in the non-representation, to think the positivity of the ‘no’? How to describe and analyse this ‘anti-representational function’ [‘Un manifeste de moins’, op. cit., p. 125]? How can we suggest that, under the representation, below it, there are variations? 14 ‘It’s a question of […] inventing vibrations, rotations, whirlings, gravitations, dances or leaps which directly touch the mind’ [Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, tr. P. Auton, Colombia University Press, New York, 1994, p. 8]. 15 The same can be said about traditional Chinese opera which ‘includes, in addition to spoken dialogue, singing, mime and acrobatics’ [François Cheng, Le Dit de Tian-yi, Paris, Albin Michel (Le Livre de Poche), 1998, p. 116].

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16 Gilles Deleuze, Différence et répétition, op. cit., p. 18. In English: Difference and Repetition, op. cit., p. 10. 17 See for example Gilles Deleuze, ‘L’Épuisé’, op. cit., p. 71. 18 See Gilles Deleuze, ‘Un manifeste de moins’, op. cit., pp. 87, 97, 123. 19 Other possible translation: ‘The modern work of art tends to fulfill these conditions [to show the difference (going) differing]: it becomes in this sense a real theatre, made of metamorphoses and permutations. Theatre without anything fixed (or stable), labyrinth without any thread (Ariadne hanged). The work of art leaves the field of representation to become ‘experience’, transcendental empiricism or the science of the sensible’ [Gilles Deleuze, Différence et répétition, op. cit., p. 79; in English: Difference and Repetition, op. cit., p. 56]. It’s Deleuze himself who put emphasis on the word ‘theatre’. 20 ‘The art work is a producer of sensations and, as a result of the senses’ activity, possibilities of sense emerge. […] Strictly speaking, a work never makes us think, but it works to make us want to think. The sensations experienced—when they ‘make sense’, as we say—operate as prompts for reflection, detonators of thought’ [Jean-Frédéric Chevallier, ‘From Senses to Sense: The Arts of Presenting’, Fabricate (Fabric of) Art, no. 2, Kolkata, Trimukhi Platform, 2016, p. 28; see also, in French, Jean-Frédéric Chevallier, Le Théâtre du présenter, Strasbourg, Circé, 2020, p. 225, 298–9, 304]. 21 In 1969, Deleuze asked: ‘With what thread, since the thread is lost?’ [Gilles Deleuze, Logique du sens, op. cit., p. 304. In English: Logic of Sense, op. cit., p. 263.] But it is about Plato and Socrates. In ‘The Mystery of Ariadne according to Nietzsche’ that Deleuze published in 1987 in the journal Philosophie, the (Ariane’s) thread is synonymous with ‘an enterprise of vengeance, mistrust and surveillance’ —Ariane herself becoming the second affirmation, the one who affirms the affirmation: the becoming-active [devenir-actif] of the Eternal Return [Gilles Deleuze, Critique et clinique, op. cit., p. 130]. 22 ‘Neither the narrative cause-consequence nor the action-reaction schemes apply. Neither the second image comes as the first one’s logical consequence nor as a physical result of it. […] There are no pre-established relations between images. There are no pre-established rules to go from one to another’ [Jean-Frédéric Chevallier, ‘How to pass from one image to another? Deleuze on Godard’s montage strategy’, op. cit., p. 148]. 23 Gilles Deleuze, Différence et répétition, op. cit., p. 79. In English: Difference and Repetition, op. cit., p. 56. 24 Performance directed by Jean-Frédéric Chevallier in collaboration with Surojmoni Hansda, produced by Trimukhi Platform, showcased at Trimukhi Cultural Centre in Borotalpada village during Night of Theatre n°9 • La Nuit des Idées 2017, as well as at Jadavpur University, Kolkata during Bonjour India 2018 festival and, the same year, at Vidyasagar University during ‘Performance Art and the Prospects of Folkloric Tribal Culture of Eastern India’ international conference. See and . See also: Samantak Das, ‘Conversation after the Night’, Fabricate (Fabric of) Art, n°2, op. cit., p. 187. 25 Cf. Jean-Frédéric Chevallier, ‘Theatre Relations: From a Tribal Village in India’, Fabricate (Fabric of) Art, nos 3/4, Kolkata, Trimukhi Platform, 2018, pp. 148–53. See also in French: Jean-Frédéric Chevallier, Le Théâtre du présenter, op. cit., pp. 359–61. 26 See footnote 16. We find a similar idea in A Thousand Plateaus: ‘[…] the artist begins by looking around him into all the milieus; […] the artist turns his attention to the microscopic […] for movement, for nothing but immanent movement’ [Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Mille plateaux, Paris, Minuit, 1980, p. 416; in English: A Thousand Plateaus, op. cit., p. 337].

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27 Four years later, Deleuze will extend this faculty of integration to contemporary art in general: ‘The artist […] integrates in his art shattered, burned, brokendown objects, bringing them back to the regime of desiring-machines […]. The artist stores up his treasures so as to create an immediate explosion’ [Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, L’Anti-Œdipe, Paris, Minuit, 1973, p. 39; in English: Anti-Oedipus, op. cit., p. 32]. Similarly, in Francis Bacon. Logique de la sensation [Paris, Seuil, 2002, p. 96], Deleuze emphasises the specificity of integration in painting: ‘Of all the arts, painting is undoubtedly the only one that […] integrates its own catastrophe’. 28 Integration and integrative capacity have to be understood in the mathematical sense—an integral function—or, in the pedagogical sense, a session of integration. When I participated in educational projects in the Maya tribal communities of Mexico, ‘integration sessions’ were organised. They were an opportunity to gather together the different fields recently studied. For an example, mathematics had to be taken with agriculture, physics, history, biology, literature and geography. And there was no question of an ‘all’ or ‘whole’ of these subjects, but simply of interweaving in a concrete manner the questions addressed in each field during the past few days. It was transdisciplinarity before time. 29 You can also project a text on the walls of the theatre, as it is often done now. The projected text does not become theatre because it is read by the spectators. 30 The première of this performance took place at El Galeón Theatre, Mexico City, in 2002. It was then presented all over the world. 31 There are counter-examples and therefore this is a question I cannot answer. I attended many theatre presentations from the 12-episode series Le Roman d’un acteur by Philippe Caubère. I then saw some of the other episodes at movie halls, that is, in a filmed version. And I must admit that my experience as a spectator was extremely similar: the connivance that often took root among the audience, the reactions to such and such remarks or gestures of the actor were the same in both places. This is also the case with the video capture that Don Kent made of Inferno by Romeo Castellucci (ARTE France, 2008). 32 ‘Theatre will spring up at that […] which presents’ [Gilles Deleuze, ‘Un manifeste de moins’, op. cit., p. 130. In English: One Manifesto Less, p. 221]. 33 In ‘One Manifesto Less’, Deleuze asks: ‘How to operate a minoration [minorer] (a term used by mathematicians), how to impose a minor treatment so to reveal becomings [devenirs] against the History, lives against the culture, thoughts against the doctrine, grace and disgrace against the dogma?’ [‘Un manifeste de moins’, op. cit., p. 97.] See also: Jean-Frédéric Chevallier, Deleuze et le théâtre. Rompre avec la représentation, op. cit. pp. 60–1]. 34 Gilles Deleuze, Le Pli. Leibniz et le baroque, op. cit., p. 168. In English: The Fold, op. cit., p. 123. 35 In Orgia, the interaction computer system Daedalus was associated with a realtime 3D animation engine (AAASeed) based on the catoptric phenomenon. As far as erotic literature is concerned, special attention was paid to the translation of Pasolini's text, since, in addition to the director himself, the authors Caroline Michel and Eugene Durif were also involved. The show was premiered in 2001 at the Théâtre Le Granit-National Scene of Belfort, and took over at the Théâtre national de la Colline, Paris. 36 Gilles Deleuze, Le Pli. Leibniz et le baroque, op. cit., p. 168. In English: The Fold, p. 123. About the notion of ‘performance’, see the next end note. 37 In French, one could also speak of a ‘performance théâtrale’ [theatrical performance]. Rabih Mroué uses the expression to qualify his show Riding on a Cloud, in an interview (‘Thinking things rather than telling them’) included in the leaflet distributed to the audience at the Théâtre de la Cité Internationale, Paris in October 2014. It is interesting to note that if this play is announced at

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the Cité internationale as ‘performance art’, it is categorised as ‘theatre’ by the Festival d'Automne in Paris 2014—proof that nowadays the two notions overlap and intersect. Hortense Archambault and Vincent Baudriller also insisted on the emergence of ‘forms between theatre and performance’ in the Festival d'Avignon 2010 editorial note [quoted by Joseph Danan, Entre théâtre et performance: la question du texte, Arles, Acte Sud-Papiers, 2013, p. 5]. See also: Christian Biet, Christophe Triau, Qu’est-ce que le théâtre?, Paris, GallimardFolio, 2006, p. 7. 38 Certainly, here is one of the very few occasions in which Deleuze openly employs the term ‘spectator’. But I am given to believe that our philosopher implicitly speaks about the audience each time he mentions the theatre—starting with himself as spectator: a spectator who stops to be such when nothing happens on stage, who then stops to talk about theatre. 39 Cf. Georges Banu, Les Cités du théâtre d’Art: De Stanislavski à Strehler, Montreuil, Théâtrales, 2000. For Georges Banu, the Art Theatre is characterised by a constant concern to revive the traditions of the theatre art—the re-setting in movement takes place from within the theatre field itself. 40 Gilles Deleuze, le Pli. Leibniz et le baroque, op. cit., p. 169. In English: The Fold, op. cit., p. 124. 41 Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Kafka. Pour une littérature mineure, op. cit., p. 103. It’s Deleuze and Guattari’s emphasis. 42 This performance was showcased, among other places, at Théâtre de la Bastille in Paris in 2007. 43 Fabienne Arvers, ‘Entretien avec Va Wölf”, in Hors-série, January–March 2011, Paris, Théâtre de la Ville, p. 5. 44 Once again, Jean-François Lyotard is not far. He wrote: ‘Here is our problem [...], at least its position: theatricality without reference’ [Jean-François Lyotard, Économie libidinale, op. cit., p. 29]. 45 The title of this work presented in Paris in July and August 2007 was Super 16. 46 Performance directed by Sukla Bar, Jean-Frédéric Chevallier, Surojmoni Hansda, Chandrai Murmu and Pini Soren, produced by Trimukhi Platform, showcased in Borotalpada village during Night of Theatre n°9 • La Nuit des Idées 2017 as well as at Jadavpur University, Kolkata during Bonjour India 2018 festival. See http:// trimukhiplatform.org/trymeunderwater/ and https://youtu.be/qHr_vnwJeXY. See also: Samantak Das, ‘Conversation after the Night’, op. cit., p. 188. 47 Gilles Deleuze et Claire Parnet, Dialogues, Paris, Champs-Flammarion, 1996, p. 179. 48 Gilles Deleuze, ‘Un manifeste de moins’, op. cit., p. 123. In English: ‘One Manifesto Less’, op. cit., p. 219. My emphasis. At the same period (1979–1980), the notion of ‘variation’ appears in A Thousand Plateaus: ‘Form itself became a great form in continuous development, a gathering of the forces of the earth taking all the parts up into a sheaf. Matter itself was no longer a chaos to subjugate and organise but rather the moving matter of a continuous variation. The universal had become a relation, variation. The continuous variation of matter and the continuous development of form’ [op. cit., p. 340. Deleuze and Guattari’s underlining; in French: Mille plateaux, op. cit., p. 419]. 49 Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon. Logique de la sensation, op. cit., p. 53.

References Chevallier, Jean-Frédéric. 2015. ‘How to Pass from One Image to Another? Deleuze on Godard’s Montage Strategy’, in Fabricate (Fabric of) Art, n°1, pp. 146–51. Kolkata: Trimukhi Platform.

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Deleuze, Gilles. 1968. Difference and Repetition. Translated by Paul Patton. London: Bloomsbury. Deleuze, Gilles. 1993. The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque. Translated by Tom Conley. London: Athlone Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 2000. Cinema 2: Time-Image. London: Athlone Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 2004. ‘The Method of Dramatization’, in Desert Islands and Others Texts, pp. 94–115. Translated by Mike Taormina. New York: Semiotext(e). Deleuze, Gilles. 1992. ‘L’Épuisé’, in Samuel Beckett, Quad et autres pièces pour la télévision, suivi de L'Épuisé par Gilles Deleuze, pp. 55–106. Paris: Minuit. Deleuze, Gilles. 1979. ‘Un manifeste de moins’, in Gilles Deleuze and Carmelo Bene, Superpositions, pp. 85–131. Paris: Minuit. Deleuze, Gilles and Parnet, Claire. 1996. ‘C for Culture’, in L’Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze. Paris: Éditions Montparnasse (DVD). Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix. 1984. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Robert Hurdey, Martin Seem and H. Richard Lane. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix. 1986. Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature. Translated by Dana Polan. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix. 2004. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London and New York: Continuum.

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Page numbers in Italics indicate figures. abstract machine 5, 44 actualisation 36, 53, 55–56, 153, 160 adjacency 112 adjectivisation 99 aesthetical-political perspective 111 alcohol 8 American Psychological Association’s (APA’s) 210 analogy 26 animation 144 anthropocentrism 28 anti-colonial resistances 223 anti-hegelianism 54 anti-methodology 31 Anti-Oedipus 10, 12, 16, 37–38, 112, 114, 209, 227 anti-thesis 144 anti-transcendent immanence 24 Aristotle 30 articulation 150 Artist (2013): enfolding 173–176; movement of bodies 170–171; nonlinear temporalities 167–168; repetition 172–173; unfolding 173–176 assemblage 3–6; collective enunciation 113; conditions 53; deterritorialisation 42–45; differently-abled bodies 159–160; enunciation 141; infra-assemblage 45; inter-assemblage 45; intraassemblage 45; machinic assemblages 229; material composition of 5; rhizomic of difference 145–148 asymmetric components 4 attributes 24; god 27; material 158; univocity 29

augmented fluidity 151 Autonomia 227 bachelor machine 116 basic anatomical elements 42 Bateson, Gregory 63–64 Baudrillard, J. 158 becoming 11; minor 13–15; politics 13–15; revolutionary 233; third gender identity 210–211 bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BSTc) 211 Bergson, H. 23, 32, 163, 168 bharatmata 224 Bhatkhande, Vishnu Narayan 91–94, 96–100; adjectivisation 100; conceptualisation 94; discontinuity 95; dissymmetry 95; extreme point 90; foregrounds 92–93; Hindustani music 94; Hindustani sangeet paddhati 91; microtones 94; motifs 90; musical entities 90; nomadism 96; nonsituated given 101; original difference 96; refrain 92; repetition 93; scientific knowledge 105; singularity 102–105; Srimallakshaya Sangitam 91; territorialisation 93; theoretical practice 100 bhayanaka 65 bibhatsa 65 biological immanence 40 blocks of deterritorialisation 117 bodies 130; differently-abled bodies 159–160; latitude 39; longitude 39; movement of 170–172; movements

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INDEX

60; rhizomatic relations in 163–164; virtual memory 161 Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex 207 body without organs (BwO) 9, 38, 42 Boulez, Pierre 89 brahminism 8 capitalism 10, 137–140 cartographic model 39 caste system 6–9; axiomatic control 129; catastrophe 69; diagram 8 Chatterjee, Arnab 14 chatur 8 Christian diagram 6 Cinema II 161 Cinema of Poetry 121 Civil and Fundamental rights 130 co-creation of concepts 11 code graft 13, 60, 63–64 codification 66 Cold War 150 collective enunciation 13, 113 colonialism 80, 223; modernity 9 communication 61, 70–72, 104, 114 Communist Party 227 community 119 complexity 116, 212 complication 24 concept-creation 11 conceptualisation 16, 94, 221–222, 226, 233 Concordia facultatum 49 conformism 148 connectors 116 consciousness 103 consistency 39 Constitution 129 Constitution of India 127 continual movement 146 Copernican revolution 24 counter-effectuation 12, 38, 56 counterrealised 55 creator-good 8 Critique of Judgment 50 culture 61–62 curving 75, 76 Cuvier, Georges 42 cybernetic model 74

dalit literature 127–128; axiom 130; becoming 130–132; capitalism

137–140; desire 132–135; novel 144; politics 128, 135–137; post-colonial approaches 130; postcoloniality 132–135 dalit territories: community living 183; cultures 185–190; dissimilarities 185; hereditary low-paid occupational divisions 188; Hindu middle-class neighbourhood 185; historical dependence 189; inhabitants 187; landowning farming communities 184; major communities 186; minor communities 186; mud houses 189; panchayat ghars 183; pinds 189–190; politics 192–195; progressive sense of place 185; social inclusion 192–195; social mobility 191–192; territorial sacralisation 190–191; upper-caste neighbourhoods 185; varna 189 D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson 68, 68 datum 153 decomposing 122 de-figuralisation 53 deictic gestures 66 DeLanda, Manuel 40–41 Deleuze and Guattari studies in India Collective (DGSIC) 2 Deleuzian concept 13 Deleuzian multiplicity 32 Deleuzian ontology: becoming 22; Difference and Repetition 21; false movement 23; fundamental enemy 21; interactive negation 22–23; Phenomenology of Spirit 23; proximate enemies 21; selfconsciousness 23 Deleuzian paradigm 61 Deleuzian philosophy 29 Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy 2, 10, 12, 17 Deleuzo-Guattarian rhizome 158 Delhi High Court 202 democracy 221, 230–231 depth 35 desire 111 Desire, Body and Capitalism 14 desiring-machines 9 deterritorialisation 3, 5, 44, 112; assemblage 42–45; blocks of 117; language 114; third gender identity 209–210 Dhasal, Namdeo 126–127

252

INDEX

diagrams of discipline 6 dialectical class formation 5 Difference and Repetition 12, 37, 45, 49 differenciation of difference 24 different and singular 90 differentiation-individuationdramatization-differenciation 35 differentiator 101 differently-abled bodies 159–160 digital and analogic 60 digital camera 76 Dirlik, Arif 127 disability 160; repetition 166–167 disequilibrium 102 disidentification 16 disintegration 56 dispositive 54 dissimilarities 185 divergent moments 102 documentary films 122 documentation 152 double bind 113 double-capture 11 dramatisation 29 dualism 28, 55 dualistic terms 34 duration 61 dysphoria disorder model 207 economic market 82 embryology 35–36 emotions 77, 161 empirical reality 101 energy 79 enfolding and unfolding 162–163, 165 enigmatic concept 55 Enkrateia 6 epistemological legitimisation 50 epochè—movement 78 eternal return 25 ethics 224 Euclidean approach 40 Euclidean geometry 41 Euclidean space 42 eurocentric pole 2 eurocentrism 11 events 12 experience of difference 50 explication 24, 103 Explorer 145, 148–151 extreme point 90

fabulation 123 face movement analysis 76 false souls 34 feminist analysis 204–209 filmmaking 145, 147, 149; Artist (2013) 159; Explorer 148–151; interaction 154; macrocosm 150; microcosm 150; multiplicity 154; translations 153; Trip 151–155 Films Division of India 144 Films Division studio 144 fluid force-field 5 The Fold (1988) 114, 243 foldings 42, 127–128 Forsythe, William 76 Foucault 6 fragility 114 Francis Bacon: Logic of Sensation (1981) 114 full of desire 115 Gauss, Fredrich 40 gaze, reversing of 135 generalised pragmatics 53 genesis 33 geometric immanence 40 geometric transformations 69 gestures 81; archive of 74; design process 84; matter 77–80; social life of 72–74; techno-criticism 82 god: attributes 27; expression 29; human knowledge 26; natura naturata 28; presentational concept 29; Propria 27 gram panchayats 187 Grotowski’s metamorphosis theory 65 hallucinatory phenomenon 149 hard currency 127 hasya 65 Hindu communities 68 Hinduism 8 Hindu middle-class neighbourhood 185 Hindustani music 13, 91–92, 100 Hindustani sangeet paddhati 13, 91; Bhatkhande, Vishnu Narayan see Bhatkhande, Vishnu Narayan homogeneity 150 Homo Hierarchicus 6 hoplites 4 human/non-human actors 153

253

INDEX

iconic gestures 66 identity of difference 24 idiosyncratic gesture analysis 76 image: enfolding and unfolding 162–163; of movement 146; real continuum 158 imagination 50, 222 immanence 55 immanent determination 50 improvisation technology 76 incompatibility 102 incompleteness 114 India Matri Bhumi 119 Indian caste system 6 Indian Constitution 129 Indian ethos 8 Indian Penal Code (IPC) 202–203 indigeneity 11 indiscernibility 52 individuation 30, 53 intensity 34–35, 114; Anti-Oedipus 38; consistency 39; counter-effectuation 38; depth 35; difference of 34; embryology 35; intensive spatium 9, 37; manual labour jobs 188; nonconsistency 39; quantum physics 35; science 38; A Thousand Plateaus 39 interactions 154; design process 84; systems 60 intercessors 119–120 Internet 80 interruption 117 Kantian interpretation 115 Kathakali 66 Keith Ansell-Pearson 32 Khan, Zakiruddin 98, 102 kinematics of the egg 36 knowledge system 101 Kutiyattam performance 65 La Gestothèque 62 language 62, 99; deterritorialisation 113–114; recovering 118 Language, Embodiment and the Third Sex 206 laughing 115 Leiris, Michel 135 Limbale, Sarankumar 130 liminal frame 78 linear transformation 41

lines of flight 111 literary machine 141 living system 147 locomotion 146 Logic of Sense 53–54 machine 118 machinic assemblages 115, 229 make fiction 122 making legends 119 Malayalam theatre 69 Malayali counterparts 8 marxism 234 Massumi, B. 169 material attributes 158 materialisation 33 matribhumi 224 Matter and Memory (1896) 160 measure 61 meat 8 mediation 165 medical research 211–212 messianism 228 metaphoricity 111–114, 221 metaphysics 27, 54 Middle Ages 6 militarism 5 minorities 117, 120, 141 misfortune 113 mobile technology 60, 146 modernity 117; political cinema 119; time-image of 116 monad 159 morphogenetics of theatre, epicentres 68 motherland 224 motifs 90–91 movement 61 multiplicities 5, 40, 154; conceptual point 9; Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy 9; Deleuzo-Guattarian plateau 10; philosophy 244; repetition 166; schizoanalysis 10; singularities 166; temporal 160; territoriality 14–17; univocity 9 museification 83 musical entities 90 mutations 8–9 myths and narratives 190 narrow-mindedness 52 national imagination 128 nationalism 127, 225

254

INDEX

National Legal Services Authority (NLSA) vs. Union of India and Ors. 15, 201 nation-ness 221–226, 229 natural fatigue 52 natural geometries 69 Natyashastra 64 navarasa 76 necropolitics 81–82 negative side of science 104 negative theology 50 neorealism 120 Nietzsche 26 nomadic thinking 11 nomadism 96 nomadology 9 non-conceptual difference 52 nonconsistency 39 non-normative group 206 nonnumerical multiplicity 32 non-penovaginal relationships 202 non-philosophical 54 numerical multiplicity 32 objective 32 ontological unity 29 Order of Things 45 organism 38; evolution of 41 organogenesis 80 original difference 96 O’Sullivan, S. 166 Othello 67 Overboe, J. 160 pancha 8 panchaguna 8 panchakarma 8 pancharatna 8 panchavadyam 8 panopticism 44 Panopticon 5 parallel hypothesis 140 parallelism 29, 41 Pasolini, Pier Paolo 121–122 passionate 70 Pati, Pramod 144 Pati’s experimental method 145 percussion instrument 70 performance 64 phalanx 4 phatic gestures 66 philosophical concepts 10

Philosophy 32 Pierre Gufflet 76 Piette, Albert 82 pind–periphery matrix 188 plane of consistency 37, 42 plane of immanence 39, 209, 230 plane of nonconsistency 39 plane of organization 37 politeness 81 politics: beyond-representation 125; dalit literature 128; dalit territories 192–195; Explorer 148–151; marxism 234; philosophy 221; political cinema 117; political immediacy 13; time 148–151 politicsdalit territories 192–195 pollution 8; purity map 7 positive unconscious 104 postcolonial approach 128 post-colonial criticism tool 77–80 postcolonialism 127 posteriori synthesis 4 post-Independence dalit assertion 125 post-scriptum 83–84 post-war period 117 potential community 113 poverty 114 power: articulated structures of 148; of false 115 Pranava Veda 8 presentational concept 29 primordial brahminism 8 prison 4 Problem of singularity 13 Propria 27 Protection of Civil Rights Act 129 protocols of experience 111 pseudostories 121–122 psychoanalysis 111 psycho-social development 212 Punjab Land Alienation Act 184 purity 8 quantum physics 35 Quixotic fantasy 14 radical empiricism 51 radical temporalisation 56 Ramayanas 68 Rao, Vijay Raghav 145 rasasutra 64 recognition 49, 160

255

INDEX

recomposing 122 recording process 77 reflexive theory 127 refrain 92 regimes of signs 53 relativity 61 repetition 93; difference 166–167; disability 166–167; multiplicities 166 resonator 104 reterritorialisations 8, 44, 112, 114 returning 25 reverse replication 33 reversing of gaze 135 revolutionary reaction 119 Roots Theatre Movement 70 Rosi, Gianfranco 123 Rossellini, Roberto 119 sacralisation 190 saha, subro 16 same 26 scheduled castes 125, 129 scheduled tribes 125, 129 schizophrenia 10 scientific knowledge 100 Scotus, Duns 26 self-affection 56 self-awareness 56 self-conscious 150 self-differentiating difference 54 self-identification model 207 self-justification 52 self-referential 103–104 sensibility 51 sensory-motor complex 128 sex reassignment surgery (SRS) 202 shell 76 singularity 102–105, 223, 225 smooth space 9 social codification 211 social encoding 212 social interaction 14 sociality 129 social mobility 191–192 social theory 200 society 5 socio-cultural space 11 socio-political milieu snatches 141 socratic courage 14 sovereignty 6 space, territoriality 181 spatio-temporal dynamisms 29 spatium 35

spectral speech 128 Spinoza 24, 26, 39 Srimallakshaya Sangitam 91 story-telling 119, 122 striated space 56 strong passport 127 structuralism 111–112 style 103 subalternity, equating 127 subcultural geography 199–200 subjective form 153 subordinate syntheses 50 sudasana 8 Sudra waadas 187 Supreme Court of India 210 Surti, Abid 144–148 swarm of appearances 52 Symbolism: Its Meaning and Effect 147 symbolisms 149 symmetry-breaking process 41 systematisation 101 Tamil groups, south India 8 Tamil Visvakarma 8 temporal discontinuum 150 temporal multiplicity 160 territoriality 14, 92, 153; dalit territories see dalit territories; functional component 181; multiplicities 14–17; myths and narratives 190; sacralisation 190; social interaction 181; space 181; time 181 theatre activity 241 Theendal Thattan 8 The Logic of Sense (1969) 114 theory of transformations 69 third gender identity: becoming 210–211; Deleuze, Gilles 200–204; deterritorialisation 209–210; feminist analysis 204–209; issues at work 199–200; medical research 211–212 Thompsonian exploration 69 A Thousand Plateaus 4, 12, 21, 36–37, 39, 53–54, 112, 145, 166, 219 Thrissur School of Drama 76 time 61; psychotropic politics of 148–151; scaling 77–80, 78; territoriality 181; time-lapse biography 148 trader of concepts 56 traditions 64, 187 transcendence 28

256

INDEX

transcendental empiricism 12, 30–35 transcendental empiricism 12 transcendental model 49 transgender 199, 202 transversality 104 Trip 151–155 unconditioned 30 unconscious 104, 149 underdevelopment 114 undifferentiated continuum 41 unfolding-enfolding process 159 uniformity 150 universality 49, 89; time-lapse 61 univocity 26; attributes 29; of being 26–30, 28; of cause 29 Untouchability Offences Bill, 1954 129 unvoiced song 90 upper-caste neighbourhoods 14, 185 uppermost caste 8 varna 189 Vedas 8 vedic conception 7 veracity 49 video-encoding algorithm 66

Vietnam War 150 violence 118 virtual–actual relationship 34 virtuality 12, 32–34; actualisation 160–162; epistemological legitimisation 50; memory 161; mode of implication 56; plane of immanence 51; pre-philosophical level 48; regimes of signs 53; sublime disposition 51; supersensible 51; transcendental empiricism 51; truth 49; unfolding-enfolding process 161; universality 49; veracity 49 visualism: democracy 148; filter 77 Visvabrahmins 7–8 Visvakarma community 7–8 war machine 9 Wendell, S. 160 Western philosophy 11 Western society 6 wheel of births 25 will-to-power 25 Winter Olympics 153 work, issues at 199–200 World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) 207

257