Beginning to mobilize Deleuzian concepts I was recommended, by my supervisor, the chapter “On Philosophy” by Gilles Deleuze in Negotiations (1995) – a very accessible book of interviews in English. At first, two things were clarified.
One, what was being called ‘problems of thought’ I had only thought through briefly, and had not distinguished it from what might be confused as ‘problem in thought’. Problems of thought are not problems one encounters ‘when thinking’, but the very problem of what kind of activity, of process, thinking is (a simlar confusion is between someone saying ‘the problem in bi-lingual education is not enough bi-lingual teachers’ and the ‘problem of bi-ligual education’ which is considering the very question of education practice in bi-lingual (and bi-cultural and post-colonial) contexts).
Two, Deleuze does not speak of concepts alone, but of three forces: concepts, percepts and affects. He says, ‘This is all I’m saying: there’s a hidden image of thought [that is the on going problem for philosophers] that, as it unfolds, branches out, and mutates, inspires a need to keep on creating new concepts, not through any external determinism but through a becoming that carries the problems themselves along with it.’ (p149). He says concepts are like songs that give tempo, rhythm, melody and structure to this unfolding, percepts are ‘packets of sensations and relations that live on independently of whoever experiences them’ and affects are ‘becomings that spill over beyond whoever lives through them (thereby becoming someone else)’ (p 137). These three come together.
Deleuze’s suggests his main concept is the ‘event’ which he wants to replace the concept and verb ‘to be’. Such a large concept, and image of thought, being written as two such small words reminds me of Annmarie Mol arguing that for her philosophy the meaning of ‘is’ has changed’:
‘somewhere along the way the meaning of the word “is” has changed. Dramatically. This is what the change implies: the new “is” is one that is situated. It doesn’t say what atherosclerosis is by nature, everywhere. It doesn’t say what it is in and of itself, for nothing ever “is” alone. To be is to be related. The new talk about what is does not bracket the practicalities involved in enacting reality. It keeps them present.’ (Mol, 2002: 54)
For Both Deleuze and Mol we begin with multiplicity. But the thread I am going to follow now is what Mol means by being situated, and I am going to begin to do this by reading about the ‘event’ in Deleuze.
Deleuze, Gilles. Negotiations, 1972-1990. Martin Joughin. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995.
Mol, Annemarie. The body multiple : ontology in medical practice. Science and cultural theory. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002.
