The Difference of Univocity
by Beth Metcalf
Introduction
Unique to Deleuze’s philosophy is his
concept of ‘difference’. Many Deleuzeans seem to
think that his ‘difference’ is merely that which
maintains or produces identity. But, if that is what
Deleuze means by the term, then what would be different about his
‘difference’? Wouldn’t this
“difference” be just the same as any traditional use of
the term? How is such a use of the term any different from
the principle of identity that is determined by our conceptual
Image of what is possible? How does that
“difference” do anything other than mediate identity?
Isn’t that just what Deleuze tells us he is against? It
is not simple to escape our habit of Representational Thought.
In this paper I will use Anti-Oedipus by Deleuze and
Guattari to illustrate the ‘difference’ of univocity.
Deleuze presents his univocity as the means of reaching real
difference. I contend that Deleuze’s univocity
escapes what has always seemed inescapable. The difference
of univocity escapes the principle that maintains and produces
identity.
Deleuze & Guattari’s Univocity
If we are to understand Anti-Oedipus,
we must understand that D&G together still lay out a plane
consistent with what Deleuze always saw as Spinoza’s
univocity. Deleuze and Guattari write that organs-partial
objects and body without organs are one and the same thing.
(AO 326-7) “Partial objects are the direct powers of the
body without organs, and the body without organs, the raw
material of the partial objects.” The body without
organs is Spinoza’s Substance that fills space to degrees of
intensity. Partial objects are these intensive degrees
(Spinoza’s attributes of real distinction) that cannot
exclude or oppose each other. That is, molecular
desiring-production and molar social production are
Spinoza’s attributes. They qualify the body without
organs, Spinoza’s Substance.
Therefore, Deleuze does not change his mind
about univocity when he writes with Guattari. Deleuze tells
us (Logic of Sense 21-2) that sense (that which is
expressed) does not exist outside the proposition (the
expression). And isn’t this just what Deleuze and
Guattari mean when they tell us (AO 302)
“….desiring-machines are in social-machines and nowhere
else.” Desiring-machines (sense expressed) are in
social-machines (collective expression) and nowhere else. But
sense does not merge with the propositional expression. Sense
is not the attribute of the proposition. Rather, sense is
said of states of affairs, or things. That is, sense is
attributed to things, not the proposition. But,
‘things’ are not to be confused with already formed
substances. Substance is qualified by the attributes that
fill space to really distinct degrees of intensity. Modal
‘things’ come from a Substance that has been qualified
by the attributes. That is, Substance must be differentiated
before modal ‘things’ are differenciated.
Deleuze does not change his mind about
univocity when he writes with Guattari. When D&G tell
us (AO 340-1) that desiring-production and social-production are
identical in nature but different in regime, we must not fall
into the common misconception that identity in nature means
conceptual identity. Their difference in regime is the real
distinction of attributes/partial-objects. Their identity
in nature is the ontological singularity of the qualified
Substance/body without organs that fills space to degrees of
intensity. The problem for schizoanalysis is how to keep
the body without organs from closing into a totalizing structure
that maintains or produces conceptual identity. Schizoanalysis
attempts to reach the difference of the Real.
Molecular and Molar Poles
There are two poles: molecular
desiring-production and molar social-production. These
poles are different in regime. Yet they are identical in
nature. But we must not fall into the common
misunderstanding that these are poles of an oppositional
structure that produce or maintain identity. Instead, we
must understand that Deleuze and Guattari are thinking in terms
of univocity. Difference in regime cannot mean that there
is a constant relation of variability where difference would
mediate identity. Difference in regime is two types of
multiplicities. There are really distinct partial objects,
like Spinoza’s attributes that cannot exclude or oppose each
other. They cannot be in a constant relation of variability
(even an infinite variability) that would maintain or produce
identity. Yet the different regimes are identical in
nature, which means they are said as the same ontologically.
The regimes include the real distinction of multiplicites, but
they are always ontologically singular Substance filling space to
degrees of intensity.
There are two poles: molecular
desiring-production and molar social-production. Their
difference in regime is the difference in scale of two types of
multiplicities -- molecular and molar. But how do we reach
that desiring-production of the unconscious? Can we reach
it if we think of it as a process that maintains or produces
identity? D&G say (322-3), “The desiring-machines
in fact are only reached starting from a certain threshold of
dispersion that no longer permits either their imaginary identity
or their structural unity to subsist.” Partial objects
are in a state of dispersion so that part of one machine refers
to a part of a different machine, like the wasp and the orchid.
Partial objects cannot maintain or produce identity. They
are not parts of even a fragmented whole. Desiring-machines
are really distinct. Nothing in one machine depends on
anything in another. And the body without organs is
produced as a whole alongside the partial objects --- added as
another really distinct part. (326) “The body without
organs and the organs-partial objects are opposed conjointly to
the organism.” That is, desiring production is opposed
to the concept of ‘organism’ which could only maintain
or produce identity.
Therefore, as we have seen, the poles of molecular desiring-production and molar social-production are different in regime. And furthermore, the two poles are identical in nature. Their identity in nature means they are ontologically single. (340) Every molecular formation is itself a direct investment in a molar formation. Their relation is inseparable, each time. (341) The two poles, molecular and molar, are in the open relation of included disjunction in two directions of subordination. (280) When the molecular forces are subordinate to the molar, there are subjugated groups. When large molar aggregates are subordinate to molecular phenomena, there are subject groups. Each subject group reaches intensive singularity that, with division, changes the nature of the identity of both poles. Both poles are identical in nature each time. With subject groups, the identical nature of the poles changes each time there is a new really distinct singularity. (287-8) Both senses of subordination are the same machine, even though they are not the same regime or scale of magnitude.
Deleuze and Guattari say (30),
“….desiring-production is one and the same thing as
social-production.” (285) No machine is a single
thing. It is a society. Social-production and
desiring-production are identical in nature and different in
regime. That is, desiring-production is not personal-mental
form in opposition to social-production as collective-material
substance. Such opposition would be closed into already
formed substances of one totalizing structure that maintains or
produces conceptual identity. Rather, we are told that
there is never a difference in nature between desiring-machines
and social-machines. There is only a difference in regime.
So, the ‘nature’ that is identical in desiring and
social production is always collective and material in both
regimes, even as the regimes are distinct in their relations of
size and their relation of subordination. Deleuze &
Guattari call ‘subjugated groups’ those in which the
molar dominates the molecular. ‘Subject groups’
are those in which the molecular forces dominate the molar.
This difference in regime and identity in nature is two
intersecting types of multiplicities. And this means that
production is immediately distribution and consumption. There
is no mediation among the syntheses (connection, disjunction, and
conjunction) that could maintain or produce identity.
Partial Objects and Uses of the Syntheses
D&G say (25) “From the moment that
we place desire on the side of acquisition, we make desire an
idealistic….conception, which causes us to look upon it as
primarily a lack: a lack of an object, a lack of the real
object”. However, (26-7) “Desire does not lack
anything….Desire and its object are one and the same
thing….The real is not impossible; on the contrary, within
the real everything becomes possible.” Therefore,
whereas (295) Oedipus is built on the ideology of lack, the
molecular unconscious knows nothing of castration-lack. (60)
Partial objects lack nothing. (324) “In short,
partial objects are the molecular functioning of the
unconscious.” (323) Partial objects as parts of
desiring-machines are mutually independent. Nothing in one
depends on anything in the other. They have real
distinction, but no numerical distinction. They are not
castrating distributions of lack. They are not exclusive
disjunctions of totalizing identity, original or produced. They
are not in variable relations that produce or maintain identity.
They are dispersions of partial objects of different machines,
like the wasp and the orchid. Partial objects are disparate
intensities.
Therefore, ‘partial objects’ as defined by D&G must not be confused with the structuralist definition of Melanie Klein. D&G say (AO 324-5), “….we cannot even go along with the image of the partial objects that their inventor, Melanie Klein, proposes. This is because, whether organs or fragments of organs, the partial objects do not refer in the least to an organism that would function phatasmatically as a lost unity or a totality to come. Their dispersion has nothing to do with a lack, and constitutes their mode of presence in the multiplicity they form without unification or totalization. With every structure dislodged, every memory abolished, every organism set aside, every link undone, they function as raw partial objects, dispersed working parts of a machine that is itself dispersed.” D&G explain that to reach desiring machines is to reach the partial objects of real distinction. No imaginary identity or structural unity can persist.
Deleuze had described the three syntheses of univocity prior to his writing with Guattari. But together they use a new language of machines, flows, partial objects, and body without organs. (324-6) The first synthesis is the binary connection of partial objects where (5-6) “Every “object” presupposes the continuity of a flow; every flow, the fragmentation of the object.” The second synthesis is the overlapping of partial objects in the indiscernibility of their inclusive disjunction. The third synthesis is the conjunction of partial objects in all permutations. (325-6) These syntheses are the body without organs in immediacy with the organs-partial objects. The oscillations of attraction and repulsion of partial objects on the body without organs means that anything may flow and anything may be blocked. There is no castrating lack. There is no totalizing organism that maintains or produces identity.
There are two uses of the syntheses (78-9).
D&G contrast legitimate immanent uses of the syntheses with
illegitimate transcendent uses (110-11). The legitimate
anoedipal use of the connective synthesis is partial and
nonspecific in contrast to the Oedipal illegitimate use that is
global and specific. The legitimate use of the disjunctive
synthesis is inclusive and non-restrictive in contrast to the
illegitimate use that is exclusive and restrictive. The
legitimate use of the conjunctive synthesis is nomadic and
polyvocal in contrast to the illegitimate use that is segregative
and biunivocal. With the legitimate uses, the three
syntheses are immediately connection, disjunction, and
conjunction. But the illegitimate uses lead to the three
errors (lack, law, and signifier) that close everything into a
theological structure that reproduces identity.
The Sub-representative Reverse Side of
Structure
(78-9) Oedipus gives us a choice. Either
we must accept the Symbolic differentiations of its castrating
structure, or we will fall into undifferentiated black night of
the Imaginary. But D&G say (82-3) that the true
difference in nature is not between the Symbolic and the
Imaginary, but between real machinic production, on the one hand;
and the structural whole of the Imaginary and the Symbolic, on
the other. Real anoedipal use is the reverse side of
Oedipal structure (Imaginary and Symbolic) with its exclusive
use. It is the structural operation itself that (306-7)
“distributes lack in the molar aggregate” as furrowed
by the line of castration. (357) It is the castrating
apparatus that distributes lack into desire, drying up flows,
breaking from Real desiring-production. D&G say (300)
that desiring-production of machines is the
“subrepresentative” domain of legitimate uses of the
syntheses where “everything is possible”. And
this subrepresentative field will work in spite of Oedipus.
(309-10) The subrepresentative is the reverse side of structure.
The reverse side is the “real inorganization” of
molecular elements in the legitimate uses of the syntheses.
It is the organs-partial objects of real distinction and the body
without organs that fills space to intensive degrees. It is
univocity.
How do we reach the sub-representative
reverse side of structure? How do we escape from the
illegitimate syntheses of Representation that maintain and
produce identity? We must reach the molecular partial
objects of desiring-machines and their functioning. (183)
“One then reaches the regions of a productive, molecular,
micrological, or microphysical unconscious that no longer
represents anything.” (288) There is no molar
functionalism. Only at the submicroscopic
(sub-representative) level does function exist. Only what
is produced as it functions escapes closed representational
meaning. It is only at the submicroscopic level of singular
intensity that function (in legitimate use) exists.
Schizoanalysis attempts to reach these
sub-representative forces of the unconscious. But these
elements are not independent of molar aggregates of social
formations that they constitute statistically. (29) “There
is only desire and the social, and nothing else.” Desiring-machines
function inside social-machines they form statistically. Beneath
the conscious economic investments there are unconscious
libidinal investments. Schizoanalysis attempts to reach
those sub-representative active forces --- the intensive forces
--- of univocity.
(249) D&G tell us that the
becoming-concrete in the differential relation has no indirect
relation between qualified or coded flows. Rather, there is
a direct relation between decoded flows that have no qualities
prior to the reciprocal relation itself. The quality of
decoded flows is the result of direct reciprocal relation. Prior
to this reciprocal relation, the quality of flows is virtual, not
actual-concrete. So, we must not think of
‘substance’ as already formed matter (an inverse
reciprocal relation of form and matter) that closes everything
into a castrating structure that maintains or produces identity.
That would be what Deleuze has always criticized as
‘identity in the concept’. That is not what
D&G mean by ‘reciprocal relation’. (240-2) A
substance is formed when deterritorialized flows (content and
expression) are in a direct reciprocal relation. There are
series of breaks and flows of asignifying signs. “The
deterritorialized flows of content and expression are in a state
of conjunction or reciprocal precondition that constitutes
figures….[that] do not derive from a signifier….they
are nonsigns….flows-breaks or schizzes that form images
through their coming together in a whole, but that do not
maintain any identity when they pass from one whole to
another [emphasis added].” D&G see the conjunction
of Hjelmslev’s deterritorialized flows in contrast to
structuralism’s transcendence of the Signifier. Hjelmslev
replaces the signified/signifier relation with the reciprocal
preconditions of content and expression.
D&G (59) describe castrating Oedipal
forces that distribute lack. Castration is the transcendent
Phallus of Oedipal Lack in the illegitimate, transcendent uses of
syntheses. Structuralism corresponds to large molar
aggregates that close into the illegitimate uses of the
syntheses. However, there is a reverse side of this
structure. (308-9) Structure has a “reverse side”
that is the real production of desire -- the “real
inorganization” that is the sub-representative field where
there is no castrating lack. (328) It is the reverse side
of structure, codes, and territories. Once we reach this
reverse side, the molecular chain is still signifying, but the
signs are asignifying. The sub-representative, reverse side
of structure is inclusive disjunction where “everything
is possible." (87) Reality is no longer thought to
be a principle of abstract quantity divided into qualitative
forms. Now, the real envelops indivisible intensive
quantities that do not divide without changing nature, opening
the forms.
The formation and functioning of the
desiring-machines are independent of interpretation. They
do not signify or represent. They reach that
sub-representative reverse side of structure. The chain in
desiring-machines brings together, without unifying, the body
without organs and the partial objects. The chain is the
network of included disjunction on the body without organs that
resects the connection of the flows. This molecular chain
determines flows. The chain is still signifying, but the signs
composing it are asignifying at the level of inclusive
disjunctions where everything is possible. This is the
reverse side of structure that must be reached with
schizoanalysis. Schizoanalysis must reach the legitimate
uses of the syntheses and intensive singular forces that, with
each division, change the nature of the chains and the flows.
The Socius
If we are to understand Deleuze and
Guattari, we must understand that they are laying out a plane
consistent with what Deleuze always saw as Nietzsche’s
univocity. Deleuze says (Nietzsche & Philosophy
p.3), “We will never find the sense of something….if we
do not know the force which appropriates the thing….”
Isn’t this just what D&G mean when they say (AO 10-11)
desiring-production and social-production both involve an
unengendered non-productive element that is a full body as a
socius. The full body of a socius appropriates the productive
forces and attributes them to itself as if it were their cause.
We will never know the sense of something if we do not know the
forces that appropriate it. The socius is a recording
surface of production. It may be the body of earth, tyrant,
or capital. The socius falls back on the economic forces of
production and appropriates them as if it were their cause.
It attributes them to extraeconomic conditions. Partial
objects cling to the full body of a socius as points of
disjunction on a recording surface.
Just as Spinoza’s attributes qualify
Substance, (343) the forms of selection are the determinate
conditions that qualify a socius. The qualified form of a
socius is produced as unengendered precondition of production.
It appropriates the forces of production. “It is
indeed in this sense that social production is
desiring-production itself under determinate conditions.
These determinate conditions are thus the forms of gregariousness
as a socius or full body, under whose effect the molecular
formations constitute molar aggregates.” But the full
body of a socius is distinct from the naked body without organs.
The problem for schizoanalysis is how to keep these forms of
selection from closing into the fixed form of a socius – how
to keep the productive forces flowing.
With the territorial socius (AO 148),
“A kinship system only appears closed to the extent that it
is severed from the political and economic references that keep
it open, and that make alliance something other than an
arrangement of matrimonial classes and filiative lineages.”
Alliance is never derived from or produced by filiation. That
is, alliance is never derived according to a filiative relation
of variability that produces or maintains identity. The
territorial socius becomes a fixed code when the recording
surface of inscription falls back on productive connections and
attributes them to itself as though it were their cause. That
is, whenever the productive connections are thought to be caused
by a structure of filiation, (342) statistical accumulation of
molecular into molar aggregates organizes lack and records it on
the socius, welding desire to lack. There is code of the
territorial socius when (247-8) a full body of antiproduction
falls back on economic forces it appropriates and attributes them
to extraeconomic filiative conditions. But the despotic
socius deterritorializes as it overcodes. Structuralism is
still in this despotic regime overcoded by the Signifier. (247)
Codes are indirect, qualitative, and limited. Code is not
economic. Rather, when there is code, economic forces and
productive connections (alliances) are attributed to an
extraeconomic (filiative) instance as though they were caused by
it.
It is the full body of the socius that falls
back on productive forces and appropriates them as if it were the
cause of their selections and accumulations. Social-production
is desiring-production under determinate conditions of forms of
statistical gregariousness. The full bodies of a socius
(earth, despot, or capital) are these conditions under which the
molecular constitutes the molar.
Capitalism
So far we have examined the territorial
socius of codes and the despotic socius of deterritorialized
overcoding. However, capitalism is directly economic.
Capitalism is opposed to codes. Its socius falls back on
production without intervention of extraeconomic factors of code.
(139) Capitalism decodes flows of desire by substituting an
axiomatic of abstract quantity (money) that deterritorializes the
socius. But (247) capitalism never reaches absolute
deterritorialization. Its deterritorialization is merely
relative. It deterritorializes and decodes, but is
reterritorialized by an axiomatic of abstract quantity. (249)
The full body of capital is directly economic. It falls
back on production without intervention of extra-economic factors
that would interpose code. (250) Capitalism reaches an
immanent deterritorialized field. However, it is still
determined by forces of an oppressive axiomatic.
(229-30) The capitalist axiomatic is caught
in a dualism between exchange money and credit money. It
measures both labor and finance by the same abstract unit. However,
(228) “….it is not the same money”. D&G
tell us that (237) the definition of ‘surplus value’
must be modified. It must be defined by the
incommensurability between these disparate aspects of money.
(228-9) The money of the wage earner is the potential
break-deduction in a flow of consumption. Finance money is
a break-detachment in chains of capital. At the level of
decoded flows, these deductions and detachments can be seen to
re-articulate connections of flows and disjunctions of chains.
We must overcome the assumption of commensurability that
maintains and produces identity if we are to overthrow the
capitalist axiomatic.
The deterritorialization of capitalism is
merely relative. It is reterritorialized by its axiomatic.
Therefore, (248-9) the axiomatic of money is an abstract quantity
that ignores the real difference in nature of the flows and
chains. The capitalist socius of abstract money could not
appropriate production without “becoming-concrete” in a
differential relation. However, this differential relation
cannot be an indirect relation between coded flows that would
still maintain or produce identity. Rather, we must reach a
region where there can be a reciprocal relation between decoded
flows whose qualities do not exist prior to the direct
conjunction of their relation. “Dx and dy
are nothing independent of their relation, which determines the
one as a pure quality of the flow of labor and the other as a
pure quality of the flow of capital. The progression is
therefore the opposite of that of a code; it expresses the
capitalist transformation of the surplus value of code into a
surplus value of flux.” Capitalism’s oppressive
axiomatic reproduces identity as it reterritorializes. The
limit of capitalism is schizophrenia.
Schizoanalysis
The psychoanalytic structure of castrating
lack maintains and produces identity. D&G introduce
schizoanalysis as their answer to such structure. (281) Whereas
the history of social investments are made on the recording
surface of the full body of the socius (earth, despot, or
capital), schizoanalysis sees the two poles operating on the body
without organs in its pure state. The paranoid molar pole
organizes the molecular through statistical laws of mass
phenomena. But the schizoid-molecular pole does not obey
statistical laws. It is the submicroscopic
(sub-representative) pole of intensities that, with division,
changes nature. The naked body without organs is the limit
of the clothed body of the socius --- its line of escape and
absolute deterritorialization. This allows schizoanalysis
to escape the molar statistical structure that maintains or
produces identity.
Alliance is never derived from filiation.
But in order for alliance to escape filiative origins, it must
reach the reverse side of structure --- desiring production.
It is only the really distinct reciprocal relations of
deterritorialized series that are ontologically singular –
and that fill space to really different degrees of intensity.
In order to reach alliance that does not derive from filiation,
we must reach that sub-representative, submicroscopic reverse
side of structure. We must reach a direct reciprocal
relation of deterritorialized flows that are really distinct, but
ontologically singular. There is a pole of molecular flows
in subject groups that dominate molar forces. There is a
pole of molar chains in subjugated groups that dominate the
molecular in a determinate condition of statistical
gregariousness. The two poles are two types of
multiplicities that interpenetrate. Schizoanalysis must
reach a region of two poles of univocality open to real change in
nature.
Structuralist
‘repetition’ is merely the movement of reproduction of
the same – maintaining and producing identity. Structuralism
is still only at the level of closed subjugated groups with their
illegitimate uses of the syntheses. But D&G tell us
there are two poles of delirium with oscillations between them.
(277-80) There is a paranoiac pole of segregative molar
aggregates and statistical formations of subjugated groups.
And, there is a pole of schizorevolutionary lines of escape that
penetrates into singularities --- the subject groups that no
longer obey statistical laws. When we reach this region of
two poles of oscillating and interpenetrating multiplicities,
both poles are independent of Oedipal-familial origins. Then,
alliance is not derived from filiation. Both poles bear on
the social field. But both poles must be included if we are
to be independent of filiative origins. When we have only
subjugated groups (leaving out the pole of subject groups) there
is only closed filiation of the statistical molar aggregates.
Then, there can only be the illegitimate uses of the syntheses --
a triumph of reactive forces. And then, all production will
have only filiative origin that can never escape identity. However,
schizoanalysis reaches a domain of univocality open to real
change in nature.
With closed
subjugated groups (342-3), molar formations of gregariousness
seem to totalize the molecular through statistical accumulations
of chance. Selection seems to presuppose gregariousness.
However, if we include both poles as deterritorialized flows
– including subject groups of the reverse side of structure
--- statistical accumulations of gregariousness are not the cause
of selection. Rather, with subject groups included,
gregariousness presupposes selection. “The order is
not: gregariousness à selection, but on the contrary, molecular
multiplicity à forms of selection performing the selection à
molar or gregarious aggregates that result from this
selection.” So, schizoanalysis includes both poles of
delirium. It includes the subject groups that are molecular
multiplicities of partial objects. They reach singular
intensity that does not obey statistical laws. They are
singular forms of selection that qualifies the body without
organs (i.e., Spinoza’s attributes that qualify Substance).
The molar aggregates result from these intensive forms of
selection. Statistical molar aggregates are the result of
selective pressure at the sub-representative level. Gregariousness
presupposes selection.
(283-8) The two types of multiplicities
integrate both structure and genesis. They reach
indiscernibility between form and function. The classical
problems of opposition cannot be solved by an extrinsic relation
between mechanism (structural unity) and vitalism (personal or
specific unity). Mechanism explains the functioning of an
organism within its structural unity, but not the genesis of its
formations. Vitalism finds an individual and specific unity
of organic continuance that is assumed to extend its formation to
a unifying outside structure. Vitalism invokes individual
and specific unity of living being. Its machines presuppose
organic continuance. But mechanism of the machine and
vitalism of desire remain in an extrinsic relation to each other.
The former gives us organic structure. The latter is merely
a formal genesis that still derives alliance from filiation.
At the level of this molar opposition between mechanism and
vitalism, there is only structure and genesis in an extrinsic
relation of variability that maintains or produces identity in a
presupposed unifying and totalizing structure. Both
mechanism and vitalism merely reproduce identity in a totalizing
system of statistical molar gregariousness. There can be no
genesis of real difference. However, we must reach a
sub-representative level of machinic production where structure
and genesis, function and form, are not in opposition.
Every structure of opposition/limitation is
locked into the illegitimate uses of the syntheses. Their
opposition closes into one structure where alliance is derived
from filiation. This merely maintains and produces identity
of the same structure without any real difference. But we
must reach the productive forces of desiring machines where
everything is possible. We must reach that region of direct
alliance not derived from filiation. Schizoanalysis reaches
an open body without organs. It rejects a closed full body
of filiation that appropriates productive forces and attributes
them to itself as if were their cause – attempting to derive
alliance from filiation. Schizoanalysis reaches real
difference that does not maintain or produce identity. Real
difference is on the reverse side of structure where function is
indistinguishable from formation. The two poles of desiring
production and molar social production are interpenetrating
multiplicities.
(287) When machines become unified molar
structure, when living molecular machines become structured in
statistical unities, and when a machine appears as a single
object and living organism appears as a single subject, then
these molar forms are statistical determinations of its own
desiring machines. Then both poles (molar social production
and molecular desiring production) are the same machine --- there
is no difference in nature. The social machines of mass
phenomena subordinate molecular forces (subjugated groups).
The desiring machines that reach a submicroscopic singularity
dominate mass phenomena (subject groups). Desiring machines
are an investment in large molar machines according to its own
determinate condition of real difference, each time. Each
time, a molecular desiring machine is a direct investment in a
large molar machine that it forms by statistical laws. Each
time, the molecular desiring machines and the molar social
machines are the same machine under its own determinate
conditions --- under statistical forms of selective pressure that
determines its own molar gregariousness. The
molecular and the molar are the same machinic nature with real
singular difference each time. But there is no totalizing
structure that maintains or produce identity. Only at the
submicroscopic level of desiring machines is formation and
function the same. Only what is produced in the same way it
functions escapes representational meaning.
D&G tell us (377) “….it is not
enough to construct a new socius as full body; one must also pass
to the other side of this social full body, where the molecular
formations of desire that must master the new molar aggregate
operate and are inscribed. Only by making this passage do
we reach the revolutionary break and investment of the libido.
This cannot be achieved except at the cost of, and by means of a
rupture with, causality……In the subjugated groups,
desire is still defined by an order of causes and aims, and
itself weaves a whole system of macroscopic relations that
determine the large aggregates under a formation of sovereignty.
Subject groups on the other hand have as their sole cause a
rupture with causality, a revolutionary line of
escape….”
Conclusion
The history of philosophy consists of
perennial problems between opposing ‘–isms’.
For example, objectivism in the form of realism or absolutism is
opposed to problems of subjectivism in the form of idealism or
relativism. Or, there are problems of rationalism versus
empiricism – universalism versus nominalism – monism
versus pluralism – individualism versus collectivism –
mechanism versus vitalism – causal determinism versus
freedom of purpose – internal relations of logically
dependent parts versus external relations of logically
independent parts. But Deleuze tells us that these problems
arise due to a presupposed structure of opposition/limitation
where matter is assumed to already have a conceptual form. This
form may evolve historically and take on many cultural
perspectives, but there is always the assumption of a totalizing
structure of what is possible in order to maintain the
principle of identity. However, Deleuze questions the
assumptions from which these problems arise. Why do we
assume that the many and the one are related as parts to whole?
How do we know that intelligible judgements relate qualities with
substances? How do we know that we recognize substances
through resemblances in perception? What is the connection
between relations and qualities? Why do we assume that
intelligible analogies in judgement correspond to continuity of
resemblances into a unifying whole? These are just a few of
the assumptions Deleuze questions with his univocity.
Deleuze says (Difference & Repetition
34-5) that generic and specific differences are complicit in
representational thought. But genus and species are not of
the same nature. There is identity of genus in relation to
species. But Being cannot form the same kind of relation to
genera. Being is not a genus. Specific differences
prevent generic differences from relating to Being as if it were
a common genus. Univocity of species in a common genus
refers back to equivocity of Being in different genera. But
representational thought cannot avoid complicity between generic
and specific differences. And this complicity causes many
problems for classical thought. Method assumes continuity
in resemblances of perception in the species. System
assumes distributions in genera according to analogy of
judgement. But this classical ‘difference’ is a
reflexive concept that is supposed to allow passage from similar
species to identical genera. That is, classical
classifications of genus and species go by the assumption that
generic identities must be cut from the continuous flux of
perceptible resemblance. Likewise, it is assumed that
respectively identical genera must allow passage to analogous
relations in intelligible judgments. In any case,
‘difference’ is merely an image that mediates identity
in the concept, opposition in predicates, analogy in judgement,
and resemblance in perception. And even when
‘difference’ becomes catastrophic (breaking with a
reflexive concept) by either breaking the continuity of
resemblances or the impassable fissure of analogical structure;
it still assumes a ground of equilibrium. Deleuze
introduces univocity as the way to escape that seemingly
irreducible ground that maintains or produces identity.
Deleuze says we need to reach a domain that
comes up through the middle of molar structures. All molar
oppositions of a totalizing structure are overcome when we reach
this sub-representative domain of univocality. In order to
address these classical problems, Deleuze’s univocity must
escape what has always seemed inescapable. The real
difference of univocity must escape the principle of conceptual
identity. Deleuze (with and without Guattari) tells us of a
sub-representative domain that allows us to escape any ground of
equilibrium. We must reach a sub-representative domain
beneath those “partial objects” that are still merely
statistical aggregates of molar elements. We must reach new
‘partial objects’ – the real difference of
intensive singularity. We must reach connections of flows
that break the continuity of resemblances. We must reach
chains of disjunction that break the fissures of analogical
structure. But this can’t happen at the level of molar
structure of subjugated groups that derive alliance from
filiation. Univocity includes the molecular pole of subject
groups that reach the pre-individual singularity that can break
the conceptual equilibrium of representational structure. The
real difference of univocity, with its intersection of two types
of multiplicites, escapes the principle that maintains and
produces identity.