The Old and the New Structure
by Beth Metcalf
Deleuze says (Difference & Repetition
209) “The reality of the virtual consists of the
differential elements and relations along with the singular
points which correspond to them. The reality of the virtual
is structure.” But he continues by warning us…
“We must avoid giving the elements and relations which form
a structure an actuality which they do not have, and withdrawing
from them a reality which they have.” Deleuze gives us
this warning after he has corrected his terminology on the
previous page by saying, “We opposed the virtual and the
real: although it could not have been more precise before now,
this terminology must be corrected. The virtual is opposed
not to the real but to the actual.” Why does Deleuze
feel the need to make this correction? Up to that point
Deleuze had to use the terminology of classical structuralism in
order to be understood. But now, abruptly, he had to
correct this old classical terminology in order to introduce his
notion of a new structure --- a new sub-representative structure
of univocity. His new structure must reach a
sub-representative domain of the virtual-real that is not to be
confused with already actual possibilities of the old structure.
In How Do We Recognize Structuralism?
Deleuze lists seven criteria of those we recognize as
‘structuralists’. These criteria reflect the
intention of structuralists to find a deeper real
condition that is not dependent upon any actual sensible
form, intelligible essence, imaginary figures, prior forms of
signification, or representation of parts in an already formed
whole. The structuralist’s intention is to reach a
symbolic object that can circulate through series of relations
and singular points. This object must be the free
circulation of unformed arbitrary relations --- without any
presuppositions about what is possible. However, after his
explanation of these criteria of structure, Deleuze warns about
two accidents of the old (classical) structuralism. He
notices that these “accidents” do not let the empty
square circulate freely. The old structure fills, or does
not fill, the empty square. However in either case, sense
could not circulate freely. Therefore, these
“accidents” are inherent tendencies of the old
structure. Either, the empty square is not filled-in (it is
not accompanied by a nomadic subject) and its emptiness becomes a
lack (the signifier disappears and the signified has no element
to mark it). Or, the empty square is filled-in (the chain
of the signifier can’t find a signified) there is nothing
that needs to be accompanied (there is no signified).
Deleuze says that those called
“structuralists” have a point in common (Logic of
Sense 71), “…sense, regarded not at all as
appearance but as surface effect and position effect, and
produced by the circulation of the empty square in the structural
series….” He further tells us that (73)
“….Today’s task is to make the empty square
circulate and to make pre-individual and nonpersonal
singularities speak --- in short, to produce sense.” This
is today’s task because the old structure did not meet its
own requirement of a freely circulating empty square. It
merely reproduced an already actual signification without
reaching the real difference of ‘sense’. The
new structure must resolve the accidents of the old structure.
(HRS) “The contradiction must yet be
“resolved,” that is, the empty place must be rid of the
symbolic events that eclipse it or fill it, and be given over to
the subject which must accompany it on new paths, without
occupying or deserting it. Thus, there is a structuralist hero:
neither God nor man, neither personal nor universal, it is
without an identity, made of non-personal individuations and
pre-individual singularities. It assures the break-up of a
structure affected by excess or deficiency….For a new
structure not to pursue adventures that again are analogous
to those of the old structure, not to cause fatal
contradictions to be reborn, depends on the resistant and
creative force of this hero, on its agility in following and
safeguarding the displacements, on its power to cause relations
to vary and to redistribute singularities, always casting another
throw of the dice.” [underlines added].
What is this dice throw of the new
structure? Deleuze provides an explanation in his Tenth
Series of ‘Logic of Sense’. The Ideal Game of
Univocity is not at all like the games with which we are
acquainted. The usual games of the old structure (the
Representational Image of Thought) have many numerically
distinct throws in one fixed distribution. Deleuze
calls this “…. the art of causality.” This
is the game restricted to the time of Chronos. However, the
Ideal Game of Univocity has other principles. With this
dice game of the new structure, there are no pre-existing rules.
All throws endlessly ramify chance in ontologically one throw
that includes all qualitatively distinct forms. Each throw
is a series which emits singular points. The set of throws
are included in an aleatory point --- an empty form that is
displaced throughout all the series and ramifies them endlessly.
Instead of sedentary distribution that divides a closed space (as
the usual games of Chronos do), the aleatory point (an empty
place --- the empty square) nomadically distributes singularities
in an open space. It is thought as nonsense --- the
unconscious of thought. This is the nomadic distribution
that circulates the empty form. What is this empty form of
time that displaces itself through all the series? This
empty place of the new structure is the time of Aion --- the past
and future of incorporeal events as surface effects. To
reach this sub-representative empty form of Aion, we must reach
the virtual-real of the new structure.
The old structure was restricted to the
plane of Chronos which measures movement in the action of bodies
that fill it. The empty square of the old structure could
not circulate freely because the time of Chronos either filled or
did not fill the empty square. But Aion is the pure empty
form of time. It is empty form --- empty of actual material
content. With this new structure, singular points are
distributed over the straight line of Aion traced by the empty
place of the aleatory point. The real distinction of events
communicates across all series in the singularity of the
Ontological Event. The paradox of the event is that it
fills, without filling, the line of Aion. Since the
virtual-real event of the new structure is impenetrable and
incorporeal, it fills the line of Aion without filling it. The
corporeal bodies on the line of Chronos fill, or do not fill, the
empty square. The old structure of Chronos could not avoid
these accidents. But when Aion is included in the new
structure, the form is empty and remains unfilled even when
filled by incorporeal events. Then, when the virtual-real
comes to be actualized on the plane of Chronos, the virtual is
actualized without resemblance. With the new structure,
Chronos remains open to the plane of Aion. Aion is included
in the ideal game of sub-representative univocality. The
required paradox of structuralism can be fulfilled.
(LoS 165), “Whereas Chronos was
inseparable from the bodies which filled it out entirely as
causes and matter, Aion is populated by effects which haunt it
without ever filling it up….Whereas Chronos was inseparable
from circularity and its accidents --- such as blockages or
precipitations, explosions, disconnections, and indurations ---
Aion stretches out in a straight line, limitless in either
direction. Always already passed and eternally yet to come,
Aion is the eternal truth of time: pure empty form of time,
which has freed itself of its present corporeal
content…..”
The aleatory point is the empty square
displaced endlessly as object without place in one series, and
place without occupant in the other. It is the straight
line that nomadically articulates a frontier between propositions
and things. Aion’s event is empty form. It is
not a corporeal object, but incorporeal object as expressed ---
never present --- already past and yet to come. So,
Deleuze’s univocity answers the paradoxical requirement of
how to fill without filling the empty place. We must reach
a new incorporeal domain of sub-representative sense --- the pure
empty form of time. The empty place of Aion allows sense to
circulate without blockages. This is the new structure of
multiplicity where all real distinction coexists as unformed
matter. All real distinction, of every degree of intensity,
coexists as ontological singularity.
(LoS 64) “This is the secret of the
event: it exists on the line of the Aion, and yet it does not
fill it. How could an incorporeal fill up the incorporeal
or the impenetrable fill up the impenetrable? Only bodies
penetrate each other, only Chronos is filled up with state of
affairs and the movements of the objects that it measures. But
being an empty and unfolded form of time, the Aion subdivides ad
infinitum that which haunts it without ever inhabiting it --- the
Event for all events.”
The classical old structuralism is the homogeneity of signified and signifier. Because its paradoxical element could only be filled, or not, at the level of signified/signifier; its resulting metaphor/metonymy, paradigmatic/syntagmatic structure could not satisfy the paradoxical requirement. But the post-classical new structuralism reaches sub-representative heterogeneity of content and expression, each with its own form and substance. D&G see Hjelmslev as reaching the deterritorialized heterogeneity of content and expression. Now, at this sub-representative level, any series of content can be coupled with any series of expression, because it reaches a domain of intensive sense (virtual-real) that is not restricted by the signified/signifier that still maintains the prior possibilities of an already actualized signification. The old structure confuses signification with sense. But sense must come from the nonsense of a freely circulating empty square. It must not assume any prior signification. Anything is compatible at this sub-representative level where everything is possible. The virtual-real structure does not have to be compatible with a prior conceptual structure of signifiance/subjectification, metaphor/metonymy. Hjelmslev’s form of content and form of expression reach the heterogeneity of the new structure. Instead of the subjectification of the old structure where the subject is split in a structural field (splitting into a subject of the statement and a subject of enunciation), the new structure is the collective assemblage of enunciation where content and expression become formalized by asignifying signs and unformed matter flowing through the machinic assemblage. The empty square now intervenes as nonsense that produces ‘sense’. Sense is not to be confused with the possibilities of signification of the old structure. Sense inheres in propositional expression but does not merge with it. Sense is attributed to the expressed content but does not merge with it. This boundary differentiates all real difference of intensive singularity.
(LoS 22) “Sense is both the
expressible or the expressed of the proposition, and the
attribute of the state of affairs. It turns one side
toward things and one side toward propositions. But it does
not merge with the proposition which expresses it any more than
with the state of affairs or the quality which the proposition
denotes. It is exactly the boundary between propositions
and things.”
The old structure closed into the structure
of signified/signifier with metaphoric correspondences. The
old structure could not avoid the two accidents. It merged
with the proposition whenever the empty square was filled-in.
Or, it merged with the denoted thing whenever the empty square
was not filled-in. Deleuze’s resolution to the problem
focuses on the seventh criterion which says that structure goes
from subject to practice. This is “the most obscure -
the criteria of the future”. Deleuze sees the two
“accidents” as bringing us to the critique of the old
structure. In answer to the accidents of the old structure,
Deleuze foresees a new structuralism that includes the
sub-representative plane of univocity. Univocity is his
answer to the paradoxical requirements of the problem. Structure
is at least two heterogeneous series differentiated by the
paradoxical empty form of Aion. The new structure opens the
forms. Content and expression each have their own form and
their own substance, reaching a new sub-representative domain of
intensive sense. To fulfill the required paradox of sense,
we must reach a sub-representative domain where the empty square
is filled without being filled. That is, it must let sense
circulate without producing Lack.
Now, with the new structure, content is not
a signified and expression is not a signifier. At this
sub-representative level, any content may be coupled with any
expression, because it reaches a domain of intensive sense
(virtual-real) that is not restricted to the (actual-possible)
old structure of metaphor/metonymy, possibilities of
filling/not-filling, or maintenance of prior signification.
Now, with the new structure, anything is compatible at the
sub-representative level of intensive difference. This new
structure now avoids giving its elements and relations an
actuality which they do not have. It avoids withdrawing
from them a reality which they have. The process now goes
from virtual-real to its actualization, and no longer from one
actual term to another.
The old structure was the homogeneous
relation of cause and effect on a closed plane of Chronos that
could not get past a duality of representation (signified and
signifier). But with the new structure, sense intervenes as
a third term.
Expressionism in Philosophy 335,
“In short, what is expressed everywhere intervenes as a
third term that transforms dualities. Beyond real
causality, beyond ideal representation, what is expressed is
discovered as a third term that makes distinctions infinitely
more real and identity infinitely better thought. What is
expressed is sense: deeper that the relation of causality, deeper
than the relation of representation.”
The old structuralism is bound to fall into
one or the other of these “accidents”. Either,
the signifier disappears with only a stream of signifieds
remaining. Or, the signified disappears leaving only a
chain of signifiers. The old structuralism could never
avoid these accidents. Either the signified merged with
denoted things whenever the empty square was not filled in,
attributing a plenitude of signifieds with no subject to
accompany them. This accident of the old structure is the
‘Despotic Paranoid Regime’. Or, the Signifier
merged with the proposition whenever the empty square was
filled-in. This is the accident of the ‘Passional
Regime’. Both of these accidents of structure cut the
empty square off from its virtual source. These two regimes
are the consequences of the accidents of the old structure,
according to Deleuze in his writings with Guattari. Accidents
of the old structure inevitably fall into either of two
regimes of madness --- the Paranoid Despotic Regime or the
Passional Regime. Psychoanalysis fortifies these regimes of
the old structure. D&G offer their schizoanalysis as
their answer to the problem.
Deleuze and Guattari say (A Thousand
Plateaus 168), “The face constructs the [white] wall
that the signifier needs in order to bounce off of….The face
digs the [black] hole that subjectification needs in order to
break through; it constitutes the black hole of subjectivity as
consciousness or passion….” The abstract machine
of faciality produces the face, but does not resemble what is
produced. They say (ATP 171) that human beings need to
dismantle the face and its facializations to become imperceptible
--- to get past the two accidents of the old structure of white
wall and black holes.
In How Do We Recognize Structuralism?
Deleuze lists seven criteria of those recognized as
‘structuralists’. In what follows I examine these
criteria, why I see the old structure as not adequate to fulfill
these criteria, and why I think the new structure is.
First Criterion -- The Symbolic:
Second Criterion -- Local or Positional:
Third Criterion -- The Differential and
the Singular:
Fourth Criterion -- The Differenciator,
Differenciation:
Fifth Criterion -- Serial:
Sixth Criterion -- The Empty Square:
Seventh Final Criteria -- From the
Subject to Practice: