Univocity versus Phenomenology
by Beth Metcalf
“It is not enough to say that
consciousness is consciousness of something: it is the double of
this something, and everything is consciousness because it
possesses a double, even if it is far off and very foreign.”
(Deleuze, Difference and Repetition 220)
When Deleuze says that consciousness is not consciousness of something, he is telling us that his univocity is not the intentionality of phenomenology. When he says that consciousness is double, he means that there is no consciousness prior to a doubling of content (visible) and expression (articulable). In order to have conscious experience there must be a prior doubling of something. But this something is far off and very foreign. It is not the phenomenological doubling of intentionality. Deleuze says we must reach a sub-representative Outside of structure. But this ‘outside’ is not just an outside of the structure of consciousness --- that is, it is not just the outside of an inside --- it is not in oppositional relation to a structure of consciousness and language. An outside in opposition to an inside could never escape a prior concept of structure.
What is ‘sense’ according to
Deleuze’s univocity? (Logic of Sense 21-2.)
‘Sense’ inheres in the proposition. Sense does
not exist outside the proposition which expresses it. However,
sense does not merge with the proposition either. The
expressed sense has no resemblance to the expression. Sense
is attributive, but it is not the attribute of the proposition.
Sense is attributed to the thing. It is the event expressed
by the verb. Sense is not a quality of the thing, because
it does not exist outside the proposition. Sense, then, is
not consciousness of some thing.
In contrast, what is ‘sense’
according to phenomenological intentionality? For
phenomenology, the perceived (noema) is an intentional correlate
of the act of perceiving (noesis). And, like the
‘sense’ of univocity, this correlate does not exist
outside the proposition which expresses it. With the
phenomenological reduction, the noematic attribute is not a
sensible quality outside the proposition. However, the
intentional correlate of phenomenology does merge with the
proposition. The intentional correlate that inheres in the
expression of the proposition merges with the expressed. Seeing
and speaking are homogeneous. Their intentional correlate
merges with propositional signification. The intentional
attribute of phenomenology is still a predicate of the
proposition. It still is a correlate of conceptual
generality. Its transcendental field of intentional
consciousness (merging with the proposition) still resembles the
extra-propositional empirical field. It never reaches the
singularity of the event. If phenomenology really puts
things in brackets it ought to question, not only an
extra-propositional reality, but also the merging with the
proposition.
For Deleuze’s univocity (Logic of
Sense 241), “Aion or empty form and pure Infinitive is
the line traced by this [aleatory] point, that is, a cerebral
crack at the limits of which the event appears; and the event
taken in the univocity of this infinitive is distributed in the
two series of amplitude which constitute the metaphysical
surface. The event is related to one of these series as a
noematic attribute and to the other as a noetic sense, so that
both series, to eat/to speak, form the disjunct for an
affirmative synthesis, or the equivocity of what there is for and
in univocal Being…” Therefore, for Deleuze’s
univocity, the noematic and noetic series are not derived from a
transcendental correlation of intentional perception and
perceiving that can only be a sedentary tracing of the empirical.
Rather, for Deleuze, noema and noesis are nomadically distributed
in the univocity of the empty form of time. With this
distribution of univocity, we can find a transcendental field
that never resembles the empirical actualizations. Sense
never resembles noematic denotation, noetic manifestation, or a
correlative signification.
Deleuze sees in Foucault an illustration of the doubling that avoids phenomenology. According to Deleuze-Foucault, ‘knowledge’ is the doubling of statements and visibilities. But this doubling must presuppose something that prevents it from merging with the proposition. That is, it must presuppose something far off and foreign. ‘Knowledge’ must presuppose power-relations between forces. But ‘power’ is not a form. Power is always already a relation between intensive forces. Power is the transversal diagram of coupling (see DR222) of intensive forces that open all forms. Power is not a property but a strategy---a functioning. Power is a strategy that distributes relations between discursive forms of expression and non-discursive forms of content. Power is a transversal across all forms of content and forms of expression to make them function in new ways. Power is an immanent field with no transcendent unification. So, I take ‘power’ to be that which distributes the force relations (sense) of ‘statements’. The force relations (sense) distributed in statements inhere in propositions, but do not merge with them. Power is that empty form of time that distributes sense (intensive relations of events). However for Foucault, the ‘sense’ that inheres in the proposition without merging with it, is not attributed to things (visibilities). Rather, visibilities have their own autonomous form which battles with the form of statements.
The statement (sense) must not be confused
with signification of propositions or denotations of words or
phrases. It is not the vertical proposition. It is
not the lateral phrases or words. The statement (sense)
inheres in the proposition but does not merge with it. It
is the transversal that cuts across all systems. (Foucault
5) “A statement operates neither laterally nor vertically
but transversally, and its rules are to be found on the same
level as itself.”
Deleuze sees Foucault’s
‘statement’ as the distribution of sense. For
example (Foucault 10-11), ‘species evolve’ is a
statement that says form of the visible and form of the
articulable in the same sense. However, the statement
(multiplicity of sense) is repetition with difference on each
stratum. That is, the statement on the stratum of
eighteenth century natural history is not the same statement as
used on the stratum of nineteenth-century biology. The
statement is said in the same sense. But it is said
of different units, distances, distributions, and institutions.
This is in contrast to the context of a system of
propositions, wherein one system has many contexts
of reference.
There is nothing behind or prior to
knowledge or consciousness. There is no
‘pre-predicative’ understanding. There is no
‘savage experience’. However, there is something outside
knowledge or consciousness. Statements and visibilities may
be revealed or hidden depending on strategic forms distributed by
power relations. (Foucault 10-12) Phrases may be
re-evoked. Propositions may be re-actualized. However,
it is only the statement that has the real conditions of
repetition. The statement is linked with something
(power-relations of intensive forces) that is flush with the real.
Deleuze says of this ‘something’ (Foucault
11-12), “…almost inevitably it is something foreign,
something outside [emphasis added].” It is
“something….far off and very foreign”. The
power-relation (intensive forces of the real) is that
‘something’ farther than external objects. It is
that being of the sensible which can only be sensed. It can
never be remembered, thought, or perceived. It is that
‘something’ presupposed by consciousness (memories,
thoughts, and perceptions). Power relations distribute the
forms of exteriority in their “distributive unity” and
“temporal dispersion” (like Deleuze’s distribution
of intensive forces of the event through the ‘empty form of
time’ or ‘Aion’).
Deleuze says, (Foucault 109)
“But if phenomenology ‘places things in
parenthesis’, as it claims to do, this ought to push it
beyond words and phrases towards statements, and beyond
things and states of things towards visibilities….‘there
is’ light, and ‘there is’ language. All
intentionality collapses in the gap that opens up between these
two monads, or in the ‘non-relation’ between seeing and
speaking.” Statements refer only to a
‘language-being’. Visibilities refer only to
‘light-being’ free of intentional gaze. There is
no ‘pre-predicative’ consciousness prior to statements.
There is no ‘savage experience’ of the thing prior to
visibilities. There is no intentional relation of
homogeneity between statements and visibilities. That is,
there is no isomorphism* between visibilities and statements.
We do not see what we say or speak about what we see.
Foucault’s reaction against
phenomenology can be seen in the primacy of the statement (Foucault
49-50). The statement has primacy, but visibility has its
own autonomous laws. The visible battles the statement with
its own form. The visible is determined by the statement,
because the statement is the ‘sense’ that inheres in
the proposition. But this determination is not a reduction
that would make the sense merge with the propositional
signification. That is, statements are determining
discursive formations. Visibilities are the form of the determinable
that are not reduced to a form of determination. The
discursive object (of the statement) is not isomorphic* with the
visible object. The doubling of two halves is a problematic
relation. There is a disjunction between seeing and
speaking that is a re-linking over an irrational gap. There
is no isomorphism* between the two forms which do battle with
each other. The condition of power does not contain the
conditioned knowledge, but is its space of dispersion under
different conditions of visibility and language. But the
statement has primacy by the spontaneity of its conditions
(language) which give it a determining form. Visibility
(receptivity of its conditions – light) has the form of the
determinable. Statements reveal, but they reveal other than
what they say.
Therefore, ‘categories’ are no
longer representational concepts said of every possible object of
experience. Rather, ‘categories’ are an open list
of variables expressing relations between intensive forces.
There are open categories of power that are not the
representational categories of possible experience. The
category of power is the diagram. The statement actualizes
virtual power relations among intensive forces. (Foucault
77) “Formed substances are revealed by visibility, while
formalized or finalized functions are revealed by statement.
There is no confusion, therefore, between the affective
categories of power….and the formal categories of
knowledge….the latter passing through seeing and speaking in
order to actualize the former…” There is a
virtual-actual doubling.
But phenomenology itself went beyond the intentionality between consciousness and its object. Phenomenology became an ontology that the fold of Being makes with beings. However, this phenomenological fold still assumes one homogeneous world of seeing and speaking. The phenomenological forms of speaking (that inhere in the proposition) merge with forms of seeing. The two forms are isomorphic. The phenomenological fold went beyond intentionality only to have it reappear in a new dimension. There is still an intentional correspondence. (Foucault 111) “….the [phenomenological] fold will constitute the Self-seeing element of sight only if it also constitutes the Self-speaking element of language, to the point where it is the same world that speaks itself in language and sees itself in sight.”
However, for Deleuze-Foucault, there is a non-relation between
two forms that is not an intentional correlate. There is a
battle between the two forms that is a strategy of interlacing.
It is a strategy of power relations that interlace the two forms
of exteriority (seeing and speaking). ‘Power’ is
open to the unformed outside in changing relations of forces.
Power is the double folding of inside and outside. Power
nomadically distributes statements that inhere in the proposition
but do not merge with it. Power is the doubling of an
unformed outside with a new inside, each time. The fold of
the outside constitutes its own inside, each time. The
outside/inside doubling is the fold of its own subjectivation,
each time. Consciousness is constituted by the folding
(doubling) of the outside that is its own inside. This
means that the visible and the articulable are not intentions of
a phenomenology, but forms of an epistemology.
As Deleuze says (Foucault 111),
“If knowledge is constituted by two forms, how could a
subject display any intentionality towards one object, since each
form has its own objects and subjects? Yet it must be able
to ascribe a relation to the two forms which emerges from their
‘non-relation’.” Power-relations are
strategies that distribute two different forms of exteriority
(visible and articulable). But power-relations also double
the outside element of intensive forces with its own inside each
time. This inside/outside doubling is that ‘something’
that is presupposed by consciousness (the fold of subjectivation
that interlaces the visible and articulable), each time. (Foucault
114) “…the fold of the outside constitutes a
Self, while the outside itself forms a coextensive inside. Only
through a stratico-strategic interlocking [a knowledge-power
doubling] do we reach the ontological fold.”
So, when Deleuze says that consciousness is
the doubling of something, he reads Foucault as an illustration
of this doubling. Deleuze-Foucault sees consciousness
(knowledge) as not merely the consciousness of something (an
intentional correlate). Rather, doubling opens the
statement (sense) to an outside farther than the external to
reach an inside closer than the internal. The statement is
the doubling (repetition of ‘sense’ with difference).
It is repetition with difference of changing power-relations.
Consciousness is the double of that ‘something’ (sense
open to an outside). Consciousness is the folding or
doubling of an outside with its own inside that reveals a new
subjectivation (interlacing new forms of visibile and
articulable), each time.
Therefore, the outside is the something
that is “far off and very foreign” that is doubled by
its own inside. Deleuze says (Foucault 117),
“What the dice-throw represents is that thinking
[consciousness] always comes from the outside….a thought
which comes from an outside that is farther away than any
external world, and hence closer than any internal world.”
Thought is the relation (or non-relation) with the outside.
The outside folds an inside (the inside of an outside). The
inside is a fold (doubling) of the outside. It is the
‘something’ that is doubled in consciousness. But
this is not an interiorization of the outside. It is not a
doubling of the one (emanation). But it is a redoubling of
the Other (repetition of the different). Therefore,
Deleuze-Foucault is not describing a phenomenological
intentionality. Consciousness is not internal consciousness
of something. It is a doubling of intensive forces that
folds an outside that is its own inside, each time. In the
double folding of power-knowledge, we fold a new ontology---a new
subject of consciousness, each time. Thought thinks its
past in order to become free of its present thinking. This
freeing allows new thought of the future---a new subjectivation
is the interior of an exterior, folded in the pure empty form of
time (Aion).
Phenomenology still does not overcome the
duality between consciousness and thing. It still sees
consciousness or spirit as light. However, Deleuze says (Cinema
1, Chapter 4), that Bergson overcomes the duality of
phenomenology. Whereas Husserl saw consciousness as
consciousness of something, Bergson says all consciousness
is something. There is no moving thing distinct from
the perceived image of the thing. The image is no longer in
consciousness. The in-itself of the movement-image is the
flow of matter. Image is movement, light, matter.
(p61) "In short, it is not consciousness which is
light, it is the set of images, or light, which is consciousness,
immanent to matter."
(C1p64) "In short, things and
perception of things are prehensions, but things are total
objective prehensions [matter-flow acting and reacting in all
facets and parts], and perception of things are
incomplete….subjective prehensions [the thing minus what is
not of interest to us].” And so we ask, when Deleuze says,
“….everything is consciousness” is he espousing a
kind of panpsychism, perhaps akin to that of Whitehead? Everything
is consciousness because there is no duality between
consciousness and thing. Consciousness and thing are the
immanence of image and sign.
Deleuze sees “everything” as
consciousness, because everything is that folding or doubling of
an outside. There is no Being-in-itself. There is no
consciousness-for-itself. Rather, the outside is
difference-in-itself. The inside is repetition-for-itself.
The double is the outside folding its own inside, and the empty
form of time (subjectivation) distributes a new consciousness,
each time. The intensive distribution of power-relations is
that doubling (folding) that opens the statement to
‘something’ farther than any external world, because
the unformed ‘outside’ is so “far off and very
foreign”. However, “everything is
consciousness” because the being of the sensible is closer
than any internal subjectivity. Doubling (folding) of an
outside with its own inside reaches a consciousness where
“everything” is pure immanence.
* Therefore, Deleuze sees in Foucault no
isomorphism or correspondence between forms of content and forms
of expression. Why then do Deleuze and Guattari see in
Hjelmslev an isomorphism without correspondence (see my article
‘Hjelmslev’s Univocity’)? I believe Deleuze
might explain this by seeing in Hjelmslev, the Spinozist, a
provisional state of “dualism” that subsequently
becomes a “monism” (see Foucault 83). Two
isomorphic series become one function of a distribution because
Spinoza’s dualism is the heterogeneous real distinction of
attributes and powers while his monism is their ontological
singularity. On the other hand, Foucault’s
“dualism” is seen as a preliminary distribution at the
heart of pluralism. There is distribution into two forms
that do battle with each other. However, in contrast to
both Foucault and Hjelmslev, phenomenology is homogeneous
isomorphism with correspondence.
So why is Hjelmslev’s Spinozism an isomorphism without correspondence in contrast to Foucault’s no isomorphism or correspondence? Deleuze reads Spinoza to say (Expressionism in Philosophy 104-111) that there is order in the expression of attributes. The attributes (thought and extension as the only two we know) are two parallel series containing modes. The modes are brought into isomorphism through this parallelism because modes of different attributes are one modification of substance. But these parallel series of modes have no causal relation. There is no prior concept of causal connection that would determine the order of modes. Also, there is equality of principle between attributes and powers (see EiP chapter 7 of which I write in my article ‘Parallelism and the Syntheses’). The object (in extension) and the idea (in thought) do not merely refer to the attributes, but also to the two powers (the power of existing and acting, and the power of thinking and knowing). This means that there are external relations where intensive signs of epistemological parallelism (in the power of thinking and knowing) may be brought into isomorphism with intensive signs of ontological parallelism (in the power of existing and acting) without prior causal order or formal connection. This is because objective formal distinction in the power of thinking is isomorophic with real formal distinction in the attribute of thought. They are ontologically singular modification of substance, each time.
Therefore, Spinoza’s isomorphism is an
identity of order and connection between modes differing in
attribute. Also, there is equality of principle in the two
powers. There is isomorphism, formally, in the real
distinction of attributes that ontologically is one
substance. Also, the powers refer this isomorphism to the
modes without any prior correspondence. But this
isomorphism must not be confused with homogeneous form of thought
that corresponds to numerically distinct substances. Deleuze
sees Spinoza’s univocal being as real distinction of
isomorphic heterogeneity without corresponding numerically
distinct substances.