Zizek’s ‘Organs Without Bodies'
by Beth Metcalf
Deleuze insists that his plane
of consistency has nothing to do with Hegel’s Infinite
Representation. However, those who are shackled to the
Representational Image of Thought always find it impossible to
believe that Deleuze can really mean this. When Deleuze
says something that is not consistent with a Hegelian plane of
consistency, they blame Deleuze for being
“inconsistent” -- or insist that Deleuze
“misreads” Hegel. If we are to understand
Deleuze, we must find consistency in what Deleuze says.
Deleuze gives us an important clue toward understanding him.
Deleuze tells us he is not Hegelian. Once we reach
Deleuze’s plane of consistency, Hegel is unredeemable.
Slavoj Zizek in ‘Organs
Without Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequences’, asks why
Deleuze can’t practice his “buggery” on Hegel?
Deleuze reads other philosophers with affirmation. Why
can’t he see something to affirm in Hegel? Zizek
wonders if there is some incest prohibition (OwB 48) because
Deleuze may unconsciously feel too close to Hegel. So,
Zizek decides to risk a “Hegelian buggery of Deleuze”.
He decides to show how Hegel takes Deleuze from behind. However,
in doing this Zizek leaves out one thing. He leaves out Deleuze.
Consequently, it is not buggery. It is Hegelian
auto-eroticism.
Zizek asks why Deleuze disavows
any Hegelian influence when it is so clear (to Zizek) that
Deleuze is Hegelian. Zizek can see nothing but dialectical
opposition in Deleuze. He sees an alleged opposition
between the transcendental-virtual and the empirical-actual.
He sees in Deleuze the opposition of Becoming versus Being.
He sees opposition between Deleuze’s quasi-cause versus
material cause. He sees opposition between production and
representation. He sees everywhere the Hegelian dialectical
oppositions that are the self-movement of an organic Whole (OwB
50). Zizek uses a Hegelian framework to show that Deleuze
sees a Unity beneath the many. However, Deleuze tells us
(see, for example, Difference & Repetition 182 or 203)
that his immanence has nothing to do with the one/many
oppositions of one unifying Whole. The one/many
opposition closes the whole into the infinite variability
of already formed matter. Deleuze always says that the
Whole must be open to unformed forces “underneath
matters and forms” (DR38). Deleuze’s
‘Whole’ is open to a
“sub-representative” domain of difference (DR178).
Deleuze’s ‘Whole’ is never a totalizable
Transcendent Image of Unity.
Now, if Deleuze were a structuralist, like Lacan* for instance, then of course, Deleuze could be seen as similar to Hegel. However, if there is transitivity between Hegel and Deleuze (through structuralism) then I need some evidence (from Deleuze’s text, not Lacan’s) that Deleuze is a structuralist. I contend that if we are to understand why Deleuze is so averse to Hegel, we must understand why Deleuze is not a structuralist. In some of my other articles, I have attempted to show evidence (from Deleuze’s text) that Deleuze never was a ‘structuralist’ in any classical sense of the term.
Zizek (OwB 3) equates
Deleuze’s ‘reality of the virtual’ with
Lacan’s Real. He describes Lacan’s Virtual as an
attractor in mathematics where lines and points are in a sphere
of attraction that only approach the form, never reaching it.
On the basis of a reading of Lacan, Zizek decides (OwB 27) that
Deleuze’s “quasi-cause fills in the gap of corporeal
causality”. But where does Deleuze say that?
Lacan’s “Real” merely approaches a prior form or
image of possibility. He never reaches Deleuze’s
virtual-real. Zizek’s Lacanianism falls into the
danger, against which Deleuze warns (Difference &
Repetition 211), of confusing the virtual with the possible.
Lacan's disciples do not reach Deleuze’s sense of the real
any more than Hegel does.
Zizek (OwB 4) explains
Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism as opposition
between the transcendental and the empirical. Zizek says,
“…the Deleuzian “transcendental” ….
is used here in the strict philosophical sense of the a priori
conditions of possibility of our experience of constituted
reality.” But where does Deleuze say that? Deleuze
tells us that his transcendental is not the a priori
condition of possible experience. It is the condition of
real experience without prior conceptual possibilities traced
from the empirical --- without resemblances or appearances of
constituted reality. Deleuze tells us that the condition
must not be in the image of the conditioned as its form of
possibility. However, Zizek puts both the transcendental
and the empirical on the plane of already actual possibility.
Zizek never reaches Deleuze’s sub-representative plane of
the virtual-real. Zizek can only see a transcendental that
is traced from empirically constituted reality. This is
exactly what Deleuze warns us he is not saying. The
transcendental must not be traced in the image of the empirical
because there can be no appearances or resemblances of identity
or difference that approach a prior form of possibility.
Zizek says (OwB 12) that the
key to the Deleuzian paradox (the paradox that the New can only
emerge through repetition) is Deleuze’s opposition
between the Virtual and the Actual. Zizek thinks Deleuze is
saying that one must betray the actual (Letter) in order to
repeat the virtual (Spirit). But where does Deleuze say
that? That would be a repetition of ‘virtual’ in
the Spirit of Sameness, not Deleuze’s repetition of
‘virtual’ as difference. Zizek’s concept of
the ‘virtual’ confuses Deleuze’s sense with
signification. (LoS 122) Deleuze says, “This form of
possibility may be logical, or it may be geometrical, algebraic,
physical, transcendental, moral, etc. It does not matter.
As long as we define the problem by its “resolvability”
[its possibility] we confuse sense with signification, and we
conceive of the condition only in the image of the
conditioned.” Whenever forces are negative (opposition
or lack), they are in the image of possibility. (DR 211)
Deleuze says, “What difference can there be between the
existent [actual] and the non-existent [virtual] if the
non-existent is already possible, already included in the concept
and having all the characteristics that the concept confers upon
it as a possibility?.....Difference can no longer be anything but
the negative determined by the concept: either the limitation
imposed by possibles upon each other in order to be realized, or
the opposition of the possible to the reality of the
real….”
Zizek says, (OwB 53) “If
there ever was a philosopher of unconditional immanence, it is
Hegel…..difference between For-us and in-itself is itself
“for us”: it is ourselves, in the immanence of our
thought, who experience the distinction between the way things
appear to us and the way they are in themselves. The
distinction between appearance and transcendent reality is itself
a fact of our experiential appearance….” But how
can he confuse this with Deleuze’s sense of
‘immanence’? Hegel’s is an
“immanence” entangled in the oppositions of
immanence/transcendence, for-us/in-itself, internal
thought/external things, apparent/real. But where does
Deleuze say that his ‘immanence’ has anything to do
with negative oppositions in unifying syntheses? Hegel
never escapes the principle (the Spirit) of conceptual identity.
Hegel can only produce same-ness within the infinite variability
of form-matter oppositions. He turns the concept into a
function of sameness. But, Deleuze’s
‘concept’ is not a function. It is intensity (see
‘What is Philosophy?’). From
Deleuze’s perspective, Hegel’s infinite representation
is immanence “to” something that reintroduces
transcendence (WiP 43-47). It is merely the prior
possibility of a totalizing Transcendent Image.
Zizek (OwB 29) says, “In
Deleuze, Difference refers to the multiple singularities that
express the One of infinite Life…” But where does
Deleuze ever say that there are multiple singularities
that express the One? Deleuze rejects the many/one
opposition. It would put singularity at the level of the
individual (rather than intensive pre-individual). It would
make the One, in its opposition to the many, a conceptual
totality. This is not Deleuze’s one/all of univocity.
Zizek can merely find an “interstice” or “minimal
difference” between images in a synthesis of homogeneously
formed substances. He cannot reach sub-representative
heterogeneous parallelism – the intensive asymmetrical
synthesis of the sensible – that is never negation,
opposition, or limitation-lack (DR 203, 235, or 268-9).
Zizek (OwB 15) tries to
describe Deleuze’s singular universal. But
since his ‘virtual’ is already actual possibility, he
thinks Deleuze must be describing Hegel’s Concrete
Universal. He thinks Deleuze’s singular universal
must be the Hegelian opposition between particular identities and
an abstract universal that is replaced by a new tension between
Singular (in the sense of individual-particular) and Universal.
Zizek thinks that Deleuze, like Hegel, reaches a new tension
between particulars and universals. But Deleuze tells us
that this Hegelian “singular” (at the level of the
particular-individual) never reaches the intensive domain of
pre-individual singularity. It is still merely a new
synthesis of particular-generality. But what does
generality have to do with Deleuze’s repetition of the
singular? Deleuze says (DR1), “Generality, as
generality of the particular, thus stands opposed to repetition
as universality of the singular….” On the plane
of the already actual (when cut off from the sub-representative
plane) there is no escaping one universalizing generality. It
is no wonder that when Deleuze is read (as he so often is) from
the plane of the already actual (leaving out his
sub-representative difference) a universalizing one-ness is
projected into Deleuze’s thought.
For Zizek-Hegel, (OwB 50-51)
every particular is an exception. The universal is the
structural tension between universal and particular. The
universal is the concrete particular. That is a fair
reading of Hegel. But where does Deleuze say that? Hegel’s
“Real” is what Deleuze sees as merely the infinitely
diverse variability of infinite representation. However, it
has no real singular difference in Deleuze’s sense of
disparate intensity. From Deleuze’s point of view,
Hegel’s structure is still conceptual identity. And,
Lacan’s structure is still universal metaphor. Neither
Hegel nor Lacan reach the intensive pre-individual singularity of
univocity.
Deleuze’s opposition to
dialectics is not a dialectical opposition. It is
vice-diction. Deleuze says (DR45-6) that Hegel begins with
the essential as a genus. The genus (the whole) is itself
and the species (the parts). The whole (one) possesses the
parts (many) essentially. Hegel’s infinite variability
of formed matter is still one essential kind of
individuation. There can be no real inessential difference.
However, vice-diction is not restricted to that closed plane of
essential possibilities. Vice-diction opens the forms to
the inessential difference of the sub-representative plane.
The many is no longer possessed by one equalizing
essence. Rather, vice-diction includes in each
inessential-modal case what it excludes as a substantial essence.
Form is no longer restricted to one essential kind. Vice-diction
(DR 278-9) reaches a prior intense field of individuation –
a field of pre-individual singularity. An intensive
‘dark precursor’ explodes like a thunderbolt between
disparate intensities on the sub-representative plane. The
intensive heterogeneity (of disparately constituted
singularities) may come up through the middle to be actualized
(each time) in divergent and incommensurable, inessential-modal
“uses” on the other plane. With vice-diction,
actualizations never close into a Universally Unifying One
that keeps the species and parts, forms and matters, imprisoned
in an essential form of infinite variability. With
vice-diction, the whole remains open to a field of
pre-individual singularity – of real inessential difference.
Zizek says that the later
Deleuze suffered under the “bad influence” of Guattari.
He thinks this “guattarized” Deleuze came to change his
mind about structuralism, and only then criticized structuralism
as a universalizing castration that holds everything in Oedipal
triangulation. But Deleuze never was a
structuralist. Deleuze always saw, in classical
structuralism, a universalizing essentialism that must be
overcome. He always rejected Saussure’s
negative differences (DR204). He always included (as
structuralism does not) the sub-representative field of intensive
singularity. Deleuze writes (DR103-108) about Lacan’s
symbolic phallus of castration. “But what is the
meaning of this idea that virtual objects refer, in the last
instance, to an element which is itself symbolic?” Deleuze’s
answer shows that his univocity is not your Father’s
Structuralism. (DR106) “…so it [desire] appears
neither as a power of negation nor as an element of an
opposition, but rather as a questioning, problematising and
searching force which operates in a different domain…”
And (DR108) “The unconscious …. involves neither
limitation nor opposition; it concerns, rather, problems and
question in their difference in kind from
answers-solutions…” [Underlines added.] The
unconscious is not relations of elements in structures of
negative opposition or limitation-lack. Rather, it operates
in a different domain (sub-representative domain). It
reaches forces of difference in kind (forces of
intensity).
Zizek (OwB 85-6) explains
Lacan’s ‘castration’ as the bodily cut by which
the universal symbolic order detaches itself from its corporeal
roots. It introduces us into the productive symbolic
domain. But where does Deleuze say that? Deleuze does
not see Lacan’s symbolic domain as productive at all. It
is “cut off” (DR207) from the virtual domain of
real genesis. Lacan cannot reach a productive genesis
because he never reaches the intensive difference of
Deleuze’s virtual-real plane. As long as structuralism
remains at the level of signified and signifier, we have merely
that “symbolic castration” of the universal Signifier.
Signification, at the level of signified/signifier, is cut off
from its virtual source --- signification is cut off from
the univocity of Sense. Structuralism, from Deleuze’s
perspective, is a Universalizing Castration that confuses sense
with signification. In contrast, univocity is the logic
of sense where there is no castrating lack. It must not
be confused with a castrating logic of signification.
(See Deleuze’s Logic of Sense.)
In ‘Nietzsche &
Philosophy’ Deleuze distinguishes his Nietzschean opposition
to dialectics from Hegel’s dialectical opposition.
Hegel’s dialectic is the triumph of ‘reactive
forces’. The oppositional relation of reactive forces
is not difference at all. It relates extensive elements, not
intensive forces. It reduces quantity to one quality---the
reactive quality. It has no heterogeneity. These
relational-oppositional “forces” (that are similar in
Hegel and classical structuralism) are merely homogeneous. They
are the already formed matter (DR 275) of actual elements in the
relation of an essential structure. These reactive
structural relations are not to be confused with the active
forces of intensity that, since they are empty of empirical
content, have no prior actuality of elements in an extensive
structural relation. The reactive extensive structural
relations are ‘organs without bodies’ (OwB) that hold
formed matter under the unifying protection of the categories
of possible experience. They are cut off from the active
forces of intensity that are the ‘bodies without
organs’ (BwO). (DR207) “Forms of the negative do
indeed appear in actual terms and real relations, but only in so
far as these are cut off from the virtuality which they
actualize, and from the movement of their actualization.”
OwB’s keep even an “atheist”, like Zizek, under
the unifying one-ness of theism.
The ‘partial objects’
of structuralism are ‘organs without bodies’ (OwB).
They are actual elements that belong to a totality, original or
produced (Anti-Oedipus 44). And, (A Thousand
Plateaus 171) “You can make any list of part-objects you
want: hand, breast, mouth, eyes….It’s still
Frankenstein. What we need to consider is not fundamentally
organs without bodies, or the fragmented body; it is the body
without organs, animated by various intensive
movements….” With active-intensive partial
objects (BwO) there is no longer any oppositional structure.
There is no longer any Oedipal structure of castrating lack.
(AO 73) “That is indeed what disturbs us, this recasting of
history and this “lack” attributed to partial
objects.” Deleuze’s active-intensive forces are
‘partial objects’ (BwO) in a new sense and are not to
be confused with the reactive-extensive ‘partial
objects’ (OwB) of structuralism.
Zizek says (OwB 20), “Under the heading of the opposition between becoming and being, Deleuze thus seems to identify these two logics [productive becoming and representative being], although they are fundamentally incompatible….The proper site of production is not the virtual space as such, but, rather, the very passage from it to constituted reality, the collapse of the multitude and its oscillations into one reality – production is fundamentally a limitation of the open space of virutalities, the determination and negation of the virtual multitude…. [underlines added]” But where does Deleuze say that? Deleuze does not agree that there is a “collapse” of the many and its “oscillations” into one (DR 264). Deleuze does not agree that production is negation – opposition or limitation-lack (DR 203 or 268-9). Deleuze constantly tells us that his univocity has nothing to do with universalizing unity. It has nothing to do with dualistic oppositions or limitation-lack. And this is because production cannot happen at the level of OwB (from one actual term to another). Production is actualization of the sub-representative virtual-real (the BwO in Deleuze's intensive sense). Zizek leaves out Deleuze's sub-representative plane of univocality.
Zizek says (OwB 77), “The
relationship between form and content is here dialectical in the
strict Hegelian sense: the form articulates what is repressed in
the content…. [this is] the torsion by means of which the
form itself is included…within content – and this,
perhaps, is the minimal definition of an EVENT.” This
is ‘event’ in a Hegelian sense. But it is not
Deleuze’s Spinozism. That Hegelian “event”
is the already formed content (i.e. the homogeneously formed
matter of already actual ‘substances’). This
never reaches the heterogeneous intensive, double articulation of
content and expression that is open to unformed matter
(Spinoza’s ‘Substance’). Zizek’s
Hegelian ‘event’ is not the singularity of
Deleuze-Spinoza.
From Zizek’s perspective,
Deleuze’s thought looks like a dualism/monism opposition
(OwB 71). However, Deleuze’s monism is not a
conceptual monism. (It is the intensive difference of
ontological singularity.) Deleuze’s duality is not
oppositional form-matter variability of homogeneous syntheses.
(It is nomadic distribution of intensive forces in heterogeneous
parallel series – a sign-signal system.) Deleuze’s
univocity is disparate difference said in one sense, not
many conceptual differences that synthesize a new unified
one-ness. Because Zizek is ensnared in the negation of OWB
(opposition and limitation-lack), he cannot reach the productive
forces of univocal affirmation. Zizek sees only a moral
(theological) Image of one-ness and sameness. He can see only an
infinite variability that maintains the principle of identity.
Zizek is still pious.
Zizek opens the introduction to
his book by noting Deleuze’s well known aversion toward
debate. Then, unintentionally, the rest of his book is just
an illustration of why Deleuze had such an aversion. Zizek’s
explanations of Hegel and Lacan are used to demonstrate how
Deleuze gets things wrong – how Deleuze apparently gets even
his own philosophy wrong. From Zizek’s
Representational perspective, he assumes that debaters see many
different perspectives of one reality. He thinks
that Hegel-Lacan and Deleuze are merely opposing perspectives on
one reality – and that Deleuze’s understanding of that
reality is lacking. But when one reaches Deleuze’s
univocity, the futility of debate is revealed. Debaters see
really different realities that are not totalizable into a
unified conceptual image. They merely say them in
the same ontological sense. This means debaters merely say
they are referring to the same thing when they use the same
terms. For example, Zizek misreads Deleuze as apolitical,
because Zizek can only use the term ‘politics’ to refer
to an Image of Castrating Lack – just what Deleuze sees as
STATE politics. Zizek never reaches Deleuze’s sense of
the micro-politics of univocity. Zizek leaves out
Deleuze-Spinoza’s real difference of ethics. He never
escapes the theistic moral Image of Representational Thought.
Deleuze and Zizek are not debating about the same thing!
When Deleuze is read from a classical perspective, his ‘difference’ is left out. Then, he seems uninteresting, unremarkable, and unimportant. When creative philosophers, like Deleuze and Foucault, come on the scene the experts hurry in to clarify, classify, criticize, and domesticate. Everything must be made to conform to common sense and good sense. All real difference must be cancelled. There must be no violent encounter. There must be no threat to egos. There must be no unhinging of sacred faculties. World, Self, and God (now called ‘Real’, ‘Imaginary’, and ‘Symbolic’) must be unified in a Transcendent structure -- a piety of signification. Soon all is safe for Representation again.
*Of course Zizek, and other
disciples of Lacan, do not see what Deleuze saw in Lacan. See
my articles Univocity and Structuralism, parts 1&2.