Foucaults Theatrum
Philosophicum
by Beth Metcalf
I want to review Michel Foucaults
essay Theatrum Philosophicum (1) which is itself a
review of two books by Deleuze, Difference and Repetition
and The Logic of Sense. Foucault calls these (Aesthetics,
Method, and Epistemology 343) books of exceptional
merit and importance. Foucault, a philosopher of
history, shares with Deleuze what I see as a common degree of
intensity that radically changes the nature of both the study of
philosophy and the study of history. Deleuze and Foucault
change the nature of the study into new practices or uses.
Therefore, Foucault has a rare insight into the writings of
Deleuze. He sees Deleuzes thought as a transformation
of philosophy into a theater of signals that intervene as sense
in the mimed usages of representation (2). This
new philosophy of usages of representation has nothing to do with
the old philosophy of Representation-Analogy (3).
Foucault begins his reading of Deleuze by saying that there is no heart or center or circle of return in this new vision of philosophical thought. There is only a problem. There is only decentering through the nomadic distribution of remarkable points. This means that there are no longer essential points of a prior formed substance. Rather, substance turns around modal uses that decenter. Now, all return is a decentering on a straight labyrinthine line of excess and deficiency.
With this new philosophy of mimed uses,
Deleuze overturns Platonism. But havent all
philosophies (even Platos) tried to overturn Platonism?
Foucault asks if this means that all philosophies are a species
of the genus anti-Platonic. Arent all
philosophies grouped around this anti-Platonic center? But
Foucault notices that this is what makes Deleuzes
anti-Platonism different. Deleuze shows us that the
traditional ways of reversing Platonism are useless. Traditional
philosophy, by merely opposing Platonic essence, could not escape
the essence/appearance opposition. A reversal of Platonism
cant be defined in opposition to its substantial center.
Rather, anti-Platonic must be an element that
functions in the Platonic series as a differential, absent in the
content of Platonism but present in its expression. It must
be defined as a phantasm by the surface effect of absence
and excess when distributed into two heterogeneous series. So
Plato cannot be reversed in the manner that the old philosophies
tried to do. The reversal cannot be a separation into genus
and species. Rather, Deleuze shows us that the reversal
must be a selective division. The true or false appearances have
nothing to do with the authentic claimant of singularity. Only
by reaching this singular difference can the Platonism of
essence/appearance opposition be reversed. Deleuzes
anti-Platonism is a delicate sorting that reaches
singularity. This has nothing to do with rights of
appearances or rights of simulacra that would
resemble essential forms. The incorporeal event
breaks with essential centering and cyclic return. It
breaks with all traditional ways of trying to overturn Plato.
Therefore, Deleuzes reverse side of
Platonism is not anti-Platonism. It is a new interpretation
of Stoicism. The pure event must have a metaphysical basis.
But this must not be a substantial metaphysics that assumes an
opposition of essence/accident in a network of causes and
effects. The event is an effect of the
intermingling of incorporeal bodies. Incorporeal bodies
create events as surface effects without being causes. They
are quasi-causes of incorporeal metaphysics. Events,
therefore, cannot be determined by a logic of propositions or
reference. Events have nothing to do with a logic of facts
or states of things that could be judged as true or false. The
pure event has a new logic of sub-representative sense --- a
metaphysics of incorporeal quasi-causes of new disparate uses of
representation.
Deleuzes phantasms and simulacra are
incorporeal. They cannot be contained in stable figures.
Phantasms cut, break, and multiply surfaces of bodies. Phantasms
are not imaginary organisms. They (AME 347)
topologize material into incorporeal bodies without
organs. They are neither true nor false. They are
neither being nor nonbeing. They are
extra-being. Phantasms are not resemblances of
perception. Rather, phantasms are the impenetrable,
incorporeal surfaces of bodies. This means that
metaphysics takes on a new sense. It is now the
discourse of incorporeal things. Deleuzes
metaphysics liberates simulacra. Simulacra
repeat without resemblance. There is only the play of the
perverse. Deleuzes metaphysics sees the phantasm and
the simulacra as a play of surfaces without the relation of model
and copy.
So, according to Foucault (AME 349-50),
instead of a logic of meaning in relation to propositional
reference; Deleuze envisions a new logic of sense that
inter-relates four terms. We have that which designates
things by blind gestures or signals. We have the derivation
of that which expresses a collective enunciation of
opinion or belief about new uses of things. We have that
which signifies the verb to be and affirms an
attributive link between things. And finally, we have
intangible meaning that articulates a frontier between (on
the one hand) incorporeal things and (on the other hand) the
incorporeal proposition as infinitive verb. I take this
final meaning-event to be what Deleuze calls
sense that inheres in the signifying affirmation of
the proposition and is attributed to designated things. The
infinitive verb to die is an incorporeal effect of a
proposition. It is a meaning and an event. Aeon is a
nomadic distribution. An aleatory point without thickness
is displaced over the surface. It articulates a frontier
between words and things. Meaning is not a concept the
subject has of an object. It is the frontier without
substantial thickness between words and things. Intangible
meaning-event is what is said of a thing. It is not the
attribute of a proposition. Being is extra-propositional.
Meaning happens, not as a variable process or an essential state,
but as the event --- the speed of what already happened and the
slowness of the not yet happened. Meaning-event is the
singularity of being-saying repeated with real singular
difference each time.
With the incorporeal metaphysics of the
event, two series can be made to resonate. There is a
neutral aleatory point that roams over the surface of two series.
The incorporeal event and the intangible phantasm are brought
into resonance. The phantasm is repetition of pure
difference. The phantasm is excessive in the series of the
singularity of the event, while the event is lacking in the
series of the phantasm. This aleatory point roams over the
surface of the two series in inclusive affirmation of all
disjunctions. It is repetition of real difference outside
any form that would copy an original model through resemblance.
Meaning-event (or that which Deleuze calls
sense) is not the attribute of a proposition. The
verb is either the present tense of the event, or it is the
infinitive of meaning by the circulation of a neutral element.
Foucault says (AME 350), The grammar of the meaning-event
revolves around two asymmetrical and hobbling poles: the
infinitive mode and the present tense. The
meaning-event then is displacement of the present singular event
and the repetition of the real distinction of the infinitive.
To die is Aeon that divides the smallest time that
can be thought. And dying is eternally repeated as a
singular displaced present and the plenitude of really distinct
forms --- (AME 350)
the (multiple) eternity of the
(displaced) present. In other words, it is real
distinction always ontological singularity. An incorporeal
event is on the surface of words and things. It is the
infinitive verb as present without thickness. It is the
saying of all real distinction in one sense. The saying of
the whole of being (ontological singularity) is real difference
and repetition.
Foucault lists three attempts in the recent
past to conceptualize the event. First, neopositivism
takes the event to be a state of things inside the density of
bodies. It reduces surfaces to depth. The event is
merely the attribute of a proposition. Second, phenomenology
sees the event as a process of meaning. The event still has
only possible form as either a logic of signification or a
metaphysics of consciousness. Third, there is a philosophy
of history and its cyclical time at the level of cause and
effect thought through conceptual identity. All three never
reach the event. They never reach the metaphysics of the
event as incorporeal surface.
Philosophy traditionally tried to determine
the event as measured by a prior concept of knowledge. And
it presented itself as critique. But Deleuzes
ontology sees the event as the repetition of difference as
singular universal. Foucault says (AME 353), If the
role of thought is to produce the phantasm theatrically and to
repeat the universal event in its extreme point of singularity,
then what is thought itself if not the event that befalls the
phantasm and the phantasmatic repetition of the absent
event?.....Thought has to think through what forms it, and is
formed out of what it thinks through. The
critique-knowledge duality is perfectly useless: thought says
what it is. And (AME 346), It is useless, in
any case, to seek a more substantial truth behind the
phantasm
.it is also useless to contain it within stable
figures
.Phantasms must be allowed to function at the limit
of bodies, against bodies
. And if seeking a
truth of substantial bodies is useless, then what is useful?
The useful must not be confused with a
relation between subject and object. That is, the event is
not meaning around a subject. Nor is the object a form of
resemblance affirmed by a subject. Aeon is a straight line
as a fissure between a dissolved self and fragmented series of
intensive remarkable points that allows no unity of subject and
object to subsist. There are only the events of thought as
incorporeality --- the problematic multiplicities --- thought as
mime in repetition of difference --- without copy of a model.
Difference has traditionally
been a relation from or within something, as
species within a genus. Yet beyond the species there are
swarms of singular individual differences outside the generality
of the concept. Foucault asks, (AME 356) What is this
boundless diversity which eludes specification and remains
outside the concept, if not the resurgence of repetition?
But how do we reach that singular individuation? Certainly
not by a subjectivation to common sense between the universal
generality of an object and the good will of the subject. Deleuzes
thought is freed from common sense to make malign use
in the free reign of ill will. What if
difference escapes that relationship within and
between genus and species? What if a differential
difference escapes the generality of the particular to reach the
universality of the singular? Then difference
would be a pure event. And repetition would no longer
repeat the identity of a concept. Difference and repetition
would reach that which, in dividing, changes its nature. Thought,
then (AME 356) produces a meaning-event by repeating a
phantasm.
Representation-Analogy could only equalize
and hierarchize quantities in a table of classification. On
the horizontal axis, the smallest unit of quantity intersects the
smallest variable of quality. Repetition within the
identity of the concept merely repeats identity and organizes
similarities. Good sense recognizes this repetition of difference
inside the identical concept. In the classical table of
Representation, there is a merely negative basis of
difference. It is based only on a
negative test of recognition. A Representational
classification has only negative oppositional relations. Its
difference can only divide same into
contradiction. It can only limit identity through
non-being. It can only change through a constant
variability of opposing predicates. Representational
difference is mediated by a prior concept. Its repetition
is merely a (AME 358) stuttering of the negative.
Nor does Hegels dialectics liberate
difference. Its contradictions salvage identity. A
real liberation of difference requires thought to escape
contradiction and negation. We require a difference that
reaches affirmation of all divergence --- the inclusion of all
disjunctions. We require the intensive disparate
multiplicities that no longer confine thought to the maintenance
of the same.
How do we reach that which perverts good
sense? How do we escape the table of similarities and
resemblances? We must reach a new vertical dimension that
is not ordered in the table of Representation. Deleuzes
intensity reaches a new domain of pure disparate
difference of the singular. Now this intensive (AME 357)
difference displaces and repeats itself, contracts and
expands; a singular point that constricts and slackens the
indefinite repetitions in an acute event. One must give
rise to thought as intensive irregularity. Dissolution of
the Me.
So, how do we reach thought that frees
difference from negation? Thought must accept divergence
and affirmation of disjunctions. Thought must reach a
nomadic distribution of multiplicities that are not mediated by a
prior concept. Thought must reach the Idea that
is not eternal essence, but exists only in the form of a problem.
The answer to a question is not an Ideal solution. The
problem has resolution only in displacement of the question.
The sub-representative problematic idea is a dispersed
multiplicity. Its solution is not a Cartesian
clear-distinct Idea. The problematic idea is an
incorporeal-intangible intersection of phantasm and event
the obscure-distinct. This is not Hegels negative of
contradiction of being and non-being. It is extra-being.
(AME 359) We must think problematically rather than
question and answer dialectically.
Another condition for reaching
Deleuzes difference and repetition is to liberate
difference by reaching non-categorical difference. Through
a sedentary distribution, the categories maintain identity of the
concept. However, Deleuze imagines a new ontology of
univocal being where difference is expressed as same.
Only difference is repeated, but it is said as same.
Differences do not revolve around a center. Difference is
no longer mediated by conceptual identity. Only difference
returns. Difference returns expressed as same, but it is
not the same. Being is not distributed into genus and
species or partitioned by categories. The real is no longer
constrained by a concept of what is possible. Being,
without opposition of the necessary and the contingent, is a pure
event expressed by the intangible verb. It is always
expressed in one sense of the whole of being, ontologically one.
In the same way, the (AME 360) phantasmic castration
of real distinction --- the already happened and is yet to happen
--- is also said in the same sense, ontologically singular.
But there is also a (AME 361) use of
categories within this new ontology. Univocal being
creates a space for new uses of truth and falsity.
When we are chained to Representational thought, we have either a
negative determination through categories that reject stupidity;
or we may have acategorical thought of a black
stupidity. Therefore, we court danger of falling into
black stupidity --- black nothingness ---
when we try to get rid of categories. How can we avoid the
danger of falling into one side or the other of this alternative?
(4) Foucault reads Deleuze to say that we can immerse
ourselves in this acategorical (AME 361) black
stupidity, to confront it and distinguish oneself from it,
to be fascinated by it, to mime its action. The philosopher
must become sufficiently ill willed and ill humored to approach
stupidity of the acategorical, to mime it, and to await the (AME
363) shock of difference. Once paradoxes have upset
the table of Representation, catatonia operates within the
theater of thought. New ground arises that no longer
absorbs differences into a black stupidity or a black
nothingness, but makes them rise in new uses of representation.
As Foucault reads Deleuze, thought has two horns. Ill will
baffles the categories. Ill humor immerses in stupidity
without categorical difference. Ill will and ill humor
await the theater of (364) perverse practices or
perverse uses. There is a
kaleidoscope of fragile uses of dice throws.
Then chance, theater, and perversion resonate and make it
possible to think radically new usages of
representation (2).
Univocal being frees difference from the order of the same in which there are only oppositional relations of conceptual elements. Univocal being is expressed as same because its intensive forces are no longer categorical differences. Being is said of difference. Only difference returns. Becoming no longer maintains identity or unity, nor is there a consciousness that recognizes it. There is no cyclic return of events around a center. Now, Chronos is a lawless becoming of new uses because it is intersected by the straight line of Aeon that nomadically distributes the ontologically singular present as a real distinction of always already happened and the not yet happened. There is no longer the succession of present instants of causal chronological thought that unifies past-present-future. Now, it is time that repeats itself. Present recurs as singular and really distinct difference. Ontological becoming is recurrence of difference. It is no longer a universal becoming of the same identical concept. All chance is affirmed in ontologically one throw where both dice and the rules change in nature. Being is not unified. Univocal being says all difference as same. Philosophy is theater of mime where (AME 367) blind gestures signal to each other.
Therefore, it seems to me that
Deleuzes Logic of Sense, Twentieth Series and
Twenty-first Series, are especially important in Foucaults
reading of Deleuze. Deleuze contrasts his own
interpretation of Stoicism with the usual divinatory
interpretation. That divinatory interpretation goes from
cosmic present to not yet actualized event, linking the event to
corporeal causes and their physical unity. That
interpretation is still Representational. But Deleuze says
that Stoic ethics couldnt be satisfied with this physical
method of divination. It had to go toward a pole of logic
--- a logic of sense. In contrast to the divinatory
interpretation of Stoicism that gathers all physical causes in
depth and unites them in a cosmic present of the event; the logic
of sense wills any event without interpretation in the smallest
possible present. This goes from pure event to smallest
present actualization --- a new use of representation
with each repetition of difference. Events are incorporeal
effects that differ in nature from corporeal causes. Incorporeal
effects are governed only by their relation to incorporeal
quasi-causes. Incorporeal effects have no relation to a
Representational interpretation of corporeal causality.
So, with the logic of sense, usage of
representation is not the usual tradition of Representation
(3). Rational Representation is still the concept of
corporeal causality derived from sensible perceptions. Deleuze
notes that sensible Representations are denotations and rational
Representations are significations. But only incorporeal
events express sense. Therefore, there is a
real difference in nature between incorporeal expression and
rational Representation. Incorporeal sense/event is
irreducible to denotation and signification. It has a
neutrality and a pre-individual singularity. Sub-representative
sense is not an object of Representation. But it does
intervene in uses of representation and (LOS 145)
confers a very special value of the relation that it
maintains with its object. Without this intervention
of sense, Representation has an extrinsic relation of
resemblance. Representation-Analogy leaves out the
internal character which envelops an expression.
But Deleuzes Stoic use of representation
encompasses an expression it does not Represent. (LOS 146)
There is thus a use of representation, without
which representation would be lifeless and senseless. This
use is not a function of Representation in relation
to the Represented. It is not Representation through a form
of possibility.
Deleuze says (LOS 146)
.the
functional is transcended in the direction of a topology, and use
is in the relation between representation and something
extra-representative, a nonrepresented and merely expressed
entity. Representation envelops the event in another
nature, it envelops it at is border, it stretches until this
point, and it brings about this lining or hem. This is the
operation which defines living usage, to the extent that
representation, when it does not reach this point, remains only a
dead letter confronting that which it represents, and stupid in
its representiveness.
The Stoic sage-actor-mime identifies with
the quasi-cause, traversing the surface as the aleatory point
traces a line on the surface. The actor awaits the event in
its eternal truth apart from its actualization in space-time.
The present event is eternally yet to come and
already passed. The actor wills the embodiment
and the actualization of this pure incorporeal event. The
actor-mime acts through a cosmic mixture and a present without
thickness that produces the incorporeal effect. This is not
a present that gathers past and future into itself. Rather,
the actor occupies the instant to bring into correspondence the
minimum time that can be thought with the maximum time over the
line of Aion. This is to limit actualization of the event
in a present without mixture to express any ramification of
divergent disjunction in unlimited past and future.
Deleuze says (LoS 147), To bring about
the correspondence of the minimum time which can occur in the
instant with the maximum time which can be thought in accordance
with the Aion. To limit the actualization of the event in a
present without mixture, to make the instant all the more
intense, taut, and instantaneous since it expresses an unlimited
future and an unlimited past. This is the use of
representation: the mime, and no longer the fortune-teller.
One stops going from the greatest present toward a future and
past which are said only of a smaller present; on the contrary,
one goes from the future and past as unlimited, all the way to
the smallest present of a pure instant which is endlessly
subdivided.
Use of representation is the
actor as mime rather than fortune teller of divination. This
use has nothing to do with Representational
pragmatism. It is not a molar functionalism. These
uses function no longer in an opposition of
true/false or essence/appearance. Rather they are the
production of a problem. They actualize an intensive,
heterogeneous disjunction between content of the phantasm and
expression as event. From unlimited future and past to a
smallest present endlessly subdivided, the sage is the mime ---
the actor --- that wills the event as wound inside that which
occurs. The actor wills the double structure of the event
--- in its repetition and its difference --- in its actualization
and its counter-actualization.
(1) Foucaults essay Theatrum
Philosophicum is published in Aesthetics, Method, and
Epistemology, a collection of Foucaults essays and
interviews, edited by James D. Faubion and Paul Rabinow, pages
343-368.
(2) See Deleuzes Logic of Sense
Twentieth Series discusses uses of representation of
the mime and its difference from Representational divinatory
interpretations of Stoicism.
(3) I make a distinction between
Representational thought which is opposed to univocity, and the
uses of representation that are actualizations of
univocity. I indicate this distinction by using the
upper-case R for the Representation of the dogmatic
image of thought opposed to univocity. I use the lower-case
r for the uses of representation.
(4) Deleuzes univocity rejects this
alternative (see my article Deleuze Versus Hegel).