THE UNIVOCITY OF DELEUZE
by Beth Metcalf
b.metcalf@comcast.net
What is Univocity?
(2003) Spinoza’s Univocity is the key in the understanding
of Deleuze. Univocity differs from any Representational ontology
of classification according to genus and species.
(2005) Univocity overcomes all
opposition of many/one with Multiplicity (real distinction,
ontologically singular).
The Immanence
of Univocity
(2003) The immanence of Univocity shows us that Individuals are
not separate forms or Subjects. What is the life of immanence
where there are no ‘individuals’ of the kind in
Representational thinking?
Force Relations
(2003) Ideas are the sub-representative internal relation of
difference without a concept. Ideas must not be confused with
concepts.
Transcendental
Empiricism
(2003) Deleuze’s Transcendental Empiricism is not to be
confused with Representational Transcendentalism or Empiricism
which trace conditions from the possibility of the concept.
Expressive Univocity
(2003) Univocity is not a correspondence of an object of
perception with a conceptual form of Representation. It is the
expression of an internal understanding that precedes all
representation.
Ethics and
Common Notions
(2003) Deleuze-Spinoza’s Univocity is an ethics of
difference. It is not a metaphysics of moral generality.
Logic of Sense
(2005) Univocity is the expressive logic of sense. It is not to
be confused with the Representational logic of signification.
Deleuze sees disparate worlds of sense conditioned by a
transcendental field of univocality.
Bergson and Univocity
(2005) I will try to make the case that Bergsonism is consistent
with Deleuze’s Univocity. So, why does Deleuze never apply
the term ‘Univocity’ to Bergson’s thought?
The Empty Form of
Time---Eternal Return
(2003) With Univocity, the empty form is not merely empty of
empirical content. It is also empty and without concept. It is
pure order. It is the Eternal Return, the third synthesis of
Univocity.
Nietzsche’s
Univocity
(2005) In order to understand Nietzsche’s Univocity, we must
know the active forces that appropriate it.
Deleuze Versus
Hegel
(2005) Representational philosophy (such as that of Hegel)
presents us with a choice: either you will accept difference as
negatively determined, or you will be condemned to the
undifferentiated abyss of black nothingness where there is no
difference at all. Deleuze rejects that alternative.
(2005) I try to show that Deleuze bases his three syntheses on Spinoza’s parallelism. With Spinozist Univocity, disjunction becomes a real synthesis. Univocity opens all the forms. Disjunction becomes all-inclusive.
(2006) We reach real difference only if we reach the virtual forces of intensity. The virtual is actualized in varieties of singularity.
(2008) I attempt to draw Deleuze's diagram of Stoic Univocity. The diagram is not circular, but it is a paradoxical element unfolding in a Mobius strip.
(2009) I compare what Deleuze calls the 'classical conception' of linguistics with his reading of Hjelmslev. I attempt to show why this is an example of Univocity.
(2009) Analogy is equivocal being said of the univocal. Univocity is the reverse. It is univocal being said of the equivocal.
(2016) Addendum
(2010) I compare Deleuze's movement-image (indirect representation of time) with the time-image (direct presentation of time). In the former, spatialized time is subordinate to movement. In the latter, movement becomes subordinate to a transcendental empty form of time.
(2010) I believe that, if we are to understand the machinic model of flows described by Deleuze and Guattari, it is important to understand their reading of Spinoza. Deleuze and Guattari find machinic univocity in Spinoza.
(2010) Univocity is the answer Deleuze and Guattari give to their question 'What is Philosophy?' Whenever philosophy is thought in the image of Representation, it comes into crisis which can only be settled by a relativism of opinions. Deleuze and Guattari reformulate the problem. Univocity is their answer to the crisis of Representational Phiosophy.
Univocity and Structuralism (Part 1)
(2008) There seems to be some ambiguity about Deleuze’s
assessment of Structuralism. How can his Univocity shed
light on this ambiguity?
Univocity and Structuralism (Part 2)
(2010) In Deleuze’s article ‘How
Do We Recognize Structuralism?’ he criticizes the “old
structure” of structuralism and foresees the “new
structure” of univocity. I attempt to address the
confusion that results when Lacan’s disciples project
notions of the old structure into their reading of Deleuze.
(2014) In ‘How Do We Recognize Structuralism’ Deleuze tells of two accidents that are the immanent tendencies of structure whenever its series remain at the level of signifieds/signifiers. Today’s task is to reach a new structure that can avoid the accidents of the old classical structuralism.
(2016) Revised.
Sub-representative Domain (Part 1) Individuation
(2010) We cannot reach Deleuze’s
univocity unless we reach his sub-representative domain of
univocality. Singular individuation is pre-individual.
It is a process beneath the forms and substances of
representation. The plane of representations must always
remain open to its sub-representative transcendental source, not
in negative opposition but in vice-diction.
(2016) Revised
Sub-representative Domain (Part 2) Deleuze-Spinoza
(2010) Deleuze’s univocity must include
the sub-representative domain if it is to reach real difference.
I believe we can best understand this through Deleuze’s
Spinozism. Difference is modal, not substantial. To
reach this modal difference, we must reach the sub-representative
plane that Deleuze finds in Spinoza.
Sub-representative Domain (Part 3) Perspectivism
(2010) Deleuze’s perspectivism is the
truth of the relative, not the relativity of truth. But we
can reach this perspectivism only if we reach Deleuze’s
sub-representative plane of univocality. I explore the
example of two critics of Deleuze, Badiou and Hallward, to ask if
they are reaching his perspective.
Sub-representative Domain (Part 4) Intensity
(2011) Intensity is pure difference in itself. But we cannot reach this difference if we are still thinking in terms of concepts bound by extensive relations. We must reach a sub-representative domain of intensity.
(2011) Consciousness is a double of something. Deleuze’s reading of Foucault’s univocity shows that ‘consciousness’ is a ‘statement’ where a prior doubling makes it flush with the real. ‘Consciousness’ as a statement is said in one sense. But ‘consciousness’ has real difference on different historical strata (e.g. the stratum of phenomenological intentionality or the stratum of univocity).
Genesis: Ontological and Logical
(2012) It is a serious, yet common, misunderstanding of Deleuze's univocity to assume that it describes a simple correspondence between the singularity of the individual and the generality of the logical proposition.
(2012) Hyppolite credits Hegel with the insight that philosophy must be an ontology of sense. However, Deleuze notices a problem that Hyppolites's Hegelian bias won't permit him to see --- a problem that prevents both Hyppolite and Hegel from reching an ontology of sense.
Numerical and Real Distinction
(2012) Deleuze’s Spinozist univocity is offered as a solution to the problems of Representational philosophy. But it is not simple to reach the real distinction of Deleuze’s sub-representative virtual. In this article, I try to make the case that Deleuze’s univocity is really different from the Representational interpretations that are so prevalent. I contend that commentary on Deleuze never escapes Representational Thinking because it still confuses numerical distinction of substances for real distinction.
(2013) This article is in response to those who accuse Deleuze of "intellectual imposture" and postmodern relativism. In particular, this is in response to 'Fashionable Nonsense' by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont; and 'Postmodernism Disrobed' by Richard Dawkins.
(2014) According
to Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, there can be no proof of
consistency within an arithmetic system (no endoconsistency).
Also, there will be true statements that are not demonstrable
within a consistent system (no exoconsistency). Set theory
is not adequate for finding both conceptual consistency and
functional reference. But Deleuze and Guattari introduce
univocity in order to reach an intersection of two types of
multiplicities for both consistency and reference.
(2015) When under the shackles of the Representational Image of Thought, ‘difference’ is seen to be merely the variable relations that maintain and produce identity. And, there is still a common misconception that Deleuze’s ‘difference’ must maintain that Image of what is possible. However Deleuze, even when he writes with Guattari, always presents univocity as the way to reach real difference that, from the point of view of the Representational Image, seems impossible. The difference of Deleuze’s univocity escapes any principle that would maintain or produce identity.
(2015) Liberal political traditional analyzes social structures at the level of normative Ideology. Many individuals and groups are unified according to collective normativity of State. But this type of political thought cannot account for any real revolutionary change. Deleuze’s univocity introduces real revolutionary difference that does not maintain or reproduce the same State structure. Univocity is the ontological process of ‘becoming minoritarian’ that does not maintain or reproduce a unifying normativity.
(2016) In chapter 4 of A Thousand Plateaus Deleuze
and Guattari examine four postulates of traditional
representational linguistics. They challenge these
postulates of representation and contrast them with their own
linguistic postulates based on univocity.
(2016) Deleuze returns to what he sees as Kant's insight that was promised but never fulfilled by his Copernican Revolution. Deleuze makes a new repetition of Kant with real difference.
(2017) Deleuze and
Guattari tell us that philosophical concept has often been
confused with scientific function. However, philosophy and
science are two types of multiplicities that intersect without
resemblance. Today there is the need for a new
contemporary (sub-atomic) philosophy of univocal being that
alludes to contemporary science.
Repetition as Universality of the Singular
(2017) I suggest that, in order to understand Deleuze’s univocity of singular difference, it is important to remember page 1 of Difference & Repetition, “Generality, as generality of the particular, thus stands opposed to repetition as universality of the singular…” Generality of the particular is Representational Thought, but univocity is the intersection of two types of multiplicities that reaches repetition as universality of the singular.
Individual Difference in Evolutionary Theory
(2018) Evolution of species through time is a fact of biological science. However as long as evolutionary theory assumes only a generalized taxonomic structure, how can it reach the singular individual difference which alone can account for creative change? The discoveries of evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) could never have been predicted under the assumptions of generalizing theory. Is Deleuze's concept of univocal being more consistent with the new findings of evo-devo?
Art as Apprenticeship of Signs
(2018) In Proust and Signs, Deleuze understands Proust to say that the work of art is always singular style. It is singular use of a general law of series of signs. Artistic style is never derived from an image or memory that comes before. There is no totalizing generality of meaning. Style comes after an apprenticeship of signs that makes use of singular-universal viewpoint. In other words, art is univocal.
(2019) Deleuze sees in Francis Bacon’s art disparate monuments of sensation conditioned by a transcendental field of univocality. Deleuze sees in Bacon’s art an irrational logic of sensation.
How Can We Avoid a Theological Vision?
(2019) The question, ‘How can we avoid the analogical transcendence of a theological vision?’ becomes the question, ‘How do we reach the ontological immanence of univocal being with its positive use of the disjunctive synthesis?’ The Kantian ‘transcendental’ ushered in the speculative death of God. God, from then on, can merely preside over the disjunctive synthesis. However, Deleuze argues that Kant’s ‘God’ did not reach the positive use of the disjunctive synthesis and therefore is still a theological vision.
BOOK REVIEWS:
Widder’s
Genealogies of Difference
(2003) Nathan Widder remains in Representational thought. He does
not reach Deleuze’s Univocity.
Levi Bryant’s ‘Difference and Givenness’
(2011) ‘Difference and Givenness’, by Levi Bryant is a traditionally strucutralist reading of Deleuze. He believes that we can reach an understanding of Deleuze by way of the structural relations of structuralism. However, I see Deleuze as going beyond traditional structuralism in order to reach a more truly anti-essentialist structure.
Zizek’s ‘Organs Without Bodies’
(2012) Zizek’s structural relations of elements (organs without bodies) prevent him from reaching Deleuze’s intensive forces of difference (bodies without organs). As long as Deleuze is read from a classical perspective, a Unifying One-ness will be the only possible way to understand him. However, once we finally reach Deleuze’s plane of univocity, we can see that Deleuze’s forces never approach Univeralizing Unity. Deleuze says that univocity is the only ontology of immanence, because it is not a unifying theology of transcendence.
Daniel W. Smith’s ‘Essays On Deleuze’
(2014) Daniel W. Smith’s collection of essays on Deleuze is an attempt to think that strange thought of univocity. I use this attempt to illustrate why I think it is necessary to reach a sub-representative and extra-propositional domain where differential forces of vice-diction are different in kind from variables that maintain identity.
Foucault’s ‘Theatrum Philosophicum’
(2015) Here I review an essay by Michel Foucault in which he reviews Deleuze’s Difference & Repetition and Logic of Sense. Foucault discusses Deleuze’s theater of mime where sense intervenes in “uses of representation”. These uses have nothing to do with the old philosophies of Representation-Analogy.
Manuel Delanda’s ‘Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy’
(2016) I argue that, since Delanda leaves
out Deleuze’s ontology of univocal being, his reconstruction
of Deleuze’s thought can only maintain a structure of
conceptual identity. Delanda sees Deleuze’s ontology
as a mind-independent realism with an added speculative
dimension. If he wants his reader to see this
“Speculative Realism” as something other than naďve
realism, he has a lot more explaining to do.
(2017) Raymond Roussel wrote How I Wrote
Certain of My Books. Michel Foucault wrote a commentary
on Roussel’s book entitled Death and the Labyrinth.
Gilles Deleuze and Maurice Blanchot each wrote a commentary
on Foucault’s book. They all discuss an apparent
deficiency in language. There seems to be an excess of
things and a lack of forms. Foucault’s Roussel
reverses this fault in language with what, as I see it, Deleuze
calls ‘univocal being’.
Foucault’s The Life of Infamous Men
(2018) In Part three of Negotiations,
Deleuze reviews Foucault’s essay, noting the parallels
between their works. Neither Deleuze nor Foucault is a
structuralist. As I see it, they both are able to go beyond
structuralism by way of what Deleuze calls ‘univocity’.
Klossowski’s Nietzsche and the
Vicious Circle
(2018) Deleuze encounters Klossowski’s reading of Nietzsche. In my summary of Klossowski’s book, I will sometimes substitute, or parenthetically add, Deleuze’s terms where I think that encounter is revealed. Nietzsche’s ‘Eternal Return’ is, in Deleuze’s terms, ‘univocal being’.
Blanchot's Infinite Conversation
(2019) Blanchot's writing is an example of what Deleuze calls 'univocal being'. His space of literary writing is what Deleuze calls 'the empty form of time' or 'Aion'. It is Nietzsche's 'eternal return' of real difference.
(2020) Foucault looks for a subterranean
field beneath what is possible to see and say in different
historical eras.
(2020) I write a favorable review of Deleuze: A Philosophy of the Event along with The Vocabulary of Deleuze, by Francois Zourabichvili. Zourabichvili's book is a rare event. His writing demonstrates that, if we are to reach an understanding of Deleuze, our use of terms must take on new ontological sense. Our thought must encounter a plane of univocal immanence.
(2020) In reading Bergson’s Time and Duration, Matter and Memory, and Creative Evolution; I am influenced by Deleuze's Bergsonism. But, according to Deleuze and Bergson, I cannot be determined by that influence.
(2021) Maimon’s critique of Kant applies to Deleuze’s critique of Hegel.