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'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'

Deleuze: reality as process « Previous | |Next »
February 17, 2007

Deleuze’s and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1988) moves towards a rhizomatic or machinic model of evolution, in that they emphasize an ethology of assemblages rather than one of behaviour. In contrast to Darwin and the neo-Darwinists, Bergson and Deleuze do not give primacy to the gene, the germ cell, the organism, the species or the memes. They focus on the becoming of duration and intensive processes that lack a specific spatial location. Therefore, evolution is not just hereditary transmission and reproduction as suggested by Dawkins and his selfish gene; it is one where bodies become the vehicle for instincts which are particular territories of becoming and of identities that emerge through differentiation, divergence and creation.

Johan Normark, in this post at Archaeolog says that:

Instead of behaviour being localized in individuals it is seen as a result of complex material networks which cut across individuals and which transverse boundaries of organisms or objects (rhizomes). A rhizome consists of plateaus or multiplicities that are connected to other multiplicities that form or extend a rhizome. A multiplicity is a unity that is multiple in itself. The rhizome is different from the tree metaphor (arborescent thinking and structure) since a rhizome connects any multiplicity with any other multiplicity. It has no centre and it is non-hierarchical and non-signifying. It does not consist of units, but of movement. There is no beginning or end; there is just a middle, an in-between. Whereas the tree logic emphasizes tracing in a direct line and reproduction, a rhizome is a map with multiple entryways The world is a changing field of multiplicities or in another word; assemblages of heterogeneous components (human, animal, molecular, materiality) in which the creative evolution involve blocks of becoming.

So we have reality as process as becoming, as fields of multiplicities.

Normark says that the reason why we have problems in understanding such a changing world is found in Bergson’s writings.

He argues that our mind has evolved to seek a lowest common denominator, a spatial location from where we can begin our understanding of the world. When we create a model of becoming we tend to freeze the process to a static frame and shape it into a being. We freeze duration to instants so we can analyze it. This is how science has created its categories and the way in which human beings gain knowledge (Bergson 1998). Our acts exert on fixed points in space where duration gets broken down to instants that relate to our positions (a discrete or an actual multiplicity). These instants are only snapshots that our mind has extracted from the continuity of duration (the continuous or virtual multiplicity).

He adds that:
From this, the mind forms artificially closed systems .... Our mind cannot understand the duration of the world since it uses these static frames as points of reference. We cannot understand what is fluid because we think to act, and to do that we need to calculate and foresee, something we do from fixed points and units. Therefore, we tend to forget that we have created the categories or representations we use. In reality, there is no fixed point or representation, only a continuous “stream” of duration ..... It is from these representations we “construct” our world view. In short, there is no fixed and ready society, and reality should be seen as a process rather than as a static being.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:26 PM |