What is the concept of sense developed by Deleuze in his 1969 Logic of Sense? This paper attempts to answer this question analysing the three dimensions of language that Deleuze isolates: the primary order of noises and intensities ; the secondary order of sense ; and the tertiary organisation of propositions. What renders language possible is that which separates sounds from bodies and organises them into propositions, freeing them for the expressive function. Deleuze argues that it is the dimension of (...) sense that brings about this genesis of language, and he analyses in detail the three syntheses that bring about the production of this surface of sense. Yet Deleuze also distinguishes between two types of non-sense: the nonsense of Lewis Carroll's portmanteau words, which remain ensconced in the dimension of sense, and the more profound nonsense of Antonin Artaud's psychotic scream-breaths, which penetrate the almost unbearable world of the primary order of noise and intensities. In the end, the focus of Logic of Sense is less the surface domain of sense than the primary depth of corporeal intensities. What Deleuze calls a ‘minor’ use of language is nothing other than an intensive use of language that constitutes a principle of metamorphosis. (shrink)

I argue against the use of general ‘ism’ terms such as ‘speculative realism’ and ‘correlationism’ by Harman. This use is contrasted with more nuanced readings of philosophers, referring to Bryant and DeLanda’s more subtle versions of materialism that do not fit the general label. Instead of general categories I defend Deleuze’s use of the concept of problem as studied by Bell. This argument is then developed through a close reading of Logic of Sense, against Harman’s denial of the reality of (...) relations and processes. I demonstrate that Deleuze is not a correlationist as defined by Harman, by following Sauvagnargues, Smith and Beistegui on the concepts of event and simulacrum in Logic of Sense. I then consider Deleuze’s study of language and his argument that designation, signification and manifestation rely on the concept of sense. This argument leads to a position which is neither idealism, nor materialism, because the differential processes at work in sense cannot be reduced to matter or to the subject, working instead between them and denying their independent reality. (shrink)

I demonstrate that Deleuze's identification of Aion as an empty form offers a fascinating model of temporality that prioritises variation. First, I suggest that Deleuze's identification of time as an empty form is supported by ancient Greek and Gnostic concepts of the relation of Aion and Chronos. From Plato, through Aristotle, to Plotinus the concept of time undergoes substantive revision, in the sense that temporal measurement becomes removed from the measurement of existent entities. This gradual untethering of time from movement (...) gives rise to the development of the concept of eternity as an ontologically comprehensive mode of time that is devoid of content. It is here, with Deleuze's reading of the Platonic cosmology, that we see the first hints of the suggestion that Aion is involved with ontogenesis. Eternity is characterised as: a temporal ‘all’ that is non-reducible to the determinacy implied by any particular temporally localised existent or temporal series ; that which tends towards a diversity of possible states of affairs. Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects in the long history of Aion is that – in the ancient world – it was used in magical incantations. For the Gnostics and Oracles, Aion was a deity, and a potent one at that. From the Gnostic papyri, we get a vision of Aion as a force which enjoys eternal realisation. I suggest that the papyri conjure an image of Aion as a deity that is liberated from time, in the sense that it enjoys a neutrality with respect to the movements of any particular entity or group of entities – a form, in the most general sense of the term. Then, to clarify this mercurial aspect of an empty form of time, I elaborate on a complex analogy between Aion and Deleuze's concept of an ‘ideal game’ – an analogy that Deleuze specifies through reference to Fitzgerald and Borges. The claim is that Aion is an analogue of an ideal game in the sense that both share essential properties. Both Aion and the ideal game involve the multiplication of chance. Finally, I suggest that the differential aspects of Aion imply that it is pure variability; something which can be illustrated through a differential equation. These yield the suggestion that Aion enjoys realisation as an ontogenetic force. I further claim that ontogenetic forces may enjoy expression as the content of literature and mathematics. In concrete terms, temporality is involved in the creation of existent entities, which may be illustrated as various types of continuous multiplicity. (shrink)

This article is concerned with the status and stakes of Gilles Deleuze’s “break” with structuralism. With a particular focus on a transitional text of Deleuze, the 1967/1972 article “How Do We Recognize Structuralism?,” it asks how Deleuze understood structuralism and why, after his encounter with Félix Guattari and Guattari’s own transitional text, 1969’s “Machine and Structure,” Deleuze felt the need to break with structuralism. It argues that reading these two texts together allows us to see that Deleuze already perceived tensions (...) within the structuralist project, and argues that Guattari’s non-structural account of the machine allowed Deleuze to clarify this perception, and see it as necessitating a departure from structuralism. To close, however, it turns to recent work by philosophers such as Étienne Balibar and Patrice Maniglier that re-examines the structuralist moment and identifies an ongoing legacy that the “poststructuralism” of Deleuze and Guattari may be part of. By considering Deleuze and Guattari’s break with structuralism in light of this work, this article considers how the polemical rejection of structuralism by Deleuze and Guattari may not fully account for the ongoing legacy of the structuralist program and the persistence of a structuralist problematic in their thought. (shrink)

A major problem threatens Deleuze’s project in The Logic of Sense. He makes an ontological distinction between events and substances, but he then collapses a crucial distinction between two kinds of events, namely, actions and mere occurrences. Indeed, whereas actions are commonly differentiated from mere occurrences with reference to their causal dependence on the intentions of their agents, Deleuze asserts a strict ontological distinction between the realm of causes and the realm of events, and holds that events of all types (...) are incorporeal happenings which are inseparable from expressed sense. For Deleuze, what counts as one’s action thus does not depend on one’s intention, but rather on a process of “making sense” of that action. Nevertheless, Deleuze continues to speak of the need to “will” the event. In order to resolve this apparent contradiction, I will read a conception of “expressive agency” into The Logic of Sense. (shrink)

The concept of biological information, and information in general, usually presupposes a purely quantitative view of reality. Even though actualist quantification has an important place in the description of the world, a nominalistic stance that tries to simplify reality in purely actualist terms inevitably runs into inconsistencies; these inconsistencies have been pointed out by the critical assessments of the notion of biological information. Rather than calling for an abandonment of the informational terminology, we try to rethink information as a part (...) of an event, the description of which cannot be exhausted by a physicalist, mechanistic, temporally static view of reality. Reconceptualizing the notion of biological information in terms of a process of interpretation rather than as an informational object allows us to transcend the limitations imposed by an analysis of reality that depends on a fixed, finite structure of outcome. Thus, we argue that measuring biological information is intrinsically problematic. (shrink)

The arguments of the Stoic Chrysippus recorded in Cicero's De Fato are of great importance to Deleuze's conception of events in The Logic of Sense. The purpose of this paper is to explicate these arguments, to which Deleuze's allusions are extremely terse, and to situate them in the context of Deleuze's broader project in that book. Drawing on contemporary scholarship on the Stoics, I show the extent to which Chrysippus' views on compatibilism, hypothetical inference and astrology support Deleuze's claim that (...) the Stoics developed a theory of compatibilities and incompatibilities of events independent of corporeal states of affairs. (shrink)

The Politics of Orientation provides the first substantial exploration of a surprising theoretical kinship and its rich political implications, between Gilles Deleuze's philosophy and the sociological systems theory of Niklas Luhmann. Through their shared theories of sense, Hannah Richter draws out how the works of Luhmann and Deleuze complement each other in creating worlds where chaos is the norm and order the unlikely and yet remarkably stable exception. From the encounter between Deleuze and Luhmann, Richter develops a novel take on (...) postfoundational ontology where subjects and societies unfold in self-productive relations of sense against a background of complexity. The Politics of Orientation breaks and rebuilds theoretical alliances by reading core concepts and thinkers of Continental Philosophy, from Leibniz to Whitehead and Marx, through this encounter. Most importantly, the book puts Luhmann and Deleuze to work to offer urgently needed insight into the rise of post-truth populism. In our complex democratic societies, Richter argues, orientation against complexity has become the ground of political power, privileging the simplistic narratives of the populist right. (shrink)

This paper advances an interpretation of Deleuze's Chronos–Aion distinction in The Logic of Sense as a development of Freud's thesis concerning the timelessness of the unconscious. If Chronos forms a unidirectional sequence along the arrow of a living present, the Aion as the eternal truth of events represents a form of time that is transcendentally distinct. While Chronos belongs to consciousness through the functions of good and common sense, the paradoxical insistence of the Aion represents for Deleuze the force of (...) the unconscious. By identifying the Aion with the death drive, Deleuze positions timelessness as the transcendental condition of the living, corporeal ego. (shrink)

The Heidegger–Deleuze relationship has attracted significant attention of late. This paper contributes to this line of research by examining Deleuze’s claim, recently reiterated and developed by Philip Tonner, that Heidegger offers a univocal conception of Being where there is one sense of Being that is said throughout all entities. Although these authors maintain that this claim holds across Heidegger’s oeuvre, I purposefully adopt a conservative hermeneutical strategy that focuses on two writings from the 1927–1928 period—Being and Time and the following (...) year’s lecture course translated as The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic—and emphasize the lesson of the ontological difference that Being is always the Being of an entity, to argue that with regards to these texts, at least, an alternative equivocal interpretation is possible in which Being is always said differently. The conclusion draws out the implications of this for the relationship between Heidegger’s fundamental ontology and Deleuze’s differential ontology. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer an account of the conceptual shift that occurs between the work completed by Gilles Deleuze prior to 1969 and his later work with Félix Guattari, beginning in 1972 with Anti-Oedipus. Against previous interpretations, which have concentrated on the developments initiated by Deleuze, I argue for the primary importance of Guattari's influence, especially his insistence on a theory of “machinic processes.” The importance of these processes is made manifest in Deleuze and Guattari's move away from theories (...) of structuralism. In order to carry out this task, I offer a close reading of Guattari's essay “Machine and Structure.” This essay was first written as a review of Deleuze's acclaimed work in Difference and Repetition and Logic of Sense and formed the basis for Deleuze and Guattari's first meeting. In the concluding sections of the paper, I show how the integration of the concept of the machine allows Deleuze and Guattari to develop a theory of the unconscious that operates outside of the boundaries traditionally set by structuralist analysis. (shrink)

In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze claims that it is in virtue of a relation of expression which holds between intensive processes of individuation and virtual Ideas that the former determines the latter to be actualised in concrete entities. He is, however, less than forthcoming in this book about exactly how we should understand the relation of expression. This article addresses itself to this lacuna. It clarifies five characteristic features of the expressive relation, partly by drawing on Deleuze's discussion of the (...) relation of expression in Expressionism in Philosophy, party by examining familiar examples of expressive relations. It then maps these characteristic features of expression onto Deleuze's discussion of the relation between Ideas and intensity in Difference and Repetition, showing that virtual Ideas are ontologically inseparable from the intensive processes that both constitute and actualise them in the production of actual entities. By way of conclusion, this expressive account of the relation between the virtual, the actual and the intensive will be compared and contrasted with several leading accounts to be found in the secondary literature. (shrink)

The concept of quasi-cause is a relatively marginal one in the work of Gilles Deleuze, appearing briefly in The Logic of Sense and then Anti-Oedipus three years later. In part because of this marginality – the meagre degree to which it is integrated into the respective metaphysical system of the two works – it provides us with a useful vantage point from which to examine these systems themselves. In particular, a careful exposition of the two forms that the concept of (...) the quasi-cause takes provides us with an aperture on the shifting role of the concepts of the virtual and the intensive in Deleuze's ongoing project. In this paper, I will argue that, through this aperture, it is possible to see the displacement of the virtual in favour of the intensive. In turn, we can characterise Anti-Oedipus as the birth of a fully actualist Deleuzian metaphysics. (shrink)

Why does Deleuze rely so heavily on Spinoza and Leibniz? At first glance, his critique of representation and the traditional ‘image of thought’ seems to oppose him to rationalism. However, Deleuze says that when the ‘cry of rationalism’ is pursued until the end, rationalism becomes ‘delirious’. In such a state, it undermines the model of representation. This delirium is found in Spinoza and Leibniz's critique of generality and their conflation of essence and existence, through which they ruin the traditional mediation (...) of difference by identity and generality. However, for this rationalism to completely break with representationalism it must undergo some Deleuzian corrections. (shrink)

This paper examines the Leibnizian influence in Deleuze's theory of the spatium. Leibniz's critique of Cartesian extension and Newtonian space leads him to a conception of space in terms of internal determination and internal difference. Space is thus understood as a structure of individual relations internal to substances. Making some Nietzschean corrections to Leibniz, Deleuze understands the spatium in terms of individuating differences instead of individual relations. Leibnizian space is thus transformed into a genetic space producing both extension (quantity) and (...) quality. (shrink)

Traditional philosophy of mathematics has been concerned with the nature of mathematical objects rather than events. This traditional focus on reified objects is reflected in dominant theories of learning mathematics whereby the learner is meant to acquire familiarity with ideal mathematical objects, such as number, polygon, or tangent. I argue that the concept of event—rather than object—better captures the vitality of mathematics, and offers new ways of thinking about mathematics education. In this paper I draw on two different but related (...) theories of event articulated in the philosophies of Alain Badiou and Gilles Deleuze to argue that the central activity of ‘problem solving’ in mathematics education should be recast in terms of a problematic of events. (shrink)

Event of Signature formulates a new philosophical problem which focuses on the handwritten signature as sign of legal identification. Author Michaela Fišerová works with three metaphysical expectations, which are shared in discourses of graphology and forensic analysis. The first expectation tends to reveal the signer's soul: a handwritten signature "naturally" mirrors the unique psychological qualities of the signer. The second expectation tends to guarantee the originality of the signer's trace: a handwritten signature proves physical contact between the signed document and (...) the writing tool "authentically" moved by the signer's hand. The third expectation tends to recognize the signer's legal identity: a handwritten signature is expected to reproduce the signer's personal style, which enables identification by legal authorities. In a methodologically inventive and semiotically-based dialogue with Derrida's deconstruction, Fišerová situates this triple expectation in the interval between life and law. Challenging coverage of this topic finally shows that none of the metaphysical expectations will ever be fulfilled in the event of manual signing. Legal uses of handwritten signature are characterized by the complex aporia of repeating the unrepeatable. (shrink)

Against the tendency to regard Deleuze as a materialist and a naturalistic thinker, I argue that his core philosophical writings involve commitments that are incompatible with contemporary scientific naturalism. He defends different versions of a distinction between philosophy and natural science that is inconsistent with methodological naturalism and with the scientific image of the world as a single causally interconnected system. He defends the existence of a virtual realm of entities that is irreconcilable with ontological naturalism. The difficulty of reconciling (...) Deleuze’s philosophy with ontological naturalism is especially apparent in his recurrent conception of pure events that are irreducible to their incarnation in bodies and states of affairs. In the last section of this essay, I canvass some of the ways in which Deleuze’s thought might be reconciled with a more liberal, pluralist and ethical naturalism that he identified in an early essay on Lucretius. (shrink)

This paper explores how affirming events rather than substances, and difference rather than identities, might affect how one responds to life's exigencies, in particular the act of choosing when to end the life of a dog that was a beloved companion. The paper addresses the concepts of the event and the time of Aion as they are presented in The Logic of Sense, and examines the resonances these concepts have with a notion of learning presented in Difference and Repetition and (...) a notion of essence presented in Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza. The argument is made that Deleuze presents us with a notion of death that is a part of the creative unfolding of life, and that affirming events rather than substances and difference rather than identities can give us insight into practical questions about how to live one's life. (shrink)

A standard approach to examining Deleuze's concept of difference in Difference and Repetition is to follow his critique of representation through an overturning of Platonism, which Deleuze finds to be the definitive task of philosophy after Nietzsche. While engaging this largely critical project, however, there is a tendency to overlook the dimensions of Platonism that Deleuze rehabilitates in a differential and immanent register. This paper aims to recover the essential dimensions of Platonism at the very heart of Deleuze's philosophy of (...) difference. This recovery is accomplished by distinguishing Nietzsche's overturning of Platonism through his evaluation of the reactive politics of the Idea from Deleuze's own reversal of Platonism through his evaluation of the active politics of simulacra. (shrink)

This article attempts to elucidate the Deleuzian philosophy of the event between The Logic of Sense and A Thousand Plateaus, where it acquires clearly political nuances. With regard to The Logic of Sense, I show that (i) it takes up the definition of the event of Difference and Repetition, identifying it with that redistribution of pre-individual singularities or individuating differences at the level of the univocal being which defines the conditions of problems; (ii) the event is henceforth also the instance (...) that makes possible the “communication” of the heterogeneous series of bodies and propositions from which the production of sense in language follows; and (iii) the counter-effectuation should be understood in this book as an ethics of the event. With regard to A Thousand Plateaus, I emphasize (i) the “return” to The Logic of Sense that the concept of assemblage entails, (ii) the reformulation of the notion of event that takes place in the new theoretical framework, and (iii) that of the counter-effectuation, which must henceforth be understood as a politics of the event. (shrink)