Does the Pope shit in the woods?
Clicking on the link below will enable you to read a paragraph or so of quotation from a book, then a sentence or two which I did not copy from another source, then perhaps another iteration of the same—I haven't decided on that yet, though clearly I will have by the time this is posted.
Here is the quotation. It's from The Logic of Sense, by Gilles Deleuze, about whom I know next to nothing. It begins, not at the beginning of the paragraph from which it is extracted, but rather after an introductory sentence and a a quotation from Carolus Ludovicus:
It is clear that the Duck employs and understands "it" as a denoting term for all things, state of affairs and possible qualities (an indicator). It specifies even that the denoted thing is essentially something which is (or may be) eaten. Everything denoted or capable of denotation is, in principle, consumable and penetrable; Alice remarks elsewhere that she is only able to "imagine" food. But the Mouse made use of "it" in an entirely different manner: as the sense of an earlier proposition, as the event expressed by the proposition (To go and offer the crown to William). The equivocation of "it" is therefore distributed in accordance with the duality of denotation and expression. The two dimensions of the proposition are organized in two series which converge asymptotically, in a term as ambiguous as "it," since they meet one another only at the frontier which they continuously stretch. One series resumes "eating" in its own way, while the other extracts the essense of "speaking." For this reason, in many of Carroll's poems, one witnesses the autonomous development of two simultaneous dimensions, one referring to denoted objects which are always consumable or recipients of consumption, the other referring to always expressible meanings or at least to objects which are the bearers of language and sense.
(I suppose that actually isn't so long.) Can one initially react to this other than by asking: what, really—that's the reason? Even before wondering whether or not it's really true that Carroll's poems so alternate? (It looks in this extract as if the reason might just be: that in this particular exchange (helpfully omitted here), "it" has these properties. But preceding paragraphs, before the quoted bit (I mean the bit quoted by Deleuze, not the bit quoted by me, though the preceding paragraphs do precede that bit as well), he speaks of an eating/speaking duality, as when discussing Humpty Dumpty (hence the protrusion of "penetrable" in the third quoted sentence, even though you might think that eating and penetrating are not equivalent, for which the toothless are thankful), so I infer that the reason has to do with the essential duality of expression and denotation. This is reason that many of the poems of Lewis Carroll, in particular, have these two dimensions, or rather, that one witnesses them. Isn't that a rather odd claim to make?
Also, if two things converge asymptotically, then they don't meet each other anywhere. That's what asymptotic convergence is: convergence without meeting.
He then (not right then) quotes three verses from Sylvie and Bruno by way of illustration, in which we learn that the following three things are entries in a series "composed of animals, of beings or objects which either consume or are consumed": an elephant, an albatross, and an argument. Also we learn that one consumes thimbles. Baffling!
Comments
on 2005-05-06 21:19:05.0, Adam Kotsko commented:
This leads us to question: Was Deleuze a brain in a vat? Or perhaps a zombie?
(Is that a suitable replacement for the improper, though more prevalent, use of "begs the question"?)
and, further, on 2005-05-06 21:27:10.0, ben wolfson commented:
OMG what if he were a zombie brain in a vat that couldn't eat other brains and make them zombies because he was stuck in a vat and just a brain anyway and brains don't have teeth!
But if by that you meant to advert to the stupid things analytic philosophy does, then, that doesn't really help me, does it?
and, further, on 2005-05-06 21:32:06.0, Adam Kotsko commented:
I know people who claim to know about Deleuze. Maybe I could introduce you. I have no way of knowing if they're telling the truth, having read only the first 20 pages of Anti-Oedipus and completely giving up.
and, further, on 2005-05-07 17:52:48.0, Michael commented:
I've spent a fair bit of time on Deleuze, though mostly on Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus. I have not read Logic and Sense, but from what I do know of it, that book, along with another major work, Difference and Repition (published the same year), are the major works in which Deluze works out his metaphysics.
His metaphysics is in one sense an undermining of Hegel and his negative dialectic. Deleuze is working out a postivie ontology (NB: in Deleuze, i cannot differentiate between his ontology and his metaphyics with any accuracy). I'm not certain the terms he uses in LS, but he variously calls it the plane of consistency, plane of immanence, or the virtual field.
Anyway, there's plenty to be said on Deleuze's metaphysics, but maybe it would be better for me to simply make book suggestions? Michael Hardt's Gilles Deleuze: An Apprenticeship in Philosophy is very good, as is Protevi and Bonta's Deleuze and Geophilosophy: A Guide and Glassary. The second book works more off of the Capitalism and Schizophrenia series, but I think it would still be quite useful.
and, further, on 2005-05-07 22:26:19.0, Michael commented:
I think what I was trying to intimate above but did not come out and say is that Logic and Sense is probably one of Deleuze's more difficult works, and perhaps not the most auspicious place to start if one does not have a teacher.
I think I would need to read more of the passage to be sure, but I do think it relates to the metaphysics Deleuze is formulating. Brief and simple, Deleuze conceives of a immanent, virtual plane which contains all the possible organizations of a system. So, right now, I have several virtual possibilities available to me; keep typing, get up and get a drink, go watch TV, ect...The thing is, right, is that I can only actualize one thing at a time despite this mulitpility of virtual states which I may choose to actualize. But, Deleuze is arguing, this does not mean that these virtual states are not real. This is where he differs from Hegel, who holds that by choosing one thing, everything thing that is not that one thing which is brought into existence is utterly negated.