Deleuze gets it almost right

Against “tra­di­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion,” Deleuze sug­gests a one-to-many/­many-to-many rela­tion­ship that changes the dynam­ics of rep­re­sen­ta­tion:

Rhi­zomat­ics! An a‑centered, non­hier­ar­chi­cal, non­signi­fy­ing sys­tem with­out a gen­er­al and with­out an orga­niz­ing mem­o­ry or cen­tral automa­ton, defined sole­ly by a cir­cu­la­tion of states.

What is at ques­tion in the rhi­zome is a rela­tion to sex­u­al­i­ty —but also to the ani­mal, the veg­e­tal, the world, pol­i­tics, the book, things nat­ur­al and artificial—that is total­ly dif­fer­ent from the arbores­cent rela­tion: all man­ner of “becom­ings.” (ATP, 21).  That is why.

The artist is the first per­son to set a bound­ary stone or make a mark. (ATP, 314).

Artist?  Ani­mal?  How?

Not in the sense that these qual­i­ties belong to a sub­ject, but in the case that they delin­eate a ter­ri­to­ry that will belong to the sub­ject that car­ries or pro­duces them. These qual­i­ties are sig­na­tures, but the sig­na­ture, the prop­er name, is not the sub­jec­t’s mark but the domain’s con­sti­tut­ing mark. (ATP, 311).

What’s art any­way?

Art is a false con­cept … sole­ly nom­i­nal. (ATP, 301)

“False” is the fal­la­cy of defin­ing some­thing for which we already have an exam­ple.  That’s the prob­lem of defin­ing art a pri­ori.¹ Deleuze favors the empir­i­cal approach of the anthro­pol­o­gist over that of the essen­tial­ist philoso­pher. We can learn about art objects because of their orga­ni­za­tion, dif­fer­ences, and inter­nal coher­ence with their exhib­it pur­pose.  Instead of “defin­ing,” let’s talk about how art is exem­pli­fied

Deleuze is explic­it about not falling for the essen­tial­ist trap. Art shows itself in its expres­sive qual­i­ties, not by “belong­ing to the sub­ject,” but because it brings forth a ter­ri­to­ry. The mark in the cave-wall above is not that of a sub­ject, but the abode itself. “The sig­na­ture is not the indi­ca­tion of a per­son, but the chancy for­ma­tion of a domain.”

As it’s to be expect­ed, art [as ter­ri­to­ry] pre­sup­pos­es de-ter­ri­to­ri­al­i­sa­tion, which is why the lat­ter becomes essen­tial to the strat­i­fi­ca­tion of human life: From undif­fer­en­ti­at­ed mag­ic, to tra­di­tion, to reli­gious sym­bol, to l’art pour l’art insti­tu­tion, to post-Cap­i­tal­ist art as spec­ta­cle. Mean­while, artists “pro­duce frag­ments with­out total­i­ty, cut-up par­ti­cles.” Deleuz­ian art pre­sup­pos­es a con­stant frag­men­tary inter­ac­tion between par­tic­u­lar instances (say, Ducham­p’s “ready mades”) and fields (the Avant-garde). ⁴

What defines a ter­ri­to­ry is the emer­gence of dif­fer­ent mat­ters of expres­sion. (ATP, 315)

There is one prob­lem: art’s “ter­ri­to­ries” have mul­ti­plied. Art [styles] grow out of par­tic­u­lar social and aes­thet­ic con­texts. As they mutate, they grow in com­plex­i­ty. It is some­times dif­fi­cult to read these styl­is­tic dif­fer­ences because they are con­text-bound.

Here’s a hap­haz­ard con­coc­tion of styles, grouped by his­to­ry, form, tech­nique, etc:

Since mod­ernism: Impres­sion­ism, Post-Impres­sion­ism, Mod­ernism (Cubism, Sur­re­al­ism, Expres­sion­ism, Futur­ism, Dada, Abstract, Con­struc­tivism, etc.), Contemporary/Postmodern (Pop Art, Min­i­mal­ism, Con­cep­tu­al Art, Street Art, Dig­i­tal Art, etc.). Then there’s “the cul­tur­al.” Islam­ic geo­met­ric art, Japan­ese Ukiyo‑e, Chi­nese ink paint­ing, Indi­an Mughal minia­tures, African trib­al sculp­ture, Indige­nous Amer­i­can art forms. How about medi­um-based styles (from tech­niques or mate­ri­als): Fres­co, Mosa­ic, Graf­fi­ti, Col­lage, Instal­la­tion, Per­for­mance Art, Dig­i­tal & AI-gen­er­at­ed art?

Pret­ty ter­ri­to­ri­al­ized!

What holds the total­i­ty? Rhythm? The pos­si­bil­i­ty of transforming/perverting life.⁵

“Rhythm enables one to set gen­er­al lev­el, plea­sure, pain, recog­ni­tion and mis­recog­ni­tion … as cycles in the ner­vous sys­tem and the psy­che, cycles which must form and dis­solve ter­ri­to­ries in response to oth­er ter­ri­to­r­i­al actions.” ⁶

I don­no.

By defin­ing art as pure “per­cepts and affects,” Deleuze abstracts it away from the his­tor­i­cal and polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tions in which art­works emerge. A paint­ing made dur­ing a famine, a mur­al on a col­laps­ing Havana wall, is not just sen­sa­tion — it is sat­u­rat­ed with con­text. Then there’s this idea of art over­ly empha­siz­ing imma­te­r­i­al aspects — sen­sa­tions, inten­si­ties, becom­ings — while over­look­ing the con­crete mate­ri­al­i­ty of artis­tic prac­tice: the cost of paint, the ruin of a gallery space, the infra­struc­ture that allows a film to be shown and in doing so, Deleuze risks pre­sent­ing art as if it were float­ing free of scarci­ty, labor, and insti­tu­tions.

Am I the only one sens­ing a “shad­ing” of com­mu­nica­tive mean­ing, i.e.,  priv­i­leg­ing art’s abil­i­ty to pro­duce per­cepts and affects has a cost in terms of art’s role as com­mu­ni­ca­tion or cri­tique?

A polit­i­cal car­toon, a satir­i­cal play, or a social­ly charged pho­to­graph is not mere­ly sen­sa­tion but an inter­ven­tion in mean­ing. Deleuze’s uncon­scious abstrac­tions under­cut the inter­pre­tive and sym­bol­ic func­tions through which art speaks to col­lec­tive expe­ri­ence, reduc­ing it to an imper­son­al aes­thet­ic force divorced from dia­logue and cri­tique.

(To be con­tin­ued)

________

1. Per­cep­tion is not rep­re­sen­ta­tion but a form of inter­ac­tive pro­duc­tion between an object and a sub­ject. 2.  As much as Deleuze dis­liked Wittgen­stein, there is a sim­i­lar­i­ty between his rhi­zomat­ic approach and Wittgen­stein’s “open-end­ed” idea of Fam­i­lienähn­lichkeit(fam­i­ly resem­blances). Read­ing Deleuze with Wittgen­stein’s glass­es: Instead of defin­ing art from the out­set, let’s keep expand­ing the under­stand­ing of these resem­blances between “milieus” and “ter­ri­to­ries.” Deleuze opts for an empir­i­cal approach beyond the subjective/objective oppo­si­tion, which his Spin­ozist view of imma­nence jus­ti­fies.  For Spin­oza, there is no tran­scen­dent prin­ci­ple or exter­nal cause to things. The process of life pro­duc­tion is con­tained in life itself.  Thus, Deleuz­ian “imma­nence” does not apply to any spe­cif­ic life, but to a life, con­ceived as the “imma­nence of imma­nence.” See Gio­van­na Bor­radori (The Review of Meta­physics, Vol. 56, 2003). Deleuze once said: “Spin­oza is for me the ‘prince’ of philoso­phers.” (Expres­sion­ism in Phi­los­o­phy: Spin­oza, New York, Zone, 1990). ⁴ Ducham­p’s mark: “orig­i­nal” and “ready made.”  ⁵ This is not the place to address Rhyth­m­analy­sis, an idea elab­o­rat­ed by Hen­ri Lefeb­vre, from Brazil­ian philoso­pher Lucio Alber­to Pin­heiro.  Accord­ing to Kurt Mey­er, there are five ele­ments worth con­sid­er­ing in Lefeb­vre’s rhythm the­o­ry: 1- Con­tem­po­rary life ruled by abstract time (the hands of the clock), 2- Isorhythm and the impor­tance of the eurhyth­mic, 3- Chrono­bi­ol­o­gy as cat­a­lyst leisure and work, 4‑Music and dance and, 5- the post-Cap­i­tal­ist manip­u­la­tion of time.  See Space, Dif­fer­ence, Every­day Life: Read­ing Hen­ri Lefeb­vre (Rout­ledge, New York, 2008).  ⁶ Gay Genosko, Deleuze and Guat­tari: Crit­i­cal Assess­ment of Lead­ing Philoso­phers (p. 256, Rout­ledge, 2001).