Botched assemblages

Rosalyn Page

Linguistics, to Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari that is characterized by constancy and sameness reposes on the double-identity of the subject. Since Plato, D&G assert, most of Western metaphysics has been predicated on this representational structure that produces the double-subject. Although there is great difference between the linguistic theories of Heidegger, Benveniste and Hegel, to Deleuze and Guattari's notion of the variability and immanence of language these theories offer only brief moments outside the structure of the western representational language system that they ultimately conform to.

It was Nietzsche in The Genealogy of Morals who wrote that "the misleading influence of language ... has not disposed of that little changeling the subject" (Nietzsche:94,p45). To Nietzsche, the doer or subject is a fiction that is added on to the enunciation; to him the deed is everything.

"The seduction of language...which conceives and misconceives all effects as conditioned by something that causes effects, by a subject" (Nietzsche:94,p45). The misconception lies in assuming that it is the subject that causes the effect. The well known example he used to illustrate this misconception was the phrase "lightning flash" (Nietzsche:94,p45) that separates the flash from the lightning, the doer from the deed. This he called a doubling of the deed, making it the deed of a deed where first the deed is the cause and then secondly the affect. It is the "changeling" or subject that is assumed as the doer of the deed.

The linguistics of Western metaphysics to Deleuze and Guattari is predicated on a representational language system that structures the subject, its concept and the objects in the world in a way that allows a correspondence between these elements.

"The subjects, its concepts, and also the objects in the world to which the concepts are applied have a shared internal essence: the self-resemblance at the basis of identity. Representational thought is analogical, its concern is to establish a correspondence between these symmetrically structured domains." (Massumi:92,p4).

"The correspondence between subject, object and domain rests on two important attributes that are assumed of each domain: constancy and sameness." (Deleuze and Guattari:94,xi)

What allows these terms to function as corresponding domains is the principle of constancy and sameness that is assumed of all three and is the hinge point for representational thinking that "reposes on a double identity: of the thinking subject, and of the concepts it creates and to which it lends its own presumed attributes of sameness and constancy."(ibid,xi)

Language is a tool for the domain of the subject that allows it to use and contain concepts that apply to objects in the world. The identity of the subject is the double -subject that speaks and is spoken of in the instance of discourse. This double-subject is explained in the instance of discourse which re-unites the 'I-Y': the person who utters the present instance of discourse containing the word 'I'.

Deleuze and Guattari explain the formation of the subject at the point of discourse as occurring where the speaking subject and the subject of the statement are derived from a point of subjectification in conformity with the dominant reality. The point of subjectification is the entity, idea or event that operates as the initial directive that brings this double -subject into being (Deleuze and Guattari:94,p128). These distinctions they are operating with they credit as having been first used by the linguist Emile Benveniste.

To use their example of Descarte;

The 'I' of the discourse or statement refers to the person uttering or speaking. This folding back occurs in conformity with a dominant reality and hence the characteristics that can be assumed of the subject and spoken about can be extended to the out there, of the dominant reality.

The line represents methodical thought that begins with the cogito, the ' I think ' and proceeds to the ergo sum or the ' I am '. The speaking subject is derived from the point of subjectivity, the subject of the statement is derived from this speaking subject where they fold-back on themselves to produce the subject in conformity with the dominant reality.

In accordance with their theory of the variability and immanence of language they note that these sort of assemblages are only one such assemblage of many different types of assemblages. "... there is no subject, only collective assemblages of enunciation. Subjectification is only one such assemblage" (ibid, p130).

Similarly, Heidegger developed his theory of language not related to a sign value. As an auditory theory of language defined by the topos of hearing Heidegger spoke of the call. He wrote that "all names are calls not representations." (Heidegger:95,p199) Rather than the word that stands in for the object it represents the call is a movement, it "brings the presence of what was previously uncalled into nearness."

This moves language out of the realm of sign value, representation, deferral and absence into a mapping or deictic model. This mapping occurs by voicing, through the call, where what specifies position, place, instance is to do with voicing occurring. The nearness is not in the actual physical presence of the called object, but rather

"it invites things in, so that they may bear upon men as things... In naming, the things named are called into their thingness. Both the place of arrival and the thing called are given a presence by the call" (ibid, p199).

In calling, things are given a thingness and by having a thingness they can by placed with a nearness to the caller. The deictic markers become presence and absence, empty/full.

Rather than the speaking subject which is formed as the double- subject of the speaker of the statement, and the subject, the one spoken of, the I, there is now a movement. Language becomes a mapping device where the call forms a place and an object that are called to. The movement occurs as the object comes into its thingness. The calling into thingness also "carries out the world. The call commands the thing to the world out of which it appears."(ibid,p200)

So the enunciation is no longer be the 'I - Y' of the double- subject, but rather there is now the call and the movement into thingness. It is at this point that Heidegger moves back into the realm of a language based on an equivalence of domains. Subject may no longer be constituted, but object and world are left intact. The movement into thingness and the world out of which it appears are produced by the call.

In this theory the call and the movement into presence now characterize language rather than the double- subject but with the call comes an inherent separateness between thing and world. Separateness is to do with sound, with the sound of the call. We may have satisfied Nietzsche, but not Deleuze and Guattari. It is no longer the subject but the call that is other to the concepts and objects in the world still expressed in a representational language that Deleuze and Guattari assert most of the linguistics of Western metaphysics is predicated on.

The naming of something whether it is through the subject or the call is fundamentally a negative process. Of the linguistic Ferdinand de Saussure, we know that he thought of the semiotic enterprise as building difference by negation. He described 'la lang' as "the system of language" and 'parole' as "the actual utterance". An instance of parole stands in relation to la lang. There is the utterance and the concept; language stands in a negative relation to itself. In his User's Guide to Deleuze and Guattari, Brian Massumi states it simply as " the modus operandi is negation X = X = not Y" (Massumi:92, p4).

This negation could also be describe as the linguistic loss in making meaning. Hegel described the loss of making meaning as the moment of the death point for the animal. For Hegel, what constitutes the difference between humans and animals is the difference between signifying and sound.

Sound is emitted by animal and voice is the animal sound + consciousness or the human element. Without wishing to dwell on the consciousness and therefore subjective aspect of Hegel's theory he does make an important distinction between sound and voice. It seems that Hegel's voice resembles the Benveniste and Deleuze and Guattari idea of the speech act.

Speech acts are accomplished by "intrinsic relations between speech and certain actions that are accomplished by saying them" (Deleuze and Guattari:94, p77). Asking a question by saying "Is ?", making a promise by saying " I love you", giving a command by using an imperative are some of the examples they give. These acts are internal to speech and constitute the performative sphere and broader illocutionary sphere of language. As such they pronounce that pragmatics no longer falls outside language. "The relation between the statement and the act is internal, immanent, but is not one of identity." (ibid,p70) Deleuze and Guattari's discussion of pronunciation is framed by this concept of the internal, immanent relation between the statement and the act.

Pronunciation is not stable and fixed where there is one right form; rather, pronunciation and thus language are characterized by variability and immanence. Taking the word "mall" as an example; for Deleuze and Guattari the pronunciation of this word is variable (and not a designator of ethnological, anthropomorphic or socio-economic difference) and there is contained an expanse of variations that are immanent to every instance of pronunciation of this word, and every word. This expanse of variations they define as the abstract line of variation that "passes through pronunciation or a particular word. The line of variation includes potential, but unrealized pronunciation of continuum of possible pronunciations. The sum of variables is contained in the abstract machine." (ibid,p278)

The line contains both actual and potential or virtual, but as yet unrealized pronunciation that together form a continuum of possible pronunciations. The real is constituted by both the actual and the virtual. The virtual consists of all those pronunciation that are as yet unrealized but just as real as those actual ones that have been realized. The line of variation contains this continuum of pronunciations. The variables are internal to language, whose structure is described as abstract lines of variation.

Speech and language are no longer inseparable due to this internal, immanent relation where the statement and act no longer belong to an enunciative subject or an outside reality. The linguist Maurice Blanchot is interested in enunciation where the subject of the enunciation is not required as the necessary condition. Blanchot gives the examples of the use of the words 'ONE' and 'HE' which in no way take the place of a subject, but instead do away with any subject. On Blanchot, Deleuze and Guattari say "the HE does not represent a subject but rather makes a diagram of an assemblage. It does not overcode statements, it does not transcend them as do the first two person; on the contrary, it prevents them from falling under the tyranny of subjective or signifying constellations." (ibid,p265)

Enunciations of the type 'ONE' and 'HE' are of the pragmatic type where the relation of variability and immanence produces a diagram of an assemblage. Deleuze and Guattari explain the pragmatics as occurring when there is no separation between speech and language and thus no subject of the enunciation.

Where actions are accomplished by saying them, for example I swear by saying "I swear", or in speaking, asking a question by saying "IS...?" what is produced are acts internal to speech. They are only within speech and produce relations of the immanent type between statements and acts. To speak these statements is to affectuate the acts not to communicate or inform someone about the statement.

As Deleuze and Guattari see it the 'HE' and 'ONE' as in "ONE is dying, HE is unhappy" provide an assemblage "of the type that carries or brings out the event insofar as it is unformed and incapable of being effectuated by persons." (ibid,p265) The sentence is instead an assemblage that makes the event of speaking a one-off moment, as something unformed by the subject, by the I of the utterance. An "haecceity" as they describe it, like the sudden lighting up of the sky with lightning. For the person who has spoken it is "something that happens to them that they can only get a grip on again by letting go of their ability to say I". It is only in the giving up or rendering useless of the "I" from under the tyranny of subject that one can experience the speaking moment where the chain of expression and the contents of which can be " assembled for a maximum number of occurrences and becomings".

The enunciation becomes an occurrence just as the pronunciation of a particular word is an occurrence of all the possible pronunciation that are immanent to the pronunciation.

The variation provides for the variables to be always different for a "maximum number of occurrences and becomings". Subjects, concepts and objects no longer have a shared internal essence based on constancy and sameness that are applied to the world. This self-resemblance is no longer at the basis of identity. Utterances no longer stand in for 'objects' in the 'world' but rather they are assemblages where the maximum number of variations are contained within itself and are always immanent. The representational thinking no longer rests on the double subject: the one that speaks and the one that is spoken of in conformity with the dominant reality. There is no longer the "I" of the utterance but an assemblage of becoming of the type "ONE" and "HE".

Bibliography

Deleuze G., and Guattari, F., A Thousand Plateaus, 'Capitalism and Schizophrenia', University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1994

Massumi, B., A User's Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia, 'Deviations from Deleuze and Guattari', MIT Press, Massachusetts, 1992

Readings for Philosophies of Sound, Faculty of Social Science, UTS, Spring Semester, 1995

The Macquarie Dictionary 2nd Edition, Macquarie Library, Australia, 1995

Nietzsche, F., The Genealogy of Morals, Aesthetics Additional Readings, Autumn 1994, UTS, Faculty of Humanities

If this essay is copied or quoted please state where it came from, thanks, Rosalyn.