A Thousand Plateaus 10: Becoming-Intense ...




Scott Kaufman
 

"1730: Becoming-Intense, Becoming-Animal . . . ."
 

The purpose of this outline is to provide first time readers with a guide that will allow them to follow the arguments presented in each "memoir". If certain aspects of each section are stressed it is probably because those are the portions of the material I felt most comfortable presenting and not necessarily because the text itself stressed those issues. With that said, I feel this outline reflects the more important issues covered in the chapter in a way that resembles their presentation in the chapter itself: reinforcement. (This is why the outline is not thematically divided but follows the text's internal divisions.) The chapter's argument is not built upon so much as re-argued in each section. This allows for D/G to elaborate without re-presenting the argument in full or repeating themselves, a mode of argumentation which emphasizes their claim that what they are describing is a process visible and active in a variety of disciplines.

I. Memories of a Moviegoer
 A. Willard
 B. becoming-rat not matter of resemblance
  1. the pack; a becoming-molarity
  2. the deterritorialization forestalls attempts of conventional reterritorializations

II. Memories of a Naturalist
 A. evolution/natural history; Nature as mimesis
  1. structure
   a. relation of structure to structure by analogy; gills are to breathing
      underwater as lungs are to . . . ; a is to b as c is to d
   b. analogy of proportionality; requires studious imagination
  2. series
   a. all terms conform to an eminent term as a principle behind series;
       a resembles b, b resembles c
   b. analogy of proportion; royal form of analogy requiring all resources of
       understanding
  3. the serial-structural idea
   a. must not rely on resemblance
   b. nor on descents or filiations
 B. Jungian archetypes/dreams
  1. animal inseparable from a series of progressions/regressions
  2. given a troubling image, it’s a matter of integrating it into an archetypal series
  3. contrary to natural history, man no longer eminent serial term
 C. Levi-Strauss and totemism
  1. a symbolic structural ordering of understanding, not a serial organization of
      the imaginary symbolic
  2. given two groups we must ascertain how each’s respective totems entertain
      relations analogous to those of the groups
   a. it is a question of ordering differences to arrive at a correspondence of
       relations
   b. the serialization of resemblance’s within a structuration of difference

III. Memories of a Bergsonian
 A. structuralism cannot account for becoming-animals of humans; when encountered
      it sees them as phenomena of degradation representing a deviation from true/tree
      order
  1. cannot account for blocks of becoming by correspondence of structural
      relations
  2. these blocks represent lines-of-flight of irreducible dynamics
   a. not systematically accountable like resemblance’s, imitations or
       identifications
   b. not a serial pro- or regression
 B. becoming lacks a subject distinct from itself
  1. not an evolution into something (if evolution contains them it is only in
      symbiosis)
  2. becoming is an involution
   a. not regressive; necessarily creative
   b. to involve is to create a block of becoming running between terms; a
                        becoming is the creation of a third term best understood rhizomatically
       between heterogeneous terms

IV. Memories of a Sorcerer, I
 A. between heterogeneous terms becoming always involves a multiplicity
  1. not characteristic dependent (unlike natural history); a matter of multiple
      possible modes (Spinoza?)
  2. a matter of unnatural[ized?] participation in the pack/multiplicity
 B. fearsome involutions (unnatural participations) lead us to new becoming-animals
           (not necessarily regressive); 3 types of animals
  1. individuated (family pets); cause to regress
  2. State animals; with characteristics and enter serial/structural relations (Jungian
                 arch.)
  3. pack-animals; affect inducing
 C. pack/multiplicity becomings
  1. oppose serial-structural apparatus of sexual reproduction
  2. involve unnatural participations (contagion, epidemics, battles, etc.)
   a. Nature operating against itself with contagions
   b. contagions function in multiplicities as assemblages (1st principle)
    -it is here human beings effect their becoming-animal

V. Memories of a Sorcerer, II
 A. 2nd principle; always an exceptional individual within a multiplicity with whom
     an alliance must be made in order to become-animal; the Anomalous (Moby Dick)
  1. the Anomalous a position or set of positions in a multiplicity
  2. it is without characteristics; has only affects
  3. it is a phenomena of bordering
   a. multiplicity not defined by extensive elements (characteristics) but by
                        intensive lines and divisions
   b. the elements of the pack are variable; the characteristics symbolic
   c. only the borderlines matter; changing them will lead to inclusion of more
       elements and characteristics and therefore to a new multiplicity
  4. the borderline is the Anomalous
   a. impossible to determine whether its in the multiplicity
   b. whenever its occupied (by an anomalous individual) the border is in the
                         process of being redrawn, changing the relations of the members of that
                         pack

V. Memories of a Sorcerer, III
 A. becoming-animal not paramount; part of the process of becoming-molecular
 B. becoming and multiplicity are the same thing
  1. defined by number of immanent dimensions
  2. gaining a dimension changes multiplicity’s nature (expands realm of
                 possibilities)
 C. the Anomalous
  1. borders each multiplicity
  2. determines the temporary or local stability
  3. precondition for alliance necessary to becoming
  4. carries transformations farther down the line-of-flight
 D. each multiplicity is symbiotic; no order to becoming; follows alogical
            consistencies and compatibilities
 E. experimentation in the construction of rhizomes
 F. plane-of-consistency (PoC) cuts across all multiplicity’s number of dimensions
  1. intersection of all concrete forms
  2. itself, all possible forms
  3. becoming-imperceptible on PoC
   a. abstract machine (AM) of which each concrete assemblage is a
       multiplicity/becoming
   b. AM is the intersection of all possibilities

VII. Memories of a theologian
 A. in theology, humans cannot become-animals except when
  1. Ulysses’ companions believe themselves to be animals and so do the observers
  2. Diomedes companions: the Devil assuming animal forms (?)
 B. but in neither case is the essential form changed
 C. degrees/intensities
  1. not demonic but
  2. account for accidents composing individuations different from subjects that
                  receive them

VIII. Memories of a Spinozist, I
 A. one substance individuated by relation of movement and rest (PoC)
 B. Curvier/Saint-Hilaire debate
  1. both denounce resemblance’s but differ, as:
   a. Curvier: scientific definition concerns relations between organs (analogy
                        of proportionality)
   B. St.-Hilaire: pure material elements of varying degrees of speed and
                         slowness
    -Perrier’s tachygenesis
  2. for St.-Hilaire then there’s a simple AM for all the assemblages that effectuate
                  it
 C. children are Spinozists
  1. peepeemaker with its machinic function
  2. Spinozism is the becoming-child of philosophers

IX. Memories of a Spinozist, II
 A. longitude: particle aggregates of a body in a given relation
 B. latitude: the affects of what a body is capable of at a given degree
 C. we know nothing of what a body is capable of without A. and B.
  1. becoming not an analogy but a composition of speed and affects on the PoC
                 (little Hans’ horse and the rat-man)
  2. problem with psychoanalysis is it denies reality of becoming-animal; has no
                 feeling for unnatural participations

X. Memories of a Haeccity
 A. on PoC, the body is defined as longitude and latitude
 B. 2 modes of individuation, one of which is haeccity
  1. individuation of a life (PoC of composition of a haeccity); aeon; infinitive
                  verbs
  2. individuation of the subject that leads it or serves as a support (form,
                  substance, subject); chronos
 C. haeccity is entire assemblage in individuated aggregate forming background for
            subject, which exists on other plane
  1. assemblage haeccities
  2. inter-assemblage haeccities
   -1. and 2. are strictly inseparable
 D. grammar

XI. Memories of a Plan(e) Maker
 A. 2 ways of conceptualizing the plane-of-organization (PoO) or development
  1. structural plane of formed organizations and their development
  2. the genetic plane of evolutionary developments and their organizations
 B. the PoO always concerns the development of forms and formation of subjects
 C. the PoO is hidden
  1. can only be inferred, induced, or concluded from what it gives rise to
  2. a hidden structure for forms
  3. a secret signifier for subjects
 D. the PoC(onsistency)
  1. relations of movement and rest
  2. only haeccities; subjectless individuations that constitute collective
                  assemblages
  3. never has supplementary planes; immanence
  4. a.k.a. the plane of noncontradiction
 E. Holerlin
 F. Kleist
 G. Nietzsche
 H. the PoC continually passes into PoO unnoticed (and vice versa)
  1. PoO = stratification
  2. PoC = machinic assemblages (MA) between strata = Nature = Body-without-
                  Organs
  3. PoO always trying to plug lines-of-flight/inhibit deterritorialization
  4. we must not allow PoC to become a plane of abolition/death
 I. Western music

XII. Memories of a Molecule
 A. progression of becomings
  1. woman
  2. child
  3. animal; vegetable; mineral
  4. molecular
   a. however, all becomings are already becoming-molecular
   b. zone of proximity (ZoP) governs all becomings and involves particles
                        (molecular)
 B. Scherer and Hocquenghem’s wolf-children
 C. what one becomes are always molecular collectivities (animals, flowers, etc.) not
            molar subjects
  1. moments of molar imitation do exist but
  2. must involve particles reined in by a zone of proximity
 D. becoming-woman
  1. microfeminity
  2. Virginia Woolf and the theft of the female body
  3. all becomings must pass through the becoming-woman
   a. marriage
   b. man of war
  4. sexuality proceeds by becoming-woman of man and becoming-animal of
                  humans
 E. becoming-animal
 F. becoming-imperceptible
  1. be like everybody else
   a. “everybody else” is a molar aggregate but
   b. becoming-everybody else is molecular (identity of ZoP and zone of
       indiscernibility)
  2. movement
   a. pure relations of speed and slowness are below the threshold of
                        perception, however
   b. movement must be perceptible
    -on PoO movement cannot be seen (nor can the PoO itself) but
    -on PoC the principle of composition must be perceived, only not at the
                             same time as that which it composes
   c. what cannot be perceived on the PoO must be on PoC
    -so it is in the interaction of the 2 planes that the imperceptible becomes
      perceptible
    -perception confronting its own limit
 G. changing perception (drug assemblages)
  1. imperceptible is perceived
  2. perception is molecular
  3. desire directly invests the perception and the perceived
  4. the unconscious
   a. plane of transcendence of psychoanalysis
   b. drugs give the unconscious an immanence psychoanalysis denies (Oedipus
                        et al)
  5. drugs mobilize gradients and thresholds of perception and therefore lead to
                  becomings
  6. however, addicts most often return to PoO
   a. this territorialization is all the more artificial because it is drug induced
                        (more artificial?)

XIII. Memories of a Secret
 A. perception and the secret
  1. regardless of the secret’s content, the secret cannot allow its existence to be
                  perceived
   a. 2 movements of the secret
    -content
    -form
   b. discovery of secret’s existence is perception of imperceptible
  2. secret societies
   a. presence of secret hindsociety
   b. secret mode of action
 B. becoming-secret
  1. secret elevated from finite content to infinite form of secrecy
  2. paranoiacs
   a. plots to steal their secrets or gifts of perceiving others’ secrets
   b. act by means of or suffer from rays
  3. the unconscious given the task of being infinite form of secrecy in
                  (interminable) psychoanalysis
 C. the more the secret is made into structuring, organizing form (PoO) the more it
            involves itself with PoC
 D. Henry James (see “1874: Three Novellas or ‘What Happened’”)
XIV. Memories of Becoming, Points, and Blocks
 A. no becoming-man
  1. because becoming is minoritarian
  2. majority is the standard against which minorities (relatively?) defined
   a. assumes as pregiven the right and power of man
   b. because of this becomings must always pass through becoming-woman
 B. becoming implies 2 simultaneous movements
  1. withdrawal from majority
  2. term rising up from minority
  3. combine in a block of alliance or becoming
  4. therefore no subject of becoming except as deterritorialized variable of
      majority
 C. no becoming-man because man is majority par excellence and
  1. becomings are always molecular
  2. the central point or third eye
   a. organizes binary distribution within dualism machine and
   b. reproduces itself in the principle term of the opposition (redundancy)
 D. arboresence is constituted by the submission of the line to the point
  1. becoming not defined by the points it connects but
  2. by the passing between them; running perpendicular to them
   a. no destination or departure
   b. not relation between the points but
  3. a nonlocalizable relation sweeping up two distinct points, carrying one into
      proximity of the other
   a. border-proximity indifferent to contiguity and distance
   b. the movement of becoming frees itself from points, rendering them
       indiscernible
    -becoming is anti-memory
    -memories have reterritorialization function
 E. punctual system
  1. when lines are considered localizable connections (arboresence)
   a. memory
   b. the flow of time
  2. comprised of horizontal and vertical base lines; serve as coordinates for
      assigning points
  3. lines drawn between points represent localizable connections
  4. represent process or re- and territorialization
 F. multilinear systems
  1. everything happens at once (simultaneity)
   a. line breaks free of point as origin
   b. diagonal breaks free of vertical or horizontal coordinates
   c. transversal breaks free of diagonal as localizable connection between
       points
  2. line runs between points and renders them indiscernible
   a. creative lines and
   b. their relative intensities
XV. Becoming-Music
 A. musical expression inseparable from becomings that serve as its content
 B. territorial refrain
  1. opposed to creative lines of flight of music
  2. music deterritorializes the refrain
 C. painting
  1. semiotic systems
  2. organizations of the face (see “faciality”)
  3. deterritorialization of the face
 D. music as the deterritorialized voice
  1. just as painting is of the face (be wary of the metaphorical)
  2. music though has stronger deterritorializing force (intensity?)
   a. therefore painting is more palatable to more people
  3. machining (abstract?) of the voice
   a. first musical operation
   b. voice neither male nor female (masculine nor feminine?)
   c. voice must attain becoming-woman or -child (castrati?)
  4. becoming-molecular is when the voice is instrumentalized
 E. becoming is always double
  1. block is formed
  2. block essentially mobile, never in equilibrium

Note: The chapter ends with the Theorems 5-8.  Quoted out of context they are nonsensical.  It is
essential that they be read not as a summation of the material presented in “Becoming Intense . . .”
but as means of producing more productive re-readings of it (in conjunction with Theorems 1-4,
presented in the “Faciality” chapter).