Recently Mark of K-Punk has written a post on the “Zizek affair”, where he makes passing reference to Deleuze’s fetish for affirmation. There Mark writes,
A final word on the negative. If I’m not convinced by Steve’s rejection of Zizek’s mechanical ‘labour of the negative’ in the name of the Deleuzean interdiction on negativity, it is because I have long found Deleuze’s abjuring of the negative equally as wearisome as Zizek’s brandishing of dialectical negativity. Deleuze’s hectoring call to renounce all negativity constitutes an ‘ascesis of the positive’ that chimes in all too well with contemporary capitalism’s obligatory positivity. (In this respect it is the equivalent in philosophy of what Popism – or better Poptimism – is in pop criticism.) Even the attack on the ‘reactive’ seems flat with Business Ontology’s insistence that we become vigilantly pro-active. Negativity in Deleuze is usually understood in terms of pathology; Deleuze’s work may well have overcome Good Sense, but at its worst it remains in thrall to a dreary and reductive model of Good Health, which it prosecutes with all the zeal of a happy-clappy Anglicanism. And, as Infinite Thought is wont to argue, what is the philosophical basis for the rejection of the negative if not the emptiest of tautologies: positivity is good because it is positive, negativity is bad because it is negative.
While I agree that Deleuze often pushes his pursuit of affirmation too far, denying himself productive tools that can be drawn from formations of the negative, both K-Punk and Infinite thought here seem to suggest that Deleuze has a preference for affirmation which cannot itself be grounded. However, I wonder if this is, in fact, the case. Does Deleuze present some sort of argument for the primacy of affirmation? Is the primacy of affirmation in Deleuze simply a tautology as Infinite Thought suggests? And more importantly, is it a moral preference or judgment, rather than an ontological thesis?
I do not have a whole lot to say on this issue, but it does seem that if there is one place where we might look for an argument for Deleuze’s “affirmationism”, this would be in Nietzsche and Philosophy. Outlining Nietzsche’s thesis of the eternal return as a cosmological and physical doctrine, Deleuze writes that,
Nietzsche’s account of the eternal return presupposes a critique of the terminal or equilibrium state. Nietzsche says that if the universe had an equilibrium position, if become had an end or final state, it would already have been attained. But the present moment, as the passing moment, proves that it is not attained and therefore that an equilibrium of forces is not possible. But why would equilibrium, the terminal state, have to be attained if it were possible? By virtue of what Nietzsche calls the infinity of past time. The infinity of past time means that becoming cannot have started to become, that it is not something that has become. But, not being something that has become it cannot become something. Not having become, it would already be what it is becoming– if it were becoming something. That is to say, past time being infinite, becoming would have attained its final state if it had one. And indeed, saying that becoming would have attained its final state if it had one is the same as saying that it would not have left its initial state if it had one. If becoming becomes something why has it not finished becoming long ago? If it is something which has become then how could it have started to become? ‘If the universe were capable of permanence and fixity, and if there were in its entire course a single moment of being in the strict sense it could no longer have anything to do with becoming, thus one could no longer think or observe any becoming whatsoever.’ (47)
Deleuze-Nietzsche’s thesis is thus that being is populated by in-eradicable inequalities and these inequalities are both the motor of being (the force that leads it to perpetually become– Deleuze will argue that being is the being of becoming and becoming is the becoming of being) and are affirmative. For each series of actualizations that take place, further inequalities are produced, further tensions, such that an equilibrium state is never reached. These, properly speaking, are what Deleuze refers to as “affirmations” and they are the genetic factors that preside over further actualizations or individuations. They are the lines through which qualities and individuals are produced within the world. Were being not populated by these inequalities, then, according to Deleuze, there would be nothing at all as being would become a “smooth surface” absent any diversity, much like the universe would be were it to suffer heat death.
Deleuze thus argues a bit earlier that there can be no equilibrium of forces, but rather that the relationship of force to force must be characterized by a difference in quantity as the genetic condition under which a quality is produced (this, in essence, is the core thesis of Deleuze’s “transcendental” or “superior” empiricism).
If a force is inseparable from its quantity it is no more separable from the other forces which it relates to. Quantity itself is therefore inseparable from difference in quantity. Difference in quantity is the essence of force and of the relation of force to force. To dream of two equal forces, even if they are said to be of opposite senses is a course and approximate dream, a statistical dream in which the living is submerged but which chemistry dispels. Each time that Nietzsche criticizes the concept of quantity we must take it to mean that quantity as an abstract concept always and essentially tends towards an identification, an equalization of the unity that forms it and an annulment of difference in this unity… What interests him primarily, from the standpoint of quantity itself, is the fact that difference in quantity cannot be reduced to equality. Quality is distinct from quantity but only because it is that aspect of quantity that cannot be equalized, that cannot be equalized out in the difference between quantities. Difference in quantity is therefore, in one sense, the irreducible element of quantity itself. Quality is nothing but difference in quantity and corresponds to it each time forces enter into relation. (43-44)
A few pages later Deleuze will refer to this perpetual reproduction of inequality as a “truly sufficient reason”, and will remark that “This is why we can only understand the eternal return as the expression of a principle which serves as an explanation of diversity and its reproduction, of difference and its repetition” (49). In characterizing eternal return as a principle of sufficient reason, Deleuze is arguing that these inequalities are the ground of actualized beings or that which account for the being of the diverse actualized beings that we discover in the world around us. I have outlined, in crude form, what such an account looks like in my post entitled Working Notes for an Appendix on Deleuze’s Theory of Individuation. There I attempted to show how a series of inequalities condition a phenomenon, leading to its actualized form and to give a few examples to illustrate this thesis. Such an account is attractive in that, in its focus on the genetic conditions of a thing, it goes all the way to the actualized individual itself, capturing that individual in its concrete, situated, historically specific being in a way that leaves no remainder between essence/form/concept and existing thing. Deleuze will develop this “principle of sufficient reason” in great detail in chapter 5 of Difference and Repetition, and will also present an extensive critique of the second law of thermodynamics and similar equilibrium based concepts. There Deleuze will write that,
Difference is not diversity. Diversity is given, but difference is that by which the given is given, that by which the given is given as diverse. Difference is not phenomenon but the noumenon closest to the phenomenon. It is therefore true that God makes the world by calculating, but his calculations never work out exactly, and this inexactitude or injustice in the result, this irreducible inequality, forms the condition of the world. The world ‘happens’ while God calculates; if the calculation were exact, there would be no world. The world can be regarded as a ‘remainder’, as the real in the world understood in terms of fractional or even incommensurable numbers. Every phenomenon refers to an inequality by which it is conditioned. Every diversity and every change refers to a difference which is its sufficient reason. Everything which happens and everything which appears is correlated with orders of differences: differences of level, temperature, pressure, tension, potential, differences of intensity (222)
Consequently, while we might express dissatisfaction with Deleuze’s argument, I do not think it can be honestly argued that he simply has a preference for affirmation. Rather, Deleuze’s thesis is that these differences in intensity, these affirmations, are the sufficient reason, the ground, of phenomena such that if we wish to account for a phenomenon we must look to the differences that condition it and preside over its actualizations. In the world of social theory, this would consist in an examination of the tendencies and tensions that populate a population and that allow us to trace the contours of a group formation. Such tensions would be the “energetic factors” that preside over the formation of such and such a type of organization. None of this is to suggest that there aren’t valid grounds for criticizing Deleuze, but I do feel that treating his remarks as tautological is highly dismissive of the ontology he actually does develop and the arguments he provides in support of that ontology.
Larval Subjects . 
May 20, 2007 at 7:51 pm
Good work.
I just posted a audio of Deleuze on y blog, but it is in French.
May 21, 2007 at 11:15 am
Everything which happens and everything which appears is correlated with orders of differences: differences of level, temperature, pressure, tension, potential, differences of intensity…
…which is what Badiou says. But “correlated” how? What is the register of these correlations? Where is it presented, and how? (etc.)
May 21, 2007 at 1:29 pm
I don’t see that this is what Badiou says. Badiou never speaks of orders of level, temperature, pressure, tension, and potential. Moreover, Deleuze and Badiou use the term “intensity” in entirely different ways. For Badiou intensity signifies the degree to which something is present in a situation. For instance, Christianity has a high degree of intensity in the United States insofar as the majority of the population here is Christian, while socialism has a very low degree of intensity here. In a number of respects, Badiou’s concept of intensity is a “population” concept. It is also a descriptive, not causal, concept.
By contrast, for Deleuze these intensive differences are the genetic conditions presiding over the actualization of a phenomenon. That is, a Deleuzian intensity would be prior to and a condition of something like what Badiou thinks of as an intensity. For instance, temperature producing the boiling of water. This is exactly what’s lacking in Badiou’s account of situations. His logic, in Logiques des mondes, is merely descriptive, and, in my view, remains too tied to linguistic constructivisms.
May 21, 2007 at 2:53 pm
Does Badiou even have any causal concepts? I guess an ontology or a logic of appearance doesn’t need them, or would even be hampered by them…
A world, I think, comprises the “nothing new” on which the sun, having no alternative, is compelled to shine. Causal processes might work away within it, but the production of true novelty requires a break which is not only causal but logical, a disturbance in the order of things. The entailed claim here is that causation, propagation, the “genetic” flow of actualisations and so on are second-order effects: for there to be differences, there must first be an order of appearance within which such differences can be registered, and the available “lines of flight” are merely tracings of particular relational circuits within this order.
So here – and this is a very rough cut – is a situation where it seems that Badiou says one thing and Deleuze another; essentially that novelty is either ubiquitous (Deleuze) or extremely rare (Badiou)…
May 21, 2007 at 3:36 pm
Does Badiou even have any causal concepts? I guess an ontology or a logic of appearance doesn’t need them, or would even be hampered by them…
No, he doesn’t, and I feel this is a significant problem with his ontology. I don’t take it that an ontology is much of an ontology if it doesn’t include such categories. After all, ontology is the discourse of being. In this regard, I have serious reservations about Badiou’s mathematical ontology. At most, I feel it can demonstrate formal possibilities and for this reason is always doomed to be haunted by a gap between really existing concrete situations and formal articulations.
A world, I think, comprises the “nothing new” on which the sun, having no alternative, is compelled to shine. Causal processes might work away within it, but the production of true novelty requires a break which is not only causal but logical, a disturbance in the order of things.
Perhaps, although I’ve come to feel fairly skeptical about Badiou’s understanding of such breaks. This is certainly how Badiou characterizes situations, the question is whether it’s true.
for there to be differences, there must first be an order of appearance within which such differences can be registered, and the available “lines of flight” are merely tracings of particular relational circuits within this order.
Yes, this is the way Badiou would characterize matters, though I would disagree that actualization “merely” traces the relational circuits within an order. In the first place, I think this grants far too much fixity to structure, and is reminiscent of a now discredited version of structuralism. If we were to situate the Deleuze/Badiou debate in terms of evolutionary theory– why not? –Deleuze could be characterized as a gradualist where evolutionary change is concerned, whereas Badiou could be characterized as a proponent of “punctuated equilibrium”, where there are sudden eruptions that introduce new species. My inclination is that the loud clamor of events we see and hear are products of gradualist processes. If this is the case, then it makes sense to look at these various gradualist processes to strategize ways of producing change within situations. A good deal of what I’ve discussed here about the materiality of rhetoric has been geared towards these sorts of strategic questions… Strategies which I have actually found to produce real concrete results in practice with my own engagements.
It’s worth emphasizing that these questions or disputes aren’t simply matters of how Badiou is “interpreted”. Sometimes I think discussions in continental philosophy get bogged down in questions of interpretation because so much of continental philosophy has been a practice of interpretation, of interpreting the texts of others, for the last one hundred years rather than actually engaging in arguments and disputes. One says “you’re misreading x!” and speaks as if a correct interpretation would resolve all disagreements. The question isn’t one of how Badiou is being interpreted, but of how adequate his thought is to what he’s seeking to describe. Ontologically I find his system tremendously insufficient, and politically, while there might indeed be something like truth-procedures (the verdict is still out for me), I find his proposals far too restrictive, not allowing for other mechanisms by which change takes place. I suspect that a good deal of the allure of Badiou’s thought is that it provides a way of remaining engaged and committed in an age where engagement has come to seem increasingly futile due to the form that late capital has taken. I applaud this move, though I see it as a precursor to the development of more elaborate and adequate theoretical formations in the future. I think the previous post I referenced does a fair job outlining the problems I have with Badiou’s ontology:
It’s noteworthy that my issue here has to do with Badiou’s ontology— worlds and ontology being my primary concern –and is not directed so much at his theory of the event which I don’t find particularly interesting.
May 21, 2007 at 4:32 pm
I think the challenge Badiou sets himself with B&E is to develop a maximally subtractive, “structuralist” ontology and then show that the same mathematical resources that support that ontology can nevertheless give rise to a theory of the event, the intervention, the generic extension and so on. The one sets the stage for the other; the burden of the demonstration is really that events are still possible even in a situation of apparently total stasis and exhaustion when everything’s ground to a halt (and are therefore always possible, and always worth fighting for). Hence perhaps the allure that you mention.