Вы находитесь на странице: 1из 24

02 Watson (jl/d) 6/11/98 12:28 pm Page 23

The Neurobiology of Sorcery:


Deleuze and Guattaris Brain
SEAN WATSON

Introduction
This article is intended to work on a number of different levels. First it is
concerned with the brain-become-subject as hypothesized by Gilles Deleuze and
Felix Guattari in their book What is Philosophy? It is concerned with demonstrating the convergence between Deleuze and Guattaris work and the claims of
some contemporary neurobiological theories of consciousness. In particular I will
be comparing Deleuze and Guattaris hypothesis to the work of Gerald Edelman
and Daniel Dennett. Second it is my contention that the shared themes of this
convergence amount to the renewal of a paradigm in the understanding of human
consciousness and its relationship to the body, which I have elsewhere called the
new Bergsonism (Watson, 1998). The emphasis in the text on themes such as
duration, material connectedness and immanence, Becoming, multiplicity, selection and so on, is taken to be self-evidently Bergsonian. The primary task of this
particular article is, then, to establish a careful technical demonstration of the
existence of a shared set of themes and concepts. But my wider agenda is that it
should contribute towards a more general attempt to establish a neo-Bergsonian
paradigm at the heart of a new sociology of affect.
This is because, so far, sociology has been weak in its attempts to integrate the
body and its forces into its analysis of social and cultural structure. Even where
the body has appeared in sociological analysis it has done so only as a blank slate,
subject to cultural coding. The post-structuralism of the 1970s and 1980s was
an attempt to remedy this denial of organic forces by re-introducing Nietzsche
into philosophy and the social sciences. But the Anglo-American assimilation of
Body & Society 1998 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi),
Vol. 4(4): 2345
[1357034X(199812)4:4;2345;007009]

02 Watson (jl/d) 6/11/98 12:28 pm Page 24

24 n Body and Society Vol. 4 No. 4

post-structuralism simply removed those forces yet again (turning it into a kind
of sophisticated social constructionism). In any case post-structuralist theorists,
such as Deleuze and Guattari or Michel Foucault, developed the forces of the
body only as a very abstract theme. No specifics were ever given, for fear of
engaging with the biologists of course. Consequently, when sociologists have
wanted to speak about affect as a determining variable in social life in the past few
decades they have found either that they had to resort to some brand of psychoanalytic vocabulary, or that they simply had no vocabulary at all. Psychoanalytic
theory has its uses but it also has severe limitations. One of those limitations is
that it allows one to talk endlessly about affect without ever getting around to
talking about the body the place where affect and consciousness actually
happen. Sociologists have to learn to talk about the body itself. To do this they
will have to know something about the body. They will have to know something
about how consciousness is actually produced in the body, they will need to know
what affect is as a physiological force, they will need to understand the relationship between affect and consciousness, they will need to know what kind of a
physiological/neurological phenomenon language is. In short they will need to
understand, at a general level, how culture comes to inhabit a biological organism.
The sciences of the brain, nervous system and the rest of the body are progressing apace and will continue to do so with, or without, the blessing of sociologists.
Evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, artificial intelligence; these are the sciences that are beginning to provide the lingua franca within
which the popular consciousness develops its appreciation of the human
condition. Sociology must defend its claim to this territory but not by, again,
trying to deny the existence of the body and its forces. The social constructionist
thesis is wrong, there is an outside to culture. Sociology can only retake this
terrain by embracing the new languages of the body and its forces and making
them its own. This is why sociology must become thoroughly Bergsonian it
must reinvent itself as the science of the production of culture in a wider inhuman,
material plain of immanence. Our new conceptual tools will come from theories
of the brain and nervous system, mutation and selection, dissipative structures,
structural modulation, organic autopoiesis, complexity, artificial intelligence and
so on.
Apart from the fact that a sociology that does not take biology on board is no
longer intellectually defensible, there are perhaps more pressing reasons for this
reappraisal of its role. The possible social and political consequences of vast technical expertise in the natural sciences, providing the ability to manipulate and
control at the molecular level, are worrying to say the least. If social scientists do
not grasp this nettle then they are destined to become ever further sidelined; they

02 Watson (jl/d) 6/11/98 12:28 pm Page 25

Deleuze and Guattaris Brain n 25

will not be in a position to provide a sociological corrective to the biological


engineers and controllers of the future.
In developing the technical arguments relating to the convergence between
Deleuze and Guattari and the neurosciences it is clear that I have mixed two very
different vocabularies. My point is to demonstrate that, while the terminology is
different, the conceptual schema is roughly the same. The point of bringing the
two together is that, while the broad frameworks are entirely compatible, thinkers
such as Edelman and Dennett provide many of the details that Deleuze and Guattari do not. I have no particular interest in any of these thinkers for their own sake.
I am primarily interested in the contribution they ultimately make to a general
Bergsonian sociology of affect.
There is also a third level to the article. Though the technical discussion (and
its Bergsonian implications) could stand alone I have placed it within the context
of a discussion of the phenomena of idiosyncrasy and the uncanny. This is because
these are clear examples of affective phenomena which occur at the social level,
which cannot be adequately accounted for by means of the usual traditions of
social theory, but which can easily be understood in terms of the framework that
I shall outline here. It also gives some sense of what it is that has drawn me into
consideration of these issues.
The Idiosyncratic
What can the affective impact of the idiosyncratic tell us about the nature of the
social as an affective fabric? In Dialectic of Enlightenment, Theodor Adorno and
Max Horkheimer define idiosyncrasy in the following way:
The motives to which idiosyncrasy appeals recall the ultimate origins. They produce moments
of biological prehistory: danger signs which make the hair stand on end and the heart stop
beating. In idiosyncrasy, individual organs escape from the control of the subject, and independently obey fundamental biological stimuli. The ego which experiences such reactions
for instance muscular torpor, or stiffness of joints is not wholly in control of itself. (1992:
180)

Adorno and Horkheimer go on to explain the affective dimensions of anti-Semitic


hatred in terms of idiosyncrasy. Something about the cultural striation of the
Jewish body induces in the anti-Semite feelings of disgust. There is a clash of
bodies at a level below consciousness. The human encounter is double (or
multiple). There is the conscious encounter but that is paralleled by another
encounter (or many) taking place outside of consciousness but which determines the mood of the conscious encounter. Adorno and Horkheimer use a
psychoanalytic vocabulary to describe this parallel encounter. But could we think

02 Watson (jl/d) 6/11/98 12:28 pm Page 26

26 n Body and Society Vol. 4 No. 4

instead in terms of the direct encounter between bodies and what these bodies
are doing to one another, outside of consciousness?
Uncanny Strangeness
Similar thoughts occurred to me when reading Julia Kristevas book Strangers to
Ourselves. I was struck by a short paragraph which made my hair stand on end.
The relevant section of the book is a discussion of Freuds analysis of uncanny
strangeness. His analysis is of the ambiguity inherent in the term heimlich which
means friendly, comfortable but also concealed, kept from sight, deceitful and
malicious, behind someones back. This brings it into the sphere of its opposite
unheimlich uncanny strangeness. Somehow uncanny strangeness is simultaneously familiar. Kristeva calls this an immanence of the strange in the familiar.
That which is strangely uncanny is that which was (the past tense is important)
familiar and, under certain conditions (which ones?), emerges (1991: 183). In
particular the uncanny is often images of death, female sexual organs (in the case
of neurotic men) and, as Freud puts it the living person when we ascribe evil
intentions to him that are going to be carried out with the help of special powers
(Freud, SE17: 243, quoted in Kristeva, 1991: 185). The latter is of course the idiosyncratic individual. Then comes the chilling paragraph in question, Kristeva
comments that:
Such malevolent powers would amount to a weaving together of the symbolic and the organic
perhaps drive itself, on the border of the psyche and biology, overriding the breaking imposed
by organic homeostasis. A disturbing symptom of this may be found in epilepsy and madness,
and their presence in our fellow beings worries us the more as we dimly sense them in ourselves.
(1991: 185)

Anyone who has experienced or witnessed epileptic seizures is well aware of the
panic and sense of the uncanny which they can arouse. So what is an epileptic
seizure? A snowballing of anomalous, random neural activity washing through
the brain-substance, temporarily eradicating any virtual processes and
machines sustained within it (including consciousness) and replacing them with
what pure drive? The underlying patterns of anomalous neural activity, below
critical level, can be detected by an electroencephalogram. But anyone can, under
the right conditions, show these patterns of neural activity, and even suffer an
epileptic seizure. Kristeva writes about the uncanny strangeness of such
phenomena providing clues to the nature of normal psychological functioning,
and to the fragility of repression. What I am suggesting here is that the closely
related phenomenon of idiosyncrasy provides similar clues, as Adorno and
Horkheimer suggest. But what kind of clues? Can we take examples of other

02 Watson (jl/d) 6/11/98 12:28 pm Page 27

Deleuze and Guattaris Brain n 27

forms of anomalous neurological functioning and make some more specific


observations?
The Tourettic Surgeon
In Oliver Sackss most recent collection, An Anthropologist on Mars, he describes
the case of the Tourettic surgeon Dr Carl Bennett. Tourettic patterns of behaviour were assimilated into medical discourse by Georges Gilles de la Tourette, a
pupil of Charcot and a friend of Freuds, in 1885.
The syndrome as he described it was characterised above all, by convulsive tics, by involuntary
mimicry or repetition of others words or actions (echolalia and achopraxia), and by the involuntary or compulsive utterances of curses and obscenities (coprolalia). Some individuals despite
their affliction show an odd insouciance or nonchalance; some a tendency to make strange often
witty, occasionally dreamlike associations; some extreme impulsiveness and provocativeness, a
constant testing of physical and social boundaries; some a constant, restless reaction to the
environment, a lunging at and sniffing of everything or a sudden flinging of objects; and yet
others an extreme stereotypy and obsessiveness no two patients were ever quite the same.
(Sacks, 1995: 73)

Often Tourettics have remarkably increased reaction times and fantastic speed of
thought. Almost as though some brake or filtering mechanism were weakened
perhaps. When forced to reduce their speed to ours, their motor activity becomes
convulsive and filled with tics. Dr Bennett is afflicted with tics, constant bending
down, skips in his walking, grabbing, lunging, flinging, tendencies to touch and
touch again smoothing his moustache, balancing his glasses, making things
symmetrical in his visual field. This is all accentuated particularly when his stream
of attention is interrupted. He also produces strange utterances such as the highpitched high Patty, high there, hideous. Phrases, words and sounds become
enshrined in tics. So do names; Bennetts sons keep lists of strange-sounding
names from the radio, TV and newspapers. Bennett calls them his candy for the
mind.
Early on, Sacks notices Dr Bennetts wolf-like dogs with their strange, pale
eyes. Bennett talks to them in a high-pitched Touretty voice. When his children
come out to meet them as they approach the house, Sacks wonders if Bennett will
speak to them and pat them in the same way. Soon, however, Bennetts becomingmachine and becoming-animal is quite manifest:
I slept soundly in the Bennetts basement room that night, but in the morning I woke early,
roused by a strange whirring noise in the room next to mine the playroom. The playroom
door had translucent glass panels. As I peered through them, still half asleep, I saw what
appeared to be a locomotive in motion a large, whirring wheel going round and round and
giving off puffs of smoke and occasional hoots. Bewildered, I opened the door and peeked in.
Bennett stripped to the waist, was pedalling furiously on an exercise bike while calmly smoking

02 Watson (jl/d) 6/11/98 12:28 pm Page 28

28 n Body and Society Vol. 4 No. 4


a large pipe. A pathology book was open before him turned, I observed, to the chapter on
neurofibromatosis. . . . The pipe, the rhythmic exercise, calm him. There are no tics, no compulsions at most, a little hooting. (He seems to imagine at such times that he is a prairie train).
(1995: 83)

As Dr Bennett prepares for theatre there is the fantastic sight of his scrubbing up:
Something in the sterile field, the prohibition, seemed to stir his Tourettes; he made sudden
darting motions, or incipient motions, of his sterile, gloved right hand towards the ungloved,
unwashed, dirty part of his left arm. (1995: 87)

This comes together with a barrage of vocalisations Hooty-hooo! Hootyhooo! suggestive of a huge owl. At other times Sacks observes Bennett engaging in:
. . . a slow, almost sensuous pressing of the foot to mark out a circle in the ground all around
him. It seems to me almost instinctual, he said when I asked him about it. Like a dog marking
its territory. I feel it in my bones. I think it is something primal, prehuman maybe something
that all of us, without knowing it, have in us. But Tourettes releases these primitive behaviours. (1995: 79)

Now Sacks is interested in the way that Bennetts disease seems to disappear as
soon as he is in the operating theatre. His brain seems to slot into a completely
different set of striations his nervous system is suddenly normalized. But what
about the strange becoming-animal and machine, the strange vocalizations? It is
these lines of flight which interest Deleuze and Guattari and which for them
provide clues to the underlying functioning of the brain-become-subject. In A
Thousand Plateaus they discussed the theme of sorcery in relation to strange
becomings (1988: 23952). I want to argue, for the purposes of this article, that
the sorcerer is the idiosyncratic individual. Dr Bennett is to the extent that he
invokes feelings of uncanny strangeness, and has the power to affect people
deeply at a level below consciousness (without even knowing it) a sorcerer; a
kind of access point to the unconscious inhuman foundations of the human. I
want to argue that idiosyncrasy/uncannyness/sorcery is always a deep, physiological phenomenon. Bennetts idiosyncrasy is clearly of this kind, as it is known
to be the product of a neurological disorder. But all idiosyncrasy is ultimately of
this kind. Now we must look at the brain and nervous system itself to ask how it
becomes subject and how sorcery can be explained in terms of this production
of the subject.
The Brain and the Plane of Immanence
According to Deleuze and Guattari we need a little objective order to protect us
from the chaos. The world we are in is one of becomings happening at infinite

02 Watson (jl/d) 6/11/98 12:28 pm Page 29

Deleuze and Guattaris Brain n 29

speeds. As soon as a thought comes it is going we are afraid of our thought flying
away- flying off half-formed blending into silence, colourlessness and nothingness the blank plane without nature or thought. As we are so afraid of
losing hold on our ideas we create fixed opinion in particular the belief in the
Cogito is an opinion an urdoxa. These provide protective rules of:
. . . resemblance, contiguity, causality which enable us to put some order into ideas, preventing our fantasy (delirium, madness) from crossing the universe in an instant, producing winged
horses and dragons breathing fire. (1994: 201)

The virtual, Henri Bergsons wellspring of human creativity and consciousness,


is an objective anti-chaos but how is it created? The brain is the junction
between three planes the plane of immanence on which the philosopher creates
concepts, the plane of composition on which the artist creates affects, and the
plane of reference on which the scientist creates functions the three confrontations of chaos the three chaoids (Deleuze and Guattari, 1994).
All three confront chaos with thought. But all three can also challenge opinion
by confronting and borrowing from chaos. This is particularly the case with the
artist. The artist must make sensation but sensation that is altogether new, that
instigates becoming he must go through a catastrophe leaving a trace (much
like the sorcerer indeed he may be one and the same). The scientist, on the other
hand, slows becoming down, eliminating many variables, in order to capture
relations between remaining ones in a function. The philosopher lays out
concepts on a plane of immanence, creates new possibilities for thought. This
plane is pure thought, pure possibility (Deleuze and Guattari, 1994).
It is perspective, in the Nietzschean sense, that develops the particular concept
within the plane. In neurological terms this amounts to a particular resolution of
forces in the brain. We perceive only what we are interested in perceiving, or rather
what it is in our interest to perceive so that it is in this sense that the sensorymotor schema is an agent of abstraction (Deleuze, 1989: 20, 45). Consciousness is
a product of a subtractive process in the organism (Deleuze, 1986: 63, 64).
Regarding the brain, within which the resolution of forces occurs, Deleuze and
Guattari state that it:
. . . appears as a complex set of both horizontal connections and of vertical integrations reacting
on one another, as is shown by cerebral maps. The question then is a double one: are the
connections pre-established, as if guided by rails, or are they produced and broken up in fields
of forces? And are the processes of integration localised hierarchical centres, or are they rather
forms (Gestalten) that achieve their conditions of stability in a field on which the position of
centre itself depends? (1994: 207, my emphasis)

Their own position is, then, allied to the second answer to each question. Cerebral maps are produced and broken up in fields of forces. Also there is no fixed

02 Watson (jl/d) 6/11/98 12:28 pm Page 30

30 n Body and Society Vol. 4 No. 4

Cartesian command centre, rather there is a fluid and mobile centre which itself
is an effect produced by the operations and conditions of the whole brain, body
and nervous system. How might this claim be concretized? Deleuze and Guattari
give no details at this point this is why we must turn to other sources for a more
detailed account. While drawing on these other sources, I will constantly refer
back to Deleuze and Guattari in order to demonstrate the theoretical parallels
which make the claim that we are looking at a Bergsonian paradigm a justifiable
one.
Neuroscience
One of the key areas of debate in brain science has been the extent to which the
brains functioning can be characterized using computational metaphors. This is
not the place to rehearse these debates, but one of the main problems for
computer models of the brain derives from the variability of circuitry. The synaptic connections and growth are multiple, swarming and relatively unpredictable.
It simply is not possible that the function of each part of the neural circuitry is
determined in advance, such that the location and structure of various inputs,
storage facilities, and manipulations of data can themselves be predetermined in a
computational fashion. This is compounded by the fact that many synapses
appear to be inactive why is this? Certain active routes and connections appear
to develop in this probabilistically created network or surface how can this
happen without a programme?
The neuroscientist Gerald Edelman has developed the theory of neuronal group
selection to explain how such a network might develop. His basic argument is that
neuropsychological outcomes are the product, not of pre-programming, but of
selection. To put it another way, they are the contingent outcome of the resolution
of a multiplicity of forces only one of which is genetic constraint. Edelman believes
that his materialist theory of thought-brain can ultimately provide an explanation
for consciousness for what Deleuze and Guattari call the survey of the entire
field (1994: 209). But Edelman provides details where they provide none.
There are, according to Edelman, three levels of neuronal selection. First is
developmental selection. This is the process whereby cells are produced under
genetic constraint, led by chemical guides in their migration, adhesion and selective death. Through this process, what Edelman calls primary repertoires are
produced. They can be understood as the substances and surfaces containing
thought and feeling as pure possibility. They are Deleuze and Guattaris bodywithout-organs. This is the plane, the substance within/upon which the virtual
floats. The virtual can be understood here as a far from equilibrium environment

02 Watson (jl/d) 6/11/98 12:28 pm Page 31

Deleuze and Guattaris Brain n 31

from which consciousness will emerge through selection and a resolution of


forces. A morphologically differentiated mechanism emerges as a substance/
network of pure possibility, though it is to some extent already functionally
differentiated. These differentiations are mainly those between the sub-cortical
regions and the neo-cortex. The former evolved earlier and to a great extent are
responsible for the regulation of bodily processes (heart rate, breathing),
endocrinal functions (production of various chemical agents such as hormones),
the autonomic responses, appetites (sexual, feeding, etc.), and automatic avoidance behaviour. Many of the feelings, appetites and impulses which we have come
to understand as emotional are produced and regulated by elements of the subcortical brain. The cortical surfaces evolved later and are concerned in the first
instance with the organisms, more sophisticated, learned sensory and motor
relationship to the outside world (though it is now recognized that much learning also involves the sub-cortical regions). The neo-cortex is also, of course,
crucial for the production of consciousness and language. It is worth noting that
these two broad areas of the brain do not really operate as separate systems. The
elements of the lower brain do not perform the same functions in the same way
that they were performed before the cortical surfaces evolved. The cortical
surfaces have effectively rewired them producing a general deterritorialization
of the sub-cortical brain. The passing over of thresholds of deterritorialization
began in the brain long before the arrival of consciousness and subjectivity.
Second, experimental selection takes place as the body samples the world.
Here some synapses are strengthened and others weakened leading to a carving
out of routes through the brain substance. These routes are what he calls secondary repertoires and they are equivalent to the beginnings of Deleuze and Guattaris striated body. This is the development of neural maps in the cortex
correlated with sensory and motor maps on the body surface carved out not by
a programme but by sampling of the world under constraint a resolution of
forces. These maps are not fixed sectors of the neural surface, they are mobile;
floating on/in this surface.
Third, there is the process of so-called re-entrant mapping. Multiple maps
relating to different aspects of the sensory field (colour, angles, movement, sound,
smell, sensation associated with motor activity, etc.) and the motor system are
correlated and mapped on to one another. These are not individual neurons
mapped on to one another but groups of neurons which seem to create between
them a relative stability of response, but in the end are always in dynamic relationships with one another. These are dissipative structures which emerge in the far
from equilibrium environment which the brain provides. So how do these selection processes build something that can think?

02 Watson (jl/d) 6/11/98 12:28 pm Page 32

32 n Body and Society Vol. 4 No. 4

Perception and Categorization


Re-entrant mapping occurs not by classical categorization (measuring and
comparing parts of the world to a programmed model of Platonic forms) but by
disjunctive sampling of properties.1 Such maps receive signals from other maps
and from the world. And, as Edelman puts it, if the maps are topographically
connected they correlate happenings at one spatiotemporal location in the world
without a higher-order supervisor (1992: 87).2 By topographically connected he
means neighbouring locations on the sensory sheet (retina, skin surfaces, etc.) are
also neighbouring on the map (cortical surface) at some minimal level of stability.
Objects and events can, then, be infolded by correlating a large number of coordinates dispersed throughout the nervous system into a temporary structure. This
is how in Bergsonian terms extension becomes intension.
These maps interact with non-mapped parts of the brain, such as the cerebellum, hippocampus and basal ganglia, producing higher-order structures called
global maps. These are dynamic structures. They allow events in current local
maps to interact with the motor behaviour of the organism, and thus bring about
further sensory sampling of the world and more elaborate mapping. These
global mappings have been simulated in super-computers:
. . . sensorimotor activity over the whole mapping selects neuronal groups that give the appropriate output or behaviour, resulting in categorisation. Decisions in such systems are based on
the statistics of signal correlation. (Edelman, 1992: 90)

Appropriateness of output or behaviour is a consequence of built-in values


which do not determine categorization of the world but act as constraints (i.e.
fundamental forces) in the selection process. Set by evolutionary selection, in
organisms, these values or homeostats are the drive features of the body/brain/
nervous system (see Figure 1, box 1).
Edelman has produced complex automata using neuronal group selection
techniques with built-in values (such as preference for light, or bumpiness, or
stripes). The automata are able to learn to control their own bodys motor functions, and to categorize on the basis of their value preferences. Neuronal groups
which are active when value circuits are positively engaged have their synapses
strengthened, in preference to competing synapses. In other words, categories
emerge out of a chaos of signals through a resolution of forces. On the one hand
the force of internal values or homeostats, on the other the force of the statistical correlations of the whole range of sensory-motor inputs. There is no centre
to the categorization process (recall the earlier quote from Deleuze and Guattari).
Like animals the automata do their learning in an individually varying manner
unpredictable other than at a statistical level. Darwin III is a model of a global

02 Watson (jl/d) 6/11/98 12:28 pm Page 33

Deleuze and Guattaris Brain n 33


SELF

NON-SELF

Internal
homeostatic
systems

World signals
including
proprioception
Current
perceptual
categorization

Brain stem
hypothalamus
autonomic centres
1

Current registration
of internal states
and values

Semantic
bootstrap

3
Correlation in
hippocampus
amygdala, septum

Conceptual
A
catagorization

Primary and secondary


cortex for sight,
hearing, touch, etc.

PRIMARY
CONSCIOUSNESS
Re-entrant loop
connecting
value-catagory
memory to current
perceptual
categorization

Broca's and
5 Wernicke's
areas

HIGHER-ORDER
CONSCIOUSNESS

Special value category


4
memory in frontal,
temporal, parietal cortex

(Implies previous experience and


neuronal group selection)

Figure 1 Diagram showing Edelmans account of the material processes constituting consciousness in the organism
Source: Adapted from Edelman (1992: 132)

mapping that carries out categorization on value in a fashion that might be called
embodied (Edelman, 1992: 93). Importantly, without the values or homeostats
learning does not take place, somatic selection systems will not converge into
definite behaviours. This points to the importance of such homeostats for the
existence of epistemic hunger in all organisms including ourselves (See Figure
1 correlation between boxes 1, 2 and 3). It also hints at the weaknesses inherent
in any sociology which does not assume certain drive features in the human body.
Categorization of the world is then, at the lowest level, determined by this
resolution of forces between sensory sampling, re-entrant cortical mapping, and
re-entrant connections with other brain centres. But nobody is suggesting that
Edelmans automata are anywhere near to being thinking let alone conscious
creatures. So what else is needed?

02 Watson (jl/d) 6/11/98 12:28 pm Page 34

34 n Body and Society Vol. 4 No. 4

Memory and Concepts


Memory is a further quality of this process of neuronal group selection. Memory
at the simplest level is the ability to repeat performances (conscious memory is
only one sub-category of memory in general). It is a dynamic quality of the
nervous system (not a storage area as in computation). It is constantly re-worked
in the light of current sensory/motor mappings. It is, in other words, retroactive
and reconstructive particularly so in relation to self-concept, once higher
consciousness has emerged. The idea is, then, that the duration of the organism is
a dynamic element in its own structure. This notion is, of course, a profoundly
Bergsonian one.
The key to memory is a higher level of mapping which maps the activities of
the brain itself. In Deleuze and Guattaris words, the brain is a state of self
survey. As I have outlined, it maps those correlative, perceptual categorizations
which have value-based salience to the organism. In memory these perceptual
maps are re-entrantly linked to the so-called organs of succession the hippocampus, basal ganglia and cerebellum (Figure 1, re-entrant loop A). They are responsible for memory placement and motor coordination in time. This is a mapping to
time categorization. In other words, time/duration is turned into a spatial
mapping within the nervous system. Interestingly, of course, Bergson developed
a general critique of the spatialization of duration in the sciences and modern
thought in general. But if Edelman is correct, then it may be that a tendency
towards the spatialization of time is built into our nervous system we may not
be able to help ourselves. The key to the operation of these value-based memory
mappings is that they can reactivate perceptual and motor mappings in the cerebral cortex, thus producing repeat performance. This is not because they activate
representations of the original experiences no such representations exist. Rather
they attempt to reactivate the temporary, multi-dimensional, correlation of
elements of the nervous system that was the original experience.3
Such higher-level mappings are also the basis for conceptual categorization of
the world. Concepts, according to Edelman, are not primarily linguistic though
they do eventually become mapped to language. They are originally abstractions
of sensation which are categorized and manipulated according to the expectancy
states of the hedonic centres (Figure 1, box 1). The main locations of mappings
responsible for correlating value category memory and conceptual categorization
are in the frontal, temporal and parietal cortices (Figure 1, box 4).
So the concept always refers back, in Deleuze and Guattaris words, to chaos
rendered consistent, become Thought, mental chaosmos. Thinking, and its
contractions, is a constant confrontation of the radical multiplicity of the world

02 Watson (jl/d) 6/11/98 12:28 pm Page 35

Deleuze and Guattaris Brain n 35

through the abstraction of sensation. The fact that concepts are not primarily
linguistic does not of course negate Deleuze and Guattaris standpoint on philosophy in which it represents that branch of thought which can invent new forms
of experience precisely by linguistically engineering new conceptual personae.
Once the conceptual regime as an abstraction of sensation has been mapped to
language then it is, of course, possible to work backwards on sensation and
experience. Once the networks of mapping are established there is no fixed hierarchy. Language can, and does, deterritorialize the original non-linguistic conceptual schemas.
Consciousness
Consciousness is a further dynamic quality immanent in the thought-brain
surface at a higher level of complexity and organization. Again it is important to
notice that this immanent quality is not pre-programmed any more than any of
the others so far discussed. It results from the creation of re-entrant mappings and
loops on the basis of a resolution of forces (or competition/selection as Edelman
prefers to call it). He argues that in fact consciousness has two levels primary
and higher-order consciousness.
Primary consciousness is where events and objects, in time and space, are categorized, on value, so that causally unconnected parts of the world are bound
together into a scene Deleuze and Guattaris survey of the entire field.
. . . the salience of an event is determined not only by its position and energy in the world but
also by the relative value it has been accorded in the past history of the individual animal as a
result of learning. (Edelman, 1992: 118)

It is produced by, first, the (previously discussed) perceptual categorizations


linking the sensory-motor and value/homeostatic systems (Figure 1, correlation
of boxes 1, 2 and 3); second the (previously discussed) value category memory and
conceptual categorization (Figure 1, re-entrant loop A and box 4); and third, by
a special re-entrant circuit allowing constant signalling between this value category
memory and current global mappings (Figure 1, re-entrant loop B). Consciousness
is a remembered present, an overlaying of traces, a slowing down of the speed of
becoming to a kind of freeze-framing. This is a further process of what Deleuze
and Guattari call contraction. Edelman puts it in the following way: a conceptual categorisation of concurrent perceptions [which] can occur before these
perceptual signals contribute lastingly to that memory (1992: 119). Deleuze and
Guattari make the same point thus:
Sensation contracts the vibrations of the stimulant on a nervous surface or in a cerebral volume:
what comes before has not yet disappeared when what follows appears. This is its way of

02 Watson (jl/d) 6/11/98 12:28 pm Page 36

36 n Body and Society Vol. 4 No. 4


responding to chaos. Sensation itself vibrates because it contracts vibrations. It preserves itself
because it preserves vibrations: it is a Monument. . . . Sensation is the contracted vibration
because it has become quality, variety . . . only the soul preserves by contracting that which
matter dissipates, or radiates, furthers, reflects, refracts, or converts. (1994: 211)4

Of course the stream of Becoming is itself without division or stasis it is pure


duration. But the brain responds to pure duration by contracting, overlaying,
freeze-framing. This is both Edelmans and Deleuze and Guattaris point and it
is also Bergsons own position. Consciousness is the product of these successive
processes of contraction (so far described) which eventually take us over the
threshold into Edelmans remembered present. We experience consciousness as
an ongoing, coherent scene but, according to Edelman, underlying this scene is a
correlation between various modes of categorization based on learning (striation)
and value (drive force) the elements of which are spread throughout the body
and nervous system.
So now we have, according to Edelman, three successive layers of contraction:
first, perceptual categorization; second, value category memory and conceptual
categorization; and third, the survey of the entire scene or remembered
present. In describing the same process of contraction Deleuze and Guattari
speak of:
. . . phase spaces as a succession of filters, the earlier of which would be in each case a relatively
chaotic state, and the latter a chaoid state, so that we would cross chaotic thresholds rather than
go from the elementary to the composite. (1994: 206, my emphasis)

They are different multiplicities on different plateaus. Imagine taking a slide


down those levels of contraction, over those thresholds becoming-animal,
becoming-molecular, becoming-imperceptible (Deleuze and Guattari, 1988:
Chapter 10).5 This is what the idiosyncratic, the sorcerer, invites as we shall see.
This primary consciousness of the remembered present is, however, limited
in time and is not self-conscious. Edelman thinks that it is the sort of consciousness cats, dogs and other complex mammals might have. It cannot consciously
model the future and past as part of the scene. In organisms with only primary
consciousness all memory remains unconscious (though it continually effects
behaviour of course). Edelman compares it to a beam of light only that which
is in the beam is conscious.
A higher-order consciousness arrives with the development of new centres of
mapping and categorization. These are Brocas and Wernichs areas of the cortex
(Figure 1, box 5). They link acoustic, conceptual and motor regions of the brain
by re-entrant loops in special ways (Figure 1, re-entrant loop C). In particular
they produce a kind of memory capable of re-categorizing sound as phonemes in
correlation with conceptual (and sensory-motor) surfaces of cortex. In other

02 Watson (jl/d) 6/11/98 12:28 pm Page 37

Deleuze and Guattaris Brain n 37

words they create the possibility of symbolic/linguistic signalling within and


between nervous systems, and the placing of the organism into a stream of narrative which arouses states of expectation a past- and future-oriented creature.
This linguistic signalling is not best understood as information transfer. It is
not that language is carrying some special, immaterial substance called information around or between nervous systems. Instead linguistic signalling is best
understood simply as another kind of structural modulation of the nervous
system. The nervous system is deterritorialized by this new usage of sound as
phonemes. The nervous system passes over yet another threshold it reconstructs
itself.
The philosopher and psychologist Daniel Dennett discusses the possible
origins of the usage of sound as phoneme to signal between parts of the nervous
system and so reconstruct its functional architecture. He argues that the inner
voice is the product of the evolutionary success of a certain kind of autostimulation. It begins with verbal signalling evolving first in creatures with only primary
consciousness. At this level these sounds are used simply for signalling between
organisms in a group signalling danger for example. The next stage is where
some organisms discover that, literally, talking to themselves enables them to
perform useful tricks with their nervous systems as they make connections
between areas of the brain (via the mouth and ear) which were not previously
connected. Eventually the language centres forge direct routes through the brain
and talking to ourselves becomes a silent affair (Dennett, 1991: 171226).
There is no genetically programmed language acquisition device as the Chomskyans claim, though there may be developmental periods in which the laying
down of the necessary re-entrant loops are most easily achieved. An important
consequence of Edelmans model is that semantics comes before syntax since, as
we have seen, concepts are (at least initially) non-linguistic. Only after a
sufficiently large lexicon has developed are rules for the arrangement of these
symbols developed and remembered. This is why computers cannot deal with
meaning. Syntax is built, not by a programme, but epigenetically under genetic
constraints in combination with a multitude of other forces within a living,
feeling, human body. Computers cannot grasp meaning, only because they are (so
far) incorrectly embodied.6 If this were not the case then structuralists could have
taught them how to think.
There is really a key issue here for both artificial intelligence theorists and for
sociologists. Dennett suggests that one could take a functionalist position on this
in which all of the elements of the human nervous system perform certain functions in the production of consciousness. He suggests that other material things
could be made to perform similar functions (i.e. computer processors). But given

02 Watson (jl/d) 6/11/98 12:28 pm Page 38

38 n Body and Society Vol. 4 No. 4

the multi-functionality and continual structural modulation of the body that is


fundamental to the production of human consciousness, is this really feasible?
Might it not be that it is precisely the peculiar material configuration of the human
body that makes its functioning possible? In that case it would only be possible
to produce robots with human-type consciousness once we have learned how to
produce a human body in all its material details and then it would not really be
a robot. Similarly, for sociologists the lesson is that society and culture are peculiarly human phenomena precisely because of the particular material configuration of the human body. To leave it out is therefore indefensible.
Selves and Collectivities
A self-concept becomes possible in the subjectpredicate relationships organized
in symbolic memory and within a speech community. Inner life is constituted
through language in this speech community. It is under these conditions that the
construction of social relations becomes possible, together with complex modelling of the world. Self-consciousness is the consequence of dynamic processes of
self-categorization which are extended massively by language. A conceptual
model of selfhood in time, society and a world, is built.
In other words, subjectivity is constituted in a machinic assemblage of
language, nervous systems and other objects and energies. Edelman describes this
in terms of communication and transmission. Speech and writing are modes of
transmission of contracted, value-based categorizations, between nervous
systems. Again it is important to emphasize that communication in this context
cannot mean information exchange or systems of representation. Such models of
communication are dependent upon neo-Cartesian assumptions with regard to
the subject. Instead, communication is a matter of structural modulation of the
body and nervous system. Communication is a mutual adjustment of bodies.
While Edelman does say of the intervention of language into the neural
environment, that this proposal is compatible with the capacity to construct and
interpret a potentially infinite number of sentences from a finite number of
words, it is not clear that he is aware of the level of deterritorialization of the
cortical thought-surface which takes place once symbolic mapping takes hold
(1992: 131). While re-channelling of the drive impulses in animals can only be
achieved through careful training (i.e. non-symbolic sensorial repetition), the
nervous system with higher consciousness has language embedded in it a highly
flexible, collective machinic-device.
Daniel Dennett is very well aware of the huge bootstrapping which is consequent upon the linguistic deterritorialization of the brain thought-surface. He

02 Watson (jl/d) 6/11/98 12:28 pm Page 39

Deleuze and Guattaris Brain n 39

argues, along with Richard Dawkins, that a whole phase transition has effectively
occurred; a new kind of replicator has been born in the universe the so called
meme (Dennett, 1991: 200210; Dawkins, 1989: 189201). But Dennett remains
a methodological-individualist. He argues that the meme constitutes virtualmachines within the brain but of course the brain and its nervous system is an
open system. Language is a collective phenomenon, the appropriate unit of analysis cannot be the individual brain. In fact, of course, the meme constitutes virtual
machinic devices occupying whole complexes of nervous systems, bodies and
objects. This is what Deleuze and Guattari have, in the course of their work,
referred to as desiring machines or assemblages.
The Brain-as-Subject
So we come to the brain as subject how does the higher-order consciousness
resolve itself? Again Daniel Dennetts thought parallels Deleuze and Guattaris
remarkably closely. He argues for a de-centred subject, constituted by cultural
replicators immanent to the thought-brain surface. But, most importantly,
consciousness is the end product of a selection process (much like Edelmans)
which begins not in a hierarchy headed by a Cartesian command centre but with
chaos. He argues that throughout the brain there is a fantastic multiplicity of
spontaneously erupting experimental responses to outside conditions, drive
requirements and other stimuli. Through a resolution of forces most of these
experiments die away, only some survive to become conscious thought (the rest
is, of course, the unconscious). But it is here in the chaos (or pandemonium as
Dennett prefers to call it) that the creativity which defines human thought is born.
This is the vital spark which Deleuze and Guattari always affirm the power of
negentropy self-organization far from equilibrium it is pure affect, the
Bergsonian virtual.7 Dennetts theory of consciousness is entirely Bergsonian
(despite his own dismissal of Bergsonian vitalism).
It is in Dennetts demolition of the philosophical concept of qualia that we find
the most powerful sense of the brain as subject. It is not possible to do justice to
the full range of Dennetts critique in this area within the limits of this article, but,
to put it at its simplest, he argues that there are no ineffable qualities within a
special mental medium because there is no special medium within which the world
is represented within consciousness. Such a model of mental functioning is a
mistake brought about by Cartesian models of consciousness in which there is a
hierarchical structure of mental functioning. In such Cartesian models, a black
box containing the Cogito, or central meaner, as Dennett calls it, is at the top. It
sits in a special mental place or Cartesian theatre, where it has representations of

02 Watson (jl/d) 6/11/98 12:28 pm Page 40

40 n Body and Society Vol. 4 No. 4

the world presented to it as special mental qualities or qualia; redness, roundness,


bitterness and so on. The black box is also the source of all intention and meaning.
It receives mental representations, then it makes judgements about them and
sends out meaningful communications to the world via its mental subordinates
(wordsmiths, grammar checkers, etc.). Dennett points out that the concept of the
central meaner explains nothing. When one asks how it understands and judges
mental representations, or how it comes to have intentions and meanings, then
one either has to have recourse to miracles or one gets into an infinite regress by
positing further meaners within the central meaner. Instead, Dennett argues, we
must cast aside the centralized, hierarchical, Cartesian model of meaning creation
(as shown above) but also of perception and understanding of the world. There is
no need for a Cogito to judge mental representations of the world because the
brain judges the world directly. Qualities are not in some peculiar mental medium,
they are in the world or at least the brain registers certain qualities in the world
which are salient to the organism. With regard to the individuals sense of a mental
plenum, he says:
No such plenum ever came into his mind; the plenum remained out in the world where it
didnt have to be represented, but could just be. . . . The richness we marvel at is actually the
richness of the world outside, in all its ravishing detail. It does not enter our conscious minds,
but is simply available. (1991: 408)

The brain is part of the mental continuum that is the world, the world produces
in the brain various dispositional states and fixations and judgements. The brain
modulates its structure in response to the world this is perception, communication and consciousness. Its full functioning includes far more than just
consciousness, but consciousness does not, cannot, exceed the brain and its direct
continuous connection to, and modulation with, the rest of the material world.
The brain, at a certain level of its functioning, simply becomes subject. In his
study of Henri Bergson, Deleuze makes the following, directly parallel, observation:
. . . there cannot be a difference in kind between the faculty of the brain which is said to be
perceptive and the reflex functions of the core. Thus, the brain does not manufacture representations, but only complicates the relationship between a received movement (excitation) and an
executed movement (response). Between the two, it establishes an interval (cart), whether it
divides up the received movement infinitely or prolongs it in a plurality of possible reactions.
(1988: 24, my emphasis)

There is no representation there is only connection, structural modulation.


Above all there is the interval between excitation and response which is made up
of the complex, contracting operations of the brain and nervous system the operations I have just outlined the contractions which take the brain and nervous

02 Watson (jl/d) 6/11/98 12:28 pm Page 41

Deleuze and Guattaris Brain n 41

system across one threshold after another up to, and including, consciousness. It
is with this in mind that we can now return to the question of idiosyncrasy how
does idiosyncrasy open up the contents of this interval to view?
Sorcery: Riding the Storm of the Virtual
In The Memories of a Sorcerer Deleuze and Guattari claim that we are all
possessed by continual becomings, becoming-animal, becoming-woman, becoming-child, becoming-molecular (1988: 23952). What can this mean?
Andr Dhotel knew how to place his characters in strange plant becomings, becoming-tree or
aster: this is not the transformation of one into the other, he says, but something passing from
one to the other. This something can only be specified as sensation. It is a zone of indetermination, of indiscernibility, as if things, beasts, and persons (Ahab and Moby-Dick, Penthesilia and
the bitch) endlessly reach the point that immediately precedes their natural differentiation. This
is what is called an affect. (Deleuze and Guattari, 1988: 173)

There is no gap between in-here and out-there. As already suggested in the


discussion above, there is no separate and distinct object, sensory apparatus,
transmission, ideation. There is no separate and distinct anything, there is material
continuity. The object is ultimately indiscernible from the sensation becomings
travelling at infinite speed. It is only through the contracting, abstracting and categorizing of a desire-driven thought-brain that such apparent discontinuities are
arrived at. Between these apparent discontinuities are, in fact, zones of indiscernibility. We are animal, vegetable, mineral, molecular. These are the thresholds
over which the nervous system has run in its aeons of deterritorialization and
reterritorialization. We are self and other, past present and future all at once. We
flow into, become indistinct the fundamental mode of becoming is contagion.
Both Dennett and Massumi independently speak of a plurality of voices within
us which are themselves contradictory, inconsistent and often just nonsense
(Dennett, 1991; Massumi, 1996). This is Dennetts pandemonium and Massumi,
Deleuze and Bergsons virtual the waves of affect constantly traversing our
body out of which consciousness becomes actualized.
The drug experience changed the perceptive coordinates of space time in the
sense that it became apparent that reality is only as it is relative to our speed, scale
and volume of perception.
H.P. Lovecraft recounts the story of Randolph Carter, who feels his self reel and who experiences a fear worse than that of annihilation: Carters of forms both human and non-human,
vertebrate and invertebrate, conscious and mindless, animal and vegetable. And more than that
Carters having nothing in common with earthly life, but moving outrageously amidst backgrounds of other planets and systems and galaxies and cosmic continua. . . . Merging with nothingness is peaceful oblivion: but to be aware of existence and yet to know that one is no longer

02 Watson (jl/d) 6/11/98 12:28 pm Page 42

42 n Body and Society Vol. 4 No. 4


a definite being distinguished from other beings, nor from all of the becomings running into
us, that is the nameless summit of agony and dread. (Deleuze and Guattari, 1988: 240)

The human is only a small and fragile part of us. We are infinite multiplicities. This
is not intended as a poetic metaphor, nor is it an exoticism of some kind, it is
intended, as the previous discussion has shown, as a statement of fact.
Wherever there is a multiplicity there is an exceptional individual or
Outsider. The Outsider is anomalous as opposed to abnormal. The latter deviates from rules in a way which ensures he remains within the system. The anomalous is no longer inside, he is unintelligible. This is the sorcerer he lives on the
boundaries representing heterogeneity (the virtual). He defines boundary by
virtue of his strangeness, he is or has made a pact with a demon in Dennetts
case demons in the plural.8 The Outsider is the access point to the line of flight,
the plunging into chaos, the virtual, pure perception. Lines of flight into
uncharted re-entrant mappings of the cortical surface, back into the molecular
de-simplified (in Henri Michauxs vocabulary) levels of perceptual categorization, and down into the frog brain.
. . . the anomalous. . . . Sorcerers have always held the anomalous position, at the edge of the
fields or woods. They haunt the fringes. (Deleuze and Guattari, 1988: 2456)

This is the secret of sorcery, of idiosyncrasy, of uncanny strangeness this is what


we see in Dr Bennett he is a point of access to the multiplicity within all of us
this is the forgotten truth that he reminds us of. Many forms of neurological
anomaly are likely to provide such points of access. Indeed Dennett and Edelman
give many examples themselves, though their intention is simply to use the
examples as evidence to support their theories of consciousness. But as I have
been suggesting, these theories can give us insight into the roots of affective
responses to all kinds of deep idiosyncrasy and difference at the social level.
Deleuze and Guattari discuss a politics of sorcery in which the sorcerer
creates assemblages of the minor, marginal and oppressed in opposition to the
family, religion and state. The sorcerer links to lines of flight which can always
erode and deterritorialize the paranoid aspects of the social and lead into the new.
The politics of sorcery are always fraught with danger however. The sorcerer can
become the charismatic despot, can become counter-sorcerer (exorcist), the state
can appropriate the war-machine of idiosyncratic charisma. The church can burn
sorcerers and re-assimilate them as saints. And the line of flight, as it unearths the
inhuman domains deep in the body, can lead into a suicidal conflagration. Dr
Bennetts house is filled with the traces of his lines of flight. Walls are chipped, the
refrigerator is covered with dents and scratches where he continually flings
objects, he has the impulse to look and be looked at Now Bennett seized

02 Watson (jl/d) 6/11/98 12:28 pm Page 43

Deleuze and Guattaris Brain n 43

Marks head, held it rigidly towards him, hissing, look at me! And Mark became
totally still, transfixed, as if hypnotised. Bennett finally says of the pandemonium, the virtual:
Its not gentle. You can see it as whimsical, funny be tempted to romanticise it but Tourettes
comes from deep-down in the nervous system and the unconscious. It taps into the oldest,
strongest feelings we have. Tourettes is like an epilepsy in the subcortex; when it takes over,
theres just a thin line of control, a thin line of cortex, between you and it, between you and that
raging storm, the blind force of the subcortex. (Sacks, 1995: 95)

Deleuze and Guattaris romanticization of becoming inhuman can be hard to


stomach when we look around our world and see the social effects of aggression
unleashed. The idiosyncratic individual is generally a victim of dislike, fear and
even hatred rather than a being regarded as a prophet or genius. And not only is
aggression invariably directed at the idiosyncratic individual as he reminds us of
the thresholds of contraction within us but, as Adorno and Horkheimer
showed, idiosyncrasy is also a question of clashing cultural codings of the body
of deep cultural difference. The effects of idiosyncrasy, of uncanny strangeness,
are always liable to occur whenever two deeply alien cultures encounter one
another. The smell of their cooking, the sight of their dancing, their dress and
body decoration, their gestures, the sound of their language, how close they stand
to us this is what determines the affective content of such encounters. And the
mood is often one of mutual hostility and disgust. Superficially tolerant belief
systems are liable to go out of the window in the face of deep idiosyncrasy, as our
bodies react before we have a chance to think about it. Adorno and Horkheimers
answer was to build ever greater mental defences against such unconscious reactions. Surely one such defence is a better understanding of the body that is
involved in these encounters.
Conclusion
Sociology has a long way to go in developing a language and theoretical tools for
analysing affect. To take one example; sociology has made only relatively small
inroads into an understanding of the role of aggression in human societies. If
asked about it then, off the top of their heads, many sociologists would probably
say that aggression was an anti-social force leading to the disintegration of
communities. Well clearly this is the case in some circumstances, but in 1987 the
American anthropologist David Gilmore published a study of small, Andalusian
communities in which he clearly demonstrated that aggression functions in such
communities as a major force for maintaining social solidarity (Gilmore, 1987).
Many sociologists would still be at a loss to explain what aggression really is and

02 Watson (jl/d) 6/11/98 12:28 pm Page 44

44 n Body and Society Vol. 4 No. 4

what arouses it, and why it is sometimes socially useful and sometimes not,
however. Gilmore himself cannot, for example, explain what it is about the character Paco that arouses such aggression amongst his fellow villagers (Gilmore,
1987: Chapter 3). He is truculent, choleric, unsociable, lazy what is he
trying to say?
This man was a stranger to me. I had seen him before, but he was always alone and appeared
somewhat unsociable. This is of course very unusual, almost aberrant for a man in Andalusia.
(Gilmore, 1987: 30)

Of course Paco is idiosyncratic to a degree, and when this is combined with a


series of social blunders then he becomes the target of the communitys aggressive denigration, mocking and ostracism. So while Gilmore has some fascinating
insights into the functions of aggression within this community, he often really
has no idea about where it comes from or why or indeed at what level it is operating.
I hope that I have begun to show in this article that we can begin to answer
such questions if we understand a little more about the body, how it is civilized
and how it responds to reminders of its primeval thresholds. We need many more
studies of the type developed by Gilmore. Sociological explanation which at least
includes the use of affect concepts must become the norm rather than the exception. The theoretical foundation of this must be a Bergsonian social theory of the
body, affect, consciousness and communication, of the type that I have tried to
hint at in this article. This is essential for the reasons that I have suggested to
make sociology more defensible in the wider intellectual environment that is
currently unfolding, and to ensure that sociological discourse is at the forefront
of the public understanding of the human condition.
Notes
1. Edelman says Plato is not even wrong; he is simply out of the question (1992: 153).
2. In case it is not already apparent, the neuroscientific accounts of consciousness put forward by
thinkers such as Gerald Edelman and Daniel Dennett are virulently anti-Cartesian.
3. Elsewhere I have discussed, in more detail, memorys relation to duration in the light of these and
other theories (Watson, 1998).
4. The notion that quality is a product of memory, which in turn is a form which duration takes, is
derived from Deleuzes reading of Henri Bergson (see Deleuze, 1988). In this, and in the other respects
that I have suggested, it would seem reasonable to regard the work of such thinkers as Gerald Edelman
and Daniel Dennett as a form of neo-Bergsonism. Though this is not, of course, how they would regard
themselves.
5. Peter Jowers (1996) gives a powerful account of Henri Michauxs journey through levels of
desimplification.
6. For a very similar argument see Jean-Franois Lyotard, Can Thought go on Without a Body?
(1991: 823). It is important to realize, of course, that the major part of this incorrect embodiment lies

02 Watson (jl/d) 6/11/98 12:28 pm Page 45

Deleuze and Guattaris Brain n 45


in a massive difference in complexity between the human body and todays computers. As Daniel
Dennett writes, in his devastating critique of Searles Chinese Room thought experiment, Complexity does matter. If it didnt then there would be a much shorter argument against strong AI: hey, look
at this hand calculator. It doesnt understand Chinese, and any conceivable computer is just a giant
hand-calculator, so no computer could understand Chinese. Q.E.D (1991: 440).
7. The equation I have made here between affect and the virtual is Bergsonian. It makes it important
to distinguish emotion (owned intensities of response which are assimilated to a narrative of selfhood,
and which are therefore properly conscious) from affect (which is the full range of energetic processes
in the organism, most of which never attain conscious representation, are never assimilated to a
narrative, never come to be owned by a conscious subject). Further discussion of this can be found in
Deleuze and Guattari (1994), also in Massumis excellent article The Autonomy of Affect (1996).
8. Dennett actually uses this same metaphor of the demon for his pandemonium of heterogeneous
voices out of which, through selection, are born the speech acts which define consciousness (1991).

References
Adorno, Theodor and Max Horkheimer (1992) Dialectic of Enlightenment. London: Verso. (Orig.
1944.)
Dawkins, Richard (1989) The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Orig. 1976.)
Deleuze, Gilles (1986) Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara
Habberjam. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, Gilles (1988) Bergsonism, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbera Habberjam. New York: Zone
Books.
Deleuze, Gilles (1989) Cinema 2: The Time-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari (1988) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans.
Brian Massumi. London: Athlone.
Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari (1994) What is Philosophy?, trans. Graham Burchill and Hugh
Tomlinson. London: Verso.
Dennett, Daniel (1991) Consciousness Explained. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Edelman, G. (1992) Brilliant Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind. London: Penguin.
Gilmore, David (1987) Aggression and Community. Boston, MA: Yale University Press.
Jowers, Peter (1996) Injecting Consciousness Where it Has Never Been: Chaos and the Aesthetic in
the Work of Michaux, Deleuze and Guattari, unpublished conference paper. Deleuze and Guattari
Symposium: Queens University Belfast, April.
Kristeva, Julia (1991) Strangers to Ourselves. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Lyotard, Jean-Franois (1991) The Inhuman, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby.
Cambridge: Polity.
Massumi, Brian (1996) The Autonomy of Affect, in P. Patton (ed.) Deleuze: A Critical Reader.
Oxford: Blackwell.
Sacks, Oliver (1995) An Anthropologist on Mars. London: Picador.
Watson, Sean (1998) The New Bergsonism, Radical Philosophy 92.
Sean Watson teaches at the University of the West of England. He is currently writing a book on the
sociology of affect, complexity and the new Bergsonism.

02 Watson (jl/d) 6/11/98 12:28 pm Page 46

Вам также может понравиться