Title

The logic of difference in Deleuze and Adorno

Author(s)

Wu, Jing;

Citation

Issue Date

2009

URL

http://hdl.handle.net/10722/130908

Rights

The author retains all proprietary rights, (such as patent rights) and the right to use in future works.

Abstract of thesis entitled

The Logic of Difference in Deleuze and Adorno: Positive Constructivism VS Negative Dialectics Submitted by Wu Jing for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at The University of Hong Kong in October 2009

Deleuze and Adorno are two of the most influential thinkers in the twentieth century, especially in the post-war period. My thesis is a comparative study of their philosophies. It focuses on the ways these two radically different thinkers attempt to break away from the primacy of identity and pursue freedom and the new. This attempt is the common logic of difference shared by them. On the other hand, such a logic of difference is expressed in two opposite ways: Deleuzes positive constructivism and Adornos negative dialectics. The thesis argues that this distinction is derived from their dissimilar understanding of the concept of difference. For Deleuze, difference is an ontological being-in-itself that always repeats like the Nietzschean eternal return; while for Adorno, it is a negative nonidentity or contradiction that refuses to be reconciled. These two views of the concept of difference stand in a strong contrast between the affirmative and the negative. Such an irreconciled opposition is present in every respect of their theories. My thesis aims to reveal the similarity (the common logic shared by them) and the difference (their different strategies and conclusions) between Deleuze and Adorno, and then examine the root that causes the similarity and the distinction. Moreover, the last chapter provides a reflection on the limitations of

the struggle of Deleuze and Adorno for freedom at the practical level. It points out a gap between the thinkers theoretical intentions and their political applications.

(238 words)

The Logic of Difference in Deleuze and Adorno: Positive Constructivism VS Negative Dialectics
by

Wu Jing ( )

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy at The University of Hong Kong. October 2009

Declaration

I declare that the thesis and the research work thereof represents my own work, except where due acknowledgement is made, and that it has not been previously included in a thesis, dissertation or report submitted to this University or to any other institution for a degree, diploma or other qualifications. (Note: If part of the research work in your thesis has been carried out in collaboration with other parties, please indicate here the extent of collaboration, including jointly published work.)

Signed

Acknowledgements
I owe profound debt of gratitude to Dr. Timothy OLeary, my supervisor, for his extraordinary patience and constant encouragement during the past four years. At the very beginning of my study, he has given me many useful suggestions to help me choose my topic for the thesis. At all the stages of writing, Dr OLeary has continuously offered me much illuminating advice and comments to improve the form and content of my thesis. Moreover, he has also provided some helpful resources for me. Without his help, this work would not have reached its present form. I would also like to express my deep gratitude to many people who have contributed to or have helped with the development of this thesis in their special ways during the years that it has been in preparation. Professor Zhang Yibin (Nanjing University), his knowledge of critical theory helped me a lot in understanding Adornos philosophy. Professor Ci Jiwei (HKU), with his unique insight he made some critical suggestions about my proposal. In addition, I am greatly indebted to my fellow graduate students whose disputable viewpoints in seminar and reading group provided other insights in my working out the problems. Third, my thanks would go to my beloved family for their supporting all through these years. Finally, I wish to thank God for giving me the opportunity to study and completing the thesis in such a nice atmosphere at HKU.
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Contents

Declaration ............................................................................................................i Acknowledgements ............................................................................................. ii Contents ............................................................................................................... iii

Introduction Why Deleuze VS Adorno? .........................................................................1

Deleuze and His Philosophy .....................................................................3 Adorno and His Philosophy......................................................................8 The Possibility of a Comparison between Deleuze and Adorno ............12 Research Methodology and Strategies....................................................18

Chapter 1 Anti-dialectic VS Dialectic: Against Ontology .............................23

1.1 Deleuzes Anti-dialectics: The Univocity of Being..........................25 1.2 Adornos Negative Dialectic ............................................................37 1.3 Deleuzian Affirmative Forces and Adornos Negative Power .........46

Chapter 2 Transcendental Empiricism VS Historical Empiricism.................59

2.1 The Deleuzian Construction of the Transcendental Field ................66 2.2 Adornos Priority of the Object ........................................................76 2.3 Constituted Subject: Disappearance of Antagonism of Subject and Object......................................................................................................84

Chapter 3 Difference VS Nonidentity: Against Identity ................................92

3.1 Deleuzes Difference-in-itself...........................................................96
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3.2 Adornos Nonidentity .....................................................................106 3.3 Internal Difference: Against Representation and the Identical.......116

Chapter 4 Rhizome and Constellation: New Modes of Production .............123

4.1 Rhizome: Construction of the Field of Signification......................124 4.2 Constellation: A Utopia of Nonidentity..........................................135 4.3 Concepts in Relation: The Power of Production ............................145

Chapter 5 Positive Constructivism VS Logic of Disintegration ..................156

5.1 Deleuzes Philosophy as Positive Constructivism..........................157 5.2 Adornos Logic of Disintegration...................................................167 5.3 How Does One Achieve Internal Difference? ................................178

Chapter 6 Striving for Exit to Freedom ........................................................181

6.1 Deleuze: Enterprising Freedom ......................................................187 6.2 Adorno: Redemption as Aesthetic Freedom...................................195 6.3 Exit to Freedom: Where Does Freedom Arise from? .....................204

Chapter 7 The Limitation of Freedom: Constant Totalization .....................208 Conclusion Meditation on Modernity .............................................................227 References .........................................................................................232

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Introduction
Why Deleuze VS Adorno?

My dissertation is a comparative study of Gilles Deleuze and Theodor W. Adorno. It focuses on the ways these two radically different thinkers attempt to break away from the primacy of identity and pursue freedom and the new. This is the common logic of difference shared by both of the thinkers. Through comparative research, the dissertation aims to point out the superiority of Deleuzes positive constructivism over Adornos negative dialectics in the practical sense. Deleuze and Adorno are two of the most important thinkers in the 20th century, especially in the postwar period. Both have wide interests in philosophy, literature, fine art, etc., although of course philosophy is their main concern. However, due to the differences in their methodology (Deleuzes constructivism as opposed to Adornos dialectics) and in their attitudes (Deleuzes optimism as opposed Adornos pessimism), their theories and philosophies develop in very different directions. According to my understanding, both Deleuze and Adorno converge at the point that they share the idea of internal difference (Nesbitt, 2005, pp. 7597) that assumes a critical attitude of the principle of identity1, because both of them commit themselves to seeking ways to break
1

Nesbitt proposes this term in his essay The Expulsion of the Negative: Deleuze, Adorno, and the Ethics of Internal Difference. He argues that the ethics of internal difference, central to Deleuzes early writings, can serve to underpin a critical and reflexive ethics of constituent subjectivity. I agree with his opinion. However, I do not think that internal difference is achieved negatively by Deleuze through an expulsion of negativity. Although Adorno never uses the term internal difference to Nesbitts knowledge, I refer to his opposition to the primacy of identity with this term. 1

through the restrictions and to transcend the limits of modern society. The principle of identity, precisely the primacy of identity, for Deleuze and Adorno, results in a hierarchical order in every respect by reducing difference to identity. Both thinkers argue against the secondary position of difference and try to emphasize its ontological privilege over identity. In doing so, they apply their own theories to their critiques of capitalism and of history, devoting themselves to the realization of freedom in modern society. Nevertheless, on account of the differences in several primary aspects, they draw radically different conclusions, regardless of the logic they share: internal difference. Considering the heterogeneous nature of beings and relations, such a logic is in fact resistance of identity that is conventionally seen as self-same persistence to make an entity definable and recognizable. Thus, there emerges a seemingly odd result: the logic of internal difference has developed into two opposite tendencies, Deleuzes positive constructivism and Adornos negative dialectics. It is at this point that my interest arises. My dissertation is intended to reveal the similarity (the logic they share) and the difference (their strategies and conclusions) between Deleuze and Adorno, and then examine the root that causes the similarity and the distinction. For the two thinkers, what interests me most is to correlate the analysis of the conditions of the new with the critique of modern society. With this critique, a way to freedom may be viable in a highly administered society. To achieve this aim, I begin my thesis by analyzing the major difference between the attitudes of the two philosophers toward dialectic

and methodology. Then I choose to compare two pairs of concepts: difference and nonidentity, rhizome and constellation. These concepts are central to the respective theories of Deleuze and Adorno. I juxtapose them because I believe that they indicate the convergence point and the divergence point of the two philosophies in how to produce the new. The first pair of concepts (difference and nonidentity) illustrates the thinkers understanding of internal difference. The second pair (rhizome and constellation) proposes the models to produce the new. On this basis, I try to contrast Deleuzes positivity to Adornos negativity on a pragmatically political level by accounting for the possibility of freedom in modern society. However, before beginning, there is a question I have to confront: why Deleuze and Adorno? What provokes me to pay attention to them? It is almost impossible to start my research unless I answer these questions first. I begin with an overview of each of these thinkers and their philosophy. I return to the above question in the section The Possibility of a Comparison between Deleuze and Adorno.

Deleuze and His Philosophy

The thought of Gilles Deleuze has had an extraordinary impact around the world. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential and revolutionary philosophers of the 20th century. From the early 1950s until his death in 1995
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(when he committed suicide), he (later with Flix Guattari) wrote a number of prominent works that cover the fields of philosophy, psychology, film, literature and painting. His complex theories have had implications in several disciplines. In particular, his books Difference and Repetition (1968) and The Logic of Sense (1969) have been considered systematic elaborations of his philosophy. In his lifetime, there is a landmark year to be noted: in 1969, the encounter with the psychoanalyst Flix Guattari. They coauthored a number of influential texts, notably the two volumes of Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972) and A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1980), which are considered critiques of capitalist society. Among all of these critical writings, we can see the shift of his main concern in different periods: from his early writing on histories of philosophy to his later works in critical philosophy and unconventional literary criticism. If those monographs on particular modern philosophers2 can be seen as constructing a selective history of philosophy, then his texts organized by distinct concepts (e.g., difference, repetition, sense) can been seen as establishing the framework of his own theory. However, his disparate interests and writings share a common concern that runs through his life as a philosopher: how to create the new, because the new for him calls for the forces in thought that are not the forces of representation and of recognition but the powers of a drastically other model that can endow thinking with vitality by putting it into
2

These philosophers include Spinoza, Nietzsche, Leibniz, Hume, Bergson and Foucault. According to Deleuzes reading, Spinoza and Nietzsche comprehend philosophy as a way of liberation that is important in relation to the pursuit of the new; Leibniz contributes to the affirmation of an infinite difference and variety in the world; Hume proposes the formation of the subject from an empiricist angle; Bergsons greatest philosophical achievement is his concept of multiplicity; Foucault presents a challenging view of desire and power. 4

movement. In Difference and Repetition in which he elaborates his theory of difference, he defines difference as the internal and primary factor in unity. Apparent unities are composed of an endless series of differences that construct an open plane with infinite potential to produce the new. The new indicates the capacity for change; it is the outcome of encounter and creation. It is this inherent capacity that presents being (becoming for Deleuze) as difference. Actually according to Deleuze, the new is produced by the different relations of the affirmative heterogeneous elements within the open plane. Contrarily, dialectic is nothing but a closed spiral, stretching itself in only one direction. Deleuzes whole intellectual experience can be traced by his shifting relationship to the history of philosophy. Starting from a few monographs on philosophers such as Hume, Kant, Spinoza, Nietzsche, Bergson, and Leibniz, he engages himself in struggling with traditional metaphysical philosophy. The reason is that, for him, the old metaphysical fashion has blocked the flows of thought of human being. At the beginning of Difference and Repetition, he expresses his interest in discovering a way to think of difference apart from the Aristotelian framework. According to him, such a framework meets the demand for coherence by constructing a conceptual hierarchy that is imposed by identical generic concepts. As a result, people think of difference in the form of specific difference that is in fact secondary to an assumed identity. In doing this, thought is imprisoned for it has been dominated and directed by the pattern of representation. To fight against such a philosophy of identity and of representation, Deleuze takes

an atypical way from his contemporaries who were more or less following the Hegelian tradition. (In the postwar period, most French philosophers were immersed in German theories derived from the three Hs: Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger.) Deleuze, however, argues against not only Hegel but also the overall history from Plato to Descartes. Deleuze follows the way that Spinoza and Nietzsche initiated: against the history of Logos. According to Deleuze, philosophy (of reason) relates to the State, for it starts from and serves a common ground: the established order. In fact, either history of philosophy or State is the production of reason. Notions such as universal, method, recognition, and meaning are subject to reason. And the history of reason ignores and conceals all the things outside. When we use concepts such as history or language, a kind of awareness of the power to perform agency has emerged. Either the history or language essentially demands coherence. In other words, to make sense of history or language, it is necessary to conceive it in a consistent, ordered and organized way. Otherwise, history would be no more than a crowd of occasional phenomena and language would be a pile of meaningless utterances. Thus, the demand for coherence and consistency implies a logic of identity that Deleuze believes oppresses difference and accordingly snuffs out the possibility of the new. Deleuze has made a drastic attack upon Hegelian dialectic. In Nietzsche and Philosophy, he states that dialectic is an awkward trick that veils the affirmative element of difference by negation, so that the overall process of becoming is

placed under the principle of identity (1981, p. 196). The dichotomy of difference and identity in dialectic seems to operate with extreme differences alone. But the synthesis of two opposite terms, such as being and non-being, actually overcomes the earlier opposition. In this sense, negation in fact is an oversimplified form of difference. This fact is the secret and the power of dialectic. In other words, negation forms a circle that assimilates difference-in-itself through the mediation of the negation of negation (or, in Marxian terms, sublation). Deleuze proposes that, in the relation with the other, the force that makes itself obeyed does not deny the other or that which it is not, but it affirms its own difference and enjoys this difference. It is a kind of emphasis on affirmative heterogeneous elements. Moreover, Deleuze directs his attention to real life. He criticizes that modern society still suppresses difference and alienates persons from what they can do. To affirm reality, which is a flux of change and difference, we must overturn established identities and so become all that we can becomethough we cannot know what that is in advance. The practical way to freedom is to create. However, here freedom is not equated with the liberty to move about and pursue ones interests within a given social formation or State; rather, it concerns the conditions of change for the social structure itself. Already in Difference and Repetition, then, Deleuze gives the concept of freedom an altered set of components, making it correspond to one of the fundamental problems of his philosophy, namely, the conditions for the production of the new. Thus, freedom

is the freedom to escape from the fixed being and territories, the freedom of a

prison break from the fate designated by Reason, and the freedom of becoming. The impulse to create goes throughout the life and work of Deleuze. He describes philosophy as an art of forming, inventing, and fabricating concepts (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994, p. 2). His struggle against totalitarianism, against dialectic and Hegel, his accent on difference, even his transcendental empiricism all demonstrates such a theoretical intention: to break away from the bondage of modern society and to ceaselessly approach the outside.

Adorno and His Philosophy

As one of the members of the Frankfurt School, Adorno puts emphasis on the critique of modern industrial society. He has a wide interest in art, literature, and music and works out numerous texts in these fields. Many of them are relevant to his philosophical propositions and have been developed in many strands of contemporary critical theory. In his last years, he published one of his most important books in philosophy, Negative Dialectics. A key notion in the work of the Frankfurt School since Dialectic of Enlightenment has been the idea of thought as an instrument of domination that subsumed all objects under the control of the subject, especially through the notion of identity, i.e., of identifying as real in nature and society only that which harmonized or fit with concepts, and regarding as unreal or nonexistent everything that did not. Adornos negative dialectics is an attempt to articulate a non-dominating thought that would
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recognize its limitations and accept the nonidentity and reality of that which could not be subsumed under the subjects concepts. The text Negative Dialectics goes beyond the classical Marxist framework. In fact, Adorno is to a great extent influenced by Walter Benjamins application of Karl Marxs thought. He criticizes Karl Popper and Martin Heidegger for positing the primacy of the object, because he believes that there is never an independent object that is in fact subjectively defined and mediated. The topic of any primacy indeed confirms a kind of identity, whatever it is. Believing in the intermediation of the subject and the object, Adorno argues that the key of all preceding philosophieseither idealism or materialism, either nominalism or realism, whatever ignores the intermediation between the subject and the objectis to presuppose a certain identity, which has shaped the foundation of totality of a system (Adorno, 1973b, pp. 14648). He also acknowledges the importance of identity that functions as the nature of thinking. The declaration that to think is to identify (p. 5) directly uncovers the essence of different philosophies and theories, the presupposition of identity that derives from the ability of reason of human beings. Generally speaking, because what thinking seeks to comprehend is structured to accord with identity (which provides the possibility for the totality of system), such an a priori presupposition to constitute the metaphysical foundation of each philosophy is actually the output of thinking. What has happened here is that philosophers generally regard the production of their thinking as the transcendental supposition of philosophy, which is mistake.

This is an inversion in essence that Adorno argues against. In Negative Dialectics, Adorno subverts the concept of positive dialectics in its traditional form by debunking pseudo-negation in Kantianism and Hegelianism. Kant develops his critique of dialectics on the basis of the critique of pure reason. As Kant puts it, due to the restriction of the capacity of reason, dialectics presents the logic of illusion. Adorno criticizes such dialectics as a medium of false epistemology by arguing that the transcendental conditions of experience are not as pure as Kant claims. According to Adorno, Kantian dialectics, which insists in separating thought from sensibility, cannot grasp genuine experience that implies nonidentity between thinking and its object. In contrast, Hegel regards dialectics as a medium of truth rather than as the logic of illusion. In light of his logic, dialectics achieves a speculative identity between thought and its object in a positive way: the negation of negation. This is the point that Adorno argues against because he believes that a speculative identity is nonidentity in nature, which only occurs in a negative way. That is why Adorno describe his dialectics as negative dialectics. Trying to escape from the cage of a logical system, he describes the purport of philosophy as a heterogeneous aesthetic experience. According to Adorno, dialectic argues against every form of ontology that includes Heideggers ontology of Dasein. Adorno begins this argument by criticizing Heideggers criticism of traditional ontology. In his view, Heideggers objection to traditional ontology is no more than an attempt to reestablish a new form of primary philosophy, the imperialism of being. However, such a

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philosophical effort of Heidegger is in fact to construct a profound philosophical trick of expressing the inexpressible. Adorno expresses his distrust in Heideggers ontology of Dasein. In the light of his account of dialectic, it is against primary philosophy as well as the framework of dichotomy and the logic of identity. As a result, the essence of dialectics is defined as the consciousness of nonidentity (heterogeneity). Adornos key to evolve negative dialectics is the concept of constellation 3 , a mode of relationship that eliminates the hierarchy and enslavements between subjects, as well as between subject and object. With the intermediation and the inter-action of the members within a constellation, Adorno wants to realize a non-hierarchical mode of coexistence by giving prominence to the non-identical elements among them. Although Adorno denies the primacy of the object posited by Heidegger, he insists on the priority of the object that is opposed to the constitutive priority of the empirical subject implied by the identity between the subject and the object. Given the identity between the subject and the object, knowledge about the object depends on the subjects experience. However, such a conclusion presumes that the empirical subject can completely know the object. For Adorno, what takes place between the subject and the object is nonidentity. The reason is the two

facts: first, the subject is objectively constituted by the social and historical conditions; second, no object can be fully known according to the rules and procedures of identity thinking. He argues that, under current conditions, the only
3

Constellation is a term Adorno takes from Walter Benjamin, who uses it in The Origin of German Tragic Drama. The Trauerspiel therefore has no individual hero, only constellations of heroes (p. 132). Constellation here for Benjamin indicates a dialectical image of history that is distinct from the linear image of history. 11

way for philosophy to give priority to the object is to think dialectically. He describes dialectics as the attempt to recognize the nonidentity between thought and the object while carrying out the project of conceptual identification. In this sense, his negative dialectics can be understood as an effort to formulate a historical materialism that reflects modern society in a critical way.

The Possibility of a Comparison between Deleuze and Adorno

Drawing a comparison between Deleuze and other philosophers has gradually attracted the attention of many contemporary scholars. According to the objects of the contrast, this type of research can be divided into two groups. First, where the contrast is between Deleuze himself and those he somehow relates to (for example, Nietzsche, Marx, Foucault, Spinoza). Second, where the comparison is drawn between Deleuze and a modern non-related thinker. My research is in the second group. The first thing that interests me is their obvious distinct outcomes despite their joint opposition to identity. Deleuzes emphasis on the concept of difference shares a common ground with Adornos proposition of nonidentity: both of them argue against the principle of identity in thinking, although to different extents. Just this nuance implies a momentous theoretical distinction: an affirmative construction and a negative criticism. As I state at the beginning of the Introduction, the radically different conclusions share a common logic, internal
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difference. Accordingly, a series of questions naturally emerges: what causes such a philosophical discrepancy when they have the same logic? What kind of role do the two concepts (difference and nonidentity) play in their respective thought and what is the distinction between them? What are the ways in which they pursue their respective goals? How should we understand the difference between the two philosophers? These questions form the departure point of my research. At first glance, Deleuze and Adorno appear to stand in irreconcilable opposition (Nesbitt, 2005, p. 75). In their philosophical careers, it is difficult to rank Deleuze in any philosophical school or faction. In contrast, Adorno was a co-founder of the Institute for Social Research (informally known as the Frankfurt School) and the most remarkable and influential member of the Institute. Also, Deleuze is a philosopher of immanence and the absoluteness of becoming, and he insists on the univocity of being. Adorno, as the foremost thinker of irresolvable contradictions and negative dialectics, argues that there is no ground for thought and Being. He claims that both of the concepts are constructed; the knowledge about them is related to the subject-object relation. Deleuze emphasizes the affirmative and active aspect of power over and over again. In contrast, Adorno regards dialectic (although not in the Hegelian sense, but his own sense of negative dialectic) as a revolutionary way that can lead us to freedom from the domain of identity. Nick Nesbitt claims that both thinkers represent difference in a negative way, although in different forms. However, it is remarkable that the Deleuzian character of affirmative is radically different from Adornos accent of

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negative. So, in this regard, we could without exaggeration consider these two philosophers as absolutely irreconcilable. Another major distinction between them is their methodology. As a principal member of the Institute for Social Research, Adorno follows the way of historical dialectics and social critique. He does not like to invent new terms as Deleuze does. The expressions he has used are the writings of familiar ones that can be found in most philosophers. However, Deleuze shows his creativity in methodology and terminology. Insisting on a philosophy of transcendental empiricism, he conceives a plane of immanence as the foundation of his theory. He condemns every dualist and dialectic way, constituting experience with the overdetermined forces. Furthermore, he borrows a number of terms from other disciplines to express his unique ideas. Deleuze and Adorno, may therefore seem like creatures from different planets, following very different precursors and making use of radically different philosophical terminology that allows for little communication to occur. However, Deleuze is similar to Adorno in that he has the same philosophical question and the same social concern. Deleuzes is the problem of the negation of the negation (even though they take different opinions of dialectic); whereas Adornos is why did totalitarianism come into power? Furthermore, both Deleuze and Adorno are against the theory of representation; they insist that the object must not be reduced to the subject, although they pursue this goal very differently. Adorno insists that what the object is actually goes beyond all

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appearances, beyond the grasp of any subject, beyond the summation of the subjects knowledge. He interprets this kind of subject-object relation as the unattained goal in the history of human beings and defines critical theory as the continuous struggle to criticize the act of knowing in social reality, which always deviates from that ultimate goal. As OConnor writes in the preface of his work Adornos Negative Dialectic (2004), After all, if objects, for instance, can be nothing other than what they are determined as being by subjectivity then there is no philosophical basis to the effort of critical theory to correct the misconceptions of the false consciousness of subjectivity (p. X). Against the Kantian antagonism between the noumenal world and the world of experience (the world of phenomena), Deleuze conceives a transcendental field between the two worlds. This transcendental field, that is, a quasi-ontological foundation as the plane of immanence, is not a pre-given nature but a pre-individual transcendental field. It is productive. The plane of immanence is constitutive of singularities or forces, which is like the current of electricity rather than fixed points. Upon this plane, there are always many infinite movements caught within each other, each folded in the others. Deleuze describes such a situation as chaos. When a singularity or a force encounters another singularity, an event occurs. Because there are infinite singularities, their interplay can produce infinite new events. Thus, he successfully eludes the conventional relationship of subject-object and constructs an overdetermined plane of forces.

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In addition, Deleuze shares with Adorno the idea of resisting the world of identity, because they agree that the primacy of identity is one of the causes that lead to totalitarianism. The demand for representation makes use of all powers in a totalizing way. As a result, an empirical subject, from which identity is derived, is constituted. Both Deleuze and Adorno distrust such identity, but they develop different countermeasures: respectively, constituent subjectivity and the non-identical subject-object relation. Nesbitt points out in his essay that the concept of internal difference is the ontological ground of Deleuzian being. Although such a difference contains some similar sense to Adornos nonidentity, it is less than a negative understanding of otherness. On the contrary, it leads to an affirmation of positivity. This position of Deleuze stands in strong contrast to Adornos emphasis of the negative. The latter proposes a logic of relation that begins with the fact of nonidentity and the intermediation between the subject and the object. Finally, there is another point that is worth noting. For both of them, art is thought to be one of the ways to freedom. Deleuze focuses on the works of Kafka (the so-called minoritarian literature) and Proust and the paintings of Francis Bacon. Adorno pays attention to literature and music and champions the atonal music that opposes the traditional twelve-scale musical system. These specific art propositions imply their hope to fight against the established system and pattern, being their distinctive way to freedom. From the presentation above, we have now obtained a rough sketch of the

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relationship between Deleuze and Adorno. Actually, their relationship is more complicated than the incompatible oppositions or the resemblance on a specific aspect or question; it is rather like two curves that cross each otherthey deviate from the other most of the time and in their direction but meet at some key points that determine the composition of the framework of this picture. In other words, these points of intersection are not insignificant details; instead, they are determinate characteristics of the theories. This may be one reason that Nesbitt thinks it possible to compose a dissonant relationship between these two seemingly antagonistic thinkers (Nesbitt, 2005, p. 75). After describing the two philosophers and their philosophies, a question arises accordingly: how should we think of the relation between them? Deleuze or Adorno? Or, Deleuze contra Adorno? Or even, Deleuze and Adorno? I do not want to provide an exclusive answer. In other words, my dissertation does not attempt to prove that one is truth and the other is untruth. The fact is that two thinkers of radical immanence encounter each other here with each other and offer a set of ways that tend to defy most critical paradigms today. Indeed, it is the internal logic of difference that might reveal an interesting connection between Deleuze and Adorno. However, I chose the third option, Deleuze and Adorno, as the title of my dissertation, because it seems to be more neutral and to contain more possibilities: neither absolute opposite nor totally alike but differences intertwined with similarities. However, if Adorno does not stand as the untruth of Deleuze, what does the distinction between them imply? This is the question I try

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to answer in the final chapter.

Research Methodology and Strategies

Although this dissertation is a comparative study, it does not cover every aspect of the theories of Deleuze and Adorno. One reason is that their research fields are too numerous to be included in a dissertation. The second is due to my own interest in their work. The contrast between Deleuze and Adorno may reach more than one conclusion in the light of different points of departure. I have already indicated that I am more interested in the stress on the ethics of internal difference revealed by their philosophies and the spirit of pursuing freedom and change. According to my understanding, the issue of difference is of central importance in continental philosophy because it challenges and destabilizes the traditional metaphysics that claims the primacy of identity. At this point, the spirit of advocating difference corresponds to the criticism of modern society. Having experienced the tragedy of the Second World War, most Western philosophers are confronting the problem of the possibility of freedom. So do Deleuze and Adorno. Being aware of the constraint of highly organized society and of the ideology derived from it, they are seeking a way to escape the compulsion, namely, to escape the principle of identity that is thoroughly implemented in modern society. This explains why I relate the philosophers opinion of difference to their pursuit of freedom. It is their philosophies of difference that provide the depth for the
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reflection on freedom in a political and practical sense. In this sense, their distinct theories are indeed different responses and approaches to the same question. For Deleuze, difference is a productive mechanism rather than a negation of identity as Adorno claims. The distinction between the different understandings is the key to their conflicting positions: positive constructivism and negative dialectics. Moreover, this distinction embodies the various aspects of their theories. I select six aspects to elaborate it, each one in a chapter. However, I do not expect to affirm a better one in the conclusion. Instead, I am more inclined to explore the illumination of one for the other, although they have different practical significance. It is the contrast that will provide us with the means to reflect on the limitation of each. This is the intention and the significance of my dissertation. My dissertation consists of seven chapters, each of which focuses on one specific aspect of the theories of Deleuze and Adorno. Chapter 1 mainly discusses the different attitudes of both thinkers toward dialectics. In this part, Deleuzes anti-dialectical position stands in vivid contrast to Adornos endorsement of dialectic. To elaborate this issue, I specify their fundamental philosophical opinion: Deleuzes concept of the univocity of being and Adornos concept of dialectic. Their criticisms of Hegelian dialectics, especially the criticism of negation are the key points in the chapter. Chapter 2 focuses on the similarity and difference between their employments of empiricism. Both can be seen as empiricists but in radically

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different senses. From this position, both argue against the conventional subject-object relationship. However, they deduce different solutions. I compare Deleuzes idea of constituent subjectivity with Adornos idea of priority of the object, trying to reveal the significance it implies. Chapter 3 discusses the concepts of difference and nonidentity. This pair of concepts appears similar to some degree at the point of stressing heterogeneity. Nonetheless, the concepts are proposed by Deleuze and Adorno to refer to distinct levels. The distinction between them accounts for the contrast between Deleuzes active characteristics and Adornos passive characteristics. I explore the implications of the distinction between the concepts by elaborating the role of each in their theories. Likewise, Chapter 4 discusses another pair of concepts, rhizome and constellation, which indicate two types of modes of relation that Deleuze and Adorno expect to substitute for established systems. Their significance lies in their breaking away from the logic of identity that predominates in traditional philosophy. The two types of modes have different accents: the line of flight of a rhizome and the coexistence and intermediation among the members of a constellation. My concern is their roles in the process of production of the new. Chapter 5 mainly discusses the overall logic of these two philosophies. From the philosophical standpoint, they stand in completely irreconcilable opposition: positive constructivism versus logic of disintegration. In contrast with Deleuzes positive (although pessimistic) way of struggle, Adorno inevitably gets

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into a political predicament due to his opposition against praxis.

However, such

an opposition does not alter their concern for internal difference. On this common ground, we can understand them as different attempts to realize difference. Chapter 6 focuses on their dissimilar understanding of the concept of freedom. Deleuze discusses a kind of freedom that concerns the conditions of change. Such freedom is neither the liberty to behave nor the power to obtain; it is rather an ability or potentiality to produce new relations. In contrast, Adornos insistence on nonidentity between the subject and the object makes his theory politically impotent to some extent: it cannot imagine a practical way to freedom except through the redemption of aesthetics. However, I juxtapose them according to a common fact: they both attempt to achieve a non-subjective freedom to create the new. Moreover, I discuss the feasibility of the two forms of freedom in political life. Chapter 7 is the reflection on the limitations of the struggle of Deleuze and Adorno for freedom at the practical level. The escape they provide from identification does not avoid the function of integration in modern society. However, although this inescapable totalization implies the principle of identity, we can see it as an open-ended process of becoming. With its operation, society continuously enforces itself by assimilating difference. I argue that, in this sense, the ethics of internal difference should be considered as a movement of totalization, which will lead to an accelerated capitalism rather than the collapse of capitalism.

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The Conclusion discusses the significance of the two philosophies in question in a reflection on the limitations of modernity. The theories of Deleuze and Adorno provide critical analysis of contemporary society. Such analysis is significant to understand the relation between modernity and post-modernity in the era of globalization.4

Due to the fact that Deleuze and Adorno have both worked with other people, my general mention of Deleuze or Adorno sometimes means Deleuze (with Felix Guattari) or Adorno (with Max Horkheimer). When the text refers to works that are coauthored by the two, I show clearly Deleuze (with Felix Guattari) or Adorno (with Max Horkheimer). This point is not specified in the following text. 4 This dissertation does not touch upon their monographs on art and literature. Sometimes I quote from Adornos Aesthetic Theories because that these citations involve the issues in question. 22

Chapter 1
Anti-dialectic VS Dialectic: Against Ontology

Dionysus and Apollo are therefore not opposed as the terms of a contradiction but rather as two antithetical ways of resolving it; Apollo mediately, in the contemplation of the plastic image, Dionysus immediately in the production, in the musical symbol of the will. Deleuze One of the notable differences between Deleuze and Adorno lies in their positions on dialectics. This is not purely a question of choice of methodology but a manifestation of their radical philosophical differences. The relation between them is similar to that between Dionysus and Apollo, as Deleuze describes. Deleuzes work seems rather a construction on an open field. Acting as an explorer, he tries his best to make the veins of topographic structure clear and construct new architectures with the spontaneous and existing conditions. He is not interested in seeking the historical origins of the phenomena; rather, he commits himself to finding the conditions of experience. For him, there are no established systems. His mission is to create the new with all kinds of conditions: planes, forces, lines, etc. In contrast, Adorno is more like a historian (so is Marx in the same sense): a linear history unfolds itself before him; what he is supposed to

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do is to take a meta-critique of the history to see whether it is an evolving one or a degenerative one. Unlike creation on an open field, a linear history always has an end. In fact, this is a presupposition that determines the judgments of the historian. However, history does not directly display what it is; rather, being an object, history, and the historian mutually mediate. Thus, the historian reflects on history in the process of knowledge-acquisition. The distinction between the thinkers reveals the contrast between two antithetical ways: Deleuzes immediate production and Adornos mediated contemplation. The different attitudes of Deleuze and Adorno towards dialectics demonstrate their distinctive understanding of being. Because he is opposed to Platonic dualism, Deleuze insists on the principle of the univocity of being. Contrary to his contemporaries adherence to Hegelian philosophy, he refuses to accept the negative way of defining being with the concept of contradiction, and intends to define the affirmative univocity of being which is neither a material substance nor a metaphysical abstraction. Concerning this topic, Adorno stands at the opposite position of Deleuze. Influenced by Hegel and Marx, Adorno describes his theory in an evidently dialectical way. His two works with dialectic in the title (Dialectic of Enlightenment and Negative Dialectics) presuppose a critical theory greatly indebted to Marxs critique of capitalism. According to Marxs philosophy, contradiction is given central status because it is the motive of the development of history. This chapter describes the radical difference between Deleuze and Adorno through an analysis of their positions on dialectics.

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1.1 Deleuzes Anti-dialectics: The Univocity of Being

Deleuzes distaste for dialectics runs throughout most of his works, from the early Nietzsche and Philosophy to his final book What Is Philosophy?. In his books, dialectics and Hegel are often treated as an underlying adversary. In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze characterizes the task of modern philosophy as the ceaseless effort to overcome the alternatives temporal/non-temporal, historical/eternal and particular/universal (1994, p. xxi). At first glance, this statement appears to be an old-fashioned claim of unity. But actually, Deleuze denies this estimation with an affirmation that philosophy is always and only untimely (p. xxi). According to him, what overcomes the alternatives temporal/non-temporal, historical/eternal and particular/universal is not a transcendental conception of unity but a condition that is foreign to time or history: the untimely. This qualification requires Deleuzes theory to be a philosophy that can transcend time. It does not mean sliding over the questions related to time: Deleuze rejects dualism in every form. He himself defines philosophy as the art of forming, inventing, and fabricating concepts. it has to determine its moment, its occasion and circumstances, its landscapes and personae, its conditions and unknowns (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994, p. 2). This statement actually pulls philosophy out of ontology and traditional epistemology: it qualifies as a philosophy concerning the conditions of being. Precisely, for Deleuze, philosophy
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is not simple reasoning but a creative activity that commits itself to determine the conditions of concepts. Because concepts, which are overdetermined, are a fundamental ontological category of being, to create concepts is closely related to determining the conditions of being. For this reason, we can understand why Deleuze began his career as a philosopher with a selective study of the history of philosophy. In his view, the history of philosophy has always been the agent of power in philosophy, and even in thought. It results in a situation of disability of thinking, because an image of thought called philosophy has been formed historically and it effectively stops people from thinking (Deleuze and Parnet, 2002, p. 12). Deleuze ascribes such a situation of thinking to metaphysical dualism, or more accurately speaking, to dialectics. Therefore, he is concerned about Descartes (the dualisms of the Cogito) and Hegel (the triad and the operation of the negation). He is attracted by those writers who even though they are part of the history of philosophy, escaped from it in one respect, or altogether: Spinoza, Hume, Nietzsche, and Bergson. Actually, each of them is never minoritarian or marginal in philosophical history. But Deleuze reinterprets their propositions in his own perspective against Hegelian dialectic. They, in Deleuzes discourse, provide the exit from a history dominated by negation and reactive forces, or rather, create a mode of existence. They are the philosophers of positivity and multiplicity. Deleuze endows himself with the same theoretical task as those of these thinkers. Similar to his relation to Nietzsche, in his books they all become Deleuzian philosophers. Some of their concepts and

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propositions are said by Deleuze to conceive of a non-dialectic philosophy of becoming. Like a skilled architect, he constructs his anti-dialectical theory of becoming with pre-given materials. In Deleuzes early reading of philosophers, he demonstrates a methodology of empiricism which he uses to battle against the traditional philosophy of consciousness. His deliberate selection provides him with several crucial elements that are indispensable to his concept of univocal being. Deleuzes anti-dialectical posture directly relates to his idea of univocity of being that claims that being is univocally difference. According to him, beings are multiple and different, they are always produced by a disjunctive synthesis, and they themselves are disjointed and divergent (1990, p. 179). From the passage we could find, the ontological proposition of univocal being presupposes the multiple difference to overcome a dialectical dualism. First, Deleuze presupposes that dialectics has a theological premise of synthesized unity unity in contradictions, because (Hegelian) dialectic brings everything into the mode of dualism and finally attains a false ontological unity with the power of the negation of negation. Then his rejection of dialectics would be substantial only when he disproves the fake unity of being. In this sense, his anti-dialectical method appears as a rejection of dualist being in the first place. Spinozas concept of Substance provides Deleuze with a special reference for this problem. He derives his plane of immanence, a plane of consistency, from Spinozas single Substance God or Nature, in opposition to the supporters of order and law. The plane is neither

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transcendent nor immanent to substance. It is substance itself. It signifies a virtual design which, for Deleuze, offers the metaphysical or quasi-ontological ground itself: a formless, univocal, self-organizing process. As Armstrong (1997) 5 explains: The main feature of this type of plan6 is that it directs the development of forms and the formation of subjects but without itself being given in that which it gives. It is a hidden structural and/or genetic principle that organizes and defines bodies in terms of their forms and their functions in terms of the ends they are to serve. Such an organization, in Deleuzes theory of becoming, takes the place of transcendence in the traditional philosophy of ontology. This univocity of being is a fundamental thesis in Deleuzes philosophy. It is actually an ontological proposition. This univocal being is not an entity. The thesis of One-Substance in fact rejects all recourse to the role of mediation which is the central operation in dialectics. He indicates the problem of dialectics in Difference and Repetition by saying that the objection to Hegel is that he does not go beyond false movement in other words, the abstract logical movement of mediation. They [Hegelian dialecticians] want to put metaphysics in motion, in action. They want to make it act, and make it carry out immediate acts (Deleuze, 1994, p. 8). According to Deleuze, mediation is an abstract substitution of direct
5

Armstrong, Aurelia (1997). Some Reflections on Deleuzes Spinoza: Composition and Agency. From Deleuze and Philosophy: The Difference Engineer (London & New York: Routledge, 1997), Edited by Keith Ansell Pearson, p. 47. 6 The French word plan means plane, and sometimes map. 28

signs for mediate representation. Dialectics is problematic, because mediation transforms affirmative univocal being into negative relations. However, Deleuzes concept of univocal being does not signify a single noumenon or a material body. It is affirmation of difference and multiplicity. The univocity of being does not mean that there is one and the same Being; on the contrary, beings are multiple and different, they are always produced by a disjunctive synthesis (Deleuze, 1990, p. 179). In this way, Deleuze resolves the problem of One and Two (dual) or Many (multiplicity). Multiplicity is immanent to being; it is being itself. With regard to his transcendental empiricism, a plane of immanence is composed of infinite elements whose interplay can infinitely produce the new. It not merely identifies the oneness that underlies the multiplicity, but establishes a system of production. Deleuze abandons the dualism of mind (thought) and nature, defining them as two facets of the plane of immanence. The interplay of the two produces infinite movement. This is why there are always many infinite movements caught within each other, each folded in the others, so that the return of one instantaneously relaunches another in such a way that the plane of immanence is ceaselessly being woven, like a gigantic shuttle (Deleuze &Guattari, 1994, p. 38). In this regard, the plane is not an

established and completed nature but a productive locus upon which the events are produced. In Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, Deleuze (1988c) interprets the

plane of immanence as a network woven by longitude (speed or state of motion) and latitude (intensity), which is constantly combined and recomposed by

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individuals and communities. The interaction and embedment of particles with different speeds create modes of life. This system of production upon the plane of immanence overcomes an appeal to dialectical contradiction and substitutes an open productive field for Hegelian synthesis. Bergson is another resource that influences Deleuzes thinking to a great degree: Deleuze borrows his idea of relating duration to mobility and interprets it as a ceaseless becoming where the new is created. For Bergson, duration is smooth, mobile time rather than spatialized time. He actually treats time as space, immobile, discontinuous, discrete and homogenous, ignoring the mobility and heterogeneity of real time, or qualified time. Duration is neither phenomenal multiplicity nor transcendental unity. New experience is produced within the duration by appropriating existing experiences rather than adding to it. To put it exactly, existing experiences in duration are the raw materials of new experiences; the process in which the former brings forth the later is a process of production, of intuition and of imagination; it is not one of simple accumulation. Thus, new experience comes as a result of accumulation of memory of experience. In Bergsons three images of duration, the last one is an elastic band contracted to a point and then drawn out indefinitely to create a line that will progressively grow longer and longer (1961, pp. 16368). It implies a ceaseless process of creation that continuously produces novelty and has no end. The theme of duration becomes the theory and practice of becoming of all kinds, of difference and coexistent multiplicities. It overthrows completely the dualism of dialectics and

30

proposes a producing plane in motion. It is Nietzsche who helps Deleuze resolve the problem of the movement of univocal being. Deleuze uses Nietzsches doctrine of eternal return (Nietzsche also uses the term eternal recurrence) to describe his univocity of being as a process of becoming. In fact, Nietzsche never expounds on what the eternal recurrence is; he only talks of the thought of eternal recurrence (Heidegger, 1992, p. 110). Heidegger interprets this eternal recurrence as the constitution of being (1992, p. 163). But its basis is that the world totality is in a state of permanent becoming. Insisting that being is becoming, Deleuze defines his univocal being as the eternal return. This definition refutes Hegels contradiction. Hegel concludes the essence of being as the real contradiction, namely the contradiction of that contradictionthe synthesis. Thus, dialectical movement is merely to bring contradiction in ever wider cycles of real contradictions where contradictions can be overcome by synthesis. In this process, we can find three substitutions. Dialectics substitutes the negation of that which differs for the affirmation of difference, substitutes the negation of the other for the affirmation of self and substitutes the famous negation of the negation and for the affirmation of affirmation. The spiral movement of return brings everything to infinity. Dialectics engulfs everything into a strong assimilation and transforms it into identity. It never negates or denies but absorbs and assimilates: that is, it is characterized by synthesis, namely, sublation (Hegels Aufhebung). Sublation is such a procedure that changing occurs with preserving. Hegel endows sublation

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with a tension between changing and preserving so that it seems a solution to the question of evolution. Its changing function does not mean to positively affirm difference but is subject to a preservation of fixed order. It makes no room for new ones. To this extent, sublation is not an active concept. Here, Hegel gives primacy to identity and makes difference secondary or derivative. A Hegelian difference is merely a conceptual account of difference, one of the poles of the contradiction, and finally achieves identity by the strong assimilation of negation. Negation becomes the kernel of dialectics. Alluding to Nietzsche, Deleuze compares it to the yes of the ass (1981, p. 185), a yes to everything that is no, a yes that does not know how to say no. Its opposition is the Dionysian yes, which absolutely knows there exist possibilities to say no, and how to say no. These two types of yes definitely differ from each other. The former radically eliminates any difference, so it finds no choice except to accept. But the latter voluntarily says yes (pp. 18586). In dialectics, the movement of negativity endlessly subordinating difference to identity forms a spiral. Conversely, Bergsons infinite duration of time cannot provide a way of return. Deleuze has to turn to Nietzsches eternal return. From this departure, Deleuze develops his theory of repetition that is defined as a mode of movement. In repetition, there is no similarity, no homogeneous elements. It is an exception or transgression, pure difference behind which will to power is at work. Deleuze uses this concept to explain the production of differential elements. In Deleuzes reinterpretation, what a will wants is to affirm its difference. Returning is being, but only the being of

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becoming. Returning is thus the only identity, but identity as a secondary power; the identity of difference, the identical which belongs to the different, or turns around the different (1994, p. 41). For Deleuze, Nietzsche grounds his philosophy on the critique of Plato, Kant and Hegel. He not only rejects Platonism and creates a philosophy of becoming on the basis of forces but also criticizes the Kantian philosophy of critique and directs it against traditional rationalism. Nietzsche is not simply influenced by the themes of Kantian philosophy. The most significant contribution of Nietzsche, according to Deleuze, is to introduce the concept of value to philosophy. Nietzschean genealogy means both the value of origin and the origin of values. In this philosophy of the origin of value, one of the important themes is the criticism of Kant for his failure to propose a critique of value. In Kant, value is never an object of critique. On the contrary, he presupposes values such as truth, goodness and beauty as transcendent values to which his other critiques resign. However, these values are the unverified ones that Nietzsche and Deleuze fight against. Genealogy is as opposed to absolute values as it is to relative or utilitarian ones. Genealogy signifies the differential element of values from which their value itself derives (Deleuze, 1981, p. 2). Evaluation of value begins with the different origins of values. And what determine values are the modes of life; difference in modes results in difference in values. According to Deleuze, differences can be produced either in an affirmative way or in a negative way. The Hegelian relation of master to slave operates in a negative way to represent his

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idea of negation of negation. Hegels dialectical relation of master-slave endows the slave with the opposite characteristics of those of the master, forming a pseudo-contradiction. In such an opposite, the slave is the negation of the master. The negation becomes the means to reach affirmation. Deleuze, following Nietzsche, denies the dualism of the relation so that he successfully challenges dialectics in which negation plays an important role. For Deleuze, Hegelian dialectical relation between the master and the slave is false, because Hegel mistakenly regards the heterogeneity of two different forces as the dualist opposition. Therefore, Nietzsches affirmation of the heterogeneous systems of the master and the slave, which are dominated by different forces, is actually the affirmation of multiplicity. At this point, Deleuze agrees with Nietzsches idea that contradiction is the false simplification of the heterogeneity: it masks the truth of the multiplicity. Deleuze criticizes Hegelian dialectic because he believes that dialectic is indeed a passive and negative reflection on difference: it inverts the image of inner difference. Deleuze reveals the secret of dialectic by saying that not all relations between same and other are sufficient to form a dialectic, even essential ones: everything depends on the role of the negative in this relation (1981, p. 8). Actually, this statement confirms that negation in dualism is the kernel of dialectics. Deleuze argues against the Hegelian interpretation of the role of negation in the relation between identity and difference, because what affirms

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difference is not nonidentity but affirmative differentiated elements which reveal several active forces. Here he does not consider negation to be the oversimplified form of difference, or a passive difference, but to be a certain reactive force. Indeed, in the relation with difference, the force that makes itself obeyed does not deny the other or that which it is not, but it affirms its own difference and enjoys this difference. It is a kind of emphasis on affirmative heterogeneous elements. The movement of positive differentiated elements is not a reactive feedback but an active will. Or, more accurately, will to power is the motor of difference. Differentiated elements and their encounter and interplay not only contain infinite potential to produce the new but also realize them. What they have done and are doing is just affirmation of themselves. In contrast, in dialectics, difference never exists in its own name; a dialectical synthesis (or identity) is never a positive outcome of progress, merely a totality realized by sublation, a function by negation. To sum up, the first problem of dialectics lies in its unconditional negation. Actually, negation is a radical ontological assumption. First, dialectics presupposes the existence of negation. Second, it tolerates the false equation negation of negation = affirmation with acquiescence. Therefore, when Other is regarded as the negation of the self, affirmation immediately relates to the negation of the Other, namely, negative differences. In rejecting all kinds of philosophy of transcendence, Hegelian dialectics made the same mistake. However, according to Deleuze (1981), it is a mistake to express affirmation with

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negation. He intends to identify difference with affirmation. It [Difference] is pure affirmation; it has conquered nihilism and divested negation of all autonomous power. But it has done this because it has placed the negative at the service of the powers of affirming. To affirm is to create, not to bear, put up with or accept (pp. 18586). Deleuze clarifies the reason why his great anti-Hegelian motif is that of absolute positivity, his thorough rejection of negativity. In this regard, he relates his discussion of the active and the reactive to the relationship of master and slave. He points out the second mistake dialectics made when he criticizes it for its mode of reactive thinking, which he interprets as a kind of slavish thinking. Negation, in his definition, is a quality of will to power, the one which qualifies it as nihilism or will to nothingness, the one which constitutes the

becoming-reactive of forces (Deleuze, 1981, p. 64). Because such reactive forces are reactions to some repression, they are incapable of spontaneously acting without the repression. From this perspective, it is repression that determines the way reactive forces act. And as a result, active forces are separated from what they can do. They no longer will behave as a master, positively affirming themselves. They realize self-identity through some responses under repression, another name of which, in Marxist philosophy, is alienation. The distinction between active forces and reactive ones bears an analogy to master and slave, or enjoyment and labor. The reason is that only active force asserts itself, it affirms its

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difference and makes its difference an object of enjoyment and affirmation (Deleuze, 1981, pp. 5657).

1.2 Adornos Negative Dialectic

Adorno wrote two books with dialectic in the title: Dialectic of Enlightenment (coauthored with Max Horkheimer, 1947) and Negative Dialectics (1966). The former focuses on the relation of enlightenment to myth and carries out a critique of the Western history of intellectual enlightenment. The latter, his most significant work, proposes Adornos own mode of epistemology, negative dialectics. Negative Dialectics is described by Adorno as a meta-critique of idealist philosophy. It is a work that responds to Kantian and Hegelian philosophy. From its structure and content we can find the subjects that interest Adorno: the Introduction introduces the concept of philosophical experience to argue against Kants distinction between phenomena and noumena and reject Hegels construction of absolute spirit. In this part, Adorno aims to bring the readers a new philosophical impulse: the impulse produced by a critical and dialectical thinking is due to some heterogeneous experience, not a logic of reason that centers on a system of concepts. This affirmation signifies three dimensions. First, in the dimension of philosophical premise, Adorno advocates thinking of non-totality and game, against totality and absolute essence in conventional
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construction of philosophy. Second, in the dimension of concepts, he refuses the primacy of identity, approving of disintegration and unattainability of nonidentity. Third, in the dimension of dialectics, he argues against contradictions for pseudo-unity, applauding heterogeneous dialectics that tries to break away from the reign of totality, namely, negative dialectics. In the preface of Negative Dialectics, Adorno elaborates his intention: this Negative Dialectics in which all esthetic topics are shunned might be called an anti-system (1973b, p. xx). The term system here does not mean a concrete philosophical system but the systematic construction of the dominant philosophy of reason. The most important character of system, for Adorno, is its fundamental principle of identity. Accordingly, to specify and realize the goal of anti-system, he puts up the concept of nonidentity to express its radical character. In this sense, he criticizes Hegelian dialectic for its ending the motion of contradiction with identity. Deleuze also argues against Hegels equation of negation of negation to affirmation. In other words, although in different terminology and expression, to reject the Hegelian circle of logic and to oppose the primacy of identity are the common points shared by Deleuze and Adorno (specified Deleuzian Affirmative Forces and Adornos Negative Forces in this chapter 1). The base of Adornos theory is the critique of Kant, Hegel and Heidegger. He aims his argumentation at three adversaries: Kants proposition of transcendental subject, affirmation in Hegelian dialectics, and conceptuality in Heideggers ontological Dasein (Being). From his view of point, they are

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dominated by identity thinking that prevents thought from freedom of thinking and conceiving objects. This identity thinking is described by Adorno as theoretical despotism against which he proposes his solution: negative dialectics. In the introduction, Adorno gives a clear description of dialectics. However, this description is a kind of negative characterization rather than an affirmative definition. It in fact repeats Adornos announcement of his philosophical intention in the preface, where he assigns negative dialectics the task of flouting tradition. The reason is that, in the history of philosophy, from Socrates to the young Lukcs, dialectics means to achieve something positive by means of negation (1973b, p. xix). He seeks to free dialectics from such affirmative traits without reducing its determinacy (p. xix). In other words, Adorno wishes to overcome the limits of rationality and reductive thinking in dualities, opposition, and essence and phenomenon, because these concepts expose a hierarchical structure dominated by identity thinking. His mission is to reveal the falseness of identity thinking with an authentic dialectical method that conceives a new type of relation of subject to object, enacting a critical consciousness that perceives that a concept cannot identify its true object. Adorno summarizes all preceding philosophieswhether idealism or materialism, nominalism or realismas philosophy of identity, because the nature of thinking, according to him, is identity that has shaped the foundation of totality of system. The declaration that to think is to identify (Adorno, 1973b, p. 5) uncovers the essence of different philosophies and theories: the presupposition

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of identity that derives from the ability of reason of human being. Generally speaking, because what thinking seeks to comprehend is structured to accord with identity (which provides the possibility for the totality of system), such an a priori presupposition to constitute the metaphysical foundation of each philosophy is actually the output of thinking. What has happened here is that all the philosophers mistakenly regard the production of their thinking as the transcendental supposition of philosophy. This is an inversion in essence that Adorno argues against. To elaborate nonidentitys characteristics of anti-system, Adorno relates the principle of identity to the totality. Because identity must offer a ground upon which totality forms, totality is immanent to every system of philosophy. Such a system of philosophy is similar to the basic capitalist formula which quantifies the valuation of a thing by a quantitative form of money. Everything is brought into an all-inclusive system. This is what Adorno refers to as the inescapability of the marketplace. And this is another deep identity. It turns creative human subjects into atomic and identical objects, also measured by money. Adorno is opposed to system, for he believes that it is a logic of identity that screens heterogeneity. He

argues that dialectics is the one and only way to break away from this logic of identity. Following Hegels stress on the role of negation, Adorno makes a positive qualification: Dialectics is the consistent sense of nonidentity. It does not begin by taking a standpoint (1973b, p. 5). Standpoint here means a certain solidified

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view or fixed theoretical supposition that drives the theoretical logic into a teleological movement. By refusing to obey such quasi-theological presupposition in metaphysics, Adorno shows his intention to revise Hegel; in particular, to revise Hegels claim that the negation of negation is equal to affirmation in dialectics. Adorno does not deny the concept of nonidentity in Hegelian dialectic. He argues that Hegel also acknowledges the validity of contradiction in nonidentity, but Hegel annuls it with the principle that double negation is equal to affirmation. As a result, contradiction disappears in identity; the three-stepped logic comes full circle in the movement of affirmation->negation->negation of negation. Borrowing the rule of negative negative = positive number, Hegel develops his famous formula, the negation of negation is equal to affirmation without any effective demonstration. For Hegel, as the result of double negation, something becomes an other; this other is itself somewhat; therefore it likewise becomes an other, and so on ad infinitum (1959b, p. 93). However, according to Adorno, Hegels concept of contradiction indicates the untruth of identity, for the dialectical primacy of the principle of contradiction makes the thought of unity the measure of heterogeneity (Adorno, 1973b, p. 5). In a word, although contradiction as nonidentity is certainly the motive of the movement of concepts in Hegelian dialectics, every step of development is always realized by unity. Even though Hegel creates a word, sublation, to describe what has happened to contradiction, this does not change the fact that contradiction is no more than a secondary and less important element when it is contrasted with identity.

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However, there is another point to clarify. What Adorno fights against is not absolute identity but identity as a kind of theoretical despotism. He clearly realizes that there would be no concepts, no cognition, no knowledge or theories if there were no identity in the multiple, because the principle of identity plays a key role in thinking. In other words, the capacity to conclude identity from numerous phenomena is the ability of thinking, whereas it is the condition to think and reason. Therefore, we can even say that identity is inherent in thought itself. Adorno never wants to deny identity completely. His object is to invert what was inverted, nonidentity, the truth of the world, which was considered to be secondary to identity. From this perspective, precisely what Adorno is opposed to is not identity but the primacy of identity. He believes that it is the primacy of identity that causes the untruth of the world. This is really an embarrassing situation: identity makes thinking possible whereas the primacy of identity imprisons thinking. To resolve this problem, Adorno invents negative dialectics that is able to achieve nonidentity. However, nonidentity and negative dialectics are the way to his ideal of freedom rather than to a theoretical goal. For him, the problem of traditional philosophy is that it thinks of itself as possessing an infinite object. In this sense, both Kant and Hegel suppose a state of reconcilement, which is actually a theological premise, between subject and object in the first place, and then try to achieve it. Their affirmative dialectics create an illusion that the concept of object can include the object entirely. Hence, Adorno insists on giving dialectics a turn toward nonidentity, which he interprets as the hinge of negative

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dialectics. He does not think that dialectics is wrong but rather that the affirmative power in it cannot achieve nonidentity, which is the truth of the world. In the contemporary world, to think beyond contradiction, to think positively or affirmatively, would be not to think at all. It is merely an action of reverting to myth or ideology. In this sense, Adorno, as well as Marx, is still a Hegelian philosopher. He also admits that dialectics is the right way to think. However, he endows dialectics with the mission of realizing the internal

differencenonidentitythrough the negative power. It is this point that distinguishes him from Hegel who pursues unity in dialectic. After the above argument, Adorno emphasizes the primacy of difference by claiming that non-conceptuality, singularity, and particularity are primary to philosophy. All these heterogeneous elements (Deleuze gives them another name, difference or differentiated elements) have been ignored as the temporal and the insignificant by all classical philosophers since Plato. The reason Adorno relates conceptuality to identity thinking is that this mode of thinking, he believes, is inherent to the process of conceptualization, a process constituted by abstraction and identification. Conceptualization conceals a mechanism of domination in which identity between concept and the signified is presupposed. Adorno is also opposed to the idea that the totality of system comes from the concept of God or absolute spirit. This attitude of anti-system represents his thorough rejection of all ontology or theological metaphysics. According to his view, the secret of system does not lie in its structure of logic but in real life.

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Adorno relates identity to the capitalist economy of the market. In fact, following the tradition of critical theory, Adornos critique of identity always keeps his eyes on reality, more exactly on capitalism. He uncovers the external surface of free market and free exchange, penetrating the internal kernel of capital. In capitalist society, underneath the exterior of freedom and equality, people subject themselves to inescapable enslavement. The maxim of capital increment degrades people and makes them turn from creative subjects into one of the conditions in the multiplication of capital. Such an opinion of Adorno continues Marxs critique of capitalist inversion. The marketplace is such a place where every unique subject gains its identity through exchange. Nonidentity dies out in such a world of identity from which Adorno wants to break away. Adorno interprets philosophy as a special heterogeneous experience that cannot be completely reduced to abstract spirits. Such experience is not a direct sensible one but is an experience mediated by concepts, namely, experience in concepts. This living experience abandons the rough superficiality of sensory perception, preserving the heterogeneity immanent in it. The task with which Adorno endows negative dialectics is to hold these heterogeneous elements firmly. In this regard, he characterizes everyday life as presenting alternatives to choose from, to be marked True or False (1973b, p. 32). Similar to the free market in capitalist society mentioned above, such behavior looks like a kind of freedom to choose, but in truth the alternatives are given. The reason is that either yes or no responds to the given structure. They are both within anticipation and do

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not go beyond a coercion of identity. This is why Adorno never says yes or no to any given concepts and invents so many concepts with the prefix non-. Also for this reason, his Negative Dialectics does not even adopt the common way of writing. The German version of the book is a mass of discrete sections rather than a chaptered book (the present titles were added to the sections by the English translator). Being aware of the limit of system, Adorno tries to seek something existing outside of system to achieve freedom, which he defines as the supreme purpose of philosophy. Related to his opposition to all systems and totalization, the concept of totality, for Adorno, includes the absolute social structures in all forms, such as Nazism. He points out that the tragedy of the concentration camps is truly the inevitable result of identification. It is a reflection of the root of World War Two, which was proposed in his Dialectic of Enlightenment coauthored with Horkheimer: why is Auschwitz possible? Why does enlightenment lead to myth? Nevertheless, Adorno fails to give a satisfactory affirmative definition of negative dialectics. He merely employs the concept of constellation to figure a kind of ideal relationship that is not hierarchical. But this borrowing of the concept of constellation from Max Weber remains an abstract image. This theoretical limitation results in the fragility of Adornos theory: lack of positivity in his negative dialectics. I specify this point in a later chapter.

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1.3 Deleuzian Affirmative Forces and Adornos Negative Power

Deleuze and Adorno represent respectively two different traditions of philosophy: the univocity of being (following Bergson, Nietzsche, Spinoza, etc.) and the meta-critique of epistemology or historical materialism (following Marx and the Frankfurt School). The two different philosophical positions are demonstrated by their different opinions of dialectics. Deleuze and Adorno are similar in that they have the same philosophical problem, the negation of the negation. However, what is problematic for the thinkers is radically different. Precisely what they argue against are the contradictory attributes of the negation of the negation: Deleuze against its negative and Adorno against its affirmative. This notable difference between their attitudes towards dialectics derives from their distinct opinions of contradiction, Hegelian contradiction, because the concept of contradiction is in fact the means that otherness (difference) expresses itself. From this perspective, the discrepancy in the logic of difference results in the opposition between Deleuzes anti-dialectic and Adornos dialectic. In other words, each of their theories is a countermeasure against Hegelian dialectics but on different planes and levels. So it is not accurate to say simply that one focuses on the affirmative and the other on the negative. Simultaneously, their respective propositionsdifference and nonidentityrefer to heterogeneous elements. Using the concepts, the primacy of difference is proposed by the thinkers

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against the primacy of identity. Nesbitt states that the concept of internal difference the ontological ground of Deleuzian beingshows some resemblance with Adornos most central concept of nonidentity (2005, pp. 7597).7 But essentially, the two concepts are entirely distinctive. To some extent they emphasize the differentiated elements; however, they are based on are two different planes. In Hegelian dialectics, the impulse to negate is the immanent desire of a being in every stage of its realization, because otherness is regarded as the limit of the self. Accordingly, the spiral moment of dialectic is to overcome the limitation and to realize a unity of the self. Such Hegelian language in fact implies a dichotomy of the self and the other, which defines difference as otherness. It is from this supposition that originates the dichotomy of the subject and the object. Deleuzes anti-dialectic lies in the rejection of this supposition. In the first place, against the definition of difference as otherness, he claims difference-in-itself that is the univocity of being. In the second place, from the perspective of epistemology, he is opposed to the dichotomy of the subject and the object. According to him, there is neither traditional subject (whatever it is) nor object, nor action of knowing of subject; thought takes place as a pure event on a pre-individual plane. This idea corresponds to the concept of the univocal being. It is a subversion of the Kantian and Hegelian mode of knowledge-acquisition and

I elaborate on the idea of internal difference in Chapter 3. 47

demonstrates Deleuzes thorough rejection of the dualism of subject and object and the theory of representation. Like Deleuze, Adorno rejects such a representational model of thought that only brings forward illusory images. However, he refuses to reduce thought to a mere mode of being. For him, there is no a prime substance at all. The attempt to seek a one-substance in every form is no more than retroversion to ancient Greek philosophy. To interpret history with a one-substance, one must have ignored the agency of the thinking subject. He argues, in classic Hegelian fashion, that pure being, instead of being ontological or ultimate ground, itself is a mediated and constructed concept. It is not a being-in-itself but a constructed subject that plays a role of mediation in knowing an object. In contrast to Deleuze, Adorno does not believe that Hegels problem of identity can be overcome by will or movement of concept. Similarly, enlightenment cannot be overcome through critique. Dialectical thinking is the only way to reach outside (nonidentity), but it must avoid the Hegelian synthesis of contradiction; it must be negative dialectics. Another way to explain Deleuzes anti-dialectical position is his rejection of pseudo-reconciliation. I mentioned that Deleuze resists all presuppositions in theories. In doing this, he regards the synthesis of contradiction in dialectics as a theological premise. First of all, it is a presupposed reconciliation and the tension between the two opposites (contradictory) of being (being and nothing) is resolved by means of a synthesis. Nevertheless, from Deleuzes point of view, the contradiction is suspect, not to mention the reconciliation in it. In his

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argumentation, forces are all-directional; no tension relates the two opposite ones. Dialectics has ignored the complicated situations of the forces and presupposed an oversimplified mode of interaction betweeen them. Thus, negation in dialectics is no more than a mistaken image of intervention of other forces. Moreover, the reconciliation of synthesis cannot find the ground on which it can rest. It is something like the problem of reconciliation between God and human beings in Christian dogma. In Deleuzes eyes, Hegelian dialectics is still theological. Secondly, dialectics employs negation as its operating means in the spiral movement. Deleuze does not treat history (or, in Marxs term, development) as a process in which it ceaselessly negates itself; rather, history is the succession of forces which take possession of it [history] and the co-existence of the forces which struggle for possession (1981, p. 3). He advocates Nietzsches genealogy because it explores the differential element of values from which their value itself derives. In contrast, in dialectical thinking, the act of reducing complex interactions of forces to negation must result in ignorance of differential elements. According to Deleuze, Nietzsche argues that in interventions of forces negation is not the aim. In its relation with the other the force which makes itself obeyed does not deny the other or that which it is not, it affirms its own difference and enjoys this difference (Deleuze, 1981, pp. 89). Here, he reverses the role of negation and succeeds in transforming it into an affirmation of difference. He demonstrates an important difference between Deleuze and Adorno, or originally, a difference between Nietzsche and Hegel. Following the spirit of Dionysus,

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Deleuze transforms the suffering of denying itself into the pleasure of affirmation of difference, the pleasure of creating novelty. In this regard, we may understand Deleuzes reading of Nietzsches contrast between Dionysus and Apollo: Dionysus and Apollo are therefore not opposed as the terms of a contradiction but rather as two antithetical ways of resolving it; Apollo mediately, in the contemplation of the plastic image, Dionysus immediately in the production, in the musical symbol of the will (1981, p. 12). For Deleuze, Apollo is not wrong, but production or to produce is of more importance than contemplation. What is production? It is in fact the creations of new attributes. Then, does dialectic produce? It is at this question Deleuze and Adorno diverge again. To elaborate the reason why dialectical thinking is insufficient to produce, Deleuze compares it to the way of thinking of the slave: it is reactive. It does not create or produce spontaneously but reacts to the master with ressentiment. In this sense, the reaction cannot affirm positivity; it is merely revenge. This idea of Deleuze lies in his opinion of limitations. For him, the Hegelian definition of limitation as otherness not merely makes the overcoming of limitations a passive and reactive action. In the passive mode of thinking, the existence of the slave is secondary and is subordinate to the master. The master outlines the limitation of the slave. Then, the slave treats the attributes of the master as the image he wants to appropriate: what he wants to do is not to make the master a slave with him but to make himself the master. What he thinks or does is no more than response to these attributes. Putting the images aside, the slave, whose opposite is the

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Nietzschean Overman, could not imagine an entirely new image of the master in his own name. This is the inability of reactive thinking itself. Deleuze (1981) endows forces with the attribute of active or reactive. Only active force asserts itself, it affirms its difference and makes its difference an object of enjoyment and affirmation. Reactive force, even when it obeys, limits active force, imposes limitations and partial restrictions on it and is already controlled by the spirit of the negative. (pp. 5657) Only active force can affirm difference, which instead of pure negation or denial raises the positivity of differentiated elements, thereby producing the new. For active forces, the demand for transcending limitations proceeds from its own will, not from the pressure of otherness. Therefore, this kind of force is creative and productive. This will to transcend is the will to produce, the will to power. Conversely, historical dialectics operates in a reactive mode. It presupposes a kind of suppression, alienation, as the pre-condition. Thus, it forms its practical contradiction and its resolution: alienation and reappropriation. However, it is an imaginary image, because dialectics deprives active forces of the ability to create in this way. It separates them from what they can do and makes them reactive by the concept of contradiction. Deleuze believes that one of the errors of dialectics lies in its affirmation of necessity. With regard to the encounter of forces, he proposes the concept of chance against absolute necessity in dialectics. Because dialectical

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reconciliation is impossible, it cannot function as the intrinsic drive to push the dialectical spiral movement. Accordingly, negation and negation of negation are far from the inevitable direction. However, Deleuze does not waive the concept of necessity completely. Rather, he acknowledges a certain necessity in reality and introduces chance to necessity. He borrows the example of the game of dice to explain chance in necessity in the sense that being is affirmed of becoming and unity is affirmed of multiplicity (Deleuze, 1981, p. 26). Adorno confronts an entirely different question. His nonidentity does not signify the difference that is the opposite of the same; rather, it is much closer to Hegels contradiction. The term nonidentity, which indicates the disparity between subject and object, still implies the dichotomy of subject and object. This kind of disparity appears as the differentiated elements that exist in the relationship between subject and object. We can know that in the definition of nonidentity, Adorno legitimizes the function of negation. Of course, this derives from his approval of dialectic. In Hegelian dialectic, contradiction is regarded as the central motor of the dialectical movement, because the limitation it indicates imposes a demand for transcending on the subject. As a member of the Institute for Social Research, Adorno is greatly influenced by Hegel and Lukcs who sings high praise for dialectic. However, he is still at a great distance from Lukcs on the issue of dialectic. Lukcs argues in his History and Class Consciousness that the primacy of the category of totality is the bearer of the principle of revolution in science (1971, p. 75). Such a sympathetic position toward totality showed by

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Lukcs is sharply criticized by Adorno, because from Adornos point of view totality is the demonstration of the primacy of identity in philosophy and history. For this reason, he is against Lukcs dialectic of totality, for he believes that the inherent contradiction of dialectic implies nonidentity between thinking and its object. In this regard, nonidentity is essentially a certain contradictory difference that lies in the subjects consciousness about the object. Deleuze shares one common point with Adorno that difference does not appear as the opposite of the same; his differences are singularities within his transcendental field. However, Deleuze disagrees with Adorno because in Deleuzes theory, differences do not contain any negative factor; they are absolute differences without negation. As he indicates in Nietzsche and Philosophy, they are essentially affirmative. Also, the Deleuzian employment of difference does not involve epistemology; rather, it is quasi-ontological. That is to say, Deleuzian differences are not descriptions of phenomena in the world of experience. It has nothing to do with the discrepancy between object A and object B. To talk of Adornos concept of nonidentity, epistemology is an inevitable topic for us. The reason is that crucial to negative dialectic is not only the objects nonidentity with itself (the concept of object) but its nonidentity with the knowing subject. From this it is not difficult for us to find the influence of Kant. In Kants philosophy of transcendental idealism, the active, rational subjects are never able to transcend the bounds of their own mind, meaning that they cannot access the ding an sich (thing-in-itself). For Kant, human understanding attempts

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to conceive of objects in abstraction from the conditions of sensibility. Adornos nonidentity actually derives directly from the inaccessibility of the cognitive subject. Nonetheless, he does not intend to describe the limitation of the action of knowing. The discrepancy between the subject and the object, for Adorno, does not derive from Kantian two-world interpretation but from the conditions of knowing. Hauke Brunkhorst has incisively observed this point. He argues that Kants version of dialectic is closer to Adorno than Hegels attempt to transform the Kantian skepticism concerning the thing in itself into an at least affirmative philosophy of history (1999, p. 5). However, Adornos acknowledgement of identification does not signify that it is the essence of the relationship between the subject and the object. For him, it is indispensable for acquiring knowledge. Because what thinking seeks to comprehend is structured to accord with identity (which provides the possibility for the totality of system), such an a priori presupposition to constitute the metaphysical foundation of each philosophy is actually the output of thinking. What has happened here is that both Kant and Hegel misread the production of their thinking as the transcendental supposition of philosophy. Nonidentity and negative dialectic are the way to his ideal of freedom rather than a fixed theoretical goal. According to Adorno, the essence of the subject-object relationship is nonidentity, because the infinity of the object is beyond the grasp of the knower. Reason emphasizes the infinity of historical conditions of the object. In other words, it is always in a specific historical context and particular cognitive

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structure that the subject comes to know the object. As a result, the knowledge it acquires must be historical and specific. This type of knowledge is finite and makes sense only in the specific context. Although there are many passages in Deleuzes text that demonstrate his attitude of anti-dialectic (confirmed by most researchers8), Slavoj iek raises a contrary opinion in his book Organs without Bodies: Deleuze and Consequences (2004). As iek argues, Deleuze, although in a literal sense, following

Nietzsche, expresses his objection to Hegelian dialectics (especially in Nietzsche and Philosophy, Difference and Repetition), he does follow a dialectical way to unfold his argument: to set a contradiction between difference and repetition, to set a contradiction between minoritarian and majoritarian, to set a contradiction between One and multitude. iek claims that these binary logics repeat the instability of the traditional philosophical opposition between idealism and materialism. Finally he comes to his conclusion Deleuze equals Hegel (2004, p. 94). This statement, however, is criticized by Robert Sinnerbrink for its tendency of Hegelio-Lacanianism (2006, pp. 62-87).9 Sinnerbrink points out that ieks fault lies in his misunderstanding of Deleuzes concept of difference. In the first place, iek cannot make a distinction between the concept of difference and conceptual difference. He regards difference as a unity which is a resolution to
For example, Claire Colebrook, Understanding Deleuze, 2002; Philip Goodchild, Deleuze and Guattari: An Introduction to the Politics of Desire, 1996; Paul Patton, Deleuze and the Political, 2000. 9 In Sinnerbrinks essay, he commends ieks accurate understanding Deleuzian philosophy as an effort that might open up the possibility of thinking the new. However, he argues that, in terms of the concept of difference, iek misunderstands Deleuze, who misunderstands Hegel. According to Sinnerbrink, ieks such misreading is due to his attempt to domesticate by integrating Deleuzes non-dialectical difference within the framework of Hegelio-Lacanianism. 55
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contradiction to which degree he looks upon Deleuzian difference as something similar to Hegelian radical universality whose groundwork is the identity of difference and identity. The striking point of this confusion is that he conceives the relationship of Deleuzian difference and same within the confines of unity all the time. In other words, for iek, difference is not independent multiplicity but still a differential element subject to the identity of difference and identity. He does not go beyond the restriction of dualism, not to mention represent the essence of Deleuzes transcendental empiricism that takes the plane of immanence and forces on it as its point of departure. Deleuze never intends to seek an abstract totality or universality or something else as an ontological plane in conventional philosophy. Deleuzes radical methodology follows the empiricism of Hume and Spinoza, but iek ignores this fundamental discrepancy. He neglects Deleuzes genetic principal that organizes and defines bodies in terms of their forms and their functions in terms of the ends they are to serve (Armstrong, 1997). iek argues, Deleuzes great anti-Hegelian motif is that of absolute positivity, his thorough rejection of negativity. For Deleuze, Hegelian negativity is precisely the way to subordinate difference to Identity, to reduce it to a sublated moment in identitys self-mediation (2004, p. 52). According to the rule of negation of negation, he reduces Deleuzian absolute difference back into a dialectical concept: identity of difference and identity. For iek, there must be a solution between a pair of contradictory concepts so that they can be put into

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motion. However, this is not true for Deleuze. He never imagines an abstract universality to mediate all opposite directions. The interaction of different forces on the plane of immanence constitutes diverse flows, all-directional, not linear, or spiral (in the sense of dialectic). In this way, the conflicting of the forces does not posit contradiction but causes the blockage that produces the new. In my view, iek misunderstands Deleuze thoroughly when he thinks that Deleuzes non-dialectical thinking of the new will turn out to be an idiosyncratic dialectical repetition of identity. The key to such a misreading is that he mistakenly takes production of Deleuzes thought as contemplation. It is evident that both Deleuze and Adorno attempt to overcome the primacy of identity that lies in the traditional understanding of the relation between difference and identity. From this perspective, each has made a critical analysis of the role of negation in Hegelian dialectic. Nevertheless, they diverge at the point of how philosophy can achieve real difference. Adornos insistence on negation derives from his believing in a negative otherness, nonidentity. In contrast, Deleuze interprets difference as the outcome of interactions of various forces. They hold distinctive opinions of negation. Adorno believes that negation has not been really achieved in Hegelian dialectics, whereas Deleuze argues that negation is itself a mistaken role to define difference. Accordingly, Adorno intends to seek a way in which the real function of negation can be exerted, negative dialectics. However, Deleuze is more inclined to explore the conditions that can bring about difference. It is in this sense that their distinctions demonstrate not merely their

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attitudes toward dialectic but also their methodology, the topic of Chapter 2.

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Chapter 2
Transcendental Empiricism VS Historical Empiricism

If thought is not measured by the extremity that eludes the concept, it is from the outset in the nature of the musical accompaniment with which the SS liked to drown out the screams of its victims. Adorno Empiricism is a theory that insists that the origin of all knowledge is sense experience. In the history of philosophy, it is contrasted with rationalism, which holds that knowledge is independent of senses. However, Deleuze and Adorno are not traditional empiricists: their empiricism is in different senses. In contrast with traditional empiricists such as Locke and Hume, Deleuze characterizes his own methodology as transcendental empiricism.10 The expression transcendental empiricism marks two methodological dimensions: empiricism against traditional ontology and metaphysics, and transcendental against conventional empiricism. Such a methodology determines the object of Deleuzes philosophy. In Difference and Repetition, he provides a clear explanation of the two parts of the expression: empiricism marks the difference of Deleuzes theory from rationalist philosophy, because the subject matter of the former is something which can be perceived only from the standpoint of a transcendental sensibility
10 Deleuze discussed his methodology of transcendental empiricism on several different occasions. The expression transcendental empiricism can be found mainly in Difference and Repetition and Pure Immanence: Essays on A Life.

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(1994, p. 144). This quotation exposes the distinction between Deleuze and classical empiricists who claims that knowledge is derived from sense experience. What he is concerned with is not the purely empirical world but a transcendental sensibility. This concern involves his critique of the role of experience in classical empiricism. For him, experience is the events that appear on the surface of the empirical world; it is constituted. What Deleuze seeks to find is the univocal being behind experience. Or, we can summarize his question as how can empiricism be transcendental? First, we need to clarify the meaning of transcendental. Kant defines the transcendental as prior thought forms that make the activities of thinking and understanding possible. However, Deleuze does not follow this definition. He reserves this concept to signify the non-empirical conditions of beings. In The Logic of Sense, he states that the objective of his philosophy is to determine an impersonal and pre-individual transcendental field, which does not resemble the corresponding empirical field (1990, p. 102). This transcendental field is the conditions of the beings in the empirical field; it is the locus where experience is produced. It makes the empirical field possible. Here another distinction is made between classical empiricism and Deleuzes transcendental empiricism. The main concern of the former is with the origin of knowledge, whereas the later does not focus on this. Its main concern is life itself. Moreover, Deleuze refuses any transcendent philosophy whose ground is based on ready-made and seemingly self-evident concepts. He classifies these

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concepts as the old metaphysical Essences (1990, p. 105), in other words, they are abstracts that cannot explain anything; rather, they must be explained themselves. Deleuze attempts to describe, in his philosophy, a state of virtuality in immanence, which means a reality that has not been realized yet. It is not something eternal or universal but something that leads our attention to the conditions under which the new can be produced. In arguing against the stable subject and the solidified object, Deleuze emphasizes a flowing subjectivity and an accidental occurrence of an event. From this departure, he develops an anti-metaphysics, transcendental empiricism. Following Whiteheads definition of empiricism, Deleuze defines the mission of empiricism as analyzing the states of things, in such a way that non-pre-existent concepts can be extracted from them (2002, p. vii). In analyzing the states of things, Deleuze seeks to find an impersonal and pre-individual field out of which the individual is derived. This is his transcendental plane, also his plane of immanence that is defined as an a-subjective, impersonal and powerful state, which exists in contrast to everything that makes up the world of the subject and the object (Deleuze, 2001, p. 25). Deleuze affirms his own philosophy as a thorough empiricism. He takes this position mainly because he believes that knowledge is not derived from ideas but from sense. Sense is a transcendental concept. His interpretation of this concept depends upon a kind of experience; however, this experience is neither an immanent thinking as in traditional epistemology, nor everyday life experience as in typical positivism. Rather, it closely relates to an open life, the

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transcendental. This is something unaffected that is actually the raw material of philosophy. For Deleuze, refined metaphysical abstraction and intuitionistic experience are not sufficient to explain the world: the former is problematic, and the later is not able to provide the possibility of the new. Neither of them is the conditions that constitute the world; they are only interpretations or inductions. He does not need an established and closed system of interpretation; rather, what he prefers is an open and productive field. Compared to the concept of the transcendental subject, life is actually an impersonal singularity; it needs a wide and wild empiricism. That is transcendental empiricism. In this sense, Deleuzes transcendental empiricism is a philosophy of conditions. But, what is Deleuzes transcendental field? It is actually the Spinozist univocity of being that I mentioned in Chapter 1. This univocity is in fact an ontological one-substance that is neither an empirical immediacy nor an abstract idea. It is a field within which everything changes. Multiplicity that exists in these changes is a virtual power. It is real but not actual. Or, in other words, the univocity consists of multiplicity which is represented as infinite possibilities to produce the new, not the numerical and concrete phenomena. Then, Deleuze integrates the principles of univocity and multiplicity into one with the concepts of the virtual and the actual. The association between Adorno and empiricism is harder to detect. Adorno develops in his works a critique of modern epistemology (including empiricism and positivist philosophy) in general. The most distinctive character of his

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epistemology is what he calls the objects preponderance (Adorno, 1973b, p. 183), namely, the priority of the object. The reason why he resists every idealist philosophy lies in two facts: 1) the presupposed identity between subject and object, and 2) the problematic priority of the constitutive subject. Against empiricism, Adorno argues that, the priority of the epistemic subject is suspicious, because it is itself constituted by the society which, not as a stable reality, is continuously changed in the historical process. However, although insisting on the priority of the object, he denies any independent and spontaneous object, for the object can only exist in relation to the constituted subject; it is always in motion with the historical conditions. In a letter to Walter Benjamin, Adorno suggests that, in the pursuit of understanding, we should search for an experience of necessity that imposes itself step by step, but which can make no claim to any transparent universal law (Adorno & Benjamin, 1999, p. 148). He stresses the historicity of the constituted subject and object. However, the significance of the given object, namely the fundamental question of empiricism, necessarily leads to the questioning of the correlative subject. The answer to both of the questions can be provided by historical philosophy, or in a more Marxian term, historical materialism. The subject of the given object is never an ahistorically identified and transcendent subject; it is ceaselessly transferred and transfigured by history and must be grasped historically. In this sense, Adorno still confirms the dualist relation of subject and object, but his methodology is a revised version of traditional epistemology. This is also the methodological position in general of the

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Institute for Social Research. Simultaneously, according to his theory of the administered society, what takes place in modern society is really dominated by illusion. An empirical study is necessary to confirm or disconfirm a stereotypical structure. Consequently, what empiricism affirms is neither the historical object nor an actual reality. If anything, it confirms the illusion produced by enlightenment reason. Actually, empiricism verifies the rationality of the compulsory character of modern society, that is, the validity of capitalist society and instrumental reason. This position is strengthened in Adornos dispute with Popper. In the debate about positivism which lasted from 1961 to 1969 in Germany, Adorno argues that the critical rationalism proposed by Popper and Albert cannot contribute to the critique of positivism. For Adorno, rationalism is absolutely not critical because it remains a theory of science. He states that Popper mistakenly ignores the distinction between natural science and social science because he has overlooked the important function of the subject. According to Adorno, it is impossible to posit an object independently of the subject, for the object is defined and mediated by the subject. Once this precondition is neglected, social life would be understood as a natural necessity. As a result, Poppers theory is not a critique of the social but a defense of the facts. At the very beginning of his essay Sociology and Empirical Study, Adorno proposes a new perspective that social research should start with social life itself. Real knowledge of society is determined by the elementary condition of the social structure. The key condition, for Adorno, is the relation of

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exchange in the marketplace. It is the very ground of Adornos focus on social life. In Negative Dialectics, Adorno affirms philosophy as a heterogeneous experience. The concept of experience here is borrowed from Benjamins Erfahrung, which means the actual experience that the individual has experienced in his own heterogeneous life. It refers to experience that is mediated by cognitive judgment. The alternative of Erfahrung is Erlebnis, which suggests immediate experience without cognition. The employment of Erfahrung demonstrates Adornos empiricist attitude. This kind of experience is a departure against conceptualization. It stresses historical dimension once again. Accordingly, I intend to characterize Adornos theoretical methodology as historical empiricism. From the above general introductions of Deleuze and Adorno in respect to empiricism, we can clearly distinguish one from the other. One perceives a univocity of being as a transcendental field where the virtual is the potential differential elements, whereas the other finds contradiction to exist in the real nonidentity of the subject and the object, of thinking and reality. However, this is only one aspect of the problem. With regard to their respective purposes, Deleuze intends to find how the given, usually regarded as some immediacy, is constituted, namely, the conditions of the given. However, his goal is not to add a footnote to reality. He does not define his philosophy as interpretation of reality. Rather, he considers creation the mission of philosophy, because one cannot create the new without knowledge of how it is constituted. Deleuze believes that transcendental

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empiricism is the way to bring him to this end. Adornos intention consists in criticizing social reality by revealing the illusion that dominates the cognition of the human being. Targeting the ostensible identity between the subject and the object, Adorno seeks to reveal the nature of capitalist society, confirming the principle of nonidentity with the intermediation between the subject and the object.

2.1 The Deleuzian Construction of the Transcendental Field

In Deleuzes view, each transcendental philosophy presupposes one or several principal concepts to unfold the theoretical constructions. These concepts or notions are self-evident because they are derived from common sense (such as Descartes Cogito and ego) or abstraction (such as the Hegelian rule of negation of negation). Deleuze does not want to follow either of these patterns. He is telling us that this representational given is still transcendent, because the empirically given is mediated by space and time as the form of the conceptually possible. Deleuze rejects both metaphysics and commonsense (in the narrow sense) at the same time. As a result, he takes empiricism as methodology. The reason can be found in the preface to Difference and Repetition (1994): Empiricism is a mysticism and a mathematicism of concepts, but precisely one which treats the concept as object of an encounter, as a here-and-now, or rather as an Erewhon from
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which emerge inexhaustibly ever new, differently distributed heres and nows. (p. 20) From this quotation we can find that one of the reasons why Deleuze demands a completely new way of thinking is to oppose representation. Representation reflects and interprets the established order, but it fails to create the new that is, for Deleuze, the positive task of philosophy. His philosophy seeks to determine how the given is produced. Thus, the empiricist dimension is to be situated according to how the given is produced and what conditions allow for the production of the given. It is for this reason that Deleuzes philosophy remains transcendental. Against the Kantian antagonism between the noumenal world and the world of experience (the world of phenomena), Deleuze conceives a transcendental field (the plane of immanence or the plane of consistency). Both Deleuze and Kant agree that knowledge derives from experience and that experience is constitued, but they have different opinions about the source of experience. For Kant, the noumenal world is the world of things as they truly are in themselves, whereas the phenomenal world is the world of things as they appear, namely, experience. Moreover, he believes that objective experience is constituted by the functioning of the human mind. However, although Deleuze also believes that even experience is itself constituted, its source is not a subjective one such as mind: rather, experience is transcendental. This transcendental field, that is, a quasi-ontological foundation as the plane of immanence, is not a pre-given nature

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but a pre-individual transcendental field. It is this productive plane that determines the conditions of experience. The plane of immanence is constitutive of numerous forces, which is like the current of electricity rather than fixed points. These impersonal and preindividual nomadic singularities constitute the real transcendental field (Deleuze, 1990, p. 109). Upon this field, there are always many infinite movements caught within each other, each folded in the others. Deleuze describes such a situation as chaos (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994, p. 42). When one force encounters another, an event occurs as a singularity. Because there are infinite forces and the chances to encounter, their interplay can produce infinite new events. Differences are inherent in this field as infinite radical differentiated constituting elements. They are sources of becoming. This type of definition and description of the plane avoids the contradictions brought by dualism. The infinity of movements and events is immanent to the plane of immanence. The motor to push concepts into action is not the contradiction and transformation of the opposite forces but the interplays of all the forces. With this plane of immanence, Deleuze develops a methodology distinct from empiricism, which is called transcendental empiricism. It is transcendental because it overcomes the fact that orthodox empiricism derives the abstract from the concrete in daily experience. Deleuze, however, believes that the phenomena of experience exist as a certain outcome of the forces behind; they cannot explain themselves. Nevertheless, he calls his own methodology empiricism, for it thinks of an experience, life or becoming that has no ground outside itself, such as

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subject, just experience. Deleuze makes the important point that Empiricism is by no means . . . a simple appeal to lived experience (1994, p. 35). His position actually rejects an empirical model that is based on sense. Deleuzes empiricism takes a departure regarding the transcendental in general. Both subject and object emerge as an effect from the transcendental field. This proposition is a revision of his account of Humes subjectivity. In Deleuzes first publication, Empiricism and Subjectivity: An Essay on Humes Theory of Human Nature, he defines the special ground of empiricism: . . . nothing is ever transcendental (1991, p. 24). In Deleuzes interpretation, Humes main concern is to establish the basis upon which the subject is formed. However, in the case of Hume, nothing is transcendental, because these principles are simply principles of our nature (Deleuze, 1991, pp. 111112). From the two citations above, we can find the way in which Deleuze has derived his transcendental empiricism from Hume. Subjectivity cannot be explained or analyzed either by subjecting it to transcendent substance or by assigning it a transcendent status. Such an ontologically defined subject would lead to a dualism between the conscious subject and the empirical world. As a result, the subject is placed at the opposite of the object; it is outside the empirical world. Such a dualism is the one from which Deleuze and Hume wish to break away. The emergence of the individual subject within a pre-individual field is the central question. But what distinguishes

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one from the other is that Deleuze regards as the transcendental the a priori ground. Deleuze argues that he has never given up the principle of empiricism by saying that I have always felt that I am an empiricist (Deleuze & Parnet, 2002, p. vii). If empiricism can be characterized by the rejection of external principles that dominate experience, then Deleuzian philosophy is empiricism in its strictest sense. And Deleuze, being an empiricist, welcomed Humes emphasis on externality of relations. According to Deleuze, three conceptsassociation, belief and externality of relationsare key concepts with which Hume explains the subject. Association is the principle of nature which operates by establishing a relation between two things. According to this principle, new relations and entities can be produced. Relations form a network. When Deleuze states that in Hume the relations are external to their terms, he means that there is no transcendent principle that imposes itself over the relations, neither the terms of the relations themselves nor a deeper and more comprehensive term to which the relation would itself be internal (Deleuze, 2001, p. 37). Thus for Deleuze, Humes three concepts emphasize the constructing process of the subject: Empirical subjectivity is constituted in the mind under the influence of the principles affecting it; the mind therefore does not have the characteristics of a preexisting subject (1991, p. 29). Although Deleuze is deeply influenced by Hume, there are distinctions between them. In Humes argumentation, he divides knowledge into two

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categories: relations of ideas and matters of fact. The first category includes mathematical and logical propositions; the second one contains those propositions concerning some event. However, Deleuze refuses this kind of division. He follows Humes emphasis of relations, not only relations of ideas but also relations of everythingrelations of forces, relations of singularities, and relations of events. For him, the category of relations is central to his philosophy. He does not treat the matter of fact as a category different from the relations. On the contrary, according to Deleuzes transcendental empiricism, a purely empirical event is not an immediate and isolated fact; it is only an effect. The relation of forces is the a priori cause underneath the event as an effect. In this sense, Deleuzes transcendental empiricism starts with the relations. The encounter with the other and the relation with the other becomes a productive system. On this condition the other appears as the expression of the possible (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994, p. 17). The relation with the other introduces a difference and produces something new. The new here does not refer to an actual and concrete fact but a virtual power. This virtual power is brought up by the relations of the forces: it opens the possible world and infinite possibilities. Indeed, Deleuzes interpretation of force formation is influenced by Michael Foucault. According to Deleuzes understanding of Foucault (1988b),11 every force represents a relationship, because a force can never function on its own; it is always in the operation of relating to others. Essentially, such a relationship with
The reason I do not say according to Foucault but according to Deleuzes understanding of Foucault is that Deleuze, in his research on other philosophers or writers, interprets them as Deleuzian philosopher. Of course, we also could say that he is influenced by these precedent philosophers, but sometimes it is not a direct inheritance; rather, it is based on a Deleuzian reinterpretation of them. 71
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others is the characteristic or existing mode of the force. In Deleuzian terms, the function of forces comes from neither beginning nor end, neither from center nor margin, but from the middle. In these relationships, there are not any subjects or objects; everything is expressed by relationship, the outcome of the encounter of the forces. This is a great achievement against classical dualism between subject and object; it breaks the theory of representation and offers a wholly new epistemology. Deleuze does not explain the source or the form or the content of the forces, because all these are not the right questions. If he tries to answer them, he would fall into the trap of traditional ontology. On the contrary, about the forces in question, as Deleuze indicates, one is supposed to ask how does it operate? (1988b, pp. 7073). A force is defined by its ability to influence other forces and to be influenced by other ones. According to Deleuzes description, a singularity may be grasped in two ways: in its existence and distribution, but also in its nature, in conformity with which it extends and spreads itself out in a determined direction over a line of ordinary points (1990, p. 109). Forces can find their own significance only in relations to others. Relations are multiple. Thus, the flows, the encounters and the direction-turnings of the forces on the transcendental fieldthe plane of immanencecreate the innumerable

differences and differential elements. Then, what does transcendental mean? Or, to be precise, what does transcendental mean for Deleuze? The answer to this question is in fact to explain how experience becomes transcendental. Deleuze does not believe the classical

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empiricist opinion that experience is the immediate and univocal source of knowledge. Rather, it is itself constituted. Accordingly, he needs a transcendental foundation to explain experience. This foundation is the plane of immanence that functions as a network of relations. Deleuze states in his last work What Is Philosophy? the plane is the abstract machine (Deleuze & Guattari, p. 36). Moreover, elsewhere, he explains the abstract machine as the map of relations between forces, a map of destiny, intensity (1988b, p. 37). It is actually the genesis system in Deleuzes transcendental philosophy and independent of the forms and substances, expressions and contents it will distribute. The reason that we call Deleuze an empiricist is that the object of his philosophy is experience, real experience, not transcendental experience. In fact, he keeps seeking to determine the conditions of real experience. What is immanent to experience is not something material but the transcendental; they are the conditions of experience in general. Transcendental empiricism does not deal with the formal conditions of the sensible experience, nor with their material conditions, but with the genetic conditions of the real and empirical events. These genetic conditions are not ontological, but the a priori reason of the experience. The question that Deleuze wants to resolve is how the individual, the event, and the experience are derived from the impersonal and pre-individual transcendental field. This question is not the type of Pythagorean question about how one becomes the multiple. It is not the result of causal reasoning but an a priori genesis. With the transcendental field, namely, the plane of immanence, Deleuze unites the univocity of being and

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the multiplicity. The generic procedure is realized with the concept of the virtual. The relations with others induct pure differentiations that are real but not actual. Also in Difference and Repetition, Deleuze discusses the concept of the transcendental from the perspective of the distinction between the virtual and the actual (1994, pp. 186190). The plane of immanence is the very ground of the univocity of Being. It does not refer to a substance or a form; it is a locus that contains infinite virtualities. Influenced by Nietzsches principle of eternal return, Deleuze interprets repetition as the univocity of Being. With the univocity (repetition), the virtuality (difference) can be brought into actualization. According to my understanding, we can grasp Deleuzes concept of transcendental from three dimensions. First of all, the transcendental field is not the outside the world but within the world. It is itself a part of reality but not in the form of experiential phenomena. In Deleuzian terms, it is virtual, not actual; in other words, it is beyond the reach of perception but still subject to reality. Second, the transcendental signifies a kind of virtuality concerned with the a priori or intuitive basis of knowledge as independent of experience. Third, in the transcendental field, everything experiential appears in disorder. And the faculties have to promote themselves to their utmostthe utmost of sensation, experience, body and thoughtto approach the transcendental field as such. With the plane of immanence and the univocity of Being, Deleuze strives to articulate the conditions for real existence, which is capable of accounting for the individual without

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falling into conceptual or ontological abstraction. His theory affirms being as a productive process or creative individuation based on real difference, and a challenging critique of essentialist ontology of substance. His substitution of sense for Essence demonstrates his philosophy of transcendental empiricism. For him, the concept of Essence is usually regarded as transcendence. Once it appears, it is probable for readers to think of ontological or metaphysical immediacy. But the concept of sense can avoid this kind of trouble. Deleuze (1990) states his reason by saying that: Sense was first discovered in the form of impassive neutrality by an empirical logic of propositions, which had broken away from Aristotelianism; and then, for a second time, sense was discovered in the form of a genetic productivity by transcendental philosophy which had broken away from metaphysics. (p. 105) The transcendental plane provides Deleuzian philosophy with a radically different field of sense. On this plane, thinking takes place. Nevertheless, this plane is not a geometric one in space; rather, it is transcendental, the locus of sense. Deleuzes transcendental empiricism wishes to resolve the question of how experience is determined. Only on this basis is it possible for Deleuze to focus on his main concern: the new and freedom.

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2.2 Adornos Priority of the Object

Adornos philosophy shows a strong objection to idealist philosophy. Although he does not affirm the principle that knowledge derives from experience, he insists on the privilege of experience in philosophy. However, such experience is not lived experience (Erlebnis) that immediately comes from life, but what he calls philosophical experience (Erfahrung) that is mediated by the subjects cognition. In fact, Adornos critique of positivism lies in its trust of Erlebnis, because he believes that such sensuous experience is insufficient to reveal the critical aspect of the subject. On the contrary, the formation of Erfahrung is on the basis of the rational judgement through which the world is mediated. At the same time, Erfahrung is the judgement about the object. Hence, experience for Adorno is indeed a dialectical movement of consciousness that revises itself according to the conditions of the truth. Adornos philosophy seeks to disclose the objectivity of the truth. His empiricism registers as what he calls the priority of the object. This empiricist position is radically different from Deleuzes: it presupposes a transcendental subject. Adornos insistence on the priority of the object does not mean that he has already abandoned subjectivity. On the contrary, he argues that the objectivity of dialectical cognition needs more subjectivity (1973b, p. 40). Accordingly, the priority of the object only refuses to take subjectivity as the primary principle of experience. This position is in fact a refutation of both idealism and positivism.

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Idealism grounds the act of knowing on the absolute subject so that it ignores the objectivity of the world. Under this circumstance, the subject reduces the object to itself, forgetting how much it is itself the object in the first place. In contrast, positivism only focuses on the actuality of the empirical world. As a result, the subjective element, by which the world of phenomena is mediated, is considered secondary. Neither of the results is what Adorno wants, because the lines they provided, either exclusively subjective or objective, suppose an identity between the subject and his/her experience. The real experience of the subject is only revealed through the subjects reflection on the process that the consciousness about the object is determined. With the priority of the object, Adorno (1973b) aims to stress the mutual mediation between the subject and the object. In such a process, Subjectivity changes its quality in a context which it is unable to evolve on its own. Due to the inequality inherent in the concept of mediation, the subject enters into the object altogether differently from the way the object enters into the subject. An object can be thought only by a subject but always remains something other than the subject. (p. 183) In this way, the truth between the subject and the object is realized: it is nonidentity. Such a truth lies in a peace achieved between human beings and their Other. Adornos epistemology is in fact influenced by Lukcss dialectic of

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subject-object.12

In History and Class Consciousness (1971), Lukcs defines

the crucial determinants of dialectics as the interaction of subject and object, the unity of theory with practice (1971, p. 24). In fact, such a dichotomy of the subject and the object is a misunderstanding that ignores the mediated subject. No self-conscious subject exists in the materialist surroundings that are external to human subjects; instead, every subject is conditioned and mediated by the socially objective conditions. This is also the case of the object. The concept of object is necessarily mediated by the subject. As soon as subject-object dialectics is not historical, it becomes a vulgar materialism. This result, in Adornos mind, is the situation that traditional empiricism cannot overcome. He is making a new form of inquiry open to experience. For him, the process of conceptualizing experience is problematic: Sensation, the crux of epistemology, needs epistemology to reinterpret it into a fact of consciousness, in contradiction to its own full characterwhich after all, is to serve as authority for its cognition (1973b, p. 172). Insisting on nonidentity between the subject and the object, he never denies the existence of identification in knowledge acquisition, because he believes that if there is no identified abstraction from multiple objects, there is no concept, or thought which operates according to concepts. For him, in the ordinary action of knowing, what takes place is not that the subject grasps or
Lukcss concept of reification is of central importance to Adornos critique of the administered world. According to Lukcs, there are pervasive phenomena of reification in the capitalist society. Reification is not only the immanent nature of the structure of commodity but also the root of many contemprory problems. Adorno shares this point with Lukcs, but he diverges from Lukcs on the overcoming of reification. For Lukcs, reification will be overcome by the proletariat. However, Adorno believes that the proletariat is unable to achieve such a mission because of their own limitations. I will explain this point in the later arguments. 78
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recognizes the object as it is. Rather, the subject identifies the object with his own previously conceived conceptual system. That is, the subject invents a conceptual system and assimilates the object to it. Metaphysical philosophy as thinking of thinking had begun to construct a hierarchical system of concepts since Plato, when it formed multiple secondary concepts that are reducible to a primary one. It is a strictly hierarchical kingdom. In Hegel, the situation is a little more complex, but it is still the process of identification that plays the key role in knowledge acquisition. This process is described by Sherratt (2002) as a process of overcoming alienation. For Hegel, (and Hegelian-Marxism) in the process of acquiring knowledge, the subject confronts the separation that exists historically between the subject and the object. This separation is, of course, alienation. The process of acquiring knowledge is part of the overall historical process of overcoming alienation. To overcome alienation, the subject must overcome the divide between the subject and the object. This engagement consists in an act of identification between the subject and the object. (p. 115) In fact, such identification mistakenly conceives the object according to what the subject had supposed, so it takes nonidentitythe truth between the subject-object relationas the separation that is supposed to be overcome. Accordingly, identity as the despotism of the Idea is what Adorno challenges. In this regard, the history of ideas is obviously a history of self-enslavement by the

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principle of Identity. Then, under the rule of Identity, conceptual order is content to screen what thinking seeks to comprehend (Adorno, 1973b, p. 5), and ultimately becomes an ideology of cognition. In Aesthetic Theory, Adorno makes a famous declaration that oneness is an illusion (1984, p. 309). In an abstraction, the appearance of thought always intertwines with the truth of thought (the actuality grasped by concepts). What takes place in reality is that whatever lies outside the cognition is decreed away: the limited intention of the concept is regarded as totality. To begin with, a concept is to represent a presence, and finally it is believed as an actual presence. It is problematic, because each concept historically and finitely reflects a particular object. Once it is believed as the totality, what happens is the ideology of Identity in which falsity takes the place of actuality. It is an illusion. Even in dialectical form, it is still ideological. As I stated in Chapter 1, Adorno defines the real concern of philosophy as nonconceptuality, individuality and particularity (1973b, p. 8). Generally speaking, nonconceptuality means concretely heterogeneous objects, namely the individual and particular presence. The idea of nonconceptuality is raised to argue against this dominating mechanism. It refers to the concrete things that have not been conceptualized. The very proposition somehow indicates an empiricist position by rejecting the alienation of the concept. Adorno does not raise the sensible experience to oppose rational essence; rather, he seeks to reemphasize the concrete specificity of the thing. In this sense, to support nonconceptuality means rejecting abstraction that is the key operating role in metaphysics. Abstraction

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extracts oneness or essence (both are identities) without paying attention to their specificities, which, according to Deleuze, is the driving dynamics in their motion of developing; it cancels the given historical conditions of the thing or experience. Both sides result in a miserable situation in which the living experiences and concrete things have become a game of concepts: that is, a game of identity. This is also the standpoint from where Adorno makes critical comments on Heidegger. What is actually in his mind is cognition: if a philosophy, no matter how profound it is, would not disclose the truth of nonidentity, then it is merely a mirror image of identity. Adorno insists that what the object is actually goes beyond all appearances, beyond the grasp of any subject, beyond the summation of any subjects knowledge. He interprets this kind of subject-object relation as the unattained goal in the history of human beings and defines critical theory as the continuous struggle to criticize the act of knowing in social reality. Generally speaking, critical theory reveals that we can only know what is within our experience and what the conditions of that experience are. To achieve the historical task of correcting the misconceptions of the false consciousness of subjectivity (1973b, p. 61), for Adorno, the only and effective weapon is dialectic. This position looks like the persistent standpoint of the Institute for Social Research. As the ideal aim that negative dialectics pursues, nonidentity describes the historical limitation of the act of knowing. Non-directly relates to the attribute of Adornos dialectic, negative. Negative never signifies

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negation. On the contrary, Hegelian-Marxian dialectic is summarized as affirmative dialectic because of its commitment to identification in the process of thinking. Such affirmative dialectic misreads the subject-object relation as identity. In fact, the misunderstanding admits the transcendental presupposition of preexistent cognitive structure. Nevertheless, nonidentity in the subject-object relation is true experience. It is the state of differentiation without domination, with the differentiated participating in each other (Adorno, 1988, p. 246). His method of negative is to emphasize the mediation of experience. For Kant, the notion of experience always entails an immediate relation with an object. Kant distinguishes in Critique of Pure Reason two sorts of experiences: inner experienceexperience of subjectand outer experienceexperience of object. He wants to explain all experience through subjectivity. That is why he interprets outer experience as the condition of inner experience. But Adorno argues against the idea of the reducibility of object to subject. He therefore holds nonidentity high through priority of the object. In effect, it is to endorse the uncertainty of the experience of subjectivity. Adorno insists on the priority of the object in the subject-object relationship. It does not mean that the object is more important than the subject, or the subject is secondary to the object. Actually, the priority of the object emphasizes the shaping of the category of the subject. According to Adorno, what we refer to when we say subject, is a complicated process. At the same time that we are subjects we are objects in the world. Grammatically speaking, if one were to say

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I see a tree, the I is the subject. Replacing the I with Me, the I becomes an object. That is to say, in our mind, I is recognized as Me before I is understood as I. However, the first procedure always takes place unconsciously. It is ignored in common cognitive movement. In fact, to this extent, subject and object are intertwined. Subjectivity is not a subject; it is an object as well and the subject is then of and a part of the world at large. OConnor states that the term mediation for Adorno is intended to capture the meaning-producing qualities of reciprocatory and nonidentical dimensions of the subject-object relationship (2004. p. 48). In the relationship, the subject and the object are not two independent moments bridged by the function of mediation; they permeate each other. Mediation is constitutive of both. What Adorno wants to show through the priority of the object, at the first level, is that the object is independent of the subject in the sense that its properties are independent of the individual subject although it must be mediated by the subject to form knowledge of it. that is, experience about it. Such independence is nonidentity, because the object has gained its unattached attribute. It is no longer restricted in the presupposed structure of identity. This proposition has overthrown the traditional epistemology and the subject-object relationship. At the second level, the priority of the object stresses its priority in the process of formation of experience. As OConnor indicates, Adorno shares the Kantian and Hegelian idea that experience is a matter of understanding. This means that experience is the activity of conceptualization of the objects which are given (OConnor, 2004. p.

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65). In other words, the given object is pre-experience, even pre-subject. It is not the self-reflection of the absolute spirit or something else. Experience is experience of the objects. From this perspective, I term Adornos priority of object historical empiricism. The new expression partially originates from me. I say partially because Nesbitt calls Adorno empiricist in one of his essays, because he proceeds in the construction of concepts inductively in the manner of Enlightenment thought (2005, p. 82). According to my understanding, Adornos emphasis on the object in the subject-object relationship is actually an emphasis on the objectivity in the epistemological field; it is the theoretical preparation for his own statement that negative dialectics is object dialectics. Moreover, this objectivity is realized in history; it is not a fixed fact but a changing process in the intermediation of the subject and the object. It is posited to oppose the mistakenly supposed subjectivity.

2.3 Constituted Subject: Disappearance of Antagonism of Subject and Object

Deleuzes transcendental empiricism and Adornos historical empiricism are undoubtedly revolutionary in contrast with traditional understandings of the subject-object relationship. Although they are radically different from each other in both form and content, they share a theoretical concern: the question of how the subject is constituted. For both of them, the subject is never a transcendent
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concept that in traditional Western philosophy means a conscious mind and a free agent. They agree that the subject is formed under some conditions. The subject does not function as a thinking being that produces knowledge about all kinds of objects; rather, the subject is ceaselessly constituted in its relation to society: the process of becoming-subject is one and the same with the process of knowledge acquisition. However, Deleuzes and Adornos revolutionary positions are not identical. Deleuze poses a transcendental plane different from lived experience. For him, it is not important to be subject or object; the question is how subjectivity is derived from the transcendental plane. Or, in other words, according to Deleuze, a subject is not always a subject. It can be a special subject at the same time as a special object. The question of how and when an individual appears as a subject is what concerns him. In contrast, Adorno commits himself to philosophy of history. Following Marxs reflection of society and history, Adornos constituted subject is a historically transformed conscious mind. Their critiques of subject-centered mode are no less profound than post-structuralists such as Lacans criticism of pseudo-subject. However, there is an obvious difference between the former and the latter: the paired categories of subject and object cannot be eliminated. For Deleuze and Adorno, the places of subject-object relationship in their respective philosophies are radically different. Deleuze thoroughly abandons the cognitive mode of the conscious subject, transforming the principle of subjectivity into a pre-individual field, the plane of immanence. In contrast, Adorno insists on the agency of the empirical subject,

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claiming that the deceptive subjectivity was fabricated in the illusory identity between subject and object. Both explore the way to freedom in their respective critique of subject-centered mode. For Deleuze, the transcendental plane of immanence consists of virtuality for engendering the new. Here, the categories of subject and object are subject to a certain structure: the transcendental field. The dualist relationship is substituted for a new productive system. Adorno wants to correct the mistaken image of the subject by overturning the mistaken process. Therefore, he posits the priority of the object against the primacy of the subject. This demonstrates a familial similarity to Marx. For Adorno, the subject is an object in the first place. He wants to reveal the idealism behind subjectivity, which means objects having a meaning apart from our subjectivity. With the intertwined relationship of the subject-object, Adorno argues against a one-dimensional dualist understanding of the relationship of the subject and the object. Because subjectivity is closely tied to objectivity, the knowing and thinking of the human subject is inseparable from society as it is transformed in history. For Deleuze, Hume contributes much to empiricism, giving it a new power, leading it to a theory and practice of relations, because he pays more attention to the conditions under which something new is produced. Such an evaluation signifies Deleuzes own main concern. As a transcendental empiricist philosopher, Deleuze intends to examine the conditioning of human thought and consciousnesstraditional philosophy presupposed several transcendental

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concepts such as conscious subject, meaning, or essence to interpret themby exploring its composing moments and the way by which it is produced. Traditional philosophy presupposes that we already live in a meaningful world and that we can only begin to build knowledge within the context of a pre-given meaning, whether this meaning is produced by history, subjectivity, or fundamental ontology. However, Humes empiricism commits itself to the exploration of the relationship between the concrete phenomena so that it is an affirmation of multiplicity at a practical level. It is he that helps Deleuze escape from the dominant continental philosophy of meaning and turn to his radical methodology, transcendental empiricism. Adopting this methodology, Deleuze renounces metaphysics. But Hume fails to examine the way in which the meanings have already been shaped by the interests and intentions of the human subject, namely, the pre-individual experience. Deleuze tries to explore the conditions of experience. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that he put his stress on the forms of consciousness and the processes in which it is formed and on experience prior to individual consciousness. Deleuze posits two aspects of his own transcendental empiricist philosophy. One is negative: empiricism means the rejection of all transcendental. The other is positive: empiricism is always about creating. For Deleuze, creating par excellence is to create concepts, which, for him, is the mission of philosophy. It is in this sense that Deleuzes transcendental empiricism is an alternative to the traditional dualism of subject-object. Moreover, the emergence of the subject as

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an effect in the plane of immanence does not suppose a transcendental subject in the process of knowing. As a result, the antagonism between subject and object has been totally overcome: Deleuze does not cancel concepts such as subject and object, but they are not the two opposite parts in knowledge-acquisition. A new quasi-ontological and productive field, neither metaphysical nor lived experienced, is developed to support an explaining model of subject and object. Both of them are constituted. Deleuzes transcendental empiricism has opened a non-dualist way, whereas Adornos historical empiricism has remained in the dualism of subject-object to some extent. Although Adorno proposes the priority of the object to oppose the transcendent subject, the model that the conscious subject comes to know the object outside has been reserved. Adorno discusses the history of illusory identity in subject-object relationship, arguing that the primacy of the subject in traditional epistemology is the result of compulsory identity. The subject is mediated by its place as an object in the first place. Then, the object is mediated by its relevant subject. However, Adorno attempts to retain the subjective principle, while criticizing its conventional form as the primacy of the subject. As he says, we must use the force of the subject to break through the deception of constitutive subjectivity (1973b, p. xx). That is to say, in the attempt to understand who I am, it turns me back to the empirical world (society and history) in which I am intertwined. Because no matter how deeply I treat myself as subject in unconsciousness, there is an object; that is, I am produced as an

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object in the society and keep transforming in the society. In the Marxian view, society is a product and a process of history: it is reproduced to such a degree that the question Who am I? is subject to the question What is the meaning of historical experience? It is in this sense that subjectivity is a problem of social relations. Adornos reconfiguration of the subject-object relationship demonstrates his attempt to build a new relationship without domination among humans. He wants to justify the objectivity of knowledge-acquisition with the function of the mediation of object. According to his critique of illusory identity between the subject and object, the more the subject forgets or denies the foundation upon which it is constituted, the more the subject is reversed unconsciously into what it forgets, the object. In his discourse, this object refers to the social reality and history. In other words, in the prevailing act of thinking or knowing, a subject is mistakenly considered as a transcendental subject who has no ground. On this condition, philosophy forgets the mediation in the mediating subject is no more indicative of meritorious sublimity than any forgetting (Adorno, 1973b, p. 176). As a result, the subject is mistakenly seen as an immediate concept. Adorno calls such a process the reversal of the subjective reduction (p. 176). Here, in fact, his critique is directed towards a critique of the fetishism of the commodity, the most profound critique of capitalism. Following Marxs critique of alienation, Adorno criticizes capitalism for its reversal of the human subject into the ossified object. As a result of the reversal, the human subject is deprived of spontaneity and

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agency, being reduced to the defense of the administered reality. In this sense, Adornos historical empiricism, the priority of object in particular aims to resume freedom and spontaneity of human subject. The centrifugal power of nonidentity is the very force that is able to withstand the assimilation of compulsory identity. Deleuzes transcendental empiricism overcomes the dichotomy of the subject and the object with a transcendental field. This plane is neither One-Substance nor lived experience. Epistemologically, transcendental

empiricism completely abandons conventional functions of the subject and the object where the subject is believed to have the ability of reasoning. However, Deleuzes empiricism avoids the topic of history by setting the productive system in a transcendental field. In contrast, Adornos historical empiricism follows the Marxian critique of social reality. Similar to Marxs critique of labor in Capital, he points out a relationship mistakenly reversed, arguing to bring everything back to historical reality. It is a meta-critique of the subject-object relationship. Both of these epistemological positions emphasize the fact that the subject is constituted, but they analyze different conditions of the subject. For Deleuze, the a priori ground of the subject is the generically transcendental conditions; but for Adorno the material conditions and the historical context are more radical. Although they are completely distinctive both in content and form, they have comparable significance. The two kinds of reformation of the subject-centered philosophy challenge classical empiricism such as Humes, one that only explains the world on the basis of experience. Deleuzes transcendental empiricism and

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Adornos historical empiricism begin with the subject-object relationship and step further into the reflection of the given. However, the more important distinctions between them cannot be understood without mention of the two concepts, difference and nonidentity. This pair of concepts is central to their philosophies that converge at the point of internal difference and diverge at one of their forms.

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Chapter 3
Difference VS Nonidentity: Against Identity

I do not know for sure, but it may be that our epoch has brought with it an upgrading of the utopianonly it is not called this anymore. Ernst Bloch Difference and nonidentity are the central concepts in Deleuzes and Adornos philosophy. I have briefly introduced these concepts in describing the foundation of the two different theories in Chapter 1. In this chapter, I discuss them in detail: their significance, their positions in their philosophies, the similarities and differences between them. Using this comparison, I aim to elaborate the distinction between Deleuze and Adorno as philosophers of difference. In Deleuze, the concept of difference is not merely proposed as a category that indicates the philosophers ontological idea; it is discussed along with the concept of repetition. In Difference and Repetition, he tries to challenge the majority of philosophers who have subordinated difference to identity or to the Same, to the Similar, to the Opposed or to the Analogous (1994, p. xv). What he wants to achieve is to think difference in itself. This means that Deleuze tries to reverse the relation of difference to the categories quoted above and define

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difference in an ontological sense. The pair of concepts, difference and repetition are employed to express Deleuzes view on being. For Deleuze, difference in itself is the nature of being whereas repetition is the mode of being. Deleuze is not the first philosopher who talks of difference and repetition. In the contemporary period, many philosophers and artists have come to emphasize the status of difference and the function of repetition. However, whether in Heidegger or in the structuralists, or even in the works of contemporary novelists, the pair of concepts is subjected to representation: they have taken the place of the identical and the negative, of identity and contradiction (Deleuze, 1994, p. xix). According to Deleuze, a relation that supposes the primacy of identity in fact confirms oppression and dominance in the representative functions of concepts and accordingly defines the world of representation (p. ix). The system of representation operates by establishing a settled norm as the model. The unity of difference and identity is one of the primary models. It functions as the medium of representation.13 Representation, in this way, distorts difference by subjecting it to identity. Deleuze attempts to argue against such a model that has subjugated the creative force. In his eyes, representation diverts our attention from being in itself. As a result, people usually focus on what is represented. This is the case of difference. In the representative model, difference is represented through specific differences that are secondary to identity. This kind of statically hierarchical structure fails to conceive the change in relation to difference. For this reason,

Deleuze describes for aspects of such a medium: identity, analogy, opposition, resemblance. A concept cannot be represented unless it is in one of the four relations to the mode of expression. 93

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Deleuze argues that difference cannot be represented within the coherent medium of an organic representation (1994, p. 29). The uniqueness of his concept of difference is revealed by difference in itself, not conceptual difference or different characteristics or details. This is the first character of Deleuzes concept of difference. The second characteristic is that Deleuzes difference does not imply the negative: it is pure difference, affirmative difference. This characteristic is in fact associated with the first one. I have mentioned that, according to Deleuze, in the representative mode of thinking, difference is commonly regarded as the substitute of the negative; it is the negation of the identical. Such an idea of difference ignores the fact of the independence of the concept, because it observes difference in a dualist or dialectical manner: difference is taken to be subordinated to the identical. It describes the non-identical attributes between two objects. But Deleuzes difference is not like this; it is a pure affirmation that is not reducible to the other concepts. It is at this point that the two characteristics of Deleuzes difference are intertwined, because difference can be affirmative only when it is difference in itself. In contrast to Deleuzes discussion of difference in an ontological sense, Adornos concept of nonidentity is thought in an ethical context. This concept emerges in Adornos critique of the notion of identity; he believes that this notion is central to the philosophy of reason (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1973). In Negative Dialectics, Adorno elaborates three dimensions of the term identity: first, the unity of personal consciousness; second, the equality with itself of every object of

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thought; third, the coincidence of the subject and the object (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1973, p. 142). The three dimensions provide the epistemological foundations of rationalist philosophy. Without them, it is impossible to conceive the empirical subject and the process of knowledge-acquisition. The word nonidentity describes the contraries of the three dimensions. However, Adornos employment of this term does not imply an irrational philosophy or agnosticism; on the contrary, it serves Adornos critique of capitalist society. Adorno interprets the actual world as an administered and dominated world where human beings are not able to think freely, because their thinking is restricted to the principle of identity which is the primal form of ideology (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1973, p. 148). Nonidentity mainly expresses the nonidentical state between the subject and the object. Adorno takes the principle of nonidentity to be the redemption of unfreedom of thought, because this principle explores the gap between two things that are presumed to be identical. It is this gap that brings utopian elements into thinking. However, the principle of nonidentity is not only Adornos solution to the epistemological problem of knowledge acquisition but also his political ideal. From the perspective of being against identity, the conceptsdifference and nonidentitycan be seen as a challenge to representation. Such a common logic of internal difference constructs the resonance between Deleuze and Adorno. This is the ground on which we can consider the distinction between them: the positive contra the negative.

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3.1 Deleuzes Difference-in-itself

In this part I will discuss two issues that are important to understand Deleuzes concept of difference: the relation of difference to identity, and the relation of difference to repetition. To elaborate the first issue, Deleuze challenges the understanding of difference from Plato to Heidegger by criticizing the image of thought in the history of philosophy. His aim is to reverse the canonical view of the relation between difference and identity, affirming difference as the first principle. The second issue is actually Deleuzes understanding of the univocity of being. He uses these two concepts, difference and repetition, to unfold his own distinctive ontological composition. The unique quasi-ontological construction attempts to emphasize the internal difference that is taken to be the element of the new. Deleuze criticizes the image of thought by beginning with the critique of representation. At the very beginning of the first chapter of Difference and Repetition, Deleuze poses a question about mediation: Must difference have been mediated in order to render it both livable and thinkable? (1994, p. 30). According to his understanding, in the history of philosophy, ordinary opinion of difference is tied to otherness that suggests a hierarchical order among concepts. With this opinion, man is used to thinking about difference according to concrete phenomena. Difference in this sense is in fact seen as specific difference: it is something represented. This kind of idea of difference fails to account for the

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conditions of the production of change, because it appears in the analogy of the two other objects. The analogy supposes a choice of characters carried out by judgment in the abstract representation (Deleuze, 1994, p. 34). To be precise, such specific difference is incapable of indicating the nature of the objects, because it has been extracted from the characteristics of the objects. In fact, as long as we consider the concrete object with respect to its characters, specific difference is merely extrinsic. Moreover, when we compare the two different objects, we always suppose a unity: as white and black are from man, or as male and female are from animal (Deleuze, 1994, p. 30). It is in this sense that the analogy always agrees on something else. In this sense, specific difference has little association with the internal difference that determines the greatest genera of the two different objects. Therefore, in the light of this viewpoint, difference is secondary; it is always subjected to something identical. In Deleuzes view, this kind of difference is not the greatest difference because it is restricted to a fixed model of the unity of difference and identity, which denies the ontological status of difference in the first place. Here the so-called greatest difference refers to difference-in-itself that concerns the conditions of change. Thus this kind of difference is primary; it is the first principle. It does not need to be mediated. Unity or identity must be apprehended as a secondary operation under which difference-in-itself is embodied into forms. Deleuze defines difference-in-itself as univocal being which is not a fixed substance or an abstract concept. Here he accepts Nietzsches idea that being is

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becoming: there is an internal self-differing within difference-in-itself, and difference-in-itself differs from itself in each form. Everything that exists is all the time in the course of becoming; it is never completed. But this internal difference reflects on distinct forms: it is multiple. In Deleuzes words, this univocal being is said, in a single and same sense, of all its individuating differences or intrinsic modalities (1994, p. 36). From this perspective, the concept of difference can be read as Deleuzes reinterpretation of Nietzsches concept of will to power: the production of differential elements or the conditions of the change. According to Deleuzes viewpoint, what a will wants is to affirm its difference, because difference is exactly its being, its genera. Moreover, in its essential relation with the other, a will makes its difference an object of affirmation. This means that difference does not come from some analogy; instead, it is being itself. A being is in its difference. For this reason, difference is the object of a practical affirmation inseparable from essence and constitutive of existence (Deleuze, 1981, p. 9). In contrast with the negative difference in dialectic, such affirmation of difference, or affirmative difference is in-itself and exists all the time, whether inconspicuous or evident. This kind of revaluation of difference-in-itself takes as its most important form the refutation of the Hegelian contradiction and dialectical difference, which, in Deleuzes eyes, represents the most extreme development of the logic of identity. In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze continues his anti-dialectical position that we have seen in Nietzsche and Philosophy. He criticizes Hegelian dialectics

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throughout this work. I have discussed this issue in detail in Chapter 1, so I will not spend too much time on his comments on dialectics unless they concern difference. According to Deleuze, it is true that Hegel is aware of the problem of difference. The criticism that Hegel addresses to his predecessors is that they stopped at a purely relative maximum without reaching the absolute maximum of difference (Deleuze, 1994, p. 44). However, Hegel misunderstands this maximal difference as contradiction. In the case of contradiction, it is that everything is subsumed to infinity in a greater opposition. Thus each time we think we have ended in a final or supreme identity, it re-opens a new contradiction. This movement shapes a dead end: each contrary must further expel its other, therefore expel itself, and become the other it expels (1994, p. 45). This is actually the logic of the identical, because in this circle, identity or unity becomes the sufficient condition to determine difference. 14 Moreover, contradiction mistakenly simplifies difference as opposition.15 In other words, presupposing difference within itself, opposition distorts difference. Deleuze rejects the synthesis of contradictory oppositions. In his view, difference cannot be reduced or traced to contradiction, because the mode of the former is much greater than that of the latter. The further consequence of the Hegelian logic of contradiction for him relates to the function of negation in the dialectical system. Dialectics mistakenly takes specific difference to be difference-in-itself and negates its
Eugene Holland points out in his essay Marx and Poststructuralist philosophies of Difference that the qualitative order of resemblances and the quantitative order of equivalences, which is described by Deleuze as the identities that suppress difference, is in fact codes and axioms. For this reason, Holland argues that the aim of Deleuzes philosophy of difference would be to salvage difference and to prevent its subordination to identity. 15 In terms of Hegelian contradiction, James Williams (2003) claims that the task of direction of philosophy, for Hegel, is to lift contradiction in ever wider cycles of real contradictions and syntheses (p. 71). 99
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individual being by way of false synthesis. In this sense, Deleuzes difference is something other than a discrepancy or otherness, because difference signifies affirmation. It is difference-in-itself. Having elaborated Deleuzes concept of difference, we can move to the next item, the concept of repetition. If the concept of difference-in-itself allows Deleuze to move away from the conventional understanding, then the concept of repetition allows him to develop his theory about the movement of the univocal being.16 Repetition, in Nietzsches term, is eternal return. Although Nietzsche uses this concept to argue against traditional philosophy of value, Deleuze employs repetition in a metaphysical sense. He defines repetition itself as the pure form of time (repetition-for-itself) and relates the concepts of difference and repetition to each other. With the concept of repetition-for-itself, Deleuze (1994) is able to explain how things are determined and what role difference plays in the process of determination. The eternal return does not cause the same and the similar to return, but is itself derived from a world of pure difference. Each series returns, not only in the others which imply it, but for itself, since it is not implied by the others without being in turn fully restored as that which implies them. The eternal return has no other sense but this: the absence of any assignable originin other words, the assignation of difference

As James Williams puts it (2003), the concept of repetition allows Deleuze to develop the mechanistic and materialist aspects of the concept of difference: it explains what difference is and how it emerges (p. 84). 100

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as the origin, which then relates different to different in order to make it (or them) return as such. In this sense, the eternal return is indeed the consequence of a difference which is originary, pure, synthetic and in-itself (which Nietzsche called will to power). If difference is in-itself, then repetition in the eternal return is the for-itself of difference. (p. 125) Repetition is not repetition of the identical but of difference. What is repeated in time is difference. But here the difference is not a certain detail or some concrete different phenomena or experiences; it is difference-in-itself. The repetition of difference constitutes the multiple of the One. However, this One is not a specific category of identity but the univocity of being: difference. It is by means of repetition that difference returns and takes new forms. Repetition does not allow the return of something that existed. On the contrary, each time difference-in-itself is repeated, it gets a new form. This is what Deleuze calls the mask (Deleuze, 1994, p. 18). Difference is covered by different masks in performances. Therefore, the mask is not only the form of difference, but also the mode of its existence and of its development. Just in this sense, Deleuze states that the mask is the true subject of repetition (1994, p. 18). However, the mask does not serve representation. Difference-in-itself cannot be represented, and it is always covered. Under each new mask, difference is signified. Here, we need to abandon the conventional way of representation to consider this process of signifying, because we cannot reach difference-in-itself by way of representative

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understanding. Considering the relation of repetition to difference, Deleuze defines difference as the movement of becoming as well as repetition. Because what repeats is differencethe univocal beingthen actually this being is never completed; it is always in the process of becoming. In other words, according to Deleuze, in repetition, nothing is ever an identity or a unity. On the contrary, there is only difference, not special difference, but difference-in-itself as the ontological One-Substance: masks are something new, everything keeps changing, and reality is a ceaseless process of becoming. This does not mean reality is not completed as being; it signifies that reality, as a constant changing movement, will never be fixed. Becoming is being itself; the being of difference is realized in each becoming (by repetition). In the case of the relationship of difference to repetition, repetition is selective: it does not concern any negativity; on the contrary, it is the affirmation of difference. In Nietzsche and Philosophy (1981), Deleuze uses a metaphor of the dice throw to describe the relation of the One to the multiple, of necessity to chance, of becoming to being: The dice which are thrown once are the affirmation of chance, the combination which they form on falling is the affirmation of necessity. Necessity is the affirmed chance in exactly the sense that being is affirmed of becoming and unity is affirmed of multiplicity (p. 26) Repetition is like the dice throw: it can affirm all of chance when the dice are

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thrown each time. Difference is produced by means of repetition. When we throw the dice, difference is not determined elsewhere; it arises internally. However, difference exists here as virtuality. Before each throw of the dice, difference is real but not actual: it is present as a virtual power. Nietzsche calls this the being of becoming; it is pure multiplicity. For Deleuze, true becoming has no end or goal outside itself; becoming is the only mode of being. Deleuzes dice throw of difference is played on the table of the field of immanence. This transcendental plane provides Deleuzes philosophy with a field where sense can be produced. On this plane, thinking takes place; difference arises. Nevertheless, this plane is not a geometric one in space; rather, it is transcendental, the locus of sense. Generally speaking, geometry is subject to empirical science; therefore, most simple ideas or prescriptions about a geometric plane cannot be applied to the immanent plane as such. Deleuzes difference is not associated with otherness or negativity; it intends to express differential moments, something new, something outside. The term outside here signifies neither the external aspect nor the geometric or experiential space beyond a boundary. In this discourse, outside and inside are no more than different locations of the same form in the abstract (still within the geometry) or concrete space, projecting and resonating with each other according to a certain reference frame in common. It is an absolute exterior, neither the opposition of any interior (in this sense it can shatter all the latent reference frames), nor according with any existing form. In other words, the outside as such is a thorough outside, outside without inside: it is

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outside all the systems, reference frames or rules of location, even outside all the outsides, outside I and the thought of I. These expressions seem ambiguous and unreadable. What does the outside without inside mean? Actually, it has surpassed all the systems and structures that are designed for evaluation, definition or location, and brought the logic of the empirical world into chaos. Such an outside is the alternative to the limit the limit of thinking and of representation. According to my understanding, Deleuzes interpreting difference-in-itself as something ontological is trying to transcend the limit of representation. This is the reason that I associate difference with the outside. The outside is not a wasteland; instead, it lies beyond all the limits: something indefinable, unrepresentative, and even unthinkable.17 However, it is able to provide fresh elements that have not been assimilated by representation. The theory of the outside as such is the most paradoxical part of Deleuzes philosophy. In effect, Deleuze aims to reveal how this unthinkable outside functions as the kernel and dynamic of thinking and how it helps thinking break away from representation, in order to become creative. In other words, according to Deleuze, what starts up thinking is not logic, not the Idea, not intellectuality, not perception but the unthinkable that is out of reach of all the intellectual abilities. How does this happen? As discussed in Chapter 2, the infinite movements of forces on the immanent plane create innumerable singular points and events. Thinking takes place in an encounter, an encounter among
Unthinkable is one of the central concepts of Heidegger. It means something that philosophers intend to point out but is out of the reach of expression. Here Deleuzian employment is much closer to its literal meaning: something beyond the reach of thinking, namely beyond the rational thinking that acts in accord with daily experience. 104
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forces, an encounter between a force and a body without organs (BwO) etc. Deleuze believes that sensation is the start of philosophy, because just in the sensation (especially shock) inspired by the encounter with an Other, the outside, one can break loose from the fetters of reality, experience, rationality, etc. and approach their limit. Thinking is not thinking of events; it itself is an event. Thus it has three characteristics. First, thinking is not the action or option of the subject; it is compelled in the first place. The emergence of thinking as an event is due to an encounter. Second, an encounter happens by chance. It is like a dice game. Before dice fall onto the table, no one can predict the result. Finally, thinking essentially implies difference, because thinking is motivated by the unthinkable from outside. This is why Deleuze uses the expression finding, encountering, stealing to describe the occurrence of thinking in a conversation with Claire Parnet (Deleuze & Parnet, 2002, p. 8). According to him, to encounter is to find, to capture, to steal it is that which creates not something mutual, but an asymmetrical block, an a-parallel evolution, nuptials, always outside and between (p. 7). The outside in itself implies difference; it is always beyond all the limits. Deleuzes philosophy can be seen as an ontology of difference that is proposed to be against all theories that advocate the primacy of identity, whether they are fascism or communism, majoritarian literature or Freudian psychoanalysis. According to Deleuze, just for this reason, differencenot dialectical negation can achieve authentic multiplicities. He uses the term outside to stress a kind of

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absolute difference. However, the outside as such is not something like substantiality (in whatever form) that functions as a source of every concrete difference, in the way that God may be said to be the source of Good. On the contrary, the outside is simultaneously abstract and concrete; it is simultaneously beyond all the planes and within every single event. In every single event, the outside creates something new by way of an encounter of forces. In the moment of encounter of two objects or things, a certain attribute belonging to neither of the two is brought forth: it does not change the essence of the two, and it rests only on the surface of the encounter for that specific moment. This process is the emergence of the new.

3.2 Adornos Nonidentity

This is not the first time that the concept of nonidentity appears in my text. In the discussion of the previous two chapters on Adorno (in particular, negative dialectics in Chapter 1 and the priority of object in Chapter 2), I have outlined the sense and the function of this concept. In this part, I focus my exposition on the role that the concept of nonidentity plays in Adornos criticism of capitalism. Following Marx, Adorno focuses on two phenomena that are presided over by the principle of identity: the exchange of commodity and the exchange of labor for wage. The problem of these forms of exchange lies in their inequality in the name of equality. What Adorno does is more than such a classical Marxian analysis. He
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claims that the unbalance between equality and inequality is caused by the principle of identity that produces fetishism by assuming a prevalent identity. At this point, nonidentity is proposed by him to resolve the problem. Nonidentity is a concept that is used by Adorno to deny the immediate identity between the subject and the object, and between thought and reality. From the composition of the word, the affix non- obviously signifies a negation of identity. In the previous chapter, I pointed out that Adorno rejects identity because of its ignorance of difference. Adorno uncovers the extent to which the concept of identity is formed by analyzing the idea of identity in the process of knowledge-acquisition.18 He uses the term identity thinking to refer to the form of thinking that has accepted the primacy of identity. 19 And he attempts to demonstrate the relation of power and domination in modern society by revealing the coercive mechanism under the shaping of the idea of identity. In doing so, he tries to fight against this kind of coercion with the concept of nonidentity. He believes that the concept of nonidentity can contribute to thorough freedom in thought by introducing difference into it. However, Adorno acknowledges that philosophy has no direct access to nonidentity. Under capitalist conditions, thought is able to achieve nonidentity only through the conceptual criticisms of false identifications. Just for this reason, we have to understand the idea of nonidentity through criticism of capitalist society.

See Chapter 2, the section entitled Adornos Priority of the Object. For Adorno, such identity of thought with its object presupposes some form of Fichtean or Hegelian idealism. As Espen Hammer (2006) puts it, it can only be anticipated from the standpoint of redemption, and not from within history itself (p. 32). This is why we can understand Adornos concept of nonidentity from the historical-social angle.
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Adorno defines capitalist society as an administered world (1973b, p. 19) whose principal characteristic is dominationdomination by human, within human, over human.20 Strictly speaking, Adorno is a post-Marxian rather than a classical Marxian, for he challenges some of Karl Marxs propositions about capitalism and inherits Lukcss and Max Webers approaches to a great extent. He employs a more precise term, late capitalism to take the place of the more general expression of Marxism, capitalism. This term refers to the highly developed stage of capitalism in which the mechanism of the market has been perfected and domination has been enforced. Consequently, his critique of capitalist society goes much further than that of Marx.21 His theoretical effort can be seen as an attempt to find a way to realize freedom that can break away from the administered world. According to Adorno, from the dimension of philosophy and epistemology, the principle of identity has become a kind of unconsciousness in knowing. People apply it to thinking without considering it consciously. However, in the field of social life, the real system of identity is not merely an ideal matter but a conscious or unconscious reflection of real mechanism. In the capitalist reality, the mechanism is the totality of identity produced by the exchange value in the marketplace. Different from extrinsic identity in feudalism, identity in capitalism is no longer an extrinsic coercion but an unconscious structure made of subject and object. It is a spontaneous and unforced constitution. Identity at the service of
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This part is commonly considered as a critique of Lukcss theory of reification. Martin Jay (1984) holds the opinion that it is due to the negative form of Adornos concept of nonidentity that he had abandoned the confidence in the possibility of human emancipation which underlay the Marxist tradition in all its forms. I think this is one of the notable distinctions between Adorno and Lukcs. 108

the market is homogeneous quantitative money, whereas what defies subsumption under identity in reality is the use value (Adorno, 1973b, p. 11). In other words, the market economy is the real foundation of the contemporary logic of identity, because all incomparable subjects in the marketplace are identified through barter trade. This does not mean that Adorno fails to grasp the difference between commodity exchange and barter trade; rather, his point is that the subject is converted to something exchangeable in the process of exchange. The value of a subject is measured by the price of his labor, the wage. In the exchange for commodities, different use value is abstracted into measurable price; by the same token, the concrete labor of the subject is replaced by abstract labor. In doing so, the subject has lost his dignity as a human being: he is no longer evaluated by his talent or creativity, or whatever attribute he has, but by a standard that is external to him, money. Consequently, the principle of identity has been realized in the form of money (or capital). This tool, invented by human subjects, has given rise to domination over the subject. As a result, the market economy succeeds in enforcing the principle of identity through ostensible exchange. This is why Adorno says that, a world that is objectively set for totality will not release the human consciousness (1973b, p. 17). Although this criticism of exchange remains Marxian to some degree, Adorno has gone a little further than Marx: Marx only points out the fact that the incomparable subjects have been turned into comparable currency, whereas Adorno uncovers its root, the principle of identity that reigns in the marketplace.

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Adornos criticism of fetishism shows the enslavement by the principle of identity. In fact, it should be noted that he explicitly introduces Hegelian logic right here: the exchange in the market economy presupposed a notion of totality, as well as the false reconciliation or identity between the general (the system of cultural exchange or capitalism as such) and the particular (the product and its consumption) within this (false) totality (Hammer, 2006, p. 76). Such a logic operates in the fetishism of commodity that is criticized by Marx. Adorno reads Marx as a Hegelian materialist whose critique of capitalism includes a critique of the ideologies. For Adorno, the most important thesis is what Marx called the fetishism of the commodity.22 According to Marx, it is inverted power that dominates commodity producers. Its developed and highest form is the fetishism of money, which transforms into the fetishism of capital in capitalist society. All these forms of fetishism imply a kind of misreading of matter (such as the commodity, money or capital) that is deemed to possess a kind of mysterious enchantment to proliferate. According to Adorno, it is in fact a misreading of the social attributes of matter as its natural attributes. People treat it as if it were a neutral object, with a life of its own, which directly relates to other commodities, in independence from the human interactions that actually sustain all commodities. Therefore, the fetishism of the commodity is domination over human being by matterit is a kind of alienation that should be sublated in the advanced social

22

Karl Marx first used this expression in Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. 110

form. To describe the identity of concepts, Adorno creates another term that is also influenced by Marx, fetishism of concepts. Non-conceptuality is the opposite of fetishism of concepts, not the opposite of concepts. The employment of fetishism here implies a kind of improper displacement having taken place. Concepts are not what Adorno fights against. He never ignores the rational fruits produced by human beings. Moreover, he states that all concepts (including philosophical ones) refer to non-conceptualities, which implies an empiricist sense.23 In other words, concepts are not self-sufficient, for they come from reality. No concept is in-itself and for-itself. In this sense, we even can make a direct claim that nonidentity is inherent in concepts. That is why it is unreasonable for concepts to be absolutized as the primary element. Fetishism of concepts is regarded as a violence of identity because it swallows the whole living objective world by reducing it to logical propositions or abstract concepts with the illusory infinity it believes it possesses. Marx aims his critique against bourgeois social scientists who simply describe the capitalist economy. According to Marx, bourgeois economists necessarily ignore the exploitation intrinsic in capitalist production. The exchange value of the commodity conceals the difference of their use value. In the marketplace, every commodity is exchangeable. The principle of equipollent exchange creates a surface of fairness. However, Marx thinks that people fail to

23

See Chapter 2, the section entitled Adornos Priority of the Object. 111

understand that capitalist production, for all its surface freedom and fairness, must extract surplus value from the labor of the working class. Adornos acceptance of the Marxian criticism of the commodity is mediated by Lukcs. Influenced by Max Webers theory of rationalization, Lukcs argues that the influence of capitalist economy is not restricted to the field of economics. Rather, its principle has spread to the whole society. In a broad sense, commodity exchange has become the central organizing principle for all parts of society. This allows the fetishism of the commodity to permeate all social institutions and academic disciplines, including philosophy. Reification refers to the fact that commodity has invaded all of human life in capitalist society. The process of reification is in fact that of objectification, whereby the product created by human beings has betrayed humanity. Reification is the outcome of the double functions of capitalism. One is impersonalization, which attaches human workers to machines; the other is rationalization, which advocates effective control such as the Taylor system. Both of these functions deprive human beings of their agency, transforming them into an accessory of the whole mechanism. Taking the example of production, workers are reified into the ability to provide labor, and products into abstract labor. It is reification that makes capitalist production possible. In this sense, it can be seen as the structural problem of capitalism. Moreover, it has become the key role whose principle governs the mind of the human being. Accordingly, Lukcs (1971) interprets reification as one of the forms of alienation that he believes will be overcome by the working class.

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Adorno partly shares Lukcss concern with reification and alienation, but he never agrees with Lukcs on the point that the revolutionary working class could overcome reification. For him, the greatest question is why do unfairness, slavery and human suffering persist although it is probable that the conditions of modern society seem to eliminate them? In other words, the development of history seems to strengthen this situation. For example, advanced technology does not bring forth the freedom of workers from labor but fetters them more firmly. The root cause, Adorno says, lies in how capitalist relations of production have come to dominate society as a whole, leading to extreme, albeit often invisible, concentrations of wealth and power (1973b, pp. 18992). Society has come to be organized around the production of exchange values for the sake of producing exchange values. Nobody can escape from the marketplace. The principle of exchange has come to dominate the whole of society: The barter principle, the reduction of human labor to the abstract universal concept of average working hours, is fundamentally akin to the principle of identificationIt is through barter that nonidentical individuals and performances become commensurable and identical. The spread of the principle imposes on the whole world an obligation to become identical, to become total. (1973b p. 146) Because Adorno describes capitalist society as absolute identity that has produced pervasive domination within the whole society, it is not odd that he puts

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forward the concept of nonidentity as a basis for his resistance. On the philosophical level, Adorno criticizes not only the dualism between alienated subject and reified object but simultaneously the identity between subject and object. The concept of nonidentity does not signify an entity called nonidentity; on the contrary, it intends to reconstruct a new type of dialectical relationship between subject and object, which eliminates the dominant law in capitalist society. The proposition of nonidentity marks the difference between Adornos materialism and Hegels idealism. Adorno never denies Hegelian speculative identity between thought and being, between subject and object, and between reason and reality, but he doubts that this identity has been achieved in a positive fashion. According to Adorno, dialectics is the only way to rescue nonidentity from the world of identity, negative dialectics. What is mistaken previously is not dialectics, but its mode, its affirmative character. As mentioned, in capitalist society, under the function of the exchange principle, human thought deviates from its natural process, being reversed. Bankrupt in the ability of agency, human thought has been imposed on a certain frame of system of general identity. Consequently, in achieving identity and unity, thought projects this frame upon objects, suppressing or ignoring their differences and diversity. This affirmative process of identifying, in Adornos eyes, is alienated. Thus he hopes he can rectify such a reversed process in emphasizing the negative character of dialectics. That

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is why Adorno calls for a negative dialectics and why he rejects the affirmative character of Hegelian dialectics (1973b, pp. 14361). Although Adorno shares Marxs view that the fetishism of the commodity is the central principle of capitalism, his focus is not the economic exploitation of workers but the intrinsic domination over human beings and their thought. His critique of capitalist ideology hence has become immanent critique rather than resentment toward an unfair economic phenomenon. Negative Dialectics and nonidentity is the method to resist the universality of capitalism. With regard to the idea of nonidentity, Adorno actually follows a Kantian rather than a Hegelian view that the object eludes assimilation by identity. His insistence on nonidentity signifies an attempt to break away from the identity and totality produced by concepts. As a redemptive strategy, nonidentity brings utopian elements into Adornos criticism of modern society. And it makes free thinking possible. Adorno never regards Marxism as a method of cognition that could lead to a program of action. His debt to Marx is clearly restricted to the negative level of critique of capitalist ideology. He believes that the opportunity to realize Marxs political ideal was missed. And there is no longer the possibility of revolution. Lukcss class consciousness, for Adorno, is not the subject of action; it merely creates a negative way to freedom: to think differently. In the practical sense, although he never gives up hope for social transformation, his struggle can merely remain at the level of critique, or be limited to the field of art or aesthetics.

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3.3 Internal Difference: Against Representation and the Identical

The previous two sections have specified the concepts of difference and nonidentity. I show in this part how the pair of concepts converges at the point of being against representation, which is believed by Deleuze and Adorno to have enslaved thinking. Deleuze shares with Adorno the idea of resisting the world of identity. They agree that the logic of absolute identity is the radical cause that leads to Fascism. On methodology, they both turn to empiricism: Deleuze to transcendental empiricism and Adorno to historical empiricism. However, Adorno contributes to the meta-critique of epistemology by employing the concept of nonidentity. In his critique of identity, Adorno always keeps his eyes on reality. And he describes capitalist society as absolute identity that works out pervasive domination within the whole society. The capitalist economy of market and the role of exchange is the reification of identical logic. Deleuze chooses another way. He does not restrict himself to the general conception of experience and the conventional relationship between the subject and the object. He deploys a series of concepts such as forces, singularities, and the planes of immanence to constitute a metaphysical framework. Following Kantian usage, then, Deleuze and Guattari call their critique of psychoanalytic metaphysics a transcendental critique: it will proceed by distinguishing
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immanent from metaphysical operations in the unconscious. In Anti-Oedipus (1983), Deleuze and Guattari make a historical analysis of the different social systems. It is not Marxian historical critique but to demonstrate that Being is a delusion that represses desire and thereby traps it in the snare of representation: the goal of Deleuze and Guattari is to release desire from Being so it can enter more freely into Becoming that is the source of the new. Freedom is freedom to produce the new. Hence, for Deleuze and Guattari the relation of desire is in fact an affirmation of difference: it manifests itself only in creation or production. Accordingly, history can be understood as the chance that the development of productive forces beyond capitalism and the expansion of will-to-power beyond nihilism will lead to greater freedom rather than enduring servitude. Their substitution of schizoanalysis for psychoanalysis is to outline a new economy of the libidinal and the social that is capable of producing difference. This theoretical goal conforms to Deleuzes emphasis on the concept of difference in his early years. Advancing difference to an ontological being, he intends to challenge the traditional image of thought which is produced by means of representation. There are several important similarities between Deleuzes concept of difference and Adornos concept of nonidentity. In the first instance, both of them indicate a moment of freedom. However, they are to be read in different sense.24 Deleuze describes how difference is internal to every singularity of being and how every singularity has multiple and differentiated elements. Adorno works another
24

As I elaborated in the first part of this chapter, Deleuze uses the term internal difference in Difference and Repetition to refer to difference in itself, which is opposed to specific difference. However, Adornos nonidentity does not imply an ontological sense; on the contrary, it is based on the criticism of the epistemological principle. 117

way: his concept of nonidentity has no relation to the nature of being; rather, it is to reveal the disparity of the relation between the subject and the object. The reason I term the common ground of the two concepts internal difference is that both of them can be characterized as highlighting heterogeneous elements that are outside identity, for it is able to pierce into the hierarchy that results from identity and accordingly to free thought from identity thinking. For this reason, I classify both as philosophers of difference. Both Deleuze and Adorno resist the primacy of identity that results in representation; however, they do not deny the medium of identity. Deleuze insists on the priority of difference over identity, whereas Adorno points out the positive function of the principle of identity in thinking. For Deleuze, modern society still suppresses difference and alienates people from what they can do. To affirm reality, which is a flux of change and difference, we must overturn established identities and so become all that we can becomethough we cannot know what that is in advance. The practical way to freedom is to create. However, here freedom is not equated with the liberty to move about and pursue ones interests within a given social formation; rather, it concerns the conditions of change for the social structure itself. Already in Difference and Repetition, Deleuze associates difference with the conditions for the production of the new. Thus, to emphasize difference is in fact to free

thought from fixeds and territories; it is the freedom of a prison break from the fate designated by reason. Through the concepts of difference and nonidentity, both Deleuze and

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Adorno express their protestation against the world of representation. To put it another way, it is the way in which both thinkers pursue a radical line of inquiry into the work done by representation that might reveal an interesting conjunction between Adorno and Deleuze. This is actually the rhythm or the common ground behind their incompatible characters, the way they engage the object. Deleuze takes the world of representation to be the outcome of the primacy of identity. Thus the mode of representation distorts difference and suppresses it. Against such logic, he proposes internal difference which never falls into the four representative forms of identity (identity, similarity, analogy, and opposition). For him, the mode of representation cannot touch difference-in-itself; neither does it touch the ground of life and thought, because it organizes thought according to a series of fixed patterns and standards that are subject to some form of identity. Difference-in-itself is thus the complete overthrow of hierarchic, organic thought in philosophy, politics, aesthetics, and ethics, as well as in society at large. In Deleuzes own terms, the accentuation of difference-in-itself is a question of producinga movement capable of affecting the mind outside of all representation; it is a question of making movement itself a work, without interposition; of substituting direct signs for mediate representation; of inventing vibrations, rotations, whirlings, gravitations, dances or leaps which directly touch the mind (1994, p. 8).

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The image of thought is produced by the means of representation. By the image of thought, Deleuze means a pre-philosophical series of presuppositions which structures both the understanding of thinking and the character of the conceptual production which ensues on that basis. For this reason, the world of representation is unable to understand difference-in-itself, because it only evaluates difference through what is represented, namely, specific difference. In contrast, repetition-for-itself indicates the essence and the interiority of movement. Deleuze makes use of the theory of theater to describe the relation of difference and repetition: in the empty space, there are costumes (signs) and marks through which actors play a role. Here, what is repeated is the condition of repetition (movement) with which something new is to be produced (Adorno, 1994, p. 10). The theory of theatre is proposed to be against Hegelian dialectics. According to Deleuzes interpretation of representation, the function of which is to present, not to dramatize the Idea, Hegelian dialectics is still representative. Hegel has made two mis-substitutions. He proposes an abstract movement of concepts instead of a movement of the physics and psyche. And, he substitutes the abstract mediation of the particular to the concept in general for the true relation of the singular and the universal in the Idea. On the contrary, difference-in-itself and repetition-for-itself resolve the problems. With the movement of repetition, difference exists as becoming. Adornos rejection of the primacy of identity can be found in his criticism of positivism and instrumental reason. In Dialectic of Enlightenment, Adorno and

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Horkheimer offer a radically different account of enlightenment from those of humanistic philosophers. The book presents a critical analysis of the instrumentalization of reason that plays an important role in the thought of enlightenment. For Adorno and Horkheimer, instrumental reason and positivism are the ways by which objects are reified and represented. It establishes an equation whose equivalence is only related to the special function of the objects, not to their immanent properties. This kind of unreasonable representative equation is actually the blockage of the commutative mediation: it prevents the subject from permeating the object. As a result, the world is conceived of as identical with its representation by instrumental reason. Such a representation produced by the principle of identity is so conservative that it can do nothing but support and justify the status quo. And the conservative position, which is unable to challenge anything old, thereby suppresses the new. Adornos concept of nonidentity explores the extent to which we can reject representation. The less identity can be assumed between subject and object, the more contradictory are the demands made upon the cognitive subject, upon its unfettered strength and candid self reflection (1973b, p. 31) The concept of nonidentity emphasizes the priority of the object and the agency of the subject, refusing to represent the object in a simple manner of instrumentalization. In this sense, nonidentity is the source that is pivotal to oppose representation and to produce the new. The new wills nonidentity (Adorno, 1984, p. 33). It is in the sense of anti-representation that Deleuzes concept of difference

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and Adornos concept of nonidentity present their pursuit of the new and the way to free thought. It is from this standpoint we could consider their theories a debate about a common issue. The distinction between the pair of concepts reveals their opposite philosophical positions to a great degree. Then, a question arises: how to realize difference and nonidentity? In the next chapter I discuss another pair of concepts that are proposed by those philosophers as providing the means to realize the logic of internal difference.

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Chapter 4
Rhizome and Constellation: New Modes of Production

The determination that relations are external to their terms is the condition of possibility for a solution to the empiricist problem: how can a subject transcending the given be constituted in the given? Ian Buchanan In Chapter 3 I discussed a pair of concepts difference and nonidentity. The logic of internal difference shared by them constructs the common ground of Deleuze and Adorno that demonstrates their rejection of the primacy of identity and of the hierarchical relation among concepts caused by the former. Then, a question emerges: how to produce difference or nonidentity? To resolve this problem, each philosopher proposes a logic of relation that is less a relational arrangement than an open model that begins with the fact of heterogeneity, rhizome and constellation, respectively. In other words, we need to consider the concepts of rhizome and constellation in the light of the question. Using these concepts, they intend to establish an open model of relationship within which no single part has primacy over the others. Moreover, within the model, different parts interact, mediate, and finally define a reticular field. This new type of loosely defined field challenges the paradigm of a hierarchical and linear relation.

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Deleuze and Adorno, respectively, focus on the means by which difference or nonidentity is produced in the modes of non-hierarchical relations. The modes of rhizome and constellation in fact plot the possibility that the subject, which is itself constituted in the given, can transcend the given. I bring Deleuzes concept of rhizome and Adornos concept of constellation together because I believe the point where they converge signifies the conception of difference once more. Moreover, these two concepts are used to describe the modes of production that are capable of producing difference. However, apart from the common logic of internal difference, there are great distinctions between the models indicated by each concept: they have particular emphasis on different aspects of relation among the parts within the mode. These distinctions reveal the philosophers different opinions of utopia. In this chapter, I begin with several similarities between Deleuzes and Adornos philosophy on the basis of a comparative study of these two concepts.

4.1 Rhizome: Construction of the Field of Signification

The concept of rhizome is developed by Deleuze and Guattari in their co-authored book A Thousand Plateaus to figure a model of non-hierarchical relationships. In the introduction to this book, the authors classify three types of books among which rhizome is brought forth to oppose the mode of root-tree or of radicle. As Deleuze and Guattari write, A rhizome as subterranean stem is
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absolutely different from roots and radicles (1987, p. 6). Contrary to the mode of root-tree or of radicles spiritual reality (1987, p. 4) of binary logic, a rhizome as an open-ended system emphasizes the nomadic character of knowledge and life. A rhizome, biologically non-centered and all-directional, is a critical alternative of root-tree. In its development, it does not follow any fixed mode or track. Nor is it recognized as a particular organ (for example, a root, leaf, branch, or trunk of a tree); it may be this or that bulb or tuber, but only bulb or tuber. Bulbs and tubers are rhizomes. Although they are specific individuals, they are homogeneous: they are all the same in the function and the way of generation. Their differences are only due to their places. In this sense, a rhizome develops upon a plane: it stretches, unfolds, and radiates all-directional lines, shaping a network. This is how a seed of grass can develop into a meadow. But confronting a meadow, you cannot tell its origin or margin. In contrast, a tree, no matter how tall it grows, is always at a certain point, unless it is replanted, but the new locus is still a point. At the same time, all the organs of a tree are recognizable in its growth. You will never confuse a root of a tree with its leaves. The growth of a tree is a centered and standard process that ends in shaping a hierarchical structure. For Deleuze and Guattari, the rhizome is a figure that reveals the inclination of rejecting totalization in its organization. The second volume of Capitalism and Schizophrenia, A Thousand Plateaus, like the first volume, Anti-Oedipus, expatiates on the process of desiring-production which challenges the mode that is advocated by Western traditional state philosophy. According to Deleuze and

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Guattaris understanding, the metaphor of root-tree is deeply rooted in Western thought and culture that insists that knowledge as a kind of mirror-image about reality is organized on the principles of systematization and of hierarchy. It is at this point that they find the theory of representation problematic. On the ground of so-called reality (the root), all the reflections have formed an arborescent structure that aims at self-identification. This structure strives hard to confirm the Oneness (the root) behind the multiple appearances (the branches and the leaves). The tree and the root inspire a sad image of thought that is forever imitating the multiple on the basis of a centered or segmented higher unityEven if the links themselves proliferate, as in the radicle system, one can never get beyond the One-Two, and the fake multiplicitiesArborescent systems are hierarchical systems with centers of significance and subjectification, central automata like organized memories. (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 16) From the standpoint of generalization and essentialism, such a root-tree framework of knowledge has shown its potential to eliminate the multiple that is supposed to derive from the One and is subject to the One. An arborescent structure such as essentialism grows in the light of the dual logic. This logic is also the immanent law according to which objects are recognized and knowledge is acquired. A root-tree indicates a representative pattern that molds thinking in a dualist way. But this is not what Deleuze and Guattari want. In an interview on A

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Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze expresses his favor for Maurice Blanchots writing style as an open system. He defines a rhizome as one of the open systems (1995, p. 31). In his understanding, an open system is a system of concepts in which concepts are related to their conditions, not to their own natures. In such a system, there is no inherent hierarchical order or fixed pattern among the concepts; instead, the relation among them lies in their conditions. For Deleuze, concepts and their conditions are the objects that philosophy is supposed to study. In such an open system, all the elements interact. But among them, the linear law of causation does not work. A rhizome has numerous lines and ways that lead in all directions. However, these multiple lines and ways are not derived from the One. All of them are becoming. Deleuze and Guattaris definition of a system of rhizome stresses its multiple dimensions (1987, p. 21): It is comprised not of units but of dimensions, or rather directions in motion. It has neither beginning nor end, but always a middle (milieu) from which it grows and which it overspills. It constitutes linear multiplicities with n dimensions having neither subject nor object, which can be laid out on a plane of consistency, and from which the one is always subtracted (n-1). These dimensions determine the nature of a multiplicity. As a result, the multiplicity changes in nature with the change of the former. The dimensions of a rhizome are constructed by lines, only lines, lines of segmentarity and stratification and the line of flight and deterritorialization (Deleuze & Guattari,

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1987, p. 21). Actually, the topic of lines interests Deleuze so much that he insists lines are prior to two-dimensional plane or three-dimensional solid, because lines have no priority among themselves (Deleuze, 1995, p. 32). Being against hierarchical order, Deleuze speaks of a rhizome as an open system that emphasizes its undifferentiated character. Lines are pure conditions. Because they do not arrange the deployment according to a certain priority, only linkage and connection create the new. A rhizome works on the principles of connection and heterogeneity (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 7). These are the first two principles with which Deleuze and Guattari define a rhizome. In fact, a rhizome is a map made of lines; it is a set of different lines that function synchronously. Any point of a rhizome connects other points. A line is the bridge that connects any two points. The emphasis of lines is actually emphasis of a kind of productive relation. In a multiplicity [a rhizome] what counts are not the terms of elements, but what there is between, the between, a set of relations which are not separable from each other. Every multiplicity grows from the middle, like the blade of grass or the rhizome. (Deleuze & Parnet, 2002, p. viii) Connection constitutes the network of a rhizome. The nodes of a rhizome send out roots and shoots that establish the new dimensions with conjugation and rupture between them, like flows. The venations of a rhizome are the deterritorialized flows. Unlike the bifurcate lines of a

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root-tree that always delimits the dimension of the new production as a sub-field, the lines of a rhizome form new circles of convergence in which new points are located outside the limits and in other directions (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 11). In doing this, lines constitute new dimension (n+1). This new dimension is not another plane that exists in juxtaposition with the established plane (n-dimensional territory); it is rather a transcending of the established one. In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari make use of lines to refer to constituents that constitute things and events. They classify lines into three types: rigid lines, supple lines, and lines of flight. They differ from each other because each type of line constructs a particular spatiality or subject. To build a rhizome is to connect and to create lines in breaking other points of convergence or connection. In this sense, the organization of a rhizome is a movement of conjugation, rupture and blockage. Dimensions are always in motion, because a line of flight is immanent in the dimensions that a rhizome has established. This is why Deleuze and Guattari say that the rhizome pertains to a map that must be produced, constructed, a map that is always detachable, connectable, reversible, modifiable, and has multiple entryways and exits and its own lines of flight (1987, p. 21). Lines of flight are liberatory escapes from the forces of repression and stratification. They are everywhere in a rhizome and are available to go across the borderline at any time. Therefore, a line of flight can be

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understood as a means of approaching the outside. Because they are able to lead in any direction, they create absolute heterogeneity beyond the limits of the established. I call this kind of heterogeneity absolute because it can neither be ranked nor be reduced to any superior. In a rhizome, all the lines and nodes are undifferentiated. In the sense of priority, they are independent; in the sense of reality, they are related. There are not any hierarchical laws or orders among them. Nonetheless, it is this undifferentiation that results in absolute heterogeneity. A rhizome is a multiplicity. Opposing the pseudo-multiplicity of an arborescent structure that is constructed by the binary logic, a rhizomatic network affirms pure difference (heterogeneity) through the lines of flight. Multiplicity designates a set of lines or dimensions which are irreducible to one another (Deleuze & Parnet, 2002, p. vii). It is a loose system in which no principles other than connection and multiplicity play a key role. A multiplicity is made of pure becoming that keeps developing new connections. In this sense, a multiplicity has no history. Moreover, it has neither subject nor object, only determinations, magnitudes, and dimensions that cannot increase in number without the multiplicity changing in nature (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987, p. 8). This means that multiplicity does not mean an increase in number but the extension of magnitudes and dimensions. It is actually a flat plane of consistency that occupies all the dimensions. A multiplicity is a multiple machine rather than a collection of

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individuals. This multiple machine is altogether different from the binary machine that produces the structure of a root-tree as a formalization of order. It produces the multiple by way of deterritorialization. To put it another way, the development of a rhizome as a multiplicity does not reproduce the bifurcations or sub-systems; rather, it always tries to break the boundary of the established and go beyond it again and again. In Deleuze and Guattaris terms, Multiplicities are defined by the outside: by the abstract line, the line of flight or deterritorialization according to which they change in nature and connect with other multiplicities (1987, p. 8). Moreover, this kind of breach is available in any direction. It is not a passive revolt against a repressive force or order but a positive pursuit of freedom and heterogeneity. Hence, for a rhizome, the principles of heterogeneity and of multiplicity are intertwined; they cannot be separated from each other. The principle of heterogeneity is immanent in the principle of multiplicity, and the principle of multiplicity is the ground of that of heterogeneity. Deleuze and Guattari use the term rhizome to signify different acentered lines that constitute a multiplicity.25 It is necessary for a rhizome to produce or construct a map that has numerous entrances and exits and the lines of flight. The function of deterritorialization is realized in a rhizome by the way of lines of flight. The outside is not a specific field that exists
Deleuze and Guattaris (D&G) theory of rhizome has attracted much attention. Some scholars criticize it for its ambiguity. For example, Dan Clinton claims that D&Gs essay on rhizome is rather an ecstatic elaboration of a metaphor than an argument (Rhizome, Theories of Media, winter 2003). According to Clinton, such a pure and static description presents a statement of identity that violates D&Gs original intention. In contrast, other thinkers commend rhizome theory. In particular, Patricia Pisters provides a real example of a rhizome: the brain (See her The Matrix of Visual Culture: Working with Deleuze in Film Theory). 131
25

outside the established in distance. Rather, it is an absolute outside that is able to penetrate and erode the established. The outside follows a logic of difference. Difference here does not indicate conceptual difference or comparative difference but the internal difference that distinguishes the object from itself. It is this kind of difference-in-itself that constantly refreshes the established. Therefore, a rhizome is a system that is open to difference that is immanent in itself. The difference enters the established field through the rupture and the conjugation of lines, or through the verification of dimensions. However, once the difference has succeeded in entering the system, or in other words, once a line of flight is caught, the difference or the line of flight is absorbed into the previous system and produces one that is different from the former. Then, new differences are brought into being as a result, which is called an excess or a supplement by C. V. Boundas (2007). Boundas indicates that this kind of excess can nourish new deterritorialized movement and release new lines of flight. In Deleuzes terms, the outside or the absolute difference in itself is becoming as the virtual. It is impossible to exhaust. It relates the individual, whether the singularities in a rhizome or a rhizome itself, to external forces on a larger scale. A rhizome is a changing system in which the virtual keeps on penetrating and invading the actual. In a rhizome, the virtual provided by a line of flight continuously influences the actual. As a result, a rhizome is

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less a fixed being than a becoming that produces conditions for change. Moreover, it is this action of penetration and invasion that endows a rhizomatic structure with vigor and fluidity. A rhizome provides a locus for desire to move freely. Or, a rhizome is a mechanism that liberates desire from the given. According to the politics of desiring-machine that Deleuze and Guattari propose in Anti-Oedipus, a rhizome is a full body without organs: it is productive, but not petrified in its organization (1983, pp. 89). To put it differently, a full body without organs engages intensities within a rhizome in a pattern of endless production of self-same pattern. In an acentered structure like a rhizome, desires are not restricted as they are in a root-tree as a totality. Desires have obtained the power for desiring which they are deprived of in a repressive system. However, once a rhizome becomes arborified, its all over, no desire stirs; for it is always by the rhizome that desire moves and produces (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 14). The Internet is a real example of a rhizome. It works through connection and it is open to expansion. In the Internet, a point can connect to any other point so that the whole network forms an acentered framework: it cannot be reduced to the One or the multiple. However, it is non-hierarchical connection that makes the production of heterogeneity possible. Since it is non-signifying, the Internet functions as a full body without organs where desire can freely flow. The human brain is another example. In contrast with the visual

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operation of the eye, which assumes the identity between the object and its image, the brain operates as a screen: it allows flattering multiplicity to freely flow and combine on it (Pisters, 2003). A rhizome is actually an assemblage of desiring-machines that constructs a logic of conjugation and. This kind of logic, pursuing a nomad and non-hierarchical state, manages to challenge the essentialism of Western traditional science. The latter intends to affirm the constant through a determinate form. In contrast, nomad science aims to remain in an endlessly changing state with the concepts of force and flow, intensity and speed. From this perspective, a rhizome is a movement rather than an entity, penetrating all of the dimensions and traversing every boundary. Both knowledge and thinking are less representation of the empirical world or the noumenon than the production of a rhizome. Thinking is always on the way; it is becoming. Therefore, to study a rhizome is not to ask a question such as what will it produce? but to find how becoming takes place. Methodologically, Deleuze and Guattaris philosophy of rhizome rejects traditional research methods such as hermeneutics or phenomenology or even analytic philosophy that does nothing but seek the ultimate being or presence behind the surface. Philosophy of rhizome is pragmatic in the sense that it always focuses on the question of functions and conditions on the basis of relations between singularities. We can make sense of this point with the example of language. Language, being

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rhizomatic, works only through the connection of words and phrases: semiotic chains of every nature are connected to very diverse modes of coding (biological, political, economic, etc.) that bring into play not only different regimes of signs but also states of things of differing status (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 7). In language, multiplicity and heterogeneity are merely related to the conditions of the connection between semiotic chains.

4.2 Constellation: A Utopia of Nonidentity

Constellation is a term Adorno borrows from Walter Benjamin. In Benjamins text, constellation is an alternative model of history that is distinguished from the linear model of progress. Similar to modernist montage, constellation links past events among themselves, or it links past to present. Constellation as an image of historical development indicates the transition from mythology into a true idea of history. However, Adorno makes use of this concept in a sense partly different from Benjamins. He does not restrict it to the field of history, extending it to refer to the correlations between phenomena or concepts. Adorno agrees with Benjamin that the relation between elements rejects a totalizing force. He understands a constellation as a dialectical model. In a constellation, elements do not indicate what they express; instead, they frame a network or a space where changing elements are juxtaposed without
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reduction to a centre. Taking the example of a constellation of stars, stars co-exist in harmony. No one is more important than others; they frame the figure jointly. The concern for this concept is a key feature of Adornos philosophy, going throughout his career. Being a metaphorical term, constellation signifies a juxtaposed rather than integrated cluster of changing elements that resist reduction to a common denominator, essential core, or generative first principle (Jay, 1984, pp. 1415). As one of the models that incarnate negative dialectics, constellation emerges as a weapon against the hierarchical order and totality of the philosophical systems of concepts. It is constructed according to principles of differentiation, nonidentity, and active transformation. Unlike Benjamins timeless, metaphysical

constellations, Adorno describes constellation as a colony that is composed out of historically actual particulars (1973b, p. 164). In Adorno, the spatial character of constellations can account for their anti-linear tensions between parts. The model of constellation releases the thought from a fixedly given pattern; it inaugurates a number of possibilities: Cognition of the object in its constellation is cognition of the process stored in the object. As a constellation theoretical thought circles the concept it would like to unseal, hoping that it will fly open like the lock of a well-guarded safe-deposit box: in response, not to a single key or a single number, but to a combination of numbers. (p. 163)

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In a constellation as a pattern of thought, a concept is not treated as an isolated object; instead, it is placed in a force field that stresses mutual relationships to other concepts. This series of communicative relationships in motion construct the object of cognition as an open, unsealed process. It is no longer a single and closed concept. It ceaselessly renews its own territory of sense. It is in this sense that there are numerous keys to this box of the given concept. In other words, the pattern of constellation endows the object of cognition with infinite possibilities. With the concept of constellation, Adorno criticizes the Hegelian idea of world history. According to his critical analysis of Hegelian philosophy, the concept of universal history26 plays the same role that mathematical natural sciences play in Kantian philosophy: it provides the ground on which the world can be understood as a total process. Hegel, according to Adorno, conceived universal history as unified merely on account of its contradictions (1973b, p. 319). On the basis of the concept of universal history, the world gets its totality. This totality is an absolute totality that is considered the subject of philosophy by Hegel. Although Hegelian philosophy introduces the concept of contradiction to assimilate the elements of difference or diversity into its own system and to set the system in motion, such a philosophy of absolute totality is nothing other than a philosophy that tries to achieve infinity in an affirmative way. Such a philosophy, for Adorno, inevitably loses its critical power. As indicated in the previous chapters, the Hegelian dialectical system constructed by the concept of

Universal history means that history is conceived as a coherent whole: it is governed by some basic principles. 137

26

contradiction cannot accommodate or tolerate anything outside itself. Finally and unfortunately, it becomes a closed system, although it appears to be in a dynamic state of progress or development (the two terms are favored by Marx). However, critical theory distrusts all closed systems, because systems with a totalizing closure occlude their possibilities of self-renewing, which Adorno attempts to get back in the way of negative dialectics. For Hegel, the totality of the movement of self-reflection of categories means a totalizing system. In this regard, Adornos emphasis on constellation demonstrates his position against a Hegelian system. The reason is that closed systems are bound to be finished; in contrast, an anti-system is always open to the unfinished. A constellation is such a structure that constructs its mobile domain on the ground of the mobile correlations of the particular parts. It is in construction and to be constructed, but it will never be completed. However, an anti-system is not a simple negation of system; it is much more complex than that. An anti-system is a critique of system. So to speak, it demands a kind of critical thinking of system. In Adornos belief, systems are necessary for interpretation in philosophy. Nevertheless, they make thought rigid and absolute. In this sense, systematic thought signifies idealism, which attesting the positive infinity of its principle at every one of its stages, turns the character of thought, the historical evolution of its independence, into metaphysics (Adorno, 1973b, p. 26). Therefore, systems as abstract and absolute thought eliminate all heterogeneous beings. Furthermore, they keep objects of cognition from the Hegelian freedom of

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object that pursues a spiral development through the negation of the negation. Constellations reject the self-identification of systems in the first place. A constellation is actually a process of self-constituting and self-refreshing. However, such a process is by no means an identity thinking or Hegelian development mediated by the concept of contradiction. A thought constellation thinks the non-identical via constituting a force field that calls for unfixed and peaceful relationships between historical particulars. Although Adorno in fact borrows this term directly from Benjamin, he takes Nietzsche to be the forerunner who forms the original idea of constellation in such a passage: The later Nietzsches critical insight that truth is not identical with a timeless universal, but rather that it is solely the historical which yields the figure of the absolute, became, perhaps without his knowing it, the canon of his practice. His desperate striving to break out of the prison of cultural conformism was directed at constellations of historical entities which do not remain simply interchangeable examples for ideas but which in their uniqueness constitute the ideas themselves as historical (1983, p. 231). Now we can know that constellations themselves are constituted by the unique particular. These numerous, unique particulars contain irreconcilable diversities and multiplicities. It is in these heterogeneous beings that constellations manifest the idea of difference advocated by Adornos negative

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dialectics. In contrast, the timeless universal or truth is problematic and suspicious. These categories are metaphysical in the sense that they imply concrete content from the historicity of the particular. According to Adornos understanding of Hegelian philosophy, the idea of universal history leads to an ideology of truth, for it merely consolidates what is identified by the system and excludes what cannot be assimilated by identity thinking. Constellation is a device that can create a potential to defamiliarize the immediacy of its elements. Such an estrangement is brought forth through the mutual mediation among the elements. As I argue in Chapter 2, according to Adorno, immediate Erlebnis is insufficient to engender a critical consciousness about the subject or the object. Constellations function of estranging serves the goal of provoking a critical and dialectical consciousness about its conditions. It juxtaposes disjunctive elements and creates an assemblage. Such an assemblage cannot be integrated into a unity; rather, contradictions and discontinuity are inherent in it. Consequently, constellation itself connotes the negative. Because Adorno defines constellation as one of the critical models of negative dialectics, it is understandable that the principle of non-identity is its key feature. Adorno employs the concept of constellation to smash the identity that is identified as the totality of the system of a given concept by creating an assemblage of conditions with juxtaposed elements. For him, the system is the source of Hegels dialectics in which the subject is hidden. However, Adorno does not intend to criticize the dichotomy of subject and object. He accepts the relative

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identity that is figured as the ground of thinking, advocating the absolute nonidentity. This kind of absolute nonidentity is actually the outside of one specific concept system, namely, the outside of thinking. Moreover, Adorno argues against the confusion about identity that turns the objects indissolubility into a taboo for the subject (Adorno, 1973b, p. 161). For him, nonidentity inherent in the concept of constellation is not to negate all kinds of identity; rather, it calls for identity between the relative identity and the absolute nonidentity. To put it another way, constellation is a cognitive measure or model that relates the activity of thinking to the individual material contexts and empirical experiences, not the supreme subject. In constellation, by gathering around the object of cognition, the concepts potentially determine the objects interior (p. 162). In this way, the concepts recover the parts that have been excised from them in identity thinking. In this sense, the cognitive model of constellation, different from system, pays attention to the particulars that have been victimized in the unifying moment of dialectics. It creates a force field where the object of cognition can activate what is immanent to itself in the communication and complementarity of parts. In constellation, all moments coexist in symbiosis. The object of cognition enters this peaceful and accrete relationship and finds what it represents in it. Adorno makes use of the example of language to elaborate the function of this model (1973b): Where it [constellation] appears essentially as a language, where it becomes a form of representation, it will not define its

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concepts. It lends its objectivity to them by the relation into which it puts the concepts, centered about a thing. Language thus serves the intention of the concept to express completely what it means (p. 162). In the same way, a constellation does not offer a system of signs that defines the concepts for the object of cognition; it merely creates a platform or a kind of atmosphere on which the object can be represented in its own right. Within a constellation there is no hierarchical order, nor any fixed relation. The role of a certain moment lies on its communication with others. And the whole constellation exhibits a fluid character. This does not mean that a constellation is an indeterminate aggregate; rather, the moments of a constellation are in a dynamic relationship of mathematical function. Each moment varies with the change of others. However, they keep a dynamic balance as a whole. This situation of fluid balance makes it possible that the object can be understood in a free and speculative way. The relationship of coexistence and the fluid balance within a constellation is essentially dialectical. They break away from the coercive identity and exclusive selectivity of the system in thinking. Now we have seen the role of constellations in the function of cognition. For Adorno, the model of constellation provides a possible approach to disengage the closed concepts. In constellations, the coexistence of stars takes the place of hierarchical order (no matter what is supreme primacy); the peaceful relationships take the place of Hegelian dialectical contradiction. Of course, Adorno here never

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aims at negating dialectics or depreciating contradiction. On the contrary, he hopes to use constellations as one critical model to resume the vigor of dialectics, namely, its power of negation. Only with this kind of power, dialectics, in Adornos belief, cannot serve the coercive identity or totality any longer. The object of cognition in the constellation of concepts can open infinite space in its own right, because it has transcended all the factitious circumscriptions imposed by system. Moreover, a constellation as a cognitive model is not fixed or established. As I have indicated, within a constellation the relationships between moments are mobile. These moments vary with the historical and social conditions. In this sense, a constellation of concepts actually tries to catch the historical and social character of an individual object. In fact, the model of constellation is analysis of conditions that substitutes dynamic balance for the one-fold essence. A constellation stresses less one or several elements than the space framed by all elements. In other words, what a constellation represents is not its elements but the relation constituted by elements. Such relation is not a fixed one; it varies with the change of the conditions. Hence, a constellation can be seen as a combination of the relations within it. Relations are external to their terms, so they cannot account for the nature of elements. Against the immediacy of elements, relations imply contradictions inherent through estrangement. With this model, Adorno intends to speak the unspeakable (the contradiction exposed by estrangement), which in his mind is what philosophy should commit itself to.

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Something unspeakable, or the power of outside, for Adorno is actually the non-identical, or nonidentity. Therefore, Adornos concept of constellation also signifies the dialectical and non-identical relationship between the subject and the object. We have seen in the previous chapters that Adorno advocates the priority of the object in the subject-object relationship. This principle reflects an attempt to ask under what conditions it would be possible to have knowledge of the object. Truth, as Adorno argues, lies in the constellations in which the subject and the object penetrate each other (1973b, p. 129). Therefore, a constellation is not a third moment beyond the subject and the object; rather, we can catch the constellations between the subject and the object from the perspective of criticizing supreme subjectivity or univocal existence. Philosophy that insists on supreme subjectivity or univocal existence tries to stress a kind of direct identity. However, the model of constellation applies itself to constructing a communicative and interactional relationship between the subject and the object. A constellation emphasizes the function of mediation. Within it, a mediation is mediated by what has mediated it. In other words, the subject and the object are mediated by the constellation of concepts that has been mediated by the subject and the object in the course of knowing and thinking. Consequently, the subject and the object are themselves constructed and inter-constructed. They are neither pure subject nor pure object. Rather, a constellation between the subject and the object reflects three dimensions of relationship: the relationship between the objects, the relationship between the subject and the object, and the relationship

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between the subjects. With this model, Adorno attempts to realize a peaceful relation of communication that frees thinking from identity.

4.3 Concepts in Relation: The Power of Production

The reason I bring Deleuzes (and Guattaris) rhizome and Adornos constellation together is that both of these concepts propose a non-centric mode of relations. They happen to coincide in using figurative images to describe new styles of concepts, substituting them for the linear or hierarchical cognition and thinking. In both new modes, every element is put into a network, and the changes of conditions are deciphered by the verification of its relationship with others. Furthermore, the two modes are not static, representative ones that merely indicate a fixed structure; they represent rather a mechanism of production that produces the new through the changing conditions determined by the relations among elements. We can understand the relation between the two concepts from three dimensions. First of all, both of them exhibit a forceful objection to totality and hierarchical orders of systems by accentuating heterogeneous multiplicities. A rhizome or a constellation unfolds a flat map made up of different dimensions of forces. In their respective contexts, a rhizome is proposed as the opposite of the arborescent structure, whereas a constellation is proposed to oppose a linear model of reflection. In both the arborescent structure and the linear model of
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reflection, binary logic plays an important role in constructing the whole structure, which, for both Deleuze and Adorno, leads to hierarchy. For Deleuze and Guattari, a root-tree derived from dualist choice produces pseudo-multiplicities which are subject to a centered totality. This kind of pseudo-multiplicity is secondary to the One. The way an arborescent structure develops is different from cell division, which breaks away from the previous whole body by dividing it into two.27 Therefore, starting from the One, cell division produces real multiplicities. Branches are never separated from the body of a tree. They share a common ground: the sole root and trunk. For Adorno, hierarchy signifies another problem. For him, the idea that the subject can completely catch the knowledge about the object (the self-consciousness of the object, in Hegels terms28)namely, the subject-object unitymakes objectivity secondary to subjectivity. Such an understanding of cognition leaves the independence of the object out of consideration and restricts an objective world in the experiences of a historical and social subject. The rhizome and the constellation, however, avoid both of these problems. Both Deleuze (with Guattari) and Adorno try to construct a non-centric network from the perspective of pluralist empiricism, which is not a system ruled by one certain identity. Here, a rhizome or a constellation is not abstract or transcendental but one of the models made up of the empirical elements. These two conceptions of relations accentuate the mutual communications and interactions among the
27

This way is analogous to the means of the development of the way described in the Chinese ancient book I Ching: Book of Changes. 28 See his Phenomenology of Spirit. 146

different moments, which have no beginning or ending. By constituting a being in regards to relations, both philosophers have deviated from the pursuit of something metaphysical or ontological like noumenon, descending to the conditions of a being. For them, a being cannot be devoid of relations. Within itself, there are different dimensions of forces interwoven, it is determined by its relations to others. An idea like this is undoubtedly influenced by Marx, although Deleuzes concept of rhizome means more than relations. It seems a modified version of Marxs famous argument in his Theses on Feuerbach: as far as the reality is concerned it is the summation of all the social relation of a human being (Marx & Engels, 1969, p. 14). In this sense, both of the new modes of relations can be seen as following a Marxian critique, advocating the role of relations in the becoming of a being. Although Deleuzes (and Guattaris) rhizome and Adornos constellation are different from each other to some extent, they take notice of the fact that multiplicity is inherent in relations. Secondly, the modes of relations open a possible space towards the outside. A possible space is a new dimension where real difference can exist. It is at this point that both of the modes can be seen as mechanisms of production. They create conditions and passages to produce difference as the outside. Just as the moments in relations determine the interior, they actually prescribe the limits and the borderlines. Simultaneously, they outline the absolute outside. In other words, when the moments determine the limits of the interior, the outside is outlined. The moments within the map of relations, which are dominated by all-directional

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forces, provide the virtual power to transcend these limits. However, as the relations keep on becoming and acting, in transcending the original limits and borderlines, the new ones have appeared. Thinking, in this sense, is actually an attempt to reach for the outside. Nevertheless, the outside has no image or signification. In contrast to the relativity of the interior, the outside is absolute. It is defined by the disability of the interior, namely, its limits. The outside exists as a marginal world where difference (other ideas or other objects) may come forth. This marginal world is in fact an entire field of virtualities and potentialities which were capable of being actualized (Deleuze, 1990, p. 305). In this regard, the attempt to reach for the outside is an effort to exploit what thinking is able to do. Although the outside as an absolute exterior cannot be reached, thinking as an endless becoming is always transcending the established; it is forever young.29 Deleuze and Guattari relate the outside to multiplicities through the line of flight, which they regard as a movement of deterritorialization (1987, p. 8). However, the outside cannot be understood as an exoteric field from the perspective of space; it is not even the negation of the established. Rather, it just signifies the wholly new determined by chance. This is the outside: the line that continually re-concatenates fortuitous selections in mixtures of chance and dependency (Deleuze, 1988a, p. 118). Deleuze uses the example of a dice throw more than once to describe how chance brings forth thinking and how thinking is
Louis Althusser quoted a sentence from Hegel, Content is forever young in the very beginning of his early paper On Content in the Thought of G. W. F. Hegel. He used this figuration to describe the endless self-renewal and self-transcending of content, which in my opinion indicates philosophy truth. However, different from the mode of a rhizome or a constellation here, Althusser made use of the Hegelian syllogism and unified entirely opposite categories like inevitability (slavery) and freedom, form and content, and externality and internality, constructing a dialectical process. In essence, it is a kind of paraphrase of Hegelian dialectics. 148
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endowed with forces of deterritorialization, namely, the forces from outside. The outside represents the simplest power- or force-relation, the one established between singularities arrived at by chance (p. 117). In this sense, thinking always comes from the outside. Alain Badiou interprets Deleuzes conception of thought as a typological outside from the perspective of Adornos objection to all philosophies of the subject (Badiou, 2000, p. 7891).30 Deleuzes position shapes a strong contrast with Adornos dichotomy of subject-object. For Adorno, constellations are merely one of the cognitive modes in the process of knowing. For Adorno, concepts as forms of thinking are the power of thinking. Constellations still concern the subject and the object of Cartesian cogito. A constellation breaks the unity of subject-object. When the object of cognition is placed in the constellation of concepts, these concepts actually enrich the new experiences and significations historically. In this way, the constellations of concepts cut off the immediacy

30

Badiou proposes several reasons to explain Deleuzes opposition to a philosophy of the subject: 1. One

must begin with the univocity of being and then position the equivocal, as expressions or simulacrum, within this and not vice versa. 2. Identifying the being of thought with a subject endows this being with a constitutive interiority, which refers both to itself (reflexivity) and to its objects, which are given as being heterogeneous to interiority (negativity). 3. What philosophers of the subject, and in particular phenomenologists, pose as an independent region of Being, or transcendental figure, is on a certain type of simulacrum for Deleuze, which he names "lived experience" (the other type of simulacrum being named "states of affairs"). 4. For Deleuze, this compulsory correlation between the subject and the (scientific) plane of reference disqualifies equally those who uphold structural objectivism and those who uphold subjectivism (pp. 79-82). However, Badiou does not think that Deleuzes conception of thought as a typological outside really resists the identity between thought and being. He argues that, the intuitive identification of thinking and Being is realized, for Deleuze, as the topological densification of the outside, which, as such, is carried up to the point that the outside proves to envelop an inside. It is at this moment that thought, in first following this enveloping (from the outside to the inside) and then developing it (from the inside to the outside), is an ontological coparticipant in the power of the One (p. 87). 149

between the subject and the object, producing an insight mediated by the force field. In a certain constellation, one concept summons another and the communications between them extend the meanings. Therefore, for Adorno, there is not a single concept that is sufficient to express the totality of experience. Only while they are brought together into a constellation do they succeed in offering a material (historical and social) mediation through the tensions between them. The outside is in fact outside the identity of subject and object, namely, nonidentity as his central concept, which is produced by the coherence of the concepts. In spite of different positions on knowledge-acquisition between Deleuze and Adorno, their concepts of rhizome and constellation make it possible to introduce elements from outside into the becoming of new knowledge. In the sense of emphasis on connections, both of the modes are rather similar to Habermass so-called communication paradigm. 31 However, I use the term communication in a sense different from Habermass communications among subjects that serve the critique of capitalism. For Deleuze and Adorno, the communicative action between the elements within a rhizome or a constellation means the blockage and the interference of the forces behind the elements. Substituting becoming for being, these two modes actually become the modes of production. A rhizome implies the production and expansion of space and power relations on an ontological level. Therefore, we can even claim that being is

See Urgen Habermass The Obsolescence of the Production Paradigm. In this essay, he set the communication paradigm as the opposite of the production paradigm, which is built upon the Enlightenment subject-centered reason. The communication paradigm rejects subject-centered mode, being grounded upon the communicative actions. 150

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production. However, production for Adorno means the production of historically conditioned knowledge, or truth. In contrast to Deleuzes (and Guattaris) ontological production, Adorno pays more attention to the movement of cognition. The important difference that distinguishes constellations from rhizomes is that constellations as a critical mode express a kind of ideal critique of the subject-object relationship. They serve both a critical and a utopian purpose. Hence, the concept of constellation exposes the dynamic character of reality, which preserves subjectivity in all the objective experiences. It is a redemption that liberates the historical conditioned truth from absolute subjectivity. Thinking in constellations is a way of finding the tensions and inconsistencies generated by the attempt to speak the unspeakable. This kind of thinking is an effective way of indicating and transcending the limits of representational thinking. In Adornos words, Constellations, alone, represent from without what the concept has excised within, the more which the concept strives to be, and fails to be in equal measure (1973b, p. 164). To speak the unspeakable is itself a utopia. Unlike Deleuzes typological outside sketched by the line of flight, Adorno defines the absolute outside as the unspeakable. This definition implies a utopian hue from the very beginning. He sets up an unattainable goal for thinking. In other words, in his belief, philosophy must think the unthinkable and speak the unspeakable. He assumes that this paradoxical proposition can be achieved through the ideal model of constellations. However, in his criticism of identity, utopia or redemption is impossible. To

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conceive an image of utopia is in fact far from its nature in a utopian sense, because to think in essence is to identify. Hence, man is unable to conceive in an identifying way a utopia as an absolute outside that cannot be reduced to any identity. In this regard, it resembles the Jewish taboo of forbidding the depiction of heaven. Any description of heaven makes the reality its own chief source, whether it copies reality or negates it. The significance of this taboo lies in the acknowledgement of the limits of human beings as mortal. Heaven or anything relating to God is forever beyond these limits. Any effort to describe it is a behavior of desecration. This is the case of Adornos redemption which only rests on the criticism of reality (1973b). The materialist longing to conceive the thing, wants the opposite: the complete object is to be thought only in the absence of images. Such an absence converges with the theological ban on graven images. Materialism secularizes it, by not permitting utopia to be pictured positively; that is the content of its negativity. (p. 207) Because the process of thinking is one of identification, once the unthinkable can be thought, it enters a new circle of identification. With the communications and the fluctuations between the moments in constellations, Adorno abandons the immediate identity between the subject and the object, extending the conditions of concept formation. But, by doing this, he constructs an imprecise identity between the constellations, which is a kind of non-conceptual mediation. Through the way

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of mediating, not subsuming, constellations attend to their object and produce the utopia of knowledge (Adorno, 1973b, p. 21), namely, the so-called historically conditioned truth. Therefore, although Deleuzes (and Guattaris) concept of rhizome and Adornos concept of constellation share several similarities; ultimately they refer to different means of production. As indicated in the section entitled Rhizome: Construction of the Field of Signification and the section entitled Constellation: A Utopia of Nonidentity, a rhizome unfolds a typological map that has numerous exits and entrances whereas a constellation rests on its relations to what is other than it. According to its nature, a rhizome is itself a non-systematic system of production: a horizontal stem that often sends out roots and shoots from its nodes. The most important characteristics that differentiates it from the root of the tree is that it can develop its stems into new roots as another source of production. Being a plane made up of different-directional forces and flows, they have numerous lines of flight that outline the limits of a rhizome. These lines mark the possible field of production, or in other words, the possibility of the production of the new. The lines of flight are towards the outside and they rise in the middle of a rhizome. Therefore, production can take place everywhere in a rhizome. In this sense, a rhizome is a machine that serves multiplicity-production through the disjunctive synthesis. A Thousand Plateaus continues the critique of capitalist society that was begun in the first volume Anti-Oedipus. As the counterpart of the concept of

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schizophrenia, the concept of rhizome that appears in A Thousand Plateaus designates, in the words of one commentator, capitalisms positive potential: freedom, ingenuity, permanent revolution (Holland, 1999, p. 2). For Deleuze and Guattari, capitalism makes universal history possible by freeing desire from what prohibited it. This attitude toward capitalist society is radically different from Adornos immanent critique. To put it briefly, flows of decoding and deterritorialization make capitalism possible; however, when these flows become the ones of recoding and reterritorialization, they hinder the realization of capitalism. Now we can move to the last, but not the least important distinction between a rhizome and a constellation. Both thinkers aim to conceive a mechanism that can transcend the limit. Such an act of transcending is an estrangement of what has been identified and totalized by ideology. However, the two modes have different pragmatic significance. The former, for Deleuze and Guattari, signifies a practical mode that may be realized by stress on the marginal ground as the outside. In such an active mode, the limits outlined by the interior can be transcended. Accordingly, the given can become other than it is. In contrast, Adornos constellation is rather a utopian image that merely expresses an ideal mode. This is closely associated with the utopian feature of nonidentity. The estrangement of immediacy implies a contradiction that refuses to reconcile. Adorno cannot even provide an actual example for this mode. I intend to consider it the inevitable result of negative dialectics that carries out a meta-critique as its

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mission. Such a distinction between the thinkers, indicated by the pair of concepts of rhizome and constellation, is a foundational one that accounts for their different attitudes towards political. This point is detailed in Chapter 5 and 6.

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Chapter 5
Positive Constructivism VS Logic of Disintegration

Deleuzian and Adornian ethics appear to be in absolute contradiction. While Deleuze follows Nietzsche in calling for an eternal return, Adorno formulates the apparently contradictory ethical absolute that Auschwitz never again be allowed to recur. Nick Nesbitt In the previous chapters, I have discussed the common logic of internal difference shared by Deleuze and Adorno and the distinction between them from a series of perspectives. The common logic, as I have elaborated, reflects a rejection of the primacy of identity. And the distinction presents a contrast between two different philosophical positions. This difference is what I characterize as the distinction between positive constructivism and logic of disintegration, which distinguishes them from each other as a whole. In fact, neither of the terms originates with me; rather, they are found in their respective authors. 32 The distinction between the two expressions allows us to understand many important differences between the theories of Deleuze and Adorno, explaining many of their philosophical propositions and attitudes. The reason is that the distinction

Deleuze (sometimes with Guattari) makes use of the term constructivism in his works more than once. In particular, this word appears several times in What Is Philosophy? and becomes the central theme of the book. The term logic of disintegration can be found in Adornos own Negative Dialectics, which is one of the main resources that my dissertation quotes. More than that, he describes negative dialectics as logic of disintegration (1973b, p. 144). 156

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indicates a common ground that all these different propositions and attitudes share, for both Deleuzes positive constructivism and Adornos negative dialectics are to be understood as rejecting all transcendentals. In other words, the theories are grounded in the criticism of all ontological and transcendental philosophies33, including those that merely appear to criticize ontology.

5.1 Deleuzes Philosophy as Positive Constructivism

In the title of this chapter, I characterize Deleuzes philosophy as positive constructivism. This adjective (positive) does not suggest a new school of philosophy, but merely emphasizes a prominent character of Deleuzes theory. Such a positive spirit is not a passive acceptance of the status quo, criticized by Hegel and philosophers of the Frankfurt School such as Adorno. The positive rejects passive negation (see Chapter 1), but it does not neglect the huge power inherent in the negation. Deleuze has always stressed difference and multiplicity. It is actually a positive spirit that implies negative power. Such a positive constructivism is critical because it can endlessly open up a territory and go beyond the limit. The term constructivism is widely used in art and learning theory.
33 The term transcendental philosophy here is distinct in signification from Deleuzes transcendental empiricism. The common adjective transcendental shared by the two terms is used by Kant to signify prior thought forms: the innate principles which give the mind the ability to formulate its perceptions and make experience intelligible. Kant applies transcendental philosophy to the study of pure mind; it is also called transcendental idealism. However, Deleuzes transcendental empiricism concentrates on the conditions of the empirical given. For him, the empirical given, the raw data of sense experience, is not the ground of explanation but that which must be explained. In this sense, Deleuzes transcendental empiricism can be read as the contrary to both transcendental idealism and classical empiricism.

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Constructivism, in the sense of art, created in Russia in the 1910s as a kind of futurism, refers to a trend within the fields of painting, sculpture and architecture that has an optimistic, non-representational belief in construction. Constructivism in the sense of learning theory generally applies to an epistemology attributed to Jean Piaget, in which individuals construct knowledge or meaning by incorporating their experience into a current framework. However, Deleuzes employment of this term is far from both of these uses; he makes use of it to resist the principle of representation and subject-centered cognition in a constructivist way. Here I refer to constructivism in an anti-foundational sense: it rejects the notion that truth is at hand or ready-made, seeking to find how knowledge is produced within experiences. Without placing subject-centered cognition at the center of the production of knowledge, Deleuze conceives a transcendental plane to explain the conditions of experiences by the interaction of forces. For him, human cognition, which implies a subject-object relation, is also constituted; it is insufficient to explain experience. Rather, it must be itself explained. In contrast, a process that produces knowledge is necessarily one of cognition. This is the departure from which his transcendental empiricism and constructivism derives. Deleuze claims that experiences are constructed on a transcendental plane. Indeed, it is this opinion that makes him radically different from most of his contemporaries in epistemology. The term constructivism here maintains two dimensions of sense: on the one hand, it involves a way of criticism, exposing the assumptions and the invalidities of the precedent knowledge. They are dependent

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on its conditions and unknowns. On the other hand, it indicates the creation of concepts upon the transcendental plane where knowledge is produced. Let us begin with one of the arguments in Difference & Repetition in which Deleuze suggests that a philosophical book is expected to be simultaneously a detective novel and science fiction (1994, p. 3). In what sense does such a claim make sense? It does not mean that a philosophical work can be confused with or secondary to these genres of literature. Actually, what Deleuze intends to show here, is his particular understanding of philosophy, according to which thinking is not originally driven by will, rather, it commences in the question of what happened? This is an encounter. In other words, the activity of thinking takes place in the sensation of consternation led by the advent of a particular event, and concepts are the problematic framework unfolded in the given circumstances rather than a response to the questions raised by the event. Events, questions, and concepts intertwine in the process of the emergence of philosophical thinking, and unfold their own inferential fields where they function as the distinctive roles. However, behind all these fields something resonates among them: it is contingency, chance, accident, or unconscious collision that runs through them. The plot, namely, the movement of thinking, is advanced by intension and infinite speed. In the last book coauthored by Deleuze and Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, the authors give an answer to this central question, defining philosophy as the art of forming, inventing, and fabricating concepts. it [philosophy] had to

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determine its moment, its occasion and circumstances, its landscapes and personae, its conditions and unknowns (1994, p. 2). This description relates philosophy to the task of determining the conditions of the philosophical problems, rejecting assertions that claim to have discovered absolute truths or facts about the world. For Deleuze and Guattari, the kernel of philosophical thinking is the creation of concepts, which are never the ones like Platos idea or Pythagorass One that need to be embodied in secondary categories. Deleuze argues that the real power of philosophical thinking does not lie in its reflection of objects but in the exterior possible world that transcends the current thinking of limitations. To put it differently, in all the thinking of limitations, there would be deterritorialization neither something beyond the limitations nor the transgression of

limitationsthat haunts within the existing limitations, simultaneously making them paradoxical. The edifice of Deleuzian philosophy is built upon this foundation, seeking to find the power of such a deterritorialization, namely, the power of the minoritarian, the source of creativities and multiplicities. In fact, the book What Is Philosophy? can be read as an attempt to define philosophy as constructivism by Deleuze and Guattari. They themselves make use of this term on several occasions in the text. As they indicate, philosophical problems, the solutions to the problems, and the conditions or the unknowns of the problems have no meaning independently of each other. In philosophical thinking, the three activitiesfinding the problems, seeking the solutions, and determining the conditionsmaking up constructivism continually pass from

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one to the other, support one another, sometimes precede and sometimes follow each other (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994, p. 81). Deleuze and Guattaris philosophy as constructivism contains three elements that interact with and determine each other. In this sense, philosophy commits itself to expose the way in which various sorts of system manipulate their possibilities and complexities in the interplay with other conditions. Moreover, Deleuze and Guattari employ the term to characterize the movement of thought in philosophy. For them, not merely philosophy or any philosophical system but also thinking itself is a process of construction. The reason is that the concepts, which are necessary for thinking, are to be created by philosophy in the first place. Concepts and their personae are intrinsic to thought; they are conditions of possibility of thought itself. However, they are not a gift of transcendent being; they are produced in the movement of thought. Although the creation of the concepts logically precedes philosophical thinking,34 it does not mean that the former is prior to the latter in time. Actually, the creation of concepts is itself the movement of thought. It is in this sense that both concepts and thought itself are constructed. Such a constructivist position reflects their empiricist position. Deleuze acknowledges this theoretical standpoint. He calls his philosophy transcendental empiricism (discussed in Chapter 2). Such a materialist posture manifests itself mainly in three of Deleuzes works coauthored with Guattari: two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand

Philosophical thinking begins with concepts. Hence logically the creation of concepts can been seen as pre-philosophical. 161

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Plateaus) and What Is Philosophy? Especially in Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari have made an analysis of the organizations of production, inscription and consumption in different social institutions (including primitive, despotic, and capitalist regimes). They describe capitalism as a form that can achieve desiring-production. For them, desire as a kind of productive force operates through the desiring-machine. The desiring-machine is the locus of desiring production. This complex, neither abstract nor material, is invented by Deleuze and Guattari, who combine desire and mechanism and create an association. Machines are constructed. Every machine is connected to another one: it functions as a breaker in the flows in relation to other machines that it is connected to. But at the same time, the desiring-machine produces a flow. According to Deleuze and Guattari, the universe is constructed by or made up of such desiring-machines connected to each other. Their movementstheir block, flow and

aggrandizementin the circuits produce new flows of desire. Every flow is made by cutting off another flow, by restricting or drawing off a flow. Such a multi-flowed universe made up of desiring-machines provides an account of the emergence of subjectivity from the perspective of constructivism: it comes from the investments of the desiring-machines. In contrast, the book What Is Philosophy? attempts to answer the question of the title by stating that, contrary to the traditional definitions of contemplation, reflection or communication, philosophy is a discipline that creates concepts. Knowledge is acquired through concepts. But its sine qua non is to construct them

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in a field that can provide necessary soil for them, because constructivism requires every creation to be a construction on a plane that gives it an autonomous existence (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994, p. 7). This field or plane, for Deleuze and Guattari, is the plane of immanence. To put it in another way, to construct such a plane in the first place is one of the steps in doing philosophy as constructivism. The constitution of the plane of immanence is pre-philosophical. The next step is to create concepts upon this plane. Philosophy as constructivism consists of the two complementary aspects: the laying out of a plane of immanence and the creation of concepts.35 According to Deleuze and Guattari, the traditional understanding of modes of philosophyrelating philosophy to contemplation, reflection, or

communicationare merely variants of idealism. These conceptscontemplation, reflection or communicationcannot be definitive of philosophical activity; they must be first of all created. Moreover, contemplation, reflection and communication are machines for constituting universals in every discipline: they are not special to philosophy. In contrast, the concept as a specifically philosophical creation is always a singularity (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994, p. 7). Being machines, they cannot explain but must be explained. In other words, contemplation, reflection and communication are themselves not philosophy or philosophical activity; rather, they are the activities that occur in philosophy or in other disciplines. Defining philosophy with these concepts, philosophy would

35

The topic of the plane of immanence has already been explored in Chapter 2. 163

become idealism (p. 7).36 Therefore treating philosophy as constructivism expresses a kind of spirit that attempts to explore the conditions for producing multiplicities. Both the plane of immanence and a concept have to be constructed. Philosophy is the logic of multiplicities. And the plane becomes the site where the process of production takes place. Creating concepts is constructing some area in the plane, adding a new area to existing ones, exploring a new area, filling in what is missing. If new concepts have to be brought all the time, its just because the plane of immanence has to be constructed area by area, constructed logically, going from one point to the next. (Deleuze, 1995, p. 147) To create is to make something. Construction is actually the production of clarity in chaos. Concept-creating carves up numerous areas in the plane of immanence. But it is not an activity of segmentation; rather, it is the deployment of forces and dimensions. The increasing joints among concepts secure conceptual linkages, and these concepts in linkage secure the populating of the plane. Thought is constructed in this way. For Deleuze and Guattari, the activity of construction or creation is the special and definitive character of philosophy. Undoubtedly, this definition of philosophy as constructivism intends to describe a picture of production of
36 According to Deleuze and Guattari, the Universals of contemplation and reflection would result in objective idealism and subjective idealism. The Universal of communication would result in inter-subjective idealism.

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immanence: it is not a particular subject that produces something; on the contrary, it is linkage that produces. Moreover, production brings forth new production. This mode of production rejects a centered subject and thus excludes history in the process, emphasizing a kind of ahistorical time and becoming. Construction is both the movement of territorialization and deterritorialization. Increasing linkages make possible the ceaseless process of deterritorialization or becoming. Hanjo Berressem describes Deleuzes philosophy as a
37

radical Social

constructivism, which argues against social constructivism.

constructivism is concerned with the social construction of reality. It argues that an individual understand knowledge within social text. And it aims at finding how human subjects acquire knowledge through the mediation of social conditions. It is a psychological construct rather than an empiricist construct. In this sense,
social constructivism has narrowed its sight on how humans or language construct

the world. Therefore, it is inevitable that the result of social constructivism is anthropocentric. In contrast, radical constructivism claims that knowledge is a self-organized cognitive process in the mind of human beings. Although the human subject plays an important role in such a process, the process of constructing knowledge regulates itself. Deleuze is opposed to the theoretical position of social constructivism. His opposition to anthropocentrism and dualism runs throughout his career as a philosopher. He is always trying to explore the way that thought takes place in order to concentrate on how the world is

See his paper submitted to the First International Deleuze Studies Conference, Eigenphilosphy: A Radical Deleuze. 165

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constructed. It is also the commitment of radical constructivism. According to the theory of Ernst von Glaserfeld, one of the most important proponents of radical constructivism, knowledge, is constructed and the process of constructing knowledge regulates itself (von Glaserfeld, 1991, pp. 4567).38 Therefore to this degree, Deleuzes idea of philosophy markedly reflects a radical constructivist perspective. However, I do not follow this expression, because there are several distinctions between Deleuzes constructivism and von Glasersfelds. The latter does not avoid a subject-centered type. In his essay Abstraction, Representation and Reflection, he considers knowledge as information actively received either through the senses or by way of communication (1991, pp. 4567). Therefore, for von Glaserfeld, knowledge is constructed but actively constructed by a cognizing subject. In contrast, Deleuze no doubt goes further than von Glaserfeld and lays out the plane of immanence. For Deleuze and Guattari, not merely knowledge but also subjectivity, even the site itselfwhere subjectivity and knowledge are constructed, namely, the plane of immanenceis constructed. By this means, Deleuze and Guattari presuppose a transcendental plane instead of a cognitive subject. It is in this sense that Deleuze is more radical than von Glasersfelds radical constructivism.

Ernst von Glasersfeld, Abstraction, Representation and Reflection. Steffe, Leslie P. (ed.). Epistemological Foundations of Mathematical Experience (New York: Springer, 1991), pp. 45-67. 166

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5.2 Adornos Logic of Disintegration

Adorno in Negative Dialectics defines dialectics as the logic of disintegration (1973b, p. 144). This definition implies that dialectics is critical in a negative sense. According to him, the only responsible philosophy is one that no longer imagines it had the Absolute at its command (Adorno, 1998, p. 7). Such a claim demonstrates a tendency of anti-ontology, because it no longer commits itself to seek an emphatic concept of truth. On the contrary, it should be understood as critique, as resistance to the expanding heteronomy (p. 10), which, in Adornos eyes, can provide a refuge for freedom. Adorno (with Horkheimer) deploys his thinking following the way of critical theory that is defined by Horkheimer as a theory to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them (Horkheimer, 1982, p. 244). In other words, a theory is critical to the extent that it is committed to a specific practical purpose: to seek the overall emancipation of human beings. However, this does not mean that dialectics is a pure method: for Adorno, dialectics as a kind of critical theory means to think in contradictions. But contradiction here is no longer a Hegelian contradiction that reconciles the opposites in identity through synthesis. They do not need to be reconciled. Contradiction is itself the element of philosophy. It is in this sense that philosophy is defined as negative. In fact, the point that distinguishes Adorno from Hegel lies in his description of dialectic as the logic of disintegration. According to such logic of disintegration, all forms of

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identity are suspicious (Adorno, 1973b, p. 144), especially the identity between the object and the cognitive subject. This issue has been studied in the previous chapters, and I do not say more about it here. Hence I discuss here the other dimension of dialectics as the logic of disintegration: namely, Adorno uses dialectics as a weapon against all ontologies, including Heideggers philosophy. However, to proceed to this theme, we need to consider Adornos attitude toward all closed systems (Fascism in particular). In fact, this is a position shared by his contemporary philosophers. Having experienced the distress and terror of war, many thinkers began to reflect on its cause. They come to be aware that the inclination for absolute identity has caused Fascism and the concentration camps. However, such an inclination for absolute identity also results in a communist totalitarianism like Stalinism. Hence, it is no wonder that numerous contemporary philosophers demonstrate a disgust at closed systems that carry out the principle of identity. According to Adorno, any closed system that claims totalityphilosophical, musical, or politicalis suspicious. It is doomed to be transcended because it is no longer opening or unaccomplished. From this standpoint he claims that what Auschwitz entails is the complete failure of culture, including its capacity to produce meaning and transcendence. The dignity of the human being was totally smashed by industrialized mass murder. Any philosophical term such as liberation, emancipation and freedom made no sense, when confronting Fascism. As a result, any theory after Auschwitz is absurd (Adorno, 1973b).

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The feeling which after Auschwitz resists every assertion of positivity of existence as sanctimonious prattle, as injustice to the victims; which is reluctant to squeeze any meaning, be it ever so washed-out, out of their fate, has its objective moment after events which condemn the construction of a meaning of immanence, which radiates from an affirmatively posited transcendence, to a mockery. (p. 354) After Auschwitz, people no longer seek to affirm the significance of culture and civilization. Instead, they come to consider the limitations of the principles, although these principles have played important roles in the development of history. Enlightenment, as well as the principle of identity, promotes civilization, but at the same time it produces the limits that cannot be transcended by itself. In doing this, Adorno offers a radical critique of the effects of capitalism on culture and on the psychology of the working class, to explain why Stalinism and German Fascism had taken root in the heads of the workers and so why efforts to develop socialist societies had failed. He gives particular attention to the critique of instrumental reason (in Dialectic of Enlightenment, coauthored with Max Horkheimer) and identity thinking (in Negative Dialectics). These two principles contributed to human reason and enlightenment, because the process of thinking and reasoning is a process of identifying the subject with the object, of indentifying knowledge with the world. However, either of these principles, instrumental reason or identity thinking, as Adorno argues, can lead to

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unprecedented calamity. In other words, it is enlightenment that results in the failure of enlightenment. To some degree, this failure is the inevitable consequence of the history of enlightenment. This is Adornos famous theme of civilizations tendency to self-destruction. Adornos political concern is to explore the possibility of avoiding such a tragic failure. His question is: why did Enlightenment fail? In order to answer this, he goes further in the direction away from Marxs own thought than Lukcs had done. He not only ties all totalitarian political systems together with Fascism but also extends the critique to the field of culture. According to him, the production of mass culture is the embodiment of identity thinking. It is simultaneously a part of the means of production so that it cannot be overcome by the development of the productive forces. He tries to find a way to overcome the limitation immanent to human reason through the critique of identity. His philosophical effort is, in essence, an attempt to develop a critical alternative to the principle of identification. In doing this, he goes so far as to abandon some of Marxs pivotal concerns.Adorno partly shares Lukcss concern that capitalist economic law has dominated all aspects of society, but he never agrees on the point that the revolutionary working class could overcome reification. He thinks that the question that a critical social theory really needs to pay attention to is why unfairness, slavery, and human suffering persist despite the purpose of civilization that seems to be to emancipate human beings from bondage. In reality, the

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development of history seems to strengthen this situation. For example, advanced technology does not bring forth the freedom of workers from labor, but fetters them more firmly. He offers an explanation of historys failure based upon the idea that problems in the sphere of human reason prevented the development of historical forces. Instrumental reason has no capacity to address moral questions or indeed any questions pertaining to human purposes and meaning. It is only used as a means to be more efficient and regards all the pertinent objects as means to serve particular given ends without considering their significances in others aspects. Reason consequently results in the absence of significance: the humanity and agency of the human beings has been ignored; an individual is merely seen as an atom in the market. Moreover, Adorno states that capitalist relations of production have come to dominate society as a whole, leading to extreme, albeit often invisible, concentrations of wealth and power (1973b, pp. 18992). Society has come to be organized around the production of exchange values for the sake of producing exchange values. Nothing can escape from the marketplace, not even philosophy. As a whole, society operates under identity thinking. Subjects are turned into materials or instruments by identification. Heterogeneity, multiplicity or nonidentity is totally ignored. Under the circumstances, the occurrence of Fascism or other forms of totalitarianism is inevitable. They could be political, economical, psychological, or even cultural. Such an all-sided oppression is the necessary result of human reason and culture, so it cannot be overcome by the practice of the human subjects. This

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theoretical position can explain Adornos opposition to the student movement in May 1968 in Paris. Lukcss class consciousness, for Adorno, is not the subject of action; it merely creates a negative way to freedom: to think differently. Accordingly, although he never gives up hope for social transformation, his struggle can merely remain at the level of critique or be limited to the field of art and aesthetics. As I indicated at the beginning of this part of the chapter, Adornos depiction of dialectics as the logic of disintegration demonstrates his opposition to all ontology. In other words, his philosophy is a kind of meta-critique. In Adornos own text, he focuses his criticism on Heidegger. At the very beginning of Part Two of Negative Dialectics, Adorno claims that, in criticizing ontology we do not aim at another ontology, not even at one of being nonontological (1973b, p. 136). It is actually a criticism of Heideggers fundamental ontology which reintroduces idealistic and identity-based concepts under the guise of having overcome the philosophical tradition. Adorno refuses every form of idealism. In particular, he criticizes Heideggers fundamental ontology of being that is seen as a critique of traditional ontology by Heidegger himself. Adorno expresses in his text a trenchant rejection of Heideggers Dasein (Being), for he believes such a concept is merely an abstraction that separates the state of being from what is being (1988). The ontologists are afraid of getting their hands dirty with the merely factually existent, which lies in the positivists hands

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aloneBeing, increasingly

in

whose

name itself, is

Heideggers for himas

philosophy a pure

concentrates

self-presentation to passive consciousnessjust as immediate, just as independent of the mediations of the subject as the facts and the sensory data are for the positivists. (p. 8) Adorno indicates his own opinion by saying that there is no Being without entities (1973b, p. 135). According to Adorno, Heideggers absolute Being is actually an illusion in pursuit of the absolute form of a concept that has broken away from the concrete content of thinking. Hence Dasein can be understood as a profound self-deception. Engaged with this concept, Heidegger has made a concrete phenomenological analysis. Although he refuses to see the entity as something substantial, he commits himself to finding a category to take the place of the entity. As a result, the copula be, which originally conveyed a combination of meaningit refers to the existence and the state of existinghas become an ontological state behind phenomena. In fact, the copula be is not a substantial category: it indicates a relation with the world rather than a substantiality like an entity. Hence, Heideggers absolutization of Being (his concept of Dasein) is mistaken. As Adorno argues, Heidegger does not even realize that, wherever a doctrine of some absolute first is taught there will be talk of something inferior to it, of something absolutely heterogeneous to it, as its logical correlate (1973b, p. 138). This means that Heideggers ontology of Being can be still seen as one of the forms of primary philosophy. To put it in another

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way, Heideggers Dasein in fact assumes an object independent of the subject to argue against the primacy of the free individual. For him, such an individual is still a Kantian transcendental subject who figures himself the lord of the earth (1982, p. 27). However, Heideggers refutation of Kant is also refuted by Adorno. The latter points out, when Heidegger purports to show his distrust in the primacy of a transcendental subject, he is positing another primacy the primacy of an independent object with the concept of Dasein. For Adorno, on the one hand, a doctrine that advocates some absolute primary or first must have an absolute hierarchical structure; the primal dominating concept reins the determined concepts. On the other hand, this Heideggerian independent object ignores the way that the object is: it is subjectively defined. It is the greatest distinction between Heideggers primacy of the object (showed by Dasein) and Adornos priority of the object: the former leads thought to a totalitarian form by absolutizing the being of the object while the latter concentrates on the existing sphere of the object and the way it is. In terms of resisting the Kantian transcendental subject, actually, as Brunkhorst (1999) puts it, Adornos attempt goes in the same direction as that of Heidegger, yet it is a more radical critique of metaphysical a prioris than Heideggers question for being (p. 1). According to Adorno, the spirit of dialectics is to refuse any form of primacy, because the philosophy of identity, which is opposed to dialectics, starts with a primal ontology. On the one hand, the philosophical concept of first is itself an ideological consciousness; therefore, the category of the root, the origin

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is a category of domination and is itself an ideological principle (1973b, p. 155). Hence, the starting point of fundamental ontology entails an implicit totalitarian inclination. Consequently, Adorno specifies rejection of primal philosophy and identity thinking as the premise of his negative dialectics. These are the two dimensions of dialectics as the logic of disintegration. This kind of theoretical orientation is an echo of Adornos attitude toward real practice: theory against practice. This pessimistic position is mainly derived from his believing in the universality of capitalism. Adorno affirms that Enlightenment reason tends towards its complete triumph in the process of industrialization. However, this process towards triumph is imbued with distress and falsities. Adorno does not agree with Marx on the point that such distress and falsities are solely the problems of capitalist relations of production. He goes further. He argues against the Marxist ontology of praxis by critiquing of productive forces. In Part three of Negative Dialectics, Adorno makes clear his position against practical reason when he discusses the theme of freedom. He states (1973b): Marx received the thesis of the primacy of practical reason from Kant and the German idealists, and sharpened it into a challenge to change the world instead of merely interpreting it. He thus underwrote something as arch-bourgeois as the program of an absolute control of nature. (p. 244)

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In Adornos view, the primacy of practical reason is the offspring of industrial civilization; it is primacy of production. He denies Marxs proposition that the emancipated productive forces could liberate human beings from the slavery of coercive praxis, because he believes that it is not feasible to ground freedom of human being upon the praxis. At the same time, Marxs belief in a historically necessary primacy of the productive forces is too optimistic. Since Marxs time, productive forces have become highly developed, but this has not solved the problem of starvation or changed the relations of production or set people free. On the contrary, the highly developed technology was put into use to industrially carry out mass murder, whereas the relations of production have not shown any sign of collapsing. This is the reality of late capitalism. This social phenomenon demonstrates that the traditional Marxian analysis of relations between forces and relations of production has not been applicable to modern societythe society of late capitalism. Accordingly, Adorno rejects the Marxian stress on the primacy of productive forces, because it actually ties productive forces tightly to production rather than emancipate them. He is more concerned with the possibility of emancipation of human beings from production. Therefore, Adorno insists on the necessity of a reconfiguration of the relation between the productive forces and the relations of production. All forces of production are under the given relations of production, so there is no primacy of the productive forces. In fact, they are mediated through social

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relations. To this extent Adorno is opposed to action. He strongly resists the traditional interpretation of Marxian dogma of a unity between theory and praxis as entailing the demand for immediate political action. In this view, praxis must be mediated through theory. However, this does not mean that practice is under the direction of theory. Rather, for Adorno, it suggests that thinking is doing; theory itself is a form of praxis (1998, p. 261). The dichotomy of thinking and practice is subject to the ideology of the purity of thinking. This ideology mistakenly separates thinking from practice in the first place and then combines them through a fictive association. However, any immediate political action inspired by some given slogan or dogma is bound to fail, for it is blind and reactive. This originates from the fact that irrational practicepractice that does not include thinkingarose from labor, which means that practice was always a reaction to deprivation. Accordingly, it carries the baggage of an element of unfreedom: the fact that once it was necessary to struggle against the pleasure principle for the sake of ones own self-preservation, although labor that has been reduced to a minimum no longer needs to be tied to self-denial (Adorno, 1998, p. 262). Practice, being a reactive action, does not mean the application of theory, and it cannot achieve the transformation of the social order. On the contrary, it must end in identification with the given order. Moreover, believing in the self-destructive logic of civilization, Adorno rejects the utopia of

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reconciliation as potential totalitarianism. For him, system is suspicious for its own sake. And it is not possible to find a secured system through enlightened political praxis, which could avoid the failure of enlightenment reason. Another reason why Adorno resists immediate political revolution is that he cannot identify a subject of history. In the previous chapters, I discuss his believing in the priority of the object. According to this principle, it is the priority of the object that can give prominence to nonidentity, whereas the priority of the subject does nothing more than subjecting to identity. Consequently, a reconciled society could not be achieved by a particular class, not even the proletariat. It is only possible for resistance to take a critique of art or culture, which serves as the media of the relations of production. Adornos position against practice is due to his dialectical methodology of critique. It is the dynamical source of his critical view as well as the cause of his political weakness.

5.3 How Does One Achieve Internal Difference?

As I have argued, the common logic of internal difference shared by Deleuze and Adorno reveals their rejection of the primacy of identity. Adornos negative dialectics as the logic of disintegration shows, through the criticism of identity thinking and primary philosophy, the fact that the
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conditions to produce difference have been oppressed in traditional philosophy. However, due to the negativity of his critical theory, his ethics of difference betrays a utopian tendency: his posture against practice has been proved powerless in the political sense. Hence, there is a gap between Adornos criticism of identity and the creation of difference: he knows why and where difference is repressed, but he is unable to point to where it can emerge. Nonidentity is rather a critical view than a substantial condition. However, Deleuze fills up this gap with his positive constructivism. He does not attempt to resolve the problem of the production of difference by creating a category and substituting it for its antonym, namely, identity, like Adorno has done. Instead, he tries to avoid traditional modes of cognition and determine the conditions of difference in a constructivist way. In fact, Adornos proposition of negative dialectics can be understood as an attempt to keep the critical thrust of Hegelian dialectics while refusing the synthesis of an immanent totality. In order to achieve this goal, he is opposed to the Hegelian overcoming of contradiction, for it realizes a synthetic sublation by assimilating opposition into identity. At this point, he agrees with Deleuze that nonidentity cannot be achieved through the negation of negation. However, where he differs from Deleuze is how to produce the nonidentical, namely, difference. For Adorno, the nonidentical is not to be obtained directly, as something positive on its part (1973b, p. 158). This assertion in fact characterizes nonidentity as something negative and mediated that can be

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realized only in negative dialectics. Such a description essentially determines nonidentity as a utopian blueprint, because it denies any possibility of achieving the nonidentical in an affirmative way. Adorno interprets negative dialectics as a way to think with contradiction: thus, to think positively or affirmatively is not to think at all. This rejection of the affirmative is in fact an action of undoing, whatever is its object. This is the point that distinguishes Adorno from Deleuze. The latter rejects such an action of undoing; in the same way, he refuses to define difference with all that it is not, which is the way Adorno defines nonidentity. As I have argued in the previous chapters, Deleuze totally abandons the dualist mode; he needs to find a new mode that is able to overcome all dualist categories such as contradiction, opposition, etc. This new mode is constructivism. To construct is to create. It is a completely affirmative action. This perspective can drive us to go further in understanding Deleuzes description of philosophy as creation of concepts. The distinction indicated by the title causes the divergence of the two philosophers, not merely in the sense of theoretical postures but also in the sense of political positions. This is the topic I explore in Chapter 6.

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Chapter 6
Striving for Exit to Freedom

Freedom must be sought in a particular nuance or quality of the action itself and not in a relation of this act with what it is not or what it could have been. Bergson In the previous chapters, I have discussed the embodiment of the logic of internal difference as well as the concrete distinctions about the conception of difference between the theories of Deleuze and Adorno. In this chapter I am going to turn to a political issue that incarnates their common logic and distinct positions, that is, the issue of freedom. The association of the philosophical concept of difference with the ethical one of freedom may not be direct, but we could make sense of this relation by understanding the philosophies of the thinkers as the concerns about the conditions of producing difference. On the one hand, being empiricists, both Deleuze and Adorno focus on the way to determine the conditions that can freely produce the heterogeneous (both Deleuzes difference and Adornos nonidentity) within experience. Freedom here is related to difference: it also seeks liberation from the domination of identity. Rather than a political revolution, what freedom signifies, according to Deleuze and Adorno, is a possibility of thinking otherwise, of living otherwise, of creating difference that

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cannot be reduced to identity. It is at this point that the demand for difference can be seen as the demand for freedom. On the other hand, such a demand for freedom is pervasive among contemporary thinkers who have experienced World War Two. Indeed, freedom is not a new question in the history of philosophy. Freedom is a complex and context-dependent issue all the time which deals with the political, ethical, social and philosophical discourses. In World War Two, all the values advocated by Enlightenment such as humanity, freedom etc. were totally put down to the largest degree. The dignity of the human being was completely smashed by the fact of industrialized mass murder. After the war, philosophers came to reflect on the profound cause of this unprecedented tragedy in human history. So to did Deleuze and Adorno. On the one hand, in their respective philosophy, they give expression to a similar understanding of this unfreedom although in diverse forms. Unfreedom is not restricted to Nazism and the war itself; it extends into the social life. Accordingly, from the perspective of being against all forms of totalitarianism and compulsion, Deleuze and Adorno (including their respective co-workers) agree with each other. On the other hand, having analyzed the root of unfreedom, it is inevitable to direct the way to freedom. On this issue, Deleuze and Adorno demonstrate distinct ideas and approaches. According to his methodology of transcendental empiricism, Deleuze does not pay any attention to the concept of freedom that is involved with individual subjects; on the contrary, he discusses a kind of freedom that concerns the

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conditions of change, which slides over the field of law or morality. Deleuzian freedom is not freedom from some oppression. It is neither the liberty to behave nor the power to obtain; it is rather an ability or potentiality to produce one or several new relations. According to Deleuzes transcendental empiricism, the blockage of flows, the encounter of elements and the change or the combination of directions of forces can be all brought into the production of new relations. These new relations become themselves active forces producing heterogeneity. As a result, the new is created. Consequently, the freedom to produce or to join the relations is equated with the freedom to create the new. That is the point of Deleuzes philosophy, because he always focuses his sight on the conditions for the production of the new. Paul Patton thinks this conception of freedom is close to Nietzsches ideal of self-overcoming (2000, p. 2).39 I partially agree with this view. Self-overcoming, for Nietzsche, is an intrinsic attribute and ability of will to power, which satisfies will to powers demand to enhance itself. Self-overcoming is a constant process of becoming. At this point it is similar to Deleuzian freedom. However, according to my understanding, Nietzsches self-overcoming is a kind of power of negating existing conditions. This act of self-negating signifies self-enhancement or self-mastery. The so-called self-enhancement or self-mastery is the latent goal, that is, the end inherent to the self-overcoming. Deleuzes conception of freedom is not subject to this character. It is not based on restraint or insufficiency. From this perspective, the emergence of new relations is merely
39 See Paul Pattons Deleuze and the Political, in the part of Introduction, p. 2. According to him, in contrast with the relation to the normative distinction of negative or positive freedom, Deleuzes conception freedom is much closer to Nietzsches ideal of self-overcoming.

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the changes of conditions: neither enhancement, nor degradation, just change pure change. Although change is itself the negation or even destruction of a previous state, it does not presuppose the direction of its progress. So change, brought about by new relations, is neutral. This difference between Nietzsches self-overcoming and Deleuzian freedom makes it clear that the latter is not the freedom impelled by the constraining pressure of internal or external reality, but the freedom of the productive system it is freedom of flow, of selectivity and of synthesis. Deleuze expresses in many of his works his preference for Nietzsche, but I doubt whether his conception of freedom directly refers to the ideal of self-overcoming. However, it is doubtless that Deleuzian freedom of creating the new is the application of Nietzsches active forces. Adorno is quite another thing. If we see Deleuzes understanding of freedom as freedom of creation, then Adornos is freedom in the social life, namely, to think and live differently. Adorno develops his understanding of freedom on the basis of a meta-critique of Kants theory of freedom.40 So he does not steer clear of Kant as Deleuze does. For Adorno, the antinomy between necessity of nature and free will is the crucial problem of Kants moral philosophy. He argues that Kants free will is devoid of any true content and is subject to necessity. According to Adorno, on the one hand, since Kants moral philosophy is closely related to the cognition of nature, moral laws are then subject to causality of nature in the aspect of its origin. Under this circumstance, free will is also
40

See Adornos Negative Dialectics (the first section of Part Three) and Problems of Moral Philosophy. Freedom, as a concept, is an important component of Kants three books of critical philosophy: Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason and Critique of Judgment. He distinguishes three dimensions of freedom: transcendental freedom, empirical freedom and free will. 184

secondary to the laws of nature. In the words of Deleuze and Guattari, the more you obey, the more you will be master, for you will only be obeying pure reason (1987, p. 376).41 On the other hand, as Hegel criticizes Kant, his account of the moral law reduces freedom to subjective knowledge. Any individual or collective cognition is restricted to its historical existence. Consequently, concrete freedom can be seen as the derivate from concrete historical reality. In view of the two reasons above, Kants freedom is really determined by necessity of nature and the experience of individual or collective subject. Adorno reads Kant as a philosopher who grounds realized freedom on the basis of the necessity of history. However, he himself wants to overcome the problem and he intends to find a freedom that is critical of all conditions. This does not mean that Adorno completely rejects Kant; on the contrary, he affirms the logical element of reason in Kants account of freedom. Freedom needs what Kant calls the heteronomous. Without what according to the criteria of reason itself is called the accidental or the contingent, freedom could as little exist as could reasons own logical judgements. The absolute separation between freedom and chance is as arbitrary as the equally absolute one between freedom and rationality. For an undialectical standard of legality something about freedom will always seem contingent: the case demands reflection, which

41

With this sentence, they criticize the subjective character of modern philosophy. 185

then lifts itself above the categories of both law and chance alike. (1973b, p. 236-37) To seek a critical freedom, Adorno begins his work with describing unfreedom in human history. In his writings, he tends to attribute unfreedom in social life to the social mechanism which engages people in identity thinking. By way of example, in capitalist society, underneath the surface of the freedom of wage labor is the unfreedom of salary earners. According to Marxs criticism of capitalist production, this ostensible freedom covers up the exploitation intrinsic to wage labor. Capitalist production, or more specially, the exchange of wage to labor, for all its surface freedom and fairness, is to extract surplus value from the proletarian workers. Adorno holds that this lack of freedom in social life results in the huge disaster in culture. Nazis concentration camp and the massacre of Jews indicate the pursuit of absolute identity in society. Having disclosed this profound root of Fascism, Adorno calls for a new consciousness of freedom namely, non-identity thinking. This new thinking of freedom corresponds to the free society, because in a state of unfreedom, no one has a liberated consciousness (Adorno, 1973b, p. 416). According to Adorno, non-identity is not only the principle of thinking, but also the principle of society. However, he nowhere attempts to give a specific description of what a society of freedom would have to be like. With regard to non-identity, his utopianism of freedom shares the negativity of his philosophy as a whole. Although Deleuze and Adorno demonstrate highly distinct understandings

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of freedom and unfold their respective arguments in highly different ways, their accounts of this concept can be united into one issue: to preserve heterogeneous elements that are alien to identity, to find a way to live otherwise. I touched upon this issue in Chapter 3 when I talked about Deleuzes concept of difference and Adornos concept of non-identity. In this chapter, I will focus on their efforts to pursue freedom and will indicate the means by which freedom can be realized in their own theories.

6.1 Deleuze: Enterprising Freedom

Deleuzes philosophy displays a non-subjective character, so does his conception of freedom. In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze (with Guattari) criticizes the preference of modern philosophy for the subject. According to him, the philosophy of Kant or of Hegel, or even of Habermas, is subject to the thinking with the image of the subject as a legislator, although they create radically different ideas of that image. In doing so, their opinions of freedom get into a vicious circle the more you obey, the more you will be master, for you will only be obeying pure reason, in other words yourself (1987, p. 376). In Deleuzes view, even leaving aside the logical problem of these distinct forms of subjective philosophy, their accounts of freedom only emphasize one dimension: they merely stress the power of legislating. He is trying to find an alternative that destroys these images and retrieves philosophical thinking from the subjective inclination.
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However, such a position is not to abandon the concept of the subject or to negate the role of the subject; on the contrary, his philosophical construction can be regarded as a call for freeing human beings from any social, historical or political constraints. In fact, the term freedom rarely appears in the writings of Deleuze (including the works co-authored with Guattari). It is said that, according to Guattaris remark, Deleuze himself dislikes those French words that end with an accent, e.g. libert (freedom) (Smith, 2003, p. 309). Im not sure to what degree this taste of language determines Deleuzes employment of concepts, but it is incapable of explaining the overall choice of Deleuze. From my point of view, Deleuze keeps distinguishing his own philosophy from the philosophical tradition from Descartes to Hegel. In doing so, he tries his best not to use those concepts that recall readers to a sense of traditional philosophy. Freedom is one of them. In the Introduction to Difference and Repetition, Deleuze illustrates the concepts of freedom as one of the three cases in which conceptual identity is invoked to account for repetition (1994, pp. 1516). However, I still use this term to characterize Deleuzes philosophy because the pursuit of freedom is never foreign to his idea. The whole construction of his transcendental empiricism and the usage of the concepts achieve freedom, freedom of flows and forces, freedom of man and thought, freedom of conditions of the new. Deleuze tries to restore the active characteristics of freedom that were repressed by Kantian morality. This has two dimensions of meaning. Above all, enterprising freedom signifies the triumph of active forces. In the preface to the

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English translation of his early work Nietzsche and Philosophy, Deleuze indicates his position against the triumph of reactive forces in man (p. x). Accordingly, in terms of Nietzsches relation of master and slave, Deleuzian freedom is freedom of master. Indeed, the so-called freedom of master does not refer to the autonomy of the individual subject. As I have argued at the beginning of this section, Deleuze does not relate his concept of freedom to an empirical subject. Therefore, following the Nietzschean usage, the notion of master does not stand for the individual or class who is dominating, but characterizes the regime of domination that comes under the sway of active forces. In the next place, with the expression of enterprising freedom, I stress the ability and potentiality of such freedom that can ceaselessly influence the existing realities. Deleuzian freedom is not a state of release or disengagement. It is not the freedom from something (constraint or regulation), but the freedom to do something. This freedom as becoming is a process rather than a consequence: it cannot be reified or petrified: it leads to more or greater freedom. These two dimensions can be united into one point: enterprising freedom is thus achieved to the extent that active forces not merely dominate reactive ones but also transmute them. This process of transmutation is a matter of creating pluralism where homogeneity had previously reigned (Buchanan, 1997, p. 491). In this sense, Deleuzian freedom appears not only as the opposite of the unfreedom in diverse forms, but also of the freedom of the slave. Or in terms of Deleuzes reading of Nietzsche, enterprising freedom is a Dionysian freedom that

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involves itself in production of the new. With regard to the enterprising feature, Deleuze has learned something from Nietzsche (will to power). What a will wants is to affirm its difference (Deleuze, 1981, p. 9). Accordingly, the affirmation of difference, the enjoyment of difference, is the new, aggressive and elevated conceptual element that empiricism substitutes for the heavy notions of dialectic (Deleuze, 1981, p. 9). A Deleuzian freedom is enterprising because it can completely exploit what it can do: to freely preserve this difference and freely put it into production. After all that, the enterprising feature of freedom is its desire to produce and to create through the appropriation of actives forces. It concerns the power and the ability that allows the active forces to be in play rather than domesticate them in the name of some given laws or values. To figure such a process of creation, Deleuze defines the productive forcespre-individual desireand the production mechanism desiring-machine that can produce flows of desire. Freedom thus becomes the intrinsic attribute of this mechanism. Deleuze regards the question of freedom as the one of outside thought that is always alien to the existing conditions (1988a, pp. 8990).42 However, such outside thought does not come from an outside field or culture. According to Deleuze, to produce outside thought, is to make thought a war machine (Deleuze & Guattari, 19887, p. 377). With the concept of war machine, Deleuze succeeds in evading the subjective character of traditional philosophy, focusing on the conditions of creating the new. The war machine is a nomadic force of

Deleuze claims that The outside is the negative space, from which the resistance derives its forces in Berrsonism, p. 89. 190

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aggression or resistance that ultimately is helpful to preserving heterogeneity. Deleuze (with Guattari) opposes it to the state apparatus in A Thousand Plateaus.43 According to Deleuze and Guattari, as the maintenance of the existing system and identity, the state apparatus strives for keeping homogeneity and totalitarianism. It has a tendency to reproduce itself and remain identical to itself, although its policies vary with situations. Thus, being the opposite of the state-apparatus, the war machine signifies an anarchic presence beyond the order of state, because war is the surest mechanism directed against the formation of the State (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 357). Here, war does not appear as a state of chaos or out-of-order; rather, it raises a kind of new order that turns against the one of state. In this sense, the war machine can be seen as a mechanism of production that brings about outside elements to challenge the conventional: It is necessary to reach the point of conceiving the war machine as itself a pure form of exteriority, whereas the state apparatus constitutes the form of interiority we habitually take as a model, or according to which we are in the habit of thinking. (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 354) Nevertheless, the term war here does not mean an armed and violent conflict; rather, it is declared against the Establishment. Although to some extent war aims for the annihilation or capitulation of enemy forces (Deleuze and Guattari, 1986b, p. 111), it means a flight rather than a battle. Hence, the war machine does

43

See Part 12 of A Thousand Plateaus, 1227: Treatise on Nomadology The War Machine. 191

not have war as its object. It is a linear assemblage that constructs itself on lines of flight: it is the invention of the nomad (p. 111). As the outside of the sate, the war machine unsettles the sedentary order and puts it into turbulence. Therefore, those elements, regulated or governed, are liberated from the normal order and become new flows. In the course of their operation, these new flows must conflict with the governing system and form their own territory for preserving themselves. The process of the operation is the deterritorialization of those sanctioned flows of power. However, this process of deterritorialization is simultaneously a process of reterritorialization: it opens a new space. As Deleuze puts it, war machines are linear arrangements constructed along lines of flight. Thus understood, the aim of war machines isnt war at all but a very special kind of space, smooth space, which they establish, occupy and extend. Nomadism is precisely this combination of war-machine and smooth space. (1995, p. 33) The most notable character of Nomadism is its free movement of migration. It is a way of life that goes across the new space opened by the war machine. The nomads are not those people who leave one state and go to another; instead, they are in constant change and never settle down. They are in dissociation, not belonging to any state. In spite of their incessant movement, the nomads still have territory. With regard to this territory, it is not a fixed and established state. The nomads move from one point to another, but in the territory constituted by these points lines of light be found every where. Such a territory asserts its power of deterritorialization. Nomadism in this sense is becoming. The freedom of

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movement is just realized in becoming. Deleuzes substitution of becoming for being reflects his opposition to institutionalization and totalization. Nomadism is the practical form of freedom advocated by Deleuze. By this means, freedom is no more an issue that involves laws and morality. Now it has become a style of life: life is always on the way. This style of life is the chance that can lead to greater freedom. Such a freedom is in some shifting intensities that are blocked and unblocked flux. However, Nomadism does not signify an aimless life: it is the potential for freedom. Nomadism as freedom is in fact the deterritorialization of state power: it is the absolute outside. It can make the outside a territory in space; consolidate that territory by the construction of a second, adjacent territory; deterritorialize the enemy by shattering his territory from within; deterritorialize oneself by renouncing, by going elsewhere (Deleuze & Guattari, 1986b, p. 4). Difference, multiplicity and change are immanent to such a freedom as becoming. For Deleuze and Guattari, it is necessary to release desire from being so it can enter more freely into becoming. Furthermore, such freedom is active. To some extent, it is even aggressive or enterprising. Using these terms, I of course do not mean that Deleuzian freedom instigates an invasive war or advocates violence. On the contrary, I attempt to stress a characteristic of freedom in Deleuzes philosophy that it shows initiative to pursue the new. Paul Patton characterizes this Deleuzian model of freedom as critical freedom. According to him, it differs from the standard liberal concepts of positive and negative freedom by its focus upon the conditions of change or

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transformation in the subject, and by its indifference to the individual or collective nature of the subject (2000, p. 83). In this sense, true freedom lies in its power to determine the conditions of change for social structure itself. As I have indicated elsewhere, being a transcendental empiricist, Deleuze focuses on the conditions of actual experience all the time. In Anti-Oedipus, by describing the modes of production in the different social modalities, Deleuze and Guattari aim to find the conditions that can help production transgress the restriction of the Oedipal triangle. In doing this, they hope to free the positive potential of capitalismthe capacity to create the ever-new relations between elementsfrom its regressive tendencies that reduces those relations to a certain axiomatic of production. This is actually to construct life on the basis of free flux of different forces. According to Deleuze (1981), life is freedom; it is itself difference: it is the power to think otherwise. In Nietzschean terms, life as freedom is a Dionysian yes, because it knows how to say no: it is pure affirmation, it has conquered nihilism and divested negation of all autonomous power. But it has done his because it has placed the negative at the service of the powers of affirming. To affirm is to create, not to bear, put up with or accept. (pp. 16586) This argument relates pure affirmation of difference to the activity of creation. For Deleuze, difference has contained the free elements in itself that can pervade and enter into every corner of life. Therefore, to create difference, is a Deleuzian freedom. Although this freedom appears as an absolute outside, it can be realized

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in the empirical world. Freedom, for Deleuze, is a revolutionary element that can exist in the current system.

6.2 Adorno: Redemption as Aesthetic Freedom

As I pointed out at the beginning of this chapter, Adorno develops his theory of freedom on the basis of a critique of Kants moral philosophy, especially, of his concept of practical reason.44 He aims to disclose what he sees as the truth of Kants conception of freedom to argue for the impossibility of its realization in the practical sense. Kant connects freedom with morality. His moral philosophy is based on rationality. For Kant, man knows that he is free by knowing his duties. Accordingly, man is free because he can choose to act according to the rational principle. Such rational principle is indeed a self-reflexive judgement. In doing this, the Kantian concept of freedom achieves a unity of theory (rationality) and practice (action). However, this is the point that Adorno intends to refute. According to Adorno, although all philosophy since the seventeenth century has regarded the pursuit of freedom as the ultimate mission, their concern is problematic. The idea of freedom has lost power from the outset; freedom has never been realized in this history. This is because the conception of freedom is above all defined within the realm of rationalist philosophy, and its demand for autonomy conflicts with the necessity of rationality (1973b).
Freedom is the first topic in the third part of Adornos Negative Dialectics. The subheading of this section is On the Meta-critique of Practical Reason. 195
44

It [the conception of freedom] goes against the old oppression and promotes the new one, the one that hides in the principle of rationality itself. One seeks a common formula for freedom and oppression, ceding freedom to the rationality that restricts it, and removing it from empiricism in which one does not even want to see it realized. (p. 214) In the Kantian philosophy, the idea of freedom is subject to the law of causality, because causality, as a condition of existence, resides in the way that the human mind is constructed. Consequently, no matter what the content of freedom is, it is in the first place compatible with the acquired knowledge that is structured according to the principle of causality. This principle signifies a two-fold sense: natural laws and human reason. For Kant, the former is just respect for the law, a sense of the wills free submission to the law, a submission free and yet bound up with an unavoidable compulsion that is exerted (Adorno, 1973b, p. 232).45 That is to say, man cannot pursue his freedom beyond the natural laws. His free will may be realized only when it obeys these laws. This first dimension of sense concerns the knowing ability of man as the agent of freedom. Obeying all the natural laws, man has the right to make free decisions. However, these decisions are made according to their knowledge, knowledge about the external the context of the society and knowledge about the internal the subject himself and his right of free decision-making. This second dimension concerns a

The words are from Kants Critique of Practical Reason. Adorno quotes them in his argument in Negative Dialectics. 196

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rationalist view that appeals to reason as a source of knowledge. In fact, the correlation of freedom to the rationalist philosophy makes the concept of freedom a rather abstract and empty one, because the precedence of reason cannot endow freedom with any detailed content before making it obedient to reason. That is to say, the exercise of freedom, even the recognition of freedom itself, depends upon the knowledge of the agent as an empirical subject. However, for an empirical subject, knowledge itself is limited, because the recognition rests with the individual experience and with the way it is acquired. This is the other aspect of the traditional doctrine of freedom: free will is rationalist, empirical and subjective. But from the viewpoint of Adorno, the attempt to localize the question of free will in the empirical subject is still a failure. According to idealists, including Kant, freedom or free will, as well as reason, is logically prior to experience. Nevertheless, free will is immanent to the empirical subject that is itself a moment of the spatial-temporal external world (Adorno, 1973b, p. 213). Therefore, the empirical subject has no ontological priority over the external world. This logical contradiction demonstrates the inconsistency of the idealist conception of freedom. From a pessimistic standpoint, Adorno argues that it is impossible to realize freedom (in the traditional sense) in the modern world, or, in his words, the organized world or administered world that advocates the principle of individualization. Freedom, or more specially, free will orients the direction of individualization. It represents a system without restriction. However, in reality,

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by a way of dualism, freedom is always defined as the opposite of unfreedom. Its realization lies in the cancellation of contradictions by negation. This definition signifies a passive dependence upon the totality of whatever restricts the individuality of the empirical subject. Thus, freedom that radically rejects totality and the movement of totalization in history, is actually defined by the ontology it denies. Accordingly, freedom becomes a moment that has two dimensions of sense: It is entwined, not to be isolated; and for the time being it is never more than an instant of spontaneity, a historical node, the road to which is blocked under present conditions. (Adorno, 1973b, p. 219) Here, freedom encounters a dilemma analogous to that of Adornos concept of nonidentity.46 It only appears as the resistance against unfreedom. If we also call freedom the outside, it is not in the sense of Deleuzes outside as Nomadism. For Adorno, the attempt to realize complete freedom in an organized world (e.g., capitalist society) is equivalent to trying to reach the outside in the inside: it is definitely impossible. With these arguments, Adorno expresses his pessimistic posture to define freedom as the negation of a specific unfreedom. Such pessimism is much deeper than other critical theorists like Marcuse, because what drives him to despair in the first place is not the pervasive and insuperable unfreedom in the oppressive world, but the problem of freedom itself. However, this does not mean that the Kantian conception of freedom has no value at all. It also does not mean that there is no freedom in empirical life.

46

See Chapters 3, the second section. 198

Instead, Adorno indicates that it is in the practical sense that he insists that positive freedom47 is merely a fiction. The impossibility of realizing freedom refers to positive freedom. As he has argued, the Kantian conception of freedom cannot break the bondage that comes from its relation to the empirical subject in a given circumstance. Due to this unavoidable bondage, positive freedom can be realized in the real world by no means. It turns into negative freedom, a resistance to repression, even, the altered forms of unfreedom to some extent. Since negative freedom emerges as a negative of unfreedom, it is sub-servient to unfreedom while considering itself to be Utopian. Although Hegel relates freedom to dialectics, he does not completely resolve this problem. What distinguishes him from Kant is his concern with history. However, as Adorno argues in Dialectic of Enlightenment, with the development of the culture and reason of Enlightenment, there is still domination and oppression in society. Human history is really a book in which unfreedom can be found everywhere. Moreover, such unfreedom originates not in injustice and inequality in laws or property, but in Enlightenment reason itself. A number of philosophers describe history as the development and progress that can overcome unfreedom. Marx is among them. However, as long as history is dominated by reason, it is impossible to avoid this problem it is the kingdom of necessity. Therefore, even from the perspective of Hegelian dialectics, history promises universal freedom, however, it in fact delivers universal compulsion, that is, unfreedom. This is the repressive
47 Isaiah Berlin draws a distinction between negative freedom and positive freedom. According to him, freedom as the absence of restraint means unwilling to subjugate. In this sense it is negative freedom, while positive one one's power to make choices leading to action.

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character of the doctrine of freedom. For Adorno, it is because Kant and the idealists after him define freedom according to a bourgeois value of universality and equality that freedom has to confront the compulsion and repression resulted from itself. Relating freedom to the principle of identity, this bourgeois ideology fails to attach importance to the deferential elements that can lead to the thought and action. As a result, it is satisfied with the ostensible equality of universal rights. For example, in the free market of capitalist society, in the name of freedom and equality, the salary of wage-workers and the exchange of commodities conceal the surplus value created by workers labor. Freedom is surely the principle of exchange in the market, but workers freedom only lies in their acceptance of the salary or not while consumers in their acceptance of the price or not. No one compels them, but they are compelled. So long as they live in this society, they have no other options except this. However, no matter whether they accept, the inequality behind the principle of identity cannot be changed. To be free is to choose what is all along the same. In fact, it is in this sense that the principle of identity cannot achieve positive freedom; instead, it reinforces the compulsion in the society. We feel that identity is the universal coercive mechanism which we, too, finally need to free ourselves from universal coercion, just as freedom can come to be real only through coercive civilization, not by way of any back to nature (Adorno, 1973b, p. 147). It is impractical to go back to nature; neither can it bring forth freedom. At the same time, to pursue civilization is to confront and bear its compulsion and

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inequality. This is the irresolvable problem of the reason of enlightenment that Adorno specifies in the co-authored work Dialectic of Enlightenment. This critique of freedom can also be applied to Marxian theory and even post-Marxian theory (e.g. Lukcs). Despite the different attitudes of Marx and Lukcs toward reification, they share a common idea that freedom can be achieved through the efforts of the proletariat to overcome the ideology of the bourgeoisie. But for Adorno, this utopian ideal cannot be realized in the practical sense, since the proletariat, the supposed subject or the agent of this revolution cannot obtain willingness for creating a definitely different freedom in the domesticating of capitalist ideology. In Adorno and Horkheimers term, such ideology is molded by culture industry. Consciousness of freedom is not a given rooted in the proletariat, but arises from the conditions of the social situation. The standardized values produced by the culture industry tend to tame the masses and manipulate them into the passive and negative. It is not simply to say that the masses (or in Marxian terms, the proletariat or working class) has lost the consciousness of revolution. To a higher extent, even their consciousness of freedom and revolution is no more than a resistance to the present oppression. In my opinion, such a consciousness is in fact close to Nietzschean consciousness of slave. For the slave, true freedom from the master is beyond their conception. In like manner, truly positive freedom that transcends the bourgeois value is inconceivable for the masses in capitalist society. This inconceivability reflects the limit of consciousness and imagination, which is

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subjected to the existing conditions. We can relate this to a question in writing science fiction the description of the alien body. No matter how grotesque and horrendous these alien bodies are, they are merely a kind of combination of some characters of human and animals, corresponding to the principle of empirical selectivity. The difficulty in the representation of alien existence, or in other words, of the imagination of the radical otherness, reflects the demands for the new power and moment that can provide justification for a spontaneously active revolution. However, this new power cannot be found in reality. This is the situation of Marx and his followers: they fail to find a source from which they can derive a new consciousness of positive freedom. Freedom of the proletariat loses both its form and its content. Adorno tries to avoid this abstract and impotent freedom. His opposition to Marxian freedom indeed lies in his posture against practice. He argues that, the ephemeral traces of freedom which herald its possibility to empirical life tend to grow more rare (1973b, p. 274). The true question for freedom is not to find what it is, or what it fights against, but what it arises from, namely, the conditions of freedom. Unfortunately, Adorno fails to determine these conditions. This probably relates to his believing in the impotence of freedom in a practical sense. Seeking an alternative, he finally localizes the way of redemption in aesthetics. Art, being defined as the medium of realizing freedom, can free thought from the doctrines that restrict it, e.g. instrumental reason because art cannot concretize Utopia, not even negatively (Adorno, 1984, p. 48). Continuing his own theory about the

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subject-object relation, Adorno emphasizes the primacy of the object in the artwork. For him, in art the primacy of the object, understood as the potential freedom of life from domination, manifests itself in the freedom from objects (1984, p. 366). This is because the artwork, which is not committed itself to the political, has autonomy from reality. Hence, it can be seen as a critical power. The primacy of the object inherent in the artwork is the experience of art that is different from experience in the empirical world. As a created work, art is itself mediated. Consequently, its experience is neither identical to itself nor to the world it represents. Aesthetic identity is different, however, in one important respect: it is meant to assist the non-identical in its struggle against the repressive identification compulsion that rules the outside world (Adorno, 1984, p. 6). Thus, Adorno opens a possible field of aesthetic experience by endowing it with a nonidentical moment. Such nonidentity derives from its distance from the empirical world and implies some kind of critical power. And the distance achieves the reconciliation between nonidentity and the world. This conception of freedom indeed serves as the potential energy to create the new. In this way, Adorno rejects the relation of freedom to the individual. Freedom does not specially involve the situation and the rights of the individual. It derives from the need to develop the new (otherness different from the existing conditions). According to Adorno, the new is necessarily abstract. It is not a certain concrete and specific end, but the longing for the new. Therefore, to be free to create the new is not to realize a practical goal; instead, it promises a

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possibility. If it is actualized, it comes to an end.

6.3 Exit to Freedom: Where Does Freedom Arise from?

Deleuze and Adorno unfold two radically different accounts of freedom. However, by the distinctive routes, they reach the same goal: a non-subjective freedom to create the new. Undoubtedly, neither of them associates freedom with the experience and situation of the individual, but with a kind of possibility and potentiality. Leaving this same end alone, the two distinctive routes reflect their difference views of practice in empirical life. In Deleuzes philosophy, difference is defined as the demand immanent to everything that has the need to affirm and develop its own difference. Therefore, to create the conditions to develop such difference is the freedom that Deleuze wants to seek. Deleuze tries to prove the primacy of difference and to distinguish it from a metaphysically abstract being; however, he cannot conceal its nature as an ontological qualification. In contrast, we cannot find an ontological presupposition similar to difference-in-itself in Adorno. Although he also tries to determine the conditions to freely create the new as a kind of otherness, this otherness, the heterogeneous moment derives from the nonidentity between the object and the world it represents. For the centrifugal effect resulting from distance can bring the non-identical elements into the relation of the object to the empirical world. And it can produce a new power that serves to create the new.
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With regard to these two qualifications, Adorno goes further than Deleuze in abandoning metaphysics. Adorno drastically rejects all pre-philosophical suppositions, whether it is the Kantian transcendental I or the Marxian liberated consciousness of the working class. All of them are transcendentally given. Indeed, Deleuzes difference-in-itself is subject to this type of categories. Deleuze does not explain the source of difference as Adorno has done, only treating difference as the given as being (of becoming) itself. What the difference in a being affirms is not otherness from other objects, but the drive to display its own difference. Deleuze and Adorno converge at this point when Adorno indicates that the new is really the longing for the new. It is in this sense that Deleuze and Adorno share the same philosophical goal. Such a conception of freedom settles the problem that accompanies the traditional doctrine of freedom and breaks the repression and compulsion of reason-directed freedom. Freedom is not merely to resist the present repression; but to find a definitely new way. This way is outside the current system. It is significant in finding a way to avoid domination (e.g., Fascism) in the post-war world. However, Deleuze and Adorno achieve this goal to different extents. Deleuze appeals to transcendental empiricism to construct a positive way to determine the conditions of change while Adorno falls into a utopia of aesthetic freedom. For Deleuze, the system of production on the plane of immanence overcomes negativity from its root. Production, completely liberated from subjective experience and knowledge, depends upon the interactions of

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all-directional forces. In Deleuzes philosophy, he embodies this way as emphasis on the minoritarian. The minoritarian, or the marginal, is something expelled by the dominant ideology, but it is the revolutionary moment that turns against the majoritarian. Becoming-minoritarian is a way to avoid becoming-fascist. In an apparatus of domination, the minoritarian plays a small but prominent role, because it indicates the direction and the possibility of change. The minoritarian is not necessarily the opposite of the majoritarian, but something that is ignored by the majoritarian. It is the virtual power that can be brought into play under some conditions. By contrast, Adorno insists on the impossibility of freedom in a practical sense. Although he turns to aesthetics to establish a nonidentical relation derived from the autonomy of the artwork, his redemptive freedom still remains abstract. By virtue of the absolute negativity of Adornos logic of disintegration, the new is only one concretized potential whose manifestation indicates the existence of the other potential that has not been realized. Thus with regard to its realization, Adorno fails to describe a positive freedom, though he has tried his best to prove that negative freedom is problematic. Art is no more able to concretize utopia of freedom than philosophy is. It has no specific content than a critical reflection on reality, namely, a critical reflection on false unity between theory and practice. Art is more than praxis because by turning away from praxis art denounces the narrow-mindednesss and untruth of practical life (Adorno, 1984, p. 342). Not being able to concretize the new, Adorno defines it as a pure will. For him, the

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nature of the new is still the image of collapse, disintegration and negation. If freedom wants to keep its vital force for ever, it cannot be realized and must be utopian all the time. Freedom is no more than a picture of sunrise on the horizon. It is always beyond our reach. Putting the two different accounts of freedom together, we could clearly tell the opposite positions between them: Deleuzes positivity contra Adornos negativity. This distinction in the political originates from their philosophically distinctive opinions of difference. To strive for freedom, Deleuze provides a more practical way than Adornos. When it is to be applied to political practice, it may encounter a danger. On the one hand, this danger explains the root of Adornos negativity and impotence in the practical sense. On the other hand, it also abate Deleuzes attempt to escape from the established system, degrading his enterprising freedom to a limited one.

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Chapter 7
The Limitation of Freedom: Constant Totalization

It is only for the sake of those without hope that hope is given to us.48 Walter Benjamin In the previous six chapters I have discussed the six aspects that demonstrate the common logic and the evident contrast in the theories of Deleuze and Adorno. On the one hand, the common logic reflects their opposition to the hierarchical order in cognition and in life. The hierarchical order is usually reduced to some identity (whatever it is) that both Deleuze and Adorno believe has repressed the production of the heterogeneous and the new. On the other hand, the contrast between the two philosophers originates from their distinctive understanding of the concept of difference. As the title of this dissertation suggests, Deleuze is engaged in a kind of methodology that can be summarized as positive constructivism, whereas Adorno turns to negative dialectics. But, does this mean we can say that Deleuze can be seen as the opposite of Adorno? The answer is much more complex than a simple yes or no. These six aspects that I chose to study in my dissertation cover their distinctive views of philosophical grounds, of methodology, and of goal. Of course these aspects have not exhausted the correlation between Deleuze and Adorno. There are still plenty of points to be
48

This sentence is cited in Herbert Marcuses One-Dimensional Man (1988, p. 257). Benjamin used the sentence to criticize the fascist era, but I here make use of it to describe the potential of freedom that is inherent in the modern totalizing society. 208

explored, points that can put Deleuze and Adorno in juxtaposition. For me, these aspects, which I intentionally select, are the fundamental ones in their philosophies that indicate their distinctive understanding of difference and lead us to explore the significance of the comparison between the two philosophers. In other words, the distinction between Deleuze and Adorno raises a series of questions. First, to what extent do their philosophies converge or diverge? Second, what does the distinction indicate? Third, how should we read the practical significance of their theories? Indeed, these questions arouse my interest in contrasting Deleuze and Adorno, and I try to answer them in this dissertation. The previous chapters try to answer the first two questions. And in this chapter I respond to the last question. No one can deny the evident differences between the philosophies of Deleuze and Adorno. The difference can be found in almost every aspect of their thought: the philosophical tradition they follow, the concepts and terms, methodology, political positions etc. However, as Chapter 6 indicates, both thinkers have a similar concern: to oppose totalitarianism and to struggle for freedom. Freedom here is a political issue rather than an ethical one; hence, we must confront the question of how to put it into practice. In other words, when we move from the issue of difference to that of freedom, we need to consider the possibility in the political practice of todays world. Theoretically, Deleuzes positivity stands in evident contrast with Adornos negativity. But, is this also the case at the level of political practice? More precisely, is it true that Deleuze

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provides a feasible way to realize freedom but Adorno does not? My answer is partly yes. However, the point I want to highlight is that even Deleuzes theory of freedom encounters a danger when it is put into practice. This danger is also the prime cause of Adornos freedom not being practical at all. The danger is totalization. In the modern world, totalization can be seen as the integrating ability of society. Such ability offers a synthesis or reconciliation that may assimilate the heterogeneous. Although Deleuze manages to avoid this problem at the theoretical level by defining two processes, deterritorialization and reterritorialization, that take place at the same time, the situation is more complex in reality. When the heterogeneous is totalized or integrated by the social, it may become part of the totality. As a result of social totalization, the government is enforced. This is the case that happens to democratic states and to globalization. To elaborate this point, I begin with Deleuzes concept of nomadism. Defining thought as the outside, Deleuze uses nomadism to express a process in which the outside constantly penetrates the state. In nomadism, which appears as a resistance to the state apparatus, all things are in relations of becoming, rather than implementing binary distributions between states: a veritable

becoming-animal of the warrior, a becoming-woman, which lies outside dualities of terms as well as correspondences between relations (Deleuze & Guattari, 1986b, pp. 23). Nomadism, opposed to the constant, the identical and the stable, calls for a ceaseless trend toward heterogeneity, namely, in Deleuzian terms, becoming-minor. In other words, Deleuze introduces difference as exteriority into

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interiority though a passage that keeps transcending the limits: the virtual.49 Bringing the forces from another plane or another dimension, the virtual acts as another species or another nature and opens a channel to differentiation. This is a new type of synthesis that makes freedom possible, freedom to produce the new. Deleuze interprets this synthesis as an encounter of diverse forces. However, according to Adorno, in the social, what happens in reality is a process of totalization in which the heterogeneous is accepted and then assimilated. This model has profound political significance in todays world: it advocates an emphasis on the value of the minoritarian. The minoritarian, for Deleuze, is an angle of view or an attitude rather than a quantity. It reflects a resistant opinion toward the majoritarian. The minoritarian is not a rigid group; it changes with different conditions. For example: for todays world, woman is the minoritarian and man is the majoritarian; the colored is the minoritarian and white people are the majoritarian; the Czech language is the minoritarian and English is the majoritarian; the child is the minoritarian and the adult is the majoritarian, etc. Therefore, Deleuzes becoming-minor is indeed a demand that the major becomes minor. It does not mean to overturn the current laws in the world or to turn the marginal into the central; instead, it merely refuses to ignore the minoritarian. According to Deleuze, the minoritarian does not necessarily become the majoritarian; instead, it is the major that constantly recognizes and introduces the minoritarian moments. In this way, Deleuze is trying to achieve a kind of

See Chapter 3, the section called Deleuzes Difference-in-Itself. I discuss Deleuzes accounts of the virtual and the actual when addressing the concept of difference. 211

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multiplicity. Deleuze aims to counteract the function of totalization in a nomadic way; however, in modern society totalization is the means by which the heterogeneous is introduced into the system, although in an integrating way. In Anti-Oedipus, he proposes schizophrenic escape as a way of fleeing from totalization. According to him, the social is not the foe that schizophrenic escape intends to fight and beat down; what he rejects is the shackle, e.g., the Oedipus complex, of the ossified totality. Deleuze believes that every schizophrenic investment is social; it always bears upon a socio-historical field. It is in this sense that deterritorialization is not a thorough and linear course with a clear goal; instead, it is a ceaseless becoming. Moreover, deterritorialization and reterritorializtion always take place at the same time. This is indeed totalization in reality. The movement happens inside the social and acts on it and makes it enter a new totalization. It is in this sense, I suggest, that Deleuzes thorough freedom is viable at the theoretical level: practically, political freedom is freedom in the process of totalization. Such freedom does not abandon the values or the laws in society; rather, it is an infiltration or pervasion into the dominant by otherness. The schizophrenic escape itself does not merely consist in withdrawing from the social, in living on the fringe: it causes the social to take flight through the multiplicity of holes that eat away at it and penetrate it, always coupled directly to it (Deleuze & Guattari, 1983, p. 374)

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The multiplicity of holes is actually the minoritarian values in the social that provide a passage to become different. It is a precise metaphor because it succeeds in describing the situation of the minoritarian: they emerge inside a given totality but map out a line of flight that escapes the majoritarian value supported by the totality itself. But, the minoritarian does not act with the goal of taking the place of the majoritarian. It merely strives after a reasonable living space for itself. What it really fights against is the autarchy of the majoritarian. Whereas the problem is that of a minoritarian-becoming, not pretending, not playing or imitating the child, the madman, the woman, the animal, the stammerer or the foreigner, becoming all these, in order to invent new forces or new weapons (Deleuze & Parnet, 2002, p. 5). Contrariwise, once the minoritarian turns into the majoritarian, its opposite or supplement will emerge as the new minoritarian. Hence I argue that what Deleuze does is to constantly advance new totalization. He never attempts to subvert the laws of the social with a violent revolution. Instead, his schizophrenic escape is subject to societys ability of integrating: to bring difference into itself and to create the new. This ability is an immanent demand of totalization. Being an ongoing moment, totalization consists of two contradictory directions. On the one hand, it stabilizes all the moments and makes them recognizable. This direction indeed suggests a pursuit of identity and certainty. On the other hand, it constantly seeks to introduce new moments (the heterogeneous) to criticize and renew the established moment. Hence, totalization in the social field can be seen as an effort

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to integrate the discontinuous and the incommensurable into society without eliminating these heterogeneous moments. Totalization also indicates the limitation of resistance, or even of freedom. Through the example of Deleuzes becoming-minoritarian, the limitation is revealed by the differentiation of the minoritarian in the first place. To distinguish the minoritarian from the majoritarian we need to determine several criteria that vary with the object and its conditions. However, these criteria are not alien ones from other worlds; they have to be subject to the dominating values and common sense in a given totality. In other words, to determine the minoritarian it is necessary to determine the majoritarian first. The latter is the premise of the former. As a matter of fact, the process of determining the majoritarian involves the recognition of the dominating values that represent the corresponding totality. Such recognition of the current totality is in fact a reference to a given unity. In this sense, the minoritarian is not really the new that indicates an absolute outside: on the contrary, it only represents infinite and infinitesimal becomings of a single, inescapable world. This is the point where Badious critique of Deleuzes univocity of being arises. Badiou interprets being as pure multiplicity.50 For him, Deleuze, as well as the Greek philosophers, fails to resolve the question that concerns the One and the presentation of multiplicity with the univocal being. In terms of this question, Badiou (2000) argues that, The price one must pay for inflexibly maintaining the thesis of
50 In The Logics of Worlds: Being and Event, Badiu addresses the philosophical problems involved the thinking of being with mathematics: set theory. Acoording to him, being is not a name of univocity but a void set, which is referred to the multiple.

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univocity is clear: given that the multiple (of beings, of significations) is arrayed in the universe by way of a numerical difference that is purely formal as regards the form of being to which it refers (thought, extension, time, etc.) and purely modal as regards its individuation, it follows that, ultimately, this multiple can only be of the order of simulacra. (p. 26) I will illustrate this point with an example. If we acknowledge that women are the minoritarian, then that means we have accepted the idea that in a patriarchal society men are the majoritarian. In the same way, if we believe the black or the Indian are the minoritarian, then the premise must be the fact that the ideology of the white has attained world domination in the field of politics, of economics, and of culture. The question of language is a much more complex issue. When Czech is regarded as one of the minor languages, the reason is that English is the most widely used language in the world. Probably English is not the language that is used by the greatest number of people (people who speak Chinese are more numerous than English-speaking people), but it is the one that is spoken most widely. The situation is more complicated than that. Accepting a language consists not merely acceptance of its words and pronunciation but also and above all in accepting the logic that language bears itself. Such logic is reflected in every respect of the language: vocabulary, genders of nouns, different forms and tenses of verbs, the structure of sentences and the order of words, special expressions, the literature, idiom, etc. Accordingly, the process of using a language is the one

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of thinking in its particular logic. Hence, the majoritarian language governs not only the mouth (to speak) but also the mind (to think). Indeed, the majoritarian values are the embodiment and elaboration of the specific thinking mode that they represent. From the argument above, we can see that the criteria to determine the minoritarian rely on the recognition of a specific system and its logic. With this premise, no matter how effective becoming-minoritarian is, it never can overthrow the system, because the minoritarian remains the fringe: it does not become the majoritarian. It does not alter or even menace the totality. The expression becoming-minoritarian essentially restricts the direction of its own resistance from the very beginning: it admits and accepts the dominating values; furthermore, it operates without a purpose of altering or supplanting them. Becoming-minoritarian merely indicates a trend of integration. The expression betrays several limitations. Deleuze uses it only because there is no other way to precisely represent those values other than the dominant. First of all, the restriction of the expression derives from the totality itself. To use such an expression means having accepted the current criteria. This action is itself the outcome of totalization. Second, becoming-minoritarian indicates the most important dimension of such a resistance: it is an endless process of becoming in which the minoritarian does not alter its own property and status in the totality. Becoming-minoritarian signifies a trend, not a pursuit of any fixed goal. The two dimensions are sufficient to respond to the question above. In contrast to

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the majoritarian, the minoritarian can do nothing other than function as the forces of becoming. It is able to create otherness inside the totality. How can it achieve this? Indeed, the existence of the minoritarian in a given totality indicates its tolerance. Similarly, the minority reveals the openness of thought.

Becoming-minoritarian makes thought break the limits brought forth by the attributes and the conditions of the subject. Therefore, what Deleuzes becoming-minoritarian aims to achieve is to constantly promote the openness and the tolerance of the dominant values. But in reality, the extent of openness and tolerance may result in another extreme: assimilation. As I mentioned, this function is one of the integrating functions of the society. It absorbs the heterogeneous and integrates it into the new society. Hence deterritorialization ends in reterritorialization in this way. This is the limitation of freedom caused by constant totalization. The self-identification of the modern democratic state exemplifies this function. In a democratic state, people have obtained more rights to freely express their dissidence and objection, which used to be suppressed by violent means in an arbitrary regime. These rights seem to indicate multiplicity and difference in the political. However, such freedom is limited; it is usually regulated and controlled. Why? It is true that dissidence and objection can be expressed, but the form of expressing dissidence or objection is regulated by laws. For example, when people intend to have a demonstration, they have to first apply and then do it according to the regulations. In this way, dissidence and objection

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are integrated into the state apparatus, no matter whether the state apparatus will be accepted or not. Furthermore, when dissidence and objection are absorbed by the government, they will reinforce its regime. Thus, when dissidence and objection represent multiplicity and difference on the surface, they are still subject to the dominant. Another example is multi-culturalism. An idea is widely accepted that the more types of culture a society can tolerate, the more open it is. This means that an open society should not ignore the minoritarian; instead, it is supposed to accept it and make room for it. Then, on the one hand the minoritarian culture obtains the opportunity to develop, but on the other hand, it may encounter a danger: it may be absorbed and become part of the mainstream or even assimilated by the mainstream.51 In todays globalization, the extinction of many minor cultures is partly due to this cause. Even though some other cultures are preserved in globalization, they are only seen as spectacles and do not influence the dominant. Consequently, such difference is ostensible. Therefore, when we apply Deleuzes theory in practice and try to realize Deleuzian difference, we have to confront this problem. In fact, because Adorno has considered the probable danger of totalization he completely rejects reconciliation in the political. I mentioned that the concept of nonidentity indicates an inherent paradox. Although Adornos nonidentity does not refer to some values as Deleuzes minoritarian does, it shares several key

Slavoj iek names such multi-culturalism the cultural logic of multinational capitalism: it is a Marcusean repressive tolerance. According to iek, liberal tolerance condones the folklorist Other deprived of its substance any real Other is instantly denounced for its fundamentalism, since the kernel of Otherness resides in the regulation of its jouissance, i.e. the real Other is by definition patriarchal, violent, never the Other of ethereal wisdom and charming customs (1997). 218

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attributes with Deleuze; accordingly, it also confronts a similar difficulty of expression. The concept of nonidentity is employed to query the self-identical subject-object of history and to break the pseudo-totality of identity thinking. Adorno writes that, Whoever chooses philosophy as a profession today must first reject the illusion that earlier philosophical enterprises began with: that the power of thought is sufficient to grasp the totality of the real (2000, p. 24).52 But this is not to say that the concept of totality is presumed to be abandoned from its root. Instead, even nonidentity itself still presupposes a Hegelian totality. Although Adorno rejects a Hegelian mediation through the principle of negation of negation, yet he demands a new reconciliation as totality: nonidentity through identity. Accordingly, his famous statement the whole is the untrue (1978, p. 50) cannot be understood as a thorough renouncing of totality: it merely argues against a totality of identity that is sustained by the Hegelian positive dialectics. The latter is a product of that process which preserves all of its moments as elements in a structure, rather than as stages or phases. This Hegelian idea of totality in fact takes a consistent process as its premise: it still presupposes an identity in the first place. For Hegel, overcoming or subsuming is just the inevitable stages in the whole process, whose existence is to affirm the validity of the whole. However, Adorno believes that the principle of identity does not express the whole relation of thought and object and therefore it fails to recognize the totality. On the contrary, in the new reconciliation, nonidentity is no longer

52

Adorno, Theodor. The Actuality of Philosophy. From The Adorno Reader. 219

secondary to identity; it unfolds the really dialectical relation to identity and helps grasp the totality. Such nonidentity is able to produce moments of negative

insight into the social totality that produces it. Indeed, nonidentity argues against every attempt to negate totality and irrupts in a critical engagement of it. Synthesis for Adorno is also important. His negative dialectics is unfolded on the basis of rejecting synthesis. Adorno appeals to a more utopian approach: nonidentity through identity. From this paradoxical expression, we can imagine the dilemma that Adorno confronts: the difficulty of embodying redemption. Martin Jay (1984) has argued that Adornos concept of totality is far more negative than positive in a variety of ways: Indeed, his stress on negation dictated not only the content of his thought, but the form in which it was expressed, a form that refused to hide the irreconcilability of its generating energies. Thus, despite his protestations to the contrary, Adornos work consistently invited the charge that he had abandoned the confidence in the possibility of human emancipation which underlay the Marxist tradition in all its forms. (p. 242) Nevertheless, although the impossibility of traditional emancipation has been demonstrated by Adorno in the sense of class revolution, he believes in dialectics, his negative dialectic, not Hegelian dialectic. According to him, Hegelian dialectic presupposes unity in the first place and then drives it into action with sublation. Indeed, such a unity that is achieved in the mediation of synthesis has never

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existed in fact. This teleological and dialectical mediation is problematic because of its affirmative character. In it, negation finally becomes affirmation through synthesis. 53 Therefore, Adorno turns to negative dialectics. He proposes a nonidentity between identity and nonidentity against Hegels speculative identity between identity and nonidentity. His negative dialectics is an effort that seeks to recognize nonidentity between thought and object in the process of identification (thinking). Although Adorno describes negative dialectics as, in theory, the only way to find contradiction and to think with contradiction, he fails to give a practical example that applies negative dialectics to reality. In this respect, his distinctive attitude towards the relation of theory to practice54 can account for the impotence of his theory in political reality. For him, Marxs separation of interpreting the world from changing the world is thoroughly unnecessary, because interpreting is itself one of the forms of changing the world. He maps out the only way to this goal: dialectic. Only dialectically, it seems to me, is philosophic interpretation possible (Adorno, 2000, p. 28). For this reason, Adornos appealing to an aesthetic utopia is essentially of little difference from the writers of science fictions employment of insularity. In most science fiction, utopia is imagined as a closed system that is completely separated from ordinary society. This closed space may be a state that is separated from other sates by geographical block, or even a spaceship. It is separation that guarantees the possibility of utopia refusing to be totalized or even assimilated by other sates.

53 54

I elaborate on Adornos critique of Hegelian dialectics in Chapter 1. See Chapter 5. 221

Indeed, the production of science fiction (in various forms) is an attempt to embody nonidentity in a systematic society, although this attempt must encounter this or that difficulty. Only in the space that keeps distance from the identified world can nonidentity exist. Theoretically, Adorno seems to find an escape hatch for his nonidentity through an optimistic55 unity of theory and practice, but this resolution has little practical significance in the political. To be sure, Adornos rejection of synthesis demonstrates a resistant attitude or a reflection on the identified reality to some extent; however, it is critical rather than practically positive. For Adorno, nonidentity between thought and object reflects above all nonidentity between the subject and the object. Despite his opposition to the conventionally identical subject-object relation, his dichotomy of the subject and the object nonetheless remains an epistemology that depends on the totality. The action of knowledge-acquisition takes place in a given totality and it must suppose a totality that accommodates the subject, the object and the dialectical relation between them. For Adorno, nature is the world of objects. Objects are conceptualized by the subject only in the course of the social totality. In other words, the totalization of the social provides the locus for the objects to be cognized and conceptualized. It is evident that the social totality and the individual are not identical in the course of knowledge-acquisition: the individual keeps attaining experiences and knowledge that are mediated by and produced
55

In Marxism and Totality (1984) Martin Jay uses this word to comment on Adornos relation of theory to practice. It does not mean that Adorno holds an optimistic view. Instead, Adorno takes a simplified way to deal with the relation between theory and practice: to unite the two into one. He defines theory itself as one of the forms of practice, which accordingly resolves, or in other words obviates, the question about practice. 222

through the social totality. However, these experiences and knowledge are irreducible to any individual; they become the compositive parts of the social totality itself: the emergence of them causes new movements of totalization. Accordingly, in this respect, the object can be considered independently of the subject. Such independence can well account for the nonidentity between the subject and the object. Although the source of nonidentity has been explained, how we are to understand its role in the social as totality remains problematic. Let us take the example of Adornos analysis of an ideal society. According to him, an emancipated society would not be a unitary state, but the realization of universality in the reconciliation of differences (2003, p. 54). It is at this point that he and Deleuze converge to some extent. Both of them realize that an ideal society is supposed to tolerate difference and multiplicity. Moreover, the so-called reconciliation of differences cannot be realized in a society dominated by the principle of identity. With regard to this principle, Adorno criticizes it for its ostensible equality that covers up the real inequality. According to his criticism, in a society that demands the equality of all who have human shape (Adorno, 2003), To assure the black that he is exactly like the white man, while he obviously is not, is secretly to wrong him still further. He is benevolently humiliated by the application of a standard by which, under the pressure of the system, he must necessarily be found wanting, and to satisfy which would in any case be a doubtful

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achievement. (p. 54) Such an ironical situation is derived from the abstract and illusory equality of identity. Furthermore, because totality is itself determined by the principle of identity in the sense of rational thinking, to realize nonidentity in totality becomes an impossible mission. This explains why Adorno fails to picture the function of nonidentity and to describe a world grounded on nonidentity. Furthermore, the reconciliation of differences that Adorno demands is merely a theoretical utopia. Indeed, nonidentity through identity is rather a philosophical image than a practically political one. Adornos retreat from practice is due to the limitation of totalization. However, it reflects on his intransigent posture against administered society and its laws. This is a radically different strategy from that of Deleuze. Deleuze above all acknowledges the partition of the minoritarian and the majoritarian. He treats the minoritarian as the outside and continuously introduces it into the majoritarian so that they form a new encounter and create the new. As I have argued, this means taking the dominating values as the premise. Politically Deleuzes strategy can be seen as a process of reinforcing the established totality by taking the fringe into the project of totalization. But this is not what Adorno or Deleuze want. In the first instance, being convinced of the notion that to think is to identify makes him unlikely to abandon totality as an outmoded category. But this reason also determines his dilemma. He is aware of several practically concrete strategies to improve the social system to a certain extent, but he is not satisfied with these reformist amendments. He wants to go

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further: to find a kingdom of nonidentity. It thus becomes a question to establish a utopia. Adorno is undoubtedly profound in this respect: he recognizes the deficiencies of every form of utopia and finally retreats from political practice. The reconciliation of differences cannot be realized in the political. This is why he turns to negative dialectics to realize nonidentity in philosophy. For him, negative dialectics is focused on the moment of negation, demonstrating that what appears to be a seamless conceptual totality is in fact scarred by antagonisms (Hammer, 2006, p. 102). This theoretical quest is indeed much more critical than any practical one. Totalization is a societys ability to renew itself. It is a synthetic and ongoing movement, which pierces the established totality and adds some new dimensions to it. However, such a totalization cannot be understood in the conventional sense, which is ordinarily described as a unifying process that wipes out otherness and difference. As for totalization, it is not assimilation but reconciliation through conflicts and complementarity. Either the minoritarian or the nonidentity is an expression of otherness that is the limitation of the established. According to both philosophers, the ongoing totalization attributes to the historical process the task and the possibility of overcoming the limitation of the dominant and finally to accommodate difference. Because totalization is becoming, it does not presuppose any teleological end. In other words, such totalization moves on without a clear goal; it merely tries to explore one of the possibilities of reconciliation through conflicts. It is in this sense that

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becoming-minoritarian (Deleuze) or thinking with contradiction (Adorno) can be subject to totalization. In Deleuzian terminology, this process is one whereby deterritorialization and reterritorialization, decoding and recoding take place at the same time. The result of such totalization manages to reinforce the cohesive capability of totality by making it more tolerant, more comprehensive, though its intention is to break through the hierarchical law of the established system. Politically this is indeed the function of self-identification of the democratic system that reinforces its domination by regulating the form of expressing resistance and dissidence. To apply this conclusion to the criticism of capitalism, we can find that what Deleuze and Adorno appeal to is accelerated capitalism rather than its collapse. Accelerated capitalism is by no means an absolute deterritorialization, but it manages to realize difference in its totality to the greatest extent.

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Conclusion
Meditation on Modernity
After World War Two, arguments about modernity and its consequences emerged with increasing regularity. These arguments tend to focus on two issues: 1) What are the limitations of modernity? 2) What is a society after modernity like? With regard to the first question, there is not just one and standard answer, because the defining characteristics of modernity are multi-dimensional. However, in the final analysis, modernity is the outcome of development of Enlightenment reason; capitalist society is its highest form of a social-economic system. In this respect, considering the limitations of modernity is to unfold criticism of capitalism in the fields of sociology, economics, politics, and philosophy, etc. The second question is indeed to some extent a positive response to the first one. Philosophers and social scientists are inclined to use postmodernity or postmodernism to refer to the social condition after modernity. Nevertheless, such a situation has no defining character as explicit as modernity;56 instead, it is loosely defined as the transcendence of modernity. Surely there are many theoretical attempts to designate the new type of society consumer society, media society, information society, electronic society or high tech (Jameson, 1991, p. 1), all of them are trying to provide a description from a specific angle. Generally, the prefix post- here is rather a kind of attitude of rejection than a particular time.
56 Frederic Jameson (1991) posits two characteristics of postmodernity: pastiche and a crisis in historicity. In my view, it is such an analysis of the postmodern era that represents the difficulty to define postmodernity with clear and rigorous characteristics.

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More critically, postmodernity refers to the incipient or actual dissolution of those social forms associated with modernity (Sarup, 1993, pp. 130-131). In other words, it is hard to indicate a date that is widely regarded as the beginning of postmodern society. For this reason, postmodernity cannot be understood as a sign of history but a rejection of the limitations of modernity. I prefer postmodernity to postmodernism because the postfix -ism refers to a specifically theoretical system. However, postmodernity lacks the affirmatively defining ground that modernity had. Although it is characterized as the attempt to describe a situation, or a state of being, or something concerned with changes to institutions and conditions 57 , it is much closer to an atmosphere than to an integrated system yet. Postmodernity demonstrates a rejection of modernity and its root, yet it does not signify an end of reason. It is more inclined to be a reflection upon those categories behind modernity: rationality, enlightenment, the subject, totality, and so on. Such a reflection intends to abandon the hierarchy and unification brought by reason, emphasizing the spontaneity of the conditions that are in nature inconstant and variable. Thus it is clear that postmodern philosophy holds a critical view of the foundational assumptions and structures of modern philosophy. Then, what is the mission of philosophy at this stage? Adorno gives a response. He claims, Its not up to philosophy to exhaust things according to scientific usage, to reduce the phenomena to a minimum of propositions Instead, in

57

See Anthony Giddenss Modernity and Self-Identification (1991). 228

philosophy we literally seek to immerse ourselves in things that are heterogeneous to it, without placing those things in prefabricated categories (Adorno, 1973b, p. 13). Indeed, this passage describes a contrast between modern philosophy and postmodern philosophy. The latter is no longer satisfied with the construction of a self-evident system; on the contrary, what it seeks to determine are the conditions of otherness, namely, of Giddenss changes or Adornos heterogeneity. To do this, philosophers have to abandon the traditional self-sufficient subject. It therefore means that, to determine changes and heterogeneity, they need to substitute something for subject to channel and integrate radical discontinuity and indivisibility. Deleuze and Adorno provide two different approaches to achieve this aim. The two approaches sometimes converge at a number of points, sometimes parallel, shaping a strong contrast. However, both of them bring us to a question: how does postmodernity take the place of modernity? Or, putting it in a way that is more related to the issues discussed in the previous chapters: how can the heterogeneous be produced under the primacy of identity? I equate these two questions because I believe that the transition from modernity to postmodernity is the course in which the primacy of identity is challenged. Thus it is in this sense that the ethics of difference shared by Deleuze and Adorno can be read as their response to both of the two questions. This is also the reason why I move to the issue of the correlation between modernity and postmodernity in the conclusion. Being one of the stages of the development of Enlightenment reason, modernity is characterized by constant rationalization. In this development the

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principle of identity, which is the immanent law of reason, plays an important role. Hence, to mediate modernity is indeed to reflect on the very principle. Surely postmodernity can be read as a rejection of modern reason and its consequences. Nevertheless, from a specific and appropriate point of view, it also can be understood as a reinforcement of modernity or a radical modernity. In other words, post- here signifies two different dimensions: the end of Enlightenment reason and the uttermost enlightenment. The former marks a rupture with modernity, whereas the latter critically reconstructs social theory in a postmodern view. The difference between the two dimensions is that between Adorno and Deleuze. Adorno profoundly criticizes the identity principle of enlightenment reason. In contrast, Deleuze and Guattari try to appropriate the liberating aspects of capitalist mechanism, the decoding of flows. Of course, each one of them only represents one of the possibilities. Accordingly, we can find that postmodern theory can serve a variety of theoretical and political purposes. It can be used to attack modernity or strengthen it, to criticize capitalism or ameliorate it, to challenge power or to consolidate it. Therefore, it is in this sense we need to bring Adorno and Deleuze together to find a viable way to confirm those differences without abandoning the positive aspects of reason in todays world of globalization. This is the significance that my dissertation aims to achieve. Furthermore, we need to be aware that to confirm difference is more a socio-political issue than an aesthetic one. Challenging the order oriented from reason, postmodernity succeeds in bringing our attention to several micro-political

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phenomena and fringe areas that are usually ignored by state philosophy. These micro-political phenomena and fringe areas are the heterogeneity and difference to which postmodernity wishes to give prominence. Nevertheless, how can we realize them? This is a practical political problem. Modernity has attained much criticism about its excessive optimism, but this does not mean we have to deny its significance or advocate postmodernity without any reflection. On the contrary, reconciliation needs to be made between modernity and postmodernity. It will help us make room for these differences and heterogeneity without treating them as something like Indian reservations in the USA. Heterogeneity is able to play a role in the social, not being a particular spectacle to be viewed. When modernity provides us with a direction to recognize the organization of the social and the institutions, we still need a postmodern view that is critical.

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