Potentiality as a Life: Deleuze, Agamben,

Beckett

Audrone ukauskaite

Lithuanian Culture Research Institute

Abstract
In Essays Critical and Clinical, Deleuze argues that Beckettian characters
usually strive towards becoming imperceptible. This statement
immediately poses another question: what is becoming imperceptible
and where does it lead? How can we rid ourselves of ourselves?
Paradoxically enough, Deleuze states that becoming imperceptible is life.
The literal and self-evident meaning of life seems somehow incompatible
with the image of dissolving and decaying characters in Becketts works.
Contrary to this self-evidence, the notion of life in Deleuze and Beckett
should be interpreted as pure potentiality which opens both the potential
to be (or do) and the potential not to be (or do). Beckettian characters
together with other figures, such as Bartleby, let us think of a life in its
potential not to be. The life of the individual gives way to impersonal
and singular life: a life of pure immanence. Such a life can be immanent
to a man who no longer has a name, though he can be mistaken for no
other: the Beckettian Unnamable.
Keywords: becoming imperceptible, a life, potentiality, virtuality
In Essays Critical and Clinical, Deleuze discusses Becketts Film as an
attempt to escape both perception and self-perception: How does one
become imperceptible? (Deleuze 1997: 23). He invites us to imagine
Bishop Berkeley who had enough of being perceived and of perceiving.
There is something unbearable in being perceived. Referring to Becketts
Film, Deleuze asks: How can we rid ourselves of ourselves, and
Deleuze Studies 6.4 (2012): 628637
DOI: 10.3366/dls.2012.0088
Edinburgh University Press
www.eupjournals.com/dls

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demolish ourselves? (Deleuze 2008: 69). This is, as Deleuze has put
it, the problem, which is followed by the general solution: we can
get rid of ourselves by becoming imperceptible. Becoming imperceptible
is Life, without cessation or condition . . . attaining to a cosmic and
spiritual lapping (Deleuze 1997: 26). This general solution poses
many theoretical problems: what does becoming imperceptible mean
in Deleuze and Becketts universe and where does it lead? If becoming
imperceptible leads to molecular dissolution, what does a life signify in
this specific context? And, finally, what are the conditions of possibility
for becoming imperceptible? Can we examine this possibility in terms of
pure potentiality?

I. Deleuze: A Life
In his last text, Pure Immanence: Essays on A Life, Deleuze
introduces the notion of a life which is quite different from any
understanding of life as the self or personal identity. Contrary to
these expectations, a life refers to impersonal individuation rather than
personal individualization, to singularities rather than particularities
(Rajchman 2005: 8). A life is an indefinite quality, a virtuality, which
may appear in the actual life of the individual. Deleuze refers to
Charles Dickenss novel Our Mutual Friend, and especially to an episode
describing a dying man:
Between his life and his death, there is a moment that is only that of a life
playing with death. The life of the individual gives way to an impersonal
and yet singular life that releases a pure event freed from the accidents of
internal and external life, that is, from the subjectivity and objectivity of what
happens [. . .] The life of such individuality fades away in favor of the singular
life immanent to a man who no longer has a name, though he can be mistaken
for no other. A singular essence, a life . . . (Deleuze 2005: 289)

Deleuze speaks about singularities without individualities: for

example, very small children do not have individuality but they
have singularities: a smile, a gesture . . . These singularities can also
be reached by becoming imperceptible, which ends by becoming like
everybody else. This is the experience of F. Scott Fitzgerald: after a
real rupture, one succeeds . . . in being just like everybody else (Deleuze
and Guattari 2004: 308). Becoming everybody/everything (devenir tout
le monde) means many things: it is becoming imperceptible, becoming
indiscernible, becoming impersonal. As far as all these features relate to
the Body without Organs,1 we can presume that becoming imperceptible

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leads not to nothingness or the total dissolution of the subject but to
the virtual state of the Body without Organs. This virtual state of the
Body without Organs comes into play by haecceity, in the production
of intensities, in the medium of becoming and transformation (5589).
Becoming imperceptible is a passage from one state to another, an
increase or decrease in power (a virtual quality).
Such is the link between imperceptibility, indiscernibility, and impersonality the three virtues. To reduce oneself to an abstract line, a trait, in order
to find ones zone of indiscernibility with other traits, and in this way enter
the haecceity and impersonality of the creator. One is then like grass: one
has made the world, everybody/everything, into a becoming . . . (Deleuze and
Guattari 2004: 309)

The haecceity and impersonality of the creator is what Deleuze

calls a life. In this sense, A life contains only virtuals. It is made up
of virtualities, events, singularities (Deleuze 2005: 31). By virtuality,
Deleuze means that it is not something that lacks reality but something
that can be actualised in any event or a state of things, in any object
or subject. Regardless of these actualisations, the plane of immanence,
which is also the plane of the Body without Organs, is purely virtual and
contains only virtualities. Events or singularities give to the plane all
their virtuality, just as the plane of immanence gives virtual events their
full reality (31). Being a virtual quality, a life may or may not connect
with the life of the individual: it appears in the writings of Dickens or
Fitzgerald and especially in Beckett, because nothing is ever finished in
Beckett, nothing ever dies (Deleuze 1997: 26). Immobilised, paralysed
and submerged in a state of becoming imperceptible, Becketts characters
still reconnect to this virtual quality of a life which keeps them going.
As Deleuze points out, When the character dies, as Murphy said, it is
because he has already begun to move in spirit. He is like a cork floating
on a tempestuous ocean: he no longer moves, but is in an element that
moves (26). This is what becoming imperceptible strives for: to get rid
of perception and self-perception, to empty space both from objects and
the subject, to rid ourselves of ourselves. At the end of Becketts Film,
after all possible amputations,
The room has lost its partitions, and releases an atom into the luminous
void, an impersonal yet singular atom that no longer has a Self by which
it might distinguish itself from or merge with others. Becoming imperceptible
is Life, without cessation or condition . . . attaining to a cosmic and spiritual
lapping. (Deleuze 1997: 26)

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II. Agamben: Pure Potentiality

Giorgio Agamben in his essay Absolute Immanence reads Deleuzes last
text2 with wonder and great admiration. What is a life? What does it
mean that a life is virtual and consists only of virtualities? Agamben,
referring to specific punctuation in Deleuzes text (a colon, ellipsis dots),
points out the indeterminate character of this term: contrary to the life of
the individual, a life refers to impersonal and non-organic power. The
technical term a life . . . expresses this transcendental determinability of
immanence as singular life, its absolutely virtual nature and its definition
through this virtuality alone (Agamben 1999: 224). The most important
thing here is that life for Deleuze might do without any individuality: in
other words, it is detached from individual or subjective consciousness;
but a life always has a singularity, a haecceity. In this sense, a life
eludes all transcendence of the subject and of the object: a life is a pure
immanence because it is immanent only to itself. Quite paradoxically,
Agamben equates the Deleuzian notion of life with his own notion of
bare life: for example, referring to Dickenss text, he points out that
The fact is that the bare life that it presents seems to come to light only
in the moment of its struggle with death (230; my emphasis). Agamben
is right to state that the notion of life appears simultaneously in the
works of Michel Foucault and Deleuze; but if for Foucault life explicitly
relates to the question of the body and of population, what it means for
Deleuze remains quite mysterious. Nevertheless, Agamben interprets the
term saying that
the difficult attempt to clarify the vertigo of immanence by means of a life
leads us instead into an area that is even more uncertain, in which the child
and the dying man present us with the enigmatic cipher of bare biological life
as such. (Agamben 1999: 230; my emphasis)

Bare biological life is one of the key concepts in Agamben: bare life is the
invention of power, it is the object of power and at the same time the
resistance to power. Thus, for Agamben bare biological life necessarily is
a political category, engendering both the annihilation and the extension
(procreation) of life.
Another interesting thing in Agambens reading of the Deleuzian text
is related to the notion of potentiality. First, Agambens reading of the
Deleuzian text on a life appears in the chapter on potentiality. Second,
Agamben several times interprets a life in terms of pure potentiality,
although this term is missing in the English translation of the book. For
example, Agamben translates the Deleuzian example of a childs smile as

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an instance of pure potentiality: The smallest infants are traversed by an
immanent life that is pure potentiality [pure puissance], even beatitude
through suffering and weaknesses (Agamben 1999: 230).3 Trying to
find the meaning of the vertigo of immanence, Agamben discusses two
possible modes of understanding vitalism in Deleuze: the first as act
without essence, the second as potentiality without action. Agamben
points out that
As absolute immanence, a life . . . is pure contemplation beyond every subject
and object of knowledge; it is pure potentiality that preserves without acting.
Brought to the limit of this new concept of contemplative life or, rather,
living contemplation we cannot then fail to examine the other characteristic
that, in Deleuzes last text, defines life. In what sense can Deleuze state that
a life . . . is potentiality, complete beatitude? (Agamben 1999: 234)4

Agamben explains that in the field of immanence desire is immanent to

itself and in this sense it lacks nothing. Potentiality is a life that preserves
itself, desires itself and is complete in its immanence. It is, then, possible
to comprehend why Deleuze writes that a life is potentiality, complete
beatitude , he continues. Life is composed of virtuality; it is pure
potentiality that coincides with Being, as in Spinoza, and potentiality,
insofar as it lacks nothing [. . .] (Agamben 1999: 237).
In the last citation, Agamben equates his own notion of potentiality
with the Deleuzian notion of virtuality. The notion of potentiality or
the potential should be differentiated from the notion of possibility
because Deleuze makes a clear distinction between the possible and
the virtual.5 For Deleuze, the possible doubles reality and simply waits
to be realised; by contrast, virtuality or potentiality does not have to
be realised because it is already real; virtuality or potentiality can be
actualised following the lines of differentiation and divergence. Similarly,
for Agamben, a potentiality, in distinction from mere possibility, means
the potential for something to be and not to be at the same time. In
other words, it introduces the occurrence of contingency. As Agamben
points out, It is a potentiality that is not simply the potential to do
this or that thing but potential to not-do, potential not to pass into
actuality (Agamben 1999: 17980). Following Aristotle, this means that
all potentiality is also an impotentiality of the same and in respect to
the same. Beings that exist in the mode of potentiality are capable
of their own impotentiality; and only in this way do they become
potential (182). Agamben explains this potentiality of not being as a
fundamental passivity which is at the heart of every potentiality: Every
human power is adynamia, impotentiality (182). Without this potential

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of not to be, potentiality would have passed into actuality and would be
indistinguishable from it. But this is the biggest challenge for philosophy:
how to think of the potentiality of not being?
The example of such a potentiality of not being Agamben finds in
Melvilles Bartleby a character that is also very important for Deleuze.
Deleuze interprets Bartlebys formula I would prefer not to as an
exhaustion of language and of all action possibilities. Bartleby counts
what he prefers not to do and at the same time renders what he was
doing impossible.
The formula is devastating because it eliminates the preferable just as
mercilessly as any nonpreferred. It not only abolishes the term it refers to,
and that it rejects, but also abolishes the other term it seemed to preserve,
and that becomes impossible. In fact, it renders them indistinct: it hollows
out an ever expanding zone of indiscernibility or indetermination between
some nonpreferred activities and a preferable activity. [. . .] I would prefer
nothing rather than something: not a will to nothingness, but the growth of a
nothingness of the will. (Deleuze 1997: 71)

Here we see that the great metaphysical question Why there is

something rather than nothing? is interpreted by Bartleby in the
opposite way: I prefer nothing instead of something. Deleuze interprets
this non-preference not as a will to nothingness (a formula for nihilism)
but as nothingness catching the will itself, as a pure patient passivity.
Deleuze points out that many other of Melvilles characters prefer
no will at all, a nothingness of the will rather than a will to
nothingness [. . .] They can only survive by becoming stone, by denying
the will and sanctifying themselves in this suspension (Deleuze 1997:
80). This nothingness of will is also the main feature of Becketts
characters: here we can think about Molloy, Malone and the character
of The Unnamable who prefer to become imperceptible or indiscernible
on the surface of the earth.
It is precisely this nothingness of the will that makes Bartleby an
extreme figure of potentiality: As a scribe who has stopped writing,
Bartleby is the extreme figure of the Nothing from which all creation
derives; and at the same time, he constitutes the most implacable
vindication of this Nothing as pure, absolute potentiality (Agamben
1999: 2534). Thus, Bartlebys formula I would prefer not to equally
opens the potential to be (or do) and the potential not to be (or
do). Agamben carefully reads Aristotles doctrine of potentiality: For
Aristotle, all potential to be or to do something is always also potential
not to be or not to do (dynamis me einai, me energein), without which

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potentiality would always already have passed into actuality and would
be indistinguishable from it [. . .] (245). The potential not to be is crucial
here and it transforms every potentiality into an impotentiality. The
architect has the potential to build even if he does nothing; Bartleby has
the potential to work even if he prefers not to. While Aristotle defines
the possible-potential (dynaton) as something which in the process
of realisation eliminates its potential not to be (or impotentiality),6
Agamben points out that it is precisely the potential not to be (or
contingency) that is at the core of the notion of potentiality. Agamben
recalls Theodicy by Leibniz, which describes the Palace of Destinies,
composed of infinite chambers with different possible destinies. This
Baroque inferno of potentiality shows everything that could have been,
but was not and in which nothing is compossible with anything else
and nothing can take place (266). Contrary to this mausoleum of
possibilities, Bartleby keeps open the potential not to be and in this sense
redefines a life as contingency.

III. Deleuze and Beckett: Potentiality as Exhaustion

The question of potentiality reappears in Deleuzes text on Beckett The
Exhausted. Here, Deleuze describes Becketts character as someone
who is exhausted in relation to potentiality. This is explained through
the distinction between someone who is tired and someone who is
exhausted: The tired person has merely exhausted the realization,
whereas the exhausted person exhausts the whole of the possible. The
tired person can no longer realize, but the exhausted person can no
longer possibilize (Deleuze 1997: 152). The tired person is someone
who cannot do something, but the exhausted exhausts the potential
to be (or do) and not to be (or do) and drowns into impotentiality.
Deleuze points out that tiredness and exhaustion presuppose a different
combinatorial logic: in tiredness the possible is realised according to a
certain plan or goal; one possibility is preferred and realised and another
is excluded (you can choose shoes to go out or slippers to stay in). By
contrast, in exhaustion one possibility is not excluded for another but all
possibilities coexist with one another and become interchangeable (for
example: shoes to stay in; slippers to go out). The disjunctions subsist,
[. . .] but the disjointed terms are affirmed in their nondecomposable
distance [. . .] The disjunction has become inclusive: everything divides,
but into itself [. . .] (153). This means that in exhaustion all possibilities
coexist in potentiality without any structure or plan. They are not only
possible or impossible but compossible, coexisting in their potentiality.

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635

As such, potentiality is not something to be realised (only possibility can

be realised) but a contingency that can or cannot occur: One no longer
realizes, even though one accomplishes something. [. . .] one remains
active, but for nothing. One was tired of something, but one is exhausted
by nothing (153). Exhaustion as potentiality is non-preference: I would
prefer not to, Bartlebys Beckettian formula. Becketts characters play
with the possible without realizing it; they are too involved in a
possibility that is ever more restricted in its kind to care about what
is still happening (153).
Deleuze calls this play with the possible without realizing it the
combinatorial and establishes a connection between the combinatorial
and exhaustion: Must one be exhausted to give oneself over to the
combinatorial, or is it the combinatorial that exhausts us, that leads
us to exhaustion [. . .]? (Deleuze 1997: 154). Deleuze refers to different
combinatorial practices in Beckett: this is the combination of sucking
stones in Molloy, or the combination of five small biscuits in Murphy.
The combinatorial relates to specific practices of exhaustion of language,
words and things, and also the exhaustion of potentialities of space
in Quad. These potentialities are counted without any interest or
preference, because they are revealed not to be realised (to be or do) but
to open their potential not to be or not to do. In Becketts universe, there
are no necessities (cannot not be) or possibilities (can be); there are only
contingencies, which equally open the potentiality and impotentiality.
Sarah Gendron points out that the potentiality not to be is one of the
main features of Beckettian characters:
This is the status of the majority of Becketts characters: if they are, what they
are is not quite there. [. . .] Some of his characters are literally absent in one
way or another. Auditor in Not I can, for example, be seen but not heard.
Others, like V, the offstage voice in Footfalls, can be heard but not seen.
(Gendron 2004: 4950)

Becketts characters are always on the edge of nothingness, about to

vanish or expire, like Malone in Malone Dies, or the character of The
Unnamable. Some of these characters, like ghosts or the chorus of urns
(Play), never promised to be present. Some of them are only body parts,
or the Organs without Bodies, like MOUTH in Not I. As Gendron
points out,
Becketts subjects [. . .] greatly resemble what Deleuze calls the virtual object,
an entity that escapes determination, and in particular humanization. [. . .]
They are, like Ada, May, V, and Willy never quite there. Never fully present,

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they are also never entirely absent. They have the property of being and not
being where they are, wherever they go. (Gendron 2004: 51)

Regardless of their vague existence, Beckettian characters still have

this quality of life, of immanent substance, which keeps them going. For
example, in Malone Dies the character states:
But what matter whether I was born or not, have lived or not, am dead or
merely dying, I shall go on doing as I have always done, not knowing what it
is I do, nor who I am, nor where I am, nor if I am. (Beckett 2010a: 53)

The character is always in the process of becoming imperceptible,

becoming the virtual Body without Organs, which can take different
shapes and consistencies: sometimes I go liquid and become like mud,
sometimes I am so hard and contracted (Beckett 2010a: 51); sometimes
the character can hardly resist the sensation of dilation, so that his
body covers the surface of the world, sometimes he shrivels and shrivels
(612). He would gladly give himself the shape and consistency of an
egg, with two holes no matter where to prevent it from bursting, for
the consistency is more like that of mucilage (Beckett 2010b: 15). But
the most important thing is that by becoming imperceptible he brings his
molecular components into play with the world he makes a world:
perhaps thats what I feel, an outside and an inside and me in the middle,
perhaps thats what I am, the thing that divides the world in two, on the
one side the outside, on the other the inside, that can be as thin as foil, Im
neither one side nor the other, Im in the middle, Im the partition, Ive two
surfaces and no thickness, perhaps thats what I feel, myself vibrating, Im the
tympanum, on the one hand the mind, on the other the world, I dont belong
to either [. . .] (Beckett 2010b: 100)

Although the Beckettian subject always already appears in the mode of

impotentiality, it is precisely this impotentiality that carries a life in its
pure potentiality.

Notes
1. The three characteristics defining the becoming imperceptible (the (anorganic)
imperceptible, the (asignifying) indiscernible, and the (asubjective) impersonal)
relate with the three characteristics defining the Body without Organs:
the disarticulation of the body, the deconstruction of signification, and
desubjectification (Deleuze and Guattari 2004: 177, 308). From this we can
conclude that becoming imperceptible leads toward becoming the Body without
Organs.

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637

2. Deleuzes Pure Immanence: Essays on A Life originally was published under the
title LImmanence: Une Vie (Editions de Minuit, 1995), which is translated by
Agamben as Immanence: A Life (Agamben 1999: 221).
3. In English translation: Small children, through all their suffering and
weaknesses, are infused with an immanent life that is pure power and even bliss
(Deleuze 2005: 30).
4. In English translation: complete power, complete bliss (Deleuze 2005: 27).
5. In Difference and Repetition Deleuze makes a distinction between the
potential or virtual object, which can be actualised through differentiation and
divergence, and the logical possibility, or the possible, which resembles the real
(Deleuze 2004: 2634). On the difference between the virtual and the possible,
also see Bergsonism (Deleuze 1991: 967).
6. A thing is said to be potential if, when the act of which it is said to be potenial is
realized, there will be nothing impotential (Aristotle Metaphysics, 1047 a 246,
cited in Agamben 1999: 264).

References
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