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Deleuze, Guattari and the Indian Diagram

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DOI: 10.4324/9781003217336-1

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 INTRODUCTION
Deleuze, Guattari, and the invention of the
‘Indian diagram’

George Varghese K. and Manoj N.Y.

This book’s title, Deleuze, Guattari and India: Exploring a Post-Postcolonial

Multiplicity, requires some clarification. What is noticeable in the contempo-
rary world is the emergence and phasing out of historical stages at a faster
pace than ever in history. The ‘post’, which is the general marker of this phe-
nomenon at present, gets tagged to a wide repertoire of realities that range
from literary theory and philosophy to environment and the Anthropocene,
not to say economics and politics. Post-humanism, post-modernism, post-
industrialism, post-naturalism, post-capitalism, post-colonialism, etc. were
all exciting constructions until recently, but only to succumb to rapid expiry
amidst the speedy and tumultuous order of things in the world. Hence an
extra ‘post’ gets added to the erstwhile ‘postcolonialism’, a concept that was
popularly and justifiably used to analyze the post-independent colonies of the
Western powers, of which India is a prominent example. The ‘post-postcolo-
nial India’, therefore, represents a new historical phase, as Jean-Luc Racine
argues:

… but India has clearly entered a new historical phase. From 1947
to the 1980s, it was a post-colonial country, cast in the mould
thoughtfully crafted by Jawaharlal Nehru and set on its way, though
in slow motion. Today, India is a post-post-colonial country, whose
decision-makers believe that the Nehruvian paradigm has to be
adjusted to new realities. They have not forgotten the past or its
legacy, but they have begun to look with a renewed confidence to the
future of a ‘resurgent India’. They believe that globalization is more
of an opportunity than a challenge.
(Racine 2008: 65)

The essays in this book occupy this post-postcolonial milieu of resurgent

India and try to respond to certain issues and problems intrinsic to it. The
areas they address are diverse, from literature and cinema to dalit and gen-
der identities. Perhaps the uniqueness of their approach is their common
theoretical affiliation to the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari. Given the
wide impact of Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy around the world, and

DOI: 10.4324/9781003217336-1 1
 G E O R G E VA R G H E S E K . A N D M A N O J N . Y.

despite its influence across various disciplines, we still find a major lack of
its presence in India. It is not only seminal theoretical works that are lacking
in this interface, but even general or introductory volumes. In this context,
it must be noted that a serious step in popularising Deleuzo-Guattarian
philosophy in India was taken up by the Deleuze and Guattari Studies in
India Collective (DGSIC) since 2015, through their annual conferences,
publications and periodic workshops. This volume is an attempt to supple-
ment the overall DGSIC initiative to promote Deleuzo-Guattarian philoso-
phy in India.
Introductions to edited volumes generally follow the main ideas in the
individual essays with a theoretical gloss and a brief summary of contents
at the end. We are forced to tilt from this path here, since certain extra-
textual and extra-theoretical issues are involved, which we briefly referred
to above. The philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari is introduced in India for
the first time in a serious way with this volume, along with the preceding
volume in the series and that of the comparative and critical approach of
Reghuramaraju (2019).1 As the saying goes, the new is always ugly. That
encumbers us to clarify certain points about Deleuzo-Guattarian philoso-
phy, its potential and destiny in India. First, there is a general lack of clarity
in India about what Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy is and its radical differ-
ence. Second, owing to the perception that it is too abstract and removed
from empirical reality, the considerably myopic question of why it should
be read in India and what the modality of its application should be is
uncomfortably thrown at specialists and lovers of this philosophy. Third,
perhaps the most serious concern, is the general scepticism about the appli-
cation of Western concepts and paradigms in India, which is still considered
to be a form of colonialism by other means. So, this introduction is strate-
gised in such a way that it addresses these problems and questions.
Though Deleuze and Guattari are against metaphysical transcendence
and ontological universals, their philosophy reveals a voracious probe-head
that spares nothing under the sun to be subjected to philosophical thinking.
Hence, their untiring ransacking of diverse and even unlikely fields like
anthropology, embryology, metallurgy, geology, music, mathematics and so
on, for the extraction of philosophical concepts. Deleuze, as Badiou points
out, is a ‘thinker-of-all’, in the tradition of the pre-Socratics:

Yes, Deleuze will prove to have been our great physicist: he who
contemplated the fire of the stars for us, who sounded the chaos,
took the measure of inorganic life, and immersed our meagre circuits
in the immensity of the virtual. It may be said of him that he did not
support the idea that ‘the great Pan is dead’.
(Badiou 2000: 100.2)

Deleuze and Guattari’s cosmic vision prevents their system from being
tethered to a narrow Eurocentric pole or prejudiced disciplinary positions.

2
 INTRODUCTION

On the other hand, their philosophy is about flows and rhizomic connec-
tions which are unbounded and planetary. Hence, though they have not
directly worked on India, the inexhaustible potential of their system could
be usefully articulated in understanding India. We have already listed three
issues in this regard. In the following part we will tentatively engage with
those issues by expanding on two concepts of Deleuze and Guattari: (1)
diagram or abstract machine; (2) concepts. Let us start by looking into the
diagram/abstract machine.

Assemblage: Greek Phalanx and Foucaldian Panopticon

Abstract machine or diagram is an operator behind the ‘deterritorialisa-
tions’ and ‘becomings’ of assemblages. So, what is an assemblage for Deleuze
and Guattari? Assemblages are wholes formed of a particular organisa-
tional principle. The concept of whole that was prevalent in philosophy and
the social sciences for a long time was modelled on the organism. It stood
for a whole with a certain number of well-defined constituents which are
mutually dependent. The whole is marked by relations of interiority.
Assemblages, on the other hand, are wholes characterised by relations of
exteriority. This means that the constituents in a whole need not be comple-
mentary, and they could be detached and plugged into a different assem-
blage in which its nature of interaction is different (DeLanda 2006: 10).
Deleuze gives a pointed definition of assemblage as a ‘[M]ultiplicity which
is made up of many heterogeneous terms and which establishes liaisons,
relations between them, across ages, sexes and reigns—different natures’
(Deleuze and Parnet 1987: 69). What is crucial to note in this context is that
the assemblage transgresses the logic of established dualisms of philosophy
and social sciences, like nature-culture, human-animal, mind-body, etc.
(Deleuze 2006: 179). On the other hand, assemblages function through
symbiosis and disjunctive synthesis, by which any domain can be freely con-
nected to any other. A musical composition can be linked to a bird’s singing,
a particular hour of the day is connected to vampire tales, the sexuality of a
plant gets coupled with an animal’s dietary behavior and so on.
Assemblages are constantly transformed, and this process Deleuze and
Guattari call ‘deterritorialisation’ and ‘becoming’. But there is a force or
operator behind such transformations, which is called the ‘abstract
machine’ or ‘diagram’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 510). The abstract
machine pilots the passage of components between different assemblages.
For example, the colours and sounds that mark the territorial assemblage
of a bird can get deterritorialised and move to the sexual or courtship
assemblage with a different function. As such, abstract machines are not
formed of substances or formalised functions like that of the assemblages.
Instead they consist of ‘unformed matters’ and ‘nonformal functions’,
which, in turn, make them abstract and virtual (Deleuze and Guattari
1987: 511). An abstract machine

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 G E O R G E VA R G H E S E K . A N D M A N O J N . Y.

… is defined by its informal functions and matter and in terms of

form makes no distinction between content and expression, a discur-
sive formation and a non-discursive formation. It is a machine that is
almost blind and mute, even though it makes others see and speak.
(Deleuze 1988: 34)

An important example Deleuze gives for the functioning of an abstract

machine is the prison assemblage/dispositif of Foucault. First of all, how
does Foucault’s prison become an assemblage? Foucault’s analysis of the
prison in Discipline and Punish falls into a neo-Kantian logic, Deleuze
observes. For Kant, knowledge is on the side of the subject and it is a tran-
scendental synthesis articulated through a priories of space and time and
categories. It is a form of interiority par excellence. Since the conditions of
knowledge are predetermined, knowledge is not a real experience, but only
a possible one. Foucault upturns this schema. For him, knowledge is on the
side of the object and is a real experience articulated through an a posteriori
synthesis. Hence his objects of knowledge become real historical formations
like dispositifs of clinic, asylum, prison etc. What is notable in Foucault’s
analysis is that he approaches these formations in a Kantian manner as a
synthesis, but this synthesis comprises two asymmetric axes: the visible and
the articulable (Deleuze 2006: 245–6). Contra Kant, Foucault becomes the
philosopher of the exteriority or the outside (Deleuze 1988: 60).
Let us come back to the prison here. Prison as a carceral architecture is
formed matter which is visible. But the material prison is dependent on the
penal law for its functioning. The latter provides prisoners, which, in turn,
become the content of the prison. Penal law is a set of linguistic statements
or utterances. What Foucault argues is that the visible material prison and
the linguistically expressed law have no natural connection. They have dif-
ferent content and expression as well as genealogies and paths of evolution.
Their coming together in the 19th-century prison was only coincidental.
For Deleuze, this relation between two heterogeneous strands in the same
apparatus makes it an assemblage.
Ian Buchanan, in an influential book on assemblage published recently,
gives another telling example of the interconnection of asymmetric compo-
nents in the assemblages. Drawing from A Thousand Plateaus, he expands
on the assemblage of phalanx, a strategic military formation in the hoplite
warfare of the ancient Greeks (Buchanan 2021: 31–33; Deleuze and Guattari
1987: 398–99). Hoplites were citizen-soldiers of the ancient Greek city-states
armed with spears, shields, daggers and chest plates. When the soldiers were
fewer in number, they were encouraged not to act individually, but in group
in the form of a phalanx. The soldiers stayed together closely and created an
integrated formation. There are many combinations of such phalanxes with
differing numbers of 8, 16, 32 etc. The phalanx resembled an oversized
organism that moved deftly through the battlefield, effectively pushing into
the enemy lines. Buchanan analyses this formation as an assemblage and

4
 INTRODUCTION

calls it an ‘event’, or, more precisely,, ‘several events ramifying one another’.
Phalanx, according to him, should be understood as a performative since
there are strict rules of behavior to be followed if the assemblage has to be
successful. Each individual has to sacrifice his free mobility, stake his life for
the one staying behind, and should be ready to step into the place if the one
in front falls. If the phalanx as a moving formation is a machinic assemblage
of different components like the human, the spear, dagger, the shield etc., it is
connected to a collective assemblage of enunciation at another level which
Buchanan specifies as militarism. As he clarifies:

The first one was the class of content (the phalanx), whereas this is the
class of expression (militarism). It has different components, such as
courage, honour, valour and discipline and a different hierarchy of
values such as the willingness to kill or die for a compatriot and a
cause versus self-protection and self-interest, and so on. It is impossi-
ble to say which comes first, the phalanx or the conquering intent …
an assemblage of bodies and weapons on the one hand and an assem-
blage of imperial ambition and militaristic society on the other. But
what we can say is that something = x – a unifying force, let’s say – is
required to bring these two different orders together.
(Buchanan 2021: 32)

Again, assemblages are never stable formations and they get deterritori-
alised as time passes. This deterritorialisation is effectuated through the
operation of an ‘abstract machine’ or ‘diagram’. Deleuze speaks pointedly
of the abstract machine in his work on Foucault. What operates as the
abstract machine/diagram in the prison is ‘Panopticon’. The Panopticon is a
social technology of ‘seeing without being seen’. In the case of the prison, it
functions through a specific architectural arrangement that enables the war-
den to surveil the prisoners in the cells without them being able to see him.
Panopticon as a diagram does not limit itself to the prison, but is coexten-
sive with the whole of the social field. It is a specific strategy ‘to impose a
particular conduct on a particular multiplicity’; and as a diagram it can be
detached from one substance or multiplicity and plugged onto another
(Deleuze 1988: 34, 72). So, for Deleuze, the same diagram of Panopticon
moves into other assemblages like the school, factory, asylum or military
with due changes in the mode of its effectuation. This change owes to the
difference in the material composition of the assemblages.
Society, from the viewpoint of assemblage and the abstract machine,
becomes a fluid force-field in which the mechanisms of one assemblage
move to another, not in a random logic, but as mutations effected by
abstract machines. Society, thus, becomes a diagrammatic composition of
flows, connections and networks, in which abstract machines move from
one node to the other, undoing and recomposing each one. This repudiates
society conceived as a structuralist whole, dialectical class formation, or

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elite-versus-subaltern model. Instead, it becomes a field that strategises. The

strategy of forces that operate in society should be distinguished from the
stratification of forms (Deleuze 2006: 249–50).
Diagrams of discipline or sovereignty have many forms that change with
society. For Western society, two important models that preceded the 19th-
century Panopticon were the Greek diagram of the ancient city-states and the
Christian diagram of the Middle Ages. The Greek diagram was a complex
one of subjectivation with a peculiar relation between the inside and the
outside. It was articulated through the concept of Enkrateia, which means ‘a
power exercised over oneself in the power one exercises over others’ (Deleuze
2006: 257). The question is: how could one rule others if one cannot rule
oneself? This forms the core of a diagram that circulated with due mutation
in the other facets of Greek life such as politics, family, eloquence, games and
even virtue, similar to the panoptic diagram of Foucault. Historically, the
Greek diagram got mutated and found a new expression in the pastoral dia-
gram of Christianity in the Middle Ages (Deleuze 2006: 251).

Caste and diagram: two brahmin variations

The question that remains to be asked now is whether there is an ‘Indian
diagram or abstract machine’ in the Greek technology-of-self sense or
European panoptic sense? The answer is, definitely, yes. There are a prolific
number of such diagrams present in the Indian milieu, as typical of any
ancient civilisation. But if there is a master diagram that has shown terrible
durability and tenacious conservatism in India, it is the caste diagram. Louis
Dumont’s classic study of the Indian caste system, Homo Hierarchicus
(1988), has brought out the profound nuances involved in this diagram and
the varying forms of assemblages to which it has given rise. The structural
method through which he unknots its metaphysical intricacies and social
complexities is a variant of the Levi-Straussian structuralism, modified by
the concepts of value, hierarchy and encompassment (Graeber 2001: 16–18).
Diagrams also get mutated and deterritorialised. ‘One of the more origi-
nal aspects of the diagram is its being a place of mutations’ (Deleuze 2006:
251). The Dumontian study of caste analyses it as a whole composed of
hierarchical and encompassing caste strata whose underlying thread is the
purity-pollution opposition. The brahmin and the untouchable are the
polar limits of this whole with other intermediary castes placed in between.
According to the purity-pollution principle, the brahmin is the purest and
the untouchable the most defiled, between whom no transaction or com-
munication is warranted. Sundar Sarukkai approaches this problem differ-
ently from the established sociological/anthropological analyses, giving a
philosophical twist to the stratification thesis (Sarukkai 2009: 39). In his
paper titled ‘The Phenomenology of Untouchability’ (2009), he argues that
the untouchability maintained towards the lower castes is only a mutation
that occurred to an original brahmin diagram. The original untouchable

6
 INTRODUCTION

was the brahmin himself. Untouchability organised the interior scape of the
brahmin caste which was paradigmatic of the general model that emerged
later. Within the brahmin caste untouchability was a positive value and a
sacred principle. Accordingly, the purest and the highest in the hierarchy, the
Acharya, was the most untouchable and the other inferior rungs were
ordered according to their degree of purity (Sarukkai 2009: 46–7). Later this
diagram got deterritorialised from the brahmin caste and duly reterritori-
alised on the untouchables. Sarukkai argues that, through this movement,
the untouchable lower caste was made a Derridean ‘supplement’ to the brah-
mins. To draw a modern metaphor, the whole movement was an ‘outsourc-
ing’ of impurity by brahmins to the untouchables (Sarukkai 2009: 39).
The caste diagram shows other mutations as well. If Sarukkai takes as an
example the case of Tamil brahmins (from the Ramanuja tradition) primar-
ily, then Kerala, the adjacent state, reveals another interesting variation
(Varghese 2003: 4798). The caste in question is the middle-order artisan
caste, namely, the Visvakarmas. Kerala as a whole demonstrates an extreme
variation of the caste diagram through the practice of what is termed ‘dis-
tance pollution’, which was in vogue until around the 1940s. In this mutated
regional form, physical touch is not needed to pollute the brahmin; the
lower castes only need to cross a spatial threshold that encircles the brah-
min to defile him. With the brahmin forming the solar centre, the warrant-
able proximity of lower castes to him was fixed according to each caste’s
degree of purity. The Nair caste was allowed to come up to 7 feet from the
brahmin, Ezhava up to 32 feet, the Visvakarmas up to 24 feet, and so on.
The most polluted castes, such as Cheruman, have to keep at least 64 feet
and beyond. The interesting aspect of this cartography was that it was not
an ‘untouchable’ order only, but an ‘unseeable’ one as well. The Nayadi
caste was never supposed to come within visibility of the brahmin. They
had to hide behind the bushes or hole up in the wayside pits when the brah-
min made his sacred ride through the public roads (Hutton 1969: 80). C.J.
Fuller finds the numerically precise layout of caste anomalous and impracti-
cal. Nobody can walk around with exact footrules in mind. In fact, the
distances relate to places or nodes of importance like the gate of the house,
the courtyard or the first step on the verandah. This map also stipulated the
distance to be maintained between the other castes, which was deduced
from the general model (Fuller 1976: 43). Here touch, which is the critical
interpretive category in Sarukkai’s analysis, transcends to assume a more
intensified and vicious virtual form.
Meanwhile, the Visvakarma artisan caste in Kerala occupied a relatively
advantageous point in the pollution-purity map, stipulated to stay at least
24 feet away from the brahmin. More interestingly, the Visvakarmas them-
selves completely dismiss the caste model which places the brahmin at the
top, and instead advance their own alternate caste diagram. According to
their genealogy and origin myth, the Vedic conception of the universe was
different from the later brahminic version. It was called ‘Visvabrahmam’

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 G E O R G E VA R G H E S E K . A N D M A N O J N . Y.

and created by Visvakarma, the demiurge of Brahma, the creator-god. The

number ‘five’ was the axial organising principle of this diagram. Accordingly,
the cosmos was organised on the principle of five or ‘pancha’. Brahma origi-
nally had five faces. He created five groups of the artisan community. There
were originally five Vedas, with Pranava Veda being the last one. There were
five qualities (panchaguna), five musical instruments (panchavadyam), five
practices of Ayurvedic medicine(panchakarma), five diamonds (pan-
charatna), five sorrows (panchadukham) and so on (Varghese 2003: 4798).
Finally, the Visvakarmas, originally called ‘Visvabrahmins’, constituted the
fifth caste above the other four ones. But their glory ended with the rise of
the present-day brahmins, through the machinations of the sage Vasistha in
collusion with a late Vedic king called Sudasana. As a result, the caste dia-
gram based on the principle of five was truncated and replaced by an order
based on the principle of four (chatur). Firstly, they chopped off the fifth
face of Brahma. From the four parts of his body, four varnas were born.
Four dharmas, four arts, four ages, four directions, four crafts, and so on,
resulted from this construal. Even the cow came to be worshipped this way,
since it has four legs. Finally, the five Vedas were reduced to four, after delet-
ing the Pranava Veda. And the Visvabrahmins, who were the fifth and
uppermost caste, were pushed down to the limbo of the untouchables
(Varghese 2003: 4797–8).
Though the Visvakarma community is present all throughout India, there
are variations of intensity in their caste diagram from region to region.
Their primordial brahminism and its glory are ardently championed by the
Tamil groups in South India, who are also spread out in Kerala. Other
castes are sceptical about their claim to brahminism since many of them eat
meat and drink alcohol, which is against the brahminic regimen of vegetari-
anism. Sometimes their reaction to brahmins appear to be absurd, whom
some of the diehard Visvakarmas consider a polluting caste. If a brahmin
happens to visit their home, they sprinkle a mixture of water and cow dung
in the place where he sat after he takes leave. The cow dung and water mix-
ture is considered to be a potent anti-pollutant by Hinduism.2 It is not only
the brahmins they consider to be a polluting caste, but some of their frater-
nal kin as well. For that matter, certain immigrant Tamil Visvakarma gold-
smiths in Kerala until recently held their Malayali counterparts as a
polluting jati (Theendal Thattan). They refused to take food from them and
also found them unfit for entering into marital alliances (Kramrisch 1983:
61; Varghese 2006: 91–2).
Like the Greek and European diagrams, the caste diagram, which has
been central to Indian ethos throughout all history, has exercised a perva-
sive influence. Almost everything in the purview of human life like flora,
fauna, metals, precious stones, food, daily working hours, crafts, body,
colours, geographical regions, directions, rivers, celestial bodies, medicinal
herbs and so on are hierarchically graded in terms of purity and pollution
central to the caste system. But with modernity, many mutations and

8
 INTRODUCTION

reterritorialisations have also occurred. Colonialism and modernity have

become two powerful influences (or two diagrams even) that have made
serious mutations to this master diagram. Though they have brought in new
technologies, new politics and new worldviews, the caste diagram has
proven flexible enough to modify itself and successfully reterritorialise upon
them. Or, as facts stand, one could also argue that the caste diagram is the
dominant mode which has successfully mutated the Western dispensations
within its own territory.

Concepts as multiplicity
The second aspect of Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy which we want to
emphasise in the context of India is their analysis of concepts. For Deleuze
and Guattari, philosophy is not about contemplation, reflection or commu-
nication, which are established assumptions about the discipline, but about
the creation of concepts (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 6). The act of creation
is very important, since it is different from invention, fabrication or discov-
ery of forms. Again, the concepts created should always be new. Nietzsche
was right when he said that philosophers must no longer accept concepts as
a gift, but must make and create their own. They must distrust the concepts
not created by them (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 5). Every concept has mul-
tiple components and is a ‘multiplicity’. It has an irregular contour defined
by the sum of its components, which, in turn, cut and cross-cut each other.
A concept is a whole because it totalises its components, but at the same time
it is a fragmentary whole as well (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 15).
A concept is not a sterile representation, but an intensive multiplicity.
Therefore, it becomes a matrix of coincidence, accumulation and condensa-
tion of its components. A ‘conceptual point’ constantly traverses these com-
ponents, both rising and falling within them. It turns out to be a moving
equilibrium of differentials. The contrast with science is clear in the case of
concepts. Unlike science, there are neither constants nor variables in con-
cepts. We do not isolate a variable species for a constant genus or a constant
species for variable individuals. The concept’s components are neither con-
stants nor variables but only pure and simple variations. They are proces-
sual and modular rather than constant and extended. For example, the
concept of a bird is not derived out of its genus or species but in the com-
position of its features like posture, colour, singing, movement etc. The bird
becomes an ‘Event’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 20).
The creation of concepts does not have a set formula or procedure.
Sometimes entirely new concepts are constructed, at other times, old ones
are reinvented and modified. Univocity or difference are concepts drawn
from philosophy itself, which are given a new function in Deleuze’s system.
On the other hand, many novel concepts are drawn from other disciplines
and reworked. Desiring-machines, intensive spatium, plateau, Body without
Organs (BwO), nomadology, smooth space, war machine etc. are notions

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drawn from other fields and reconstructed as philosophical concepts. As an

example, we may look into the concept of ‘schizophrenia’ in Anti-Oedipus
which is explained by Eugene Holland. Originally from psychiatry, this con-
cept was drawn to constitute one pole of the economic, cultural and libidi-
nal dynamics of capital. The other pole is designated by paranoia.
Schizophrenia articulates the mode of psychic and social functioning which
is both produced and repressed by capitalism. There is a bivalence imma-
nent here. In its positive form, schizophrenia becomes a practice that enables
the humans to release the unrealised potentials of joy and creativity that are
innate to the psyche. But once the ‘process’ of creative flow is arrested and
repressed—which is what capitalism does—schizophrenia becomes an
‘entity’, represented by the madman. Again, concepts can also get deterrito-
rialised and reterritorialised through a unique process in the Deleuzo-
Guattarian plateau. For example, fascism becomes a psychological concept
instead of a political and historical one, while, on the other hand, schizo-
phrenia and paranoia from psychiatry become political terms in their
schizoanalysis (Holland 1999: x).
Philosophical concepts can be created from any possible domain or disci-
pline. Some of Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts are drawn from ethology,
topology, science, embryology, geology, metallurgy, arts and even military
science. Cinema becomes another improbable area from which Deleuze has
created concepts. The cinema books illustrate Deleuze’s practice of philoso-
phy as a form of concept-testing. He concedes that the cinema books pro-
vide a theory of cinema which is not about cinema, but about the concepts
that cinema is capable of generating, which, in turn, are related to other
concepts belonging to other practices (Taylor 2013: 43). To quote Hugh
Tomlinson and Robert Galeta, the translators of Deleuze’s Cinema 2: The
Time-Image,

… Deleuze does not set out to provide another theory of the cinema.
His project is a philosophical one. Philosophy itself is not a reflection
on an autonomous object but a practice of creation of concepts, a
constructive pragmatism. This is a book of philosophical invention,
a theory of cinema as conceptual practice. It is not a question of
‘applying’ philosophical concepts to the cinema. Philosophy works
with the concepts which the cinema itself gives rise to.
(Tomlinson and Galeta 1989: xv)

Here a fair question emerges. What sort of encounter is Deleuzo-

Guattarian philosophy capable of making with India so that new concepts
can be created from it? In the present scenario of global divisions like
North-South, Orient-Occident, Third World-First World, Developed-
Underdeveloped etc., such a tryst must appear dubious. But any form of
malice or suspicion towards Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy is unfounded
since it holds the proven credential of being highly critical of the

10
 INTRODUCTION

conservative trends in Western philosophy and the imperialist tendencies of

Western politics. Moreover, the system as such is against molar regimes of
power, striated categorisations of culture and narrow notions about gender.
Their effort had always been to disrupt the established binaries that have
governed Western culture by counterposing rhizomic linkages, molecular
becomings and nomadic thinking (Coleman and Ringrose 2013: 15).
Concepts and concept-creation also tune up with their nomadic thinking
and molecular becoming. As we saw above, the concept of a bird is not
derived from its set attributes classified under the species, but from the syn-
esthetic intermingling of its qualities like colour, sound, posture etc. as an
event. Again, being events, concepts are expressional configurations that
undergo becoming. Becoming, for Deleuze and Guattari, is not something
achieved by imitating somebody or some process, or accomplished through
conforming to a model. It is neither resemblance, imitation, nor identifica-
tion (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 237). Instead it is a ‘double-capture’.

… it is not one term which becomes the other, but each encoun-
ters the other, a single becoming, which is not common to the
two, since they have nothing to do with one another, but which
is between the two, which has its own direction, a bloc of becom-
ing, an a-parallel evolution …
(Deleuze and Parnet 1987: 6–7)

Becoming is something that occurs beyond the two terms that are coming
together and moving in an entirely different direction. This becomes impor-
tant in the relation between India and Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy vis-
à-vis concepts. It is not the case of a set of reified Western concepts being
applied unilaterally to an entirely different socio-cultural space. Rather, it is
a process of co-creation of concepts and mutually complementary philo-
sophical practice. From this perspective, the association of Deleuzo-
Guattarian philosophy and Indian thought and social space does not
become a form of imitation, resemblance or even correspondence, but
rather the creation of something new, which is completely outside both, and
pivoted on a process of becoming. The essays in this volume are singular
projects posited in such a third and in-between space which is outside both
the Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy and the Indian ethos.
What is attempted above is a brief sketch of a potentially fruitful associa-
tion between the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari and India. The dimen-
sions discussed in this regard, viz. diagram and concept, could be claimed to
have untangled two important nodes to some extent. While the diagram
explores an indigenous institution like caste, the concept articulates the
wider issue of the legitimacy of a Western philosophy being associated with
Indian society and ethos. The latter question becomes crucial as it is posited
at the matrix of a set of molar polarities like the West versus the East,
Eurocentrism against indigeneity, First World contra the Third World etc.

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 G E O R G E VA R G H E S E K . A N D M A N O J N . Y.

However, while recognising the facticity of such dichotomies, an attempt is

also made to overcome them and open a space of ‘in-betweenness’ which is
on neither side. This space is the space of becoming, which expedites the
fight against intransigent syndromes like race, class, gender, nation-hood
and all that can be placed under this decadent genus.
Both this book as a whole and the individual essays in it harbour the
spirit of becoming and difference, while also echoing the omnivorous
exploratory dynamics of Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy. There is a wide
range of areas traversed, including cinema, literature, gender stratification
and so on. There are three papers that are not directly related to India, but
form a theoretical prologue to the Deleuzo-Guattarian framework.
Arranging them into a sequence was another challenge before us. The obvi-
ous approach in this regard is to arrange the chapters under themes like
politics, art, theatre, literature, gender etc. But a more useful option, we are
convinced, is to go by the logic of the concept itself, which is fundamental
to Deleuzo-Guattarian thought. So, here we experiment with a new cartog-
raphy of mapping the papers into different conceptual clusters. They are
enumerated as follows.

Deleuzian ontology: difference, events, and codes

George Varghese’s chapter, titled ‘Deleuzian Ontology: Encounter and
Experimentation’, is an introductory analysis of Deleuzian ontology.
Though Deleuze addressed wide range of domains, disciplines and phi-
losophers, the core of his ontology is explicated in Difference and
Repetition (1968) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980), with Anti-Oedipus
(1972) forming a bridge text between them. The author closely examines
the transformation of Deleuzian ontology through these texts, with spe-
cific emphasis on the configurations of concepts and their becomings.
The analysis starts with Deleuze’s critical encounter with the earlier phi-
losophy and ends with the concepts of topological multiplicities and
assemblages.
Marc Rölli’s, ‘Virtual Ontologies’, revolves around the theory of event,
which forms Deleuze’s central argument in his magnum opus, Difference
and Repetition, against the dogmatic image of thought steeped in the repre-
sentational structure. The theory of ‘event’ becomes pivotal to Deleuze’s
concept of ‘transcendental empiricism’, which reconstitutes ontology in
terms of the virtual and the actual. The virtual, in turn, exists as a set of dif-
ferentials charged with an uncontainable intensity. The intensive nature of
virtual differentials makes them ‘events’ and their knowledge becomes
‘sense’, instead of representation. To experience the virtual as event, one
needs to step back from the actual to the virtual, or, in Deleuze’s terms, to
‘counter-effectuate’ the actual.
In her chapter titled ‘La Gestothèque in Translation: From Body Techniques
to Technologies and Back’, Anne Dubos encounters the necessity of creating

12
 INTRODUCTION

new tools for archiving gestures without fossilising them, in the context of
trans-media installations which combine traditional and digital experimen-
tation in the arts. This probe into the vernacular taxonomy and organisation
of gestures in Indian theatre and their sustenance over the years invokes the
Deleuzian concept of ‘code graft’ in its back and forth (involution and evolu-
tion) movement from body techniques to technologies. Based on the division
of analogue and digital as proposed by Gregory Bateson in terms of expres-
sion and language, the author proposes that the grafting of digital code
(Natyashastra) to the analogic (expressions) can augment the performance
(Kathakali), contribute to the life, circulation and survival of gestures, and
facilitate the creation of innovative designs and techno-human interfaces.
A Deleuzian reading of the scientificity of Hindustani classical music is
attempted by Vibhuti Sharma in her essay titled ‘Hindustani Sangeet
Paddhati and the Problem of Singularity’. Exploring the Deleuze-Foucault-
Boulez triad, the author critically interrogates Vishnu Narayan Bhatkande’s
attempt to systematise the Hindustani musical system, from the vantage
point of music as an intensity, which cannot be reduced to any representa-
tion or identity principle. The task of ordering musical knowledge (Paddhati)
falls into the philosophical problem of explication of the genesis of method,
complicating the method and system division. She uses the Deleuzian con-
cept of refrain to explain the ordering of musical knowledge in terms of
organisation (marking out its territory) and repetition. The article reveals
the productive unconscious which is at work behind any attempt of system-
atisation, revealing the differential logic of repetition itself.

Becoming minor/becoming political

In her contribution, ‘Becoming Minor: From Literature to Cinema’, Daniela
Angelucci explicates the political implications of the concept of becoming
minor in literature and cinema. It is argued that the Deleuzian explication
of becoming minor in Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature (1986) is sub-
jected to a dense analysis in Cinema 2: Time Image (2000) by forging a
relation between minority and the power of the false. The deterritorialisa-
tion of language, political immediacy which erodes the difference between
the personal and the political, and the assemblages of collective enunciation
mark the revolutionary conditions for minor literature and political cinema.
Angelucci argues that the incompleteness of Kafka’s writing doesn’t indi-
cate the fragility of the author, but a constant possibility of deterritorialising
to invent a missing people. In a similar fashion, the political (minor) cinema
of the modern period is also about contributing to the invention of a people,
the correlation between the political and the private, and becoming a collec-
tive agent, a catalyst. The two cinematographic regimes are made distinct
by Deleuze from the vantage point of description, narration and the register
of the story in terms of the power of the false. Angelucci argues, that the
power of the false becomes the principle of the modern regime of cinema,

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the becoming minor of cinema—the minor screens, exemplifying the con-

cept of minority in literature and cinema.
In ‘Desire, Body and Capitalism’, Cybil Vinodan expands the concept of
becoming political and minor in terms of dalit literature in a postcolonial
context, explicating how the question of subjectivity is enmeshed in the col-
lective assemblages of enunciation and differences in political affinities with
that of dalit and postcolonial literatures. Contrary to the general practice of
relegating dalit literature to the representational paradigm, Cybil attempts
to address it as a becoming minor of literature, regaining its political dimen-
sions. In contrast to the postcolonial positioning of the subaltern subject
beyond the nation-state (colony), dalit literature problematises the folding
of the striated and smooth spaces of the nation-state and society, the mic-
ropolitical and the macropolitical, and its ‘legally internalised form of con-
trol’. In this becoming minor of writing, specifically in its departure from the
celebration of victimhood and in framing a new syntax to problematise the
humiliation which doesn’t fit into the normative definition of justice, dalit
writing frames the problematic of subjectivity in its desire for a body. Dalit
literature envisages an imaginary which is drawn from the assemblages of
myths and legends, inventing a past, and draws a metaphysics based on the
‘body’, as the site of contemplation and thought, in its political becoming.
In her chapter ‘The Un/Paralleled Universe of Pramod Pati’, Silika
Mohapatra explores the cinematic world of Pramod Pati, an ‘eccentric’
filmmaker of the 1960s, specifically through three works of art: Abid,
Explorer and Trip. The author argues that the cinematic method and con-
tent of Pati offers a Deleuzian alternative to mainstream cinema. Abid is
about the deconstruction of a room, into which the artist enters through a
door from the floor, and the various interactions individuating the room,
making it a multiplicity. This process of rooming rather fits into the move-
ment image of Deleuze, explicating the ontology of difference. In Explorer,
the artist explores the dimension of lived time and a mode of visuality
through a non-human lens, reversing the platonic division of real and simu-
lacrum. Trip explores the adumbrations of a schizophrenic metropolitan
city ‘Bombay’ with no essential singularity; rather, it is argued as becoming
a pure affect with multiple strands. This time-lapse video presents the city
as a prehending thing, not an enduring or consistent unit, which becomes
an assemblage of relations. Pati’s cinematic experimentation can be sum-
marised as, to quote the author, ‘a concoction of Socratic courage and
Quixotic fantasy, churned with the speed of American Disco, interspersed
with an off-beat tempo’.
The next chapter deals with South Indian cinema and its political and
aesthetic readings via Deleuze and Guattari. Thejaswini J.C. and Shuaib
Mohamed Haneef write about the Malayalam film Artist, which extols the
artistic experiences of the protagonist Michael before and after losing his
eyesight. This article draws on the idea of the image of thought, the pro-
cesses of unfolding-enfolding based on Deleuzian aesthetics and the

14
 INTRODUCTION

Bergsonian conception of time, to explore the ‘virtual and actual experi-

ences’ in the film—and not relegating it to the realm of representational
meanings. The optic and the haptic visuality of the protagonist negate the
essentialist notion of the body and assert the corporeality of thought, irre-
spective of the abled/disabled body.

Territorial multiplicities
Ronki Ram, in his chapter titled ‘Can “Territoriality” be Social? Interrogating
the “Political” of Dalit Social Inclusion in India’ problematises the politics
of social inclusion of dalits in terms of an emerging territoriality in opposi-
tion to the segregated dalit neighbourhoods, which reaffirm the territorial
discrimination of dalits. The segregated dalit neighbourhoods are organised
semiotically, as part of the affirmative actions of civil society and the social
reform movements led by upper-caste reformers which focus on the pooling
and control of material resources for the community, whereas the social
dimension of exclusion in terms of territoriality is retained as it is. Instead
of conceiving territory as ‘passive, static, recalcitrant and non-political,
bereft of social interaction’, the author takes a Deleuzian position by
rethinking it as a process and thus as social in multifarious ways. The meta-
morphosis of this segregated social space into a site of dalit contestations
against social domination and a contestation against the resistance of the
upper castes to these social protests bring forth the notion of caste to the
centre stage. The existence of this segregation, suggestive of the Deleuzian
virtual, comes to the fore (actualises) in the contexts of these ideational and
material contestations. The dalit deras emerge not only as spiritual centres
but also as sites of non-violent social protest within the segregated dalit ter-
ritory which function as a process of reterritorialising the defiled territory
into a sacred space of self-respect and dignity. Through the Deleuzian read-
ing of this territoriality, the essay explicates a hidden dimension of spatial
segregation and affirmation in terms of dalit politics in Punjab.
Arnab Chatterjee looks into the phenomenon of legalisation of the third
gender identity in India using two key Deleuzian concepts: deterritorialisa-
tion and rhizome. Two legal instances are cited, which open up the chal-
lenges and problems related to the legalisation of the third gender in India,
especially that of the exclusion of the LGBT category. The legal instances
cited in this article are: (i) the famous Naz verdict of Delhi High Court
which decriminalised all consensual ‘non-penovaginal’ relationships invok-
ing article 14 and 15 of the Indian Constitution; and (ii) the verdict on the
writ petition filed by transgender activist Ms. Laxmi Narayan Swami
(National Legal Services Authority (NLSA) vs. Union of India and Ors.),
which included transgenders in the category of OBC on the ratio of eco-
nomic deprivation. The author analyses the implications of these verdicts in
terms of Deleuzian notions of identity and difference, namely the tripartite
division of gender by assigning to it a centre and a margin, and the

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exclusionary nature of the verdict which neglects other LGBT communities

under the rubric of the third gender. It is pointed out that the new anthro-
pological inquiries into non-European and North American organisation of
gender substantiate that any specific attention to one non-normative group
results in making other groups invisible. A machinic conception of gender
which deterritorialises any configuration to a specific centre is cited as an
alternative conception, as disidentification is very relevant in the articula-
tion of democratic contestation.
Subro Saha, in his chapter ‘Concepts, Singularity and Nation-ness:
Rethinking the Political’, attempts to problematise the concept of nation
through Deleuze and Guattari’s understanding of concept and the contin-
gent relations it brings within its constitution. Taking cue from Deleuze and
Guattari’s last work What is Philosophy?, the chapter explains how concep-
tualising is prone to getting caught up in the exclusionary structure of nor-
mative/binary categories, foreclosing its potential to take new lines of flight.
It is argued that any attempt at thinking the concept can remain partial,
especially in cases where normative categories shape the act of conceptuali-
sation, and provokes us to rethink the modalities of ‘conceptualising’ itself in
a Deleuzian manner and the relationality between politics and philosophy.
In the essay ‘Why Deleuze Spoke So Little About Theatre?’, Jean-Frederic
Chevallier explores the reasons for a negative view and perhaps even no
thought on theatre from Deleuze. He cites important instances in which
Deleuze refers to theatre as an art which has less scope in his dialogues with
Claire Parnet, and as a counter-example in Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and
Schizophrenia. There are three occasions on which Deleuze discussed stage
practices—as theatre of repetition (Difference and Repetition), minoration
(One Manifesto Less) and exhausted (The Exhausted). But these references
were not adequate enough to derive a specific Deleuzian thought on theatre,
unlike for cinema or literature. It is argued that Deleuze’s negative view on
theatre reveals something radical which defines the contemporary stage; the
intervention of non-theatre in theatre and drawing an external relation with
other arts outside theatre. Thus, the author concludes that Deleuze, in fact,
proposes a philosophy of theatre while proposing a theory of multiplicity.
As we noted elsewhere, this is the second volume in the ‘Deleuze and
Guattari Studies in India Series’ that attempts to strengthen the DGSIC’s
efforts to create a wider base for the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari in
the region. The advantage of such an initiative is obvious enough, especially
in the context of a thoughtless capitalism which tries to foment disruptive-
ness and parochialism in all possible forms, everywhere. The form it takes
in India at present is horrifyingly intricate, and needs to be fought by all
means. From the brief analysis we made in the beginning, it becomes evi-
dent that Deleuze and Guattari can provide a battery of powerful concepts
that can be usefully engaged in this confrontation.
But there is an ambivalence that lurks here. We hinted at this question ear-
lier: Can a philosophy from the West be made an ally to fight the problems

16
 INTRODUCTION

fomented primarily by a capitalism from the West? How far can it sync with
the national identity and integrity of India? Addressing this anomaly, we have
also argued that to xenophobically block every intellectual current that flows
in from the outside in the name of identity and nationalism would be self-
defeating ultimately. We cannot afford this at the present times. Moreover, the
Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy is a time-tested philosophical machine that
has razed down many philosophical archaisms and reactionary ideologies of
the West. So, the road ahead, we propose, is to make more prolific forays into
the Indian situation equipped with the insights and concepts that the philoso-
phy of Deleuze and Guattari provides. The contributions made by the authors
in this volume are invaluable on that count, and we hope that they lead to
further research and meaningful critique.

Notes
1 The preceding volume refers to Patton, Paul and George Varghese K. (eds).
2018. ‘Deleuze in India’ (Special Volume), Deleuze Studies 12(1).
2 This practice was narrated to George Varghese K. by Prof. Visvawani Natarajan
from Alleppey during his ethnographic fieldwork on Visvakarma goldsmiths in
Kerala in 2001.

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