Man and Worm 28: 283--302, 1995. (~) 1995 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 283 From relations to practice in the empiricism of Gilles Deleuze PATRICK HAYDEN Department of Philosophy, DePaul University, 2320 North Kenmore Avenue, Chicago IL 60614-3298, U.S.A. 1. Introduction In The Fold, Gilles Deleuze's book dedicated to the Baroque ontology of Leibniz, Deleuze states that in "a certain fashion all Leibniz does is ponder relations. ''1 The same can be said of Deleuze himself. Deleuze's philosophical concerns are consistently formulated in terms of the conditions, transformations, and distributions of relations actualized within the social world. Consequently, any consideration of relations with respect to Deleuze's philosophy must begin from his claim to be "an empiricist, that is, a pluralist. ''2 In this paper I propose, first, to examine Deleuze's concept of relations from the perspective of his pluralist empiricism, that is, an empiricism for which difference is the generative force of the actual. This conception of relations is initially formulated in Deleuze's book on Hume. 3 In addition, I will consider two aspects of Deleuze's philosophy that I believe may be associated with and explained in terms of this particular empiricist conception of relations: his logic of sense, and the concept of the rhizome developed with F61ix Guattari. My aim in this essay is to illuminate the importance of relations for Deleuze from the practical standpoint that his philosophy embraces and promotes. For Deleuze, relations immediately imply social practices and are thus to be conceived as essential to the active constitution of human existence. It will become apparent, then, that understanding what Deleuze says about relations will prove valuable not only for the decision of how to read Deleuze, but perhaps more importantly, of how to use Deleuze. 2. Empiricism, relations, and difference Deleuze's most sustained engagement with the philosophy of Hume appeared in 1953, with the original publication of Empiricism and Subjectivity. 4 A s Deleuze recounts in a short piece entitled, "I have nothing to admit," he 284 PATRICK HAYDEN turned to the study of Hume as a way to act against the "rationalist tradition" that has dominated the history of philosophy. 5 Deleuze's resistance to the rationalism he disdains is further revealed in the later expositions of Nietzsche, Bergson, and Spinoza, all of whom for Deleuze qualify as empiricists. Consequently, while concerned with the philosophy of Hume in particular, Empiricism and Subjectivity also proves useful for understanding the development and orientation of Deleuze's philosophy as a pluralist empiricism. What immediately distinguishes Deleuze's reading of Hume from classical interpretations is that while these interpretations tend to cast Hume in the role of an early positivist concerned with epistemology and psychology, Deleuze insists that Hume should be seen fil:st and foremost as a political, historical, and moral philosopher (ES, 27; 33). 6 Deleuze's point is that Hume, like Deleuze himself, sought to make philosophy more practical, in the sense that it is directed toward questions regarding the active composition of an intensive world (or worlds). 7 It is for this reason that Deleuze claims that "the only possible theory" to be found throughout all of Hume's work "is a theory of practice" (ES, 32). One of the most important discussions to emerge from this exposition of Hume's practical philosophy is directed to the concept of relations. Hume, according to Deleuze, created "the first great logic of relations" (ES, x). In Deleuze's view, Hume's philosophy constitutes the apex of early-modem British empiricism. Yet Deleuze maintains that there is also something more to Hume, "something very strange," he says, "which completely displaces empiricism" (D, 15). Deleuze notes that it is a sign of Hume's genius to have conceived not only a theory of relations, but more importantly a "practice of relations," which offers empiricism a new and genuinely radical power (D, 15). In fact, while Kant refers to Hume in the first Critique as a "geographer of human reason," Deleuze describes Hume as, on the contrary, a geographer of relations (D, 56). 8 Yet what does Deleuze mean by the word relation, and how does he utilize Hume in this respect? There are three characteristics of relations that are important for Deleuze: their exteriority, their non-reducibility, and their status as effects of human practice. Deleuze claims that Hume discovered the exteriority of relations by way of his empiricist critique of metaphysical essentialism. Generally, the problem here is that of the derivation of relations from the supposed essence or nature of things. 9 Essentialism first posits the existence of essences, as the source of a thing's existence, and then locates relations as if they are derived from this source. Hence it is maintained that a relation belongs to an essence or, in other words, that a term and its relation belong to one another essentially. It is in this sense that relations are defined as internal or intrinsic to the being of their terms, that is, grounded in the nature of the things which possesses FROM RELATIONS TO PRACTICE IN THE EMPIRICISM OF GILLES DELEUZE 285 them (ES, 109). Consider an example supplied by Deleuze: "The glass is on the table" (D, 55). According to what we can call the essentialist-internalist theory, the relation of the glass to the table is one derived from the nature of the glass and/or table; that which the glass (or the table) absolutely "is" determines the relations it must have. The relation of the glass to the table is apparently founded on an innate or a priori nature from which it emanates and to which it can be reduced. Thus, it would be impossible to alter the relation of the terms in question without altering the essence of the terms themselves as well, a move prohibited by the essentialist-internalist theory. The most obvious implications of this position is that a term and its relations form an organic unity, and that the relations which hold between two or more terms are necessary for the identity of each and the whole they form. It is at least implied, then, that the relation and the thing which possesses it can never exist in a manner other than that determined by the essence of the thing. And it is only a short step from here to the ontological position that all things are related in an inextricable and necessary fashion, and that this absolute unity somehow transcends the diversity and contingencies of the world of empirical experience. One of the most important points of Empiricism and Subjectivity is to show that this essentialist notion of relations is a betrayal of actual experience and a denigration of the richness and diversity of the life of the world, l° Deleuze thus articulates an empiricist conception of relations not only to counter the totalizing tendencies of the essentialist theory, but also to offer an account of relations that accords them a positive role in the creation of different modes of existence. In Deleuze's view, empiricists believe that relations "are always external to their terms" and therefore are not derived from the essence of a thing (ES, 66). For empiricists, a relation is not an inseparable bond connecting a thing's essence and its properties. In Deleuze's account, empiricists recognize two problems with the theory of internal relations. First, if each relation is held to necessarily inhere in its term and is reducible to the term's essence, then there is nothing to distinguish the term from the relation. Second, in order for change to occur not only must the relation change but the terms themselves must change as well, since the relation and terms are inseparable by nature. The first problem presents a danger in the form of a totalizing image of the world, an organic unity or Whole that sacrifices relations, individuals, and difference in favor of a closed system that transcends the empirical and pluralist status of all three. The second problem lends itself to the universalisation of the metaphysical totality implied by the first, in that any alteration of a relation must be accompanied by a corresponding alteration in its terms. This requirement is an attempt to neutralize difference, in that the relation must always remain identified with, 286 PATRICK HAYDEN and therefore reducible to, its term(s); any alteration on the part of one is met with an equal alteration on the part of the other, such that a thing's essence and its properties maintain the equilibrium of a constant identity or generalized equilibrium. Consequently, the purpose of Deleuze's critique is to demonstrate that the theory of internal relations actually prohibits the possibility of conceiving change by positing an absolute totality which is homeostatic in nature. 11 Deleuze contrasts this position to the one he maintains is characteristic of empiricists. Rather than making relations dependent upon the essence of things, empiricists emphasize that relations are independent of terms which, in fact, are not endowed with metaphysical essences. How, then, are relations between terms to be established? Deleuze explains that it is the contingent "circumstances, actions, and passions" of life which provide for the specific instauration and alteration of relations between different terms (D, 56). Both terms (ideas, objects, persons) and relations are endowed with a positive reality because relations are not derived from the terms themselves. Therefore relations may be constituted between terms and changed by a variety of human actions without affecting the terms themselves, since there is no necessary connection or absolute unity to be maintained. It is important to note that Deleuze is not denying the interrelatedness of things, although he is challenging the fundamental ontological assumptions of the essentialist theory of relations. This occurs in several ways. First, as we have seen, the Deleuzian empiricist resists subordinating relations to the essence of things by insisting on the exteriority of relations. This does not means that relations do not exist between terms, only that they come into existence by practical rather than essential or necessary means. Furthermore, when the relation(s) between terms are altered there is no requirement that the terms themselves must change, at least "in essence." This provides a certain freedom to the relational realm, which effectively counters any move toward attributing teleological causation to an internally-related and closed system. Second, Deleuze rejects the notion of an organic, stable, and absolute unity that transcends the empirical world. Relations lose all practical relevance when they are subordinated to this totality, for the only relations possible are those that inherently tend toward the consolidation of absolute identity. Instead of viewing things on the basis of their essential identities and relations as derived from them, Deleuze explains that actual relations are effects of the activities and practices of individuals who are different yet nevertheless interacting. These interactions do not occur within a single encompassing Whole, but take place within and give rise to a series of qualitatively changing, open wholes or systems which may overlap at certain points. 12 Deleuze thus contrasts a fixed Whole that transcends its parts to a series of shifting contingent FROM RELATIONS TO PRACTICE IN THE EMPIRICISM OF GILLES DELEUZE 287 wholes that form the immanent and open network of the world. Both of these challenges presented by Deleuze not only contribute to the positive empiricist assessment of the contingencies and differences characteristic of human existence, but they also tend to politicize the ontological implications of each position. On the one hand, essentialism and the paradigm of internal relations leads in the direction of extreme centralization and totatization, the subordination of individuals to transcendental principles, and passivity in the face of social and political homogeneity. On the other hand, pluralist empiricism and the theory and practice of external relations promotes decentralization and multiplicity, resistance to supposed universal necessities, and action with respect to the possibilities of creating new types of social and political association. It is clear, then, why Deleuze is so appreciative of Hume's philosophy, for here Deleuze has found the resources with which to associate relations to praxis. Whereas the essentialist-internalist theory of relations claims that there are relations arising directly out of the nature of things which have their necessary place in the Absolute, the empiricist-externalist conception of relations finds them to be variable effects of the practical formation of multiple open systems that overlap, converge, diverge, and interact at various points. For Deleuze, our world is composed of open wholes produced by social practices, practices which constitute and alter the relations of these wholes and thereby the quality of the wholes themselves. Although relations are external to their terms they are nonetheless immanent within and open to the dynamic continuum of the world. Hence, because relations do not belong to their terms, their composition and alteration does not transform the terms; instead the wholes are qualitatively changed. In other words, as relations are created or varied between terms the wholes to which these terms are related change as well, in such a manner that the wholes or systems are continually open, always giving rise to something new. 13 If we reconsider our previous example we can see that it would be possible to alter the relation between the glass and the table because the relation is not grounded in any essence and is irreducible to its terms. What is altered is the relationship between the two terms. The contingent whole formed by this relationship can be qualitatively changed without affecting the supposed nature of the terms. This way of thinking about relationships allows them to be conceived in a practical manner which refuses their subordination to essentialism. Accordingly, empiricists are not concerned with determining the essence and intrinsic relation of each thing, but with describing how new relations can be actively created between things in order to produce change in and between the wholes these relationships form. Relations are to be thought in accordance with what Deleuze refers to as the "fundamental principle of empiricism," the 288 PATRICK HAYDEN principle of difference, instead of a transcendental principle of essential and absolute identity (ES, 90). For Deleuze the world is thoroughly relational, yet this world is not one of pre-given identity or intrinsic consonance. It is one composed of heterogeneous systems formed by various irreducible relations, systems whose relational qualities constantly mutate and exceed our attempts to grasp them. The world is a multiplicity without a transcendental unifier, formed of persistently altering multiplicities that are drawn elsewhere by the variation of relations. This brings Deleuze to write that what is most important in a multiplicity "are not the terms or the elements, but what there is 'between'," the relations between the terms (D, viii). A relation is not understood, then, as a fixed link but instead as something that passes between two or more terms, which composes a relationship, unity, whole, or system, a multiplicity in short, which is open and changeable. 14 Both Deleuze's affirmation of the exteriority of relations and his emphasis that they are the selective means by which we create and structure different worlds through our practical activity are based in his reading of Humean empiricism (ES, 120; 133). In order to illustrate and develop further what has been said thus far about Deleuze's conception of relations, I wish to explore briefly some of the ways this conception has been put to work in his later writings, and in so doing further demonstrate how Deleuze is able to advance a positive practice o f relations. 3. Empiricist relations in The Logic of Sense "The logic o f sense," Deleuze announces, "is inspired in its entirety by empiricism" (LS, 20). 15 The role of linguistic sense in Deleuzian empiricism is of great importance, insofar as Deleuze indicates that a consideration of sense must pose the question of the relations that exist between words and things, between propositions and states of affairs, and between concepts and events. Consequently, it will become apparent that Deleuze's empiricistinspired account of sense is an examination of the conditions and production of sense, by way of the theory of relations developed in his work on Hume. Deleuze's logic of sense develops from a critical examination of the foundationalist and representationalist treatment of language and meaning.~6 From the perspective of the philosophical tradition, language has been understood as in some way standing in a unique relation to non-linguistic reality, such that language is taken to represent or mirror this reality, thereby forming a fundamental unity. In this view, meaning is the correct representational relation or necessary link that connects words to the particular things they apply to; it objectively exists and can be known as such. Language and objects are internally related and this essential interdependency must be reflected FROM RELATIONS TO PRACTICE IN THE EMPIRICISM OF GILLES DELEUZE 289 in meaning. Meaning and therefore truth, are obtained only when language accurately corresponds to non-linguistic reality and are defined in terms of reference. The problem, of course, is knowing whether our language is indeed standing in correct relation to the reality it supposedly represents. Deleuze argues that the traditional attempt to guarantee this knowledge has taken the approach of proposing that language and nonlinguistic reality are internally related, and this in three ways. Considering the case of propositions, Deleuze notes that the first internal relation claimed to hold is that of denotation or indication. Denotation is that which refers the words of a proposition to exterior objects or states of affairs. This mirroring relation individuates or identifies the non-linguistic object by linking it to the linguistic form "it is": it is this or that, it is here or there (LS, 12-13). The second internal relation examined by Deleuze is that of manifestation. Manifestation connects the proposition to the speaking subject, that is, to the pure intentions internal to the subject who speaks (LS, 13). The purpose of this relation is to ground the correspondence of beliefs and objects in the apparently indubitable domain of human nature. Meaning emerges as the intrinsic relation of subject and object, whose certainty is found in the linguistic form of the subject who speaks, the 'T' (LS, 13-15). The "I" is, in this case, conceived as the identity-form of representation and functions as the foundation of all possible denotation (LS, 13-15). The third internal relation discussed by Deleuze is that of signification. Signification is the relation of the words of propositions to general or universal concepts. Further, its syntactic connections relate, Deleuze writes, to "conceptual implications capable of referring to other propositions, which serve as premises of the first" (LS, 14). Basically, signification guarantees the truth of an assertion either by linking words to universal concepts or by connecting one proposition to another, such that valid claims about reality are obtained (LS, 15-16). In other words, signification is supposed to guarantee the truth of the proposition by serving as the internal relation of implication and assertion. Through these various approaches meaning is accounted for by explaining how language and non-linguistic reality are internally related, that is, connected by an ideal relation of correspondence. However, Deleuze contends that this model of language as a representational medium results in what he calls "the circle of the proposition" (LS, 17). The difficulty here is that denotation and manifestation, the speaking subject and external object, must presuppose one another; the intentions of the subject require something which they are "about." Furthermore, their intrinsic relation to signification also presupposes that the denotative premises of a proposition are true, that it is at once already situated within meaning on the side of the subject. If the designation or denotation of an object is the 290 PATRICK HAYDEN result of a logical deduction from propositions that serve as its premises, this in turn assumes another true proposition to which it refers, and so on in an infinite regress (LS, 16). In this model the proposition remains internal to itself; signification functions as the condition of truth, but is that which must also be conditioned by the true (LS, 18). Meaning thus appears as the logical possibility of identifying the proposition with its internal relations, and depends upon a strict correspondence of language and that reality which it represents; a knowing subject is intrinsically related to its intended meaning, which is intrinsically related to truth, which is the intrinsic relation of language to a non-linguistic reality. Deleuze remarks that this "internal model of the proposition" is unable to account for the creation of sense that is irreducible to the proposition in itself (LS, 20). As Deleuze observes, there is nothing in this model which accounts for the social activation and practical generation of sense prior to the logical form of the proposition (LS, 123). Although denotation, manifestation, and signification presuppose one another, they also presuppose sense itself. What is required to escape this circle, Deleuze suggests, is an entirely different understanding of the relationality which is characteristic of sense. Sense is identified by Deleuze as the fourth relation of the proposition, or more correctly, as that type of relational interaction which breaks open the self-referential circuit imposed by the intrinsic-relation theory. It is, he writes, "the expressed oftheproposition.., an incorporeal, complex, and irreducible entity, at the surface of things, a pure event which inheres or subsists in the proposition" (LS, 19). Sense is the effect of a type of relationality different than that found in the theory of meaning considered above. For Deleuze, sense is an event in between words and things, and it belongs neither to the pure subject nor to the brute physical object, nor is it to be derived from their correspondence. It is an event of expression that cannot be reduced to such an apparently objective and rationally knowable unity. It is sense that functions as the condition for the possibility of the proposition, that is, of denotation, manifestation, and signification, yet it does not exist in isolation from the proposition because it subsists in language. The key concepts, then, for Deleuze's logic of sense are expression and event, as well as a different kind of relational interaction. How do these concepts work for Deleuze? Part of the answer is to be found in Deleuze's major study of Spinoza, which is a detailed excursus not only of Spinoza's philosophy but also of the tradition of expressionism. 17 In this work Deleuze discusses the importance of the concept of expression and the scarce attention it has received. He finds that Spinoza's concern with expression stands as a crucial moment in the history of Western philosophy, in the form of a resistance to the Cartesian notion of clear and distinct ideas and the transcendentalism it promotes (SE, FROM RELATIONS TO PRACTICE IN THE EMPIRICISM OF GILLES DELEUZE 291 17;153). Deleuze's analysis of the basic history of expressionism is rigorously articulated around the idea of immanence in contrast to that of an eminent and transcendent source of unification, identification, and explanation, such as found in Platonism which forces the sensible to imitate or reproduce the intelligible, and Cartesianism which divorces formal cause and efficient cause and refutes the immanent power of being (SE, 167-72). For these latter traditions, the created is the image or likeness of the transcendent source that is reflected in them. Spinoza's philosophy of immanence, however, moves in the opposite direction. While the superiority attributed to the emanative cause requires not only the degradation of its effects but also the hierarchical ordering of beings, the immanence of cause and effect implies the ontological equality of formally different beings and the univocity of being. This allows Spinoza to think of immanence in the form of expression, since being is expressed equally in all of its forms: a substance that is expressive, attributes that are expressions, and modes that are the expressed. In this way the expressed modes participate fully in expressive substance through the expression of the attributes, which allows for the immanent interaction of each even though they can also be seen as distinct (SE, 176). TM Expression, then, is a concept for explaining the type of relationality between substance, attributes, and modes that cannot be reconciled with the emanative model, which treats effects simply as flowing from, and as determined by, a transcendental principle to which they are internally related. Spinoza's expressionism points to the insufficiency of the Cartesian notion of a clear and distinct idea, in that it grasps only the representative content of the idea and never its "expressive content," that is, the productive power of substance or being. As Deleuze remarks, the Cartesian philosophy of rational clarity is attached to the very foundation of representation because it identifies the idea with its mere representative content; it stops at the representative content of thought. In so doing it connects an idea to an object in a necessary, causal, and intrinsic manner, and therefore fails to see that the real distinction of idea and object expresses the power of univocal being that belongs equally to each, "an expressivity over and above representation" (SE, 335). Outside o f representational correspondence is a different relation common to both idea and object yet distinct from each as well, the "third term" of the expressed, that is, sense (SE, 335). In this way Spinoza, and Deleuze, can free "expression from any subordination to emanative or exemplary causality," so that sense ceases to be seen as either resembling or representing anything (SE, 180). Spinoza's resistance to the Cartesian reliance on the principle of clear and distinct ideas and the necessity sought there is one reason why Deleuze finds a "profoundly empiricist" inspiration in his philosophy (SE, 149). 292 PATRICKHAYDEN This returns us to Deleuze's logic of sense. The difference between representation and expression lies in this relation of sense, insofar as sense is the expression of an event or incorporeal effect while representation is the identification of the causal relation of ideas and objects. Deleuze explains that sense is an event; it does not represent the event but is the effect of combinations of actions, passions, and circumstances. Events are the effects of the interactions of bodies yet are not themselves corporeal (LS, 4). While states of affairs are the spatio-temporal relations that bodies and things are to be found in, their interactions produce effects that cannot be identified as belonging to them in the same manner. These incorporeal events subsist on the surface of things and express the movement and timeless duration of their becoming, thereby constituting sense. In this manner, sense-event is a unique relation between words and things; it is shared between the actualizations of things and the words which express these actualizations, although it is not strictly possessed by either. 19 With respect to propositions Deleuze claims that they both designate things and express events. They do not, then, represent things but express events that occur outside of language, even though these events require language in order to be expressed. If that is the case, language must also be thought of in terms of events, as linguistic events which cause words and things to interact and produce new effects, new sense. For example, the sense of the proposition, "The tree is green," does not exist outside its expression, but neither is it solely an attribute of the proposition. Deleuze claims that sense is instead to be understood in the manner of predication, "as a verb expressing an action or a passion" that is irreducible to the constancy of the attributive scheme. The expressive predicate "is above all a relation" and an incorporeal event of the subject of the proposition (F, 53). 20 The sense of the above proposition, namely, the "becoming-green-ofthe-tree" or "the tree greens," is an active becoming or event of change that exceeds the proposition, and does not it find its origin in the consciousness of the knowing subject. 21 For Deleuze, then, the relations that make sense possible must be external to the terms which are composed into a particular sense-entity, and they must find their direction (sens) within the contingent circumstances of the world and practical existence. 22 In this manner Deleuze manages to break open and unfold the circle of the proposition: Sense is both the expressible or the expressed o f the proposition, and the attribute o f the state o f affairs. It turns one side toward things and one side toward propositions. But it does not merge with the proposition which expresses it any more than with the state of affairs or the quality which the proposition denotes . . . . It is in this sense that it is an "event": on the condition that the event is not confused with its spatio-temporal / FROM RELATIONS TO PRACTICE IN THE EMPIRICISM OF GILLES DELEUZE 293 realization in a state of affairs. We will not ask therefore what is the sense of the event: the event is sense itself. (LS, 22). Thus, the event of sense is not a thing or a fact but the relational effect of the practical interaction of words and things, expressed in the infinitive, active form of verbs (LS, 5). Infinitives express the becomings of events, which pass between language and states of affairs. They do not serve an attributive but an expressive or predicative function, expressing movement, action, passion, change, p a s s a g e - in short, the event. 23 Sense is the singular and contingent unity composed as an effect of infinitely variable relations between terms, a unity without intrinsic relations. As such, it is, Deleuze remarks, "exactly the boundary between propositions and things" (LS, 22). Utilizing the theory of external relations in his account of sense, Deleuze stresses that linguistic meaning is not formed according to a transcendental principle or representational schema of the intrinsic relations of signifier to signified and sign to referent. On the contrary, sense is the variable effect of the dynamic production and distribution of actual series of differentially related words and events. In Deleuze's logic of sense, words and things are treated as elements that interact on an immanent plane, but that are fundamentally distinct and different; sense is an incorporeal event that passes between them, on their surfaces. Sense is not the property of a natural correspondence between words and things. Rather, sense must be considered as the expressed affirmation of multiplicity, a true event of becoming which displaces essentialism and the pure subject of meaning (LS, 172). 4. Rhizome, language, and practice Perhaps the most innovative use Deleuze finds for his adherence to the exteriority of relations is the concept of the rhizome he develops with Frlix Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus. As was the case with sense, the issue here is to articulate how differential compositions, open ended wholes, or what Deleuze and Guattari call "assemblages," can be formulated on the basis of a relational multiplicity that avoids binary logic and representational correspondence. Drawing inspiration from the botanical rhizome, the subterranean plant stem that produces shoots and roots, but in no way feeling constrained to restrict their use of the rhizome to the botanical level, Deleuze and Guattari create a full-blown concept of anarchic and creative associationism which they contrast to the hierarchical schema of arborescent structures. 24 Such arboreal or vertical tree-like structures are found within the dominant forms of Western epistemology and ontology, which organize knowledge according to essentialized, centralized, internalised, and codified systems ofrepresenta- 294 PATRICK HAYDEN tion that are held to reproduce or mirror a transcendent reality. The rhizome, on the contrary, is a horizontal and immanent assemblage of relations open to the productive continuum of the world, and is to be distinguished from the arboreal scheme by six characteristics. The first two characteristics concern principles "of connection and heterogeneity," according to which "any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be" (ATP, 7). As is evident from the previous section on Deleuze's reading of Hume, the rhizome is placed immediately within Deleuze's position on the exteriority and mobility of relations. The rhizome is defined by its ability to continually establish "connections between semiotic chains, organisations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social sciences" (ATE 7). It is understood in light of the diverse relations established between variable and heterogeneous terms, both discursive and non-discursive. Yet rhizomatic relations are not intrinsic, in that they are not derived from self-enclosed essentialist totalities, but external, because they are the effects of practices which associate external terms according to specific social conditions and circumstances. Although always external to their terms, relations are nevertheless enveloped, that is, immanent, within these social or empirical encounters. Rhizomatic relations produce contingent wholes or open systems that cannot be self-enclosed, on the basis of these particular interactions. Thus, Deleuze and Guattari argue that there is no such thing as "language in itself," but instead that there are temporary stabilizations of linguistic, perceptive, gestural, environmental, and political components that assemble "not only different regimes of signs but also states of things of different status" (ATE 7). The rhizome therefore partakes of Deleuze's logic of sense, as well. The third characteristic of the rhizome is multiplicity, which Deleuze and Guattari treat as a substantive. Rhizomatic assemblages are multiplicities in that they are composed of different terms and external relations irreducible to those terms. Multiplicities change their dimensions and magnitudes by altering or expanding their relations, thereby bringing about a qualitative change of the relational assemblage itself: "An assemblage is precisely this increase in the dimensions of a multiplicity that necessarily changes in nature as it expands its connections" (ATE 8). 25 The rhizome does not possess an essence that determines and fixes its relations. Rather, its sense is made up of the interplay of those relations which compose it; as these connections are altered or new connections are made the multiplicity effectively assumes a new or different sense. The sense of the assemblage is seen as the effect of the co-functioning of heterogeneous elements in a contingent unity. 26 As proposed by Deleuze, external relations are rhizomatic lines of sensebecomings that constantly pass or flow between the different elements of FROM RELATIONS TO PRACTICE IN THE EMPIRICISM OF GILLES DELEUZE 295 an assemblage. 27 This lends the rhizome its fourth characteristic, that of the "asignifying rupture" (ATP, 9). The rhizome, as an open system composed - o f external relations and heterogeneous elements, is constantly mutating, shifting, and reforming itself on the basis of its multidirectionality. It pursues one line at one moment, a different line at another. This is what Deleuze and Guattari also refer to as territorialization, deterritorialization, and reterritorialization, the qualitative transformation of complex assemblages on the basis of proliferating relations between heterogeneous terms. Every assemblage is characterized by the processes of constituting a "territory" that holds together distinct or heterogeneous elements, which is simultaneously a movement of deterritorialization or the transformation of the assemblage's previous relational quality, and reterritorialization or the passage from one kind of territorial assemblage to another. It follows that none of these movements can be isolated as the original moment of the process, for they continually pass into one another. The rhizome does not change simply because new terms are brought into play, but because different relations are allowed to flow between the terms, mutating the relationship as a whole; the rhizome remains although its sense "can no longer be attributed to or subjugated by anything signifying" (ATP, 10). The rhizomatic assemblage does not resemble, reproduce, or represent any fixed meaning that would determine it in terms of an essential correspondence. Rather, the sense of the rhizome is engendered in the relational interaction of its elements and forms of expression, which change as the rhizome itself is transformed. It is a question of the becoming-expressive of every assemblage (ATP, 322-23). Lastly, according to Deleuze and Guattari the rhizome is defined by pragmatic cartography or the active formation of maps, in contrast to representational decalcomania or the static imitative function of tracing and reproduction. Because the rhizome is foreign to any structural or generative model, it cannot be represented in the form of an infinitely reproducible tracing. Maps are constructed by means of actual rhizomatic connections. Because it is a part of the rhizome, the map "is open and connectable in all of its dimensions; it is detachable, reversible, susceptible to constant modification" (ATP, 12). In short, "one of the most important characteristics of the rhizome is that it always has multiple entryways," which allows all its other characteristics to flourish (ATP, 12). What is most important is for the rhizome to be conceived as productively operating within diverse fields of activity and different types of social practices, shaped by and informing those fields and practices. At all points, insist Deleuze and Guattari, rhizomatic multiplicity "must be made" (ATP, 6). It does not simply occur by spontaneous generation; it is to be created by actual productive processes, whether they be philosophic, scientific, aesthetic, or political. 28 296 PATRICK HAYDEN Because the relations of a rhizomatic multiplicity are immediately interactive, heterogeneous, and variable they are not to be understood as successive derivations of an evolutionary descent that progresses from the least to the most differentiated of terms within an encompassing order of identity. Rhizomes do not evolve from an original unity by means offiliation or correspondence. Instead, they are anomalous becomings produced by the formation of transversal alliances between different and coexisting terms within an open system (ATP, 10; 237-39). Becomings involve relations of a communicable nature, akin to contagion, that cannot be reduced to relations of strict correspondence. For these reasons, rhizomatic becoming "lacks a subject distinct from itself," a fixed term that marks its point of completion, since the subject is nothing other than the becoming itself, a multiplicity (ATP, 238). The importance of external relations in this context is vital, for the multiplicity and becoming conceived by Deleuze and Guattari would be rendered completely ineffectual from the point of view of internal relations. Internal relations can only be thought of as secondary derivations from the essential identities of homogeneous terms, whereas external relations are necessary for the active creation of symbiotic alliances that pass between heterogeneous terms and thus for the composition of multiple open systems that are capable of transformation. Becoming occurs within those in-between spaces that external relations traverse. This last point may be further considered from Deleuze and Guattari's concepts of the majoritarian and minoritarian, viewing the former from the perspective of internal relations and the latter from that of external relations. In addition to the relational characteristics of these two concepts, Deleuze and Guattari's use of majority and minority are also meant to express the practical and political levels of the corresponding notions of molarity and molecularity. The majoritarian functions by confining its subject, defining it as a rigid molar entity formed of privileged oppositional essences or terms intrinsically related to invariable functions, meanings, and identities. The objective of the molar or majoritarian is to remain the same, to remain above or outside becoming by excluding qualitative transformations.29 The molecular, on the contrary, corresponds to processes of becoming-other or qualitative transformations ofrhizomatic relationalities. Here, the collective coexistence of heterogeneous elements is made possible by the fluidity of the relations that pass between them. Deleuze and Guattari explain that all becomings are molecular "because becoming is not to imitate or identify with something or someone," but instead to "enter into composition with something else" by means of different relations simultaneously passing between molecular elements; it is to be deterritorialized (ATP, 272; 274). Molecular becomings thus constitute practices that challenge molar and arboreal systems: "Becoming- FROM RELATIONS TO PRACTICE IN THE EMPIRICISM OF GILLES DELEUZE 297 minoritarian is a political affair and necessitates a labor of power, an active micropolitics" (ATP, 292). Micropolitics does not work to institute large, encompassing systems and centralized powers, nor is it based on the notion of an intrinsic identity between the subject and the state. It is instead concerned with a diversity of collective assemblages, with specific relational systems that remain open, and which seek to find new ways of organizing their interactions and drawing connections in virtue, and not in spite, of their diversity. The lessons of Deleuze's logic of sense and the rhizomatic account of minoritarian practice and becoming that he develops with Guattari are utilized in their analysis of Kafka's writings and what they refer to as minor literature.3° Again, minor is not a quantitative but a qualitative distinction, and in this case refers to the revolutionary potential of all literatures that challenge the dominance of the binary form of linguistic interpretation by proliferating relations and connections between expression and content. Minor literature comprises a practice of rhizomatic experimentation by mixing asignifying ruptures and intensive utilisations of language in order to create assemblages o facts and statements. Deleuze and Guattari explain that the three characteristics of minor literature "are the deterritorialization of language, the connection of the individual to a political immediacy, and the collective assemblage of enunciation" (K, 18). Minor literature, as an "expression machine" that unexpectedly mixes expression and content in a single intense matter, leaks around the structural or organic correspondence of content and expression that major literature and languages depend upon for their coherence and conformity; it expresses the relational tensions of a language that is in fact infiltrated by multiple languages. At this point, minor literature develops uses of language in such a way that it "stops being representative in order to move toward its extremities or its limits" (K, 23). Moving toward these limits is an effect of diverse linguistic practices "which simultaneously combine fluxes of expression and fluxes of content" (D, 116-17). The point is not that the minor and the major are two different types of language, but that they are two different uses of language: while the former invents becomings of language by means of the transformation of variable relations between linguistic and non-linguistic elements, the latter seeks constants, universals, and reducible relations according to formal standards derived from these variables (see ATP, 101-106). As clearly seen by Deleuze and Guattari, the preference attributed to supposedly natural signs and principles has often been used for the justification of coercive political authority. 3L Deleuze and Guattari's theory of minor language is thus critically directed at the idea of a universal semiology, as their empiricist insistence on the importance of specific social contexts and formations of languages undercuts 298 PATRICK HAYDEN the attempt to erect an abstract and homogeneous linguistic system that has the purpose of explaining contingent and variable formations on the basis of its universal principles. Central to Deleuze and Guattari's theory is their belief that all languages "are in immanent continuous variation: neither synchrony nor diachrony, but asynchrony, chromaticism as a variable and continuous state of language" (ATP, 97). Such variations are the result of placing linguistic elements into different relations, which can be done because the relation between content and expression is not that of an inferred causal infrastructure but instead the effect of a specific productive cause; it is a molecular and rhizomatic becoming, rather than a molar and arboreal evolution. Furthermore, language does not solely have the function of informing or communicating something that exists independent of one's actions. Language is a type of social practice whose meanings do not lie outside this practice. On the contrary, language consists in the emission, reception, and transmission of"order-words," which are defined by Deleuze and Guattari as "the relation of every word or every statement to implicit presuppositions, in other words, to speech acts . . . accomplished in the statement" (ATP, 79). It is true that at this point Deleuze and Guattari claim that the relation between the statement and the act is internal, but by this they simply mean that the relation o f one to the other is one of immanence and not one of identity. The two presuppose one another, yet they do not correspond in any essential, intrinsic, or representational manner. Thus, Deleuze and Guattari's concem is to demonstrate that every statement is linked to an act in such a way that neither can be seen as a form of transcendence. The relation is neither inferred nor contained by one of the terms; it is actively established within a given social field, between order-words, immanent actions, and the sense expressed by the statement (ATP, 79; 83). Consequently, Deleuze is not making any claims regarding the impossibility of meaning; for him, the ubiquity of difference does not undermine the possibility of making sense. Deleuze's point, rather, is that meaning cannot be confined to a representational model that posits an intrinsic relation from the supposed essence of the subject to its objects; the relations of words and things are not "natural" but practical and social associations that are the expressions of diverse modes of existence. Linguistic practices are assemblages that we create and occupy immanently, from within which we make claims about the world and other linguistic practices (as well as our own), whether minoritarian or majoritarian. Because the relations of such assemblages are thoroughly social in character, pragmatics (semiotic and political) becomes the very presupposition of language, as it defines "the effectuation of the condition of possibility of language and the usage of linguistic elements" (ATP, 85). 32 And as we have seen, pragmatics can be FROMRELATIONSTO PRACTICEINTHEEMPIRICISMOF GILLESDELEUZE 299 associated with neither structural organization nor evolutive genesis, but with the rhizome and micropolitics. 33 5. Conclusion With his theory of relations and the associated concepts of sense and rhizome Deleuze develops a pluralist empiricism with which to express the immanent diversity of the world. It would be a mistake, I think, to see Deleuze's insistence on the exteriority of relations as a path to either a sterile atomism or a chaotic indifference to unity. What his theory offers instead is a renewed attention to the importance of relations, from the perspective of a creative, productive, and practical associationism. For Deleuze, there is nothing which has only one component, but neither can the unities of this associationism be subsumed under a totalizing Absolute. In the same way, concrete social fields cannot be explained by reference to the individual only, but are understood by way of the relations, interactions, and collective forces through which they are actualized and transformed. Social fields are combinations of collective assemblages, of open wholes or multiplicities relating to each other under many different circumstances and in many different ways. I take it, then, that the question for Deleuze is how to understand the composition and organization of the components of social existence, according to the immanent interaction of variable relations within the encounters of human experience. These compositions are not governed by an intrinsic connectedness but by a differential relationality, which prevents them from being reduced to the terms of which they are constituted or from being identified with a transcendental principle. Multiple social fields are the products of diverse social practices forming a network of transformable open wholes or contingent unities, such that the network is itself open to change; it is a "multiplicity that effectively goes beyond any opposition between the one and the multiple" (ATP, 154). From this perspective, what concerns Deleuze is not the project of identifying an essence or necessary relation, but rather the ability empiricism has to reveal the social, historical, and political character of relations that have been established and that continue to be established. This anti-essentialism makes it possible to conceive of a productive practice of relations whose importance consists in qualitatively transforming existent wholes by remaining open to that which is external to them. Through his theory and practice of relations, Deleuze provides a means for thinking of alternative ways of inhabiting our world, without having recourse to the model of an organic wholeness that would predetermine our interrelationships and interactions or provide the indubitable standard by which to judge them. 34 In this manner, Deleuze's account of relations moves from the ontological to the ethical and 300 PATRICK HAYDEN the p o l i t i c a l b y f o c u s i n g o n t h e i n s e p a r a b i l i t y o f r e l a t i o n s a n d p r a c t i c e s , o n t h e c o m p l e x i n t e r a c t i o n o f the d i v e r s e e l e m e n t s o f o u r e x p e r i e n c e s , o n t h e t y p e s o f r e l a t i o n s o u r s o c i e t y e i t h e r m a i n t a i n s o r d e s t r o y s , a n d o n the a c t u a l effects a n d c o n s e q u e n c e s o f t h e s e actions. F o r D e l e u z e r e l a t i o n s are f u n d a m e n t a l to p r a c t i c e , a n d t h u s h e m a k e s c l e a r w h a t m a t t e r s m o s t o f all is that w h i c h h a p p e n s in b e t w e e n . 35 Notes 1. Gilles Deleuze, The Fold: Leibniz and The Baroque, trans. Tom Conley (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), p. 53; hereafter cited parenthetically as F. 2. Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, Dialogues, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), p. vii; hereafter cited as D. 3. Gilles Deleuze, Empiricism and Subjectivity: An Essay on Hume'S Theory of Human Nature, trans. Constantin V. Boundas (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991); hereafter cited as ES. See Boundas' introduction for a clear presentation of the primary themes of Deleuze's book. 4. Deleuze had previously co-edited a collection of Hume's writings with Andr6 Cresson entitled David Hume, sa vie, son oeuvre avec un exposd de sa philosophie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1952). He later contributed the entry on Hume for the Histoire de la philosophie series edited by Franqois Chatelet (Paris: Hachette, 1972). 5. "I have nothing to admit," trans. Janis Forman, Semiotext(e) 2/3 (1977): 111-16. 6. In a recent collection of essays the traditional interpretation of Hume is supported by Alexander Rosenberg: "Hume is widely recognized to have been the chief philosophical inspiration of the most important twentieth-century school in the philosophy of sciencethe so-called logical positivists. . . . In Hume's philosophy, epistemology is the dominant force." See "Hume and the Philosophy of Science" in The Cambridge Companion to Hume, ed. David Fate Norton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 64-65. 7. For Deleuze, the world of extension, of extended space and time, is the effect of"intensive quantity," that is, of non-conceptual and dynamic difference differentiating itself. Deleuze writes in Difference and Repetition that it is "that by which the given is given as diverse," because intensity "is the form of difference insofar as this is the reason of the sensible... the condition of that which appears" (trans. Paul Patton, New York: Columbia University Press, 1994, p. 222). As he states in Dialogues it is "the concrete richness of the sensible" and the vitality of the world which is primary for empiricism (p. 54). 8. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1929), p. 606. 9. The most obvious adversary for Deleuze on this issue is Hegel, although his critique is also directed to Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes. Hegel is opposed to empiricism on just these points. For him it can only be a mistake to follow this path as it leads to a pluralism that does away with absolute unity. He correctly observes, however, that for empiricism "whatever relation obtains between the things combined, their nature is one extraneous to them that does not concern their nature at all, and even if it is accompanied by a semblance of unity it remains nothing more than composition, mixture, aggregation and the like." Hegel's Science of Logic, trans. A.V. Miller (Atlantic Highlands, N J: Humanities Press, 1989), p. 711. Hegel seeks to overcome the plurality occasioned by the externality of relations by utilizing the model of an original "organic" unity composed of intrinsic relations (see Hegel's Science of Logic, pp. 761 IT)-For an account of Deleuze's differences with Hegel on these points see Bruce Baugh, "Deleuze and Empiricism," in The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Jan. 1993): 15-31. FROM RELATIONS TO PRACTICE IN THE EMPIRICISM OF GILLES DELEUZE 301 10. Deleuze holds Spinoza in high regard for his insistence on this very issue. According to Deleuze, the practical orientation of Spinoza's philosophy and ethics demands the denunciation of all transcendent values that separate us from life, while encouraging the composition of diverse relations which increase the power to be affected and therefore joyful. See Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, trans. Robert Hurley (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1988), chapters two and three. 11. Somewhat similar arguments are given by G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell in their reactions against the British Hegelians. See, for example, "The Refutation of Idealism" and "External and Internal Relations," in G.E. Moore: Selected Writings, ed. Thomas Baldwin (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), and Bertrand Russell, Our Knowledge of the External Worm (London and New York: Routledge, 1914). 12. In an interview conducted in 1980 Deleuze relates that he does not deny the reality of systems, unities, or wholes, but only that they are closed rather than open. He notes that what he and Guattari call a "rhizome," which I examine below, is an example of an open system. "Entretien sur Mille Plateaux," in Pourparlers, 1972-1990 (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1990), p. 48. 13. These formulations can be found in Deleuze's discussion of Bergson's notions of relations and change in Cinema 1: The Movement-lmage, chapter one, third thesis. Deleuze also states, "We know that the relation between two things is not reducible to an attribute of one thing or the other, nor, indeed, to an attribute of the set. On the other hand, it is still quite possible to relate the relations to a whole if one conceives the whole as a continuum, and not as a given set." See Cinema 1: TheMovement-lmage, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), p. 219 n. 6. 14. For a treatment of the difficulties surrounding the question of unity in Deleuze's work, see Todd May, "Difference and Unity in Gilles Deleuze," in Gilles Deleuze and the Theater of Philosophy, ed. Constantin V. Boundas and Dorothea Olkowski (New York and London: Routledge, 1994). 15. Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, trans. Mark Lester, ed. Constantin V. Boundas (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990); hereafter cited as LS. In keeping with the English translation, I retain the use of"sense" for the word sens, which can mean not only "sense" and "meaning," but also "direction," "way," "feelings," and "interpretation." 16. It is not my intention to provide a comprehensive treatment of modern semiotic or semantic theory, but only to examine how Deleuze's empiricist critique of essentialism carries over into the analysis of linguistic phenomena and the attempt to ground meaning on an a priori referential unity of subject and object and thus on an indisputable foundation for knowledge. There are a number of books and essays which attempt to come to terms with these issues from a variety of perspectives, but perhaps the most well-known of these is Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979). 17. Gilles Deleuze, Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, trans. Martin Joughin (New York: Zone Books, 1990); hereafter referred to as SE. 18. For a comprehensive account of how Spinoza's ontology is related to practice by Deleuze, see Michael Hardt, Gilles Deleuze: An Apprenticeship in Philosophy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), chapter three. 19. Michel Foucault provides a description of Deleuze's notion of sense-event in his essay "Theatrum Philosophicum," in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon (Ithaca, NY: Comell University Press, 1977), especially pp. 172-76. 20. Deleuze examines the event-relation in his book on Leibniz, demonstrating how it is to be disentangled from the essence-attribute model of representationalist essentialism. Deleuze then offers a reinterpretation (against Russell) of Leibniz's theory of relations, showing that the apparent internality of Leibnizian relations ceases to hold when they are seen from the perspective of sense-events, and thus that they are more correctly understood as the type of external relations we have been concerned with here. Whitehead also is 302 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. PATRICK HAYDEN particularly important for Deleuze in this respect. See The Fold, especially chapters 4 and 6. Deleuze discusses sense in regards to the genesis of the act of thinking within the context of his critique of representationalism, in Difference and Repetition, pp. 153 IT. On the equality of event and entity, see Dialogues p. 66. Cf. The Fold, pp. 52-54 Gilles Deleuze and F~lix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987); hereafter referred to as ATE Andr6 Pierre Colombat briefly discusses the extension of the rhizome beyond its botanical limits, and why it is not simply a metaphor, in his article "A Thousand Trails to Work with Deleuze," in SubStance, Vol. 20, No. 3 (1991): 10-23. It is important to note that by speaking of the nature of the multiplicity, Deleuze and Guattari are referring to the quality that an open whole or system possesses and which changes as the relations of the whole are transformed, and not to the essence of a thing and its intrinsic relation to an attribute or property. See Dialogues, pp. 69-70. Cf. Dialogues, pp. vii-viii. See Ronald Bogue's discussion of Deleuze and Guattari's attempts to "situate linguistics within a larger theory of action" in his Deleuze and Guattari (London and New York: Routledge, 1989), pp. 136-149. The issue here is to be stated in qualitative not quantitative terms. For Deleuze and Guattari, majority refers "not to a greater relative quantity but to the determination of a state or standard in relation to which larger quantities, as well as the smallest, can be said to be minoritarian: white-man, adult-male, etc." (ATP, 291). Gilles Deleuze and F61ix Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, trans. Dana Polan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986); hereafter referred to as K. See the critiques of fascism, semiotic law, social representation, and organicism by Deleuze and Guattali in Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983). Deleuze reinforces this perspective when he writes in Dialogues that "it is in concrete social fields, at specific moments, that the comparative movements of deterritorialization, the continuums of intensity and the combinations of flux that they form must be studied" (0.135). Deleuze and Guattari explain elsewhere in A Thousand Plateaus: "We just use words that in turn function for us as plateaus. RHIZOMATICS = SCHIZOANALYSIS = STRATOANALYSIS = PRAGMATICS = MICROPOLITICS" (p. 22). This position is expressed quite well by Foueault, whom Deleuze saw as a fellow empiricist: "! do not think there is anything that is functionally - b y its very nature -absolutely liberating. Liberty is a practice." See "Space, Knowledge, and Power," in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), p. 245. Deleuze's Foucault, trans. Paul Boy6 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), is a magnificent exercise which reads Foucault in light of the type of empiricism Deleuze promotes, and shows how Foucault too was a profound theorist and practitioner &relations. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Thirty-Third Annual Conference of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. I would like to thank Todd May and Katherine Meacham for their very helpful comments and discussions on these issues.