NATHAN MOORE�

SO YOU LOVE ME

ABSTRACT. This essay uses the work of Gilles Deleuze, in some detail, to argue for a newpractice of criticism. Not in order to purify, refine, or generally redeem anything, but ratherto encourage a focusing upon the production of fields of experience as an ethical event.As such, the piece re-problematizes what it means to raise questions, and demonstrates theunderlying responsibility of doing so.

KEY WORDS: Carroll, contract, criticism, despot, Masoch, Sade, sense

INTRODUCTION

It is not the law that binds you but the other of law.

What do we want to achieve by legal criticism? This may appear to bea naive question, but it is one that is worth thinking about. The act ofcriticism is carried out, but is the purpose ever actually considered? It isin fact questionable whether writers ever have a purpose beyond writing.Of course, there are certain groups where the aim of criticism is taken tobe self-evident. This is, obviously, a mistake. Because we are not dealingwith black letter problems, we are not lobbying necessarily for a change inthis or that law. We are thinking about the law generally, in jurisprudentialterms: Trying to understand what it is. Trying to understand what it does.Why?

How do you think of your enemies? This is the fundamental questionof any criticism, as the best criticism is born from an encounter with aworthy enemy. What makes an enemy worthy of criticism? If he or shetouches you in some way . . . if the enemy is you. This does not mean thatyou must admire your enemy, or find anything likeable about him or her.Neither does it entail any kind of dialectical reversal, whereby the relationof master and servant becomes interchangeable. It means being responsibleenough to recognise that your enemy has a responsibility in how your beingin the world is organised.

We all have people and organisations that we would prefer not to exist.We may have an opportunity to do something about them or not. Philo-

� Thanks Anne, thanks Costas.

Law and Critique 15: 45–64, 2004.© 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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sophically this is not important. Not because of any divide between thebanal and the philosophical. That kind of distinction is itself an enemyof this paper. It is not important because destroying an enemy meansdestroying the desire of that enemy.1 To kill an opponent will not changethe world. It is not criticism. But to destroy your opponent’s desire willchange the world, and is then a critical operation.

So far, I have talked of destroying enemies as if this were a war story ora spy thriller. There are parallels. However, it must be noted that ‘destroy’is used here in a specific way. It means to have done with something.2 Thisis the precise difference between a military act and the action of criticism.The military cannot have done with its enemies – never was this clearerthan during the Cold War.3 The military, the state, murderers are all motiv-ated by specific networks of desire, whereby they perpetuate themselvesthrough a relationship to an other. They never take action, but can only actout their phantasies through war and imagination. By reproducing them-selves, they avoid all critical actions – they never create anything.4 Rather,they act as lightning conductors for specific symbolic delusions. Phantasywould then be the limitlessness of signification. Becauase it can alwaysmean something else, desire can be actualised in the most extraordinaryneuroses. There is always an other.5 Particular others congeal around thedesires of a particular body. Each acts as an ideal for the other: the interplayof signifier and signified. The body of the murderer is like the face of the

1 In many ways this is the most surprising and yet obvious assertion. Perhaps I shouldhave called this paper “The Art of Love” or alternatively “The Art of Murder”. See forinstance P. Virillo, “Moving Girl”, in F. Peraldi, ed., Semiotext(e) #10 Polysexuality (NewYork: Semiotext(e), 1995); or J.-F. Lyotard, “The Assassination of Experience by Painting– Monory”, in S. Wilson, ed., Revisions ( London: Black Dog Publishing, 1998). At anylength, while the current paper is permeated by this issue of what it may mean to killanother’s desire, it is not something that is addressed here explicitly. Rather I must leavethis issue for another day.

2 Cf. G. Deleuze, Essays Critical and Clinical (London: Verso, 1998). See in particularTo Have Done with Judgement.

3 Or the current adventures in the east.4 The reproduction of the self . . . this is really the central issue, the manner in which so

many critics encounter the world with the sole aim of perpetuating their current state. Theprecise phantasy here is narcissism; moulding the world in your own image.

5 One area of difference between Deleuze and Guattari from Jacques Lacan, is themanner in which they tie together what is incommensurable (the subject and its uncon-scious). The signifier need not always unify its field of operations. Rather, desire is splitin a manner which can only ramify the plentiude of creation, rather than expose its lackor absence. Contrast “Psychoanalysis and Familialism: The Holy Family”, in Deleuzeand Guattari, Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus (London: Athlone, 1984) with“The Unconscious and Repetition”, in J. Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts ofPsycho-analysis (London: Vintage, 1998).

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despot in Deleuze and Guattari.6 It selects others – it brings signifieds outof signifiers; it makes people and races emerge from the cosmos. Mostprofoundly, it doubles itself through a body of evidence. By this otherbody, it knows itself . . . there are always at least two detectives on thecase! For this reason, murder could never become an art – it is the ultimatepassive act. Instead, it veers between paranoia and a limited schizophreniacentred upon the body (not a body that contracts new elements, but one thatspews out the same old shit). The history of the west has been to becomeless neurotic and more schizophrenic in this limited way. Limited, becausewhat has been involved in the history of the 20th Century has been the rateat which others appear. There is still always an other . . . so many others infact that you can never catch them all.

For this reason, there was never a monarch who did not have an enemy.As Deleuze and Guattari have shown, there is always a scapegoat.7 Some-thing vilified, hated, blamed, distrusted. We may try to help the scapegoat,to defend it. Why? Because we are the subjects of the monarch – otherwisewe would not recognise the symbolic function of the scapegoat. We wouldbe incapable of perceiving it as victim. For this reason, Nietzsche andSpinoza were both suspicious of pity. This is not an excuse for standing bywhile the scapegoat is beaten, raped, and driven from its home. Contrary tothe criminal law, murder need not be a positive act. Saving the scapegoatcan be a critical action, but it takes more than an identification.8 Often, weare in danger of being our own scapegoat in this context! Nevertheless it isdifficult to understand why we should be critical if the monarch kills. Thisis because any notion of human decency is immediately deconstructed byirony.9 But we will see that this deconstruction is the operation of a specifictype of sovereign power, whereby we come to loathe ourselves so muchthat we say, “Rather them than me”.

What it is crucial to understand is that we can never be without themonarch or the scapegoat. We are always with the law. Just as importantto understand is that we do not lack anything in relation to the law. Weare in law like a fish in the sea. Some seem to think that we can leavelaw through psychoanalysis and post-modern operations. They play within

6 G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, Capitalism and Schizophrenia: A Thousand Plateaus(London: Athlone, 1992).

7 Ibid. at 111 et seq.8 We must always be sensitive to the register into which words may fall. To identify . . .

like the critic to want to identify with everything, to find him/herself at every turn. But toactually identify with something or someone – that always happens behind your back! Youdo not realise what is happening until it is too late.

9 On the difference between humour and irony see G. Deleuze, “Coldness and Cruelty”,in Masochism (New York: Zone Books, 1989).

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their own desire for the aura of the scapegoat. “I am with this against you”.Freud has been used to condemn us to such perpetual adolescence: “Theunconscious is to blame. We cannot be responsible”. Yet somehow we arealways to blame.

GOATS WILL FLY

We are in the habit of wanting to understand things in a complete manner.Not only is this an impossible (and therefore essential task), it is potentiallydangerous because it can have the effect of discouraging us from action.Just look at the work of Baudrillard! Notice how he cannot stop spewingit out.10 Complete knowledge necessarily cancels itself out. In this sense,life is fuelled by ignorance. The danger here is in thinking in terms of greatexplorers – there is actually nothing to discover. You only ever discoverwhat you expect to discover – consider the flag they took to the moon!The crucial ignorance of critical action (i.e. limited thought) is experi-mentation. Ignorance problematises a field of knowledge, and motivatesthe latter’s transformation through creativity. Adding new things. It doesnot involve trying to achieve a particular end precisely because we are tooignorant to have one. Therefore, there is no causal distance between anaction and its consequence. They are one and the same thing – a constantsurprise. The survival of any specific system is dependent upon avoidingtoo big a surprise. This is the constant worry of the monarch, the militaryand murderers: the traitor, the ambush, the arrest. The point of this is thatthe despot can never know the total effect of selecting signifieds from thestream of signifiers. So it is not really a question of trying to know what thedespot or monarch is doing. Interpretation is always already a game, whichhas to be played on the despot’s terms. As a result, we can never know themonarch’s others, even if it is us. Rather, we can turn the game against him– we can exaggerate otherness so long as we do the same for despotismsimultaneously. Critical action is the movement from knowing your enemyto forgetting your enemy. Deleuze and Guattari, working from Foucault,show how the scapegoat serves an important function in maintaining thedespot: “the scapegoat represents a new form of increasing entropy in thesystem of signs: it is charged with everything that was ‘bad’ in a givenperiod . . .”11 It is precisely any distortion in the interplay of signifier and

10 Actually this is just an element, or style, in Baudrillard’s output, and is clearly bentback on itself in order to produce a new tone of thought. See for example Baudrillard,Forget Foucault (New York: Semiotext(e), 1987).

11 Supra n. 6 at 116.

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signified that is being symbolised under the sign of the scapegoat. It isworth pausing to ask if we gain anything now by ‘identifying’ ourselveswith the scapegoat, as a sign of our resistance or critique. Certainly itrepresents an act of deviation (and therefore revives the despot in question),but the real question is whether or not it is an action of deviation (regicide).Deleuze and Guattari continue: “(the scapegoat) incarnates that line offlight the signifying regime cannot tolerate, in other words an absolutedeterritorialization; the regime must block a line of this kind or define itin an entirely negative fashion precisely because it exceeds the degree ofdeterritorialization of the signifying sign, however high it may be”.12 Thedespot does not create anything other than a specific type of resonancebetween things that already exist. To a large extent, this involves the despotdenying his own ignorance through identification with the transcendentalterm of signification. In this sense, the whole practice of ruling is basedaround the organisation of ignorance, around its concealment. This is thedeterritorialization that the sign of the despot performs, the resonance ofthe all knowing. In practice, some ignorance must go free, if only to letit rebound off of the predetermined limits of the system, deposited by thedespot. The power of the despot must be exercised; justice must be seen tobe done.13 Do not go too far – the world is flat after all!

The goat, face of the devil, something that we can all hate, divertsattention from the guilt of not being the despot. Rather it than me. Thisis justice because all of my indiscretions are not my fault after all – blamethe goat – it went too far, and gave up any appeal to mercy and pity. It putitself outside the despot and denied him. As the quote above says, the goatcarried deterritorialization too far, gave us all a nasty surprise. Black sheep,yes; goats, never. If you want to criticise the monarch, it is very appealingto valorize the goat, whatever it may be: “the enemy of my enemy is myfriend”. So, you must love your enemy and desire it, because only thencan you know your friend. Immaculate conception as the ultimate act ofbestiality; Joseph as spare part to Mary and the donkey. This valorisationis an extreme form of pornography. The scapegoat is as stupid as the mostobscene of spectacles. Titillation for the despot, shooting his seed onto thewall of his own ignorance. As if he can fertilise it and give birth to pureknowing, pure death. The ultimate tragedy of the despot is just this: he cannever finally become death. He will never be that which does not die. Lifeis the mark of this failure – how it is loathed as a result! So the monarchneeds his others. A little packet of ignorance. What does that leave forcriticism? What is the position of this action, if it is not undertaken by

12 Ibid.13 One thinks of W.S. Burroughs: “death needs time like a junky needs junk”.

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an other? The need is for something that leaps right out of the wholesystem . . . something that is totally alien, but somehow unfolding fromwithin. Criticism is not just something that the despot does not know – itis something that he knows that he does not know. Those that leap achievethis by the affirmation of their affirmation. It is not enough to say, “I amother”, as if this would concern the despot. It must be taken to the nextlevel; the state that Nietzsche implies when man finally hears the news ofGod’s passing. The shock for the monarch, confronted with an experienceoutside of his thought, literally not knowing what it is. Suddenly they arethere. But who is there? What is there?

Do not mistake what you are about to read. The one who leaps is thegoat. But have we not just seen how the goat must be discounted as themere other of the despot? The difference is that the tethered scapegoatmust transform itself into a merrily prancing kid. Only then will it leap.The kid knows nothing of self-pity. It does not cry out or ask “why me?”Rather, it says, “let it come down”. It has no concept of murder or militaryoperations: “The will to power certainly appears in an infinitely more exactmanner in a baby than in a man of war”.14 Leaping out, the goat turnsitself into an authoritarian, according to Deleuze and Guattari.15 Not rule,and not all knowing. Rather, a particular expertise within a given field ofoperations. An authority in the sense of know how. The monarch knewwhat he was doing when he drew out a line of flight. The goat has no ideawhat he or she (or they – the name of the goat is legion) is doing by fleeingdown it.

. . . a sign or packet of signs detaches itself from the irradiating circular network and setsto work on its own account, starts running a straight line, as though swept into a narrow,open passage. Already the signifying system drew a line of flight . . . but the system gavethat line a negative value and sent the scapegoat fleeing down it. Here, it seems that the linereceives a positive sign, as though it were effectively occupied and followed by a peoplewho find in it their reason for being or destiny.16

Psychoanalysis is never critical for this reason – it interprets, and this putsit on the side of the despot. Together they say, “know thyself”. The kiddoes not know itself and does not interpret anything. It is in a world of theobvious, made up entirely of surfaces, of tactile images.17 It is affected.Deleuze and Guattari juxtapose the priest with the prophet:

the prophet interpets nothing: his delusion is active rather than ideational or imaginative,his relation to God is passional and authoritative rather than despotic and signifying; he

14 Supra n. 2 at 133.15 Supra n. 6 at 121.16 Ibid. (Author’s emphasis).17 See G. Deleuze, Cinema 1: The Movement Image (London: Athlone, 1997).

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anticipates and detects the powers of the future rather than applying past and presentpowers.18

No ideal by which to know oneself. Instead a field of immanence wherethe people are equal to the unfolding of the future – of the identity tocome. The search for the Holy Land is here antithetical to teleological oreschatological ideas of a resurrection. Two different concepts of the chosenpeople. Two different types of goat. The embodiment of a line of flight tornfrom the hands of the monarch.

SHARKS OR SNARKS

When the time comes you must be capable of forgetting everything thatyou know, in order to put it into practice: that is affirmation. In The Logicof Sense19 Deleuze revels in an almost pseudo-philosophical20 account ofhow propositions come to denote, manifest and signify. The trick with thisbook is to remember its central factor: Lewis Carroll. It should be readhumorously, with the same sly jokes, as we would expect from Duchampor Roussel. Deleuze’s book is highly complex and self-referential, so itis impossible to give any definitive account of it. Perhaps this is part ofDeleuze’s strategy – to produce a book that can only be used rather thanfinally interpreted. So we know where we are:

. . . denotation . . . is the relation of the proposition to an external state of affairs . . .

manifestation . . . concerns the relation of the proposition to the person who speaks andexpresses himself . . . Signification is defined by (an) order of conceptual implication wherethe proposition under consideration intervenes only as an element of a ‘demonstration’, inthe most general sense of the word, that is, either as premise or as conclusion.21

The question Deleuze asks is how is it that the proposition comes to havesense? Certainly, it is not within the three relations of the proposition, aseach relation must presuppose the other two in order to function.22 There-fore, none can be the locus of sense as “each of the three relations is, inturn, primary”.23 As is so often the case with Deleuze, one must begin atthe end and end at the beginning in order to upack these ideas.

18 Supra n. 6 at 124 (Author’s emphasis).19 G. Deleuze, The Logic of Sense (New York: Columbia, 1990).20 This does not quite catch it: the book is rigorously philosophical, but it is precisely

the philosophy of bending philosophy back on itself; of finding the humour in it rather thanthe irony.

21 Supra n. 19 at 12–14.22 Ibid. – see 12–13 generally.23 Ibid. at 119.

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The name of sense is the singularity. The singularity is a (non) thing initself, beyond good and evil. As an example, think of the shark in the filmJaws – a great neutral machine that distributes a whole series of effects andintensities across a field populated by the island’s mayor, police chief, thechief’s wife, tourists, etc. The shark is a great stupidity in this sense: thatit folds the depths of the sea onto the surface. It is “neither individual norpersonal, but rather singular”.24 The singular is something else, therefore,without being other:

nonsense and sense are no longer found in simple opposition, but are rather co-present toone another within a new discourse. The new discourse is no longer that of the form, butneither is it that of the formless: it is rather that of the pure unformed.25

The singularity is a propensity, without being statistical. The stupid aspectis precisely this, that it is a tendency. To ask what it is a tendency towardsonly highlights the paradox. The singularity is towards while having noother to be towards to. Thus, it is untoward. It is consistent.26

A singular point is extended analytically over a series of ordinary points up to the vicinityof another singularity, etc. A world is therefore constituted on the condition that seriesconverge.27

Again, think of how the shark is extended across the series of characters,and thereby determines them as elements of its world (its destruction atthe hands of the chief being a divergence: another world), while simultan-eously, the shark is merely a dream of the characters, their phantasy.

Deleuze goes on to explain, “A world already envelops an infinitesystem of singularities selected through convergence. Within this world,however, individuals are constituted which select and envelop a finitenumber of the singularities of the system”.28 The point is that the worldonly exists through the individuals who are its expression, who actualise avariable quantity and quality of singularity. What must be borne in mindis that the singularities are pre-individualistic: “We see that the continuumof singularities is entirely distinct from the individuals which envelop it invariable and complementary degrees of clarity”.29 In short, the singulari-ties are only partially determined by their actualisation through worlds/individuals. At this point, Deleuze is able to distinguish between two typesof event; that is the event of the singularity itself, and the event of the

24 Ibid. at 107.25 Ibid.26 See G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, What is Philosophy (London: Verso, 1994).27 Supra n. 19 at 109.28 Ibid.29 Ibid. at 111.

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“analytic predicate of the subject”,30 but that this latter event, despite itsinvolving the expression of the world through individuals, has “neitherlogical hierarchy nor the character of generality”.31 This is why it is onlya partial determination. The proposition here is still undetermined, in asmuch as its sense cannot be separated from it:

When a predicate is attributed to an individual subject, it does not enjoy any degree ofgenerality; having a colour is no more general than being green, being an animal is nomore general than being reasonable.32

Individuals are never the beginning or end of anything, but rather, toborrow a favourite phrase of Deleuze and Guattari, are always in themiddle of something.

Deleuze’s writing is often typified by a delirious quality, but it isperhaps most evident in this book. By looking to the creation of worlds andindividuals as deriving from singularities and their series, and yet, findingthose singularities as expressed only through the world and individuals,ensures that no transcendental hierarchy can be constructed. The purposeis to avoid displacing life outside of the world.33 We should be immediatelyaware that an approach towards the procedure of critical action is alreadyimplied: criticism is that which ramifies worlds and individuals. The onlything worth the effort of criticism is that which opposes life with death orentropy. In terms of performing a critical action, we must look to the nextstage of Deleuze’s analysis, and to what is common to all worlds, even the‘incompossible’ ones.

If a world arises from the convergence of series and an infinite systemof singularities, the end of that world, and the beginning of another, occurswhere series diverge. The other worlds are not other because of the neut-rality of the singularities at this level. It is precisely a secondary functionthat is required to synthesise the incompossible and divergent worlds. (Acommon image of this synthesis is the hero: as Deleuze has written else-where34 the process of being unequal to the task, becoming equal to it, andthen overcoming it is ultimately one of doing the impossible, of synthes-ising incompossible worlds. It follows that the hero is never active, but doeswhat he or she has to do.) This function Deleuze calls the object = x, andit is that which is common to all (or some) worlds. This object is familiarfrom psychoanalysis and deconstructionist theories, but rather than makethis object the site of lack/excess, Deleuze insists upon a positivity: an

30 Ibid. at 112.31 Ibid.32 Ibid.33 Or into the beyond of the Great Signifier.34 G. Deleuze, Difference and Repetition (London: Athlone, 1994).

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aleatory point that has constant properties, so that all worlds become itsvariables. It is not something missing from the world, but is the greatcontraction. It brings unity without idealism by adding the one to makeone. The paradox of the synthetic procedure is that the one is always inaddition, not subtraction. It is precisely this procedure that the musicianJames Brown puts into effect, for example.35

The object = x is also the person, thereby completing the passive seriesof world, individual and person. It must be remembered that this termis used by Deleuze in a passive sense. Specifically, this person does notbelong to any race. Does not in fact belong at all. Deleuze writes: “Eachperson is the sole member of his or her class, a class which is, neverthe-less, constituted by the worlds, possibilities, and individuals which pertainto it”.36 The person is always then in addition to the world/individual.Deleuze identifies two processes at work here, as the instigators of theworld/individual and persons: sense and nonsense respectively. This mayseem strange at first because we think we know what sense is. However(and this is why Lewis Carroll is so appropriate for Deleuze here) bythinking of what we know, we are merely displacing our understandingto an equally non-determined position. Sense would then actually be notthat which we think we know, or even think of, but merely that which wethink: passive thought itself. Deleuze shows the logic of this in the hilariousand beautiful Fifth Series of Sense section of his book, in the form of fourparadoxes. The paradox of regress arises due to the impossibility of theproposition of containing its own sense. Rather, the sense of a propositioncan only be stated in a second proposition, and the sense of the secondproposition can only be stated in a third, and so on. The paradox of steriledivision relates to the failure of sense to ever be productive – it can never gobeyond the proposition that expresses it. Deleuze describes it as both extrabeing and non being relative to the proposition, and the specific paradoxis that sense is dependent upon the proposition, while simultaneouslyengendering the proposition. The paradox of neutrality is the result of theindifference of sense to affirmative and negative. All propositions, regard-less of whether or not they are contradictory, have sense (thus, dialecticsdoes not make sense). Sense defeats good sense by going in all directions atonce, as Deleuze shows very well when he writes, “It is neither at the same

35 Hear for example Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine, Mother Popcorn, LickingStick, Super Bad, Soul Power, etc. For Brown, ‘The One’ is the first beat of a bar, ormeasure, in 4/4 time. However, while the overall pulse remains constant, the displacementof time, during the bar itself, means that while you can always be sure when the one willcome, you can never be sure where it is. Needless to say, in this context, ‘the one’ is in arelationship of reciprocal determination with the rest of the bar in its entirety.

36 Supra n. 19 at 115.

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time, nor in relation to the same thing, that I am younger and older, but it isat the same time and by the same relation that I become so”.37 That is, bybecoming older than I am at the same moment that I become younger thanI will be! The paradox of the absurd relates to single propositions, whichare in themselves contradictory while still having sense (e.g. a squarecircle). Together, these four paradoxes demonstrate how sense is alwaysboth very close and further away (leaping). Again, we find a psychoana-lytic and decontructionist echo, but consistency must be insisted upon: theproposition is not motivated by lack. Propositions are distributed along theseries, and we find more in common with Foucault than Lacan: proposi-tions say everything that is capable of being said in a world. How it canbe said depends upon the individuals; what will be said depends upon thepersons. More formally, the deconstructionist approach ultimately makesthe proposition mean either too much (psychoanalysis) or nothing at all(Baudrillard). This does not make sense.

STOP MAKING SENSE

The particular problem is the result of a pseudo-critical exercise to discoverthe true and to distinguish the false. As such, so much time and energyis taken up by futile interrogations of the past (what happened; who saidwhat; etc.) as if this alone could encourage us. Knowing the past in this wayis always a contemporary question of control, rather than a critical orienta-tion towards the future. The same technique results in a sense-nonsenseopposition based upon the true-false. Deleuze is explicit in his rejection ofsuch a technique. Rather than oppose sense, nonsense is that which statesits own sense.38 In other words, nonsense is a stop to the regression ofpropositions referred to above. The nonsensical proposition for Deleuzeis the one that has denotation and manifestation, but lacks signification(a square circle cannot be explained by any further proposition). For thisreason, nonsense has a constancy which makes all worlds its variables,as we saw above with the object = x. Rather, any alternative propositionis avoided by the nonsensical expression of the proposition’s own sense(‘square’ gives the sense of ‘circle’, and vice versa, while each denotesthe other in turn. It is then impossible to go beyond what the immediatesense of ‘square circle’ may be).39 In this way, nonsense is actually thegenerator of sense: “The logic of sense is necessarily determined to posit

37 Ibid. at 33.38 Ibid. at 68.39 Ibid. in particular at 67.

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between sense and nonsense an original type of intrinsic relation, a mode ofco-presence”.40 Nonsense is then the singularity that organizes series, andextends sense across them. Deleuze talks of the circulation of the object =x as the producer of sense: by creating a block, or by solidifying certainelements, the constancy of sense is instigated. This is why Deleuze talksof good sense as having a direction – the object = x limits the directionof the elements outside the series to the unified direction within the seriesitself. Simultaneously, the object = x becomes common to all elements inthe series (while already being what is common to all elements) and givesrise to common sense. Sense is the effect of nonsense “not merely in thecausal sense; it is also an effect in the sense of an ‘optical effect’ or a‘sound effect’ . . .”41 An effect is the image isolated from its referentialfunction (therefore, meaning is never arbitrary), in order to become tactile– a body. The image of sound, for example, has an immediate humourthat causes it to leap outside: think of Stockhausen and his helicopters,42

or Bjork and her growling.43 An essential nonsense is at work here, anexperimental stupidity that produces organisms from an infinite mass oforgans that embodies a new way of being. The immediate point to grasp isthat these bodies are not forever, and are certainly not universal (althoughthey may have a cosmic element). The particular incompossible worldssynthesized by the person determine the contingencies of the specific body.It is this, if you like, which determines the theatre of operations for thebody, in a reciprocal move where body and operations are both posited atonce, and are immanent to each other. A baby, for example, is not an emptyvessel to be filled up. It does not acquire what were previously objects,such as language, in the course of stabilising its subjectivity. Rather, it isconstantly being reincorporated by the world-individual-person series as abody that is coordinated in a specific way; a body, which is able to speak;a body, which urinates in a pot rather than on itself; etc. Recall Deleuze’scomparison of a baby and a man of war above – we see this as explainedby the increased number of reincorporations and embodiments a baby goesthrough, relative to the solider, if nothing else.

PROBLEMS

So far, I have been looking at the body in its passive virtual mode. Just asimportant is the active actualisation of the body: the egotistical subject.

40 Ibid. at 68.41 Ibid. at 70.42 K. Stockhausen, The Helicopter Quartet.43 Bjork, Homogenic.

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Deleuze makes it clear that both bodies function simultaneously – toomuch virtually leads to pure schizophrenia; too much actuality leads toneurosis. The point being for us that the other is always a function of theactualised body (the paranoia of the despot). It is worth noting now how wehave always been on the verge of a definition of the actual, when describingthe virtual. Good sense and common sense are the elements of actualisa-tion, and these are familiar from the two passive functions of the individualand the person. The crucial difference being the passivity of the latter two,where good sense and common sense have no moral function, merely anethical one (creativity) indeterminate from nonsense. All that is involved inmoving from the virtual to the actual is a reversal of perspective. Becausethe person (object = x) is that which is common to all worlds, it follows thatit must be that which is constant. Therefore all worlds are the variables ofthe person, because the person results from the world-individual series. Assuch, the worlds/individuals synthesised by the person are the conditions ofpossibility of the person; anything beyond this the person cannot actualisewithout becoming a different person. However, because the specific personis the only one capable of actualising what is possible within the synthesisin question, Deleuze concludes “persons themselves are primarily classeshaving one single member, and their predicates are properties having oneconstant”.44 The reversal of perspective is that “Classes as multiples, andproperties as variables, derive from these classes with one single memberand these properties with one constant”.45 In other words, the generali-ties of actualisation (I and my others) derive from the singularity of theworld-individual-person series, by treating that series as the constant tothe variables of the subject (basic liberalism) – we in the cosmos, ratherthan the cosmos in I. The essential point is that this reversal of perspectivewould not occur without nonsense, as only the nonsensical is capable ofgoing in both directions at once.

This brings us full circle to denotation, manifestation and significa-tion as the relations of the proposition, as the reversal of perspectiveseparates the condition from the conditioned: “the relation of denota-tion as the relation to the individual (the world, the state of affairs, theaggregate, individuated bodies); the relation of manifestation as the rela-tion to the personal; and the relation of signification defined by the formof possibility”.46 The last point on signification is worth emphasising inparticular, as possibility needs to be differentiated from potential. Poten-tial involves the variables of the constant person (object = x); possibility

44 Supra n. 19 at 115 (Author’s emphasis).45 Ibid.46 Ibid. at 118–119.

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involves a particular symbolic function of meaning – the actualisd personhas a defined area of manoeuvre, limited by the signifieds determined bydenotation and manifestation. Capitalism achieves a strange state wheredenotation and manifestation are highly virtualised, and yet highly deli-mited, by being conditioned by the limitlessness of capitalist signification.Thus, anything is possible, but only on the basis that potential is reducedto a minimum (both extensive classes and variable predicates are capital-ised). What concerns us immediately, however, is the functioning of thetrue and the false within generality, because this is the crucial factor inunderstanding what it means to criticise.

Always moving back and forth, always with great humour, Deleuzetraces the connection between the various series of the person, etc., andthe functioning of the problem. For Deleuze, the problem is not concernedwith the true and the false, in the general sense. The true and the falseappear with the active ego, which must, as a condition of its functioning,view the false as that which is overcome in the truthful constitution ofitself. The condition of the ego is to presuppose the true and the false(i.e. a reflexive and reflective activity). While the particular territory inquestion determines how the true and the false are actualised, it is worthnoting now that the capitalist territory is one that constantly displaces thelimits of the true and the false (hence, anything is possible). We can seethen, that the true and the false are part of that same reversal of perspectivementioned above, whereby good sense and common sense take on a moraldimension that limits (through defining) what is knowable in the world(in other words, what is true). The true only appears as the solution to aproblem (error being the false solution). By going back to the passive onto-logical series, Deleuze is able to discover another being of the problem,one which is fused with its conditions, and thereby self-determining, ratherthan a problem that is dependent upon the truth (or falsity) of its solutionsfor its being (active embodiment). In such a case, sense “is discoveredonly when the notions of true and false are transferred from propositionsto the problem these propositions are supposed to resolve . . . it is thecategory of sense which replaces the category of truth, when ‘true’ and‘false’ qualify the problem instead of the propositions which correspondto it”.47 We must remember the double life of the proposition as thatwhich is actively said (meaning) and that which says passively (sense).The passive facet conditions the problem (and thus “defines sense as thetruth of the problem”),48 but also merges with it (in particular, the paradoxof sterility is important here, because it is the fullness of the proposition,

47 Ibid. at 120.48 Ibid. at 121.

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and as such, is its completion and non-sense). The element of nonsense isthen the self-determination of the problem.49

To be clear: nonsense is the passive being of the problem; sense is thetruth of the problem. A true problem is one that defines an area of potentialfor the person (and thereby, the condition of possibility of the subject). AsDeleuze writes: “Solutions are engendered at precisely the same time thatthe problem determines itself . . . (A)s it (the problem) is determined, itdetermines the solutions in which it persists. The synthesis of the problemwith its conditions engenders propositions, their dimensions, and theircorrelates”.50 The problem is immanent to the proposition, and they arereciprocally determining. The point is that the problem only exists throughits own distribution of its own solutions (potentials). Deleuze goes on:“Sense is thus expressed as the problem to which propositions correspondinsofar as they indicate particular responses, signify instance of a generalsolution, and manifest subjective acts of resolution”.51 Furthermore, thisstatement is correct, in two different ways, for both the passive and activefacets of the propositions. Criticism then comes down to a very simpleaction of simply asking, “what can it do”?52 The complexity arises inknowing how to determine simultaneously the truth of the question withinthe context at hand. Murderers and psychoanalysts are never concernedto find out ‘what it can do’. Rather, all of their time is taken up by whatit should do. The American composer, John Cage, found it useful to linkdada with Zen teachings – the connection is very clear in our context if weconsider this statement of Duchamp’s: “There is no solution because thereis no problem”. Yea saying!

TWO FIELDS OF DESIRE

Why criticise? To increase potentials, becomings, to realise what we canbe (‘Know thyself’ understood in the Nietzschean sense of ‘Become whatyou are’); in short to live. Criticism is the giver of life and is the oppositeof murder (of course, much criticism actually falls on the side of death).The action of self determination. As if Nietzsche had not said it loudlyenough in his quiet writing, this passive embodiment is a question of joyand humour, and this element of criticism is traced in an explicit way in

49 Ibid.50 Ibid.51 Ibid.52 To refer back to the beginning, you have destroyed an other’s desire when s/he asks

“What can I do?” You have made love to them, but simultaneously (in a manner I nowhope is clear), they have also caused you to ask the same question of yourself.

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Deleuze’s writing on Sacher-Masoch. One of his earlier texts, Coldnessand Cruelty53 is an attempt to understand sadism and masochism in analternative way to that of the inversions of psychoanalysis. However, thefield of operations is within the psychoanalytic, and Deleuze adopts thelanguage of the discipline. As such, it can come as a surprise to thosefamiliar only with his later work, but a careful eye hears the uncannymelody that Deleuze sees within masochism: it is as if Deleuze experi-ences a surrealism in Sacher-Masoch that is freed of Breton’s incessantmasculinity; an icy blue of humorous suffering. Coldness should notbe misconstrued as detachment, and nor should the tiresome body-mindpair be played out in favour of the latter. Masochism, as a regime, is apragmatic response to an intellectualised problem (thought is always anembodiment). In Sacher-Masoch’s case, the problem is the Law.

In particular, Deleuze is interested in two facets of the law. Firstly, lawdoes not exist for the sake of the law, but the sake of the Good (obviously,the Platonic/Christian displacement of the world to a world beyond) – “Ifmen knew what the Good was, or knew how to conform to it, they wouldnot need laws”.54 Secondly, precisely because the good is unknowable,then man has no choice but to observe the laws because this is best: lawis “the best thing in the image of the Good”.55 The immediate point forDeleuze is that the law is then necessarily open at both ends: “Irony isthe process of thought whereby the law is made to depend on an infinitelysuperior Good, just as humor is the attempt to sanction the law by recourseto an infinitely more righteous Best”.56 Every despot hopes that the Godssmile, while keeping a careful eye on their court jester.

The great irony of the law is perhaps best seen in Foucault’s Disciplineand Punish,57 particularly in relation to punishments where the Good ofthe law only becomes evident with the confession of the condemned: onlythe criminal can speak the Good via a renunciation of all that condemnshim (the relation between the despot and the scapegoat is also an ironicone in this sense). Humour, as well, finds its location in the others of thedespot, in those who must submit (the joke being that we would prefersomething other than what is best for us). Again, this is well shown whenFoucault highlights the status of many of the condemned as folk or antiheroes. A laugh at the despot’s expense is not to be lightly passed up.However, as Deleuze himself makes clear, none of this is enough to bringabout any fundamental shift in how law functions: as we have already seen,

53 Supra n. 9.54 Ibid. at 81.55 Ibid.56 Ibid. at 82.57 (London: Penguin, 1991).

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law operates through these others. Rather, the ungrounding of law needsan alternative process from its own outside. Deleuze does not attempt toaddress what the process may substantially be – as we have seen from theabove discussion of The Logic of Sense, this is not possible unless we aregrounded in specifics. Rather, Deleuze looks to a more formal analysis, inthe work of Kant. Here he finds a new understanding of law; that is lawfor the sake of law, not the sake of the Good. This is the beginning ofthe modern experience of law that has now become THE LAW,58 withoutreference to any Good at a higher level. Additionally, Deleuze explains thatbecause THE LAW has no orientation, no object it strives to attain, as itdid when it strove to attain the Good, it follows that the application of thelaw is divorced from what is best: “Clearly THE LAW, as defined by itspure form, without substance or object or any determination whatsoever, issuch that no one knows nor can know what it is. It operates without makingitself known”.59 The series of the law is separated from the despot who hadovercoded it, who had extended himself across it, who had actualised in aspecific way the limits to its irony and humour. Instead, the new regime ofcontrol seizes upon the ironic element and makes it the new principle ofthe law in its entirety: all become guilty,60 while the humour of the law isdisplaced to the moment of a punishment become discipline (and finally aquestion of performance). The perspective of law has been reversed so thatwhat had been the other of law in fact becomes its new location.

For Deleuze, the consequence of law’s irony and humour is detailedin the work of Sade and Masoch respectively. With Sade, Deleuze showshow a fury is harnessed at the audacity of a law that presents itself astotal, and yet can only be secondary to a more fundamental principle (nolonger the Good with Sade, but rather sovereign nature): irony is Sade’smethod of demonstration. (Part of Sade’s genius was his ability to maintaina permanent revolution of fury without descending into a murderous exist-ential void. As such, the atrocities in his work have a very special quality,which, it must be stressed, are primarily literary before being sexual. Asa sexual practice, sadism in fact comes under the sign of maschoism,opposed to the pure, and always imaginary, sadism of would-be murderersand rapists. Obviously, the distinction can be a fine one, and, as ever, callsfor a discerning eye.) Sade is then always concerned to prove somethingabout law and as such, never leaps outside of it.61 While Deleuze talksof sadism as an attempt to transcend the law, we must note that it is notso much a transcendence as it is a close look at just what the law is. On

58 Supra n. 9, at 83.59 Ibid.60 Ibid. at 84.61 Ibid. See 86–87.

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the other hand, masochism is much more inclined to leap from the law inthe way in which we have been contemplating, through the humour of thelaw’s consequence. In this context, a fundamental problem of the law isknowing what the sense of the law is, because very often a strict adherenceto the meaning of the law will be a departure from its sense altogether. Thissituation is precisely the humorous one that Sacher-Masoch seizes upon:“A close examination of masochistic fantasies or rites reveals that whilethey bring into play the very strictest application of the law, the result inevery case is the opposite of what might be expected”.62

While pure sadism is ultimately a destructive force, masochism is verymuch a functional one: it contracts a new field of potential by reversingthe possibilities of the law and its limit. By subjecting oneself to thepunishment, Deleuze argues that the masochist then has the right to thetransgression that the punishment was supposed to discourage. What mustbe understood is that the transgression is not predetermined by its denialby law – because the modern experience of law is its unknowableness, itfollows that there can be no substantial transgression defined by the law.There is merely that which the law knows it does not know, and this isreached by the masochist exaggerating what the law does know: that we areall guilty. Rather than the misery of a guilt within the system of law (anddistinct from the sadistic total destruction of that system), the masochistuses his/her guilt to leap from the system. The masochist is not concernedto destroy THE LAW, but instead to replace it with the system of his/herown desire as law.

This is clear in an obvious way from the importance of the masochisticcontract that Deleuze highlights. The use of the contract to safeguardparticular rights has the immediate effect of displacing those rights. Thisdisplacement is one in favour of the law instituted by the contract: if thereis no beyond of law (because the Good is now the result of the law), itfollows that rights are now dependent upon the form of the law, rather thanthe substance of the contract (precisely because the contract can no longerbe the substance of the law – its Good). Entering into a contract invalidatesthat contract simultaneously. As Sade had already pointed out, law cannever restrain a despot. Instead, it guarantees his appearance (at the samemoment as his substantial disappearance). The masochistic strategy is toexaggerate this function of the contact. Initially, the contractual arrange-ment in masochism appears as something the despot would approve of.The exaggeration of the form is, however, achieved at the despot’s expensebecause it involves a reversal of perspective that, in Sacher-Masoch’s work,appears as the reversal of male-female relations. While contract generally

62 Ibid. at 88.

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is necessarily patriarchal because it must go by way of the despot to beenforceable (not merely in the sense of sanctioned force, but in the verycreation of an obligation in the first place), the masochistic contract ismatriarchal:

The contract in masochism reverses this state of affairs by making the woman into theparty with whom the contract is entered into. Its paradoxical intention extends even furtherin that it involves a master-slave relationship, and one furthermore in which the womanis the master and torturer . . . Hence we have once more a sort of demystification of thecontract, inasmuch as it is made deliberately to promote slavery and even death at theservice of the woman and the mother. The ultimate paradox is that such a contract shouldbe initiated, and the power conferred, by the victim himself, that is to say the male party.63

Such a contract short-circuits the despotic system precisely because itexcludes the despot. If the masochistic contract is undermined as it isentered into, then this is to the benefit of the dominatrix who now assumesthe form of the law herself. In other words, the contract is the mechanismby which the masochist puts his desire into effect as the law.64

The reference to death in the above quote of Deleuze must be under-stood within the masochistic context rather than the sadistic. With the later,it is the final destruction of the universe rather than its reincorporation asa system of law that is achieved (precisely the effect that Sade avoids byalways repeating himself, always starting again). With Sacher-Masoch, thedeath is always part of a simultaneous rebirth. This rebirth has to go byway of suffering, as the death that must occur is the death of the imageof the father in the masochist.65 As such, the universal guilt inherent in asystem of unknowable law is reversed. Because the law is unknowable, itcan only be embodied as guilt – it can only be known in that form (theoriginal sin arising from the fact of not being the despot). However, byshifting the emphasis so that the embodiment of the law as guilt becomesthe actual basis of guilt itself, it follows that expiation involves the death,or disembodiment, of that guilt which arises from the unknowableness ofmodern law.66 Not a total death in the sense of what the despot does notknow, the masochist achieves a rebirth through a new law that the despotknows he does not know! By exaggeration, the law has been effectivelycriticised in a way that has totally transformed not only what the law canbe, but also how it is experienced.

63 Ibid. at 92–93.64 Again, this point needs elaboration, but here it is sufficient to point out that this is no

longer the same desire as the contracting parties began with. As such, we have a perfectexample of what it is to criticise.

65 Supra n. 9, at 101.66 Precisely a transformation of desiring practices, or regimes.

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The contractual relation then casts the dominatrix as mother. However,this should not be understood psychoanalytically as the mother of themasochist. Rather, it must be understood socially and historically as themother of the despot. The masochist is then reborn as the source of law,but any new despotic function is continually displaced by the function ofthe dominatrix as the enabler of this new regime. Rather than despot, theyhave become authoritarian scapegoats that shoot down a passional line offlight, away from signification and interpretation. It is not a question ofwhat coldness and cruelty may mean, but rather an issue of how they areexperienced as a type of passion, which is immediate in effect. As Deleuzesums up,

The masochist practices three forms of disavowal at once: the first magnifies the mother, byattributing to her the phallus instrumental to rebirth; the second excludes the father, sincehe has no part in this rebirth; and the third relates to sexual pleasure, which is interrupted,deprived of its genitality and transformed into the pleasure of being reborn.67

STILL TO COME

Criticism is not something to be undertaken lightly, but it is somethingto lightly undertake. Through both tears of laughter and tears of pain,criticism gives life to new bodies by exaggeration of the law. The processis a humorous and parodic one, rather than the deathly conclusion ofsadism’s irony and satire. For this reason, there is a direct link to dada andsurrealism, which can now both be seen as attempts to laugh without law(rather than as satire, which is always based upon deviation from the law).The most necessary criticism of this paper is the development of a systemof female masochism. In other words, how sadism becomes humorousthrough the mechanism of consent. We have already seen how consentto a contract undermines that consent. Might the feminine line of flight bethe constant repetition of consent; that is, the undermining of formal lawby the return of substance?68

Kent Law SchoolUniversity of KentCanterburyKent CT2 7NSUK

67 Supra n. 9, at 100.68 This involves the production of an ethic of law, which is then directly experienced as

transformative by the parties concerned.