Logics, according to Deleuze and Rajchman

Logics, according to Deleuze and RajchmanBR

#essay, #deleuze, #perversion

Deleuze tries to find the logic behind aberrant movements. Perversion is the focus of his work, specifically what the conditions are that make something aberrant, and what makes something an anomaly. To create a concept around aberrant movements he seeks to create a logic to link them with other concepts. In other words, to define the abnormal, normality needs to be defined first. To him, logical doesn’t mean rational, moreover ordinary empiricism is the death of philosophy. To bypass this he creates ‘transcendental empiricism’ which includes the demonic, excessive, and essentially the irrational movements in itself. With the help of this new ontology, Deleuze can define the new logics life ceaselessly produces, which are always the subject of their own irrationality.

He proposes to change perspective and that instead of the traditional dichotomous, dualistic standpoint, the universe should be looked at as something univocal, or as Spinoza puts it ‘pantheistic’. This oneness can explain all the existing parallel concepts and the aberrant movements that all exceed the empirical experience; the unthinkable in thought, the unlivable in life, the immemorial in memory. He goes further and asks what if nothing is accidental, what if Nature is pure aberration? Or, as the predecessors

of this approach called it, eternity (Spinoza) or eternal return (Nietzsche). To break away from the classical concepts he proposes the question of ‘what to do with life?’ instead of ‘what is right?’ Life permeates the living things. It exists beyond bodies. Death motivates movements and these movements put things to death which aren’t necessary in life. The time in between the two (life and death), this everchanging temporality, is what defines the whole.

The attempt to understand this coexistence of all concepts and ideas at the same time, needs a lot of imagination but first of all it requires the reevaluation of time, at least how we think about it. According to Deleuze’s logic, time needs to be reimagined. This radical step takes the biggest courage. To do this we essentially need to reject the hierarchy that undermines the possibility of looking at substance, which without the help of an external entity can arrange itself into an infinite number of combinations. Present is something which has its actuality and, with the already happened past, a virtuality as well. Present is not a snapshot of a linear line and is not a cross section of a space. It is more like a realm where past, future, and present coexist. This approach allows the thinker to deconstruct the omnipresent interrelation of systems, and hierarchy. It makes us realise that, instead of always wanting to know what is on the other side, we can only constantly produce new ways of thinking. attempt we’re only fixing something which is embedded in a hierarchy that is incapable of changing. This impotence which drives us and transforms us into the living dead, into futureless zombies as Deleuze puts it. That is exactly why we need these aberrant concepts, which are there to be probed and perhaps on the trillionth occasion get proven, and change the existing configuration, keep it flexible for the rest of the coexistent flows of Duration, to allow the fold unfolded to infinity.

This idea resonates in Moten and Harney’s text about ‘the undercommons’, which is a space and time that has always been and will always be there. Its initiative is to urge a change of perspective, but not by repairing an already existing one, or by ending the trouble already there, but by ending the whole world that created these troubles. Don’t just reshuffle the cards, but play another game. For instance, language which doesn’t allow new ideas to emerge as the related context and pretext overrules the potential new meaning. Producing a new language takes a lot of effort but without the