DELEUZE ON
HUME
I shall follow Goodchild's
account initially but will add some features to it. Deleuze is interested in
the zone or area or level prior to particular forms of consciousness - the
'unconscious'. As Goodchild notes:
Deleuze wished to understand the processes of life
that exist prior to consciousness, and upon which meanings in consciousness are
formed......[Deleuze] rejected the Hegelian assumption that any particular
'meaning' is active in this process of formation, and can consequently be used
as the basis from which to interpret other kinds of subjective meaning. In
Deleuze's thought, the unconscious processes that produce meaning will be of a
different nature from the meanings produced - the unconscious is a place of
production, not expression; meaning is purely a surface effect. This approach
also has a political import: certain forms of consciousness are perpetuated by
appealing to established interpretations and meanings embedded in culture; such
a culture can be transformed, therefore, by attaining a level of communication
unmediated by established meanings. (1996: 13-14)
There are several important points here:
- the rejection of meaning as constitutive of
itself. If meaning is involved in its own formation it becomes both enormously
powerful and also no longer under control.
- the processes that
produce meaning are different from meanings themselves. In fact meaning as a
surface effect becomes downgraded in keeping with the point above.
- we have the basis here for a political strategy
and project. It is no longer a contest over meanings but a matter of developing
meanings that lie outside the established, habitual and culturally dominant.
AN EXAMPLE
If we take the work of any professional group we can
see the contestation over these processes. If we consider provision for the
elderly with dementia the points are shown in sharp relief. It is very easy to
see how the meaning of dementia has become part of the definition of the
condition and experience. It has become part of the constitution of the care of
the demented. But it also easy to see how the practices of the demented and
the meanings they ascribe are considered to be outside the realm of the
recognizable. In a real sense the processes of meaning production and the
surface manifestation of meaning have come together. The meanings are being
produced by people who are downgraded and in care so their connection to a
surface level is not seen as important. The illusory link of production to
expression is broken. Political control is manifest.
SO WHERE DOES MEANING FIT IN?
Deleuze takes over from Hume the idea that essences
of meaning of individual phenomena are of no interest. What becomes relevant is
how meanings are linked together through associations. As Goodchild expresses
it,
'Questions of meaning, essence, and existence are
displaced in favour of extrinsic principles of association. Human nature is
able to associate diverse sense-impressions through principles of resemblance,
continguity, and causality: a single idea may then stand in for a variety of
sense-impressions, although such general ideas are not any different in nature
from the sense-impressions received in the mind' (1996: 14).
We now have a level of analysis that evades the
problem of meaning as part of its own explanation and we have an approach that
rescues important principles of empiricism. Society is seen to be founded on
custom and habit. But the role of values is particularly important. In fact
Deleuze picks out the ownership of private property and the conversation over
values as the two main components of society.
But it is this emphasis on sense impressions that is
going to take us to the field of difference. Deleuze rejects a dualism between
experience and ideas that represent such experience. He argues for a passive
and unconscious field, outside of words and things. through which data are
constituted 'as immediately given in the mind'. This is precisely Hume's
contribution. The flux of sense-impressions 'only becomes discernible when it
manifests a difference; the fundamental category of empiricism is difference'
(Goodchild, 1996:17).
Atoms of sense experience is a difference which
exists in the mind. It does not exist in space and time, history, language.
Space, time, history, language are constituted by the associations between such
atoms.
Ideas are different from each other through difference. This
sounds tautological! Ideas are not associated by internal resemblances but only
by the small differences between them. Difference becomes the building block
because atoms differ from each other. They are combined in various ways and
Deleuze frequently uses the term 'constellation' to capture this quality. These
atoms are referred to as 'intensities'. They have no qualities except vivacity
or resonance. Because an intensity lacks qualities it is unconscious but of
course we can reconstitute a sensation or an idea. Through repetition and
combination they can constitute ideas. Their relations are given imaginatively
in the mind. We expect associations and repetitions because of habit and
tradition.Return
to discussion of 'difference'.