Fido the Yak

Deleuze discusses the schizophrenic body as a body without surfaces (The Logic of Sense, "Thirteenth Series of the Schizophrenic and the Little Girl"). Since Deleuze has defined sense as taking place as an incorporeal surface effect, a body of pure depths must then by his reckoning be unable to touch on sense. Deleuze argues that the world of the collapsed surface has no meaning, that it can only have the signification of phoniness. And, he says that the word loses sense, which is to say it loses the ability to express "an incorporeal effect distinct from the actions and passions of the body, and an ideational event distinct from its present realization" (p. 87). My inclination is to regard as insightful the imaginations Deleuze diagnoses as schizophrenic, because words don't really have the power to express ideational events apart from the practice of making words. Of course Deleuze must be given credit for imagining that his logic of sense is phony, even if he doesn't fully embrace what he calls the schizophrenic at this point, and he wrongly regards a world of pure depths as meaningless. It must be imagined that thought and feeling are inextricable (music for instance prompts such a gesture), and that the body is their nexus.

Labels: body, Deleuze, depths, surfaces

posted by Fido the Yak at 11:48 AM.