Last week's episode ended with the dramatic unveiling of embryogenesis. I was more or less claiming that this is a key metaphor for understanding the two types of repetition Deleuze is uncovering towards the end of the introduction as well as thinking about the relationship between repetition and difference (qua cellular differentiation). You may have thought that this was a perfectly nice neat package that explained pretty much everything, but under the surface I could already see trouble brewing. Because, while I'm trying to finish writing about the introduction here, I've actually read all the way up to the end of chapter 1. Which made me acutely aware that I really still didn't understand the bit about signs and signaling which immediately follows the passage I claim refers to embryogenesis:
For it is not the elements of symmetry present which matter for artistic or natural causality, but those which are missing and are not in the cause; what matters is the possibility of the cause having less symmetry than the effect. Moreover, causality would remain eternally conjectural, a simple logical category, if that possibility were not at some moment or other effectively fulfilled. For this reason, the logical relation of causality is inseparable from a physical process of SIGNALING, without which it would not be translated into action. By 'SIGNAL' we mean a system with orders of disparate size, endowed with elements of dissymmetry; by 'SIGN' we mean what happens within such a system, what flashes across the intervals when a communication takes place between disparates. The SIGN is indeed an effect, but an effect with two aspects: in one of these it expresses, qua SIGN, the productive dissymmetry; in the other it tends to cancel it. The SIGN is not entirely of the order of the symbol; nevertheless, it makes way for it by implying an internal difference (while leaving the conditions of its reproduction still external).
Hence yesterday's post pulled out every reference to signs, signaling, and signifying in the introduction and chapter 1. Since I've given such a specific reading of the discussion of causality and the example of repeated decorative motifs, I feel like I need to be able to map what he says about signs onto that metaphor. So here goes an attempt at that.
A sign is like a trigger. A trigger is not the same thing as a cause, but is intimately related to it. If we're talking about firing a gun, the distinction between "trigger" and "cause" can seem like a completely boring and semantic one. Okay, sure, the trigger doesn't itself shoot the bullet out of the muzzle; it's just at the end of a long chain of things that "caused the shot to be fired". The distinction is more interesting though when we're talking about complex or chaotic systems where you don't have a nice linear chain of causes to explain things. Consider, for example, the famous Californian butterfly whose flapping wings "cause" a hurricane in Indonesia. The butterfly may be a trigger, but it doesn't really make sense to call it a cause of the hurricane in this case. The hurricane really has a dynamic of its own that's ready to go; in some sense you have to say that it is the cause of itself (given the feedback loop that characterizes it). But this particular hurricane appearing in this particular place can still have a particular trigger.
This idea of a trigger fits nicely with the story of embryogenesis. The symmetry breaking stimulus that began the cascade of differentiation that led to a symmetrical left and right hand is a trigger. It didn't cause the hands to form. Yet it was a sort of necessary intervention that kicks off their mechanism of formation. I think we can unravel all of the references to signs with this equation of SIGN = SYMMETRY BREAKING STIMULUS (more broadly, I suppose this latter could be "differentiating stimulus", but our way into this problem is through symmetrical repetition). For example, it now makes perfect sense to say that the sign expresses a "productive dissymmetry" which it then tends to "cancel" -- there will be a difference between left and right, but they will be the same; and both the difference, as well as the similarity, are expressed by the combination of stimulus and mechanism.
And now, looking back at the quotes from pages 8 and 18, we see how signification is opposed to representation. Whatever trigger causes the beginning of left/right symmetry or the arm to branch into a wrist and 5 fingers is not a representation of the hand. There's no picture of the hand, no code for the hand. There's just a stimulus that, combined with the existing mechanism and under the "normal" conditions, produces a hand. What's being repeated in development is the process that produces a hand, but so long as the connection is stable, we can usefully point to that process by the initial stimulus that reliably triggers it. That pointing -- not representing -- is signification. Suddenly you can see why Deleuze reaches for the word "mask". We want to talk about the process of digital (as in possessing digits) differentiation. We can refer to it by the trigger that sets it off, but that in some sense is completely beside the point and tends to hide that we're talking about a process. On the other hand, it's just as misleading to call it the "hand process". The hand is not the point or culmination of the process in any deep sense. It's just one possible output of the process. Just a few tweaks here or there and it produces a paw or a set of talons or a flipper. Referring to the whole process by pointing to its starting or ending point just masks what is going on. In fact, the more you think about it, the more you find that "starting" and "ending" points are just some arbitrary limits we use to slice up an unbroken flux. Behind those masks are other masks, ad infinitum ...
But wait, there's more! Let's put trigger in for sign in this passage:
SIGNS involve heterogeneity in at least three ways: first, in the object which bears or emits them, and is necessarily on a different level, as though there were two orders of size or disparate realities between which the SIGN flashes; secondly, in themselves, since a SIGN envelops another 'object' within the limits of the object which bears it, and incarnates a natural or spiritual power (an Idea); finally, in the response they elicit, since the movement of the response does not 'resemble' that of the SIGN.
The fact that the trigger is not a cause accounts for the first heterogeneity; it's just a tiny difference that sets off a whole huge system. I think I've even seen this disparate size idea phrased in terms of the energy released by the two pieces -- a sign can use a very small amount of energy to create a massive energy release in the system it triggers (not unlike a word resulting in a brawl) which in a different context might even be part of the definition of what makes it a sign rather than a cause. The second heterogeneity also makes sense now, since we are using the "sign stimulus" to signify the "hand process". These are of completely different orders though, since one is a thing and one a process, which is why 'object' appears in quotes in this case. An Idea is not an object, but exactly a natural or spiritual process of differentiation (what's the difference?) that is kicked off somewhere specific. An object becomes a sign precisely when it manages to signify this process to some"one"/thing. So this second heterogeneity is between the actual and the virtual, the concrete assemblages and abstract machines, etc ... all the dualities that constantly appear in Deleuze's philosophy. Substituting "trigger" also explains the final heterogeneity. The hand as product looks nothing like the stimulus that triggered it or the process that produced it. There's no resemblance.
There's more to go here. We've got signs and learning, signs and problems, and signs and the simulacrum and the Eternal Return still to come. And that's just to get up to the end of Chapter 1. But for now, I think we've cracked the nut/seed/egg.
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