In what feels like a crescendo of sorts, Deleuze uses this next section (pgs. 108-112) to recapitulate the first two passive syntheses, and discuss again how they lead us to a third synthesis. I said quite a lot about the third, disjunctive, synthesis when we saw it for the first time framed in terms of Kant's discovery of the transcendental. In fact, it looks as if all the January and February posts discussed different aspects of it. Embedded in this new psychoanalytic context though, we'll see that it also relates directly to the Freudian idea of a death drive. Of course, its meaning will be completely transformed by Deleuze. Death becomes a symbol of the spiritual annihilation of our ego as a substantial identity, and the condition for our liberation. In effect, it becomes the final step in answering the question: "How do you make a self?" -- a self capable of posing exactly this question.
First, the recapitulation.
The first synthesis was Habitus -- repetition as habit, as the binding of difference to a form. This form seeks to repeat itself. A little feedback loop is created that defines a passive local ego. The loop defines pleasure as the narcissistic pleasure of existing, and always seeks to perpetuate that pleasure as the principle of its continued existence.
The second synthesis was what we were calling memory, and is here relabeled Eros-Mnemosyne. In this case, it's not a form, but a process that is repeated. This was the process of displacement and disguise that we struggled for so long to figure out -- the displacement of a virtual object into the disguises of real objects. As the name suggests, we might look at the second synthesis as two distinct syntheses, both of which join together the passive local egos created in the first synthesis.
On one side, these little egos -- which were conjured into existence by the world's habit of repeating itself, a habit they narcissistically hallucinated was actually all about them -- can be combined by positing a world out there that provides the stuff they need for their collective reproduction. This is an synthesis of a larger ego based on hypothesizing a reality that would satisfy the various drives to repeat of all its smaller parts. The search for reality then activates that ego and accounts for all our activity.
On the other side, the little egos can be combined in a second level of passive synthesis. In this case, the thing that holds them together isn't the hypothesis of a real object that would collectively satisfy them, but the contemplation of a virtual object. The virtual object is not some specific thing the larger ego wants, but is more like the process by which our wanting attaches to particular real objects. What's repeated is the hidden process of desiring, of desire motivated by some pure memory that we never actually lived as a present, and played out in the endless succession of real objects that stand in for this missing memory. In other words, what's repeated is the construction of an ego with sexual drives.
Together these two sides define two ways of getting pleasure for the larger ego, which is why Deleuze calls them the "ground" of the pleasure principle. Either the pleasure of actively seeking the real objects that provide for our self-preservation (this pleasure of self-fulfillment was local, instantaneous, and passive in the first synthesis). Or the sexual pleasure of passively contemplating the virtual object, a pleasure rooted in phantasy that reflects the possible ways the little narcissistic local egos might be joined together.
The pleasure principle here receives new conditions, as much in regard to a produced reality as to a constituted sexuality. Drives, which are defined only as bound excitation, now appear in differenciated form: as self-preservative drives following the active line of reality, as sexual drives in this new passive extension.
The second synthesis as a whole involves the combination of these two sides locked in a pattern of circulation. The virtual objects of our sexual desire are abstracted from our past experiences and then projected back onto the real objects around us, imbuing our experience of these with a secret sexual dimension we are constantly grasping for. But there's no original moment in this cycle, no first real objective memory or virtual object that sets it off. It's just an always-already operating and never-ending cycle of the displacement of the virtual object onto a new real one, and the disguises of the real objects that hide the virtual one.
If the first makes use of repetition in order to draw off a difference, the second passive synthesis includes difference at the heart of repetition, since the two figures of difference, movement and disguise - the displacement which symbolically affects the virtual object and the disguises which affect, in imaginary fashion, the real objects in which it is incorporated - have become the elements of repetition itself.
The 'never-seen' which characterises an always displaced and disguised object is immersed in the 'already-seen' of the pure past in general, from which that object is extracted. We do not know when or where we have seen it, in accordance with the objective nature of the problematic; and ultimately, it is only the strange which is familiar and only difference which is repeated.
At this point we come to the third synthesis.
The problem is basically that the two parts of the second synthesis, which imply a qualitative difference or divergence between the real and the virtual, are easy to misinterpret as converging on some more abstract object that includes both of them as parts or aspects. In short, it's easy to mistake the process of the second synthesis for a thing, and to then to interpret its movement as a single circle that alternates between two opposed sides of that thing.
In relation to the first passive synthesis of Habitus, the series of the real (or the presents which pass in the real) and the series of the virtual (or of a past which differs in kind from any present) form two divergent circular lines, two circles or even two arcs of the same circle. But in relation to the object = x taken as the immanent limit of the series of virtuals, and as the principle of the second passive synthesis, these are the successive presents of the reality which now forms coexistent series, circles or even arcs of the same circle. It is inevitable that the two references become confused, the pure past assuming thereby the status of a former present, albeit mythical, and reconstituting the illusion it was supposed to denounce, resuscitating the illusion of an original and a derived, of an identity in the origin and a resemblance in the derived. Moreover, Eros leads its life as a cycle, or as an element within a cycle, where the opposing element can only be Thanatos at the base of memory, the two combining like love and hate, construction and destruction, attraction and repulsion. Always the same ambiguity on the part of the ground: to represent itself in the circle that it imposes on what it grounds, to return as an element in the circuit of representation that it determines in principle.
The mythical present he is referring to here is obviously Plato's metempsychotic heaven. We saw how Plato's myth seemed at first to involve a deep connection between movement and thought, but that in the end, the movement it imagined was just a simple circle that kept passing through a fixed Platonic heaven before falling back to earth. Plato's scheme involved movement, but no real qualitative change -- he failed to really introduce time into thought.
Similarly, we can mistake the circulation we described in the second synthesis for a process that always tends to converge towards some master virtual object. We would never quite grasp this full virtual object since it is inherently partial and in motion, but we can imagine the limit of convergence of the series of disguises and displacements the virtual objects undergo. Every time we go searching for what we desire, we find it slipping away from us. Every time we get what we wanted we discover it doesn't quite satisfy us. Eventually, we become wise to this wild goose chase, and realize that there is no-thing we truly desire at the bottom of it but ourselves. Ultimately, the limit the process converges to -- "the object = x taken as the immanent limit of the series of virtuals" -- is us, our big ego. It's our self that keeps this perpetual motion machine in constant circulation. We never reach all those virtual objects we so lust after because they are simply the masks and disguises of our self. Because each one is an intersubjective series of possible selves, all the virtual objects can converge on the limit of our real self.
So the third synthesis really functions a sort of corrective to a danger presented by the second. We could phrase this in buddhist terms and say that the danger lies in mistaking the process by which your self arises for your self as substantive thing. Overcoming the danger does not involve denouncing the self as mere illusion. It means experiencing the self as a process, and the way this process is qualitatively different from the things it produces as a residue -- namely, our individual selves considered at each moment, or some abstract and permanent self as soul that functions like a mythical moment.
The essentially lost character of virtual objects and the essentially disguised character of real objects are powerful motivations of narcissism. However, it is by interiorising the difference between the two lines and by experiencing itself as perpetually displaced in the one, perpetually disguised in the other, that the libido returns or flows back into the ego and the passive ego becomes entirely narcissistic. The narcissistic ego is inseparable not only from a constitutive wound but from the disguises and displacements which are woven from one side to the other, and constitute its modification. The ego is a mask for other masks, a disguise under other disguises.
Repetition, in the second synthesis, already included difference within itself. We understand the process through establishing relations amongst the products which hide or disguise it, but we never get to the process as a thing-in-itself since it is always displaced into these products -- movement and change are built into the repetition of the process. But now this difference, the movement of displacement and disguise, will be interiorized inside us. The virtual object we end up passively contemplating is ourself. And what motivates us to action is just this self disguised in real objects. We as a whole are the difference and relation between these two.
At first it's not clear what the third synthesis adds to the second beyond a reminder not to confuse the virtual object with a mythical real one. But actually, 'identifying' ourselves with this process that inherently involves two sides has some pretty strange consequences, precisely because this process is not an identity. Not only is the virtual object always a non-identity, but the process, considered as a virtual object itself, is built on the non-identity of its virtual and real sides. In other words, there's a recursive split-that-keeps-on-splitting at the heart of ourselves. This takes us straight back to Kant's discovery of the fractured I and the transcendental.
Nevertheless, the importance of the reorganisation which takes place at this level, in opposition to the preceding stage of the second synthesis, cannot be overstated. For while the passive ego becomes narcissistic, the activity must be thought. This can occur only in the form of an affection, in the form of the very modification that the narcissistic ego passively experiences on its own account. Thereafter, the narcissistic ego is related to the form of an I which operates upon it as an 'Other'. This active but fractured I is not only the basis of the superego but the correlate of the passive and wounded narcissistic ego, thereby forming a complex whole that Paul Ricoeur aptly named an 'aborted cogito'.
Gradually, we realize that the virtual objects we experience passively -- as if they were given to us from the past -- as the source of our sexual desires are just versions of our self embedded or embodied in (and abstracted from) the real objects we go chasing after. But if we take our self as the virtual object we actually love, where did this self come from? And what action does this object motivate us to, or what real objects would that activity seek? Now, the activity becomes thinking, and the real objects are thoughts. With the second passive synthesis, the activity would have been something more like eating or bonking, and the objects would have been apples or babes with beautiful ankles. The third passive synthesis has the same structure, but moves us up a level. Instead of searching for our lost loves in the world, we are searching for our self, and we find it given to ourself in our thoughts, but as a gift that comes from outside of us. There's not original self beyond this process of searching for ourselves.
Now we can start to see the answer to our original koan, "how do you make a self capable of asking this question?" The structure is tricky to describe because it has a strange self-referential feedback loop. But then what other structure would account for the our ability to ask this question? Essentially, the third synthesis is born of the second synthesis looking itself in the mirror. Since the second synthesis already involved a mirrored virtual object things quickly get pretty complicated.
Taking a cue from the last time I tried to describe this structure, when it appeared on pg. 86, we should start by emphasizing that there are two sides, each of which are split in two. We can look at the second passive synthesis either as the construction of an extended passive ego, or as the construction of a large active ego. It is meant to account for both. It does this by relating each of them to two sides -- the real and the virtual -- that only stand up by leaning on one another. The extended passive ego contemplates virtual objects extracted from the relations of real ones. The active ego pursues real objects that have become invested with virtual significance. The qualitative split between real and virtual therefore applies to how both egos are constructed, since they are co-constructed. We can look at the interlocking of virtual and real either as constitutive of either the passion of our desire, or as its activity.
So when we say that in the third synthesis, the extended passive ego takes itself as a virtual object, this object is actually better thought of as composed of both a virtual and real part. The passive being of our ego is synthesized through contemplating their relation. Likewise, if the active ego takes itself as a real object, this object is also better understood as composed of both real and virtual parts. The active thinking of our I is similarly synthesized from seeking out their relation. This is why Deleuze speaks of "the passive and wounded narcissistic ego" on the one hand, and the "fractured I" on the other. Both recognize themselves as split between the two sides that composed the second synthesis. In the third synthesis, they also recognize one another as 'the same', as doubles, as if the image in the mirror came to life. Since the active and passive sides are really co-constructed, the split between real and virtual applies not only to each of them separately, but to both of them together.
This peculiar self-reflexive structure casts our earlier discussion of the "empty form of time", its "pure formal order" of before, during, and after, in a new light. We called this "unhinged" time because is wasn't measured by the number of times we passed a given point on a circular orbit. Instead, what's repeated every time is literally nothing, emptiness. The first synthesis repeated a form or product. The second synthesis repeated a process that produced multiple products. With the feedback loop created by the third synthesis, we discover that the product is a process, the process a product, and the distinction between the two is abolished (or perhaps it would be better to say that the difference remains, but becomes relative). I guess you could equally well look at this and say that it's all product, but Deleuze seems to take the opposite approach and emphasize how it's all process. So when the extended passive ego of the second synthesis takes itself as a narcissistic object of contemplation, we end up with a pure and never-ending process that produces no products -- the empty form of time. In the third synthesis, what's repeated is repetition itself.
We saw above that the fracture of the I was no more than the pure and empty form of time, separated from its content. The narcissistic ego indeed appears in time, but does not constitute a temporal content: the narcissistic libido, the reflux of the libido into the ego, abstracts from all content. The narcissistic ego is, rather, the phenomenon which corresponds to the empty form of time without filling it, the spatial phenomenon of that form in general
Though it's empty of any content, this time still has a well defined form. We might call it the form of a process. After all, part of the reason I keep using the word process is because it's something that inherently involves time and change. Boiled way down, this just means that there must be a before and an after, and that they must be qualitatively different, yet somehow still joined as two parts of the process of time passing. But of course these are just the two sides of the second synthesis, the real and the virtual, which are joined as different but necessary to one another, as 'the same', by the third synthesis. So now not only is the narcissistic ego seen as empty, a pure process, but its form is seen as the formal static order of time. This brings us straight back to our discussion of Hamlet (aka Oedipus), and the strange way he became capable of the great act that defines him in an obscure off-stage sea voyage.
The formal static order of before, during and after marks the division of the narcissistic ego in time, or the conditions of its contemplation. The whole of time is gathered in the image of the formidable action as this is simultaneously presented, forbidden and predicted by the superego: the action=x. The temporal series designates the confrontation of the divided narcissistic ego with the whole of time or the image of the action. The narcissistic ego repeats once in the form of the before or lack, in the form of the Id (this action is too big for me); a second time in the form of an infinite becoming-equal appropriate to the ego ideal; a third time in the form of the after which realises the prediction of the superego (the id and the ego, the condition and the agent, will themselves be annihilated)!
Finally, the form of the passive narcissistic ego is associated with the image of an action, just as we saw the second synthesis had an active and a passive side. Now though, the action we're talking about is thought. So here we get a first glimpse of what we'll talk about in the next chapter, the image of thought. The activity must be thought when the ego takes itself as a narcissistic object. The image of this activity is the same as the formal order of time -- a caesura that rejoins two sides as qualitatively different.
Well, we didn't get as far as promised at the beginning of the post; the death instinct doesn't enter till the next paragraph in the text. But I think we've at least got a much better handle on how the third synthesis is constructed now. And we've also kept what is a very abstract structure firmly attached the question Deleuze wants to ask: "how do you make a self?" You can see this illustrated perfectly in the last quote -- Freud's tripartite structure of the psyche (Id-Ego-SuperEgo) is reinterpreted as the structure of the very particular process by which the full narcissistic ego is constructed. For Freud, this is a mainly a structural description of the mind, though he does talk some about its childhood development. For Deleuze though, since this is also a description of the process of time unfolding, the scheme becomes completely dynamic. Where Freud wants to know how we make a 'normal' self once and for all, Deleuze is interested in how me make a new self all the time. Next time we'll investigate his answer, which basically boils down to, "die and be reborn every instant".
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