Memories of a Bergsonian.
None of the preceding satisfies us, from our
restricted viewpoint. We believe in the existence of very special becomings-
animal traversing human beings and sweeping them away, affecting
the animal no less than the human. "From 1730 to 1735, all we hear about
are vampires." Structuralism clearly does not account for these becomings,
since it is designed precisely to deny or at least denigrate their existence: a
correspondence of relations does not add up to a becoming. When
structuralism encounters becomings of this kind pervading a society, it
sees them only as phenomena of degradation representing a deviation
from the true order and pertaining to the adventures of diachrony.
Yet in
his study of myths, Levi-Strauss is always encountering these rapid acts by
which a human becomes animal at the same time as the animal becomes
... (Becomes what? Human, or something else?). It is always possible to try
to explain these blocks ofbecomingby a correspondence between two relations,
but to do so most certainly impoverishes the phenomenon under
study.
Must it not be admitted that myth as a frame of classification is quite
incapable of registering these becomings, which are more like fragments of
tales? Must we not lend credence to Jean Duvignaud's hypothesis that
there are "anomic" phenomena pervading societies that are not degradations
of the mythic order but irreducible dynamisms drawing lines of flight
and implying other forms of expression than those of myth, even if myth
recapitulates them in its own terms in order to curb them?6 Does it not
seem that alongside the two models, sacrifice and series, totem institution
and structure, there is still room for something else,
something more secret,
something more secret,
more subterranean: the sorcerer and becomings (expressed in tales instead
of myths or rites)?
A becoming is not a correspondence between relations. But neither is it a
resemblance, an imitation, or, at the limit, an identification. The whole
structuralist critique of the series seems irrefutable. To become is not to
progress or regress along a series.
Above all, becoming does not occur in the
imagination, even when the imagination reaches the highest cosmic or
dynamic level, as in Jung or Bachelard.
Becomings-animal are neither
dreams nor phantasies. They are perfectly real. But which reality is at issue
here? For if becoming animal does not consist in playing animal or imitating
an animal, it is clear that the human being does not "really" become an
animal any more than the animal "really" becomes something else.
Becoming
Becoming
produces nothing other than itself. We fall into a false alternative if we
say that you either imitate or you are. What is real is the becoming itself, the
block of becoming, not the supposedly fixed terms through which that
which becomes passes. Becoming can and should be qualified as becoming-
animal even in the absence of a term that would be the animal
become.
The becoming-animal of the human being is real, even if the animal
The becoming-animal of the human being is real, even if the animal
the human being becomes is not; and the becoming-other of the animal
is real, even if that something other it becomes is not. This is the point to
clarify: that a becoming lacks a subject distinct from itself; but also that it
has no term, since its term in turn exists only as taken up in another becoming
of which it is the subject, and which coexists, forms a block, with the
first.
This is the principle according to which there is a reality specific to
becoming (the Bergsonian idea of a coexistence of very different "durations,"
superior or inferior to "ours," all of them in communication).
Finally, becoming is not an evolution, at least not an evolution by
descent and filiation. Becoming produces nothing by filiation; all filiation
is imaginary.
Becoming is always of a different order than filiation. It concerns
alliance. If evolution includes any veritable becomings, it is in the
domain of symbioses that bring into play beings of totally different scales
and kingdoms, with no possible filiation.
There is a block of becoming that
snaps up the wasp and the orchid, but from which no wasp-orchid can ever
descend.
There is a block of becoming that takes hold of the cat and
baboon, the alliance between which is effected by a C virus.
There is a block
of becoming between young roots and certain microorganisms, the alliance
between which is effected by the materials synthesized in the leaves
(rhizosphere).
If there is originality in neoevolutionism, it is attributable in
part to phenomena of this kind in which evolution does not go from something
less differentiated to something more differentiated, in which it
ceases to be a hereditary filiative evolution, becoming communicative or
contagious. Accordingly, the term we would prefer for this form of evolution
between heterogeneous terms is "involution," on the condition that
involution is in no way confused with regression.
Becoming is
involu-tionary, involution is creative. To regress is to move in the
direction of
something less differentiated. But to involve is to form a block that runs its
own line "between" the terms in play and beneath assignable relations.
Neoevolutionism seems important for two reasons: the animal is
defined not by characteristics (specific, generic, etc.) but by populations
that vary from milieu to milieu or within the same milieu; movement
occurs not only, or not primarily, by filiative productions but also by
MOnStroUS InConGRUity _ JuxtapOsition_BiFurFaction__ transversal communications between heterogeneous populations.
Becoming is a rhizome, not a classificatory or genealogical tree. Becoming
is certainly not imitating, or identifying with something; neither is it
regressing-progressing; neither is it corresponding, establishing corresponding
relations; neither
is it producing, producing a filiation or producing
through filiation. Becoming is a verb with a consistency all its
own; it does not reduce to, or lead back to, "appearing," "being," "equaling,"
or "producing."
(image Goya)
ditto below)
ditto below)
Memories of a Sorcerer, I.
A becoming-animal always involves a pack, a
band, a population, a peopling, in short, a multiplicity. We sorcerers have
always known that. It may very well be that other agencies, moreover very
different from one another, have a different appraisal of the animal. One
may retain or extract from the animal certain characteristics: species and
genera, forms and functions, etc. Society and the State need animal characteristics
to use for classifying people; natural history and science need characteristics
in order to classify the animals themselves. Serialism and
structuralism either graduate characteristics according to their resemblances,
or order them according to their differences. Animal characteristics
can be mythic or scientific. But we are not interested in characteristics;
what interests us are modes of expansion, propagation, occupation, contagion,
peopling. I am legion. The Wolf-Man fascinated by several wolves
watching him.
What would a lone wolf be? Or a whale, a louse, a rat, a fly?
Beelzebub is the Devil, but the Devil as lord of the flies. The wolf is not fundamentally
a characteristic or a certain number of characteristics; it is a
wolfing. The louse is a lousing, and so on. What is a cry independent of the
population it appeals to or takes as its witness? Virginia Woolfs experiences
herself not as a monkey or a fish but as a troop of monkeys, a school of
fish, according to her variable relations of becoming with the people she
approaches.
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_______________ATp 237-9
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