dls%2e2012%2e0088

Potentiality as a Life: Deleuze, Agamben,Beckett

Audrone ukauskaite Lithuanian Culture Research Institute

Abstract

In Essays Critical and Clinical, Deleuze argues that Beckettian charactersusually strive towards becoming imperceptible. This statementimmediately poses another question: what is becoming imperceptibleand where does it lead? How can we rid ourselves of ourselves?Paradoxically enough, Deleuze states that becoming imperceptible is life.The literal and self-evident meaning of life seems somehow incompatiblewith the image of dissolving and decaying characters in Becketts works.Contrary to this self-evidence, the notion of life in Deleuze and Beckettshould be interpreted as pure potentiality which opens both the potentialto be (or do) and the potential not to be (or do). Beckettian characterstogether with other figures, such as Bartleby, let us think of a life in itspotential not to be. The life of the individual gives way to impersonaland singular life: a life of pure immanence. Such a life can be immanentto a man who no longer has a name, though he can be mistaken for noother: the Beckettian Unnamable.

Keywords: becoming imperceptible, a life, potentiality, virtuality

In Essays Critical and Clinical, Deleuze discusses Becketts Film as anattempt to escape both perception and self-perception: How does onebecome imperceptible? (Deleuze 1997: 23). He invites us to imagineBishop Berkeley who had enough of being perceived and of perceiving.There is something unbearable in being perceived. Referring to BeckettsFilm, Deleuze asks: How can we rid ourselves of ourselves, and

Deleuze Studies 6.4 (2012): 628637DOI: 10.3366/dls.2012.0088 Edinburgh University Presswww.eupjournals.com/dls

Potentiality as a Life: Deleuze, Agamben, Beckett 629

demolish ourselves? (Deleuze 2008: 69). This is, as Deleuze has putit, the problem, which is followed by the general solution: we canget rid of ourselves by becoming imperceptible. Becoming imperceptibleis Life, without cessation or condition . . . attaining to a cosmic andspiritual lapping (Deleuze 1997: 26). This general solution posesmany theoretical problems: what does becoming imperceptible meanin Deleuze and Becketts universe and where does it lead? If becomingimperceptible leads to molecular dissolution, what does a life signify inthis specific context? And, finally, what are the conditions of possibilityfor becoming imperceptible? Can we examine this possibility in terms ofpure potentiality?

I. Deleuze: A Life

In his last text, Pure Immanence: Essays on A Life, Deleuzeintroduces the notion of a life which is quite different from anyunderstanding of life as the self or personal identity. Contrary tothese expectations, a life refers to impersonal individuation rather thanpersonal individualization, to singularities rather than particularities(Rajchman 2005: 8). A life is an indefinite quality, a virtuality, whichmay appear in the actual life of the individual. Deleuze refers toCharles Dickenss novel Our Mutual Friend, and especially to an episodedescribing a dying man:

Between his life and his death, there is a moment that is only that of a lifeplaying with death. The life of the individual gives way to an impersonaland yet singular life that releases a pure event freed from the accidents ofinternal and external life, that is, from the subjectivity and objectivity of whathappens [. . .] The life of such individuality fades away in favor of the singularlife immanent to a man who no longer has a name, though he can be mistakenfor no other. A singular essence, a life . . . (Deleuze 2005: 289)

Deleuze speaks about singularities without individualities: forexample, very small children do not have individuality but theyhave singularities: a smile, a gesture . . . These singularities can alsobe reached by becoming imperceptible, which ends by becoming likeeverybody else. This is the experience of F. Scott Fitzgerald: after areal rupture, one succeeds . . . in being just like everybody else (Deleuzeand Guattari 2004: 308). Becoming everybody/everything (devenir toutle monde) means many things: it is becoming imperceptible, becomingindiscernible, becoming impersonal. As far as all these features relate tothe Body without Organs,1 we can presume that becoming imperceptible

630 Audrone ukauskaite

leads not to nothingness or the total dissolution of the subject but tothe virtual state of the Body without Organs. This virtual state of theBody without Organs comes into play by haecceity, in the productionof intensities, in the medium of becoming and transformation (5589).Becoming imperceptible is a passage from one state to another, anincrease or decrease in power (a virtual quality).

Such is the link between imperceptibility, indiscernibility, and impersonal-ity the three virtues. To reduce oneself to an abstract line, a trait, in orderto find ones zone of indiscernibility with other traits, and in this way enterthe haecceity and impersonality of the creator. One is then like grass: onehas made the world, everybody/everything, into a becoming . . . (Deleuze andGuattari 2004: 309)

The haecceity and impersonality of the creator is what Deleuzecalls a life. In this sense, A life contains only virtuals. It is made upof virtualities, events, singularities (Deleuze 2005: 31). By virtuality,Deleuze means that it is not something that lacks reality but somethingthat can be actualised in any event or a state of things, in any objector subject. Regardless of these actualisations, the plane of immanence,which is also the plane of the Body without Organs, is purely virtual andcontains only virtualities. Events or singularities give to the plane alltheir virtuality, just as the plane of immanence gives virtual events theirfull reality (31). Being a virtual quality, a life may or may not connectwith the life of the individual: it appears in the writings of Dickens orFitzgerald and especially in Beckett, because nothing is ever finished inBeckett, nothing ever dies (Deleuze 1997: 26). Immobilised, paralysedand submerged in a state of becoming imperceptible, Becketts charactersstill reconnect to this virtual quality of a life which keeps them going.As Deleuze points out, When the character dies, as Murphy said, it isbecause he has already begun to move in spirit. He is like a cork floatingon a tempestuous ocean: he no longer moves, but is in an element thatmoves (26). This is what becoming imperceptible strives for: to get ridof perception and self-perception, to empty space both from objects andthe subject, to rid ourselves of ourselves. At the end of Becketts Film,after all possible amputations,

The room has lost its partitions, and releases an atom into the luminousvoid, an impersonal yet singular atom that no longer has a Self by whichit might distinguish itself from or merge with others. Becoming imperceptibleis Life, without cessation or condition . . . attaining to a cosmic and spirituallapping. (Deleuze 1997: 26)


II. Agamben: Pure Potentiality

Giorgio Agamben in his essay Absolute Immanence reads Deleuzes lasttext2 with wonder and great admiration. What is a life? What does itmean that a life is virtual and consists only of virtualities? Agamben,referring to specific punctuation in Deleuzes text (a colon, ellipsis dots),points out the indeterminate character of this term: contrary to the life ofthe individual, a life refers to impersonal and non-organic power. Thetechnical term a life . . . expresses this transcendental determinability ofimmanence as singular life, its absolutely virtual nature and its definitionthrough this virtuality alone (Agamben 1999: 224). The most importantthing here is that life for Deleuze might do without any individuality: inother words, it is detached from individual or subjective consciousness;but a life always has a singularity, a haecceity. In this sense, a lifeeludes all transcendence of the subject and of the object: a life is a pureimmanence because it is immanent only to itself. Quite paradoxically,Agamben equates the Deleuzian notion of life with his own notion ofbare life: for example, referring to Dickenss text, he points out thatThe fact is that the bare life that it presents seems to come to light onlyin the moment of its struggle with death (230; my emphasis). Agambenis right to state that the notion of life appears simultaneously in theworks of Michel Foucault and Deleuze; but if for Foucault life explicitlyrelates to the question of the body and of population, what it means forDeleuze remains quite mysterious. Nevertheless, Agamben interprets theterm saying that

the difficult attempt to clarify the vertigo of immanence by means of a lifeleads us instead into an area that is even more uncertain, in which the childand the dying man present us with the enigmatic cipher of bare biological lifeas such. (Agamben 1999: 230; my emphasis)

Bare biological life is one of the key concepts in Agamben: bare life is theinvention of power, it is the object of power and at the same time theresistance to power. Thus, for Agamben bare biological life necessarily isa political category, engendering both the annihilation and the extension(procreation) of life.

Another interesting thing in Agambens reading of the Deleuzian textis related to the notion of potentiality. First, Agambens reading of theDeleuzian text on a life appears in the chapter on potentiality. Second,Agamben several times interprets a life in terms of pure potentiality,although this term is missing in the English translation of the book. Forexample, Agamben translates the Deleuzian example of a childs smile as


an instance of pure potentiality: The smallest infants are traversed by animmanent life that is pure potentiality [pure puissance], even beatitudethrough suffering and weaknesses (Agamben 1999: 230).3 Trying tofind the meaning of the vertigo of immanence, Agamben discusses twopossible modes of understanding vitalism in Deleuze: the first as actwithout essence, the second as potentiality without action. Agambenpoints out that

As absolute immanence, a life . . . is pure contemplation beyond every subjectand object of knowledge; it is pure potentiality that preserves without acting.Brought to the limit of this new concept of contemplative life or, rather,living contemplation we cannot then fail to examine the other characteristicthat, in Deleuzes last text, defines life. In what sense can Deleuze state thata life . . . is potentiality, complete beatitude? (Agamben 1999: 234)4

Agamben explains that in the field of immanence desire is immanent toitself and in this sense it lacks nothing. Potentiality is a life that preservesitself, desires itself and is complete in its immanence. It is, then, possibleto comprehend why Deleuze writes that a life is potentiality, completebeatitude , he continues. Life is composed of virtuality; it is purepotentiality that coincides with Being, as in Spinoza, and potentiality,insofar as it lacks nothing [. . .] (Agamben 1999: 237).

In the last citation, Agamben equates his own notion of potentialitywith the Deleuzian notion of virtuality. The notion of potentiality orthe potential should be differentiated from the notion of possibilitybecause Deleuze makes a clear distinction between the possible andthe virtual.5 For Deleuze, the possible doubles reality and simply waitsto be realised; by contrast, virtuality or potentiality does not have tobe realised because it is already real; virtuality or potentiality can beactualised following the lines of differentiation and divergence. Similarly,for Agamben, a potentiality, in distinction from mere possibility, meansthe potential for something to be and not to be at the same time. Inother words, it introduces the occurrence of contingency. As Agambenpoints out, It is a potentiality that is not simply the potential to dothis or that thing but potential to not-do, potential not to pass intoactuality (Agamben 1999: 17980). Following Aristotle, this means thatall potentiality is also an impotentiality of the same and in respect tothe same. Beings that exist in the mode of potentiality are capableof their own impotentiality; and only in this way do they becomepotential (182). Agamben explains this potentiality of not being as afundamental passivity which is at the heart of every potentiality: Everyhuman power is adynamia, impotentiality (182). Without this potential


of not to be, potentiality would have passed into actuality and would beindistinguishable from it. But this is the biggest challenge for philosophy:how to think of the potentiality of not being?

The example of such a potentiality of not being Agamben finds inMelvilles Bartleby a character that is also very important for Deleuze.Deleuze interprets Bartlebys formula I would prefer not to as anexhaustion of language and of all action possibilities. Bartleby countswhat he prefers not to do and at the same time renders what he wasdoing impossible.

The formula is devastating because it eliminates the preferable just asmercilessly as any nonpreferred. It not only abolishes the term it refers to,and that it rejects, but also abolishes the other term it seemed to preserve,and that becomes impossible. In fact, it renders them indistinct: it hollowsout an ever expanding zone of indiscernibility or indetermination betweensome nonpreferred activities and a preferable activity. [. . .] I would prefernothing rather than something: not a will to nothingness, but the growth of anothingness of the will. (Deleuze 1997: 71)

Here we see that the great metaphysical question Why there issomething rather than nothing? is interpreted by Bartleby in theopposite way: I prefer nothing instead of something. Deleuze interpretsthis non-preference not as a will to nothingness (a formula for nihilism)but as nothingness catching the will itself, as a pure patient passivity.Deleuze points out that many other of Melvilles characters preferno will at all, a nothingness of the will rather than a will tonothingness [. . .] They can only survive by becoming stone, by denyingthe will and sanctifying themselves in this suspension (Deleuze 1997:80). This nothingness of will is also the main feature of Beckettscharacters: here we can think about Molloy, Malone and the characterof The Unnamable who prefer to become imperceptible or indiscernibleon the surface of the earth.

It is precisely this nothingness of the will that makes Bartleby anextreme figure of potentiality: As a scribe who has stopped writing,Bartleby is the extreme figure of the Nothing from which all creationderives; and at the same time, he constitutes the most implacablevindication of this Nothing as pure, absolute potentiality (Agamben1999: 2534). Thus, Bartlebys formula I would prefer not to equallyopens the potential to be (or do) and the potential not to be (ordo). Agamben carefully reads Aristotles doctrine of potentiality: ForAristotle, all potential to be or to do something is always also potentialnot to be or not to do (dynamis me einai, me energein), without which


potentiality would always already have passed into actuality and wouldbe indistinguishable from it [. . .] (245). The potential not to be is crucialhere and it transforms every potentiality into an impotentiality. Thearchitect has the potential to build even if he does nothing; Bartleby hasthe potential to work even if he prefers not to. While Aristotle definesthe possible-potential (dynaton) as something which in the processof realisation eliminates its potential not to be (or impotentiality),6

Agamben points out that it is precisely the potential not to be (orcontingency) that is at the core of the notion of potentiality. Agambenrecalls Theodicy by Leibniz, which describes the Palace of Destinies,composed of infinite chambers with different possible destinies. ThisBaroque inferno of potentiality shows everything that could have been,but was not and in which nothing is compossible with anything elseand nothing can take place (266). Contrary to this mausoleum ofpossibilities, Bartleby keeps open the potential not to be and in this senseredefines a life as contingency.

III. Deleuze and Beckett: Potentiality as Exhaustion

The question of potentiality reappears in Deleuzes text on Beckett TheExhausted. Here, Deleuze describes Becketts character as someonewho is exhausted in relation to potentiality. This is explained throughthe distinction between someone who is tired and someone who isexhausted: The tired person has merely exhausted the realization,whereas the exhausted person exhausts the whole of the possible. Thetired person can no longer realize, but the exhausted person can nolonger possibilize (Deleuze 1997: 152). The tired person is someonewho cannot do something, but the exhausted exhausts the potentialto be (or do) and not to be (or do) and drowns into impotentiality.Deleuze points out that tiredness and exhaustion presuppose a differentcombinatorial logic: in tiredness the possible is realised according to acertain plan or goal; one possibility is preferred and realised and anotheris excluded (you can choose shoes to go out or slippers to stay in). Bycontrast, in exhaustion one possibility is not excluded for another but allpossibilities coexist with one another and become interchangeable (forexample: shoes to stay in; slippers to go out). The disjunctions subsist,[. . .] but the disjointed terms are affirmed in their nondecomposabledistance [. . .] The disjunction has become inclusive: everything divides,but into itself [. . .] (153). This means that in exhaustion all possibilitiescoexist in potentiality without any structure or plan. They are not onlypossible or impossible but compossible, coexisting in their potentiality.


As such, potentiality is not something to be realised (only possibility canbe realised) but a contingency that can or cannot occur: One no longerrealizes, even though one accomplishes something. [. . .] one remainsactive, but for nothing. One was tired of something, but one is exhaustedby nothing (153). Exhaustion as potentiality is non-preference: I wouldprefer not to, Bartlebys Beckettian formula. Becketts characters playwith the possible without realizing it; they are too involved in apossibility that is ever more restricted in its kind to care about whatis still happening (153).

Deleuze calls this play with the possible without realizing it thecombinatorial and establishes a connection between the combinatorialand exhaustion: Must one be exhausted to give oneself over to thecombinatorial, or is it the combinatorial that exhausts us, that leadsus to exhaustion [. . .]? (Deleuze 1997: 154). Deleuze refers to differentcombinatorial practices in Beckett: this is the combination of suckingstones in Molloy, or the combination of five small biscuits in Murphy.The combinatorial relates to specific practices of exhaustion of language,words and things, and also the exhaustion of potentialities of spacein Quad. These potentialities are counted without any interest orpreference, because they are revealed not to be realised (to be or do) butto open their potential not to be or not to do. In Becketts universe, thereare no necessities (cannot not be) or possibilities (can be); there are onlycontingencies, which equally open the potentiality and impotentiality.

Sarah Gendron points out that the potentiality not to be is one of themain features of Beckettian characters:

This is the status of the majority of Becketts characters: if they are, what theyare is not quite there. [. . .] Some of his characters are literally absent in oneway or another. Auditor in Not I can, for example, be seen but not heard.Others, like V, the offstage voice in Footfalls, can be heard but not seen.(Gendron 2004: 4950)

Becketts characters are always on the edge of nothingness, about tovanish or expire, like Malone in Malone Dies, or the character of TheUnnamable. Some of these characters, like ghosts or the chorus of urns(Play), never promised to be present. Some of them are only body parts,or the Organs without Bodies, like MOUTH in Not I. As Gendronpoints out,

Becketts subjects [. . .] greatly resemble what Deleuze calls the virtual object,an entity that escapes determination, and in particular humanization. [. . .]They are, like Ada, May, V, and Willy never quite there. Never fully present,


they are also never entirely absent. They have the property of being and notbeing where they are, wherever they go. (Gendron 2004: 51)

Regardless of their vague existence, Beckettian characters still havethis quality of life, of immanent substance, which keeps them going. Forexample, in Malone Dies the character states:

But what matter whether I was born or not, have lived or not, am dead ormerely dying, I shall go on doing as I have always done, not knowing what itis I do, nor who I am, nor where I am, nor if I am. (Beckett 2010a: 53)

The character is always in the process of becoming imperceptible,becoming the virtual Body without Organs, which can take differentshapes and consistencies: sometimes I go liquid and become like mud,sometimes I am so hard and contracted (Beckett 2010a: 51); sometimesthe character can hardly resist the sensation of dilation, so that hisbody covers the surface of the world, sometimes he shrivels and shrivels(612). He would gladly give himself the shape and consistency of anegg, with two holes no matter where to prevent it from bursting, forthe consistency is more like that of mucilage (Beckett 2010b: 15). Butthe most important thing is that by becoming imperceptible he brings hismolecular components into play with the world he makes a world:

perhaps thats what I feel, an outside and an inside and me in the middle,perhaps thats what I am, the thing that divides the world in two, on theone side the outside, on the other the inside, that can be as thin as foil, Imneither one side nor the other, Im in the middle, Im the partition, Ive twosurfaces and no thickness, perhaps thats what I feel, myself vibrating, Im thetympanum, on the one hand the mind, on the other the world, I dont belongto either [. . .] (Beckett 2010b: 100)

Although the Beckettian subject always already appears in the mode ofimpotentiality, it is precisely this impotentiality that carries a life in itspure potentiality.

Notes1. The three characteristics defining the becoming imperceptible (the (anorganic)

imperceptible, the (asignifying) indiscernible, and the (asubjective) impersonal)relate with the three characteristics defining the Body without Organs:the disarticulation of the body, the deconstruction of signification, anddesubjectification (Deleuze and Guattari 2004: 177, 308). From this we canconclude that becoming imperceptible leads toward becoming the Body withoutOrgans.


2. Deleuzes Pure Immanence: Essays on A Life originally was published under thetitle LImmanence: Une Vie (Editions de Minuit, 1995), which is translated byAgamben as Immanence: A Life (Agamben 1999: 221).

3. In English translation: Small children, through all their suffering andweaknesses, are infused with an immanent life that is pure power and even bliss(Deleuze 2005: 30).

4. In English translation: complete power, complete bliss (Deleuze 2005: 27).5. In Difference and Repetition Deleuze makes a distinction between the

potential or virtual object, which can be actualised through differentiation anddivergence, and the logical possibility, or the possible, which resembles the real(Deleuze 2004: 2634). On the difference between the virtual and the possible,also see Bergsonism (Deleuze 1991: 967).

6. A thing is said to be potential if, when the act of which it is said to be potenial isrealized, there will be nothing impotential (Aristotle Metaphysics, 1047 a 246,cited in Agamben 1999: 264).

ReferencesAgamben, Giorgio (1999) Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy, trans.

D. Heller-Roazen, Stanford: Stanford University Press.Beckett, Samuel (2010a) Malone Dies, ed. Peter Boxall, London: Faber and Faber.Beckett, Samuel (2010b) The Unnamable, ed. Steven Connor, London: Faber and

Faber.Deleuze, Gilles (1991) Bergsonism, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam,

New York: Zone Books.Deleuze, Gilles (1997) Essays Critical and Clinical, trans. D. W. Smith and M. A.

Greco, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Deleuze, Gilles (2004) Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton, London,

New York: Continuum.Deleuze, Gilles (2005) Pure Immanence: Essays on A Life, trans. A. Boyman,

New York: Zone Books.Deleuze, Gilles (2008) Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and

Barbara Habberjam, New York and London: Continuum.Deleuze, Gilles and Flix Guattari (2004) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and

Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi, London and New York: Continuum.Gendron, Sarah (2004) A Cogito for the Dissolved Self: Writing, Presence and

the Subject in the Work of Samuel Beckett, Jacques Derrida, and Gilles Deleuze,Journal of Modern Literature, 28:1, Fall, pp. 4764.

Rajchman, John (2005) Introduction , in Gilles Deleuze, Pure Immanence: Essayson A Life, trans. A. Boyman, New York: Zone Books, pp. 723.

dls%2e2012%2e0088

Documents