Book Review

Craig Lundy (2012) History and Becoming: Deleuzes Philosophy ofCreativity, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press

As is well known, Deleuze and Guattari are notable for their eschewal ofthe word or in relation to potential conceptual and creative encounters.It is always a question of and as a means of propagating differenceand becoming through a combination of rupture and affirmation,thereby circumventing the capture of signification, recognition andrepresentation, binary structures which stymie the production of newsubjectivities. It thus seems anomalous to discover in the Deleuziancanon as well as Deleuze and Guattaris later collaborations astubborn predilection for opposing history and becoming as mutuallyincompatible, largely because the former is always identified with acapturing, ex post facto historicism while the latter, because of itstrans-situational potential, is the very stuff (as indeterminate excess)of philosophy. In Negotiations, for example, Deleuze unequivocallystates that Becoming isnt part of history; history amounts only to theset of preconditions, however recent, that one leaves behind in orderto become, that is, to create something new (Deleuze 1995: 171).A Thousand Plateaus continues the polemic, aligning history with asyntagmatic teleology: All history does is to translate a coexistence ofbecomings into a succession (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 430). Evenworse, History is always written from the sedentary point of view andin the name of the unitary State apparatus, at least a possible one,even when the topic is nomads. What is lacking is a Nomadology,the opposite of a history (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 23). Becomingis always viewed as a productive, virtual force for change (puissance);while history/historicism is equated with power/control (pouvoir): theactual of the State. Deleuze even goes so far as to contrast historyunfavourably with geography: We think too much in terms of history,

Deleuze Studies 8.4 (2014): 569578 Edinburgh University Presswww.euppublishing.com/dls

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whether personal or universal. Becomings belong to geography, they areorientations, directions, entries and exits (Deleuze and Parnet 1987: 2).In his provocative new book, Craig Lundy subjects Deleuze and

Guattaris uncharacteristic binary tendencies in reducing history tohistoricism to a form of immanent critique, in effect putting theand back in the equation to create a hybrid, composite form thatis neither pure history nor pure becoming, thereby folding the virtualinto the actual and vice versa. Thus Lundy attempts to show thathistorical reality is always more than the actual through its productive,transmuting relationship with the virtual and incorporeal (and byextension the two different forms of Stoic temporality that of Chronosand of Aion). The result is a history irreducible to both historicism andpure becoming an in-between composite that Lundy variously callshistory/becoming or historiophilosophy. This entails the constructionof a model of history that can be explained in five different ways(corresponding to Lundys five different chapters), namely, the abyssof the intensive-depth (focusing largely on the corporeal intensities ofDifference and Repetition); the dynamic surface (via the incorporealevent of The Logic of Sense); the nomadic of A Thousand Plateaus;the universal-contingent; and finally historiophilosophy itself through adetailed look at the use of conceptual personae in Deleuze and GuattarisWhat Is Philosophy?In the final chapter of Difference and Repetition, Deleuze sees

creativity as a relation of depth and surface to the movement betweenthem, a trial run perhaps for the subsequent transverse relation ofchaoids to chaos in What Is Philosophy? Thus, as Lundy, echoingDeleuzes position, argues,

all extensive reality is the product of an intensive process that comes from thedepths and emerges at the surface. While the creative movement from depthto surface is referred to as a becoming, history concerns the retrospectiveidentification and representation of this productive process. Or does it? (10)

In attempting to rephrase this question in terms of history-as-becoming,Lundy draws on Deleuze himself, Henri Bergson, Fernand Braudel,Charles Pguy and Nietzsche to posit history as an intensive-depth that,far from being anti-becoming, is actually in productive relation with it,for if an intensive force is to move from depth to the surface, then thehistorical process of production will need to be enlisted, not overcome(10). Significantly, inOn History (1980), Braudel saw this as a historicalprocess-in-depth, arguing that we can only come to know the life ofan event by living with it, not by externally tracking its movement.

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In contrast, in What Is Philosophy?, Deleuze and Guattari cite Pguyon the same lines but in terms of philosophy, not history:

[T]here are two ways of considering the event. One consists in going over thecourse of the event, in recording its effectuation in history, its conditioningand deterioration in history. But the other consists in reassembling the event,installing oneself in it as in a becoming, becoming young again and aging init, both at the same time, going through all its components or singularities.(Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 111)

Lundy convincingly makes the latter process compatible with historyby turning to one of Deleuzes chief philosophical forebears, Nietzsche,who was never against history per se, only its timely incarnations (themonumental and the antiquarian) as opposed to critical, useful historyfor life. It is Nietzsches critical scepticism that questions whethera philosopher could ever have ultimate and real opinions, whetherbehind every one of his caves there is not, must not be, another deepercave a more comprehensive, stranger, richer world beyond the surface,an abysmally deep ground behind every ground, under every attempt tofurnish grounds (Nietzsche 1996: 229).Deleuze of course sees these intensities as becomings, while history

can only account for an extensive recording of intensities. This raises anobvious series of questions: can history be intensive? Is the latter a viableontology and methodology of history? What would this alternative,creative history bring into being? Following Bergson, the identity ofintensity is produced by a constitutive difference. Indeed, Deleuze isnot concerned in Difference and Repetition with a difference predicatedon spatio-temporal divisions such as past/present/future but, followingSpinoza, speeds and slownesses, issues of level, temperature, pressure,potential in short, difference of/as intensity. Far from being cowed,Lundy takes this as a challenge, arguing that history cannot be reducibleto time alone but must also include space that is, nomadology,topology, geophilosophy which are all based on intensity-as-difference.This produces an innate aporia, for if intensity/difference is to be

conditioned and correlated in and through extensivity, it ultimately mustput an end to itself: intensity is inherently suicidal. As Deleuze points out,

Intensity is difference, but this difference tends to deny or to cancel itself outin extensity and underneath quality. It is true that qualities are signs whichflash across the interval of a difference. In so doing, however, they measurethe time of an equalization in other words, the time taken by the differenceto cancel itself out in the extensity in which it is distributed. (Deleuze 1994:223)

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Away out of this double bind is to show that history is itself constitutive.Taking his lead from far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics whichevades a radical finalism Lundy attempts to show that intensiveproductivity can remain open and contingent, producing differentiatedhistories that can no longer be taken for granted: History becomesconstitutive at precisely that point where the future becomes open [. . . ]Thus to allow for the contingency of the event is to affirm the historicalprocesses of production, not to deny them (20).It Is here that Lundy turns to Bergsons heterogeneous multiplicity of

duration an indivisible movement irreducible to a shared homogeneousspace (epitomised by the race between Achilles and the tortoise, whereeach participant is placed on their own indivisible duration, therebyallowing Achilles to ultimately overtake his slower opponent) in orderto make history compatible with depth. Situating ourselves within theintensive depths entails placing ourselves within the past as it movestowards the present in order to make a composite of the two asduration. Braudel ties this process directly to a history for life: Justlike life itself, history seems to us to be a fleeting spectacle, always inmovement, made up of a web of problems meshed inextricably together,and able to assume a hundred different and contradictory aspects in turn(Braudel 1980: 10). Lundy argues that each form of history needs anappropriate explication of the different durations involved of men andwomen, of societies, of worlds. Thus there can be no unilateral history,whether dubbed economic, racial or technological.However,

Whereas depth for Bergson, Braudel and Pguy is in many respects anhistorical depth that is intensively productive in relation to the present andfuture, for Deleuze depth is a realm of becoming that is in turn overlaid byhistorical extensities. How then are we to explain this discrepancy? (27)

Lundy argues that Deleuze repositions Bergson, Braudel and Pguyagainst history to emphasise the future orientation of his ownphilosophy-qua-philosophy. Yet the others are also future-oriented sowhat is the creative role of history in this relation of depths of pastto what is to come? My claim is not just that the empirical facts ofhistory have an impact on what comes next, argues Lundy, but ratherthat the intensive features of history are productive of the empiricalextensive facts of history (hence two kinds of history) (29). In short,intensive-depths produce identities through their very difference, whatNietzsche called will to power. It is the affirmation of this becoming asBeing that Nietzsche called the eternal return, for while the will to

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power is the play of difference, the eternal return is the being of thatdifference it is that which is said of difference (32). Nietzsches historyis untimely, it acts counter to our time [. . . ] for the benefit of a timeto come (Nietzsche 1983: 60, cited in Lundy 2012: 35). Significantly,when Deleuze quotes this line he omits the first half of the phrase becauseof his vested interest in pitting the future against the past, contrastingbecoming to history. Conversely, Nietzsche stresses the importance ofboth philology and history for life, for becoming is instrumental increating that very history it must be made experimental as a historyfor the future. In this regard Nietzsche is perfectly Deleuzian he alsoattacks historicism but in the name of history.Shifting his attention to Deleuzes The Logic of Sense, Lundy extends

this argument from a focus on the intensive depths to the incorporealsurface in an attempt to make this surface-becoming compatible withnomadology and the different chaoid planes of What Is Philosophy?Obviously, surface becoming is different than that of the depths andrequires a different model: it is organised like a chessboard witha given plan. It has a logical organisation (the chaoid planes ofimmanence, organisation and composition) which is given all at onceand stretches to infinite limits, in a constant state of renewal. Thisdynamic process of creation also spills beyond each level of systematicityas the dynamic process works transversally across and between planesand their different levels. As Lundy points out,

The historical process that Deleuze describes and employs in the latter seriesof The Logic of Sense will thus lie somewhere between these two extremesof pure becoming and historicism. It will also lie between the depths ofcorporeal bodies and the incorporeal surface, insofar as it is what generatesthe movement from the former to the latter through a process of historicalcreativity. (401)

Developmental becoming and historical progression cannot be reducedto the surface itself as this will negate the innate difference of the stepsbetween and across the planes. This accounts for the key role of thebetween in Lundys methodology.One of the innate shortcomings of the incorporeal surface is that it

transforms the dynamic intensities of the corporeal depths into staticstates of equilibrium as a base for judgement and comparison by theintellect. Surfaces thus create actual things but these becomings arealso sterile and fixed: a form of static genesis. The latter proceeds byprocesses such as prolongation, convergence, envelopment, stabilisationand limitation in much the same way that Bergsons perception-image is

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extracted from an aggregate of images or Nietzsches creation requires amodicum of limitation via forgetting and turning away from the abyssof becoming. In other words, static genesis requires a dynamic genesis tocomplement it, which for Lundy means that the logic of surfaces requiresa history of surfaces, in effect a history of developmental becoming.True becoming can only unravel through the continually shifting relationbetween two different realms: the corporeal/incorporeal; states ofaffairs/pure events. They remain different despite their transmutations,which allows them to collude in the task of creation. As Lundy argues,The significance of developmental becoming thus lies in its unfinishedand dynamically progressive nature, as opposed to the already delimitedinfinitives of various surface becomings (48). Developmental becomingmust not be equalised; it must be far-from-equilibrium a history opento the future.Lundys main metaphor here is the Herculean form, the mythic figure

who moves effortlessly between the surface and the depths, as well as tothe heights of the heavens: It is no longer a question of Dionysus downbelow, or of Apollo up above, notes Deleuze, but of Hercules of thesurface, in his dual battle against both depth and height: reorientationof the entire thought and a new geography (Deleuze 1990: 1312).With Hercules, it is more a question of his return to the surface fromelsewherewith his plunder so that the surface is capable of refashioningheight and depth into an immanent monism or productive composite.In other words, the surface is no longer just an enveloper, but it alsomoves in a dynamic way between dualisms deep bodies and loftyideals. This allows Lundy to overcome the opposition between historyand becoming whereby the between is able to bring them togetherthrough an ontology of historical creativity. This move also takesLundy to a new threshold and a harnessing of history to a new formof geography nomadology and the key equation of multiplicity. Toavoid regression into an initial capturing dualism, we need to progressto a nomadic history whereby PLURALISM =MONISM.As we noted above, the Treatise on Nomadology The War Machine

in A Thousand Plateaus completely dismisses history as counter tonomadology. Indeed, if nomadology opposes history, it is due toits concern with space territory, topology rather than time. It isgeographical, aligned with becoming. The question for Lundy thenbecomes: how can we excavate a Deleuzian philosophy of historyfrom within nomadology, the very thing that seems to most malignit? The answer partially lies in nomadologys tendency towardsmetamorphosis and deterritorialisation rather than confining itself to

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strict binary oppositions. Thus the apparent distinctions between thesmooth and the striated, the war machine and State machine (and,by extension, pure becoming and pure history) are always mutuallyimplicated, often by a mediating third term that breaks the dialectic.For example, the nomad/State dualism is split by a third element: themachinic phylum the subterranean flow of pure becoming (Nietzsche)or universal aggregate of action/reaction (Bergson) that flows betweenthem and on which they depend. As Deleuze and Guattari point out, thegreat phylum is what selects through the intermediary of assemblages(Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 398).The same is true for the smooth and the striated, for their key

mechanism is the transmutation of form and how one part of the dualismmigrates to the other not just how transmutations occur between fixedentities of smooth and striated, but how they themselves metamorphose(that is, how the relation can differ from itself). Thus the nuclearsubmarine does not convert the smooth space of the ocean into a striatedspace but harnesses it for State control:

the smooth is employed by the State as smooth for the purposes of striation.The smooth characteristics of the sea are thus maintained, but they areredirected by State powers to achieve a level of control that the State on itsown would be incapable of. (79)

One thus can become the other while also remaining the same. Neverbelieve that a smooth space will suffice to save us, warn Deleuze andGuattari in A Thousand Plateaus (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 500).While revolutionary becomings can spawn micro-fascisms, converselyhistories can be intensified as history for smoothing processes: the nomadand the State can be brought back together through a shared immanence:The smooth and the striated, in other words, are expressions of amachinic phylum that gives itself to both (416).While this might sound at first like a pragmatic compromise, one

should note that it is not uncharacteristic, for Deleuze and Guattariinvariably move towards a middle ethic of the between, for this is whereeverything happens between pure being and pure becoming temperedby prudence and caution.

This is how it should be done: Lodge yourself on a stratum, experiment withthe opportunities it offers, find an advantageous place on it, find potentialmovements of deterritorialization, possible lines of flight, experience them,produce flow conjunctions here and there, try out continuums of intensitiessegment by segment, have a small plot of new land at all times. It is through ameticulous relation with the strata that one succeeds in freeing lines of flight,

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causing conjugated flows to pass and escape and bringing forth continuousintensities for a BwO. Connect, conjugate, continue . . . (Deleuze and Guattari1987: 161)

For Lundy, this shows the immense importance of historical processesand relational mechanisms that link strata with lines of flight in order toproduce that small plot of new land (141).Lundy then turns his attention to the problem of how history

begins. For example, the question of when the State apparatus emergescannot be found in history for it pre-exists and outlasts history itis suprahistorical. Instead, Lundy calls for a contingent model ofsimultaneity and non-linearity where the virtual (pre-history) and theactual (history) co-exist: in short, universal history. This contingencyhas three lines of creativity: (1) it remains open to the future and change;(2) it is created by a presently existing power; and (3) it is approachednon-linearly so that it can have an influence on what it becomes. Inthis sense, the traditional Marxist chronological development of Stateforms for example, in the Asiatic formation the emperor-despot isalways prior to private property; agriculture gives rise to State stock isreplaced by a non-linear simultaneity. Thus the archaic State did notcome before the primitive development of a potential surplus, northe opposite, for they both coexist (108). Or, to put it in Deleuzeand Guattaris language, social formations are defined not by modesof production but by the different social machines that produce thosemodes.More importantly, these modes are as much virtual as actual, and

indeed this virtuality has a concrete history: Universal history makes acomposite out of succession and simultaneity from its ability to arrayan entire successive progression simultaneously (116). Capitalism is theclassic condition of this simultaneity as it determines the conditions andpossibility of its own universal history via its twin functions: its superiorpower of decoding and deterritorialisation through exchange and theendless flow of capital; and its flexible axiomatic structure which allowsit to set and then repel its own limits as well as account for all previous(and future) societies. It universalises because of its relativity (in contrastto the absolutism of schizophrenia which is an attempt to liberate theworld from these axiomatics). As Lundy argues,

Capitalism is able to occupy every point in history, for it has no point of itsown; it is able to interpret every coding and overcoding throughout history,for it has no essential code or sign of its own. Like a spectre or faceless ghost,

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capitalism haunts all previous forms of society as their terrifying nightmare,[. . . ] the dread they feel of a flow that would elude their codes. (122)

Lundy concludes with a look at the role of history and becomingin Deleuze and Guattaris definition of philosophy, which leads him tohistoriophilosophy as a call for a minor history. Deleuze and Guattaridefine philosophy as the art of forming, inventing and fabricatingconcepts which link together on the plane of immanence via theircommon consistency. At the same time, every concept always has ahistory, even though this history zigzags, though it passes, if needbe, through other problems or onto different planes (Deleuze andGuattari 1994: 18). These concepts are not represented by flesh-and-blood philosophers themselves Plato, Descartes, Nietzsche butrather their conceptual personae who fabulate on their behalf Socrates,Descartes idiot, Zarathustra, Dionysus. The latter encompass a certaingeographical uniqueness philosophy could only have come into beinggiven the specific conditions of ancient Greece at that time but alsohistorically according to the concerns of different eras. Thus Platosconcepts of One, Being and non-Being, and the Idea (predicated ontime as anterior) undergo a creative movement via Descartes cogito(which expels time as anteriority in order to make it a simple mode ofsuccession referring to continuous creation). Put simply, the novelty thatis engendered by Descartes his creative act specifically occurs withrespect to Platos creation (149), whereby the cogito is prepared bythe Greek plane that precedes it (even if it is not fully accomplished).This is surely a case of historical puissance rather than pouvoir.Creative becoming is further exacerbated by the zigzag transverse

movement that occurs between planes of consistency which is aninherently dynamic and nomadic movement combining intensive andextensive forces in each measure. For Lundy, it is clear that all theselevels are directly susceptible to time (that is, it is a model of duration),But, note Deleuze and Guattari,

if it is true that the plane of immanence is always single, being itself purevariation, then it is all the more necessary to explain why there are varied anddistinct planes of immanence that, depending upon which infinite movementsare retained and selected, succeed and contest each other in history. The planeis certainly not the same in the time of the Greeks, in the seventeenth century,and today . . . (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 39)

Thus planes pass into and out of existence in time, so that the logicof planes needs a history of planes. This does not necessarily have tobe linear, for every plane is not only interleaved but holed, letting

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through the fogs that surround it (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 51).Consequently, a singular feature cannot be isolated from the planethat gives it voice the breath that suffuses the different/separate parts.Lundy concludes by calling for a historical version of what Deleuze andGuattari call stratigraphic time, where before and after indicateonly an order of superimpositions (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 58).In this respect, far from being an apparatus of capture in oppositionto becoming, philosophy necessarily becomes indistinguishable from itsown history (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 95; original emphasis), albeitholey rather than linear.

Colin GardnerUniversity of California, Santa Barbara

DOI: 10.3366/dls.2014.0170

ReferencesBraudel, Fernand (1980)On History, trans. Sarah Matthews, Chicago: University ofChicago Press.

Deleuze, Gilles (1990) The Logic of Sense, ed. Constantin V. Boundas, trans. MarkLester and Charles Stivale, London: Continuum.

Deleuze, Gilles (1994) Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton, New York:Columbia University Press.

Deleuze, Gilles (1995) Negotiations: 19721990, trans. Martin Joughin, New York:Columbia University Press.

Deleuze, Gilles and Flix Guattari (1987) A Thousand Plateaus, trans. BrianMassumi, Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press.

Deleuze, Gilles and Flix Guattari (1994) What Is Philosophy?, trans. HughTomlinson and Graham Burchell, New York: Columbia University Press.

Deleuze, Gilles and Claire Parnet (1987) Dialogues, trans. Hugh Tomlinson andBarbara Habberjam, New York: Columbia University Press.

Nietzsche, Friedrich (1966) Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufmann, NewYork: Vintage Books.

Nietzsche, Friedrich (1983) Untimely Meditations, trans. R. J. Hollingdale,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.