Subjectivity, when understood as a process of becoming, differs from the traditional notion of a self looked at, and rationally appealed to, from the top-down approach of the macro perspective of theory. Instead, Deleuze recognizes the so called micro-political dimension of culture as a contextual, experiential and circumstantial site where subjects are situated and produced. As a qualitative multiplicity, subjectivity does not pre suppose identity but is produced in a process of individuation which is always already collective or “populated” (Deleuze, 1987, p. 9).
The infamous death of the subject is not to be mourned, because “when something occurs, the self that awaited it is already dead, or the one that would await it has not yet arrived” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987, p. 199).Instead, the event itself, the human experience per se, is to be considered as a condition of possibility, or “the inventive potential” (Massumi, 1992,p. 140), of becoming other than the present self. Subjectivity is constructed in a multidimensional field and, never mind if it sounds paradoxical, individuality is always posited as collective and plural: as a state of any other“thing”, it too is a multiplicity.
Philosophical site, for Deleuze, is always an open space or the multiplicity of planes on which concepts form a field that involves at once logical, political, social and aesthetic dimensions. The concept – because it “should express an event rather than an essence” (Deleuze, 1995, p. 25)– is to be understood as a distribution of points on a plane, forming – in the spatio-temporal terms – a field of lines, going in multiple directions. Any philosophical concept, for Deleuze, involves at least
two other dimensions, percepts and affects. Percepts aren’t perceptions, they’re packets of sensations and relations that live on independently of whoever experiences them. Affects aren’t feelings, they are becomings that spill over beyond whoever lives through them (thereby becoming someone else).
. . . Affects, percepts, and concepts are three inseparable forces, running from art to philosophy and from philosophy into art (Deleuze, 1995,p. 127).
The intensive capacity “to affect and be affected” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987, p. xvi) is part of the dynamic subject’s complex rules of formation. The production of subjectivity includes an encounter with pure affect as if it were an autonomous and real being. The powerful intensity of such an encounter marks the passage between the experiential states of the body and accordingly affects the body’s capacity to act. The body, for Deleuze (borrowing from Spinoza), is both physical and mental; the affect is not just a feeling or emotion but a force influencing the body’s mode of existence or its power. The latter is defined as a capacity to multiply and intensify connections so as producing a complicated rhizome and not planting a single root.
Inna Semetsky - The Problematic of Subjectivity
The infamous death of the subject is not to be mourned, because “when something occurs, the self that awaited it is already dead, or the one that would await it has not yet arrived” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987, p. 199).Instead, the event itself, the human experience per se, is to be considered as a condition of possibility, or “the inventive potential” (Massumi, 1992,p. 140), of becoming other than the present self. Subjectivity is constructed in a multidimensional field and, never mind if it sounds paradoxical, individuality is always posited as collective and plural: as a state of any other“thing”, it too is a multiplicity.
Philosophical site, for Deleuze, is always an open space or the multiplicity of planes on which concepts form a field that involves at once logical, political, social and aesthetic dimensions. The concept – because it “should express an event rather than an essence” (Deleuze, 1995, p. 25)– is to be understood as a distribution of points on a plane, forming – in the spatio-temporal terms – a field of lines, going in multiple directions. Any philosophical concept, for Deleuze, involves at least
two other dimensions, percepts and affects. Percepts aren’t perceptions, they’re packets of sensations and relations that live on independently of whoever experiences them. Affects aren’t feelings, they are becomings that spill over beyond whoever lives through them (thereby becoming someone else).
. . . Affects, percepts, and concepts are three inseparable forces, running from art to philosophy and from philosophy into art (Deleuze, 1995,p. 127).
The intensive capacity “to affect and be affected” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987, p. xvi) is part of the dynamic subject’s complex rules of formation. The production of subjectivity includes an encounter with pure affect as if it were an autonomous and real being. The powerful intensity of such an encounter marks the passage between the experiential states of the body and accordingly affects the body’s capacity to act. The body, for Deleuze (borrowing from Spinoza), is both physical and mental; the affect is not just a feeling or emotion but a force influencing the body’s mode of existence or its power. The latter is defined as a capacity to multiply and intensify connections so as producing a complicated rhizome and not planting a single root.
Inna Semetsky - The Problematic of Subjectivity
