“Now, if one ceases to limit oneself to the model of phonetic writing, which we privilege only by ethnocentrism, and if we draw all the consequences from the fact that there is no purely phonetic writing (by reason of the necessary spacing of signs, punctuation, intervals, the differences indispensable for the functioning of graphemes, etc.), then the entire phonologist or logocentrist logic becomes problematic. Its range of legitimacy becomes narrow and superficial…

            “It is a question… of producing a new concept of writing. This concept can be called gram or différance. The play of differences supposes, in effect, syntheses and referrals which forbid at any moment, or in any sense, that a simple element be present in and of itself, referring only to itself. Whether in the order of the spoken or written discourse, no element can function as a sign without referring to another element which itself is not simply present. This interweaving results in each “element” – phoneme or grapheme – being constituted on the basis of the trace within it of the other elements of the chain or system. This interweaving, this textile, is the text produced only in the transformation of another text. Nothing, neither among the elements nor within the system, is anywhere ever simply present or absent. There are only, everywhere, differences and traces of traces. The gram, then, is the most general concept of semiology – which thus becomes grammatology – and it covers not only the field of writing in the restricted sense, but also the field of linguistics. The advantage of this concept – provided that it be surrounded by a certain interpretive context, for no more than any other conceptual element it does not signify, or suffice, by itself – is that in principle it neutralizes the phonologistic propensity of the “sign,” and in fact counterbalances it by liberating the entire scientific field of the “graphic substance” (history and systems of writing beyond the bounds of the West) whose interest is not minimal, but which so far has been left in the shadows of neglect.

            “The gram as différance, then is a structure and a movement no longer conceivable on the basis of the opposition presence/absence. Différance is the systematic play of differences, of the traces of differences of the spacing by means of which elements are related to each other.”

4) The nature of meaning, and the sign’s relation to its meaning.

Let us again consider our earlier localization of this form of image writing within the interpretive sphere of that which Deleuze and Guattari term “desiring-production”; and, ask what bearing this concept might have upon the extended systemization of difference which this form of writing has shown itself to be:

"D as in Desire"

”Parnet begins by citing the biographical entry on Deleuze in the Petit Larousse dictionary (1988 edition), that refers to his work with Guattari on (among other topics) desire, citing Anti-Oedipus (1972). Since Deleuze is considered to be, says Parnet, a philosopher of desire, so what is it?

Deleuze starts by saying that "it's not what people thought it was, even then. It was a big ambiguity and a big misunderstanding, or rather a little one." However, he then addresses the question in great, and often moving detail. First, like most people in writing a book, they thought that they would say something new, specifically that people who wrote before them didn't understand what desire meant. So as philosophers, Deleuze with Guattari saw their task as that of proposing a new concept of desire. And concepts, despite what some people think, refer to things that are extremely simple and concrete.

What they meant to express was the simplest thing in the word: until now, you speak abstractly about desire because you extract an object supposed to be the object of desire. Deleuze emphasizes that one never desires something or someone, but rather always desires an aggregate (ensemble). So they asked what was the nature of relations between elements in order for there to be desire, for these elements to become desirable. Deleuze refers to Proust when he says that desire for a woman is not so much desire for the woman as for a paysage, a landscape, that is enveloped in this woman. Or in desiring an object, a dress for example, the desire is not for the object, but for the whole context, the aggregate, "I desire in an aggregate." Deleuze refers back to the letter "B", on drinking, alcohol, and the desire not just for drink, but for whatever aggregate into which one situates the desire for drinking (with people, in a café, etc.).

So, there is no desire, says Deleuze, that does not flow into an assemblage, and for him, desire has always been a constructivism, constructing an assemblage (agencement), an aggregate: the aggregate of the skirt, of a sun ray, of a street, of a woman, of a vista, of a color... constructing an assemblage, constructing a region, assembling. Deleuze emphasizes that desire is constructivism. Parnet asks if it's because desire is an assemblage that Deleuze needed to be two, with Guattari, in order to create. Deleuze agrees that with Felix, they created an assemblage, but that there can be assemblages all alone as well as with two, or something passing between two. All of this, he continues, concerns physical phenomena, and for an event to occur, some differences of potential must arise, like a flash or a stream, so that the domain of desire is constructed. So every time someone says, I desire this or that, that person is in the process of constructing an assemblage, nothing else, desire is nothing else."

From: L'Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze, avec Claire Parnet

(Gilles Deleuze's ABC Primer, with Claire Parnet) Directed by Pierre-André Boutang (1996)

Overview prepared by Charles J. Stivale, Romance Languages & Literatures,
Wayne State University

http://www.langlab.wayne.edu/CStivale/D-G/ABCs.html

            When we are dealing with desiring-production, we are invariably working with assemblages. Thus, the “meaning” of the compositional patterns found within this form of image writing must be understood as being related to the nature of the coherence of such patterns, to what was earlier identified as  ‘laws for the series of infinitesimal differences and subtle contrasts’. As was noted earlier, “desiring-production is pure multiplicity, that is to say, an affirmation that is irreducible to any sort of unity.” (“Anti-Oedipus”, page 42); thus, in order to understand the compositional patterns of such a form of image writing, we must first grasp the essential nature of that ‘multiplicity’ which characterizes it.

            “The important thing here is that the decomposition of the composite reveals to us two types of multiplicity. One is represented by space (or rather, if all the nuances are taken into account, by the impure combination of homogenous time): it is a multiplicity of exteriority, of simultaneity, of juxtaposition, of order, of quantitative difference, of difference in degree; it is a numerical multiplicity, discontinuous and actual. The other type of multiplicity appears in pure duration: it is an internal multiplicity of succession, of fusion, of organization, of heterogeneity, of qualitative discrimination, or of difference in kind; it is a virtual and continuous multiplicity that cannot be reduced to numbers.”

Gilles Deleuze, “Bergsonism”, copyright 1988 by Urzone, Inc.; page 38.

            Here is a distinction which is essential to our analysis: the differences which compose this form of image writing are differences in kind; and as such, they are characteristically temporal in nature. Beyond the static objectivity of the discrete things displayed through this form of writing, beyond the interiorized subjectivities which semiological analysis tends to oscillate toward, we are here dealing with temporal determinations of differentiations that can be grouped into multiplicities supporting compositionally serial narrative structures.

            “It would therefore be a serious mistake to think that duration was simply the indivisible… In reality, duration divides up and does so constantly: that is why it is a multiplicity. But it does not divide up without changing in kind, it changes in kind in the process of dividing up: this is why it is a nonnumerical multiplicity, where we can speak of “indivisibles” at each stage of the division. There is other without there being several; number exists only potentially. In other words, the subjective, or duration, is the virtual. To be more precise, it is the virtual insofar as it is actualized, in the course of being actualized, it is inseparable from the movement of its actualization. For actualization comes about through differentiation, through divergent lines, and creates so many differences in kind by virtue of its own movement. Everything is actual in a numerical multiplicity; everything is not “realized”, but everything there is actual. There are no relationships other than those between actuals, and no differences other than those in degree. On the other hand, a nonnumerical multiplicity by which duration or subjectivity is defined, plunges into another dimension, which is no longer spatial and is purely temporal: it moves from the vitual to its actualization, it actualizes itself by creating lines of differentiation which correspond to its differences in kind. A multiplicity of this kind has, essentially, the three properties of continuity, heterogeneity, and simplicity.”

“Bergsonism", pages 42-43.

            In order to grasp the essentially temporal nature of this form of image writing, we must abandon those preconceptions which would have us defining multiplicities of image elements in anything approaching a spatialized form. There is no other approach through which we might gain an understanding of how such image writing functions, grammatologically, in ways that are quite different from semiologically defined concepts of ‘meaning’. We must think of image composites that are not defined through any sort of spatial measurement but, instead, are realized through the temporal differentiations of the events they present. The differentiations through which externalized relations are established in the description of territoriality are temporal in nature; the image elements composing the narrative structures that define the grammatological nature of this form of writing are nonnumerical multiplicities. I will from this point describe such image composites as “non-metrical multiplicities” (to clearly define them from the more basic distinction used by Bergson in reference to the nature of pure temporality); describe the form of image writing being considered herein as “non-metrical image writing”; and distinguish such composite image patterns from the more familiar spatially-defined forms of images in the following way:

1) Perspectival Horizons:

Striated space, metrical features, and discrete multiplicities.

             Picking a point upon any surface, we experience the visual possibilities of that surface as a compilation of all of the collected directions away from the specific point we have selected. These possibilities exceed the chosen point, in an extending‑away that culminates upon the edge of the surface. This is to say, the visual possibilities of a surface exceed any point upon that surface; and such excessive possibilities are collected at, are contained within and defined by, the edge of the surface in question.

             It is at the edge of a surface that the visual possibilities of the surface are realized, through the absence of any specific actuality. And from here, we realize that these possibilities can only be actualized by a return to the surface, from the edge: a return that again localizes extension, re‑introducing extension to the surface as an expression of the edge which defines the surface in terms which are characteristic of its edge. The possibilities of a visual surface are only realized when that surface has been abandoned, or is in some way separated from; the farthest point of this abandonment is the edge of the surface: but, whatever possibilities are realized of a visual surface, they can only be actualized by a return to that surface.

             Returning a surface's edge to the body of the surface proper striates that surface: it defines its possibilities in terms of separation and so divides the surface up into characteristically metrical features. This is true in creating perspectives (which link visual occurrences together in a shared commonality of display); or in applying paradigms onto conceptual planes (which relativizes events to a dominant interpretive model); or in localizing specific instances of occurrence as generalized forms (which preferences occurrences of "the same", and of recognition, over occurrences of the unique, and of difference); or when interpreting symbolic forms through any assumed context supplied by representational display (it is all too easy to "recognize" a 'symbol'; but far more difficult to define the nature of its occurrence without evoking those representational traits that so often pre-determined the context of its recognition).

             The edge of a surface, re‑introduced as the striations through which the process of characterization then proceeds, imparts an essential quality of separation into any space that it defines. The characteristics of particular forms of metrical striation produce distinct and distinguishable characterizations; and the discrete, interpreted characters which are so formed owe more of their definition to the mechanisms of their interpretation, than they do to the inherent nature of their existence.

             Here, that connectivity which might otherwise be defined as gammatological is all but subsumed by those divisionings through which the visual surface is striated; and any inherent texture essential to a visual surface so considered is thus obscured. Perspectival approaches, as inherently relativizing, necessarily define that which they are applied to within terms carried by that application (rather than through terms produced from the situation such perspectivalism is being applied to). Since ‘communication’, broadly taken, occurs with: connectivity; with decenterings of "self" (that is, self-differentiation: the continuity of temporal ‘differences in kind’, rather than the separations of ‘differences in degree’ and of measure); with differential textures (which exceed the semiological family of concepts expressive of an opposition between ‘presence’ and ‘absence’); and with a whole range of concepts associated with indeterminacy and indiscernibility (rather than with determinate measurement), a perspectival approach to non‑metrical image writing simply will not function in a way that is adequate to the task with which it is presented.

2) Event Horizons:

Smooth space, non‑metrical features, and continuous multiplicities.

             Let us again pick a point upon a visual surface. But instead of looking toward 'extension away' from our point as the definition for our realization of this visual surface, let's approach this point until we can no longer separate it from this surface. Let's find its zones of indiscernibility, where whatever makes this point what it is - what makes it a “difference” - supports a threshold of appearance, and of disappearance. Let's find the threshold of indeterminacy for this point, where its actuality empties to the very edge of its non‑being. Let's look for where this point is fused to the surface: let’s find that transitional differentiation without which we can no longer distinguish and separate this point from the surface of its occurrence.

             Let us look for ways in which this point is fused together, for that transitional differentiation we can not remove any components from without this point ceasing to be distinct and distinguishable. That is the edge of this point's very existence: here, we can no longer separate distinguishing features within this point without characterizing said point as something else. We have arrived at a condition of singularity which characterizes that point's essential nature, the point's very being.

             If we extend such a point of singularity back into the visual surface upon which it occurs, we encounter not the possibilities of the surface, but rather the virtuality of the surface as it is expressed through the indiscernibility of the point's singularity. We encounter this surface as its inseparability from this point: the surface's virtuality is expressed through the point's actuality. The point's indiscernibility can be taken as actualizing the surface. We can not say that no surface exists without the point; but we must say that surface does not exist without the point.

             Now, we have a visual surface that is defined not through perspective but, upon a ‘horizon’ produced from the event of the point's existence. Now, everything that we encounter upon this visual surface can be defined through indiscernibility, and by a tentative connectivity to the differential threshold of that point’s existence. The point need no longer be considered as completely separable from the virtual positions of other locations, which are also actualized through an indiscernibility from - the inseparability of - that visual surface upon which our original point is differentiated.

             Suddenly we are dealing with conditions which support non‑metrical multiplicities of fusion, by way of a multiple, definitional connectivity. The singularity of the initial point chosen is now defined by the event(s) of its connectivity: by the extension of its existence into and through a fusion with the surface upon which it occurs; and, in a connectivity to the virtuality (the ability to support any such point) of other loci upon the visual surface.  The inherent indiscernibility of the point's constituent elements from themselves renders indeterminate its separability from other points upon the visual surface; and from this conceptual position, other factors related to such a point's intrinsic and extrinsic consistency also come into play.

             When such a texture of connectivity is defined through self-differentiations upon the threshold of divisions-in-kind, a characteristic virtuality of the conceptual is realized through the localized extension of event horizons, and actualized from the singularities thus presented, through zones of indiscernibility. The productive capability of the visual surface, as a mediating substrate, supplies definitional parameters that are sufficient to allow for the reconstruction of assemblages that are linked through the conditions of their production, rather than through an imposed interpretive matrix. Although this demands that any non‑metrical assemblages so encountered must first be deconstructed (in order to establish the range of productive mechanisms holding between the virtual state of their essentially random, metric substrate and, the actualized expression of the non‑metrical composites that such substrates - as visual surfaces – support), much more information can be obtained through this approach than one could ever expect to access in such situations from interpretive approaches derived from perspectival horizons.

             We must concede at this point that questions of meaning are not here of primary importance; rather, we must instead begin to consider those productive mechanisms through which discernable points are differentiated upon a visual surface. Here, we must again localize our analysis within a material sphere related to the physical substrates which support the production of such images as we are examining; and from such a starting point, we must consider a basic functionality which exceeds and subsumes any questions of meaning. We must ask questions about how such production functions in a differential fashion, and about the nature of those processes that are making the surfaces in question somehow differ from themselves yet, are doing so without interrupting the continuity of these surfaces. We must conceptualize such production in terms of composite assemblage; and as such, as a specific form of multiplicity which is characteristic of the temporal rather than of the spatial: in doing so, we must realize that the essential nature of such multiplicities is characteristic of that productive force which we term desire.

            Through such a realization, we will be able to define the contingent nature of those differentiations which establish such composite assemblages in the exteriority of that interconnectedness characteristic of the multiplicities which they form, and which they occur as. Thus will the grammatological functionality of such assemblages be demonstrated in their true anasemantic nature, and the asemiological character of non-metrical image writing be presented in its differential essence. This functionality is remarkably appropriate for producing those territorializations through which the nature of the world is grasped - as ‘events’.