Out of
This World: Deleuze and the Philosophy
of Creation
by Peter Hallward
Verso, London and New York, 2006
160 pp. Trade, $90; paper, $25.00
ISBN: 1-84467-079-1; ISBN: 1-84467-555-6.
Reviewed by Eugene Thacker
School of Literature, Communication &
Culture
Georgia Institute of Technology
eugene.thacker@lcc.gatech.edu
Creation is a confusing affair. There
is creation-as-process (e.g. the creation
of the world, e.g., on the seventh day,
clones were made), but there is also creation-as-product
("
my creation!" Victor
Frankenstein says). In addition, creation
is a theological affair (this is its pre-modernity).
In the later Middle Ages, Aquinas would
synthesize the ongoing debates surrounding
creation, distilling them into the triad
of Creator, creation, and creature. Of
course, at the center of the debate was
the nature of the relation between Creator
and creature (was the former totally separate
from the latter, and if so, then in what
way could the human said to be divine?).
Creation is also an aesthetic affair (its
modernity). Kant, in writing about aesthetic
experience, often made reference to the
triad of artist, art-making, and the art
work and yet his primary examples
of the sublime are examples from nature
(e.g. mountains, storms, cliffs, and anything
represented in a Friedrich painting).
Finally, creation is a formal affair (an
ancient problem). The Platonic theory
of forms begins from a distinction between
the immaterial Idea and the particular,
instantiated instance of that Idea, with
the noological process of philosophy situated
between them.
However all of these aspects of creation
presume a context, a container, a "space"
within which creation occurs or takes
place. Even the Biblical injunction implies
this a primary space of nothing
that serves as the platform, or the stage,
for the dramatic unfolding of the substantial
something. Being is assumed to precede
creation; creation happens "after"
being. Aquinas carefully safeguards this
primordial space by granting God a similarly
primordial nature beyond which nothing
can be thought (the first Being, the prime
mover, the most necessary Being, the most
perfect Being, the organizer of hierarchies).
Kant, in stepping back (though only a
little) from theology, would re-cast this
limit as a problem of reason detached
from the companion faculties of the sensibility
and understanding (leading to the contradictory
statements in debates over the nature
of God, the cosmos, and the soul). And,
of course, we know what Plato thought
of poets . . .
Hallwards book can be seen as an
attempt to trace an alternative to this
lineage by focusing on the work of Gilles
Deleuze. The overarching claim Hallward
makes is that, for Deleuze, creation does
not come "after" being, but
instead, creation is being, and
vice-versa being is creative. While
many of the concepts presented in Hallwards
book will be familiar to readers of Deleuze
(e.g. the virtual, becoming, the event,
sense, multiplicity), what Hallward does
is to re-cast such concepts within a larger
framework that is ontological that
of the concept of creation. This project
is noteworthy because much Deleuze scholarship
tends to oscillate between two poles:
those that argue for a Deleuzian ontology
of infinite production, virtual potential,
and difference (the process-Deleuze),
and those that argue for a Deleuzian ontology
of a univocal One-All, and a pure plane
of immanence (the flat-Deleuze). In essence,
Deleuze-the-Heraclitean (everything flows,
everything moves, everything is change)
vs. Deleuze-the-Parmedian (everything
is everywhere, at all times, cutting across
all material-conceptual orders).
Obviously these are not mutually exclusive,
and Hallward turns to the concept of creation
as a way of mediating between these two
perspectives. The overall organization
of Hallwards book offers a kind
of outline of his thesis. The first two
chapters establish the key elements of
Deleuzes ontology for Hallward:
that being equals creation, and that being/creation
exists as such through a modality of the
actual and the virtual. Simplifying to
the extreme, the Deleuzian ontology presented
reads as follows: Being is creative; All
is One (or univocal); All is real but
not actual (that is, virtual recall
that for Deleuze the actual/virtual pair
is different from the real/possible pair
the possible is negated by the
real, while the virtual subsists within
the actual, making for a wholly different
notion of change, modality, and memory).
Finally, the aim (or better, the intension)
of all this is to move "out"
towards the virtual by passing through
the "creatural opacity" of the
actual (56).
This last point is the real contribution
of Hallwards book. And it will perhaps
raise some controversy in the reading
of Deleuze (if such a thing is possible).
Hallward refers to Deleuze as a "redemptive"
thinker, one whose thought is always denying
all moves towards transcendence, but whose
thought always moves "out" but
not necessarily "beyond" (64,
80) the actual. Chapters three and four
detail this movement (from the virtual
to the actual, and from the actual to
the virtual). The way in which this is
achieved is through Deleuzes notion
of "counter-actualization,"
a kind of negation that is proliferation,
a "creative subtraction." Again
this emphasis on counter-actualization
is an important contribution, for too
often is the Deleuzian notion of the virtual
read in additive or supplementary ways.
The virtual is not added to or even in
excess of the actual in Hallwards
reading; rather the virtual is precisely
what is subtracted from the actual in
order that the actual can open onto the
virtual.
The final chapters discuss creating-as-such,
and focus on art and philosophy, or affect
and concept. Do these constitute a kind
of technics of redemption for Deleuze?
This question is left open by Hallward,
as is the question of the role of modality
in Deleuzes thought (in particular,
the way in which the Deleuzian ontology
of being = creation sort of jumps over
the question of becoming). But, amidst
the relatively large output of Deleuze
scholarship, Hallwards book stands
out for its perceptive articulation of
Deleuzes philosophy through the
single theme of creation. In addition,
I would also argue that it points to another,
rather under-explored area in Deleuzianism.
Deleuzianism in its British and American
variants is largely split between the
sciences (studies linking Deleuze to complexity
science) and the humanities (studies emphasizing
Deleuzes phenomenology of affect).
Hallwards study points to another
approach that of theology
one in which the question of Deleuzes
"vitalism" (as Alain Badiou
has perceptively noted) is brought together
with Deleuzes emphasis on "pure
immanence."