Deleuze's Philosophy of Dance
Part I
Spinozistic Affection Waves
and the Bodily Expression of
Iggy Pop's Body without Organs
To my knowledge, Deleuze does not articulate his philosophical ideas regarding dance [but my knowledge is severely limited.] This entry is the first in a series about Deleuze's implicit philosophy of dance. My inspiration is dancer Richard Stadler. In another entry I will say more about him and his works. For now I invite him to contribute his expertise. I will outline some general observations about Deleuze's Spinozistic notion of expression. I regard it as a criteria for artistic expression. Then I discuss Spinoza's continuous variations of intensive affections. I will try to assimilate them to the "waves of intensity" that bring-about a Body without Organs (BwO). My hope is that Richard can help us answer the question: Does the BwO dance?
We begin with Spinoza. All of reality is expression.
What is doing that expression we may call God or substance. [This God is not the anthropomorphic God of religion. He is God as a rational idea. He is what is most perfect. Hence he is infinite and whole.] So God is essentially all of reality, and he expresses himself through an infinity of qualities. Consider first that things around us extend in space. So one way we can conceive of the fundamental substance is as something that extends. We call this attribute Extension. Also consider that we have ideas for the things around us. Perhaps there is a table sitting before us that extends from end-to-end. We also have an idea of that table. So another way that we may conceive God or substance is in terms of the world of ideas. We call this attribute Thought.
But, God is infinite. So there are infinitely more ways that we can conceive of God. He expresses himself in all these infinite attributes. But we only have access to two: Thought and Extension.
By means of a complex argument, we can know that there is this infinity of other properties to God. [For more, see this entry and this one.] But we do not know explicitly what they are. So when we for example see the table, we see God explicitly manifesting himself in the realm of Thought and Extension. But we also know that implicitly he expresses himself in all the other attributes that we cannot know explicitly. So in other words, there are two sides to expression. There is explicit expression and implicit expression. The implicit expression is no less there. We know that it is fully there. But it is just implied. When we later discuss the BwO, we will see that it is not fully expressive, because it does not express itself explicitly.
Everything in substance has more-or-less power to survive. And when bodies and objects make contact with each other, they can increase or decrease each other's power. Deleuze has us imagine we are sitting in the dark. Someone walks in and turns-on the lights. Consider these possibilities: 1) We were meditating in the dark. When the lights came on, our concentration was broken. This decreases our power. Or,
2) We were looking for our glasses in the dark. When the lights came on, we saw them. This increases our power.
In either case we were affected. What is important to note is that when we speak of affections, we are not talking about them as having different characters, as if we might say: this color affected me in a red way, and that rock affected me in a hard way. Rather, our affections are matters of degree. They are more-or-less, depending on how much they increase or decrease our power. We saw also that in the case of the light-switch, the change in power happened instantly. But Deleuze elsewhere describes such affections as happening through continuous variations. He says we never cease passing from one degree of power or perfection to another "however miniscule the difference, and this kind of melodic line of continuous variation will define affect (affectus)... [même minuscule, et c’est cette espèce de ligne mélodique de la variation continue qui va définir l’affect (affectus)...] ["Cours Vincennes: 24/01/1978"]
So how can these changes be both continuous and discrete? Consider when we swing a ball on a rope.
If we were to cut the string at any point, it would fly off at a right angle to the string. So it is always tending some different direction depending on its position. And the ball moves through an infinity of points. So there are an infinity of discrete different tendencies the ball passes through. Although the circle is a simple example, we may determine the tendency of the ball by finding the ratio of two numerical values that have diminished to the infinitely small [that is, by applying differential calculus.] Because these values are so diminished, they are nothing in comparison to the larger extensive values. They are inextensive values. However, the ratio of one value to another produces a finite value. [I suggest Leibniz' illuminating demonstration.] In this case it tells us the angle that the ball is tending.
We can consider then our affections as being curves or waves. They wave up or down, depending on whether they increase or decrease our power. But the question is not how high or how low the wave is. The question is, how strong is its tendency to change at any one instant? Do the changes in our power increase quickly at one time, slowly at others? In other words, are there variations in the rates of change? If these speed-changes happened in a predictable way, we would become adapted to them. Hence for the affection waves to have the most intensity, they must be unpredictable. We see then the role of chance.
So we are continually being affected. These affections increase or decrease our power. They increase or decrease at a certain rate. That rate itself can increase or decrease. The changes happen at different speeds. But those speeds change. Hence there are accelerations and decelerations. The more pronounced and unpredictable those speed changes, the more intense the affection. So one instant of affection is not more intense because it increases our power more. An instant of affection is intense if there is a large unpredictable change between its tendency or impulsion and the following instant's tendency or impulsion. In other words, the more deformation in the rates of change, the more intense the affection.
Now, we are interested in bodily expression. And I have selected Iggy Pop as my illustration. Here he explains how he developed the art of giving people intense affections.
In Deleuze's book on painter Francis Bacon, he writes about waves of intensity. Like Spinoza's affection waves, these waves are involved in the sensations we give each other, and their amplitude varies. So the intensity waves are greater or less in amplitude. But their amplitude does not determine their level of intensity. The waves are intense when their variations are irregular. While painting, Francis Bacon would deform his figure. We cannot recognize it, but we know it is something, and it is visually powerful. So it affects us profoundly, but we do not know exactly what we are looking at. It affects us to different degrees at different phases of our experiencing it, as our senses and minds struggle to agree on what we see. The irregular rhythm of affection disorganizes our bodies. Let's consider for example Bacon's Figure at a Washbasin, 1976 [click on image for enlargement].
Gaze at the body. As our eyes move around the deformed figure, perhaps our stomachs turn with dizziness at faster or slower speeds depending on where we look and how fast our eyes move. So already we have one affection wave that we feel. The irregularities in the speed are already a source of intensity. The speed of affection is one thing. But the variations in speed are internal differences. The wave's speed differs from itself as we look about the white man. So the more pronounced and unpredictable these internal differences are, the more intensity. Thus intensity is a matter of difference, and differences in difference. Or we could say variations in variation, or changes of change. The way that the man affects us changes. But that changing changes, just as a car accelerates and decelerates. The distances we travel change with the speed. So speed is one level of change. But we accelerate and decelerate. That changes the first level of change (speed). So that means not only do our distances-traveled change (with the speed), also, these changes themselves change (with accelerations and decelerations).
We might consider now more of Iggy Pop's bodily expressions. Clearly deformations of movement are involved. But that is a superficial observation. What we are looking-for are changes in the speeds of the affection-waves that he sends us.
Speaking for myself, the irregularities in the speed of affection were evident. And Pop communicated bodily intensity to me. It could be that it is on account of irregular speed changes.
Bacon painted. Pop moved. One is a permanent image. The other is motion changing over time. One important common feature is the spasm. Deleuze writes that such bodies exert themselves with a very intense effort. It is as if the body wants to escape itself through some specific orifice that breaks-open on its surface. These intense spasmodic bodies are affected at such irregular patterns that they no longer work organically as they normally would. The organs that had a specific role fall into chaotic functioning with the other organs. But what defines an organ is its functioning. So when the functioning becomes radically irregular and disjointed, then the body technically loses its organic parts. It becomes a Body without Organs. But like we said, the body tries to escape itself spasmodically. And it does so by escaping through an organ that erupts at the surface. The location for this new organ depends on waves of disorganization flowing through the body, and where they happen to find an escape. More concretely, this could be the mouth. When we vomit, our mouth becomes an anus, so to speak. If the forces of the body find their exit in the mouth, than the temporary organ for spasmodic escape will form there.
We will observe the following things in this next clip. We see firstly the rip in Pop's chest, as though his body were bursting-out from the inside. Also we will notice the speed changes. At the end is something interesting. We see how Pop places the microphone-wire in his mouth. Clearly this organ's functioning has been made irregular.
I draw our attention also to the spasmodic speed changes that Pop exhibits here at the song's close.
For these reason, we might find Iggy Pop to exhibit traits of a Body without Organs.
Deleuze also writes that BwOs can exchange their intensive waves with each other. This brings about a "conjunction of flows" that is a "continuum of intensities." So the BwO is always in a collectivity. It is in a totality of BwOs who exchange their intensive waves. [For citations and further explanations, see this entry on the BwO.] Notice in the following clip how Pop seems to merge his bodily intensities into the crowd. To my ears he seems to be telling the woman to kiss his blood. Apparently a hole has ruptured in his skin. We might stretch our imagination to see this as illustrating the exchange of intensities between BwOs.
But unlike Iggy Pop the rock singer, a true BwO is not able to communicate using language. They would speak only sounds and gibberish. [For more on the BwO's schizophrenic speech, see this entry.] And even if we only looked at Pop's body, we would see that he is not "saying" anything explicit to us. This is not expression. For, expression requires both implicit intensities and explicit extensities, as we learned from Spinoza. So I will address some questions for Richard's expertise:
1) Is Pop dancing? Are there other "deformative" performers like him?
2) In dance, is there something being "said"? We compare dance as we know it with random spasmodic motions which are exhibitions of implicit internal intensities. It would seem that one could for example tell a story, or express some recognizable emotion using dance. Or perhaps even a dancer could communicate concepts.
Knowing these things will take us to the next step in analyzing Deleuze's philosophy of dance.
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