Deleuze and Guattari:
Becoming Intense. Becoming
Animal. Becoming Imperceptible.
A Thousand Plateaus (1988)
Becoming-Animal - the Context
For
French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Felix Guattari animals are an
integral part of their thoughts, so much so that they created a concept
becoming animal. Becoming-animal
presents us with an alternative to identity thinking. Their intention is to
deconstruct dualistic thinking and the desire for people to reject their
preference for rigidly centralised systems of thought by becoming-animal,
‘becoming-minoritarian’.
Deleuze and
Guattari talk about anthropology, myth and folktales providing evidence of a
human tendency for becoming-animal. These becomings are often related to
marginal social groups or movements resulting in ‘an entire politics of
becomings-animal and a politics of sorcery… that are neither those of the
family nor of religion nor of the State. Instead they express minoritarian
groups, or groups that are oppressed, in revolt, or always on the fringe of
recognised institutions’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1988, p.247).
During the post-war era (1960s in particular), a
significant and complex
cultural change took place in the Western world. In France (May 1968),
political unrest saw students and workers protest against the government.
Widespread strikes and riots over a two-week period almost brought down the de
Gaulle government. It was this unrest and the disillusional wake that
influenced the historico-political context of Deleuze and Guattari’s thinking. The Western world experienced counterculture on a large scale. Social movements were born, driven by
racial issues, gender and sexual politics, and a new emphasis on world peace
and the environment (Kurlansky, 2004). These steered the process of reshaping
and changing cultural forms and identities. Public consciousness shifted and
opened the way for a new kind of thinking about many issues – including the way
people regard animals.
The 1960s saw the emergence of the animal rights movement
and by the early 70s, the Animal Liberation Front was firmly established – a
self-declared advocate, representing the case for animals politically and morally. Public
awareness of environmental issues increased along with debates on the ozone,
climate change and globalization.
Becoming-Animal – the Concept
Deleuze and
Guattari’s radical concept of becoming-animal has the potential to lead us far
enough away from being human, allowing us to experience what being other than
human may involve, perhaps even allowing us an understanding of what it is like
to be an animal. Although they do
not provide a definition or description, they present us with a fresh
non-hierarchical model; a rhizomatic[1]
approach that is anti-Freudian and anti-psychoanalytical in nature. Their becoming-animal is a means
of escape from the forces of repression. The authors examine the link between
human and animal, a link that cannot logically be entirely human or entirely
animal. They offer a complex explanation of what they call ‘Becoming-Intense, Becoming-Animal,
Becoming-Imperceptible’, discussed at length in their
book A Thousand Plateaus (1988), summarised briefly below.
Becoming-animal is a process of metaphysical
metamorphosis, where internal forces are seized and expressed through
behaviour, speaking or writing. Becoming-animal is something external to the
production of identities and meanings. Becoming-animal is an invitation – or temptation – that comes from
the animal: a proposal of a kind of un-humaning of the person – a signalling of
ways and means of escaping. Deleuze and Guattari refer to this as
‘deterritorialisation’ or ‘line of flight’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1988, p.174)
the point at which metamorphosis takes place.
Becoming
is outside the human experience but peculiarly must be understood as a being
perfectly ‘real’ - a reality without characteristics.
‘Becomings-animal
are basically of another power, since their reality resides not in an animal
one imitates or to which one corresponds but in themselves, in that which
suddenly sweeps us up and makes us become’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1988, p.279).
Deleuze and Guattari explain: ‘if
becoming-animal does not consist in playing animal or imitating an animal, it
is clear that the human being does not “really” become an animal any more than
the animal “really” becomes something else. Becoming produces nothing other
than itself’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1988, p.237). This metamorphosis is not a change in
identity that would make recognition impossible; becoming is not a case of
moving from one being to another. However, ‘what is real is the becoming itself
– the becoming-animal of the
human is real, even if the animal the human becomes is not’ (Deleuze and
Guattari, 1988, p.237). For them the
world is a dynamic process of becoming.
Becoming-animal is a creative opportunity for
the human being – an opportunity to think of oneself as anything other than
human, anything other than in identity. And because there are no set rules with
becoming, it happens like an event and because of this we can be swept up most
unexpectedly by anything at all.
For Deleuze and Guattari, becoming ‘always
involves a pack – a multiplicity’, and for them, all animals are fundamentally
a pack – including humans. They have pack modes rather than characteristics,
and within every pack is an exceptional individual or an ‘anomalous’. It’s the
‘anomalous’ that invites the human to become-animal – proposes a way out, a
means of escape, a way of unthinking identity and subjectivity. This is the stage where the human encounters
the animal, and enters into an ‘alliance’.
Its ‘reality’ is in the nature of an alliance itself and not in the
transformation. For example, they talk about Captain Ahab’s[2]
alliance with Moby-Dick:
‘Ahab chooses Moby-Dick, in a choosing that exceeds
him and comes from elsewhere, and in so doing breaks with the law of the
whalers according to which one should first pursue the pack’ (Deleuze and
Guattari, 1988, p.244).
Those who have access to this knowledge are
referred to by the authors as ‘sorcerers’.
Sorcerers know that it is ‘with the Anomalous that one enters into alliance
to become-animal’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1988, p.246). They are thought of as exceptional beings who
are already prepared or who are open for such becomings. ‘Sorcerers have always held the anomalous
position, at the edge of the fields or woods. They haunt the fringes’ (Deleuze and Guattari,
1988, p.246). It is at the borders, where the sorcerer encounters the animal
and “enters into a becoming-animal”’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1988, p.244). It is difficult to imagine the sorcerer as
anyone other than an artist or writer or shaman. It is through the creative
process of transformation that the artist and animal become bound up in some
way.
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