Valentine Moulard-Leonard - BERGSON-DELEUZE ENCOUNTERS PDF

S SUUNNY Y s se erri ie es s i inn CCoonntte emmp poorraarry y F Frre enncchh TThhoouugghhtt
S
S
U
U
N
N
Y
Y
BERGSONDELEUZE
BERGSONDELEUZE
s
s
ENCOUNTERS
ENCOUNTERS
e
e
r
r
i
i
Transcendental
TranscendentalExperience
Experienceand
andthe
the
e
e
s
s
Thought
Thoughtofofthe
theVirtual
Virtual
i
i
n
n
C
C
o
o
n
n
t
t
e
e
m
m
p
p
o
o
r
r
a
a
r
r
y
y
F
F
r
r
e
e
n
n
c
c
h
h
T
T
h
h
Vale
Valentine
ntine Moul
Moular
ard-Leonar
d-Leonardd
o
o
u
u
g
g
h
h
t
t
S SUUNNY Y s se erri ie es s i inn CCoonntte emmp poorraarry y F Frre enncchh TThhoouugghhtt

BERGSON-DELEUZE ENCOUNTERS
SUNY series in Contemporary French Thought
David Pettigrew and Franois Raffoul, editors
The Creation of the World or Globalization by Jean-Luc Nancy, translated

and with an introduction by David Pettigrew and Franois Raffoul
BERGSON-DELEUZE ENCOUNTERS
Transcendental Experience
and the Thought of the Virtual
Valentine Moulard-Leonard
State University of New York Press

Published by
State University of New York Press
Albany
2008 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever

without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic,
electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise
without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact

State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production by Eileen Meehan

Marketing by Michael Campochiaro
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Moulard-Leonard,Valentine, 1972
Bergson-Deleuze encounters : transcendental experience and the thought of the virtual /
Valentine Moulard-Leonard.
p. cm. (SUNY series in contemporary french thought)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7914-7531-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Bergson, Henri, 18591941. 2. Deleuze,
Gilles, 19251995. 3. Philosophy, French20th century. I.Title.
B2430.B43M67 2008
194dc22
2007042891
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Papa et Maman
This page intentionally left blank.
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction.Virtual Empiricism:
The Revaluation of the Transcendental 1
Briefly Mapping Our Experimental Journey 5
1. Bergsons Genealogy of Consciousness 11

The Immediate Data of Consciousness 12
The Role of the Body 19
Pure Perception and Beyond 24
2. Introducing Memory:
From the Psychological to the Virtual 33
Memory and the Brain:Which Survival? 35
Folding Over:The Psychological Is Also
Necessarily Virtual 44
3. The Unconscious as Ontology of the Virtual 55

From Dualism to Difference 55
The lan Vital or the Ontologization of Duration 58
Memory as Virtual Coexistence 64
Sense and Sensibility: Bergsonian Positivism 74
Contents
4. Between Bergson and Deleuze:

The Method of Intuition as
Transcendental/Virtual Empiricism 89
Absolute Movement and Intuition 89
Intuition and Superior Empiricism 100
5. Cinematic Thought:
The Deleuzean Image and the Crystals of Time 105
Why the Cinema? 106
Toward the Crystal-Image: A Vision of the
Genesis of Time 112
6. Proust and Thought:

Death, Art, and the Adventures of the Involuntary 123
Death Is the Truth of Thought 124
How Might Death Be Put to Work? 129
Art as the Production of Essences 135
Conclusion. Bergson-Deleuze Encounters:

Machinic Becomings and Virtual Materialsm 141
What Does Deleuze Find in Bergson? 142
Why the Image? 144
Why Read Deleuze after Bergson? 146
Which Machinic Becomings? 148
Closing 152
Notes 155
References 179
Index 187
viii
Acknowledgments
The Philosophy Department of the University of Memphis has served as my

adopted home and chosen family for almost nine yearsfrom my first fum-
bling attempts at philosophizing fresh off a plane from Paris in 1997 until my
last two years as a visiting assistant professor. Like all the best families, it has
seemed dysfunctional at times but loving and respectful always. It has certainly
sustained my intellectual growth and has nourished me in many other but no
less important ways. I will always be affectionately grateful to everyone there.
This path has been strewn with inspiring encounters with fascinating, pas-
sionate, and brilliant thinkers for which I feel blessed. Leonard Lawlor, at Mem-
phis, has been my most consistent, faithful, and influential guide throughout. I
am thankful to him for having set by example the highest standards of rigor and
creativity in thought. Keith Ansell-Pearson, at Warwick, not only strengthened
and enlivened my passion for Bergson and Deleuze but welcomed me into his
home for three months and provided me with a rare instance of great intellec-
tual and personal charisma. James Williams, at the University of Dundee, offered
me the rare opportunity to spend a year on a postdoctoral fellowship in Scot-
land to continue my research and broaden my horizons. He also fostered fur-
ther confidence in my abilities as a thinker and provided a bright model of san-
ity and simplicity in the midst of the often overwhelming world of academia.
Robert Bernasconi has remained throughout a persistent and highly influential
inspiration. I hope to never lose sight in myself of the unfailing commitment
to justice, humanity, care, responsibility, and fulfillment that he tirelessly culti-
vates in himself, his students, and his colleagues. His humility, authenticity, and
enlightened generosity are truly to be admired and prized. During her too-
brief stay at Memphis, Sara Beardsworth fostered a rich, brilliant, and original
atmosphere of truly demanding but always friendly and loving honesty toward
self and others. I will always be thankful to her for not letting me get away with
denial and self-deception. I am grateful to Mary-Beth Mader for the sparkling
ix
Acknowledgments
intelligence she generously spreads, for her down-to-earth good-heartedness,

and for her friendly encouragement. Richard Beardsworth, at the American
University in Paris, is responsible for having sparked in the wide-eyed under-
graduate that I was the love and fascination for the rigors of philosophical
thinking that have sustained me in the last twelve years. I also hold him respon-
sible for having opened the doors of Memphis and, beyond that, of America for
me. I cannot imagine what my life would have turned out to be without his
confidence in my abilities.
I thank Nancy Simco for her unflinching dedication to promoting and
defending the best interests of her students and colleagues. Her personal invest-
ment in upholding the most supportive, caring, and respectful professional and
social environment cannot be underestimated. And I am eternally grateful to
Lisa Andrews for the bureaucratic miracles she has repeatedly performed on my
behalf over the years. Her humble, cheerful, yet fiercely efficient assistance has
turned many an administrative nightmare into a breezy walk in the park.This
is definitely no light achievement.
I am thankful to Franois Raffoul and Jane Bunker at State University of
New York Press for agreeing to publish this book. And a heartfelt thank you to
Anna Esquivel for all her invaluable editorial help.
My dear friends and fellow graduate students from the Memphis Philoso-
phy Department should know that I could not have made it through without
them. Donna Marcano, Ann Murphy, Stacy Keltner, Rex Gilligand . . . we sure
had a fabulous time together working, partying, struggling, laughing, and think-
ing hard.You are all brilliant, fabulous, and beautiful people.
I am deeply grateful to Diane Brandon and Wayne Knerr. Because of their
enlightened wisdom I have been able to maintain the precious (if relative) men-
tal and spiritual health that this and future endeavors require.
To Jack, Dave, and Rico I send a heartfelt thank-you for having lightened
up my Sundays and for having repeatedly rescued my brain from overheating
with the joyful beats and metaphysical rhythms we shared.
I thank my family for the love and encouragement they have generously
bestowed upon me and for the trust in my abilities that they have never ceased
to expound. From all the way across the big pond, they have made sure that I
never felt forsaken in this strange land that fails to grasp the magical virtues of
mold-flavored cheese.
Finally, I thank my dear, sweet, wonderful husband David. His strength, tal-
ent, and free spirit never cease to amaze and inspire me. His love, trust, and
understanding fill my soul and nourish my body, always. He has supported me
throughout this process with otherworldly patience. I adore him.
x
INTRODUCTION
Virtual Empiricism:
The Revaluation
of the Transcendental
To philosophize would be easy if ready-made ideas were not con-

stantly inserting themselves between the things and us.
Henri Bergson, Une pense de Bergson in Mlanges
The transcendental form of a faculty is indistinguishable from its

disjointed, superior or transcendent exercise. Transcendent in no
way means that the faculty addresses itself to objects outside the
world but, on the contrary, that it grasps that in the world which
concerns it exclusively and brings it into the world. The transcen-
dent exercise must not be traced from the empirical exercise pre-
cisely because it apprehends that which cannot be grasped from the
point of view of common sense, that which measures the empirical
operation of all the faculties according to that which pertains to
each, given the form of their collaboration. That is why the tran-
scendental is answerable to a superior empiricism which alone is
capable of exploring its domain and region.
Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition
Until Gilles Deleuze set in motion the revival of Henri Bergsons philosophy
beginning in the late fifties,1 the Bergson rage of the teens had receded into
1
Bergson-Deleuze Encounters
the unconscious depths of European thought. Nevertheless, Bergsons contri-

bution to the posing of the philosophical problems central to contemporary
philosophy is inestimable. His novel concept of duration (la dure), the nexus of
his new philosophy, and his innovative methodology of metaphysical prag-
matism have challenged our thinking of time, and they continue to defy any
established idea or philosophical system concerning consciousness, perception,
memory, knowledge, life, evolution, reality, causality, and freedom. Bergson has
not only redefined the terms of the relations between science and philosophy,
but his political engagement also has contributed to shaping the geopolitical
face of the Western world.2 In fact, both his declarations and his practice of phi-
losophy testify to the necessary relevance of concrete life to metaphysical
thought and of philosophy to social and political life. This indisputably makes
him one of our most significant contemporary interlocutors.
While Deleuzes somewhat unorthodox philosophical practice has capti-
vated, puzzled, and sometimes irritated many, much serious work still needs to
be done for his legacy to achieve the position it deserves. To be sure, anyone
who has ever attempted to grapple with Deleuze can testify to the extreme dif-
ficulty of his thought.This difficulty is as much due to its innovative character
as it is due to the vertiginous wealth of intertextual and interdisciplinary refer-
ences pulsing through his writings. Metaphysics, the history of philosophy,
mathematics, physics, psychoanalysis, literature, cinema, painting, music, and
politics all figure as major, lively, rambunctious characters in his playful, dra-
matic, yet deeply scholarly probings into the nature of reality and thought, the
eventfulness of life, materiality, and subjectivity. Although Deleuze seems to be
finding his inspiration in and somehow responding to every thing, idea, work
of art, or school of thought he comes across, some salient points and clearly
determined series arise from these avid encounters; Nietzsche, Spinoza, Kant,
Flix Guatarri, Proust, Francis Bacon, Blanchot come to mind, and, of course,
Bergson.This books ambition is to shed some light on the intricate relation of
creative involution that ties Deleuze to Bergson and that sweeps them both
along in a common, though not undifferentiated, bloc of becoming.3
The major insight that has driven this project from the outset is the real-
ization that these two thinkers share a more or less explicit dedication to a
revaluation of the transcendental conditions informing the Kantian and phe-
nomenological image of experience. As it copies the supposedly a priori con-
ditions of experience from the given (e.g., in order for this kind of sensible
intuition to be possible, such and such formal conditions have to be there in
the first place), transcendental philosophy simply forecloses any account of the
production of the new from the outset. In response, Bergson and Deleuze wish
for philosophy to procure conditions that may still be called transcendental
(since they lay the ground and the reason for the particular kind of experiences
we have) but that would open up experience to novelty and to other dimen-
sions of the real rather than closing it down and confining it to some phe-
2
Introduction
nomenal realm postulated by the dictates of common sense.This means that the
nature of time and space, perception and subjectivity, knowledge, truth, and,
ultimately, thinking, is at issue here.
The key word informing this revaluation of the transcendental is the vir-
tual. I intend to show that Bergsons metaphysical pragmatism and Deleuzes
transcendental (or superior) empiricism could equally be called virtual
empiricism. In effect, it is in Deleuzes encounter with Bergsonism that the
philosophical significance of the term virtual is rooted. This, however, should
not overshadow the irreducible originality of their respective thought.
While Kants invaluable contributions to modern thought have become

inseparable from the idea of a Copernican revolution (i.e., let us suppose that
objects are a function of our cognitive faculties, rather than assuming that our
knowledge must adjust itself to objects4),William James has suggested that the
Bergsonian methodology that Matter and Memory introduces also constitutes, in
its own right, yet another Copernican revolution.5 In fact, I want to add, it
amounts to a Copernican revolution of the Copernican revolution, as Bergson
shows that Kants divisions between the phenomenal and the noumenaland
his consequent affirmation that knowledge cannot possibly reach beyond sen-
sible experienceare themselves contingent. Relying on his groundbreaking
notion of duration to rework the differences and relations between matter and
perception, consciousness and memory, and spirit and experience, Bergson
concludes that it is only abstractly that we can separate brain, body and world,
as Keith Ansell-Pearson explains (2002, 12).We will see that immeasurable con-
sequences follow from this.
The main consequence of the Bergsonian revolution is that the conditions
of experience can no longer fit in the Kantian or traditional phenomenologi-
cal framework. Since, for Bergson, the conditions of experience are no longer
external to it, he in effect provides us with a new conception of experience as
integral experience.6 This in turn signifies the opening up of the realm of
knowledge to include the dimension of spirit (lesprit)7 and the redefinition of
philosophy as methodological intuition, driven by an effort to reach beyond
(dpasser) the human condition (2001b, 1425/1965, 193).
In Deleuzean terms, we could say that the main effect of this Bergsonian
revolution consists in the elaboration of a plane of immanence. This plane is
neither a thing nor a form, neither objective nor subjective, neither indetermi-
nate nor fully determined, neither a simple whole nor a part, neither material
nor spiritual. Real without being actual, ideal without being abstract,8 it is a
virtual field of vibrational potentials, of preindividual singularities out of which
the thought of pure immanence must be produced. One of the internal con-
ditions of this production lies with a certain kind of experimentation, a certain
kind of lived reality.While it is lived, it cannot be experienced if experience
here means conscious representation. Deleuze calls it the transcendental lived
3
reality (le vcu transcendental). Like the Bergsonian integral experience, then, this
experimentation is conditioned by the inhuman. Eventually, Deleuze will use
the word machinic to refer to this immanent process of production by means
of unconscious and impersonal experimentation. Here it may seem tempting
to take a shortcut and read Deleuze as a raving materialist. I contend that this
cannot be the case, as not only is he careful to distinguish between machinism
and mechanism (Bergsons greatest enemy), he also never separates the machine
from its virtual becomings. But a new conception of matter is definitely at stake
in Deleuzes appropriation of the virtual.
Most generally speaking, the virtual coincides with an immanent plane of
self-alteration that subtends and traverses all beings, thereby constantly inform-
ing and deforming the real. It challenges all ready-made conceptions of iden-
tity from the outset. The virtual thus necessarily carries us away from con-
sciousness-centered accounts of time and subjectivity, as it is indissociably
linked to the unconscious, which is to say to the impotence (impuissance) that
lies at the core of thought, at once grounding and ungrounding it. As such, it
not only problematizes transcendental idealism but also any philosophy that sit-
uates itself within the Cartesian dualistic problematic, be it in its idealist, mate-
rialist, existentialist, or phenomenological shape.
Hoping to limit the scope of this potentially endless inquiry, I have cho-
sen to engage in a selective reading of both thinkers, more interpretive than
critical in nature.While Bergsons engagement with the sciences of his time is
visionary in many respects, it might appear dated to some today. I am happy to
leave to other, more qualified scholars and/or scientists the task of unraveling
the potential inadequacies of his accounts of perception, memory, and the
brain, for instance, in light of recent discoveries in the neurosciences.9 Similarly,
while I have no doubt that Deleuzes creative appropriation of quantum physics
and differential calculus (most notably in the fourth and fifth chapters of Dif-
ference and Repetition) is highly relevant to the metaphysical issues he takes on, I
harbor no ambition of delving into any critical assessment of this move.10 As is
typical with both Bergsons and Deleuzes writings, many different points of
entry into their thought are provided, and they all are equally valid.
Because Bergsons writings are still very little known in contemporary
academia (and still relegated to a minor, if not nonexistant, position in most
curriculums), and because despite their exemplary precision and clarity they
have traditionally been subject to numerous misinterpretations, I have chosen
to offer a fairly straightforward reading of them on their own terms.11 In contrast,
the Deleuze scholarship has exploded in the last five years or so, and the topic
of his connection to Bergsonism has attracted much attention. However, much
of this literature has tended to either focus on Deleuzes work with Guatarri or
on Difference and Repetition.12 Here, in addition to Deleuzes explicit dealings
with Bergson, I have sought to bring out the centrality of his books on the cin-
ema for reconstructing the Bergsonian landscape hosting Deleuzes own philo-
4
Introduction
sophical peregrinations. I argue that it is also there that the point of diffraction
between the two thinkers becomes most visible. Finally, while Deleuzes
explicit criticisms of his guide are extremely rare, I have found a few cues in
Difference and Repetition and Cinema 2 that pointed to the nonphilosophical
image of thought Deleuze finds in Proust as a necessary complementin the
shape of what could perhaps be called an ungroundingto the Bergsonian
account.With the cinema books of the early eighties and Deleuzes 1964 Proust
and Signs (revised and expanded in 1970 and 1976), I am taking a scenic road
through Deleuzes Bergsonisma road that allows for different, yet no less cru-
cial, vistas into Deleuzes own account of the emergence of thought.
Briefly Mapping Our Experimental Journey
I begin by focusing on Bergsons genealogy of consciousness in terms of the

theory of pure perception he proposes in his 1896 Matter and Memory. There
I argue that Bergson is able to overcome the sterile paradoxes that plague dual-
ism on the basis of a displacement of the mind/body problem. This displace-
ment (and the concomitant resolution) of the problem of dualism takes place
in Bergsons seminal distinction between two kinds of multiplicities, namely,
the actual, quantitative, and homogenous multiplicity that corresponds to
space, on the one hand, and the virtual, qualitative, and heterogeneous multi-
plicity coinciding with duration, on the other.Arguably, the sterility of the tra-
ditional dualistic problematic is attributable to the assumption, shared by ide-
alists and realists alike, that matter and spirit are two separate substancesthat,
in other words, they are inscribed in a relation of transcendence. By shifting
to a vision of the real, with its two sides (spatial and temporal, actual and vir-
tual, quantitative and qualitative) in terms of different kinds of multiplicities,
Bergson is able to bridge the otherwise insuperable gap between the two. Mat-
ter and spirit then turn out to be two opposite poles, intensities, rhythms, or
levels of contraction/expansion of the same, one, underlying, virtual, imma-
nent duration. The vital dynamism of this vision may fully come into focus
when one imagines the universe as a giant beating heart, endlessly contracting
and expanding.
This vision of the real implies that one begins with mobility rather than
inertia.As Bergson untiringly reminds us, one may very well analyze movement
into inert positions, but one will never reach mobility by juxtaposing positions.
On the basis of this vision, Bergson reinterprets consciousness as motility and
presenceor a diminution, a closing down of the open whole of absolute
movementwhile unconsciousness coincides with the ever-excessive open
whole of virtual memory or of the preservation of the past in the present. Both
heterogeneity and continuity are accounted for. Bergsons seminal distinction
between the two multiplicities thus allows for a displacement of the traditional
5
mind/body problem (together with, in its wake, the problems of freedom and
causality) onto the terrain of the relation between continuity and discontinu-
ity, extensity and duration, present and past, perception and memory, and con-
sciousness and unconsciousness.
The second chapter tackles the original theory of memory that Bergson
elaborates in the central chapters of Matter and Memory. I give a detailed account
of the issue of the survival of the past subtending Bergsons approach to the
relationship between memory and the brain.As he argues that the preservation
of the past in the present (i.e., memory) must be thought independently of any
material inscription within the cerebral matter, I conclude that for him the
actual epistemological domain of our psychological determinations must nec-
essarily be referred back to, or folded over, the metaphysical realm of our vir-
tual conditions. Once again, his original notion of duration qua both hetero-
geneous and continuous multiplicity will provide the key to the immanent yet
nonreductive relation he establishes between epistemology, psychology, and
metaphysics. This relation finds its reason in Bergsons demonstration of the
positive existence of the unconscious. For him, the unconscious is not only psy-
chological but also ontological.As a pure past that preserves itself in itself, it also
is the virtual point of contact between the two multiplicitiesthe point at
which dualistic dichotomies become nuances of difference. If being endures, if
it is not to be collapsed into an eternal present, then it must be equated with
this virtual unconscious. Put otherwise, the virtual is necessarily of an ontolog-
ical nature, just as being, qua survival, must be primarily virtual.
The first two chapters are mainly concerned with following Bergson in his
effort to disencumber our minds from all the ready-made ideas and all the
intellectual illusions that stand in the way of philosophythat is, of the effort
to reach beyond the contingent limitations that define a certain conception of
the human condition.With the unmixing of psychology and metaphysics, the
way is finally cleared for the radically new philosophy Bergson wants to create.
This new philosophy consists in the solution of the problems inherent in dual-
ism by way of a dissolution of its false problems. Bergson is then able to pose
the true problems at stake (empiricism) to finally solve them (by way of the vir-
tual).This is what the third chapter tries to convey.
With this unmixing, Bergson shows that the Kantian account of the tran-
scendental conditions of experience ultimately relies on the confusion between
contingency and necessity: these supposedly transcendental, impervious, and
necessary conditions that remain external to what they conditionnamely, the
homogenous forms of time and space, which in Kants view are themselves out-
side of experienceindeed turn out to be merely contingent on certain intel-
lectual and utilitarian habits of the mind that can and must be overcome.
Kant equates the intellect or the understanding with the necessary forms
of all possible experience and concludes that all intuitions must be sensible or
infra-intellectual.13 In other words, in the confrontation between the real and
6
Introduction
the intellect, it is the latter, in its fixing, delimiting, and symbolizing activity, that
has the last word. In contrast, Bergson shows that the intelligences negative
activity must be the negation of something, and that this something we must
grasp in some sense in order to delimit it in the first place. Kants reliance on
possibility implies an unbridgeable gap between contingency (or the possible,
the conditioned, experience, knowledge, sensibility) and necessity (the uncon-
ditioned conditions, reason, the unknowable, the supersensible). Bergsons
appeal to virtuality allows him to establish a passage between contingency and
necessity: because actual consciousness necessarily involves memory, it coin-
cides with duration; because duration, like life, is a virtual multiplicity, it is the
point of contact with the vital order of evolution; because evolution is creative,
it involves a vital impulse (lan vital) that can no more be reduced to material
determinism than it collapses with traditional teleology. For Bergson, then, the
relation between thought and things cannot simply be a matter of the under-
standing imposing its a priori categories on the real. More profoundly, it must
and can be traced to an intuition of the vital itself. Ultimately, it is for the sake
of this affirmation of the reality of a supra-intellectual intuition (that nonethe-
less remains continuous with sensible intuition) that Bergsonism repudiates
transcendental idealism.
By focusing on Bergsons method of intuition, the fourth chapter tries to
recapitulate the most important Bergsonian insights concerning the relation
he sees between perception and memory, the psychological and the meta-
physical, and the actual and the virtual. This relation is one of
contraction/expansion of the virtual. I argue that it is here that the hypothe-
sis of a point of indiscernibility between Bergsons and Deleuzes virtual
empiricism is most likely to take hold. For both thinkers, the formula of this
new philosophical method could be stated as follows:The transcendental con-
ditions of experience are no longer abstract conditions of possible experience,
they are virtual conditions of real experience. As such, they are not transcen-
dent or baggy; rather, they are immanent or tightly fitted to what they condi-
tion. They are no longer Kant-like conditions of all possible experience in
general; rather, they are the conditions of experience in all its peculiarities, in
its uniqueness or singularity. In fact, the conditions of real experience are no
broader than what they condition, because experience reaches them by broad-
ening itself out (expansion) by means of intuition, by opening itself up to other
rhythms of duration, to the inhuman or the superhumanin a word, by going
beyond the human condition, but doing so immanently. Thus, Deleuze con-
cludes,The conditions of experience are less determined in concepts than in
pure percepts. And, while these percepts themselves are united in a concept, it
is a concept modeled on the thing itself, which only suits that thing (1998a,
19/1988, 28, emphasis added). Here Deleuzes appropriation of the Bergsonian
method of intuition not only confirms the overcoming of transcendental ide-
alism brought about by virtual empiricismthings are no longer modeled after
7
concepts, but concepts are modeled after thingsit also strikingly resonates
with Deleuzes own definition of philosophy as the creation of concepts.14
The fifth chapter inaugurates a series of more original and exploratory
reflections on Deleuzes original brand of Bergsonism on my part. Although
Deleuze teases out of Bergson the new conception of the transcendental nec-
essary for his own philosophy of pure immanence, he appropriates the
Bergsonian insights to radicalize the notion and the status of transcendental
experience.The result is a conception of the virtualand therefore, of thought
and its conditionsthat must be distinguished from Bergsons. In the final
analysis, we could say that the ultimate point of diffraction between Bergson
and Deleuze lies in their respective conceptions of life, being, or timewhich
is to say the human condition.
On the one hand, Bergsons conception of the virtual privileges continu-
ity, as his founding notion of duration and his ontology of memory testify to.
For him, transcendental experience is the experience of memory, of the preser-
vation of the past in the present, of time as the interiority in which we live: in
a word, it is the experience of survival. For Deleuze, on the other hand, tran-
scendental experience is the experience of death: a minute freed from the
order of time, as Proust put it. Following the great modern art, cinema, and
literature, Deleuze thus privileges discontinuity and fragmentation over conti-
nuity. I argue that this is where art takes up the baton from philosophy, where
Proust and the great modern cinema take up the baton from Bergson, where
the pre-World War II humanist hope for progress still held by Bergson is
replaced with the postwar vision of a world reduced to chaos and crumbs.The
whole has been shattered, the human has been demoted from its pedestal, and
the only junction between the human and the world now lies in their shared
positive fragmentation. But for Deleuze, this transcendental experience also is
the experience of becoming, because it coincides with experimentation as the
very force of time (and not only of its effects): the empirical cycles of creation
and destruction are shown to be conditioned by deeper, machinic processes
governed by a necessary absence of unity.And of course we must keep in mind
that for Deleuze this fundamental fragmentation of the world, the self, and time
also coincides with the future, with the untimely event of A life.
The fifth chapter is dedicated to an examination of this point of diffraction
between Bergson and Deleuze based in the latters extensive study of the cin-
ema. Through his reinterpretation of the status of the cinematographic image,
Deleuze launches into a full-blown revaluation of the Bergsonian metaphysics
of movement and time.This yields a vision of the very genesis of timeits con-
stant splitting into past and future.Arguably, it is this properly genetic dimension
of time that was missing in Bergson.15 Of course, what is also at stake here is the
distinction that must be introduced between Bergons and Deleuzes respective
accounts of the emergence of subjectivity, knowledge, truth, and thought.A fur-
ther exploration of this distinction is the object of our last chapter.
8
Introduction
In the sixth chapter, through an inquiry into the Proustian influence on

Deleuzes philosophy, I strive to bring to light the central role that the
Deleuzean image of thought ascribes to death, qua artistic experimentation. I
propose to sum up the most significant differences between Bergsons and
Deleuzes positions on art, philosophy, thought, and experience with the fol-
lowing syllogism:
1. For Bergson, art equals life (creation), and life is the truth of thought
(intuition).
2. For Deleuze, thought equals (the encounter with) death (artistic production)
and is the truth of life.
3. Therefore, death is the truth of thought.
I conclude that in light of this formula, we can say that Deleuze is neither
rejecting Bergsonism nor is he, strictly speaking, proposing an alternative for it.
Rather, in a typical fashion, he is faithfully traveling farther down the same path
when, pushing Bergsons insights to their extreme limits, he is able to provide
a ground/unground for a Bergsonism of the future.
In the conclusion, I provide some observations on what such a productive
Bergsonism of the future could look like. I also take this as an opportunity to
offer a brief reconstruction of the Deleuzean ontology of becoming from the
perspective of his theory of machinic production.
My hope is that this journey will contribute to revitalizing scholarly inter-
est in Bergson; that those who wish to explore possibilities for alternative
accounts of experience, subjectivity, thought, and their conditions might be
tickled; and that those who are curious about transcendental (or virtual)
empiricism might find it helpful, or at least provoking.
9
1
Bergsons Genealogy
of Consciousness
The percept is the landscape before man, in the absence of man. . . .

We are not in the world, we become with the world; we become
by contemplating it. Everything is vision, becoming. We become
universes. Becoming animal, plant, molecular, becoming zero.
Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus
In Time and Free Will,1 Bergson endeavors to demonstrate a traditionally over-

looked yet radical difference between two kinds of multiplicities: an actual,
quantitative, discrete, and homogenous multiplicity that coincides with space,
on the one hand, and a virtual, qualitative, heterogeneous, yet continuous mul-
tiplicity that corresponds to psychological duration, on the other.Against Kant,
Bergson contends that it is in fact heterogeneity that constitutes the ground of
experience (2001a, 72/2001, 97).When, by making it an a priori form of sen-
sibility, Kant provides space with an existence independent from its content
(i.e., sensibility), he is in fact defining space as a homogenous milieu. This
implies that he conceives sensations themselves, considered independently of
the form of space, as nonextended and simply qualitative. Now, Bergson
explains, If space is to be defined as the homogenous, it seems that inversely
every homogenous and indefinite milieu will be space. For homogeneity here
consisting in the absence of any quality, it is hard to see how two forms of the
11
homogenous could be distinguished from one another (2001a, 73/2001, 98,

trans. modified). However, Bergson continues, it is customary to regard time as
an indefinite medium, different from space yet homogenous as well. But when
we make time a homogenous medium in which conscious states (or inner
sense) unfold, we take it (time) to be given all at once, that is, simultaneously.
This amounts to saying that we thereby abstract time from duration, or from
the irreversibility of succession. Indeed, we are thereby really, though uncon-
sciously, giving up time by making it a mere ghost of space. We then end up
trying to spatialize our conscious states, to juxtapose them simultaneously as if
they were well-defined, discrete, and mutually exclusive objects. Instead of thus
reducing everything to space, Bergson demands that we begin to think in terms
of time.
The Immediate Data of Consciousness
Duration (la dure) and the Two Multiplicities
Bergsons seminal insight lies in the insistence, against all scientific and meta-
physical approaches, that time not be confused with space.While space or mat-
ter consists in an actual, discrete, or quantitative multiplicity akin to unit and
number, time or psychological duration can only be thought of as a virtual,
continuous, or qualitative multiplicity. Lived duration is continuous and quali-
tative because it enfolds a confused plurality of interpenetrating terms. It is only
by means of an intellectual abstraction from this incessant flow that we can even
begin to speak of discrete states and well-defined discontinuous objects. Our
ordinary conception of time as a homogenous medium in which our conscious
states are placed alongside one another as in space thus fails to take into account
the essential heterogeneity of duration.The difficulty and novelty of Bergsons
approach here lies in his connection of the continuous with the heterogeneous
(duration), on the one hand, and of the discontinuous with the homogenous
(space), on the other. In their comprehensive and penetrating introduction to
Bergson: Key Writings, Keith Ansell-Pearson and John Mullarkey (2002) note
that although the use of the term multiplicity refers to Riemannian geometry,
Bergson wants to show that timethat is, life or changeis psychical in
essence; as such, it is not of a mathematical or logical order.
In a somewhat counterintuitive way, it now appears that duration is het-
erogeneous because it is continuous. As a virtual multiplicity of interpenetrat-
ing states, it is essentially indivisible, which means that as soon as we try to
divide itor break the continuityit changes in kindhence the qualitative
heterogeneity. In contrast, space is discontinuous because it is homogenous.
Each discrete element or unit is simply a different degree of the same inert
underlying milieu.
12
Bergsons Genealogy of Consciousness
As Gilles Deleuze saw, what is at stake in Bergsons distinction between the

actual and the virtual multiplicities is no less than a radical revaluation of the
metaphysics of the real and of the qualitative change that essentially informs it.
The radicality of Bergsons philosophy becomes even clearer in his subsequent
works, as his notion of duration evolves so as to become, by his 1907 Creative
Evolution, the nexus of a full-blown ontology of self-alteration. As Ansell-Pear-
son and Mullarkey note, this involves breaking down the form-matter opposi-
tion that structures his account in Time and Free Will. But this must not over-
shadow the fact that the method of intuition he elaborates, alone capable of
coinciding with this change, is one of perhaps unequaled precision and rigor.
One crucial outcome of Bergsons overcoming of sterile dualisms on the basis
of duration lies in a metaphysics and an epistemology capable of shaking to
their foundations Kants critique and the phenomenological approaches of his
inheritors. Duration is no longer restricted to the realm of consciousness and
instead coincides with the movement of life itselfthat is, external things do
endure in their own way, independently of our psychological experience (contra
subjectivism) and duration is shown to be immanent to the universe.
Thus it turns out that the transcendental forms applicable to things cannot
be entirely our own work: if we do give much to matter, then we probably
receive something from it as well. In short, the very meaning of the transcendental
is transformed for, as a residual product of the evolution of life, consciousness is
only a determined case of duration.As such, it can neither encompass the open
whole nor condition it; rather, consciousness very existence (and not only its
possibility), as well as that of its conceptual categories, is conditioned by it.This,
in turn, means that psychological durationthat is, consciousness and memory
(or the unconscious)constitutes the point of contact and the immanent
opening onto ontological duration. Because we have memory, it is possible to
reintegrate all closed systems (be they individuals, species, or political societies)
into that ever-evolving whole. From the disinterested point of view of dura-
tion, they turn out to be products of only one of the two tendencies of the real:
evolutions own tendency to slow down and arrest its forward movement
within extensity (space or materiality). Indeed, the intelligence and the cate-
gories of the understanding follow a similar tendency.
Although this forming, materializing, and measuring activity is a natural
and necessary tendency from the point of view of practical interest, it is really
a mere habit of the mind. For Bergson, this habit is essentially what accounts
for the kind of science and metaphysics we know; but it can be overcome. In a
word, the kind of phenomenological experience that has defined the condi-
tions and the limits of our possible knowledge may capture one aspect of the
real, but this is only one particular line of access. By methodically turning
intelligence against itself to follow the other, durational tendency, through the
kind of intellectual effort that Bergsons writings force us into, we can integrate
a different kind of experience (namely, Bersgonian intuition) and rejoin the
13
source of experience, the point at which the mind becomes continuous with
creative duration. For Bergson, this means that against Kant, knowledge does
not have to be relative: it can be absolute (that is, coincide with the real),
though necessarily incompleteas the coincidence can only ever be partial,
and the real is the moving, variable essence of things. For Bergson, then, truth
will have to be defined as the stable (though not immutable) accord between
the real and intuition.2
The Split Self
In Time and Free Will, Bergson shows that these two tendencies or multiplici-
ties coincide with the two sides of the self. On the one hand, lived duration
(that is, the heterogeneous qualitative multiplicity) corresponds to the funda-
mental self, considered independently of its symbolic representation. In Matter
and Memory, this deep self will be called the unconscious. On the other hand,
the homogenous, quantitative multiplicity informing spatial representation cor-
responds to the superficial or social self. Although these two sides ought not to
be confused, Bergson acknowledges that we arrive naturally at such confused
representation.This is because in a series of identical terms, each term assumes
a twofold aspect for our consciousness: one that is always identical to itself
since we are then projecting onto it the identity of the external objectand
another that is specific and singular, since the addition of this term brings about
a new organization for the whole (2001a, 92/2001, 124).
In a word, our self is split up; it is dual. Insofar as it comes into contact with
the external world at its surface, its successive sensations, although dissolving
into one another, retain something of the mutual externality of their objective
causes; this is why our superficial psychological life unfolds in a homogenous
milieu without this symbolical representation requiring any effort from us. But
as we advance farther into the depths of consciousness, the deep-seated self that
senses and loves, deliberates and decides, is encountered as a force whose states
and modifications permeate one another and undergo a deep alteration as soon
as we separate them from one another in order to set them out in space, that
is, in order to actualize and communicate them (2001a, 93/2001, 125).This is
a crucial aspect of Bergsons new metaphysics: the virtual necessarily transforms
itself in the process of its actualization.3
Nevertheless, given that it is the refracted ego that best lends itself to the
exigencies of social life and language, consciousness tends to hold onto it and
to forget about the fundamental self. In order to recover this fundamental self
such as it would present itself to an immediate consciousness, a vigorous effort
of introspection and analysis is necessary; by means of this effort of the will, we
may isolate the living psychological facts from their refracted and solidified
double. Once again, Bergson concludes that all of our perceptions, sensations,
emotions, and ideas present themselves under a twofold aspect: the one clear
14
and precise, but impersonal because reified, and the other indistinct, infinitely
mobile, and inexpressible because profoundly subjective (2001a, 96/2001, 129).
Ultimately, however, both of these opposite tendencies of the ego are rooted in
the same one, natural phenomenon called intelligence.
As the center of indetermination inserting duration into a refractory and
simultaneous matter, the brain embodies the fundamental psychological duplic-
ity just described, thereby allowing for hesitation and choice. But I insist that
hesitation, or deliberation, must not be identified too quickly with choice, or
decision. They are two very distinct moments in a persons psychological life,
in the sense that their respective qualitative what its likeness takes on a very
different tone. Just think of what it feels like to be stuck in an apparently insol-
uble dilemma, as opposed to what it feels like to finally make a decision and/or
act on it. If we are duration essentially, if our deep psychological states pene-
trate one another constantly, then (1) at what point can we say that we actually
made a decision, and (2) to what extent can this decision be said to constitute
a free choice? Put otherwise, the new problem that the analysis of the twofold
nature of consciousness conjures up is one of free will and determinism.
The Two Causalities: Determinism and the Free Act
According to Bergson, the problem of freedom is a false problem: it deals with

a badly stated question, because it relies on the confusion between the two
multiplicities, duration and simultaneity. What is the question Are we free?
really asking? Most generally, and as Kant himself understands it, it is asking
whether any given psychological state can be said to be determined on the basis
of certain laws, that by establishing a causal connection between past and pre-
sent facts, claim to be able to calculate, that is, to predict the future. It thus relies
on the illusion that psychic duration is measurable, when we have already
shown that such measurement would imply reducing it to the discrete multi-
plicity of number, to which it is de jure irreducible. Bergson contends that such
a mechanistic approach to the issue of freedom falls prey to the Eleatic confu-
sion between movement (duration) and inertia (space). In fact, it is significant
that his discussion of Zenos paradoxes returns virtually untouched in every one
of his major texts, from Time and Free Will to the Two Sources, through Matter
and Memory, Creative Evolution, and the Introduction to Metaphysics.
Like Zeno of Elea, the determinist attempts to explain motion in terms of
resting points. If we abstract each one of Achilles strides from the simplicity of
the act of running in the process of being performed, then we can easily divide
them into shorter and shorter intervals, and do so ad infinitum. This is to say,
with arithmetic, that we can divide any given motion into an infinite number
of fixed points, or positions. But in order to do this, Bergson points out, we
would have to be positioned at the static end of each one of those intervals and
look back, after the fact, at the distance that has been covered.We may then try
15
to reconstruct the movement by means of positions; but since these positions

are mere suppositionsAchilles was never really in any one of these points; at
best, he passed themwe may multiply the number of points as much as we
want: we will never create motion out of immobility. From the dynamic point
of view of immediate consciousness, then, this approach does not make any
sense. Each of us has the immediate feeling of her or his own spontaneity, with-
out the idea of inertia having anything to do with it. In fact, while the idea of
inertia can only be understood and defined by means ofif only in contrast
withthe idea spontaneity, spontaneity itself is self-sufficient (2001a,
106/2001, 142). As Bergson sees it, it is therefore only from the static and ret-
rospective point of view of the mechanist that the idea of freedom can be put
into question, for it is necessarily first, and simpler, than the notion of inertia.
With regard to immediate reality, the point of view of the determinist is an illu-
sion. This mechanistic approach consists in overlooking the irreducible differ-
ence in kind between the two series, an error that ultimately results in an
equivocal notion of causality.
Leaving aside the case of physical determinismwhich, Bergson argues,
simply assumes the universality of the mechanic law of the conservation of
energy, thereby dismissing a priori the possibility of novelty and spontaneity
we can turn to the theory of psychological determinism and prove that it relies
on the same fundamental illusion, which overlooks the potentiality inherent in
time. Psychological determinism implies an associationist conception of the
mind according to which the present state of consciousness would be necessi-
tated by the states that precede it. However, with Bergson we want to ask, what
kind of necessity are we here talking about? As we showed that there exists
between the successive states of consciousness a qualitative difference, we will
always fail to deduce one state from the other a priori.Therefore, a strong con-
ception of causality cannot account for the transition. One is then tempted to
turn to experience, with the object of showing that the passage from one state
to the next can always be explained by some simple reason, the second obey-
ing as it were to the call of the firsta bit like the spark provoking the explo-
sion of the stick of dynamite. Indeed, experience does show such a relation.Yet
Bergson asks, Is this relation, which explains the transition, the cause of it?
(2001a, 117/2001, 156, emphasis added).4
For instance, Bergson examines the case of a subject who carries out at the
appointed time the suggestion received in a hypnotic state; the act that this sub-
ject performs is brought about, according to her, by the preceding series of her
conscious states. However, Bergson points out, these states are really effects, not
causes. It was necessary that the act should take place; it also was necessary that
the patient should explain it to herself; but it is the future act, not the past series,
that determines, by a kind of attraction, the whole series of psychic states of
which it is to be the natural consequence. Now, Bergson warns us, the deter-
minists will seize on this argument to prove that we in effect are sometimes
16
irresistibly influenced by anothers will.Yet Bergson asks, does it not show us as

well that in the first place our own will is capable of willing for willings sake
(spontaneity) and secondly of leaving the act that has been performed to be
explained by antecedents of which it (i.e., the act) has really been the cause?5
Indeed, we all know that we sometimes weigh motives and deliberate over
them when we have already made up our mind (2001a, 11819/2001, 15758).
But, I want to add, is willing for willings sake identical to willing freely?
Before I address this question, let me sum up by insisting that according
to Bergson if there is such a thing as psychological determinism, then it is the
future, rather than the past, that determines not only the present but the past
as well: any new event reorganizes the whole. Now although it eventually con-
stitutes an integral part of the ever-changing rhythm of the heterogeneous
multiplicity of duration, this future is always novel and unpredictable, since it
necessarily introduces qualitative difference in the series. In fact, because asso-
ciationist psychology assumes a mechanistic rather than a dynamic approach
to psychic processes, it confuses the fact itself with its retrospective explana-
tion. In a word, associationism implies a defective, abstract, intellectualized
conception of the self by overlooking its twofold nature, which in turn implies
a faulty, impersonal, and reified conception of the multiplicity of its conscious
states. But once again, as mistaken as this approach may be, it can be explained
naturally. Due to the simple fact that we use language (that is, by definition,
general impersonal terms that we share with a community), we tend to over-
look the specifically personal impressions that define our feelings, and to asso-
ciate ideas with one another; we thereby juxtapose these ideas instead of let-
ting them permeate one another. We thus fail to translate entirely into
language what our soul senses: thought remains incommensurable with lan-
guage, since the latter necessarily cuts up the durational real in accordance
with social utility.6
In light of the purely qualitative nature of the multiplicity that conscious-
ness is, it appears that the act of thinking itselfas distinguished from its static
explanationis none other than a feeling (sentiment) of the soul. Now, Bergson
claims, as long as those feelings have reached a sufficient depth (i.e., the deep-
seated self), each one represents the whole of the soul; because feelings are
essentially heterogeneous and permeate one another, the whole content of the
soul is reflected in each. So to say, as the coarsest psychology does (and here,
Bergson has in mind such English psychologists as J. S. Mill), that the soul is
determined under the influence of any one of those feelings (e.g., sympathy,
hate, aversion) is in fact to admit that the soul determines itself. In other words,
rather than reducing the self to an impersonal aggregate, we can take psychic
states with the specific coloration they have in any determinate persona spe-
cific and determinate nuance that comes to them as a reflection of all other
states; then we do not need to associate several facts of consciousness in order
to reconstruct the person; she is entirely in any single one. Finally, Bergson
17
writes,The external manifestation of this internal state will precisely be what

one calls a free act, since the self alone will have been the author of it, and since
it will express the whole of the self in one simple act (2001a, 12425/2001,
16566). For Bergson, then, what defines freedom is consciousness unification
with itself, a unification that can only occur as the result of a violent effort of
the intellect to revert its natural tendency.This effort is at once of the will and
spontaneous.
In this sense, freedom is not absolute, but it admits gradations. As we just
saw, because the self is twofold as well as one, it is not the case that all conscious
states necessarily blend with one another. Insofar as it perceives homogenous
space, the superficial self also is the ground for conscious states that can remain
independent of the heterogeneous mass of the fundamental self. For example,
this would be the fate of a suggestion received under hypnosis or, similarly, of
some repressed anger suddenly springing forth for no apparent reason. But pre-
cisely, says Bergson,
thereby endowed with a life of its own, it will usurp the whole personality
when its time comes. And alongside these independent elements, there may
be found more complex series, the terms of which do permeate one another,
but never succeed in blending perfectly with the whole mass of the self. Such
is the system of feelings and ideas which are the result of an education not
properly assimilatedthe kind of education which appeals to memory rather
than judgment. (2001a, 125/2001, 166)
This distinction is mirrored in the Two Sources of Morality and Religion,

where Bergson differentiates between dressage and asceticism: while the first
has to do with the formation of a parasitic self within the fundamental self, the
second allows for the true creative integration of the twofold self.While one is
an obstacle to freedom, the other is its very source.
When a decision emanates from the dynamic series to which the free act
belongs, this decision will be said to arise from the whole soul.The self modi-
fies itself, as well as the feelings that animate it, at each moment of the deliber-
ation. In this dynamic series, the states reinforce one another and lead by a nat-
ural evolution to a free act. Only from the mistaken point of view of the
deterministic approach can we distinguish states and forces from one another
and represent a mechanistic self as hesitating between two feelings, passing from
one to the other and finally deciding in favor of one of them. For in this case
Bergson asks, If it is always the same self which deliberates, and if the two
opposite feelings by which it is moved do not change, how, in virtue of this
very principle of causality which determinism appeals to, will the self ever
come to a decision? (2001a, 129/2001, 171).The truth is that even the coars-
est determinist would have to assume some kind of internal, continuous, and
vital impulse underneath the static representation of its discrete states.
18
From a Bergsonian point of view, then, the willinformed as it is by its past

experience and capable of projecting itself into the futuredoes not exclude
spontaneity. On the contrary, the living self evolves naturally from deliberation
to decision, since its two opposite tendencies are mere symbolical representa-
tions of one single self that lives and develops by the very effect of its hesita-
tions, until the free act drops from it like an over-ripe fruit (2001a, 132/2001,
176).The very notion of psychological conflict turns out to be a false problem
too, stemming from the confusion between duration and simultaneity, and its
consequent unjustified extension of the useful yet fictional tool of abstraction.7
In Time and Free Will, consciousness is thus defined as the juncture of the
two sides of the self on the basis of real duration as its most primordial ground.
So far, however, this account fails to capture the process of the emergence of
consciousness. Bergsons rendering of the phenomenon of consciousness in
Time and Free Will remains limited to its psychological manifestation.8 This
means that it does not, as yet, provide a necessary ontological grounding for this
phenomenon, traditionally held by phenomenology to be the condition of all
thought, all experience, all knowledge: the first condition for the possibility of
any phenomenological inquiry. Let us turn to the first chapter of Matter and
Memory for what I take to be Bergsons genealogical account of the phenome-
non of consciousness.
The Role of the Body
Preliminary Remarks: Science and Philosophy
As its title clearly indicates, Matter and Memory aims primarily at tackling the
problem of dualism. Furthermore, Bergson suggests that such metaphysical
antinomies as those that both plague the Kantian critique and made it neces-
sary must be brought back to the wider issue of the relationship between sci-
ence and philosophy.9 In fact, this is one of the many aspects of Bergsonism that
makes it particularly relevant today. In a world of increasing technological com-
plexity, in our everyday life as much as in our philosophical attempts and spir-
itual endeavors, we come to rely more and more on science for a new promise
for eternal life and absolute knowledge. This tendency toward the unification
of all knowledge and strivings under the heading of science and technology is
diagnosed by Bergson as relying on a profound confusion between science and
philosophya confusion that leads, ultimately, to the reduction of metaphysics
to physics, and of thought to logic, just as the confusion between spatialized
time and duration leads to the reduction of freedom to mechanistic deter-
minism. For Bergson, it is not a question of some nostalgic return to an imag-
inary state of nature. His self-declared optimism is clearly directed at the
future;10 he situates his greatest hopes for the actual progress of humanity
19
toward universal peace in the combination of mystical aspiration and tech-

nological progress (1997b, 310/1935, 291). Such remarks as those we find in
the Two Sources only reinforce the work he performed in Creative Evolution,
when he proposed a method based in the necessity of the convergence between
the respective efforts of philosophy and the sciences (1998, 85/1998, 94).
One central aim of Matter and Memory thus consists in identifying the orig-
inal illusion that allowed for metaphysics to be sacrificed to physics, and the
consequent impasse that the philosophies speculating about the relationship
between body and mind, or matter and memory, find themselves in. As is typ-
ical of his larger effortthe striving for the liberation of spirit for a new phi-
losophy capable of sympathizing with the flowing real so as to introduce real
change in the worldBergsons critical work is both rooted in a positive phi-
losophy based in experience and observation and directed at generating poten-
tialities for creating new avenues of thought and activity.11 Now if science and
philosophy must complement one another, then it also means that they must
be irreducible to one another. But for Bergson, this irreducibility is no more
based in the diversity of their objects than in the diversity of their methods per
se; these differences may be an effect, but they cannot be the cause of their nec-
essary distinction, since ultimately the object of both science and philosophy is
(at least in principle) reality itself.
According to Bergson, the difference between science and philosophy lies
in their respective functions. On the one hand, the goal of science is to make
possible and increase ones material and intellectual grasp onto the world, so
one can manipulate to ones advantage, calculate, predict, and utilize its
resources. This natural, vital, yet purely pragmatic need requires that the ever-
changing real be arrested, fixed, and symbolized. In a word, science naturally
tends to eliminate concrete duration from its field of operation; henceforth, it
is generally, though unconsciously, left dealing with discrete multiplicities alone.
In Bergsons view, this teleological attitude becomes deeply problematic when
it is extended unlimitedly, and ultimately conjures up the belief that its own
methods and conclusions apply equally to the real itself, in all of its aspects,
including the metaphysical. On the other hand, Bergson writes,Philosophy . . .
is not constrained to the precision of science, since it does not aim at any appli-
cation (1998, 85/1998, 94, trans. modified). Because philosophy is essentially
speculative and does not aim at any practical application, it does not have to
restrain itself to working with discrete multiplicities, and it can extend its vision
to the qualitative tendencies that fundamentally constitute the real as a whole,
in its duration. In a word, while for Bergson the teleological approach of sci-
ence (and, by extension, of all traditional metaphysics) can only account for the
residual part of the real that remains relative to the limited powers of the intel-
ligence, true philosophy has the potential to access the real absolutely, if only
incompletely.This conviction underlies one of the main complaints that Berg-
son has against Kants claim concerning the relativity of knowledge.
20
If philosophy is to escape Kantianism, then, it must expand the critical pro-

ject to include the very conclusions of science that Kant himself was only try-
ing to ground, without being able or desirous to put them into question (1998,
358/1998, 390). Since the issue at hand is that of the genesis of consciousness,
a novel reflection on matter, or on the function of the body, must lie at the
heart of Bergsons dualistic project for a new philosophy.This is the focus of
the first chapter of Matter and Memory, which culminates with Bergsons theory
of pure perception. I read Bergsons theory of pure perception as constituting
a provisional yet highly significant account of the genesis of consciousness; in
order that we may nevertheless keep an eye to the nonprovisional conclusions
of the book, let me recall the closing words of Matter and Memory: Spirit bor-
rows from matter the perceptions on which it feeds and restores them to matter in
the form of movements which it has stamped with its own freedom (1997a,
280/1991, 249, emphasis added).
The World of Images
In his attempt at lessen[ing] greatly the theoretical difficulties which have

always beset dualism, Bergson proposes a new philosophy of matter based in
the notion of the image. Contending that idealism and realism are both exces-
sive thesesthe one reducing matter to a subjective representation, the other
to an objective thing that would mysteriously produce representations in us
he proposes to conceive matter as an ensemble of images. And by image, we
mean a certain existence which is more than what the idealist calls a represen-
tation, but less than what the realist calls a thingan existence placed half-way
between the thing and the representation (1997a, 1/1991, 9, emphasis
added, trans. modified).
To decipher the process by which conscious representations come about, we
will need to momentarily place ourselves, with Bergson, at the standpoint of
common sense, which only perceives images, or phenomena.When my eyes are
open, images appear to me; when my eyes are closed, images disappear. Insofar as
I perceive them, then, objects and their qualities are images, but images that exist
in themselves (1997a, 2/1991, 10): I do not expect my desk to be gone when I
close my eyes.That images exist in themselves means that they constitute a neu-
tral positive reality, which is neither subjective nor objective; it also means that
those images act and react on one another.They are not merely a basis for action
and reaction, but the images themselves, in all of their parts, are indeed action and
reaction in accordance with constant laws of nature.This in turn means that the
knowledge of those laws would allow for predicting what will happen to each
and any one of those images, or that the future of the images must be contained
in their present and will add nothing new to it (1997a, 11/1991, 17, trans. mod-
ified). At this point, we are in a world of images in which duration has no effi-
cacy; we are in the realm of pure perception, exclusive of memory.
21
Yet, Bergson continues, there is one particular image that progressively

stands out in the midst of all others. If all images act and react constantly on
one another in all of their parts, then it means that there is no center, no one
organizing principle coordinating their henceforth indeterminate posi-
tions12not until, that is, one particular image stands out, around which all
other images organize themselves concentrically.This image is the one I call
my body. It becomes a center in that I do not merely know its external sur-
face by means of perception, but that I also know it from within, through
affections. Affections are those particular images that interpose themselves
between the movement-images I receive from without, and those move-
ment-images I am going to execute.13 It looks, then, as though [affections]
had some undefined influence on the final issue (1997a, 12/1991, 18).They
have some influence on the outcome insofar as each appears as an invita-
tion to act; yet this influence also is undefined insofar as it contains an
authorization to wait (ibid.). In other words, affections are movements
begun, but not executed, the indication of a more or less useful decision, but
not that constraint which precludes choice (ibid.). For Bergson, then, sen-
sibility appears to the same extent as does the ability to move. The living
body is its cradle. In Creative Evolution, he writes:
Between mobility and consciousness, there is an obvious relationship. No

doubt, the consciousness of the higher organisms seems bound up with cer-
tain cerebral arrangements (dispositifs).The more the nervous system develops
the more numerous and more precise become the movements among which
it can choose; the more illuminating, also, is the consciousness that accompa-
nies them. (1998, 111/1998, 122, trans. modified)
Consciousness is thus primarily the consciousness of movements received

in the shape of perceptions, and of potential movements to be executed in the
shape of actions. Consciousness appears as a feeling or a sensation at every step
at which I have to take an initiative, and it disappears as soon as my activity, by
becoming automatic, does not need its assistance any longer (1997a, 12/1991,
18). In the language of Time and Free Will, we could say that at the level of pure
presence, the origin of the phenomenon of consciousness, whose site is the
body, is none other than the feeling of spontaneity. As a feeling (sentiment), it
coincides with sensibility itself.
Between input and output the body, or the brain, thus consists in a zone
of indetermination, a distance or delay (cart) between centrifugal and cen-
tripetal movements, between perception and action. It is in this sense that Berg-
son (in)famously claims that the brain is none other than a central telephonic
switchboard, whose role is to allow for communication or to delay it (ibid.,
26/30).What happens in this delay that distinguishes my brain-image from all
other images, allowing me to choose between diverse courses of action?
22
The idealist tells us that this particular image that Bergson calls cerebral vibra-
tion (branlement crbral, ibid., 13/19, trans. modified) generates external images, or
representations. But this would imply that this molecular movement-image (the
brain) really did contain, in some mysterious way, the representation of the whole
material universe. As Bergson points out, To state this proposition is enough to
show its absurdity.The brain is part of the material world; the material world is not
part of the brain. Eliminate the image which bears the name material world, and
you destroy at the same time the brain and the cerebral [vibration] which are parts
of it (ibid.).14 Against both idealism and realism, this also means that nerve cen-
ters cannot condition the image of the universe (ibid., 14/19). In factand I
believe this is the full significance of the metaphor of the central telephonic
exchangeBergson simply wants to insist that the brain does not add anything to
what it receives (ibid., 26/30), although as a delay rerouting movement toward
more or less complex sensory-motor avenues it embodies choice.
We established as a fact that my body can act on the world of images,
which means that it can efficiently affect the universe. But preciselyand here
Bergson tackles what he considers the fundamental illusion common to both
idealism and realismthis is all my body can do: as a center of action destined
to move other objects, it cannot give birth to a representation (ibid., 16/20). In
fact, this is one of Bergsons central theses in Matter and Memory, the point of
departure of his theory of knowledge which, in stark contrast to traditional
epistemology, affirms that perception is entirely directed toward action, not
speculation. We also established that the cerebral matter consists in the ability
to choose between several possible courses of action, or images, themselves sug-
gested in accordance with their greater or lesser utility for my body. As Berg-
son points out, then, These images must display in some way, upon the aspect
which they present to my body, the profit which my body can gain from them
(ibid., 15/20, emphasis added). But we know that this display is not what the
idealist calls a representation.
Now, How do we get from the sheer presence of images, or phenomena,
to representation? If, according to Bergson, matter is an ensemble of images,
and if the perception of matter consists in those same images referred to the
possible actions of one particular image, namely, my body (ibid., 17/22), then
no doubt my perception is a function of molecular movements; it depends on
them. But the true problem for Bergson is how? How does my perception
depend on centripetal and centrifugal nerves (ibid.)?
To appeal to the vague notion of translation would be to fall back into the
sterile dualism that postulates a radical difference between matter and represen-
tation, which ends up conceiving matter as devoid of form and thought, and rep-
resentation as devoid of mattera dualism that henceforth must appeal to some
mysterious, philosophically ungrounded force, to account for the passage from
presence to representation.We showed that with Bergsonism, on the contrary,
this transition can only be a matter of movement-images, of mobility among
23
the whole of the world of images. Bergson asks, what are those movement-
images, and what particular role do they play in the representation of the
whole? He claims that the answer is obvious: they are, within my body, the
movements intended to prepare, while beginning it, the reaction of my body
to the action of external objects (ibid., 18/23).They may be a very small part
of the material world, but they are of capital importance for that part of rep-
resentation which I call my body, since they foreshadow at each successive
moment its virtual acts (ibid.).
Granted, here we are using the term representation in a fairly loose sense; as
may be expected, it will only acquire the kind of subjective richness and com-
plexity that phenomenology ascribes to it when we reintroduce memory into
the picture. But for now the crucial point that Bergson wants to make against
both idealism and materialism is the following: There can only be a difference in
degree, and not a difference in kind, between matter and perception (ibid., 19/24).This
is the central claim of Bergsons theory of pure perception, from which every-
thing else unfolds.
Pure Perception and Beyond
If it is the case that there is only a difference of complication of movement

between the perceptive faculty of the brain and the reflex functions of the
spinal cord, then we can specify a bit further the kind of relation we have estab-
lished between perception and molecular movements. Not only do our per-
ceptions depend on the molecular movements of the gray matter, but they also
vary with them; and since those movements are indissolubly linked to the rest
of the material universe (ibid., 20/25), we can see that the psychological prob-
lem of perception becomes a metaphysical issue. The problem regarding the
passage from presence to representation stated earlier may now be restated in
the following terms:
How is it that the same images can belong to two different systems: one in
which each image varies for itself and in the well-defined measure that it
undergoes the action of the surrounding images; another in which all images
vary for a single image, and in the varying measure that they reflect the pos-
sible action of this privileged image? (1997a, 2021/1991, 25, trans. modified)
As Bergson indicates, the first system is that of science, wherein each image is
related only to itself, thereby acquiring an absolute value.The second system is
that of consciousness (con-science), in which all images are referred to a central
image, our body, whose slightest variations they follow (21/26).We can finally
see more clearly why Bergson deems it necessary to address the problem of
dualism left hanging between idealism and realism in terms of images. And
24
once again, it appears that the reason both idealism and realism must appeal to
a deus ex machina (be it in the form of a mysterious force or a preestablished
harmony between the faculties) is that they both address the metaphysical
problem at stake through the postulate that perception has a speculative inter-
est rather than, as Bergson would have it, a pragmatic interest.
When it affirms that there is a mere difference in degree between matter
and perception, the theory of pure perception also suggests that there is a mere
difference in complication, or degree, between the pure automatism of, say, the
activity of the lamp ray and the voluntary activity of higher vertebrates. Once
again, it seems that spontaneity, for Bergson, is not the monopoly of humanity.
Yet we did see that this difference between matter and perception consists in the
distance (cart) between incoming and outgoing movements. Now as the French
term suggests, this distance also is a delay; it is not only a spatial interval, it is a
little slice of time between two movements as well. And this delay, ultimately, is
going to be the fulcrum we need to account for the richness of human thought
and creative abilities, a creative richness immeasurably greater than that of the
other living beings. As we will see when we turn to the next section, this delay
(the brain) is the point at which memory inserts itself into matter.
But before we turn to an examination of the second and third chapters of
Matter and Memory, which deal specifically with Bergsons conception of mem-
ory and the role it plays in the generation of thought, let us return to the issue at
handnamely, that of the material genesis of consciousness. For Bergson, the
true distinction that needs to be accounted for is not simply that between body
and mind. His rooting of consciousness within matter testifies to that. I will argue
that the true significance of his use of the terms matter and memory rather than
body and mind, or receptivity and intentionality lies in the fundamental displacement
of the problem of philosophythat of establishing a ground for itself, hence for
thought and experienceonto the terrain of the relationships between con-
sciousness and the unconscious. In Creative Evolution, Bergson writes:
Here again, however, we must beware of radical distinctions. Unconscious

and conscious are not two labels which can be mechanically fastened, the
one on every vegetable cell, the other on all animals. While consciousness
sleeps in the animal which has degenerated into a motionless parasite, it prob-
ably awakens in just the degree to which the vegetable has regained liberty of
movement, and awakens in just the degree to which the vegetable has recon-
quered this liberty. (1998, 113/1998, 124)
From Presence to Representation: Discernment
We have seen that the degree of consciousness varies in accordance with the
living beings freedom of movement. Now going farther down the genealogi-
cal path of the birth of consciousness, we want to ask, what is it that makes a
25
perception conscious in the first place? But once again, Bergson warns us, this
is not the right question to ask. As soon as we give ourselves the least parcel of
mattersuch as, for instance, the brainthen we have also thereby given our-
selves the totality of images, the whole universe, since each image is inscribed in
a continuum of action and reaction, in a system of total mutual reflection. What
needs to be explained is not how conscious perception is born, but how it limits itself.
Bergson showed that in principle conscious perception should be the image of
the whole, but in fact it is limited to what interests my body.We already know
the reason for this limitation; as a point of contact between perception and affec-
tion, my body becomes the varying center of a world of images (or of the sim-
ple image of the whole) that would otherwise remain indefinite because
absolutely continuous, hence prior to any determination or indetermination.
To define consciousness in terms of freedom of movement, or of the zone
of indetermination generated by my body qua sensibility is also to provide it
with the power of determination that comes with choice, or selection. My
body introduces both indetermination and determination into the world on
the basis of the discontinuity of its needs. Against both idealism and realism, it
turns out that what primarily defines consciousness for Bergson is not anything
added onto inert matter but the diminution of the pure image of the whole. In
Bergsons words, Our representation of things would thus arise from the fact
that they are thrown back and refracted by our freedom (1997a, 34/1991, 37).
But, he adds, there also is something positive in this necessary paucity of our
representation that already announces spirit; this is discernment (ibid., 35/38), or the
work of intelligence par excellence, which consists, literally, in cutting up the real.
What happens in the cart between pure presence and conscious representation,
between the images being and their being consciously perceived, is the elimina-
tion of that which does not interest us. Bergson sums it up as follows:Our zones
of indetermination play in some sort the part of the screen [upon which the
image could be projected behind the photographic plate].They add nothing to
what is there; they effect merely this: that the real action passes through, the vir-
tual action remains (ibid., 36/39). An image among other images, the brain is a
mere yet crucial screen.15 Since it does not preexist perception, the brain is not the
cause of perception. But it is its occasion.The rigorous correspondence, or recip-
rocal dependence between representation (or conscious perception) and cerebral
variations, thus turns out to be a function of a third term, which is the indeter-
mination of the will (ibid., 39/41)or freedom of choice.
To recapitulate, here are the most significant implications of Bergsons the-
ory of pure perception. First, the image is perceived exactly where it is; it is not
in my brain, it is in the world: it coincides with a neutral and veridical domain
of reality. As Bergson puts it, By [pure perception] I mean a perception that
exists in principle rather than in fact, and would be possessed by a being placed
where I am, living as I live, but absorbed in the present, and which is capable,
through the elimination of memory in all its forms, of obtaining a vision of
26
matter both immediate and instantaneous (ibid., 185/34). And since the brain
has been defined as delay, it cannot be where this instantaneous vision of mat-
ter takes place. Second, there is only a difference in degree and not a difference
in kind between matter and perception, or between being and being perceived
(ibid., 187/37). Third, representation starts out by being impersonal. It adopts
our body progressively, to become our representation through a phenomenon
of frustrated refraction against that particular image I call my body, which intro-
duces indetermination in matter. I conclude that the Kantian unity of apper-
ception does not have to be assumed; we can show its genealogy by tracing it
back to the sensory-motor system qua small part of the universe.
In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant must postulate the unity of appercep-
tion as the ultimate ground of his phenomenological critique. But subjectivity
itself thereby remains groundless; its metaphysical necessity is reduced to an
epistemological, or a logical necessityunless one appeals to God, which in a
post-Nietzschean world cannot but seem philosophically naive. Furthermore,
while the Kantian unity in which subjectivity is rooted only arises from the
abstract, hence arbitrary work of the intellect,16 Bergson provides it with a con-
crete foundation in the Being of the Sensible itselfor that which, in Difference
and Repetition, Deleuze will call the Sentiendum. With Bergson, then, the body
and sensibility acquire the kind of privilege, in the constitution of subjectivity,
which Merleau-Ponty will attempt to give it.17 My personality acquires a con-
crete, physical, and spatial absoluteness that idealism (be it transcendental or Pla-
tonic) could only derive from an abstract posit, thereby making it relative to the
work of the intellect. It is in this sense that Renaud Barbaras could write that
[perception] hence does not go toward exteriority, it proceeds from it.18
Beyond Pure Perception (1): Affection
Several corrections must be brought to the theory of pure perception once we

reintroduce affectivity. Bergson ascribes a privilege to the body, insofar as my
body is the only image I perceive both from within and from without. It is this
relationthat Merleau-Ponty calls touching-touched, or the Chiasm in his
1947 The Visible and the Invisiblethat constitutes the site of affection.This means,
Bergson points out, that we eventually must take into account the fact that the
body qua actualization of consciousness is not a mere mathematical point in
space (1997a, 59/1991, 58). Its virtual actionssuggested by the sensory-motor
system that, as we showed, coincides exactly with pure presenceare compli-
cated and impregnated with actual actions that take place in duration. Says Berg-
son, There is no perception without affection. Affection is that which, from
within our body, we mix with the image of external bodies (ibid.). Affection,
then,is not the primary matter of which perception is made; it is the impurity
with which perception is alloyed (ibid., 60/58). Against psychologists (e.g.,
Hume) who see a mere difference in degree between perception and affection,
27
Bergson thus establishes a radical difference in kind between the two. It can only
be a mistake to consider perception as an aggregate of inextensive sensations, for
the qualitative difference between the two prevents such an a priori deduction.
Nevertheless, we just showed that perceptions, being the qualities of external
objects, must be extended from the outset. Similarly, each affection must itself be
extended, or localized immediately (even though its self-conscious localization
may require some education) in the shape of its own proper, hence objective,
tone (ibid., 61/60). How else would it ever gain the extensity that, for instance,
a localized pain has?
According to Bergson, the famous objection that could be opposed to his
theory of the extensity of affectionsnamely, the phenomenon of the phan-
tom limbonly attests to the fact that the necessary education of the senses
subsists once it has been acquired (ibid.). In other words, it only attests to the
role that memory plays within the mechanism of consciousness. After having
restored its depth to the body by reinstating its affections, we may finally rein-
troduce memory into the picture.
Beyond Pure Perception (2): Memory
With the theory of pure perception, Bergson has been able to isolate an objec-
tive material order of absolute exteriority, independent of us and of sensation.
By reinstating the central role of affection, he has complicated the role the body
plays in the phenomenon of consciousness, in the shape of the twofold expe-
rience that this body possesses, of both performing actions and undergoing
affections (1997a, 6263/1991, 61). Now, If we went no further, the role of
consciousness in perception would . . . be confined to threading on the con-
tinuous string of memory an uninterrupted series of instantaneous visions,
which would be a part of things rather than ourselves (ibid., 67/65). But if, as
we have demonstrated, consciousness is choicehence the introduction of
indetermination into matterthen it remains to be explained why this choice
cannot be pure whim, why this indetermination does not proceed from mere
chance. For Bergson, if the indetermination of the will coincides with freedom,
then it must be that the choice among the diverse possible reactions, or virtual
actions of the body, is inspired by past experience; it requires the conservation
of past images (ibid.).With Bergson, then, we will want to ask, what is the mode
of this survival of the past in the present? In other words, what do the mecha-
nism and the function of memory consist in?
Although it was necessary to isolate the function of perception in its pure,
virtual form, it is clear that it is never encountered as such in its actual activi-
ties. In fact,Past images . . . will constantly mingle with our perception of the
present and may even take its place (ibid., 68/66, trans. modified). Bergsons
self-declared dualism is therefore to be understood as a very nuanced, original
form of the metaphysical polarities he is engaging. His conclusions concerning
28
the role of consciousness, or the body, with regard to knowledge, or self-con-

sciousness, then insist on the necessity of reintegrating temporality into the pic-
ture. For on the one hand, if our action-oriented consciousness is to have any
efficacy (i.e., if it is to be able to introduce voluntary change into the world),
then we must recognize that its fundamental characteristic, qua action, is to be
an encroachment onto the future. Bergson explains:
We have no grasp onto the future without an equal and corresponding per-
spective onto the past . . . and memory is thus the repercussion, in the sphere
of knowledge (connaissance), of the indetermination of our will. But the action
of memory goes further and deeper than this superficial glance would sug-
gest. (1997a, 67/1991, 65, trans. modified)
Most generally defined as the survival of past images, memory also dis-
places present perception. Again, perception is essentially directed toward
action, hence informed by utility. But precisely there are going to be cases
where analogous prior images may turn out to be more useful, capable of
throwing a better light on our decision than the present intuitionsfor, says
Bergson, those past images are themselves bound up in our memory with the
whole series of subsequent events (1997a, 68/1991, 66). As both The Mem-
ory of the Present19 and the theory of memory in Matter and Memory show,
the role of actual perception (in contradistinction to pure perception) may then
merely consist in call[ing] up the recollection, giv[ing] it a body, render[ing] it
active and thereby actual (ibid., 67/65). Our practical interests, the imminence
of a real or an imaginary danger, will therefore be capable of displacing reality for the
sake of utility.20 In other wordsand this will be the central thesis of my argu-
mentconsciousness, or the power to act, is necessarily and positively informed by the
unconscious, or nonpower, impotence (impuissance).
For Bergson, this implies that the coincidence that the theory of pure per-
ception established between perception and the object perceived (i.e., the
absolute objectivity of knowledge) exists in principle rather than in fact (ibid.,
68/66).This does not mean, however, that idealism is justified. If it is true that
our complete perception is impregnated with images that belong to us per-
sonally, it does not follow that perception is entirely subjective. Bergson is care-
ful to remind us to not forget the impersonal ground that always subsists as
exteriority itself (what Blanchot, Foucault, or Deleuze would call the Out-
side), where perception coincides with the object perceived (ibid., 69/67). But
given that in its very absoluteness, exteriority preexists the distinction between
exterior and interior, it cannot be experienced as such any longer once the inte-
rior, or self-consciousness, has been generated.21
The persistence and consistence of the Outside allow us to understand more
clearly the reproach that Bergson addresses to both psychologists and metaphysi-
cians who see a mere difference in degree instead of a qualitative difference in
29
kind between pure perception and memory. Bergson is particularly interested in

demonstrating that there is a constant phenomenon of endosmosis at work
between perception and memory, but it is precisely on the basis of the substan-
tial difference of nature between the two that he enforces this argument. Indeed,
Bergson adds, the failure to see this distinction condemns us to ignore either of
the two phenomena, which is to say to misunderstand the essential difference
between past and present (ibid.). This psychological error thus has immense
metaphysical implications.This error also condemns us to abandon all hope of
understanding the phenomena of recognition and, more generally, the mecha-
nism of the unconscious (ibid., 70/67).22 In my view, this suggests that the
mechanism of the unconscious, for Bergson, does not only refer to the role of
memory but also to the original act constitutive of pure perception through
which we place ourselves among things immediately.23 Consciousness would thus
merely consist in the mediation between those two extremes (i.e., pure percep-
tion and pure memory, matter and spirit).While its examination must be primary
when it comes to epistemological issues, it will turn out to be secondary when
we turn to metaphysical matters.
In short, I want to add, the fundamental error that consists in overlooking
the difference in kind between perception and memory cannot but vitiate all
philosophies of experience. Indeed, phenomenology and existentialism them-
selves do not escape this fate. Despite their attempts at elaborating a theory of
experience based in temporality, they fall prey to Bergsons pitiless condemna-
tion. For it is not enough to take time into account; we also need to under-
stand the fundamental difference between the time of the philosophers, which
remains relative to space and movement, and concrete duration, which makes
time into an absolute, independent of simultaneity. I argued that duration coin-
cides with succession, with the irreversibility of the arrow of time.This means
that the future must be open, unpredictable, since past and present (where pre-
sent also is an encroachment onto the future) are qualitatively heterogeneous.
On the one hand, the present is essentially that which acts; it is power (puis-
sance).The past, on the other hand, is that which does not act any longer; it is
nonpower (impuissance). But precisely, Deleuze points out, it does not mean that
it has ceased to be;useless and inactive, impassible, it IS in the full sense of the
word: It is identical with being itself (1998a, 50/1988, 55, trans. modified,
emphasis in original [in capitals]).24 Ultimately, then, for Bergson, if this pri-
mordial difference is overlooked, then no difference but that of mere degree
will remain between perception and memory and neither from the one nor from
the other will the subject rise outside of herself (1997a, 71/1991, 69, trans. modified,
emphasis added); I argue that Bergson is here claiming that there can be no
transcendence, no ground for subjectivity, unless one establishes a true differ-
ence in kind between past and present. For him, it is to mistaken epistemolo-
gies founded on a fundamental error about the function of perception that we
must ascribe the failure to account for the birth of subjectivity.
30
Subjectivity and Memory
We are now in a position to clarify the aforementioned claim that Bergsons

work may be characterized as capable of thinking both continuity and discon-
tinuity.While the theory of pure perception allowed him to isolate an order of
objective reality constituted by discontinuous successive vibrations,25 his theory
of memory accounts for an order of continuity that memory, qua condensa-
tion, is able to realize. In order to really understand the basis for those affirma-
tions, we need to keep in mind that although Bergson sees a mere difference
in degree between matter and conscious perception, he establishes a difference
in kind between perception and memoryeven though, practically, perception
and memory are inseparable.This nevertheless means that matter and spirit are
two orders of reality independent from one another. Against Kant, then, it is
clear that our intuition of matter cannot be a mere rational construction; rather,
it is necessarily immediate, hence objective. And just as we were able to estab-
lish the absoluteness of matter by means of the theory of pure perception, Berg-
son adds that if, then, spirit is a reality, it is here, in the phenomenon of mem-
ory, that we may come in touch with it experimentally (1997a, 77/1991, 73).
The full sense of Bergsonian dualism can now come into focus.
To conclude this inquiry into Bergsons account of the nature of con-
sciousness, let me just indicate yet another consequence of his insistence on the
qualitative difference between matter and memory. All questions concerning
the mode of the survival of the past will dismiss from the outset any psycho-
logical theory trying to locate recollections within the cerebral matter of the
brain.To say, with Bergson, that the brain is a mere central telephonic switch-
board transmitting movements is also to say [that] it is in vain to attribute to
the cerebral substance the property of engendering representations (ibid.). In
fact the final conclusions of Matter and Memory run as follows: Questions relat-
ing to subject and object, to their distinction and their union, must be put in terms of time
rather than of space (ibid., 74/71, emphasis in original). As Frdric Worms
insightfully points out, we are here witnessing a crucial reversal of the relationship
between the body and memory.Whereas from a practical point of view, the body
is occupying the foreground in the theory of perception, it gets relegated to the
background in the theory of memory. Similarly, while memory remains sec-
ondary from a practical point of view, it returns as primary with the reintroduc-
tion of time, which is to say, of becoming.Worms writes,At bottom, the stakes
are the following: the body, whose existence had been posed as an absolute in the
first chapter, now depends on memory for its conservation in time!26 This is the key to
the Virtual informing the Bergsonian unconscious.
31
2
Introducing Memory:
From the Psychological
to the Virtual
If we begin by isolating man on the instantaneous island of his pre-

sent, and if all his modes of being as soon as they appear are des-
tined by nature to a perpetual present, we have radically removed
all methods of understanding his original relation to the past. We
shall not succeed in constituting the dimension past out of ele-
ments borrowed exclusively from the present any more than the
geneticists have succeeded in constituting extension from unex-
tended elements.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness
As we turn to the second chapter of Matter and Memory, titled Of the Recog-
nition of Images. Memory and the Brain, we must begin, with Bergson, by
establishing secure foundations for the comprehensive theory of memory that
constitutes the cornerstone of the book as a whole. I argue that in order to
grasp the full significance of Bergsons theory of memory, we must equally
appreciate its psychological and its metaphysical, or ontological, reach.
Although the ontological significance of memory is not explicitly thematized
by Bergson until the third chapter on Memory and Spirit, his insistence that
memory-images cannot depend entirely on the body, or the brain, for their
33
conservationbut rather that it is the other way aroundis already providing

us with crucial clues as to the issue of the survival of the past, of its specific
mode of being. I have suggested that one way of reading Bergsons philosoph-
ical project is to establish a parallel between Bergsonism and Kants early criti-
cal philosophyat least in spirit, and primarily for the sake of appreciating the
extent to which Bergson goes beyond Kantianism, while acknowledging Kants
crucial contribution to a philosophical theory of knowledge. Indeed, like Kant,
Bergsons central interest lies in providing a ground for knowledge and expe-
rience. But unlike Kant, who merely aimed at grounding the conclusions of the
scientific knowledge of his time without questioning those conclusions them-
selves and the metaphysical assumptions they rely on, Bergson wants to estab-
lish both the necessity of the system we call the sciences,1 on the one hand,
and the system he calls metaphysics, on the other.2 This explains Bergsons insis-
tence on the complementarity of science and philosophy, a relation whose
necessity will be made fully explicit as we turn to what Deleuze has called
Bergsons method of intuition. In my view, Bergsonism remains intent on
locating freedom, as opposed to mechanistic associationism, at the heart of our
everyday psychological experience. I hope to establish in what follows that for
Bergson, freedom, spontaneity, and creativityor, as Deleuze would put it, dif-
ferenceas opposed to metaphysical determinism, also function ontologically
as the fundamental defining feature of spirit.
Necessity in Bergsonism must be understood quite differently from the way
in which it informs the hypostasized Ideas of Platonism or Aristotles ousia. Nev-
ertheless, in an Aristotelian fashion, to ground a system for Bergson is to give its
reason (1998, 347/1998, 378). But a sufficient reason would be too general, too
baggy: it may justify a system, tell us why a system arose rather than nothing;
it cannot tell us why this system rather than anotherany other imaginable and
sometimes equally justifiable system.What Bergson is after, then, is not Kant-like
conditions for the possibility of a system of knowledge or experience but its
real conditions of necessity. In fact, we will see, as Deleuze brilliantly points out,
that this demand for conditions both tightly fitted to the conditioned and
absolutely prior to it (unlike Kantian conditions which, Deleuze argues after
Bergson, are merely copied off of the conditioned and then projected back)
constitutes the core of both Bergsons and Deleuzes Superior Empiricism. But
more about this later. For now, I just want to bring out a move central to
Bergsonism as a whole, and to Bergsons theory of memory in particular. This
move Leonard Lawlor has tagged the paradox of the double.3
Faithful to his self-declared dualism, Bergson establishes radical distinctions
between what he considers extremes in their pure forms, and among otherwise
unified concepts or entitiesdistinctions that, according to him, have typically
been overlooked by the tradition, hence throwing it into confused, endless, and
sterile arguments. Among such distinctions we have already encountered the
difference in kind between (1) time and space; (2) quantitative (homogenous)
34
Introducing Memory
and qualitative (heterogeneous) multiplicities; (3) motion and rest; (4) spon-
taneity and mechanism; (5) matter (perception, body) and memory (spirit); and
(6) present and past. In a similar move, Bergson introduces his theory of mem-
ory with a radical distinction between two forms of memory, namely, habit-
memory and representation-memory. In fact, just as he established the afore-
mentioned differences in order to both secure philosophical precision and
allow himself to work out the convergence of the terms thereby isolated, we
could say with Worms that the object of the whole second chapter of Matter
and Memory consists in establishing both the distinction and the convergence
between the two forms of memory (Worms 1997, 96). Accordingly, I dedicate
the first section of this chapter to a close examination of this distinction and of
its significance regarding the phenomenon of recognition, which Bergson
identifies as the point of convergence between the two memories. In the sec-
ond section, I extend my inquiry into the methodological role and the onto-
logical signification of Bergsons paradox of the double.
Memory and the Brain:Which Survival?
We have seen that for Bergson the body functions as the real condition for
the actualization of memory as subjectivity. But we also have pointed out,
following Worms, that the transition from matter to spirit consists primarily
in the reversal of the relation between matter and spirit, as a result of which
the body now depends on memory for its conservation in time. How are we
to understand such a claim? How is it that memory, qua order of reality
independent of matter, may ground the very survival of the latter? Further-
more, if spirit is to correspond to the condition for the survival of matter,
and memory cannot simply be preserved in the brain cells due to its essen-
tial independence from matter, then how does memory/spirit ground its
own reality and persistence? Both the second section of this chapter and the
next chapter will attempt to answer this last question. Here I want to clarify
what I believe is at stake in those problems and how Bergson proposes to
solve them.
So far we have seen that according to him, while the past differs essentially
from the present, they both participate in the underlying Ur dimension of
becoming, or the constant unidirectional flow of duration. Moreover, we know
that we obtain the image we call our body by operating a cut into becoming
in general, thereby obtaining an instantaneous slice of time and space within
which my body, as a sensory-motor nexus, occupies the center.This means that
my body, in its very spatiality, coincides with presence; therefore, Bergson con-
cludes, it can only store up the action of the past in the form of motor arrange-
ments (dispositifs moteurs), and of motor arrangements alone (1997a, 77/1991,
81, trans. modified), whence it results, Bergson continues, that past images
35
themselves must be otherwise preserved (ibid.). This implies, as Bergson will

show with his famous treatment of aphasia, that the forgetting involved in var-
ious forms of mnemonic pathologies usually associated with the damaging of
a certain localized part of the brain must not be ascribed too quickly to the
destruction of the memory-images themselves, images that would otherwise
have to be strictly localized in that particular part of the brain. Such forgetting
should be identified with the diminution of the function of memory rather
than that of the number of recollections (ibid., 131/119). We thus have a dis-
tinction between, on the one hand, memory as a unified function of the
bodywhose role consists in the actualization of the virtual memory-
imagesand, on the other hand, memory as the diverse recollections that the
sensory-motor mechanisms may or may not actualize. If both of those forms of
memory survive, then they must correspond to different kinds of survival,
which is to say different forms of life, or modes of being.
The Two Forms of Memory
The first proposition of Bergsons theory of memory is expressed as follows:

The past survives under two distinct forms: first, in motor mechanisms; sec-
ondly, in independent recollections (1997a, 82/1991, 78).This implies, Berg-
son adds, that the ordinary practical operation of memory, which consists in
the utilization of past experience for present action, and which Bergson will
identify as recognition, must take place in two different ways. First, recogni-
tion can happen within action itself, that is, through movements automati-
cally putting to work the mechanisms appropriate to the present situation
(ibid.).This is the kind of experience that Deleuze, in his cinema books, will
call the action-image, which is based in the movement-image. This type of
recognition belongs to the present, and according to Bergson, its impulse pro-
ceeds from the object. Second, recognition may imply the intervention of
spirit, in which case it proceeds by representations emanating from the sub-
ject (ibid.).The kind of experience resulting from this centrifugal movement
corresponds to what Deleuze will call the time-image. Although the time-
image does not exclude movements, since it requires them for its actualiza-
tion within recognition, it does not depend on them for its existence. What
is here at stake, existentially speaking, is two distinct orders of experience, one
that can be reified, and therefore generalized as a result of its objective, hence
impersonal origin, and the other that necessarily remains purely subjective,
personal, and unique.
Bergson then tells us that the question of how past images are preserved
cannot be addressed outside of the problematic of the unconscious and its
ontological status. For if, as we have shown, consciousness coincides with the
present and action, then the pure past will have to be located outside of con-
sciousness, in the unconscious. In order that this difficult and unorthodox idea
36
Introducing Memory
may be fully understood, or even taken seriously in spite of our realist and sci-
entifically oriented intelligence, we must begin by focusing on what the actual
empirical work of recognition consists in. Following Bergson, then, I will
endeavor to test the validity of his proposition in light of the simple, everyday
example of memorizing a lesson to both demonstrate the necessity of the dis-
tinction between the two kinds of memories and exemplify the actual process
through which the two kinds of memory relate to one another.
Habit and Representation:The Lesson Example
Bergson chooses the experience of learning a lesson as a privileged instantia-

tion of the process by which the present activity becomes recollection. Mem-
orization, in both its voluntary and involuntary forms, thus corresponds to the
becoming memory of the sensory-motor information. In a move with which
we are now familiar, Bergson explains that the retrospective self-examination of
consciousness yields two different ways in which one can memorize a lesson,
each coinciding with one of the two forms of memory he has hypothetically
isolated a priori.
First, he says, I can learn a lesson by heart by analyzing each sentence into
segments within my reading, and then repeating that segmented reading sev-
eral times. Each such additional reading constitutes a progress, insofar as the
words are increasingly linked together, and at last the readings organize them-
selves into a continuous whole. It is at the precise moment when this organic
whole is constituted, by analysis and repetition, that I can say that I know the
lesson, that I have memorized it. Now if I look back onto the memorizing
process I just went through, it appears that each reading comes back to my
mind with its own individuality. It is distinguished from those which pre-
ceded or followed it by the very place it has occupied in time; in short, each
reading recurs before me as a determinate moment of my history (1997a,
8384/1991, 79, trans. modified, emphasis added). I have thus acquired this
recollection through the repetition of one identical effort, one closed system
of automatic movements of decomposition and recompositioneach repeti-
tion nevertheless producing a difference, a progress in relation to the preced-
ing one.This first kind of memorizing, Bergson concludes, has all of the char-
acteristic features of habituation (ibid., 84/80). The recollection resulting
from it is therefore indistinguishable from habit; it is habit, and as such it
belongs to the activity of the body. Are we justified, then, in calling it mem-
ory proper?
For, Bergson adds, there is a second aspect to this process of memorization,
one that does not involve habituation. If I now focus on the recollection of any
particular reading within the whole process, I can see that it does not have any
of the characteristics of habit, no analysis and no repetition.Its image was nec-
essarily imprinted at once onto memory, since the other readings constitute, by
37
definition, different recollections (ibid., trans. modified, emphasis added).

Whereas in the first case, each reading represented a moment of my history, in
this situation each reading coincides with an event of my life.4 In its unity, this
event bears a date and can therefore not lend itself to repetition, since in fact
any additional reading would only alter its original nature (ibid.). In other
words, the memorized lesson as a whole is a case of a voluntarily acquired recol-
lection, which necessarily involves movements of articulation, hence action. In
its final form, it does not bear any mark of the past any longer, since it has
become a so-called recollection by virtue of having organized itself into an
organic whole, whose parts have been superseded (i.e., aufheben, cancelled and
lifted up) through the dialectical process of their mutually mediated organiza-
tion. On the contrary, each individual reading consists in an innate recollection,
a recollection that remains self-sufficient since it was immediately memory at the
same time as it was present, which means that it does not require any voluntary
effort of the will in order to become memory.
For Bergson, it is in this temporalhence at once ontological and psy-
chologicaldifference between the two kinds of recollections that their qual-
itative difference lies. While the second kind coincides with memory proper,
the first can only be called memory derivatively. While the latter, rooted in
action, necessarily occupies a determinate duration (i.e., the time it takes to
develop each movement of articulation, even if only in imagination), the for-
mer is inscribed in an intuition of spirit, whose duration remains arbitrary,
hence variable. Indeed, this variable duration, or virtuality, is precisely what
characterizes a representation for Bergson (ibid., 85/81). Indeed it is this vari-
ability, more importantly than the immateriality of representations, that defines
their virtuality. Furthermore,Worms insists,this variability of memories alone
forces us to assume that they have an autonomous source, of a new genre, rad-
ically different from the source of material perception (1997, 104).
Note on the Two Forms of Time
In light of Bergsons notion of duration, which we examined in the context of

its role within psychological life in Time and Free Will, those last remarks may
sound contradictory. It seemed, then, that the succession involved in duration
constituted the most fundamental, although mostly hidden, element underly-
ing any conscious experience. So what are we now to make of the paradox of
the coexistence between past and present as what essentially defines the life of
spirit? I contend that this shift is a precious indication of the crucial reversal we
announced earlier. First, I noted that both Time and Free Will and the first chap-
ter of Matter and Memory situated their domain of inquiry within the psycho-
logical field of everyday experience, rooted in action and motivated by utility
and social interactions. The body occupied the foreground. The displacement
that is now taking place with the introduction of spirit seems to indicate not
38
Introducing Memory
only that the body is receding in the background but that duration itself, which
in Time and Free Will characterized the fundamental self, is losing its originary
and productive function. However, this apparent tension between the two
accounts does not, in my reading, constitute any philosophical contradiction.
On the contrary, it testifies to the radical difference between the realm of the
psychological (the actual) and the realm of the metaphysical, or the ontologi-
cal (spirit, the virtual). Ultimately, this radical distinction is precisely that which
is going to allow Bergson to argue for the necessary doubling, or folding over,
of the two realms.The reversal that we are now witnessing indicates the neces-
sity of establishing a further distinction, which will prove more explicitly cen-
tral as we turn to Deleuzes work. It is, I argue, the distinction between the time
of consciousness, or duration, and the time of the unconscious, or what
Deleuze calls the empty form of time, that is, transcendental time.While the
former remains actual and informs the real through and through, the latter is
essentially virtual; it is the absolute outside of consciousness, although it pre-
cisely conditions it. Nevertheless, as Worms points out, it also is because our
body is capable of being habituated that our memory is able to rejoin it and
relate to it (1997, 102).
Two Recognitions
In a typical move, Bergson tells us that in their pure states, the two forms of
memory are theoretically independent, although in practice neither is ever
encountered as such.The first kind of memory,5 he writes, records in the shape
of memory-images each event of our everyday life as it occurs, without
neglecting any detail, even the most insignificant onesmost insignificant,
that is, insofar as spontaneous memory has no utilitarian ulterior motive, no
intention. It simply stores up the past by the mere effect of a natural necessity.
It is through it, Bergson adds, that the intelligent (or rather the intellectual)
recognition of a past perception becomes possible (1997a, 86/1991, 81). Each
perception prolongs itself into a nascent action so, as the perceived images fix
themselves within spontaneous memory, the movements that continued those
perception-images create new dispositions to act within the body: they modify
the organism (ibid.). This consists in a radically different order of experience
than that of the recording process of spontaneous memories.This second order
of experience is at last deposited within the body in the form of ready-made
and ready-to-hand mechanisms.We become conscious of those mechanisms as
they spring into action. Bergson insists that unlike the recording process of
memory-images, this consciousness is the consciousness of a whole past of
efforts stored up within the present, or within the body in action (ibid.).While
the former is a passing present that is therefore always already past, the latter
consists in a past that is in the process of becoming present for the sake of the
future (i.e., utility).In truth, it no longer represents our past to us, it acts it; and
39
if it still deserves the name of memory, it is not because it conserves bygone

images, but because it prolongs their useful effect into the present moment
(ibid., 87/82, ephasis added). In fact, according to Bergson, these two processes
coincide with two different kinds of recognition, one that is thought (or intel-
lectual recognition) and one that is lived (or sensory-motor equilibrium).
Two Orders of Experience: Actual and Virtual Consciousness
Bergson points out that while the spontaneous recollection is immediately per-
fect, which means that repetition and time will not be able to add anything to
its image without denaturing it, the acquired recollection will spring outside of
time as the lesson is better known; it becomes more and more foreign to our
own past life, that is, more and more impersonal (1997a, 88/1991, 83). The
qualitative difference between the two also means, then, that repetition cannot
convert the former into the latter.The only progress repetition may introduce
within the process of recognition is to better organize the movements through
which spontaneous memory extends itself and to create a habit of the body
(ibid., 8889/8384). Moreover, once again, this memory of the body is only
memory to the extent that I can remember having acquired it. Howeverand
this is the crucial pointI can only remember having acquired it because I appeal to
spontaneous memory (ibid., 89/84). If the memory of the body that belongs to
the actual present we call psychological memory, and if spontaneous memory,
which belongs to the past we call virtual memory, then we can say that psycho-
logical memory only survives qua memory on the basis of virtual memory. Furthermore,
as the rest of my argument will strive to establish, if consciousness can be iden-
tified with psychological memory springing into action, and virtual memory
can be shown to coincide with the unconscious, then we can say that con-
sciousness is necessarily grounded in the unconscious.
But consciousness, embodied in the nervous system as it is, is exclusively
interested in utility.The primordial condition for its efficacy thus lies in main-
taining ones life, whose primary form coincides with adaptation to ones envi-
ronment, to the immediate threats and promises this environment presents. In
contrast, to evoke the past in the form of a representation requires being able
to abstract oneself from present necessities, to care about the nonuseful; in a
word, says Bergson, it requires that one be willing to dream (ibid., 87/82). But
then why would consciousness actually retain not only the useful mechanisms
that allow it to act on and react swiftly to external reality but also virtually pre-
serve the images of the situations that led to the construction of those mecha-
nisms? Bergson writes, of what use are those memory-images (ibid., 90/84)
since once it has been formed and survives as a set of mechanical arrangements,
habit no longer needs the images that have served to compose those arrange-
ments? If representations are closer to dream-life than to reality, are they not
then going to threaten the practical adaptive function of consciousness?
40
Introducing Memory
This would be the case, Bergson suggests, if consciousness were not itself
twofold. We saw earlier that Bergson considers the self as dual. On the one
hand, consciousness is for the most part actual, insofar as its role is to maintain
a relative sensory-motor equilibrium. To this effect, its positive function con-
sists in using those, among the past images, that are capable of throwing light
onto the present situation. Conversely, this means that envisaged negatively, the
role of consciousness is also to inhibit all those past images that cannot accom-
modate actual perception in order to form a useful combination (ibid., 90/85).
Practically speaking, then, spontaneous memory is dependent on the actual
bodily consciousness for its actualization. But, on the other hand, I read Berg-
son as suggesting that there persists such a thing as a virtual consciousness as
well.This would be the kind of consciousness we experience in dreams as we
sleep, or in accidental situations capable of upsetting the equilibrium main-
tained by the brain between external reality and the motor reaction (ibid.).
Such traumatic situations can have the painful anxiety-producing effects that
Freud analyzed in such texts as Beyond the Pleasure Principle.6 They may
also, as Deleuze points out in Cinema 2, be identified with the experience of
the sublime as a possible genetic condition for art, or even of genuine thought
qua creation of concepts.7 In either case, we are confronted with a kind of
experience informed by a duration that can only be called pathological, as its
primary effect, Deleuze suggests, is to throw time out of joint.
Between the Two Recognitions:The Pendulum
Here I want to introduce the phenomenon of attention to life, which accord-

ing to Bergson is the essential point of the debate (1997a, 108/1991, 99).
The debate is the problem situated between the two kinds of recognition,
namely, automatic recognition (or recognition by distraction), on the one
hand, and attentive, or complete, recognition, on the other.We have seen that
in principle the utility-oriented present displaces the useless past, but that
there are exceptional cases where an old image will displace present percep-
tion (ibid., 104/96). Automatic recognition takes place entirely on the level
of the body, which means that the role of memory-images in it remains
accessory, or accidental. On the contrary, attentive recognition is characterized
by the fact that memory-images rejoin present perception as a rule (ibid.,
107/99). The problem that lies at the core of my argument concerning the
relationship between consciousness and the unconscious is expressed by
Bergson in the following terms: In those cases where recognition is atten-
tive . . . is it the perception which determines mechanically the appearance of
the memories, or is it the memories which spontaneously go to meet the per-
ception (ibid.)?
We can see what is really at stake here. If, as I want to argue, the unconscious
does ground and condition consciousness, then it means that the unconscious is
41
ontologically prior, and that consciousness, or what is traditionally identified as

the subject, is a mere negative manifestation relative to utility. But if I am
wrong, then either the appearance of consciousness must be ascribed to some
chance ex nihilo divine act, or (which in fact amounts to the same) subjectiv-
ity must be retrospectively posited as a logical requirement, as happens in the
Kantian critique. In either case, I contend, consciousness and subjectivity would
fail to be properly grounded, and thought itself would have to be accidental. In
short, if with Bergson I can show not only that consciousness is necessarily
grounded in the unconscious but also that subjectivity is thereby not an acci-
dental epiphenomenon of some obscure divine will, then idealism, even in its
transcendental version, will be invalidated. Furthermore, as Bergsons conclu-
sion to Matter and Memory claims (as well as the whole of Creative Evolution),
this would entail that spontaneity is metaphysically first, even though it is con-
stantly and necessarily contradicted by determinism. Realism would thus be
shown to remain insufficient.
We have suggested that the relation between consciousness and the uncon-
sciousa relation that defines experience in its diverse manifestations, be they prac-
tical or theoretical, perception or memory, action or thought, material or spiritual
necessarily involves two movements working in opposite directions. In the
language of Creative Evolution, we could say that, on the one hand, we have an orig-
inary life impulse (the lan vital) working in the positive direction of the creative
evolution of life; on the other hand we have inert matter, constantly busy with
arresting, stabilizing the forward impulse, in order to form speciesa process Berg-
son also calls involution (in contrast to evolution). In The Two Sources, Bergson iden-
tifies the constant play of those two opposite tendencies with the swing of a pen-
dulum, balancing back and forth between two extreme states, eventually passing
through momentary equilibrium, yet unable to arrest the cosmic motion com-
pletely. In this sense, Bergsons pendulum resembles Foucaults pendulum.
Recognition versus Association:The Case of Aphasia
In an attempt to clarify the phenomenon of doubling at play in Bergsons vir-

tual empiricism, let us look more closely at the kinds of experiences that result
from the interaction of the two opposite tendencies.We mentioned that what
happens within the folding over of perception and memory is recognition.This
is the most general definition of recognition Bergson gives: The concrete act
by which we grasp the past anew within the present (1997a, 96/1991, 90,
trans. modified).Therefore, he adds,to recognize would be to associate with a
present perception the images which were formerly given in contiguity with
it (ibid., 97/90, trans. modified). But what does this association of a percep-
tion with a recollection consist of?
According to associationist psychology, it may be either the juxtaposition or
the fusion between perception and memory. In both hypotheses, however, it is
42
Introducing Memory
assumed that it is the resemblance between the actual perception and the memory
of the old perception that drives the association. But since perception and recol-
lection are by definition qualitatively different, the association cannot be made a
priori: the resemblance would have to be perceived. How do we perceive a resem-
blance between a perception and a recollection? Trying to endorse this Humean
viewpoint for the sake of his argument, Bergson points out that resemblance is a
relation established by the mind between terms it compares and therefore already
possesses. So contra Hume, Bergson concludes, the perception of a resemblance is
an effect of association rather than its cause (ibid., 98/91). Furthermore, we have
established with Bergson that recollections are not stored in the brain, which
means that we cannot possess them, or keep them at hand, as if they were located
in some specific storage room just in case. In the final analysis, then, Bergson
contends that associationism cannot account for recognition, as is confirmed by
scientific experiments regarding several cases of aphasia (ibid., 99/91).
Bergson mentions such facts of experience as certain illnesses where the
patients are able to summon up the mental picture of an object named to
them; they can describe it very well, but they cannot recognize it when it is
shown to them (ibid., 99/92). Conversely, Bergson cites a case where a
patient was unable to recognize his own wife and children, yet he knew that
she was a woman and that they were children (ibid., 100/92).8 Finally, Berg-
son concludes, not every recognition implies the intervention of a mem-
ory-image, and, conversely . . . we may still be able to call up such images
when we have lost the power to identify perceptions with them (ibid.).This
means not only that there must be different kinds of recognitionat least
two, as we already knowbut also that the failure to fully recognize certain
images must be ascribed to the diminution of the function designed to
ensure the actualization of memory-images rather than the destruction of
those images themselves.
As we mentioned earlier, Bergson isolates action-recognition (or motor-
recognition), which takes place within the instant.This habit-recognition does
not require the intervention of true memory but merely takes place through
the education of the senses in the shape of mechanisms in the process of being
perfected by repeated movements. As such, action-recognition itself does not
contribute directly to the solution of our problem. However, what does have
significance in relation to my argument is that which the existence of such a
recognition implies. Bergson writes:
If, then, every perception has its organized motor-accompaniment, the ordi-
nary feeling of recognition has its root in the consciousness of this organiza-
tion.This is to say that we ordinarily act our recognition before we think it. . . .
Motor tendencies would, then, be enough by themselves to give us the feel-
ing of recognition. But we hasten to add that in most cases there is something else
besides it. (1997a, 102103/1991, 9495, emphasis added, trans. modified)
43
Once again, besides the motor arrangements constituted along with the
memory of the body, the entirety of our past psychological life survives in all of
its detail.Although it constantly tends to be inhibited by practical consciousness,
this virtual memory simply awaits the occurrence of a rift within the sensory-
motor equilibriumthat is, of a fissure between the actual impression and the
concomitant movementin order to slip in its images (1997a, 103/1991, 95). In
principle, then, it looks as if movement tended to drive away the image. Never-
theless, Bergson insists, it also must contribute to preparing the insertion of this
image as a means of selecting the appropriate image among all possible represen-
tations (ibid.). This is why in our first chapter we defined the brain as a central
telephonic switchboard as well as an organ of choice. For again, Bergson con-
tends, if we are constitutively beings for whom present impressions prolong
themselves into the appropriate nascent movements, and if the goal of perception
is action, not speculation, then nothing prevents old images from slipping into the
actual perception and being adopted by it if it so happens that those old images
can just as well be prolonged into useful movements (ibid., 104/95). It is in this
sense that Bergson was able to claim that although in principle the present dis-
places the past, there also are cases where the past can displace the present.
Indeed, in his masterful 1908 essay The Memory of the Present: False
Recognition (from Mind-Energy), Bergson goes so far as to claim that this
apparently exceptional and usually considered pathological phenomenon of dis-
placement of the actual by the virtual is in fact the normal mode by which intel-
lectual recognition takes place. Not only does such principled displacement pos-
itively account for the phenomenon of dj vu but also, envisaged negatively, it
offers a basis for the fact that there exists different kinds of experienceor, as
Bergson also puts it, different tones of psychological life. In other words, Berg-
son is here arguing that in the context of intellectual recognition (i.e., the most
frequent kind of recognition in humans), the doubling of the present and the
past is not merely accidental or possible but really necessary. He writes:
If we accept this principle, we shall not, in the case of a morbid or abnormal

phenomenon presenting special characters, have to seek any active cause,
because the phenomenon, despite appearances, has nothing positive and noth-
ing new about it. It was already being manufactured while the conditions
were normal; but it was prevented from emerging, when about to appear, by
one of those continually inhibitory mechanisms which secure attention to life.
(1996, 126/1975, 12425, emphasis in original)
Folding Over:The Psychological Is Also Necessarily Virtual
We mentioned at the beginning of this inquiry that the fundamental problem

addressed in Matter and Memory is one of dualism. Practically, we saw in the first
44
Introducing Memory
chapter that the problem of dualism is the question of the relation between
body and mindor, more exactly, following Bergsons fundamental restating of
the true problem at stake, the question of the nature of the relations between
memory and the brain. Finally, our examination of Bergsons account of recog-
nition has led us to locate the nexus of the debate in the phenomenon of atten-
tion to life.The true problem that Bergsons theory of memory must be able to
solve may then be reformulated as follows: if attentive recognition necessarily
occurs within the folding over of perception and memory, and if memory sur-
vives outside of consciousness, then where does the impulse for the doubling
come from? In other words, to which of the two tendencies (actual perception
or virtual memory) must we give ontological primacy in the generation of the
phenomenon of attention?
We already suggested that for Bergson it is ultimately to pure memory that
the positive force underlying human striving for speculative knowledge must
be ascribed. But this resolution of the problem of memory will not be explic-
itly explained until we turn to Bergsons philosophy of life.The aim of this sec-
tion thus consists in clarifying the methodological move that will both allow
Bergson to affirm the existence of the unconscious in the third chapter of Mat-
ter and Memory and to establish its nature as well as the status of its function
within the process of the generation of self-conscious knowledge. I thereby
intend to establish the ground of such knowledge within a certain kind of
experiencean experience he calls intuition. I will argue that beyond Kants
transcendental idealism, it is to a Bergsonian/Deleuzian virtual empiricism
based in the unconscious that philosophy must appeal if it is to prove its own
necessity and provide a ground for its age-old claim to being the mother of
all sciences. In this attempt, I will trace back the real genetic conditions for the
actualization of the virtual. First, this will require that we examine closely the
phenomenon of attention as Bergson analyzes it. Second, this will introduce us
to the notion of contraction or condensation as the central characteristic feature
of the work intrinsic to memorya work we will examine closely in the next
chapter. It also should shed some light on Bergsons conception of reflection
together with the notion of subjectivity it yields. Finally, the analysis of the phe-
nomenon of reflection will allow us to examine both the actual and the virtual
conditions for the positivity of spirit constituted by the paradox of the double.
Attentive Recognition: Doubling as the Creative Evolution of Reflection
In his effort to trace the process by which a recollection may progressively

insert itself into the motor mechanism, Bergson analyzes the phenomenon of
attention into its negative and positive sides (1997a, 109/1991, 100). Accord-
ing to him, automatic recognition is by definition recognition by distraction
(ibid., 107/98). It can occur without the subject making any particular effort
of the will, and it is for this reason, too, that it does not usually require the
45
intervention of representation-memory. Considered in its material aspect,

then, the effect of attention is simply to render perception more intense and
to give out its details. But it would seem that this increase in the intensity of
perception results from a magnifying of the intellectual state (ibid., 109/100).
For, Bergson notes, at the same time as it exercises its power of attention, con-
sciousness testifies to an irreducible difference of form between this increase
of intensity and one that would result from a higher power of the external
stimulus (ibid).We can conclude with Bergson that the stimulus at the origin
of the increase of intensity of perception he identifies with attention seems to
come from within, thereby indicating a certain attitude adopted by the intel-
lect rather than a mere attitude of the body imposed by the external situation.
In either case, attention would primarily be the product of an intellectual atti-
tude. But, Bergson asks, what exactly is an intellectual attitude?
In continuity with his critical work from Time and Free Will, Bergson
argues against most psychologists of his time, who typically tend to translate this
psychological fact (this so-called concentration of the mind) into a physio-
logical one. For Bergson, although it is true that in its purely material manifes-
tation attention does coincide with concomitant physical movements of inhi-
bitionif only movements of arrestwe still need to account for the work of
the mind that accompanies it. Put otherwise, Bergson argues that the material
aspect of attention merely coincides with the negative condition of the phe-
nomenon (ibid., 110/101). As a negative condition, it can only account for the
possibility of the phenomenon as a whole, but not for its substantial reality
that is, for the fact that the same organ (i.e., the brain), perceiving the same
object in the same surroundings, discovers in it a growing number of things and
characteristics (ibid.). In short, the material conditions for the possibility of
attention cannot fully account for its positive occurrence. It has to leave the
explanation of its completion to mystery or chance. Bergson concludes that we
must go farther and look for the positive conditions of attentionconditions
that by inference we can anticipate as belonging to spirit. Just as motor mech-
anisms in general both inhibit and prepare the work of memory, here in the
specific case of attention we can theorize that the phenomena of inhibition
constitute a mere preparation for the effective, or positive, movements of vol-
untary attention that prolong them (ibid.).What do those positive movements
consist in? Bergson writes:
While external perception provokes on our part movements which retrace

its main lines, our memory directs upon the perception received the old
images that resemble it and which have already been sketched out by our
movements. Memory thus creates anew the present perception, or rather it
redoubles this perception by reflecting upon it either the latters own image or
some memory-image of the same genre. (1997a, 111/1991, emphasis added,
trans. modified)
46
Introducing Memory
I believe that there lies the key to understanding the phenomenon of

doubling at the heart of Bergsons theory of matter and memoryand there-
fore, the key to his conceptions of attentive recognition, reflection, and sub-
jectivity.While external perception, no matter how intensified, remains in the
domain of the impersonal and objective (i.e., the main lines just quoted),
something moresomething not merely more intense but also of a different
natureis required for the experience to become subjective, with a specific
color and a tone of its own. This something more belongs to the realm of
memory.9 Furthermore, Bergson makes it clear that self-conscious represen-
tation consists literally in a re-presentation, a doubling over, a reflection of
memory upon perception, of the past upon the present, of the virtual upon
the actual.
Now, Bergson points out, in order to literally reflect (as in a mirror) upon
a perception the image we have received of it, we must be able to reproduce it,
which is to say to reconstruct it, by an effort of synthesis; if attention consists
in the analysis of the external object, then the truth is that this analysis is
effected by a series of attempts at a synthesis, or . . . so many hypotheses (ibid.,
112/102). And we know that those hypotheses are not selected at random.
Before we move on, let me recapitulate the process of attentive recogni-
tion according to Bergson. First, we are given an external perception, the con-
sciousness of which really consists in centripetal movements of imitation con-
tinuing this perception.These movements coincide with an impersonal motor
schema, which will provide a common framework for both the present per-
ception and the past images that are constantly trying to insert themselves into
the present. This common framework prepares the effective movements by
which our memory then reaches out into its own depths in search for appro-
priate (i.e., analogous or superimposable) images. This search consists in so
many hypotheses, which memory launches in the direction of the new per-
ception (centrifugal movement). We thus have two movements, two opposite
tendencies at work, and their hinge is reflection. Furthermore, says Bergson,
The operation can go on indefinitelymemory strengthening and enriching
perception, which, in its turn becoming wider, draws into itself a growing
number of complementary recollections (ibid., 111/101).
I wish to insist that reflection thus understood involves re-construction,
which means that it involves creationa creation made possible by the sensory-
motor schema, but a creation also made necessary by the intrusion of memory.
This implies that active creation occurs at the precise point where matter and
memory become indistinguishable or, as Deleuze puts it in Cinema 2, at the
point of indiscernibility between reality and fiction.10 But, Deleuze insists,this
point of indiscernibility of the real and the imaginary, or of the present and the
past, of the actual and the virtual, is definitely not produced in the head or the
mind, it is the objective characteristic of certain existing images which are by
nature double (1985, 93/2001, 69).
47
Now, we want to ask, does this necessary creativity of complete recogni-

tion coincide with freedom? In order to answer this question, we need to turn
to an examination of (1) the specific function and sense of the motor schema
with regard to the acquisition of knowledge, and (2) the contraction involved
in the work of memory in the process of its actualization.
Motor Schema and Sense: Hearing a Foreign Language
A philosopher of nuances, Bergson is here echoing his remarks from Time and
Free Will centering on the issue of freedom. From what we have just seen, it
appears that the question of freedom will have to be addressed in terms of
degrees of freedom, since both material determinism and spiritual indetermi-
nacy are involved in the act of attentive recognition. But it is not because free-
dom cannot be absolute actually speaking, that Bergson does not hold on to a
strong notion of ontologically pure, virtual freedomwhat I want to call affir-
mative or positive freedom, as opposed to a negatively conceived freedom
fromas the defining feature of spirit. He insisted throughout Time and Free
Will that spontaneity and unpredictability are first, and that quantitative multi-
plicities cannot be thought without an implicit appeal to qualitative multiplic-
ities. Still, ultimately, for Bergson the phenomenon of recognition is partly
automatic, determined and impersonal, partly active, thus inserting indetermi-
nation and subjectivity into the actual material world. The degree of freedom
of action therefore depends on the share that can be ascribed respectively to the
intelligence of the body and to the work of memory. In this attempt at dis-
cerning the respective roles of perception and memory in the phenomenon of
complete recognition, let us, with Bergson, focus on the empirical case of hear-
ing a foreign language.
When I hear two people having a conversation in a language unknown to
me, I do not actually hear them (in the sense of a true auditory recognition).
All I perceive is a confused, continuous, and indeterminate sonorous mass. I do
not distinguish anything, which means that I would be incapable of repeating
anything.Within this same sonorous mass, however, the two foreign interlocu-
tors are able to distinguish separate syllables and words. Nevertheless, the vibra-
tions that reach my ears are identical to those that reach theirs.The true ques-
tion, for Bergson, is How can the knowledge of a language, which is only memory,
modify the materiality of a present perception and cause some listeners actually to
hear what others, in the same physical conditions, do not hear? (1997a,
120/1991, 109, emphasis added, trans. modified).
In my view, this remark testifies to the fundamental relevance of episte-
mology to metaphysical issues and therefore to the crucial importance of Berg-
sons endeavor to establish the mutual interdependency of the study of knowl-
edge and the philosophy of spirit. I maintain that if Bergson can account for
the actual process here alluded to, then his hypothesis that memory, or virtual-
48
Introducing Memory
ity, can operate a real modification of matterand not merely impose some
abstract, more or less arbitrary imaginary form onto itwill be grounded. Fur-
thermore, both his otherwise paradoxical claimsthat (1) matter ultimately
consists in pure exteriority or objectivity, as we saw in the first chapter, and (2)
that memory introduces subjectivity and indetermination into itwill be rec-
onciled without one having to be sacrificed for the other. Bergsons philosophy
will thus be truly situated between idealism and realism, between metaphysics
and the sciences.
In accordance with the account of complete (i.e., meaningful) recognition
to which we have alluded, the process of recognition of an unknown language
would first imply that auditory recollections answer to the call of auditory
impressions, reinforcing their effect through repetition. However, Bergson
points out, in order for the recollection of a word to be evoked, it is necessary
that the ear hears the word in the first place (ibid.). In fact, as long as we (i.e.,
psychologists) assume that we only have purely objective auditory impressions,
on the one hand, and auditory recollections, on the other, the psychological
question of the process of discernment remains insuperable. On the contrary,
says Bergson, if auditory impressions were indeed already organizing nascent
movements of articulation, then we could account for the phenomenon of
forming ones ear to the elements of a new language and ultimately to language
in general. Those automatic movements of internal accompaniment would
become more and more precise through repetition, and eventually the motor
schema of the speech we hear would unfold within our consciousness in the
shape of nascent muscular sensations. Forming ones ear to a foreign language
would thus consist in perfecting this motor accompaniment by coordinating
the motor tendencies of the muscular apparatus of the voice to the impressions
of the ear (ibid., 121/111). At the level of the motor schema, then, the role of
repetition consists in a rudimentary analysis of the underlying brute sonorous
continuity that the ear perceives. But we are still, at this point, at the surface
level that coincides with automatic recognition; no sense can be ascribed to the
words we hear. Once the memory of the body has made possible the actual reg-
istering of present impressions that then become past images, how is memory
itself going to insert itself into matter? In other words, how do we get from the
automatic to the complete recognition of the others discourse? How do we get
from distinguishing words within a continuity of sound to understanding the
sense of those words?
Paradoxically (yet in a typical fashion), Bergson responds that we indeed
have to place ourselves among the interlocutors corresponding ideas at once
(ibid., 129/116), just as we had to place ourselves within the world of images
at once in order to account for perception in the first place. Continuity must be
first metaphysically, although it becomes second epistemologically. Earlier it was
shown that the motor schema is the receptacle of the understanding, that is, of
the experience of sense.According to Bergson, then, the intelligence of the body,
49
or the motor accompaniment, constitutes the form of the understanding: it deter-

mines it.This determination occurs at the precise moment of the practical con-
vergence of the two forms of memorywhere convergence must be understood
as the unity resulting from a movement starting from distinct origins. But the
decisive argument, for Bergson, must show that recollection ultimately anticipates
perception. In fact, the same example of hearing a foreign language testifies to the
necessity of both the motor schema as forming the experience of sense and of
the preexistence of a mnemonic or an imaginary schema.11
According to Bergson, to understand the others discourse involves true
activity on our part, and not merely receptivity. I will never be able to under-
stand the others discourse on the basis of the verbal images themselves.Those
images are by definition discontinuous; I only perceive them to the extent that
they are separated by an interval that my needs have carved up within the con-
tinuity of the real. In this sense, we can say that my consciousness is by defini-
tion discontinuous. Now, Bergson adds, no concrete representation will ever fill
in this interval, just as it is impossible to embrace Achilles stride on the basis of
a juxtaposition of indefinitely divisible (sup)positions. As Bergson puts it,
Images will only ever be things, and thought is a movement (ibid., 139/125,
trans. modified).This means that I will never be able to understand the others
discourse unless I place myself within an analogous mental attitude at once.The
progress from motor schema to sense must therefore primarily be a progress
from memory to perception, from continuity to discontinuity, from virtual sub-
jectivity to actual consciousness.Two opposite movements must fold over one
another. As Worms points out, this is because recognition for Bergson is not a
limited or local function: it is the very principle of our continuous and tem-
poral relation to the worldand to others (1997, 100).
The Memory of the Present (Bergsons First Diagram)
Bergson recapitulates his claims about the relations between the two kinds of
recognition, or the two kinds of experience, in the following terms: Our dis-
tinct perception is really comparable to a closed circle in which the perception-
image directed toward spirit and the memory-image launched into space
careen the one behind the other (1997a, 113/1991, 103, emphasis added, trans.
modified).This circuitous image with two faces (as opposed to the traditionally
linear model of reflective perception) further signifies that no vibration (bran-
lement) starting from the object can stop on its way and remain in the depths
of the mind: it must always find its way back to the object itself (ibid.,
114/104, trans. modified).This conception of the work of the intellect relies on
a profound solidarity between spirit and its object, a connection that cannot be
deemed either abstract or arbitrary. In fact, Bergson insists, the circuit is so
tightly shut that we cannot pass to states of higher concentration without cre-
ating, whole and entire, so many new circuits which envelop the first and have
50
Introducing Memory
nothing in common between them but the perceived object (ibid.). Keeping
in mind the characterization of the heterogeneous multiplicity of duration
from Time and Free Will, we can see how he is able to assert that any new addi-
tion, any increase in intensity, must produce an entirely different whole. Thus
the reflective work of memory coincides with creation.
Nevertheless, the radical difference between the diverse circles of memory
does not excludeand indeed, it entailsthat each time, it is the whole of
memory that passes over into each of these circuits (just as, in Time and Free
Will, it was the whole personality that passed into each free act). In other words,
because memory virtually survives entirely, it is always presentat the same
time as it is past. Envisaged metaphysically then, memory is one because its
duration is elastic, variable, and virtual. But considered psychologically (in its
actual duration), memory is multiple, since this very duration coincides with
heterogeneous succession. It is because of this elasticity or arbitrariness of vir-
tual duration that memory can be dilated indefinitely and reflect upon the
object an increasing number of suggested images. Indeed, for Bergson, these
increasingly expanded virtual circles of memory correspond to growing efforts
of intellectual expansion (ibid., 11415/104). From this he concludes that the
progress of attention attains to deeper and deeper strata of reality. On the one
hand, the work of intellectual recognition reproduces the perceived object at
the actualized surface of memoryor the smallest circle, which also contains the
external object itself, which means that this smallest circle coincides in fact with
the point of indiscernibility between the actual and the virtual. But, on the
other hand, we also reconstruct together with this object the more and more
distant, or profound, conditions with which it forms a system.12
Notice that unlike the Kantian homogenous and impersonal transcenden-
tal conditions (i.e., time and space), those Bergsonian virtual conditions of
experience are essentially heterogeneous and personal. In fact, if those Bergson-
ian conditions of experience can be called transcendentalinsofar as they con-
dition the specific kind of reflective experience that we humans have, and
indeed, Deleuze will not hesitate to use the term transcendentalthen they must
correspond to a profound transvaluation of the transcendental.
Conditions for the Actualization of the Virtual:The Proustian Experience
Unlike Kantian forms those profound Bergsonian conditions of experience

consist in personal memories. As such, they are exactly localized events within
the unfolding of my life, and their heterogeneous series sketches out the course
of our past existence; taken together they make up the last and largest enve-
lope of our memory (1997a, 116/1991, 106, trans. modified). This essentially
subjective, and therefore unique, last and largest envelope of our memory is
precisely what I want to call the ultimate, or the transcendental, form of mean-
ingful experience. I argue that they also differ from Kantian forms insofar as
51
they are not given but rather essentially fugitive (ibid.) and variable. This
implies that we cannot voluntarily recall those innermost memories. Like
Prousts Combray, memory-images remain hidden, captive of an object or a sen-
sation (for instance, a tea biscuit [the famous madeleine]since in relation to us
all objects are a sensationupon which we may never stumble again). For Berg-
son, too, our most profound fugitive recollections only materialize (or actually
come to consciousness) by chance, either when an accidentally precise deter-
mination of our bodily attitude attracts them or when the very indetermination
of that attitude leaves a clear field to the caprices of their manifestation (ibid.).13
Notice that this does not contradict Bergsons earlier claim that the appro-
priate recollections returning to redouble the present perception are not
selected at random.What belongs to chance is the occurrence of the situation
or sensation that constitutes the occasion (as opposed to the cause) for recollec-
tions to manifest themselves; it is in this sense that Deleuze begins by charac-
terizing the Proustian experience in terms of involuntary memory. But which
one, among the innumerable series of memory-images, is actualized is a selec-
tion that occurs precisely on the cusp between voluntary and involuntary
processes. In other words, while the deep virtual condition for the actualization
of memory remains unconscious, the actual condition for this materialization
belongs to the order of consciousness.
Now what about the actual empirical process of actualization that the
unconscious thus conditions?
Actualization as Transformation of the Virtual
According to Bergson, the whole of the past constantly weighs on the body,
trying to insert itself into present perception; at the same time, the present pre-
pares and calls on the virtual past for added information and depth as to the
course of action to be actualized. The outcome of the convergence of those
two movements consists in the following:
[T]he outermost envelope contracts and repeats itself in inner and concentric
circles, which in their narrower range enclose the same recollections grown
smaller, more and more removed from their personal and original form, and
more and more capable, in their banality, of being applied onto the present
perception and of determining it after the manner of a species which defines
and absorbs the individual.There comes a moment when the recollection thus
brought down is capable of blending so well with the present perception that
we cannot say where perception ends and where memory begins. (1997a,
116/1991, 106, emphasis added)
Once again the two opposite movements converging within the kind of
meaningful recognition occurring when one understands the others discourse
52
Introducing Memory
may be recapitulated as follows: from perception to memory, analysis and rep-

etition perform the work needed for the deepening or virtualization of the pre-
sent. But from memory to perception, contraction (or synthesis) and repetition
implement the actualization of the virtual. In both cases, however, repetition is
the vehicle of difference, of a transformation in kind. At the precise point of
convergence, or of indiscernibility between perception and memory, then,
memory turns into something other than itself.
Since, according to Bergson, memory is by definition virtual, it necessar-
ily turns into something else in the process of its actualization.We know that
this something else is a perception or a sensation, an image in the widest sense
of the term; in any case, it is a phenomenon; it is that which appears but also
disappears. Now, as explained earlier, in order for an image to be able to appear
and disappear, to remain in a process of becoming between appearance and
disappearance, this image must have at least two sides: an actual side when it
becomes present and a virtual side when it recedes in the obscure depths of
the mind.
Like Kants transcendental forms, these obscure depths cannot be experi-
enced as such in their pure state. They survive outside of consciousness, given
that with Bergson we have defined consciousness in terms of actuality or of the
embodied part of the process of actualization of the virtual.The shelter of the
virtual images that condition actual experience must therefore correspond to
the unconscious. Nevertheless, as I will continue to argue, Bergsons implicit
transvaluation of the transcendental by the virtual yields a kind of experience
that cannot be captured by Kants critical work. Beyond the Kantian negative
conditioning of experience in terms of possibility, we now have to work out
the positive grounding of experience in terms of the virtual and its ontologi-
cal status. The time has thus come to turn to the third chapter of Matter and
Memory to examine more thoroughly this virtual mode of being that Bergson
ascribes to that which, with Deleuze, I want to call Bergsons transcendental
unconscioustranscendental, that is, insofar as it constitutes the condition for
the actualization of consciousness in the shape of freedom.
53
3
The Unconscious as
Ontology of the Virtual
We believe we think the strange and the foreign, but in reality we

never think anything but the familiar; we think not the distant, but
the close that measures it. And so again, when we speak of impos-
sibility, it is possibility alone that, providing it with a reference,
already sarcastically brings impossibility under its rule.Will we ever,
then, come to pose a question such as: what is impossibility (impuis-
sance), this non-power that would be the simple negation of power?
Or will we ask ourselves: how can we discover the obscure? How
can it be brought into the open? What would this experience of the
obscure be, whereby the obscure would give itself in its obscurity?
Maurice Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation
From Dualism to Difference
The outcome of the convergence of Bergsons general psychology of memory

with his account of the material genesis of consciousness consisted in the affir-
mation of the reality of enlarged experience in the shape of intuition. First, by
redefining perception in terms of its pragmatic interest rather than some alleged
speculative function, Bergson was able to establish the de jure objectivity of pure
perception against not only realism and idealism, but also against the Kantian
55
critique. No longer relative to the forms of transcendental idealism (that is,

homogenous time and homogenous space), knowledge would thus necessarily,
if only incompletely, attain to the absolute real, to the noumenal realm that Kant
excluded a priori from the grasp of human intuition.The Bergsonian notion of
intuition cannot be equated with Kants. One of the goals of this chapter is to
show that for Bergson, intuition must be inhuman; as a method rooted in the
essentially utility-oriented human experience, it is also, at the same time, the
means to that which lies beyond human experience, beyond the turn at which
experience becomes human.1 Indeed, it will appear that all along, and unlike the
Kantian critical effort, Bergsons own critical work has been exclusively directed
at bringing to light the fundamentally positive dimension out of which meta-
physics will be resurrected. This positive dimension he calls the virtual, the
pure past, the unconscious.
So far we have been following Bergson in his genealogical exhibition of
the necessity of assuming the existence of the virtual, or the survival of the
past, independently of its material actualization; as he puts it, memory is other
than a function of the brain (1997a, 238/1991, 268). Concretely, Bergson
upholds the necessity of this existence on the basis of the difference in kind
(and not merely in degree) between perception and memory, present and past,
presence and absence. Our last chapter was indeed dedicated to proving, with
Bergson, that we must postulate the reality of pure memory in order to
account for the facts of human experiencefrom actual perception to intel-
lectual recognition.The aim here is to examine the source of this experience,
its ontological status, the metaphysical nature of this virtual existence that
defines memory proper. Our central claim will be that methodologically, such
metaphysical endeavor can only be carried out on the basis of a genuine phi-
losophy of difference. This is where I suggest that the project of the renewal
of philosophy informing the French philosophy of the latter half of the twen-
tieth century is profoundly indebted to Bergson.This I will illustrate by exam-
ining the shape this legacy takes in Deleuzes 1968 Difference and Repetition, as
well as in his cinema books of the early eighties. It will appear that through
Deleuzes reworking of Bergsons entire philosophical enterprisea project
for a new philosophy of concrete perceptionan alternative irreducible to
the phenomenological approaches that have hitherto dominated our philo-
sophical landscape may be outlined.
In his 1956 Bergsons Conception of Difference,2 Deleuze writes that a
philosophy of difference always plays itself out on two levels, methodological
and ontological.While the methodological level consists in determining differ-
ences of nature (or in kind) between things, the ontological level focuses on
determining the nature of difference. But, he adds, these two problems, namely, of
the differences of nature and of the nature of difference, constantly refer to one
another. For it is only by establishing differences of nature between things that
we will be able to account for the things themselves without reducing them to
56
The Unconscious as Ontology of the Virtual
something other than themselveswhich is to say, we will be able to grasp

them in their being. Furthermore, says Deleuze,if the being of things is . . . in
their differences of nature, we can hope that difference itself is something, that
it has a nature, finally that it will deliver Being to us (2002a, 43/1999, 42).
Now, Deleuze continues, in Bergson we encounter those two problems in their
bond, we discover the passage from one to the other (ibid.).
If we are to understand the full import of Bergsons ontology of the vir-
tual, then we must fully comprehend this passage. I argue that that is precisely
what we are now faced with, as we turn from the second to the third chapter
of Matter and Memory, from the issue concerning memory and the brain to
the problematic of memory and spirit. While the former was still dealing
with the psychological dimension of the problem of memoryhence of the
process of its actualizationthe latter attaches itself to the metaphysical dou-
ble of this psychology of memory.Whereas the first two chapters of Matter and
Memory aimed primarily at posing the true problem of difference by grappling
with dualism, the third and fourth chapters consist in solving this problem by
examining the mode of the union of body and mind.Yet I indicated that it is
through his determination of the differences of nature between homogenous
and heterogeneous multiplicities, between spatialized time and duration,
between perception and memory, between matter and spirit, and between the
actual and the virtual that Bergson was able to displace profoundly the prob-
lem at stake between idealism and realism. Bergsons dualism thus already aims
at situating philosophical inquiry anew. No longer caught up within the ster-
ile debates inherited from Cartesianism, Bergsonism displaces the issue of the
relationship between mind and body onto the terrain of the relation between
consciousness and the unconscious.This was the conclusion of our first chap-
ter. We then tried to show that Bergsons notion of the virtual, articulated
around the paradox of the double involved in both its determination and its
movement of actualization, constituted the bond between consciousness and
the unconscious, between actual perception and memory, and that it therefore
coincided with both the core of the problem at stake and the key to its solu-
tion. The time has now come, finally, to examine how Bergson proceeds to
offer such resolutionhow, in other words, Bergsonism resolves the problem
of dualism, all the while generating a true philosophy of difference in the
shape of what Deleuze has called superior or transcendental empiricism
(and of what I call virtual empiricism).
So far, then, we have witnessed Bergsons hyperbolization of dualism. On
the one hand, functionally, or psychologically speaking, matter (the brain, the
body) depends on memory for its conservation in time, and pure virtual mem-
ory requires material cerebral arrangements for its actualization. But, on the
other hand, Bergson insists, matter and spirit constitute two metaphysically
independent orders of existence, which is to say two essentially opposite ten-
dencies which, in their pure states, remain mutually exclusive. But as the very use
57
of the term tendency suggests, these two distinct essences are neither immutable
nor immediately able to be experienced as such. In fact, there is a sense in
which we could say that Bergsons theory of tendencies, although it is not
made fully explicit until his 1907 Creative Evolution, subtends both his psy-
chology of memory and his metaphysics of matter. Our first step in the direc-
tion of capturing the ontological status of the virtual will therefore consist in
a brief examination of Bergsons theory of tendencies as it appears in Creative
Evolution. This will bring to light the fundamental basis of the Bergsonian
method (the method of intuition), which in turn should allow us to fully
appreciate the ontological dimension of the problem at stake, and ultimately
to reformulate the question of the difference between matter and spirit in
terms of the difference (hence the relation as well) between difference in kind
and difference in degree.
So that we may keep in mind the horizon that awaits us, let me simply
announce that this resolution, which is to rise out of Bergsons further trans-
mutation of the problem, he envisions as coinciding with a process of differen-
tiation and integration3 rooted in memorys constant effort of contraction. In
contrast to traditional metaphysics primary method of hypostatic identifica-
tion, based in association and resemblance, it is ultimately in terms of tension, or
of rhythms of duration, that Bergson will resolve the problematic of unity and dif-
ferencethat is, the problem of the unity of the personality and the difference
of nature that subtends it. We will see that this consists of what Deleuze has
provocatively called Bergsons dualistic monism. I will strive to show that the
very notion of rhythms of duration can only be understood on the basis of a
profound intertwining between duration and virtuality, or between succession
and coexistence.4 Put otherwise still, I will strive to trace Bergsons final reso-
lution of the problem of dualism (or difference) into his concomitant refor-
mulation of the traditional dialectics of necessity and freedom. Once again, if
philosophy for Bergson is to be a new philosophy, then it must at the same
time be a philosophy of the new, of variability, of movement and creation
which is to say, it must be a philosophy of freedom.
The lan Vital or the Ontologization of Duration
lan Vital and Individuation
Most generally, we could say that Creative Evolution consists in Bergsons reval-
uation of the history of the evolution of life. In this sense, it is a philosophical
examination not only of the concept of life but also of that which essentially
defines it, namely, the phenomenon of change.The empirical study of the evo-
lution of life does not go without both an examination of the concept of life
itself qua creative impulse (the lan vital) and of the true conditions, or the
58
profound causes, of this necessary production of the new. We already know

that for Bergson the notion of causality cannot be left unquestioned. His affir-
mation of the reality of freedom as the unity of self with self in Time and Free
Will turned out to rely on his critique of the mechanistic conception of cause.
Echoing this early argument, the first chapter of Creative Evolution rehearses the
critique of mechanism, as applied to the concept of life itself, and to both the
evolution of life and of its concept. But as its title (The Evolution of Life:
Mechanism and Finalism [trans. modified]) indicates, this first chapter also
makes it clear that although finalism could provide us with a philosophically
satisfying alternative to mechanism, such a teleological approach to the issue of
evolution must first be disencumbered from its intellectualistwhich is to say
abstract and dogmaticbent. In this attempt, Bergson embarks once again
upon a genealogical project, this time of intelligence itself, but also of its vital
counterpart in the form of instinctthat is, ultimately, of what he considers the
two essential tendencies that constitute life.
This is not the place to delve into Bergsons transvaluation of teleology, but
let me simply mention that for him, if there is a telos to life, then this telos must
be understood in terms of origins rather than ends, in terms of external final-
ity rather than internal finality. Against radical finalisminstantiated by the
Leibnizian theory that the universe as a whole is the carrying out of a plan, a
theory that makes all genuine creation of the new impossible from the outset,
since just as mechanism, it entails that the whole is givenBergson writes,
Radical as our own theory may appear, finality is external or it is nothing at
all (1998, 41/1998, 41). Indeed, he argues, the doctrine of internal finality sim-
ply destroys itself: if we consider the most complex and most harmonious
organism, then internal finalism tells us that all of its elements conspire for the
greatest good of the whole. But in light of Bergsons conception of individua-
tion, it appears that each of those elements may in turn be a smaller organism.5
Ultimately, then, by subordinating the smaller to the greater organism, the the-
ory of internal finality accepts the thesis of external finality.
To affirm that individuation is never perfect, as Bergson does, is to uphold
both the relative autonomy of the organism and its continuity with the rest of
the livingjust as, in Matter and Memory, he demonstrates both the ontologi-
cal independence and the functional complementation of matter and memory.6
Against vitalism, Bergson then asks the following: If the individual is not inde-
pendent enough, not isolated enough from the rest for us to allow it a vital
principle of its own, then where does this vital principle of the individual
start, and where does it end? (ibid., 43/43). Gradually, if we go back far
enough, we shall find the individuals solidarity with each of its remotest
ancestors, and ultimately with that little mass of protoplasmic jelly that is prob-
ably at the root of the genealogical tree of life. This solidarity with its primi-
tive ancestor further entails a solidarity with all that descends from this ances-
tor in divergent directions (ibid.). Thus Bergson concludes, if there is finality in
59
the realm of life, then it embraces the whole of life in one single, indivisible
embrace (ibid.).7 This one simple principle, which constitutes the original
impulse of life, he calls the lan vital.
Now we want to ask if on the basis of a close examination and evaluation
of the facts of scientific experience (primarily embryology), Bergson is able to
lay down a fundamental principle of unity and continuity at the source of life,
then what are we to make of the divergent directions instantiated within the
evolution of life? In short, what is a tendency?
Between Continuity and Discontinuity:The Tendencies
Once again we can see that the central problem we are faced with is that of the
relation between continuity and discontinuity, between unity and difference.
And once again, Bergson insists, we have to understand that the real motor of
evolution, be it of the evolution of life or of thought, is not association or
aggregation (as both Darwin and the associationist psychologists would have it)
but division and differentiation. For, he says, throughout the process of individ-
uation, the characters of a group (e.g., a species) appear as general themes, com-
parable to a musical theme, in relation to which each subgroup executes its par-
ticular variations in rhythm.8 For Bergson, this relation also describes exactly
the relation, informing the animal and vegetal worlds, between the genitor and
that which it generates. For instance, scientific experience shows that until a
certain period in its development, the embryo of the bird is barely distinguish-
able from the reptiles. But throughout embryonic life in general, the individ-
ual develops a series of transformations comparable to those through which
one would pass, according to evolutionism, from one species to another. Berg-
son insists, however, that it is a single cell, obtained by the combination of a male
and a female cell, that accomplishes this work by division. For him, then, expe-
rience establishes that the most complex can arise from the simplest by evolu-
tion (ibid., 24/24)that, in other words, divergent tendencies can be generated
out of simple duration. For an individual to realize itself is to differentiate itself
in a vital form. But this differentiation is only the separation of that which
coexisted virtually in duration.
Again, for Bergson, individuation is never fully realized and thus contains
an infinity of degrees (ibid., 12/12). This means that we cannot give a perfect
definition of individuality, for such a definition applies only to already-made
reality, whereas vital properties are never entirely realized but always in a process
of realizationin this consists their virtuality. Those vital properties are what
Bergson calls tendencies, as opposed to states.As a tendency, then, individuation
is not only present everywhere in the organic world, but it is also everywhere
disputed by the antagonistic tendency to reproduction. If individuation were
perfect, then none of the parts (not even the reproductive germ cells) would be
able to live independently of the organism, and reproduction would be impos-
60
sible.The vital necessity of the organisms perpetuation in time condemns it to

never being complete in space. Antagonistic tendencies are therefore always
implicated into one another.
Ultimately for Bergson there are two series of causes for the fragmentation
of life into individuals and species. One is the resistance to life on the part of
brute matter: its negativity.The other is an explosive forcedue to an unsta-
ble equilibrium of tendencieswhich life bears within itself (ibid., 99/98,
trans. modified).9 As the earlier example of the cell shows, however, it turns out
that organized matter itself has a limited power of expansion that is very
quickly reached; beyond a certain point it has to divide, to double itself up (se
ddouble). It is indeed through this repetition on the basis of a division of labor
that it can obtain that an increasing number of elements, always ready to divide
further, remain united in an indissoluble knot (ibid).10 This doubling by divi-
sion thus corresponds, in the realm of evolution in general, to the paradox of
the double involved in the relation between memory and the brain that we
examined in the preceding chapter.This relation can only be grasped as a para-
dox because it involves the interaction of two distinct principles, working in
opposite directions. And ultimately, Bergson adds, the true and profound
causes of this division inherent in matter must be ascribed to life qua lan vital.
He says, Life is a tendency, and the essence of a tendency is to develop in the
form of a sheaf, creating, by its very growth, divergent directions among which
the impetus is divided (ibid., 100/99).
Indeed, Bergson continues, this explosive force of life we equally observe
in ourselves, in the evolution of that tendency we call our character. Glancing
retrospectively over our history, we find that our child-personality, though indi-
visible, united in itself diverse persons, which could only remain blended
because they were in their nascent state. But these interwoven personalities
become incompatible in the course of growth, and as each of us can live but
one life, a choice must perforce be made. As Bergson puts it, The route we
pursue in time is strewn with the remains of all that we began to be, of all that
we might have become (1998, 101/1998, 100).We saw in our last chapter that
those remains, those nascent personalities, together with the acts they accom-
plished, all of those divergent virtual tendencies whose actualization has been
voted out, are indeed the stuff of memory. They are what psychoanalysis calls
the unconscious.11 And we saw that for Bergson, if they happen to reach actu-
alization, it is as necessarily differing in kind with themselves, as contracted
within one single heterogeneous multiplicity, one single life. In contrast, nature
has at command an incalculable number of lives and thus is in no wise
bound to make such sacrifices. She preserves the different tendencies that have
bifurcated with their growth. She creates with them diverging series of species
that will evolve separately (ibid.).12
In Bergsons view, then, on the one hand there are the unorganized mate-
rial bodies, which we need in order to act and consequently on which we have
61
modeled our ways of thinking. But those are governed by the simple rule that
the present does not contain anything more than the past, and what we find in the effect
is already present in the cause (ibid., 14/14, emphasis added). Negatively, this
entails that the explosive force inherent in life must be equated with duration
a duration that has therefore no efficacy in the realm of dead matter. On the
contrary, the distinctive feature of organic bodies is that they grow and change
constantly; there is therefore nothing surprising, Bergson concludes, in the phe-
nomenon that the living body is one first and then many (ibid.). In the realm
of life in general, the lan vital coincides exactly with that which, in the domain
of consciousness, Bergson called duration: their essential function is to introduce
variability, although they are by nature one and simple. Once again, this inter-
twining of unity and difference escapes contradiction, because it is grounded in
the coexistence of degrees that essentially defines difference of nature qua tem-
poral difference (or heterogeneous multiplicity).We will show that in the end,
it is this coexistence that allows for variability and that accounts for the posi-
tivity of the virtual.
Notice that as the earlier illustration suggests, the duality of the Bergson-
ian tendencies does not distribute the ontological difference along the lines
of Cartesian dualism, with inert matter, on the one hand, and spiritual move-
ment, on the other. Rather, both individuation and reproduction occur within
one of the two directions, namely, the direction of life. In accordance with Time
and Free Will if, on the one hand, pure matter is a mere quantitative multiplic-
ity whose variations consist in differences in degree (e.g., augmentation and
diminution), then, on the other hand, life or consciousness coincides with a
qualitative multiplicity. And it is solely on account of that heterogeneous mul-
tiplicity itself that further differences in kind will be produced. Thus beyond
Time and Free Will we must say that there is not only a difference in kind
between the two halves of the division between space and duration. Moreover,
and perhaps more importantly, The qualitative difference is entirely on one
side, as Deleuze points out: it is on the side of duration, of temporal difference,
because it alone is endowed with the power of qualitatively varying with itself
(alteration)and not only with other things (1998a, 22/1988, 31).
Let us take, for instance, Bergsons famous example of the lump of sugar.
When we only approach it from the angle of its spatial configuration, all we
ever grasp are differences in degree between that lump of sugar and any other
thing. But, Deleuze adds,It also has a duration, a rhythm of duration, a way of
being in time which is at least partially revealed in the process of its dissolving,
and that shows how this sugar differs in kind not only from other things but
first and foremost from itself (ibid., 23/32).This shows that this internal differ-
ence or alteration is one with the essence or the substance of a thing, and it is what
we grasp when we conceive it in terms of duration (ibid., emphasis added).13 In other
words, it all happens as if, with the theory of tendencies he proposes in Creative
Evolution, Bergson extended the bearing of duration beyond consciousness, to
62
the things themselves. Indeed, this may be the greatest import of Bergsonism
that which, beyond phenomenology, establishes it as signifying the end of the
Cartesian era in French philosophy.14
Metaphysics beyond Descartes and Kant: Life Philosophy as Ontology
We noted earlier the necessary complementation Bergson sees between philos-

ophy and the sciences. In fact, in his excellent introduction to Bergsons
uvres, Henri Gouhier insists that Descartes and Bergson have the same con-
ception of philosophy as science; but, he adds, they do not have the same con-
ception of science (2001b, xi). In Descartess time, if philosophy is a science,
then it can only be so as mathematics, which alone offers in its geometrical
method (unifying intellectual intuition with deduction), the type of certainty
to which reason must pretend. However, Gouhier points out, Bergsonism pre-
sents itself as the self-conscious realization of a novel situation in the history of
the sciences (ibid., xii).The nineteenth century saw the constitution of a posi-
tive biology; after the sciences of organic life, there appeared naturally the sci-
ences of social life and psychic life.These pursue their development outside of
the framework that Descartes had provided for them, since their progress man-
ifests truths that are indisputably scientific and yet that are not true as 2 + 2 = 4
is true.There is thus a type of evidence that is not that of intelligible relations
(or laws) but that of facts. And if a method is required in both instances, then
it is not the same method, for in the end while philosophy is a science in the
way of mathematics for Descartes, it is a science in the way of biology for Berg-
son (ibid.), as Creative Evolution shows most prominently. For Bergson, then, to
follow the example of the Cartesians is not to do what they did but to do what
they would have done in the situation in which we arethat is, to think at the
level of a broader experience. Indeed, this metaphysics that imitates the life sci-
ences Bergson embraces and calls a positive metaphysics, a metaphysics
which searches for facts, models itself after their contours, cuts out concepts
to their measure and leads, for each problem, to a theory saturated with expe-
rience (ibid., xiv).
Furthermore, Gouhier emphasizes, in order to properly understand not
only that which Bergsonism puts an end toCartesianismbut also that
which it generatesthat is, an ontology of the virtual, or of becomingwe
need to go back to the origin of the concept of being. For the Greeks, being
is opposed to becoming as the more real is opposed to the less real, or the real
to appearances. It follows that for them that which is fixed, immutable, and
intemporal enjoys an ontological privilege in which existence is synonymous
with identity. As Bergson insists in the final sections of Creative Evolution, it is
the same opposition between being and becoming that informs the philoso-
phies of Plato,Aristotle, Zeno, Descartes, Leibniz, and even Kant, when he pos-
tulates his transcendental subject (ibid., xv). However, Gouhier continues,
63
something happens as philosophy turns to the life sciences for its model, some-
thing that, in its radicality, is able to interrupt this tradition. What happens is
that the life sciences put spirit in the presence of a reality that is change
(ibid.). Confronted with organisms that are born, grow, and perish, that con-
stantly adapt actively to their environment, it becomes impossible to dissociate
being and becoming. Life, in its constant intertwining with material negativity
and inertia, is precisely this union of being and becoming. Henceforth, we want
to argue, such life philosophy, which renounces the postulate of an immobile
and intemporal being, remains an ontology, albeit a new ontology; indeed, I
shall add, it is the only possible ontology in modernity.
We said that the novelty of Bergsonism consists in the fact that while Berg-
son has the same idea as Descartes of philosophy as science, he does not have
the same idea of science. Similarly, we can say that while like his great prede-
cessors prior to the Kantian critique, Bergson thinks that spirit can attain to
being, he does not have the same conception of being. We just saw that with
Creative Evolution, and the profound connection Bergson establishes between
life (or being) and duration, he is in fact going beyond the psychological
account of duration he provided in Time and Free Will. But, as we will strive to
show, this radicalization of duration through its ontologization was already
occurring in Matter and Memory. By ontologization of duration, I mean that
things are no longer a liminal case of duration, relative to our consciousness
that is, we have to wait for the lump of sugar to dissolve. Rather, things them-
selves participate in duration directly, absolutely: the lump of sugar has to wait
for its own dissolution. For Bergson, then, matter is not entirely devoid of vir-
tuality; put otherwise, virtuality is not simply reducible to subjectivityat least
not to a traditional, humanistic conception of subjectivity.
Before returning to a full examination of the method of intuition that
Bergson is able to design on the basis of this enlarged notion of duration and
of the diverse tendencies that embody it, I now pursue an investigation of the
source of Bergsons ontology of the virtual. I locate this ontological move
within his examination of the union of memory and spirit in the third chapter
of Matter and Memory.
Memory as Virtual Coexistence
If memory is primarily defined as the conservation and preservation of the

past in the present, and if the main function of memory proper is to carry out
this preservation by contracting a number of external moments into a single
moment of our consciousness, then it appears that Bergson is pointing to the
structural identity of memory and duration: they both consist in a heteroge-
neous multiplicity, in a unified series of coexisting qualitative differences. In a
word, their difference is based in their continuity.
64
The Real as Becoming
Recapitulating his conclusions of the second chapter of Matter and Memory,

Bergson starts out his third chapter by reminding us of his ontological assay so
far. On the one hand, we have pure memory, which remains independent of per-
ception in principle. On the other hand, we have perception, which in its pure
virtual state remains equally independent of memory. But we also have a third
term, the memory-image (located within consciousness), which participates
both in pure memorywhich it begins to materializeand in perception
where it tends to be incarnated. However, says Bergson, what consciousness
bears witness to, whenever it follows the movement of memory at work so as to
analyze it, is that our thought describes a continuous line from pure memory to
perception, and that it is impossible to say precisely where one of the terms ends
and another begins (1997a, 148/1991, 133).We saw that, according to Bergson,
the consciousness striving to evoke a period of its past history performs an act
sui generisan act without a genre, an act that resembles no other conscious
actby which we detach ourselves from the present to replace ourselves, first in
the past in general, and then in a certain region of the past.This work of adjust-
ment Bergson compares to the focusing of a camera, or more famously, to the
turning of a kaleidoscope. But, he maintains, we thereby simply prepare our-
selves to receive it by adopting the appropriate attitude; the recollection itself
remains virtual, but at the same time it transforms itself through the process of
actualization. Says Bergson,Little by little it comes into view like a condensing
nebulosity; from the virtual state it passes into the actual; and as its outlines
become more distinct and its surface takes on color, it tends to imitate percep-
tion. But it remains attached to the past by its deepest roots (ibid., 148/134,
trans. modified). Even in its actualized state, then, a recollection retains some-
thing of its original virtuality.This is because, like life, memory is a tendency, a
qualitative multiplicity capable at once of preserving and altering itself.
Bergson seizes this opportunity to clarify his contention with the associa-
tionists account of the work of the mind: they substitute an abstract, discon-
tinuous (or discrete) multiplicity of inert elements for this real, living continu-
ity of becoming (ibid.). In a word, the error of associationism consists in
desperately trying to erect into a difference of nature that which it has con-
demned to being a mere difference in intensity (or of degree) between recol-
lection and sensation. Situated within the actual from the outset, associationism
can only try in vain to discover, in a present and already-made state, the mark
of its past origin. In contrast, Bergson argues that we shall never reach the past
unless we place ourselves in it at once (demble): immediately. Since the past is
essentially virtual, we can only grasp it as past by following and adopting the
movement by which it emerges from obscurity into the light of the day (ibid.,
150/135).This means that for Bergson there is much more than a difference in
degree between past and present, between memory and perception: there is a
65
difference of nature, for while my present is that which interests me, that which
is alive for me, the place where I act, my past is at once impotent (impuissant)
and the mark of my impotence (ibid., 152/137).
The Concrete Present and the Nature of the Pure Past
Because Bergsons investigation of the nature of the virtual must follow and
adopt the movement of thought, it must begin with a self-examination of
consciousness in the act of apprehending its past as pastthat is, it must follow
consciousness involved in the effort of recollection. And since that which
defines consciousness qua activity is the present that interests it, we must begin
by asking:What, concretely, is the present moment for me?
That which properly defines time is that it flows.What we call the present
is the instant in which it flows. But, as Aristotle holds, the now is always already
gone: this instant is not reducible to a mathematical point. Concretely, says Berg-
son, the present necessarily occupies a duration (ibid). Now, he asks, where is this
duration located? Obviously it is located both below and beyond the ideal pre-
sent, which means that my present encroaches onto both my past and my future.
From this, Bergson concludes, The psychological state that I call my present
must be both a perception of the immediate past [or a sensation] and a deter-
mination of the immediate future [in the shape of an action or a movement]
(ibid.). In essence, my concrete present is an indivisible sensory-motor whole,
which is to say that it consists in the consciousness I have of my body. Put oth-
erwise,my present represents the actual state of my becoming, that which is in
the process of being formed with and in my duration; as such, it coincides with
the quasi-instantaneous cross section that my perception operates within the
flowing mass of reality. And we know, from the first chapter, that this cross sec-
tion is precisely what we call the material world, within which my body occu-
pies the center (ibid., 154/138). But notice that because my concrete present
endures, because it is more than a mathematical instant, it cannot exactly coin-
cide with matter. Matter is absolute exteriority; insofar as it is extended in space,
it must be defined as a present that is always beginning anew.15 Conversely, says
Bergson, as a system of sensations and movements and nothing else,our present
is the very materiality of our existence (ibid., 154/139). In other words, the
present is both juxtaposition in space and succession in time, the coexistence of
repetition and difference, matter and memory. The validity of this paradoxical
claim stems not from a clever logical game on Bergsons part. For him, this para-
dox of repetition and difference, which defines the present, refers to a positive
reality, namely, the reality of the unconscious.
Existence of the Unconscious
Let us not forget that the immediate past or sensation that remains indistin-
guishable from my psychological present may be a memory-image, but it can
66
never be misconstrued as pure recollection. Bergson reminds us that, unex-

tended and powerless, pure recollection does not participate in sensation in any
way (1997a, 156/1991, 140). Indeed, he adds,this radical powerlessness of pure
memory is just what will enable us to understand how it is preserved in a latent
state (ibid., 156/141). How so?
Bergson explains that it is because we are so used to considering con-
sciousness as the essential property of psychological states that we are so unwill-
ing to conceive unconscious psychological states: it seems to us that a psycho-
logical state could not cease to be conscious without ceasing to exist. But if, as
we have been arguing, consciousness is only the characteristic of the present, or
the active, then that which does not act may cease to belong to consciousness
without thereby ceasing to exist (ibid.). A psychical state can very well be with-
out, for that matter, being active. As we have been insisting, it is because he was
able to introduce scientific-like precision into the traditionally vague term con-
sciousness, that Bergson is able to positively show the existence of unconscious
states. By creating a concept that fits tightly the phenomenon of consciousness,
he has built the foundation from which to embark upon a metaphysical quest.
This quest he likes to call a science of spirita kind of knowledge capable of
complementing the sciences, which obviously have remained dedicated to the
study of matter, or, in the case of psychology, to the study of materialized spirit.
Bergson begins his empirical demonstration of the existence of uncon-
scious representations on the basis of a parallel between the material and the
spiritual realms. Everybody agrees that the images actually present to our con-
sciousness do not exhaust the whole of the material world. But then, what
could be a nonperceived material object, if not a kind of unconscious mental
state? Both realists and idealists must admit that such perceptions as the other
rooms in the house, which are presently absent from my consciousness since I
do not perceive them, are nevertheless given, and they are given outside my
consciousness: they are not created as my conscious perception welcomes them.
This means, Bergson continues, that they already were, in some way or another:
that they already existed in themselves, independently of my consciousness.
They existed in an unconscious state (ibid., 158/142).
Now why do we have no resistance to conceiving of such objective
unconscious representations while the notion of subjective unconscious repre-
sentation seems so obscure to us? Why would space seem to be able to preserve
indefinitely the things that are juxtaposed in it, while time would simply
destroy states to the extent that they succeed one another in it (ibid., 159/143)?
Once again Bergson locates the source of the confusion inherent in the failure
to distinguish properly between present and past in the pragmatic destination
of intelligence. The nonperceived part of the material universe consists for us
in possible actions, hence, in potential energy. Our past, on the contrary, has
exhausted its possible action and will only recover its efficiency to the extent
that it is able to borrow present perceptions vitality (ibid.). But although this
67
distinction is entirely relative to our practical utility, it takes in our mind the
shape of a neat metaphysical distinction (ibid., 160/144). In short, an error that
is psychological (habit and utility) in its origin turns out to have metaphysical
pretensions. For to the extent that spatial objects represent our possible action,
or the possible action of objects on us, we also could say that space gives us at
once the scheme of our futurea future that must remain indefinitely open,
so that the space that symbolizes it remains equally open. Thus Bergson con-
cludes,It is of the essence of our actual perception, inasmuch as it is extended,
to be always only a content in relation to a vaster, even an unlimited, experience
which contains it (ibid., emphasis added). Insofar as it remains grounded in a
homogeneous conception of spatio-temporality, this vaster, unlimited experi-
ence nevertheless appears to us as given (at least potentially). It does not, as yet,
account for the entirely positive kind of experience both Bergson and Deleuze
are gesturing toward, beyond the Kantian framework.
This psychological error rooted in pragmatism explains the fact that when
a recollection reappears within consciousness, it produces on us the effect of a
ghost, whose mysterious apparition must be attributable to specialindeed,
pathologicalcauses. But, Bergson adds, the adherence of this memory to our
present condition is really exactly comparable to the adherence of unperceived
objects to those objects that we perceive: it is no more mysterious, and no more
abnormal, than the latter. Finally, Bergson writes, The unconscious plays in
each case a part of a similar kind (ibid., 161/145, trans. modified).
The Ontological Unconscious:The Past Preserves Itself in Itself
It turns out that for Bergson the unconscious is not merely subjective but also
objective, and it can be both because it exists really, though virtually. Despite
the similarity of the role of the unconscious across the objective and the sub-
jective orders, or the spatial and the temporal orders, we usually insist on notic-
ing only the differences between the two series. Out of habit and pragmatism,
we point out that while in the case of objectivity the order of the representa-
tions is necessarysince the terms condition one another in a fully determi-
nate mannerin the case of subjectivity this order is contingent, as memories
present themselves in an apparently capricious order (1997a, 161/1991, 145).
But, Bergson warns us:
If we look at the matter closely, we shall see that our memories form a chain
of the same kind, and that our character, always present in all our decisions, is
indeed the actual synthesis of all our past states. In this epitomized form our
previous psychical life exists for us even more than the external world, of
which we never perceive more than a very small part, whereas on the con-
trary, we use the totality of our lived experience. It is true that we only pos-
sess it in an abbreviated form. (1997a, 162/1991, 146, trans. modified)
68
Before we turn to an examination of what Bergson really means by this

abbreviated form, let me insist with him once again that it is merely due to
the practical interest of consciousness that we overlook the fundamental conti-
nuity of the unconscious underpinning either situation (i.e., the objective and
the subjective). As actual consciousness continually accepts the useful and
rejects the superfluous, it overlooks the temporal intervals separating the pre-
sent situation from a prior one, so that the intermediate past escapes its hold.
Thus, Bergson concludes, it is for the same pragmatic reasons that we represent
our perceptions as arranging themselves in strict continuity in space, and that
we conceive our memories as being illuminated discontinuouslyhence, con-
tingentlyin time (ibid.). Psychologically speaking, there is a mutually exclu-
sive distinction between unconscious objective representations and uncon-
scious subjective representations. But metaphysically speaking, the forms of the
existence of objects unperceived in space and those of unconscious memories
in time are not radically different.
In Bergsons view, existence is virtually one. But as the exigencies of action
are the opposite in one case of what they are in the other, we assume that those
are two radically distinct modes of beingone that coincides with reality, the
other that corresponds to an illusion. In truth, while the virtual or temporal
order coincides with the real itself, the real as continuous becoming (the actual
or spatial order) is the result of a turn of experience, at which our experience
is bent in the direction of practical utility. But while the existence of internal
states and external perceptions does not differ in kind, each nevertheless corre-
sponds to different degrees of existence.
For in fact, Bergson explains, two necessary and cumulative conditions
define for us the problem of existence.We usually say that the objects of expe-
rience (be they things or psychic states) exist if (1) our consciousness can per-
ceive them, and (2) they belong to a temporal or spatial series in which the
terms determine one another.Yet those two conditions, although equally neces-
sary, do admit of degrees, and can therefore be unequally fulfilled.We established
that the first condition does not entail the nonexistence of unconscious psychic
states but simply assesses their virtuality.As for the second condition, we already
suggested that to define it in terms of a logical or causal connection is already
to situate ourselves on the plane of pragmatically determined experience, which
fails to capture the whole of experience.Yet we can agree that, on the one hand,
within human experience, the connection between past and present does not
have the characteristic features of a mathematical derivation, since it leaves a lot
of room for contingency. On the other hand, the presentation to consciousness
is perfect, as an actual psychical state immediately yields the whole of its con-
tent in the very act whereby we perceive it (ibid., 163/147).The emotional con-
tent of the feeling is the act of feeling, immediately and completely. On the con-
trary, in regard to external objects, it is the connection that is perfect, since it
obeys necessary laws, while the second condition is only ever partially fulfilled,
69
as the material object appears to enfold within itself and to hide behind it much
more than it displays (ibid., 16364/147). Finally, says Bergson, we ought to say
that empirical existence always implies at the same time, but in different degrees,
both conscious apprehension and regular connection. But our intelligence sees
it otherwise. As its essential function is to establish clear-cut distinctions, it
prefers to dissociate those two elements and to distribute them among external
objects, on the one hand, and internal states, on the other, rather than admitting
the presence of both conditions in both cases, although in different proportions
(ibid., 164/147).
In short, the two elements that condition empirical existence for us con-
sist in tendenciesindeed, the admission of variable intensities within one and
the same kind is the essential import of the theory of tendencies. If it is true
that the regular connection between objects preponderates in the assessment of
the existence of things, while the presentation to consciousness is more perfect
for mental states, then we must also keep in mind that the presence of these
elements is not, for that matter, mutually exclusive.As I have been insisting, the
illusions informing our failure to view the conditions for the possibility of exis-
tence as tendencies admitting of degrees rather than states monolithically local-
ized generate not only a mistaken representation of matter but also a corrupted
conception of spirit (ibid.).We can now see that this error is attributable to an
unduly and artificially obscure idea of the unconsciousan unconscious whose
existence we have shown to be real, althoughor precisely becausethis real-
ity is of a virtual nature.
Now due to the same obsession with spatial images dominating the
intelligence, one cannot help but ask, where is this existence of the uncon-
scious localized? We have shown that the brain cannot function as the site of
the conservation of unconscious memories. Moreover, Bergson here points
out, to locate memory in the brain does not account for the conservation of
the brain itself, or for the survival of the past thereby identified with the
brainunless the brain itself preserves itself. But we know that as a spatial,
extended image, the brain coincides entirely with the present moment, since
the brain constitutes, with all the rest of the material universe, an ever-
renewed section (coupe) of universal becoming (ibid., 165/149).This means,
Bergson adds, that in order to account for the fact of the survival of the past
and its concomitant coexistence with the present, either one will have to
assume that this universe constantly perishes and resuscitates, by some kind of
miracle, at each moment of duration; or one will have to attribute to it the
continuity of existence one denies to the unconscious. In the end, to deposit
memories in matter will compel one to confront an absurdity that consists in
extending to the totality of the states of the material world the complete and
independent survival of the past that had been denied to psychical states.
Finally, says Bergson, either way the survival in itself of the past imposes itself
to philosophers (ibid., 166/149). And in light of the present discussion,
70
together with the affirmation of the difference in kind between past and pre-
sent that Bergson keeps emphasizing, we can see that this survival in itself of
the past can only be virtual. In the end, what this issue of survival tells us is
that there is in fact a point of contact between the two multiplicitiesthat
is, between differences in degree and differences in kind, a point at which dif-
ferentiation becomes integration. But this point of contact is metaphysical or
virtual: it is the unconscious past.
I want to suggest that in this survival in itself of the past precisely lies the
sense and the bearing of Bergsons conception of the unconscious. I conclude
that if being endures, if it is not to collapse into an eternal present, then it must
be equated to the virtual unconscious. Put otherwise, the virtual is necessarily
of an ontological nature, just as being, qua survival, must be primarily virtual.
Nuances of Difference
With Bergsonism, being is thus fundamentally redefined as both becoming and

preservationwhich is to say, as Life. This becoming is grounded in the past,
in that which has ceased to act but has not ceased to exist, thereby allowing for
the present to pass. In contrast, the abstract present, this indivisible limit sepa-
rating past from future, as that which is in the process of making itself, is not.
But between the pure past and the abstract present, between pure succession
and pure juxtaposition, we have the concrete present, a present that endures and
is therefore always already past at the same time as it constantly gnaws at the
future. It is in it that actual perception, with all its richness, takes place (1997a,
167/1991, 150).
We said that, on the one hand, there is habit-memory, deposited and
fixed within the organism, and thereby evolving within an eternal present;
guided by utility and adaptation to the present situation, it automatically plays
our past experience without conjuring up its representation. On the other
hand, there is true memory, which retains and ranges alongside of each other
all our states in the order in which they occur; it is thereby coextensive with
consciousness, says Bergson: it redoubles it although (or rather, precisely
because) it evolves within a definitive past (ibid., 168/151). We argued that
the latter must subtend the former, that the unconscious past necessarily
grounds actual consciousness. But that only tells us that metaphysically speak-
ing, true memory must be prior to the memory of the body. It does not tell
us what, concretely, the link between those two kinds of memories is (ibid.).
With the introduction of the problematic of existence and the affirmation of
the ultimate unity of existence (together with the examination of concrete
perception in its essential duration) we can now see how the two distinct
terms must be intimately knitted together. Indeed, it is precisely because they
are constantly intertwined in fact, that Bergson felt the need to distinguish
them rigorously in principle. But in the end, it turns out that the whole point
71
of the discussion, its ultimate philosophical import, was to show that our con-
sciousness of the present (concrete perception) is always already memory.
The establishment of the difference of nature was necessary in order to sit-
uate Bergsons theories of matter and memory between idealism and realism:
matter can no more be collapsed into spirit than spirit can be reduced to mate-
rial determinations. They both exist, which entails that their difference of
nature is resolvable into different degrees of existence, different tones of life or
rhythms of duration. Furthermore, we have shown that in this difference of
nature lies the true nature of difference qua heterogeneity, alterationin a
word, difference of nature qua duration as that which essentially differs with
itself.This also entails, as we suggested earlier (following Deleuze), that the dif-
ference of nature is not between the two tendencies; rather, it is itself one of
the tendencies, one of the multiplicities, opposed to the other (2002a, 88/1999,
4748). Finally, then, to say that the difference in kind (life itself) is resolvable into
degrees is not to say that it collapses into differences of intensity or of quantity. If, as
Deleuze writes, virtuality could only differentiate itself on the basis of the
degrees that coexisted within itand therefore, differentiation would simply be
the separation of that which coexisted in durationthen we can see that more
profoundly, the differentiations of the lan vital are the degrees of difference itself
(ibid, 100/55).Those degrees of existence are no mere quantitative differences
in degree resolvable into a homogenous milieu; they are nuances, and as such,
they are pure heterogeneous qualities.We must understand that the degrees of
Difference-in-itself are not differences in degree; Bergsons philosophy of dif-
ference is a philosophy of nuances.
The Cone: Spiritual Life as Internal Difference
Deleuze writes,Psychic life is, then, the difference of nature itself: within psy-
chic life, there is always other without there ever being number or several (2002a,
88/1999, 48). This is exactly what I take the famous Bergsonian image of the
cone to be striving to convey. When psychic life is instantiated in concrete
experience, it becomes clear that the two kinds of memory are not two sepa-
rate things; rather, they are two functions. Simply, says Bergson, the memory of
the body, as the place of passage of the movements received and thrown back,
is none other than the mobile pointof the inverted cone of psychic life,
whose base is constituted by the mass of pure memoryinserted by true mem-
ory in the shifting plane of experience (ibid., 169/152). It is therefore not sur-
prising that the two functions should lend each other mutual support (ibid.).
Finally, confirming the hypotheses he presented in the second chapter, Bergson
concludes that it is from the present that the appeal to which memory
responds comes, and it is from the sensory-motor elements of present action
that a memory borrows the warmth which gives it life (1997a, 170/1991,
153). For Bergson, then, the actualization of the virtual consists in a transformation
72
which is not, for that matter, a denaturalization: in this profound alteration consists the
very substance of the virtual.
Because of this mutual support that the two memories lend one another,
it appears that this movement of actualization is indeed twofold, and it is so in
at least two ways. First, we showed that there is, subtending recognition, a back-
and-forth movement between action and memory, between the virtualization
of the present and the actualization of the past. But also, more profoundly and
perhaps more importantly for the issue at stake, Bergson now points out that
there are two simultaneous movements at work within memory itself. Focus-
ing on those should help clarify further the ontological status of the virtual qua
difference that arises from Bergsons science of spirit.
Bergson sums up in the following terms his discussion of the empirical
verification of this hypothesis through the examination of the formation of
general ideas:
. . . integral memory responds to the appeal of a present state by two simulta-

neous movements, one of translation, by which it proceeds in its entirety to
meet experience, thus contracting more or less, though without dividing, with
a view to action; and the other of rotation upon itself, by which it turns toward
the situation of the moment, presenting to it that side of itself which may
prove to be the most useful. To these varying degrees of contraction corre-
spond the various forms of association by similarity. (1997a, 188/1991,
16869, trans. modified, emphasis added)
On the one hand, the action to be performed determines the actualization

or the becoming-consciousof an unconscious recollection. On the other
hand, which one, among those recollections, is carried out is determined by the
internal movement of memory rotating upon itself like a kaleidoscope. While
the intended action constitutes the condition for the possibility of the actualization
of memory, the internal difference (or heterogeneity and self-alteration) of
memory itself constitutes the condition for the reality of this actualization.16 This
distinction is essential to our comprehension of Bergsons sublation of Kan-
tianism through his reexamination of the transcendental. With Bergson, if
memory (or time) is to thus contract and rotate, then it cannot be a homoge-
neous, undifferentiated milieu. This further means that which one, among all
the recollections, comes to life is determined in accordance with necessity
rather than mere possibility (or contingency).
Consider for example the association triggered by my hearing someone
utter a foreign word. It can make me think of this foreign language in general,
or of a particular voice formerly pronouncing it in this particular way; eventu-
ally it brings back specific recollection-images connected to this voice. But in
truth, Bergson points out, these two different associations by similarity are not
due to the accidental arrival of two different representations, which chance
73
brought by turns within the attracting influence of the actual perception.They

answer to two different mental dispositions, that is, to two distinct nuances of
tension of memory; in the latter case, they are closer to the pure image, while
in the former, they are more disposed toward immediate response, which is to
say, to action (1997a, 188/1991, 169).
As the image of the cone suggests, there are indeed two extreme limits,
separated by an infinity of degrees, to be distinguished within memory proper.
At the wide basis of the cone we would find the dreamer type. According to
Bergson, this human being would dream her life instead of living it: she would
keep before her eyes at each moment the infinite multitude of the details of her
past history. She would never depart from the particular, as she would attach
each image to its own proper date and place (ibid., 172/155). Conversely, at the
opposite, pointed end of the cone, we would find a conscious automaton
who would repudiate this memory, thereby constantly acting out, or playing
her existence, instead of representing it.While the former, caught up in partic-
ularity, would only ever see the differences between things and events, the latter,
prompted by habit, would only ever distinguish in any situation that aspect in
which it practically resembles former situations (ibid.).While the dreamer would
be incapable of acting and would constantly contemplate visions, the actor
would simply be unable to think. But obviously, in normal life those two
extremes penetrate one another constantly.As the title of Bergsons 1937 inter-
vention at the Congrs Descartes puts it,Il faut agir en homme de pense et penser
en homme daction.17 In fact, he says, it is at the junction of the two currents of
the memory of differences and of the perception of similarities that the general
idea lies (ibid., 172/155).
Sense and Sensibility: Bergsonian Positivism
According to Bergson, the psychological issue of the formation of general ideas

coincides with the key verification of his identification of memory with dif-
ferentiation. It also allows him to establish the definitive role that sensibility
plays within the formation of thought. Let us focus on the latter first.
Sensibility and Generality
To begin with, it all looks as if any account of the birth of thinking were caught
up within a vicious circle, revolving around the problem of general ideas. Berg-
son writes,to generalize, it is first of all necessary to abstract, but to abstract to
any purpose we must already know how to generalize (1997a, 174/1991, 156).
This is the aporia of the particular and the universal that both nominalism and
conceptualism seem to remain caught up in.What Bergson is questioning is the
assumption, common to both nominalism and conceptualism, that we start
74
from the perception of individual objects, on the basis of which we are able to
form a concept or a genus through abstraction of individual qualities. Indeed,
this latter approach is also embraced by Hegel in his historical account of the
formation of consciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit. Obviously such a
point of departure will necessitate the intervention of negation (of the partic-
ular), and eventually of the negation of the negation (the dialectic), as a motor
of the abstraction process allegedly producing thought. But like the Kantian
conditions of possibility, the Hegelian account of differentiation as negation
yields such an abstract notion of the work of the negative and of difference that
it becomes impossible to establish with precision the necessary link (if any)
between thought and sensibilityhence an idealism that eventually collapses
into subjectivism.18
In truth, Bergson explains, the real question we want to oppose to the tra-
ditional theories of the formation of concepts is the following: Is it not the case
that individual qualities, despite being isolated through an effort of abstraction,
remain individual? Is it not the case, therefore, that a new operation of the mind
would be needed in order to turn a quality into a name capable of collecting
under itself a multiplicity of individual objects? In short, he suggests, nominal-
ism brings us back to conceptualism, and conversely, conceptualism leads back
to nominalism, since generalization can only be effected by extracting com-
mon qualities; however, in order that qualities should appear common, they
must have already been subjected to a process of generalization (ibid.,
175/157, trans. modified).19
For Bergson, although at first glance this circularity seems to present an
evidence, it indicates a failure to capture the real process of the formation of
thought. For if, as he showed, the two polar tendencies of psychical life (i.e.,
contemplation and action) are constantly intertwined in fact, it appears that
psychologically speaking we start neither from the perception of the individ-
ualwhich presupposes the faculty of noticing differences, that is, the memory
of imagesnor from the conception of the genuswhich implies a reflection
through which we eliminate from a representation the particularities of time
and place. Instead, we start from an intermediate knowing (connaissance interm-
diaire). This intermediate knowing, says Bergson, is indeed a confused feeling
(sentiment), a feeling of a striking quality or resemblance. And, he adds,equally
remote from generality fully conceived and from individuality clearly per-
ceived, [this feeling] begets both of them by a process of dissociation (ibid., 176/158,
emphasis added).
In a typical and crucial move, Bergson is thus once again able to solve the
static, hence superficial, paradoxes informing the dualistic tradition. Once
again he does this by (1) reestablishing the intermediate degrees, or the con-
tinuity, between the poles at which traditional dualisms crystallize; (2) being
thereby able to redefine the principle of this faulty, because abstract, distinc-
tion and introducing concrete differentiation to bear immanently onto the
75
things themselves; and (3) offering an empirical verification of his metaphysi-

cal findings (i.e., the necessity of immanent differentiation) on the basis of the
facts of psychological experience. In this consists precisely the new method
that Bergsonism introduces into philosophy, a method that Deleuze appropri-
ates and calls transcendental empiricism.20
At this point what I take to be crucial in this last declaration by Bergson
is the confirmation of the essential role that sensibility plays within the process
of thought formation. Indeed, we could say that for Bergson, sensibility, insofar as
it generates both perception and conceptualization, coincides with the very source of expe-
rience. As that which can only be as sensed (that which Deleuze calls the Sen-
tiendum), this sensibility coincides exactly with the sensible; it is neither purely
objective nor subjective; rather, it is entirely positive. I contend that in this, too,
lies the novelty of Bergsonism: between objectivity and subjectivity, between
pure matter and pure spirit, between perception and thought, and grounding
them both, what we have is pure positivity. Composed of pure qualities, of pure
forces, this simple heterogeneous continuity of the real inevitably expresses
itself in the form of a sheaf, sprouting personalized, human experience from an
impersonal ground by dissociation.
In Bergsons view, this should become evident if we refer this process once
again to the pragmatic, vital origin of perception.What primarily interests us in
a given situation, and therefore, that which we first grasp from it (by diminu-
tion), is the aspect by which it answers to a need. Now, Bergson points out, a
need goes straight to the resemblance or quality; it cares little for individual dif-
ferences (ibid.). For instance, it is grass in general that attracts the herbivorous
animal. The only immediate data of its perception are the smell and color of
the grass. Notice that here we do not need to appeal to a representation or a
consciousness of the grass: those qualities are felt and undergone as forces; they
are the impersonal positive ground of resemblance on the basis of which mem-
ory will eventually highlight contrasts, hence out of which differentiations will
be generated.The animal will thus eventually be able to distinguish a field from
another field (ibid., 177/159). Going back to the account of pure perception
from the first chapter of Matter and Memory, we must keep in mind that from
the point of view of perception, the operation of differentiation is merely the
superfluity of perception, not a necessary part (ibid.). We now know that the
necessary part is the positive ground constituted by the Sentiendum.
Bergson then anticipates a possible psychological objection to this view.
He notes,Are we thereby simply relegating to the unconscious the process by
which similarity is discovered and genera are constituted? (ibid.), and falling
back into the very subjectivism we are trying to escape? His response is quick
to come:
[W]e relegate nothing to the unconscious for the very simple reason that it
is not, in our opinion, an effort of a psychological nature which here disen-
76
gages similarity; this similarity acts objectively like a force and provokes reac-
tions that are identical in virtue of the purely physical law which requires
that the same general effects should follow the same profound causes. (1997a,
177/1991, 159)
Here he is telling us that because there is a fundamentally positive dimension

underpinning conscious activities, there is no need to abstracthence to fold
back onto the arbitraryin order to perceive similarities between qualities, or
generality. It does not matter how diverse in their detail the perceptions may
be; as long as they prolong themselves into the same useful motor reactions,
something common will issue from them.The general idea will have been felt
and passively undergone before being represented (1997a, 178/1991, 160).
This testifies not only to the breaking of the vicious circle we indicated
earlier, but also, correspondingly, to the necessary phenomenon of doubling
between the psychological and the virtual, or between perception and mem-
ory, that we alluded to in our second chapter. For we now find ourselves with
two kinds of similarities, or two kinds of representations. On the one hand, the
resemblance from which the mind starts is felt, acted, that is, it is automatic. On
the other hand, the resemblance to which it returns when it consciously gen-
eralizes (i.e., full-fledged representation) is intellectually perceived, or thought
(ibid.). For Bergson the motor of this profound alteration of generality itself is
reflection, not negation. Now in light of Bergsons account of reflection we
touched upon earlier, we know that reflection is a creative, productive process
and not merely an operation of selection by diminution.We thus go from the
mechanically sketched genera to the general idea of the genus through an effort
of reflection over this very operation of habit: a redoubling, a repetition that, as
such, generates difference.21 And once again, unlike Hegel, Bergson grounds this
evolution from consciousness to self-consciousness in the pure positivity of the
sensible as the unity of the actual and the virtual. Ultimately if we are to pick
one element, within Bergsons ontology of the virtual, to which his overcom-
ing of the false problem of dualism must be ascribed, then it must be to sensi-
bility in its positivity.
For Bergson, the sensible corresponds to the positive and irreducible
ground out of which both the objective and the subjective (and, indeed, all
dualisms) are generated. Furthermore, and on this basis, we can say against
Hegels negativism that the real motor of the progress from consciousness to
self-consciousness, or from automatism to freedom, lies in an effort, in a posi-
tively creative activity of the mind.22
The Planes of Consciousness: Dynamic Schema and Intellectual Effort
The fact of experience that prompted Bergson to question once again, though
on a deeper level, the associationistic account of the generation of thought in
77
terms of the representation of images is the feeling that we sometimes have of

performing an effort.There is a distinguishing principle between thought that
lets itself live (in a state of relaxation) and thought that focuses on something,
that makes an effort of attention or invention (in a state of tension).This distin-
guishing principle is the feeling of effort, which is present in one case and
absent in the other. Now, Bergson asks, is the play of representations, or of intel-
lectual elements, the same in either case? (1996, 153/1975, 152). Put otherwise,
What is the intellectual characteristic of intellectual effort? (ibid., 154/153).
In Matter and Memory, Bergson distinguishes between a series of different
planes of consciousness, beginning with the plane of pure, virtual memory
(at the wide basis of the inverted cone) not yet translated into distinct images
and descending toward the plane where the same memory is actualized in
nascent sensations and movements.There, he claims, the voluntary calling up
of a recollection consists in traversing these planes of consciousness one after
another in a definite direction (1997a, 155/1991, 154). This movement of
thought was represented in Bergsons second cone diagram, which unlike the
first one comprises several slices, layers, or planes; each plane coincides with a
different degree of translation (rather than division) of the whole of memory,
which marches forward toward experience by contracting itself to gain the
power to act. We noted that there was indeed a simultaneous movement of
rotation of memory upon itself, through which it directs itself toward the pre-
sent situation to present it with the most useful aspect. We concluded, with
Bergson, that our normal psychic life constantly oscillates between the two
extremities of dream (integral, personal memory), on the one hand, and action
(useful, impersonal, actualized memory), on the other.23 As Bergson also points
out, it is precisely the essence of the general idea to move unceasingly between
the sphere of action and the sphere of pure memory (ibid., 180/161).The gen-
eral idea then simply consists in this double movement. Like the normal self,
it never stays in either of these extreme positions but rather moves between
them, adopting in turn the positions corresponding to the intermediate sec-
tions (ibid., 181/163).
In his 1902 The Intellectual Effort, Bergson identifies the specifically
intellectual mark of intellectual effort as spirits displacement from one plane (or
degree of tension) of consciousness to another (1996, 159/1975, 158); only in such
cases would we experience the feeling of effort. On the basis of the distinction
between the two kinds of memory and of the corresponding two kinds of rep-
resentation (i.e., spontaneous and attentive), Bergson examines the case of the
great magician Houdinis experiment with educating his sons visual memory.
The goal of this education was to allow the boy to apprehend in a single glance
around an assembly room, the objects the individuals in the audience carried
on their person to be able to simulate double vision with bandaged eyes and
recall them immediately on a conventional sign from his father. Commenting
on the boys skill, Bergson writes,He took, as it were, a mental photograph of
78
the whole, and this enabled him to call up an immediate recollection of the
parts (ibid., 158/157, trans. modified).Without here getting into the details of
the educational process involved, we can see that the principal spring of this
memory education was to keep the mind on the plane of visual images by exclud-
ing all interpretation of the visual images from the act of seeing (ibid.). The
recall could then be instantaneous, because it did not involve any effort on the
part of the mind: it did not involve spirits displacement from one plane of con-
sciousness to another.
In contrast, if we now examine the process of memorization when the
goal is not instantaneous recall, then we see that the educational process of
memory involved must be quite different. It involves primarily the analysis of
the whole into parts instead of the instantaneous mental photograph of the
whole that Houdinis son was able to take. In this second case, where the recall
requires an effort, the perfecting of memory consists in memorys increasing
ability to make all the ideas and all the images and words converge in one and
the same point, one simple representation, which nevertheless contains the
ability to develop again into multiple imagesindeed, this is what treatises on
mnemonics teach us. This simple representation Bergson calls the dynamic
schema. It is characterized by the fact that it does not contain the distinct
images themselves so much as the indication of what we must do to reconstruct them
(1996, 161/1975, 160).This indication will turn out to be irreducible to a par-
tial extract of the imageor else how would we ever be able to recover their
integrality? It cannot be reduced to an abstract representation of the significa-
tion of the whole of imagesfor although the idea of signification must play
a large part in the process, the signification of the whole cannot account for
the retention and reconstitution of a determinate series of images rather than
of any other series, since the same abstract signification (which is by definition
detached from the particular images themselves) may very well apply to a
quite different series of images.
In his attempt at isolating the proper nature and structure of this dynamic
schema, then, Bergson focuses on this second case of memorization and its
concomitant operation of recall by reconstitution. This nonvisual memory
effort he identifies with the operation that the great chess player must be able
to perform, namely, play several games at once without looking at the chess-
boards. At each move of one of its opponents, the new position of the piece
is indicated to the player; he then moves a piece on his own side and is thus
able to win games simultaneously played while playing blindly, yet represent-
ing mentally to himself at each moment the respective positions of all the
pieces on all the chessboards (ibid., 162/161). Following Ribot, Bergson con-
cludes from this fact of experience that it could not be the case that the image
of the chessboard with all its pieces be presented to memory as in a mirror:
it cannot be a case of pure visual memory in which the mind is kept on the
plane of the actual visual images. Rather, it must be that at every move, the
79
player must make an effort of reconstruction of the whole image of each of

the particular chessboards he is playing. It must be, then, that what the play-
ers retain and picture mentally (and this is confirmed by their declarations) of
each piece is not its external aspect but its power (puissance), its bearing and
value, in a word, its function. For instance, a bishop is not a piece of wood of
more or less fantastic shape: it is an oblique force (ibid., 163/162). As for
the game as a whole what is present to the mind of the player is a composi-
tion of forces or, better, a relation between hostile and allied powers. By
remaking mentally the history of the game from the beginning, by reconsti-
tuting the successive events that have brought about the present situation, the
great player is able to obtain a representation of the whole that allows him,
at any moment, to visualize the elements. Now this is what the dynamic
schema consists in: a unified, abstract idea of the whole, which eventually
allows to retrieve all the individual elements in accordance with the proper
function they perform within that whole (ibid.,163/162).This means that the
unity of the dynamic schema is a unity in multiplicity, which implies the rec-
iprocal penetration of all the elements in one another. For Bergson the
dynamic schemathe essential operation of mental lifeconsists in a het-
erogeneous multiplicity; as such, it exists in a state of virtuality that does not
require the juxtaposition of the discrete images implicated in it: There is an
ideal scheme of the whole, and this scheme is neither an extract nor a sum-
mary. It is as complete as the image will be when we call it up, but it con-
tains, in the state of reciprocal implication, that which the image will develop
into parts external to each other [i.e., the homogenous multiplicity] (ibid.,
164/162). I believe this description of the dynamic schema as a unity con-
sisting of a virtual multiplicity explains the illustration of memory as a cone
consisting of numerous horizontal slices, with each slice containing the
whole of memory in a different state of contraction.
Bergson identifies this internal complexity of the dynamic schema as the
essential of representation. This internal difference, this differentiation with
and from itself that does not involve any negation or diminutionin a word,
this virtualityis indeed, for Bergson, not only the very structure of the
dynamic schema, but it also provides us with a model of the mind as a basis for
the science of spirit he wants to carry out. Thus understood, the effort of
recall consists essentially in developing a concentrated (if not always simple)
schema into an image whose elements are more or less distinct and indepen-
dent from one another (ibid., 166/164). In short, we have the feeling of effort when-
ever memory, or the mind, is involved in a process of transformation of an unconscious,
virtual, heterogeneous, qualitative multiplicity (the schema) into a conscious, actual, homo-
geneous and quantitative multiplicity (the image). Because this movement is con-
stant, it is hard to see exactly where the transition from recollection-memory to
body-memory occurs.At this point, all we know is that the distinction between
the different planes of consciousness is necessary.
80
Sense and Signs
Next Bergson wants to establish that similarly, in the work of intellection (i.e.,
interpretation and comprehension) in general, it is the same movement work-
ing in the same essential direction (from schema to image, and not from image
to schema) that is involved. We already examined his account of full recogni-
tion in the preceding chapter, so I will not rehearse it here. The point I want
to emphasize here is that in light of the psychological mechanism of compre-
hension (or full recognition), it turns out that according to Bergson,
the fact is that it is the memory which makes us see and hear, and the per-
ception is incapable by itself of evoking the memory which resembles it,
because, to do that, it must have already taken form and itself be complete;
now, it only becomes complete and acquires a distinct form through that very
memory, which slips into it and supplies most of its content. If this were so,
then, it must be the meaning (sens), before everything, which guides us in the
reconstruction of forms and sounds. (1996, 171/1975, 169)
When we examined attentive recognition, we concluded that one had to

place oneself at once in the corresponding ideas of the interlocutor, hence to
reconstruct his discourse for ourselves, in order to make any sense out of it.
Similarlyalbeit on a deeper level of consciousness (which is to say, on a
deeper ontological level as well)we can now see that for Bergson this struc-
ture is not a mere manifestation or phenomenon of human experience, it also
coincides with its necessary condition, its ground. In the progress from percep-
tion to meaning, or from consciousness to self-consciousness, brute perception
is limited to furnishing us with guiding signs; it is limited to drawing an out-
line that we fill in with memories.What we hear of the sentence uttered is only
what is necessary in order to place us in the corresponding class of ideas.24 This
placing oneself at once in the corresponding class of ideas is exactly the char-
acteristic of what Bergson calls intuition. I will examine in detail later how it is
that, according to Bergson, we leap into intuition. For now I proceed with
Bergsons account of the actualization of the virtual as ontogenesis.
Coming from memory, sense not only preexists its actualization, but it
is also always already and essentially personal; in short, we could say that for
Bergson sense is a pure past, a past that was never present. It is as such that
it is identified with the form of the understanding (that is, of meaningful
experience), or better, with its transcendental condition. According to Berg-
son, then, sense in its virtual state coincides with unconscious or involuntary
memory, with time, with what, for Deleuze, must be the empty form of
timeso that it may accommodate different kinds of content depending on
the present situation. For Bergson, unlike for Kant, however, this accommo-
dation of form and content cannot be reduced to a container-contained
81
relationshipwhereby the homogenous abstract temporal milieu would

simply inertly await its fulfillment.
Bergson then endeavors to verify his hypothetical law according to which
the feeling of effort, in intellection, occurs on the trajectory from the schema
to the image (ibid., 174/172, trans. modified) through what he considers the
highest form of intellectual effort, which is to say, the effort of invention. As
Ribot suggests, to invent is to solve a problem; now, Bergson asks, what other
way is there to solve a problem than by supposing it already solved?25 One who
wishes to invent a machine, for instance, must first form a representation, an
ideaor better, an idealof a certain effect the machine is to obtain, of a cer-
tain work or function it is to perform.The abstract form of this work will evoke
successively in his mind by tentative experiments, the concrete form of the dif-
ferent elementary movements that will realize the total movement. In other
words, we leap at once to the complete result, to the end we want to achieve,
and the whole effort of invention is then an attempt to fill in the gap over
which we have leapt, and to reach anew that same end by following, this time,
the continuous thread of the means that will realize it (ibid., 174/173). Put oth-
erwise, our access to the end must be intuitive; as such, it is achieved immedi-
ately (though discontinuously), since it requires a leap.This discontinuity testi-
fies to a difference in kind between the end and the means, the whole and its
parts. But the effort itself consists precisely in bridging the gap, in reestablish-
ing a continuitywhere continuity here coincides with repetition of the same
end, although on a different ontological level; the effort thus consists in inte-
grating the difference between the abstract idea and its concrete actualization
into nuances.
Note that this resolution differs from the phenomenological account of
the fulfillment of intentions. Although the Bergsonian account of the work of
the intellect (and, indeed, of any evolution within the living realm) relies on a
certain kind of finalism, it cannot be said to be teleological. It is not teleologi-
cal for several reasons, which all have to do with Bergsons inscription of the
problematic within duration.
Hesitation and Conversion: Contra Teleology
First, the fact that we can intuitively perceive the whole without perceiving its
parts proves that this whole must be a schema, not an image. So the whole is
presented as a schema, and invention consists in converting the schema into
images (1996, 174/1975, 173). This conversion thus implies a transformation,
an alteration of the virtual schema itselfin fact, this is what the feeling of
effort, corresponding to spirits difficult movement from one tonality of con-
sciousness to another, consists in. This conversion is therefore to be distin-
guished from a mere teleological filling in of the blanks by means of an aggre-
gation of juxtaposed parts. This is because, Bergson adds, unlike some
82
predestined, hence somewhat mechanical, accumulation, the conversion

involves hesitation; it involves, as he says, tentative experiments: hesitation
necessarily takes time, it endures.26 Just as in the first chapter of Matter and Mem-
ory, Bergson based his theory of pure perception in the delay between input
and output that defines the brain, he is now grounding his science of spirit in
the delay that coincides with the intellectual effort. But is it one and the same
delay we are talking about in either situation?
Is it one and the same duration that informs both intervals? Following
both Bergson and Deleuze, I argue that it is and it is not. It is not, because the
brain delay belongs to the actual.Yet at the same time it is, because as a delay,
as the temporal dimension of the actual gray matter, it also is the bond between
matter and spirit, the point at which the virtual cone of memory inserts itself
into the actual physical plane.27
Second, the conversion of the abstract schema into concrete images is to be
distinguished from a teleologically driven dialectical accumulation of images
because the hesitation or duration entailed by the intellectual effort involves the
elasticity and the concomitant transformation of the schema itself. Failed tentative
experiments of, say, the realization of the first turbine engine testify to the neces-
sity, in some cases, of modifying the original schema to effect a mutual adaptation
of the schema and the images by which it endeavors to be filled in. For Bergson,
the schema, or the form, is thus not immutable: it is in a process of becoming.This
becoming, this movement by which the image turns around toward the schema
in order to modify it, also testifies (against mechanistic accounts) to the necessary
part of unpredictability within the actualization process.
Finally, and for all of these reasons, Bergson adds, it is not even always the
case that the schema explicitly precedes the image. Ultimately, he writes:
[I]n place of a single schema with fixed and rigid lines, given to us immedi-
ately in a distinct concept, we may have an elastic or mobile scheme the con-
tours of which our mind will not fix, because it will get the suggestion of the
definite shape from the very images which the scheme is calling up in order
to be embodied in them. (1996, 176/1975, 175)
Bergson argues that all effort of creation proceeds along the same lines.The
musician who composes a symphony, the poet who creates a poem, all start
from something simple and abstractwhich is to say incorporealin their
mind. It is then a matter of unfolding or developing a novel impression into
sounds or imagery (1996, 175/1975, 174).This unfolding or expression of the
implicated multiplicity constitutes, for Bergson, a certain kind of bringing
about, which, he insists, must be clearly distinguished from either mechanistic
or teleological causality.
The mark of the intellectual effort then consists in the delay, the waiting time,
or the duration that defines the work of the intellect qua effort of translation of
83
an incorporeal, variable, and abstract schema into concrete and well-defined

images. He writes,Does not this delay measure the interval between the difficult
attempt and the easy execution, between the learning and the doing of an exer-
cise (ibid., 181/179)? Ultimately, this feeling of effort, most clearly experienced
during the effort of invention, yet present in any effort of recall or comprehen-
sion, is the distinct feeling of a form of organization, variable no doubt, but ante-
rior to the elements, then of a competition between the elements themselves, and
lastly, if we succeed in inventing, of an equilibrium which is a reciprocal adapta-
tion of the form and of the matter (ibid., 182/181).
Feeling, Struggle, and Emotion
This means that in Bergsons view, the mutual adaptation of matter and
spiritthat is, full-fledged or integral experience in all its richnesscannot
be accounted for in terms of some Kantian preestablished harmony of the
faculties under the forming guidance of the understanding and of its
homogenous transcendental forms. Rather, the relationship between mind
and body is one of constant struggle between the faculties, of constant play
between form and content.
Furthermore, and most significantly for our own argument, it seems as if
on Bergsons account, and in stark contrast to Kants, we do indeed experience
the transcendental condition of the work of the intellect, or of thought: it is,
after all, a feeling (sentiment). As Deleuze claims in Cinema 2, thought is none
other than a feeling of the soul.Therefore, after having laid down the founda-
tions for the solution of the problem of the relationship between matter and
spirit in terms of sensibilityor the feeling of effort inscribed in duration
Bergson endeavors to further integrate the two multiplicities by grappling with
the problem of the relationship between affect and representation.This he does
through emotion.
Anticipating some possible objections to his increasingly monistic ontol-
ogy of psychical life, Bergson now asks, How can a play of representations, a
movement of ideas, enter into the composition of a feeling? (1996, 183/1975,
181, trans. modified). It seems as if affectionwhich, as we showed, is by defi-
nition an extended phenomenonwere irreducible to representation. Carte-
sian dualism would thus once again return to cover over and invalidate all of
Bergsons efforts to displace and solve it. But precisely, we said, Bergson is able
to succeed in his project of overcoming dualism, because he is able to establish
that in its Cartesian form, the problem is a false one, resulting from a badly ana-
lyzed composite, hence a badly stated and unsolvable problem. In its place,
Bergson substitutes the problem of the difference and the relation between
quantitative multiplicities that belong to spatiality and qualitative multiplicities
defined by duration. This leads him to problematize the relation between dif-
ference in kind and difference in degree, thereby translating philosophical dual-
84
ism into a philosophy of difference. We said that the issue of the relation
between differences of nature and differences of degree is equally the issue of
the nature of difference. Once again, it is in terms of duration that this ques-
tion will be answered. As Deleuze puts it, Bergson shows that duration itself is
difference of nature and the nature of difference. It includes matter as its low-
est, most relaxed, degree, as an infinitely dilated past, but duration also
includes itself by contracting itself into an extremely tight, or tense, present.
Finally, Bergson shows that if all those degrees in fact coexist within duration
and memory is this coexistence, since duration is memory insofar as it prolongs
the past into the presentthen duration also is that which differentiates itself
constantly; this means that the present splits itself up into two directions,
namely, the past and the future.28 We saw that this notion of duration as differ-
ence of nature, nature of difference, coexistence, and differentiation allows
Bergson to come up with a model of the mind, or memory, as a virtual cone
consisting of different tones of psychic life, or nuances of duration. On the basis
of this model he proceeds to give his own account of the creation of difference
(differentiation) as the passage, the bond between the methodological and
ontological aspects of the problematic of difference. Says Deleuze:
What, in fact, is a sensation? It is the operation of contracting trillions of

vibrations onto a receptive surface. Quality emerges from this, quality that is
nothing other than contracted quantity.This is how the notion of contraction
(or of tension) allows us to go beyond the duality of homogeneous quantity
and heterogeneous quality, and to pass from one to the other in a continuous
movement. (1998a, 7273/1988, 74)
In order to discover the exact relation between the affective tone that gives
all intellectual effort its sui generis nuance, on the one hand, and the particular play
of representations that analysis discovers in it, on the other, all we need to do is
assume that the play of sensations responds to the play of ideas and is an echo
of it, so to say, in another tone (1996, 183/1975, 182). Indeed, Bergson adds:
That is the easier to understand inasmuch as we are not in fact dealing here
with an idea, but with a movement of ideas, with a struggle or an interference
of ideas with one another. We may conceive that these mental oscillations have their
sensory harmonics.We may conceive that this indecision of the mind is contin-
ued in a disquietude of the body. The characteristics of intellectual effort are
likely to express that very suspension and disquietude. (1996, 183/1975, 182,
emphasis added)
We have a natural tendency to act out our thoughts. According to Berg-

son, consciousness precisely coincides with this movement of externalization.
Furthermore, as I have been trying to show, the consciousness we have of this
85
centripetal movement is always necessarily redoubled by a movement in the

opposite direction. Consciousness is thereby sent back to thought itself (the vir-
tual schema) by a kind of ricochet (the pendulum). Now we can see that what
happens within this folding over of consciousness and memory (or the uncon-
scious) is emotion. Says Bergson, Thus arises an emotion, which usually has a
representation as its center, but in which are especially visible the sensations in
which that idea is prolonged (1996, 184/1975, 182).
Emotions thus have two faces, two sides to them. They are both affective
and intellectual, objective and subjective, since like the Proustian/Deleuzian
signs, they both refer to an object and signify something elsesomething sub-
jective. As such, they are the deepest, most fundamental point of contact
between matter and memory. In fact, in the Two Sources, it is to what he calls
the creative emotion that Bergson is going to ascribe the power to generate
true, that is, dynamic, religion and morality.29 This emotion is creative insofar as
it generates out of itself something other than itself, thereby allowing for tran-
scending the human condition, primarily defined by its fastening to material
negativity in the shape of habit and vital needs.The emotion signifies a tension,
a problem to be resolved, which eventually necessitates an intellectual effort,
since qua tension the emotion brings together elements at different levels of
contraction. This generation through internal differentiation coincides, for
Bergson, with the movement of life itselfthat which, after Gilbert Simondon,
Deleuze calls heterogenesis.
On the one hand, then, emotion coincides with the conscious equivalent
of the conflict between the schema and the image, between abstract represen-
tation and concrete sensation. On the other hand, the intellectual effort echoes
this tension and strives to resolve it by operating a transition from the abstract
and vague unity of the scheme to the concrete and clear unity of its actualized
expression.This passage requires a selection. Mental effort, then, consists in the
internal movement by which a representation or idea is isolated from all oth-
ers, because the organizing scheme rejects the images which are not capable of
developing it, and confers thus a real individuality on the present content of
consciousness (ibid., 185/183).
As a continuous movement in duration, the intellectual effort brings
together unity and multiplicity, simplicity and richness; there is intellectual
effort only where a multiplicity of intellectual elements is in the process of get-
ting organized. But, Bergson insists, the key is to understand the nature of this
unity, which in his view has been largely misunderstood. This unity toward
which all mental effort tends is no longer abstract and empty. Rather, it
becomes the unity of a directive idea common to a great number of orga-
nized elements. It is the very unity of life (ibid., 186/184). In other words, like
the lan vital, it is one and complex at the same time: it is a heterogeneous
unity. And this heterogeneity is precisely the reason we can explain the intel-
lectual effort on its own terms, without referring it to something other than
86
the intellect itself. For if sensation and emotion play a necessary role in the gen-
eration of thought, then they do so as thoughts qualitative nuance, not as exter-
nal elements. Thus, Bergson concludes, what distinguishes passive representa-
tion from representation accompanied by an intellectual effortor, put
otherwise, what distinguishes consciousness from self-consciousnessis a dif-
ference in internal contexture, a difference in the relation between the elements
of the composite idea (ibid., 187/185); the mark of the intellectual effort is
therefore itself intellectual. This difference, which is necessarily internal to
thought, is what allows for the very movement that characterizes the intellec-
tual effort. Indeed, Bergson concludes,why not see in the movement the very
essence of the intellectual effort? (ibid.).
I am well aware that this discussion of the intellectual effort involves too
many problematic and novel notions to dispel the residual questions we might
have about Bergsons effective carrying out of his dualistic monism. Those
difficulties are due both to the extreme complexity of the issues at hand and to
the novelty and radicalism of Bergsons approacha radicalism that necessarily
and self-consciously disrupts our customary, limiting thinking habits. Person-
ally, I do not see the need to try to justify and legitimize the violence that Berg-
sons philosophy is inflicting on a sterile orthodoxy that he has rightly diag-
nosed as stemming from profound metaphysical illusions resulting from natural
psychological errors of judgment. I believe that nobody can show the necessity
for this violence better than Deleuze (after Nietzsche and Heidegger) has. I will
return, with Deleuzes help, to many of the issues I have only begun to distin-
guish and clarify so far, in the hope of shedding some new light onto them.
Hoping to bring to light the philosophical transition I see between Berg-
son and Deleuze, let me recapitulate what I take to be the most fundamental
imports of Bergsonism.With Deleuzes invaluable assistance, I do this by exam-
ining the method of intuition that, while constantly developing throughout
Bergsons oeuvre, has been at work from the outset.
87
4
Between Bergson and Deleuze:

The Method of Intuition as
Transcendental/Virtual Empiricism
Lintuition est la jouissance de la diffrence.

Gilles Deleuze, Le Bergsonisme
But a true empiricism is the one which purposes to keep as close

to the original as possible, to probe more deeply into its life, and by
a kind of spiritual auscultation, to feel its soul palpitate; and this true
empiricism is the real metaphysics.
Henri Bergson, Introduction to Metaphysics
Absolute Movement and Intuition
Matter and Memory aims at producing a new philosophy, disencumbered from

the badly analyzed composites informing dualistic metaphysics. For Bergson,
only such a philosophy can rejoin the things themselves, from which critical
philosophies have insuperably separated us. A clear thread runs through Berg-
sons philosophical achievements, from his 1889 Time and Free Will to his 1932
The Two Sources. This thread I have identified successively as the distinction
between the two multiplicities, the theory of tendencies, and the ontology of
the virtual qua philosophy of difference. But underlying those divisions there
89
always remains, as the unmistakable mark of Bergsonism, the notion of real

duration, defined as the virtual coexistence of succession and interpenetration.
Far from thereby wanting to somehow retrospectively reduce the richness and
complexity of the development of Bergsonisman attempt that would a pri-
ori betray the very spirit of this philosophyI have sought to follow Bergson
as closely as possible in his own following of the movement of thought qua
philosophy proper, as the only way to reach, beyond the turn of experience,
the very source of experience. Unlike the critical philosophies indebted to
Kant, however, Bergson insists on determining the conditions of experience in
terms of reality rather than possibility.This demand for conditions of reality
or, as Deleuze would call them, genetic conditionsrather than conditions of
possibility is indeed required by Bergsons rigorous self-imposed methodology
of following the movement of thought. Of course, this movement is a con-
torted, complicated, meandering, and at times seemingly impossible one. Like
the movement of life, it sometimes encounters dead ends; like the lan vital, it
is constantly in conflict with the negativity of matter, with death and entropy.
But ultimately, for Bergson, this movement is metaphysically first; it is the meta-
physical absolute.Absolute movement is at once the essence of the real, the sub-
stance of life and the ontological virtuality accounting for the necessity of
understanding thought as a movement, as something always in the process of
making itself, thereby constantly struggling with its own tendency to degener-
ate within habit, opinion, or ready-made ideas. Metaphysics must therefore
rejoin this movement if it is to explain anything at all. But as Bergson shows,
the work of the intelligence, left to its own devices, can only capture a partial
and superficial residue of this movement, as intelligence itself is a mere residual
alluvium of an infinitely grander cosmic evolution. According to Bergson, it is
on the basis of a widespread (because natural) failure to notice this fundamen-
tal nature of the intelligence that philosophers have traditionally either
appealed to some mysterious, hence unaccountable, faculty of the mind (for
instance, Platos reminiscence) or simply, in a self-defeating resignation, they
have sought to establish and recognize the relativity of knowledge.
The reason Kant, more so than any other thinker, ends up under Bergsons
pitiless scrutiny is because he represents, for early twentieth-century continen-
tal thought, the model for trying to overcome the so-far unbridgeable (and
therefore sterile) divide between idealism and empiricism, dogmatism and
materialism. Like Bergsons virtual empiricisim, then, transcendental idealism
was aimed at reconciling spirit and matter, reason and sensibility, truth and
imagination. In this respect, there is no doubt that Kants Copernican revolu-
tion constituted an immense contribution to the advances of philosophical
thinking, and of knowledge in generalalthough this contribution, as we
know, is primarily negative, since its goal lies in determining the limits of the
understanding.Yet as Bergson untiringly reminds us, the Kantian critique sim-
ply failed in its attempt at liberating thought from its dogmatic image. Kants
90
Between Bergson and Deleuze
de jure insistence on the impossibility of ever grasping the noumenon and his
concomitant apology for the subjectivity and relativity of knowledge testify to
this. Furthermore, I have been trying to establish that what I take to be Kants
ultimate reinstatement of dogmatism within a transcendentalism originally
intended to avoid such dogmatism has in fact, from the outset, sacrificed the
very experience it was aimed at accounting for to the contingency of so-called
pure reason, abstracted from its essential duration.
In response to Kant, Bergson advocates for integral experience1or what I
have been calling transcendental experienceas a solution to the aporias viti-
ating such philosophical endeavors. Bergson argues that as long as philosophy
pretends to penetrate the secrets of the real (that is, the secrets of creation) by
analysis and circumspection (that is, by presupposing that the human intellect
is originally and inevitably external to the vital movement, as if it had been
mysteriously added onto it, thus remaining essentially separated from it) as long
as philosophy thereby locates the conditions of experience outside of experi-
ence, metaphysics will be condemned to failure. In contrast, he writes at the
end of his remarkable Introduction to Metaphysics,Metaphysics has nothing
in common with the generalization of experience, and nevertheless it could be
defined as integral experience (2001b, 1432/1965, 200, emphasis in original).
Now I argue that for Bergson, this integral experience is none other than intu-
ition itself.
Insofar as it consists in an immediate sympathizing with the absolute, intu-
ition is opposed to analysis. But this immediate sympathizing cannot be
explained in terms of some mysterious faculty of the wise mans intellect. Once
again, if the necessary connection between thought and reality cannot be
shown, then metaphysics remains condemned to contingency and relativity
be it in the form of material reductionism or idealistic negativism. In order to
establish the necessary connection between thought and things grounding any
proper metaphysical endeavor, Bergson provides us with a method of intuition.
Obviously the very formula method of intuition seems to involve a self-con-
tradiction: how can a method, which by definition involves a series of media-
tions, have immediacy as its defining characteristic? The ontology of the vir-
tual we have examined, which establishes a principle of positive internal
alteration as substance, already suggests possibilities for making sense of Berg-
sons apparently contradictory project. We can conjecture that his notion of
absolute movement (or ontological duration) will subtend the solution to the
apparent paradox of intuition.
In a typical move, Bergson starts out by distinguishing between two pro-
foundly different ways of knowing a thingthat is, between two different types
of conscious psychological experiences. He writes:
The first implies going all around it, the second entering into it. The first
depends on the viewpoint chosen and the symbols employed, while the second
91
is taken from no viewpoint and rests on no symbol. Of the first kind of knowl-
edge [i.e., analysis] we shall say that it stops at the relative; of the second [i.e.,
intuition] that, wherever possible, it attains the absolute. (2001b,1393/1965, 159,
emphasis in original)
For instance, he says, I perceive a movement in space differently depend-

ing on the mobile or immobile point of view from which I look at it. Not
only do I perceive it differently, but I also express it differently, depending on
the system of reference points, or symbols, by which I translate it. I thus call
this movement relative, because in either case I place myself outside the object
(2001b, 1393/1965, 159). Both relativism (hence, skepticism), when it posits
axiomatically the incommensurability of thought and world, and Eleatic
monism, when it affirms the oneness of being and the consequent contin-
gency of time, stem from such an approach.2 In contrast, Bergson notes, when-
ever I speak of an absolute movement, it is because I ascribe an inner being,
or something like states of mind, to the mobile.This, in turn, is because I can
sympathize with those states and insert myself within them by an effort of the
imagination. In this case, it is not only my expression of the movement that will
vary; more profoundly, depending on whether the object is mobile or immo-
bile, depending on the specific kind of movement it adopts, I will not experi-
ence the same feeling. Furthermore, the feeling I experience will neither depend
on the points of view I could adoptsince I will thereby be within the
objectnor on the symbols by which I could translate itsince I will have
thereby renounced all translation. In short, Bergson concludes, the move-
ment will not be grasped from without and, as it were, from where I am, but
from within, inside it, in what it is in itself (ibid.): The movement will be
grasped as an absolute.
Put otherwise, all I can perceive in the first case are calculable, measurable,
and emotionally indifferent quantitative changes; but what I experience in the
second case is a qualitative variation, a positive alteration of my own affective
states. While the first case coincides with subjective perception, mediated
through socially and intellectually constructed criteria, the second resembles
what, in the first chapter, I identified as pure, objective, immediate perception,
for it is characterized by simplicity and continuity. But pure perception and
intuition ought not to be confused.They resemble one another insofar as they
are both defined by immediacy, simplicity, or continuityinsofar, too, as they
both involve an enlargement of consciousness to include the unconscious.3 But
while pure perception was the theoretical removal of duration from perception,
pure intuition consists in the methodological disengagement from ones partic-
ular rhythm of duration to access experiences or rhythms of duration other
than our own (sympathy). According to Bergson, this is possible because as a
continuous and heterogeneous multiplicity, memory virtually contains the infi-
nite wholeof the past and eventually of nature as well.
92
Now, just as Zeno was incapable of reconstructing motion out of fixed

positions, even through the infinite juxtaposition of infinitesimal points, I can-
not reconstruct an absolute movement out of relative movements. In order to
obtain the indivisible feeling of the absolute movement, I must leap at once
into its mobility. Similarly, says Bergson, a writer could accumulate as many
details, as many perspectives on the hero of her novel, but it will never approx-
imate the simple feeling she would obtain by coinciding momentarily with
him. The actions, gestures and words would then appear to flow naturally, as
though from their source (ibid., 1394/160). We mentioned earlier the neces-
sity for this leap directly to the source that Bergson locates at the origin of any
true comprehension of the others discourse. In the same vein, his discussion of
the intellectual effort (including the effort of recall) pointed to the necessary
preexistence (or at least concomitance) of the dynamic schema over the images
that develop it.We also saw that according to Creative Evolution, any true under-
standing of the evolution of life must grasp the simple original life impulse in
order to make any sense of the products of this evolution. In all those cases,
Bergson wanted to demonstrate that when I limit myself to the symbolical rep-
resentation of particular aspects of a thing or person, I in fact remain stuck in
generality, in that which this thing or person shares in common with others. I
can never grasp that object in its uniqueness, in its being, in what makes it prop-
erly what it is, or in its own proper essential duration.
Thus intuition, as Bergson understands it methodologically, already presup-
poses duration (Deleuze 1998a, 1/1988, 13). Only when combined with dura-
tion can it be both a simple act by which one sympathizes or coincides with what
is unique about an object and at the same time a series of acts or a method. Intu-
ition is a simple act when seen from within, but it also can be analyzed retro-
spectively into a series of actsjust as when I raise my arm, I am performing a
simple act of which I have a simple internal perception, and yet for an outside
observer (or for myself, looking back on that movement from without), my arm
passes through a point, and then another, and so on, ad infinitum. However, we
must keep in mind that the retrospective analysis and the immediate sympathiz-
ing do not bear on one and the same object, since the former deals with an
already-made reality, a product, a symbol, whereas, the latter attaches itself to a
reality in the process of making itself, or the movement of creation, which
exceeds all symbolization. According to Bergson, it is to the failure to see this
distinction and the concomitant distinction between past and present that the
defeat of metaphysics and its correlative sacrifice to physics must be ascribed. For
him, on the contrary, metaphysics must be defined as the science which claims to
dispense with symbols (2001b, 1396/1965, 162, emphasis in original).
But how does one sympathize with the absolute, since the work of our
intelligence is always already mediated through pragmatic analysis? Is our
knowledge of everything necessarily mediated through forms and symbols that,
although coming from us, remain external to us, as Kant claims? Not so for
93
Bergson. Echoing the founding argument from Time and Free Will, he contends
that there is at least one reality which we all seize from within not by simple
analysis. It is our own person in its flowing through time, the self which
endures (ibid.). It is in this sense that Deleuze can claim that the method of
intuition owes everything it is to duration. If Bergsons philosophy aims at
establishing a new kind of relation between thought and world, then this rela-
tion is rooted in my own relation to myself qua difference and differentiation.
For when I focus on that which the inner gaze of my consciousness yields, I
find a multiplicity of perceptions, a multiplicity of memories serving to inter-
pret those perceptions, and a multitude of motor habits, of virtual tendencies to
act that are more or less tightly linked to those perceptions and memories. But
that is only the surface of my self. Below this superficial crystallization and sub-
tending it what I find is a continuous flow, incommensurable with any of the
states that are flowing in it.What I find is a succession of states, each of which
announces what is to come and contains what precedes. Indeed, says Bergson,
they only constitute multiple states to the extent that I have already gone
beyond them to look back at them after the fact.Yet as I was consciously feel-
ing them, I was unable to tell where one ended and another started. According
to Bergson, this is because in reality, none of them begins or ends.They all pro-
long into one another, which means that they all prolong the past into the pre-
sent and future. For him, then, there is no consciousness without memory, and
that which defines memory is duration (ibid., 1398/164).
If Bergsons philosophy is to establish a new connection between thought
and worlda connection that would complement yet not replace the sciences
limited analytic approachthen this connection will be grounded in my own
immediate contact (i.e., a feeling) with my own profound self qua qualitatively
heterogeneous simplicity, that is, qua alteration. Says Deleuze, Bergson often
presents intuition as a simple act. But in his view, simplicity does not exclude a
qualitative and virtual multiplicity, various directions in which it comes to be
actualized (1998a, 2/1988, 14).
Notice that Bergsons appeal to the self s own duration as the foundation
of my relation to the worldhence the foundation of knowledgecannot be
confused with some elaborate form of solipsism.The profound self he is refer-
ring to is not some hypostasized, conceptual, artificial recomposition of the
unity of apperception; rather, it is the self as essentially sharing in the cosmic
duration, the self as a particular rhythm of duration. As such, the profound self
cannot be represented, since in its fluidity it always transcends the fixed con-
cepts and ideas that aim at defining it once and for all. The error of the psy-
chologists is therefore no different than the error of the metaphysicians, who
look for an intuition in the analysis that precisely negates intuition from the
outset.As Bergson tells us, the psychologists look for the ego, but they claim to
be able to find it within psychic states, whereas this diversity of psychic states
can only have been obtained by transporting oneself outside the ego and tak-
94
ing a series of sketches and more or less symbolical representations of the per-
son. However, they may juxtapose states with states as much as they want:The
ego will always escape them, so that they end up seeing it as a mere ghost
(2001b, 1406/1965, 173).4
When philosophical empiricism ends up declaring that there is nothing
beyond the multiplicity of psychic states, it is due to this confusion between
two points of view, namely, analysis and intuition, which consists in looking for
the original in the translation, where it can obviously not be, and then to negate
this original, since it cannot be found there (ibid., 1407/173). In contrast, Berg-
son continues,a true empiricism is one which purposes to keep as close to the
original as possible, to probe more deeply into its life, and by a kind of spiritual
auscultation, to feel its soul palpitate; and this true empiricism is the real meta-
physics (ibid., 1408/175, emphasis in original).
False Problems: Intuition versus the Retrograde Movement of the True
In Bergsonism, Deleuze writes:
Intuition certainly is second in relation to duration or memory. But while

these notions by themselves denote lived realities and experiences, they do not
give us any means of knowing (connatre) them with a precision analogous to
that of science. We might say, strangely enough, that duration would remain
purely intuitive, in the ordinary sense of the word, if intuitionin the prop-
erly Bergsonian sensewere not there as a method. (1998a, 2/1988, 14,
What is at stake for us in the problematic of intuition as a method, then,

is the properly epistemological issue inherent in the sterile metaphysics that
Matter and Memory intends to overcome. Of course this epistemological prob-
lem cannot be separated from the metaphysical claims it seeks to establishthe
question How do we know? is always implied within the question of the
nature of being. In fact, I have argued that one of the crucial imports of
Bergsonism precisely consists in reminding us of the necessity we are faced
with of grounding ontology within psychology, as well as of grounding psy-
chology within ontology. I further argue that the method of intuition not only
embodies this twofold demand but also that, taken in connection with dura-
tion (with its two sides, psychological and ontological), it manages to carry this
circularity of metaphysics and epistemology beyond formal logics worries
about the viciousness of such circularityand to thereby succeed in ground-
ing Bergsons solution to the problems plaguing dualism.
According to Deleuze, the Bergsonian methodology may be summarized
in three great steps. Each coincides with one of the virtual tendencies of the
simple enduring ego; each is a sort of act, which in turn determine[s] the rules
95
of the method.The first concerns the stating and creating of problems; the sec-
ond, the discovery of genuine differences in kind; the third, the apprehension
of real time (1998a, 3/1988, 14). For the sake of clarity, I will examine each
one of these separately to eventually capture the movement from one to the
othermovement of thought, that is, which is none other than the movement
we have sought to convey since the beginning of this project: a movement from
psychology to ontology, from consciousness to the unconscious, from experi-
ence to its real genetic conditions.
The first rule of the method of intuition is to apply the test of true and
false to problems themselves. Condemn false problems and reconcile truth
and creation at the level of problems (ibid., 3/15). As we know, this is the
prerequisite that already informs Time and Free Will, where Bergson was
claiming that the problem of freedom is a false problem. It is a false problem
because it relies on a badly analyzed composite, which is why it calls for the
establishment of the distinction between the two kinds of multiplicities in the
first placea distinction that in turn corresponds to the second rule of the
method of intuition, namely, the establishment of differences in kind. Inci-
dentally, I find it noteworthy that while the first false problem Bergson iden-
tifies is that of freedom, the very act of bringing the trial of true and false to
bear on problems themselves also coincides with Bergsons attempt at freeing
thought from the psychological illusions naturally resulting from the normal
work of the intellect.
The dominant belief that true and false concern only solutions is simply
the product of what Bergson calls the retrograde movement of the true.5 This
movement he ascribes to the intellects pragmatic orientation and its resulting
tendency to analyze, hence to reify and hypostasize its own mental states, as well
as all things and all concepts. But Bergson insists that our mind can follow the
opposite course of action and install itself within the mobile real to succeed in
producing fluid concepts, capable of following the real in all of its meanderings.
According to Bergson:
Only in that way will a progressive philosophy be constituted, freed from the
disputes which arise between schools, capable of resolving problems naturally
because it will be rid of the artificial terms chosen in stating them. To philos-
ophize means to reverse the habitual direction of the workings of thought. (2001b,
1422/1965, 191, emphasis in original)
Applying the test of true and false to problems is the necessary prerequi-
site for doing any philosophy, because the traditional problems (for instance, the
one and the many, freedom, etc.) are always already vitiated, since they stem
from a thought already abstracted from the real, hence necessarily artificial,
contingent and relative. This first requirement, as the means for rejoining the
real to give an empirical ground to thoughta ground within sensibility, such
96
as, for instance,the feeling of our own spontaneity, which undercuts the false
problem of freedomalso indicates the necessity for understanding philosophy
as empiricism, albeit a superior or virtual one. Intuition thus consists in turn-
ing intelligence against itself, in reversing the work of the intellect, but doing
so in a methodical way.
Deleuze asks, How can this constitutive power which resides in the
problem be reconciled with the norm of the true? (1998a, 5/1988, 16). In
other words, what criterion are we going to use to reconcile truth and cre-
ation? What makes a problem true or false? Unsurprisingly, for Bergson the
answer lies with positivity. I have tried to bring out the fundamental role that
Bergson ascribes to positivity. I believe that nowhere is it more clearly
expressed than in his critique of possibilitywhich he masterfully brings to
bear on Kants conception of the transcendental in order to operate a trans-
valuation of transcendentalism.
The point is, according to Bergson, the philosophers who have realized
this need to bring the test of truth to bear beyond solutionswhich is to say,
transcendental philosophers, who beyond experience (i.e., the solution) seek
the conditions for experience (i.e., the problem to which experience answers),
have simply defined the truth or falsity of a problem by the possibility or
impossibility of its receiving a solution.Thus a problem would be a true prob-
lem if and only if it can be solved. In accordance with this view, then, the con-
ditioned (i.e., experience) would have to precede and condition its very con-
ditions (i.e., the forms of time and space). This means that by defining the
transcendental in terms of conditions for the possibility of experience, Kant
could not escape the psychological illusions that his critique sought to dispel.
Moreover, such an approach necessarily forecloses any creation, any future for
thought, since the making is the measure of the already made, thereby remain-
ing subordinated to it.
Instead of such an external (i.e., negative and necessarily contingent) con-
ditioning of the truth of problems, what Bergson offers with the expression
false problem is an intrinsic (i.e., immanent and positive) determination of
the false (1998a, 56/1988, 17). He argues that the problem of possibility can
be shown to be a false problem, because when we actually follow the move-
ment of the thought that comes up with the idea of possibility, we find that this
idea results from a confusion between the more and the less. Against the doc-
trines of the possible, which believe that the possibility of things (or their rep-
resentation) precedes their existence (or their realization) on the basis of the
idea that the possible is less than the realagainst Aristotle and KantBergson
shows that it is the other way around, that there is more in the idea of the pos-
sible than there is in the idea of the real.For the possible is only the real with
the addition of an act of mind which throws its image back into the present,
once it has been enacted. But that is what our intellectual habits prevent us
from seeing (2001b, 1339/1965, 100). Just as the grounding of the intellectual
97
effort required the identification of a properly intellectual mark within itthat

is, of an internal determination, which also is the mark of its internal differ-
encethe Bergsonian demonstration that the problem of possibility lying at
the heart of the problematic of existence is a false problem relies on the intrin-
sic positivity of its falsity. And once again, Bergson points out, the psychologi-
cal error resulting from the natural work of the intelligence qua retrograde
movement of the true dangerously reaches out into the metaphysical stuff of
both thought and the world. He explains:
As reality is created as something unforeseeable and new, its image is reflected

behind it into the indefinite past; thus it finds that it has from all time been
possible, but it is at this precise moment that it begins to have been always possible,
and that is why I said that its possibility, which does not precede its reality, will
have preceded it once the reality has appeared. The possible is therefore the mirage
of the present in the past. . . . It is as though one were to fancy, in seeing his
reflection in the mirror in front of him, that he could have touched it had he
stayed behind it. (2001b, 1340/1965, 101, emphasis added)
Bergsons introduction of the notion of false problems in general, and his

critique of the problematic of possibility in particular, not only provides us with
a positive internal criterion for the determination of the falsity of the problem.
It also at once articulates one fundamental dimension of that which is at stake
in Kants erroneous conception of the transcendental in terms of conditions of
possibility, and it points to the way in which that error can be avoided
namely, by rejoining the real in its essential duration, by apprehending real
time or, in other words, by turning intelligence against itself.
If the normal work of the intellect consists in the retrospective reduction
of novelty to possibility, or of the making to the already madea normal work
that Kants critique exemplifies perfectlythen it necessarily results in the
metaphysical misconceptions plaguing philosophy. Furthermore, Deleuze
points out, such metaphysical misconceptions based in the confusion of the
more and the less coincide with none other than the negation of true differ-
ences in kind, and the concomitant reduction of profound qualitative differ-
ences to superficial quantitative distinctions.6 It is for this reason that, in
Deleuzes view, the second step of the method of intuition requires the discov-
ery or reestablishment of differences in kind.Again, while the natural tendency
of the intellect is to think in terms of differences in degree where there really
are differences in kind, and this illusion cannot be dispelledas, indeed, Kant
knew and showedBergsons method of intuition tells us that this tendency
can nevertheless be repressed.7 Quite typically, it is therefore by means of a
method of positive compensation of one tendency by another, opposite ten-
dency, rather than by means of negation, that Bergson proposes to restore its
rights to metaphysics. Says Deleuze:
98
We can only react against this intellectual tendency by bringing to life, again in
intelligence, another tendency, which is critical. But where, precisely, does this
tendency come from? Only intuition can produce and animate it, because it
rediscovers differences in kind beneath the differences in degree, and conveys to
the intelligence the criteria that enable it to distinguish between true and false
problems. (1998a, 1011/1988, 21, trans. modified, emphasis in original)
Intuition and the Articulations of the Real
The second rule of the method of intuition thus runs as follows: Struggle
against illusion, rediscover the true differences in kind or articulations of the
real (1998a, 11/1988, 21). I have been insisting throughout what precedes on
this fundamental requirement of the Bergsonian method. There lies the key to
the radical significance of Bergsons new dualisma dualism, Deleuze points
out, that does not have the last word in his philosophy (ibid., 11/22). For
instance, I pointed out in the first chapter of this book the importance of Berg-
sons displacement of the traditional distinction between matter and perception,
and its replacement with the more profound difference between perception and
affection, on the one hand, and between perception and recollection, on the
otheror what I have identified as the difference in kind between conscious-
ness and the unconscious. I also explained that Bergson is aware that experience
itself offers us nothing but compositesof matter and memory, space and time,
extensity and duration. The problem for Bergson is that we fail to distinguish,
within that composite representation, between the two pure presences of matter and
memory.As Deleuze puts it,In short, we measure the mixtures with a unit that
is itself impure and already mixed.We have lost the reason for the mixtures.The
obsession with the pure in Bergson goes back to this restoration of differences in
kind. Only that which differs in kind can be said to be pure, but only tendencies
differ in kind (ibid., 12/22, trans. modified, emphasis in original).
We are now familiar with this Bergsonian leitmotiv. At this point, what
I want to emphasize is the relation that is now being drawn between false
problems and the failure to rediscover the articulations of the real informing
those false problems.We can now see more clearly than ever the connection,
within Bergsons thought, between differences in kind and tendencies. The
two notions are shown to be both functionally identicalsince they signify
the necessary task of tracing experience back to its sourceand substantially
identicalsince they consist in directions of movement, as explained in the
last chapter. In fact, I have been arguing that the word virtual precisely aims
at conveying the transvaluated status of those pure conditions: they are the
absolute outside of experience and can therefore not be found in experi-
ence, as Kant tried to (all the while denying the possibility of experiencing
them as such). Their ontological principle is one of alteration and mobility,
so if there is a sense in which they can still be called pure forms, then they
99
can no longer be reduced to some ready-made, abstract containers for expe-

rience, like Kants transcendental forms.8
It is becoming obvious that even though Bergson did not clearly thema-
tize it as such, what Deleuze calls the method of intuition has been constantly
and consistently at work throughout Bergsons uvre, from Time and Free Will
and its identification of the false problem of freedom on the basis of the dis-
tinction between the two multiplicities to The Two Sources and its solution for
the inescapable war instinct driving human societies: in terms of the produc-
tion of an opposite tendency capable of repressing the war instinct (in the form
of the creative emotion leading to universal love, exemplified by the great
Christian mystics rapture).
Intuition and Superior Empiricism
Notice that in the two earlier examples, the conditions we find beyond the turn
of experience are concrete, positive conditions; we are able to rediscover the
difference in kind between quantity and quality, or between two kinds of
causalities, on the basis of our feeling of spontaneity. Similarly, according to
Bergson, the mystical experience consists in an emotion, a direct contact
between the soul of the mystic and the lan vital, experienced as universal love.
This is precisely what the formula superior empiricism signifies: the condi-
tions of experience are not only conditions of real experience, but those con-
ditions themselves are real too. As Deleuze puts it, Intuition leads us to go
beyond the state of experience toward the conditions of experience. But these
conditions are neither general nor abstract.They are no broader than the con-
ditioned: they are the conditions of real experience (1998a, 17/1988, 27).Yet,
Deleuze adds, This going-beyond does not consist in going beyond experi-
ence toward concepts (ibid., 19/28). Concepts can only give us Kant-like con-
ditions of all possible experience in general, whereas here, on the contrary, we
are seeking conditions of real experience, that is, of experience in all of its
peculiarities, in its uniqueness or singularity. Thus, Deleuze continues, The
conditions of experience are less determined in concepts than in pure percepts.
And, while these percepts themselves are united in a concept, it is a concept
modeled on the thing itself, which only suits that thing, and which is no
broader than what it must account for (ibid.).
This brings us back to Bergsons requirement for understanding thinking,
or philosophy, as an operation of differentiation and integration rather than
association and circumspection. In fact, we know from Matter and Memory that
the movement of thought is twofold.We start with phenomenological experi-
ence as a mixture of perception and recollection, of objectivity and subjectiv-
ity. Then we must go and seek experience at its source, above the decisive
turn where it becomes properly human (i.e., utility-oriented experience).This
100
going beyond thus involves a broadening out or dilation of experience itself,

which reaches out as far as pure perception, identical to the whole of matter,
on the one hand, and pure memory, coinciding with the totality of the past, on
the other. According to Deleuze, it is in this sense that Bergson (and Deleuze
himself) compares philosophy to infinitesimal calculus. From, say, our own con-
scious experience of our feeling of spontaneity, we gain an insight that shows
us an articulation of the real; then all that remains is to extend this insight
beyond experience, to reconstruct the diverse series or tendencies to which
those articulations correspondjust as mathematicians reconstitute, with the
infinitely small elements that they perceive of the real curve, the curve itself
stretching out into the darkness behind them (ibid., 18/27)a darkness
which, as I have been trying to show, coincides with the unconscious.
But this does not as yet yield the sufficient reason for the thing we are
seeking to account for. Once we have followed the lines of divergence drawn
from actual experience beyond experience to its pure virtual conditions, we
must rediscover the point at which those lines intersect again. This time,
Deleuze insists, this point is not an actual but a virtual point, a virtual image
[or double] of the point of departure (ibid., 19/28).While the point of depar-
ture belonged to a spatial series, the point of return belongs to duration (or
spirit). In accordance with the process of integration between the two series
described earlier, the sufficient reason of the thing as we know it will ultimately
and necessarily have at least two aspects, namely, extensity and duration, even
though it will be located entirely on the side of the durational series. Once
again, its virtuality does not exclude its empirical concretenessin fact, it con-
ditions it. Furthermore, Deleuze points out, this explains what we meant when
we suggested that dualism did not have the last word in Bergsons philosophy:
turn and return; differentiation and integration; dilation (dtente) and contrac-
tionin a word the pendulum means that Dualism is therefore only a
moment, which must lead to the reformation of a monism (ibid., 20/28). In
the end, we are able to identify the precise point at which memory inserts itself
into matter anew, as illustrated by the image of the cone.
On the one hand, superior empiricism is empirical insofar as its concern
lies primarily in accounting for the concrete diversity of the sensible. Indeed, as
I will try to show in what follows, philosophical thinking for Deleuze, as for
Bergson, aims directly at the very being of the sensible (the Sentiendum) in its
immanenceas opposed to desperately wanting to reach sensible beings
through a series of intellectual reductions. But, on the other hand, superior
empiricism is properly transcendental because it searches for the necessary con-
ditions that ground this richness of the real, and in fact produce it. For Deleuze,
these conditions are not Kantian conditions of all possible experience, abstracted
from the immanent incommensurabilities of the real they try to mediate, or
copied off of what they are supposed to condition and then projected back
retroactively. They are genetic conditions of real experience: different in kind
101
from what they condition, yet fitting the conditioned tightly enough that they
contain their own necessity.9 Beyond the epistemological foundations of a pos-
sible, hence contingent, experience, which remains hostage to the idiosyncracies
of human consciousness, Deleuze searches for the differential ontological
ground of an experience that is properly metaphysical in the Bergsonian sense,
in that it goes beyond human experience, beyond the sensory-motor schemes
and intellectual consciousness qua consciousness of the worldthe inhuman
rather than the human conditions. In contrast to the intentional model sub-
tending possible experience, the fundamental concept informing what I want
to call the transcendental experience generated by transcendental empiricism is
the unconsciousan unconscious that is not merely psychological but also
ontological, not simply actual but also virtual: an unconscious that, in Deleuzes
and Guattaris words, produces the impossible real (1972, 62/1994, 53).
This takes us to the third and final rule of the method of intuition. We
claim that superior empiricism constitutes a progress over both empiricism and
transcendental idealism, because ultimately it is capable of providing us with a
genealogy of the necessary relation between the condition and the condi-
tioned, by bringing the condition back to the conditioned (without, however,
reducing one to the other), so that no distance remains between them.10 This
ability, this power (puissance) of transcendental empiricism, in turn, stems
directly from the specifically Bergsonian method, according to which problems
must be stated and solved in terms of time rather than space (1998a, 22/1988, 31).11
Intuition and Time
This third rule not only consists in the third kind of act demanded by the method
of intuition, in its ultimate simplicity it also grounds and envelops all others. As
Deleuze puts it,This rule gives the fundamental meaning of intuition: Intuition
presupposes duration, it consists in thinking in terms of duration (1998a,
22/1988, 31). In other words, to think (i.e., to think intuitively) is to follow the
movement of the real, which is the movement of thought as well. In it lies the
fundamental unity between thought and world.We have shown that for Bergson
this movement is absolute; it is the metaphysical absolute, which means that in the
end, duration must coincide with the virtual as that which redefines substance in
terms of self-alteration. At once psychological and ontological, duration has the
power to ground thoughts relationship to the world (or the relation between
consciousness and the unconscious) and to unground it at the very same time.
For, on the one hand, what we grasp when we think in terms of duration is this
alteration that is one with the essence or substance of a thing (ibid., 23/32); but,
on the other hand, this entails the unpredictability of the future and the conse-
quent necessity for constantly reinventing and recreating that link.
If consciousness is nothing but a certain rhythm of duration, a certain
mode of being in time determined by ones ability to evolve in space, then
102
memory or the unconscious, in its virtuality, escapes those spatial determina-

tions that are nonetheless necessary for its actualization: the survival of the past
does not depend on matter for its conservation in time.As consciousness, dura-
tion is the stuff of the immediate data informing our conscious perception. But
as memory, duration also is the varying essence of being that refers things and
their concepts to a grander differential fabric out of which they are carved.To
say that intuition consists in thinking in terms of duration, and that such
demand gives the fundamental sense of intuition, is precisely to capture the
twofold movement I have strived to convey all along. It tells us that despite this
ineluctable tie between the two notions, between the two experiences, intu-
ition is not duration itself (ibid.). Says Deleuze,Intuition is rather the move-
ment by which we emerge from our own duration, by which we make use of
our own duration to affirm and immediately recognize the existence of other
durations, above and below usthat is, of inhuman and superhuman durations
(ibid., 2425/33). In short, when with Bergson intuition has become a method,
the method has been reconciled with the immediatesince by dividing the mixture
according to two tendencies (i.e., extensity and duration), with only one (i.e.,
duration) showing the way in which a thing varies qualitatively in timethe
other one showing only the way in which a thing differs in degrees from other
thingsBergson effectively gives himself the means of choosing the right
side in each case, that of the essence (ibid., 24/32). As transcendental empiri-
cism, Bergsons method of intuition does without the kind of mediation that is
ultimately required of both the Platonic dialectic and transcendental idealism,
since in both cases analysis fails to provide us with a means of choosing the
right side: Why would the forms be more real than the appearances? Why
would the noumena be truer than the phenomena? We showed that no expe-
rience that remains simply psychological can answer those questions, as the psy-
chological is always already plagued with inevitable illusions. Deleuze writes,
echoing Bergson, the retrograde movement of the true is not merely an illusion
about the true, but belongs to the true itself (ibid., 26/34, emphasis in origi-
nal). But precisely, as a problematizing, differentiating, and temporalizing
method, intuition drives a folding over of the psychological and the ontologi-
cal, of the actual and the virtual, which brings the condition back to the con-
ditioned to leave no distance between the two, no room for the utility-oriented
human intellect to introduce its contingent and ready-made categories
between matter and spirit.
I will now show that what virtual empiricism is able to achieve with this
folding over that establishes a most intimate relationship between subject and
object is to allow for thought to grasp at once the essence and the event of its
own emergence. In fact, it is in this latter characterization of thoughts power
that I locate Deleuzes departure from his master.
103
5
Cinematic Thought:
The Deleuzean Image
and the Crystals of Time
The conditions of a true critique and a true creation are the same:
the destruction of an image of thought which presupposes itself and
the genesis of the act of thinking in thought itself.
Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition
When we professional liars hope to service truth, Im afraid the

pompous word for it is Art.
Orson Welles, F for Fake
As I now turn to a closer examination of Deleuzes own philosophical project

in light of the Bergsonian insights he has been so keen on reviving in his
uvre,1 I find it necessary to unravel the intricate relation of creative involu-
tion that ties Deleuze to Bergson and that sweeps them both along in a com-
mon though not an undifferentiated bloc of becoming. I begin by locating the
point of diffraction between the two thinkers in their respective conception of
the ties between thinking and the cinema.
105
Why the Cinema?
In a section of Creative Evolution titled Form and Becoming, Bergson estab-

lishes a parallel between the natural mechanism of knowledge that his method
of intuition seeks to overcome and the cinematograph. For him, the best the
cinema can do is artificially reconstitute movement, in a mode comparable to
Zeno chopping up Achilles stride in a doomed attempt at accounting for
mobility. Bergson writes, This is what the cinematograph does. With pho-
tographs, each of which represents the regiment in a fixed attitude, it reconsti-
tutes the mobility of the regiment marching (1998, 304/1998, 305). Now
where does the mobility that animates the image come from? According to
Bergson, the mobility is in the apparatus.To which apparatus is he here refer-
ring? In 1907, it is unlikely that he could be referring to the mobility of the
camera.The projector itself obviously does not move. So the mobility must be
in the unrolling of the film reel. The process consists in extracting from each
figures own proper movement an impersonal, abstract, and simple movement,
in putting this movement in general in the apparatus, and in reconstituting
the individuality of each particular movement by combining this anonymous
and external movement with personal attitudes. The artifice of the cinemato-
graph thus matches the mechanism of our acquisition of knowledge by means
of analysis:Instead of attaching ourselves to the inner becoming of things, we
place ourselves outside them in order to recompose their becoming artificially
(ibid., 305/306). Like the pragmatic operation of our knowledge, the cinema
seems to prohibit the immediate intuition of the becoming that subtends all
forms. Indeed, Bergson concludes,The mechanism of our usual knowledge is
of a cinematographic nature (ibid.).
In the cinema books, Deleuze picks up on this Bergsonian insight, com-
bines it with the theory of pure perception from the first chapter of Matter and
Memory, and contends that in this consists Bergsons extraordinary leap forward:
to see the material universe as cinema (motion picture, i.e., moving image) in
itself, or as metacinema. However, Deleuze adds, this visionary insight implies
a totally different view of the cinema from the one Bergson proposes in his
explicit critique (1983, 88/2001, 59). The central insight animating Deleuzes
cinema books is precisely that the cinema does not imitate natural perception;
on the contrary, it frees itself from it, thereby presenting us with the means to
go beyond everyday experience to its source.
Image and Movement
First Deleuze shows that the shot (plan) is not an immobile section of some
abstract movement, as Bergson thinks. Insofar as it establishes the movement
between the parts of an ensemble in a frame, or between one ensemble and
another in a reframing, the shot relates movement to a whole that changes
106
Cinematic Thought
picture, for example, the great spiral in Hitchcocks Vertigo (1958), which can
become the vertigo plaguing Scottie, but also the circuit he covers in his car, or
the curl in Kim Novaks hair, or even the overall spiraling down to his death of
Scottie that animates the plot of the movie as a whole.The shot, then, is not so
much an immobile section of abstract movement as it is a mobile section of dura-
tion (or of concrete time). Indeed, for Deleuze, this is precisely what defines the
movement-image: it is a mobile section of duration. While natural perception
introduces halts, fixed points, and separate points of view, cinematographic per-
ception works continuously in a single movement whose very halts are an inte-
gral part of it and are only a vibration upon itself (1983, 36/2001, 22). In other
words, the essence of the cinematic movement-image lies in extracting from
movements the mobility that is their common substance.This, of course, is pre-
cisely what Bergson wanted: to extract from the relative movements of moving
bodies the mobility or absolute movement that is their essence; to grasp the
reality of movement as a change in quality of the whole rather than a mere
local change of place (1997a, 219/1991, 196); to grasp the kinetic nature of
mobility over and beyond mechanical movements of translation. Finally,
Deleuze contends:
[B]ecause Bergson only considered what happened in the apparatus (the

homogenous abstract movement of the procession of images) he believed the
cinema to be incapable of that which the apparatus is in fact most eminently
capable of: the movement-imagethat is, pure movement extracted from
bodies or moving things. This is not an abstraction but an emancipation.
(1983, 3738/2001, 23)
The difference between Bergsons and Deleuzes understanding of the sta-

tus of the cinematographic (or kinetic) image thus lies in their respective
localization of the source of the mobility of the moving image. Bergson
ascribes the mobility of the image to the artifice of the mechanical apparatus.
He treats the cinematographic image as a mere assemblage of discontinuous
photographic poses to which mobility is artificially added from without.
Accordingly, such an image remains incapable of accounting for the real qual-
itative transformations (that is, the duration) implied in any movement of
translation (or spatial displacement). In contrast, Deleuze ascribes the mobility
of the image not to an external mechanical cause (the unrolling of the reel)
but rather to a set of features inherent in the very production of the cinematic
image. Accordingly, the frame, shot, and montage must be recast within this
wider genetic perspective.
It is already worth noting that the technological advances separating Berg-
sons own experience of what the cinema can do from Deleuzessuch as the
moving camerado not suffice to account for their differing conceptions of
the movement-image. Nevertheless, such technological advances certainly do
107
facilitate the decentralization or deterritorialization that for Deleuze is another

essential characteristic of the movement-imagepicture, for instance,Vertovs
camera-eye constantly shifting points of view, the alternance between tracking
shots and photograms, and so on.2
Acenteredness and Deterritorialization:The Experience of Pure Perception
In fact, Deleuze insists, there lies the second great advantage the cinema pre-
sents over natural perception: Precisely because it lacks a centre of anchorage
and of horizon, the sections it makes would not prevent it from going back up
the path that natural perception comes down (1983, 85/2001, 58, trans. mod-
ified).What the cinema can do, its power (puissance) or essence (what defines it
from the outset), is allow for an experience of pure perception, of the realm of
acentered movement from which conscious perception must be deduced.Thus
Deleuze concludes, Even in his critique of the cinema Bergson would be on
a level with it, to a far greater degree than he thinks (ibid., trans. modified).
The crucial difference, of course, is that while for Bergson pure perception had
to remain an in principle hypothesis, Deleuze holds that the cinema yields a
real experience of it. If, as I have been arguing, the import of the theory of pure
perception over transcendental idealism consisted in allowing for an immanent
account of the emergence of consciousness from mobile materiality, then the
Deleuzian interpretation of the cinematographic movement-image goes even
farther in the direction of pure immanence.
In effect, The Movement-Image traces the genesis of consciousness back to a
particular experience rather than a speculative methodological artifice.The cin-
ematic images power is therefore to give access to the virtual experience of
acenteredness and deterritorialization that characterizes pure perception. Not
only does it replace the conditions of experience within experience (superior
empiricism); it also redefines those transcendental conditions in terms of light-
matter, of material vibration, or of Becomingrather than form. The cinema
thereby contributes to the elaboration of what I call a material transcenden-
tal. But that is not all.
Thought and the Sensible Form of Time
While The Movement-Image inaugurates a reading of the cinematic image as

performing a transcendental function (i.e., grounding experience) by reinter-
preting the transcendent form of space in terms of immanent material
becoming, in The Time-Image the transcendental status of the image achieves
full completion.There Deleuze tracks down the irruption of a new element,
which is going to prevent perception from being extended into action, and
put it into contact with thought instead. There, over and beyond the emer-
gence of everyday consciousness from material vibration, what is accounted
108
Cinematic Thought
for is the irruption of thought from within the image. Deleuze calls this new
element the pure optical or sound situation, characterized by a detachment
from action, which reaches its highest expression in the Nouvelle Vague
(1985, 8/2001, 1). From Antonionis LAvventuras (1960) aimless wanderings
(the search for the lost woman on the bare island quickly makes way for a
series of lonesome roamings about the failure of individual encounters) to
Godards lifeless passions and furious yet thwarted attempts at completing
political and artistic projects (Passion), what bursts out of the image every
time is a situation no longer determined by the ups and downs of the action,
or the perception-action-affection triad that characterizes the movement-
image.3 In that triad,
what the spectator perceived . . . was a sensory-motor image in which he

took a greater or lesser part by identification with the characters. Hitchcock
had begun the inversion of this point of view by including the viewer in the
film. But it is now that the identification is actually inverted: the character
has become a kind of spectator. He shifts, runs and becomes animated in
vain, the situation he is in outstrips his motor capacities on all sides, and
makes him see and hear what is no longer subject to the rules of a response
and an action. He records rather than reacts. He is prey to a vision, pursued
by it or pursuing it, rather than engaged in an action. (1985, 9/2001, 3, trans.
modified, emphasis added)4
In this vision or pure optical situation stemming from motor impotence,

Deleuze tells us, what we find is the point of indiscernability between the spec-
tator and the spectacle, between the real and the imaginary, or even between
the objective and the subjective.
We run in fact into a principle of indeterminability, of indiscernability: we no

longer know what is imaginary or real, physical or mental, in the situation, not
because they are confused, but because we do not have to know and there is no longer
even a place from which to ask. It is as if the real and the imaginary were run-
ning after each other, as if each was being reflected in the other, around a
point of indiscernability. (1985, 15/2001, 7, emphasis added)5
To the extent that the optical situation replaces the motor action, new
connections and new circuits are uncovered. Pure optical situations put the
senses (now emancipated from the requirements of action) into a direct rela-
tion with time, that is, with thought.With this direct presentation of time (the
time-image) rather than the indirect representation of time we get in the
movement-image, there is no need to invoke transcendence, since the defining
characteristic of the time-image consists precisely in making time or thought
sensible, in making them visible and audible.6
109
From Clichs to Camera Consciousness
The pure optical situation takes us beyond the sensory-motor schematas

informing the logic of recognition in accordance with which we perceive less
than the whole thing or the whole image.As Bergson noted, we ordinarily per-
ceive only what interests us in virtue of our pragmatic (i.e., economic, ideo-
logical, or psychological) exigencies.We ordinarily perceive only clichs. How-
ever, Deleuze adds,
[i]f our sensory-motor schemata jam or break, then a different type of image
can appear: a pure optical-sound image, the whole image without metaphor,
brings out the thing in itself, literally, in its excess of horror or beauty, in its
radical or unjustifiable character, because it no longer has to be justified in
terms of good or evil. (1985, 32/2001, 20, trans. modified)
Faithful to his seminal Nietzschean inspiration, Deleuze claims that the time-
image thus understood takes us beyond good and evil not so much in the
sense of going beyond or transcending slave morality as in the sense of indicat-
ing or signifying the other, excessive side of the real.What is to be encountered
on that other side? Pure powers (puissances) of expansion and forces of becom-
ing.The important thing for us, at this point, is that according to Deleuze, these
immanent forces of becoming are also, at the same time, mental relations.
Of course, the key word here is excess (as opposed to the diminution that
characterizes the Bergsonian account of consciousness). Following Deleuze, we
can indicate at least three dimensions (or powers) in which the time-image
expands beyond sensory-motor schematas and operates a junction between
material vibration and thought.
In the first place, this excess signifies that the movement-image has not dis-
appeared. Rather, it now exists as the first dimension of an image whose pow-
ers keep expanding in excess of spatial dimensions. The movement-image no
longer forms a circuit with an image of time (for example, the whole derived
from montage). It now enters into relation with a direct time-imagepicture,
for instance, the numerous nonchronological layers of the past through which
the central character of Alain Resnaiss Je taime, je taime (1967) travels endlessly
while his body remains locked up in a womblike cell. This in turn indicates a
fundamental reversal of the relation between time and movement, whereby
time takes priority over movement: time is no longer the measure of move-
ment, but movement has become the perspective (or measure) of time (1985,
34/2001, 22). In this reversal consists the main import of the Deleuzean notion
of the time-image over the movement-image.
This emancipation of time from movement indicates a second dimension
of expansion of the image. As Deleuze notes, at the same time the eye takes on
a visionary function, the visual and aural elements of the image enter into
110
Cinematic Thought
internal relations, which means that the whole image has to be read, no less
than seen, readable as well as visible. For the eye of the seer as of the soothsayer,
it is the literary quality (littralit)7 of the world which constitutes it as a book
(ibid., trans. modified). For Deleuze, this means that in the time-image, the ref-
erence to some supposedly independent object out there does not disappear
entirely, but it becomes subordinated to the internal elements and relations that
tend to replace the object, to always displace it (ibid.). In short, the time-image
gives rise to another type of signs, the signposts of the mental relationsor of
the thought-sideof what I call the material transcendental.8
This principle of the readability of the cinematographic image holds the
key to much of Deleuzes take on the cinema and the ability he attributes to
the cinema to produce a direct time-image by establishing a direct connection
between the actual elements of the image and the virtual or mental relations
that constantly displace them.This readability of the image holds the key to the
complicity Deleuze sees between the cinema and philosophy (as well as to the
connection I see between the time-image and the Proustian image).This com-
plicity between the cinema and philosophy (both understood as intersecting
practices) is due to Deleuzes famous contention that it is at the level of
interference of many practices that things are made, beings, images, concepts,
all the kind of events (1985, 365/2001, 280). Of course, this level of interfer-
ence coincides precisely with what, elsewhere, Deleuze calls Becoming, or the
plane of immanence.
Finally, the third dimension of the great reversal involved in the passage
from the movement-image to the time-image lies in the transformation of the
function of the camera.We noted earlier that Bergsons dismissal of the move-
ment-images ability to emancipate mobility from movements of translation
may not be entirely due to the fixity of the camera characteristic of the early
cinema he explicitly criticized. In fact, with the passage to the time-image, the
fixity of the camera no longer presents the only alternative to movement.Even
when it is mobile, the camera is no longer content sometimes to follow that
characters movement, sometimes itself to undertake movements of which they
are merely the object, but in every case it subordinates description of a space
to the functions of thought (ibid., 35/36). It is no longer only the characters
who imagine, remember, question, object, hypothesize, or experiment, but it is
the camera itself. This is Hitchcocks dream come true: a camera-conscious-
ness which would no longer be defined by the movements it is able to follow
or make, but by the mental connections it is able to enter into (ibid.).
To sum up, we could say that by going beyond the movement-imageby
liberating the image from the sensory-motor schematas, by becoming a pure
optical and sound image, by connecting itself to excess forces and opening itself
up to the powerful revelations of the time-imagethe cinema does not simply
make us think.As it acquires the power to break away from the clichs of ordi-
nary experience, the cinema itself thinks.
111
Toward the Crystal-Image: A Vision of the Genesis of Time
The Recollection-Image (limage-souvenir)
Let us note that Deleuzes account of the emergence of thought from within
the cinematic image in terms of the images powers of expansion presents strik-
ing parallels to Bergsons theory of attentive recognition, or of the intellectual
effort (which both involve a passage from one plane of consciousness to
anotheror from automatism to thought). To begin with, the constitution of
the pure optical image depends on the jamming or breaking of our sensory-
motor schematas (clichs or automatic recognition); then, if this image cannot
prolong itself into action, it gives rise to a visionary experience. Similarly, the
experience of attentive recognition as described by Bergson ultimately depends
on true or imaginative memorys independence from the bodys pragmatic ori-
entation: To call up the past in the form of an image [rather than to simply
play it or act it out], we must be able to withdraw ourselves from the action
of the moment, we must have the power to value the useless, we must have the
will to dream (1997a, 87/1991, 82).The difference, at this point, is that Berg-
son is here suggesting that only humans have this capacity, whereas Deleuze
ascribes it to the machinic processes inherent in the production of the cine-
matic image: the cinema does not merely make us think; it itself thinks. More-
over, Bergson ascribes this detachment from action to the power of a human
will, while Deleuze finds that it proceeds from the impossibility of assimilating
the intolerable, or from an experience of fundamental impotence. I argue that
such differences speak to a perhaps unbridgeable gap between the two thinkers
conceptions of thought, the first remaining decidedly humanist or anthro-
pocentric, the other emphatically machinic (though not mechanistic).
Second, what Deleuze finds in this visionary experience is the point of
indiscernability between the physical and the psychological, the real and the
imaginary, or the objective and the subjective. Similarly, Bergson accounts for
the introduction of the cone of memory into present materiality informing full
recognition in terms of the indiscernability between perception and memory.
As he puts it, there is no doubt that any memory-image9 that is capable of
interpreting our actual perception inserts itself so thoroughly into it that we are
no longer able to discern what is perception and what is memory (ibid.,
113/103). It is clear that for both thinkers, this point of indiscernability is pre-
cisely the mark and the condition of the passage from movement to time, or
from the sensory-motor situation to the pure optical and aural situation.
Third, we may want to claim that the pure optical image in Deleuze cor-
responds to the memory-image in Bergson. As such, not only does it redouble
or recreate the supposed independent object (what Bergson calls representa-
tion memory), it also displaces it constantlyjust as the past displaces the pre-
sent in attentive recognition. Hence the readability of the image, which not
112
Cinematic Thought
only conditions the pure optical images intrinsic connectedness to thought but
also exhibits its infinite powers of expansion.
Finally, it is very tempting to see a connection between what Deleuze calls
the powers of expansion of the image and the increasingly wider circles of
memory that attentive recognition must draw upon in order to throw light on
the object perceived.This seems to coincide with the process of dilation exam-
ined in the second chapter, which Bergson illustrates with his first great
schema.10 In fact, Deleuze does not hesitate to draw this connection explicitly:
How can we say that it is the same object [the heroine in Rossellinis Europe
51 sees a factory and thinks she is seeing convicts] which passes through dif-
ferent circuits, because each time description [or the formation of a pure opti-
cal sound image] has obliterated the object, at the same time as the mental
image has created a different one? Each circuit obliterates and creates an
object. But it is precisely in this double movement of creation and erasure
that successive planes and independent circuits, canceling each other out, con-
tradicting each other, joining up with each other, forking, will simultaneously
constitute the layers of one and the same physical reality, and the levels of one and the
same mental reality, memory or spirit. As Bergson says,it will be seen that the
progress of attention results in creating anew, not only the object perceived,
but also the ever-widening systems with which it may be bound up; so that
in the measure in which the circles, B, C, D represent a higher expansion of
memory, their reflection attains in B, C, D deeper strata of reality. (1985,
65/2001, 46, emphasis added)11
Nevertheless, we must keep in mind that in Bergsonism, the recollection-

image still pertains to the actual, since by definition, as an image, it coincides
with the process of actualization of virtual memories. But for Deleuze, it is to
a decidedly virtual image that the optical image gets connected. Now what can
play the role of a virtual image?
Beyond the Flashback:The Memory of the Present
If the time-image is to yield an insight into the essentially productive nature of

thought (and not merely into its derivative aspect from perception), then the
visionary experience involved in great modern cinema must take us beyond the
expanding circuits of memory, beyond dreams even. While the latter may be
understood as a means to the virtualization of the image (its detachment from
action and emancipation from clichs), that is not enough.This is because the
flashback, which traditionally conveys the relation between recollection-images
and actual images, actually remains a closed circuit, which goes from the pre-
sent to the past and brings us back to the present. But, Deleuze warns us, the
flashback remains a very conventional, extrinsic device, generally indicated by
113
a dissolve-link. As such, it is like a signpost with the words: Watch out! Rec-
ollection. It indicates a causality that may be psychological but is still analo-
gous to sensory-motor determinism and only confirms the progression of a lin-
ear narration (1985, 67/2001, 48). In short, the flashback does not yield any
true point of indiscernability between the real and the imaginary or past and
present. In fact, the flashback must be given its necessity from elsewhere, just as
recollection-images must be given the internal mark of the past from elsewhere
(ibid.). This means that thus understood, neither the flashback nor the recol-
lection-image can be said to constitute genuinely virtual images: they may be
actualizing a virtuality, but they do not deliver the past itself; rather, they rep-
resent the old present that the subject has been.
Now we know from Bergsons seminal distinction between two kinds of
memory that this type of representation-memory indicates the deeper strata
of reality mentioned earlier: the other side, the virtual or unconscious side
of the real. But they are not identical. Both in the second chapter of Matter and
Memory and in his 1908 The Memory of the Present: False Recognition
Bergson argues that for memory to preserve its independence from the body
and to remain self-sufficient, it must have constituted itself as recollection
immediately, at the same time it was present.12 Subtending any recognition (or
the mechanism by which we establish a rapprochement between a recollection
and a present perception), there is therefore a virtual plane in which the past
survives in itself, and not merely as an old present.This virtual plane is the one
that holds the secret of thoughts inherent productivity (over and above its
derivativeness from perception). According to Deleuze, this also is the plane
with which the pure optical image has the power to establish a junction.
What is to be encountered on that virtual plane? Deleuzes first answer
is the crystal-image. On the one hand, although the recollection-image
expands conscious perception into the ever-vaster powers of memory or
thoughtthereby operating a virtualization of the presentit remains
caught up within the actual.This means that if our inquiries are to yield some
genuinely transcendental insights, then what needs to be discovered is the
genetic element of the pure optical image.We know that this genetic element
must somehow coincide with a point of indiscernability, solely capable of
allowing for a purely immanent account of the transition from the actual to
the virtual. So far, however, if I am right in establishing a parallel between the
Deleuzean time-image and the Bergsonian memory-image, then all we have
found is a point of confusion between perception and memory, whereby
the memory-images insertion into the actual perception is still dependent
upon its usefulnessand therefore upon the requirements of action (see
1997a, 113/1991, 103, quoted earlier).This confusion remains of a subjective
nature. However, if this point of indiscernability is to be sufficiently
grounded, if it is to hold the key to any significant insight into the nature of
the relations between the actual and the virtual, then it ought to correspond
114
Cinematic Thought
to an objective illusion, an illusion that is not merely accidental but necessary.

This necessary illusion Deleuze finds in the crystal-image.
While the memory-image finds its figuration in the expanding circuits of
memory and the correlative deepening layers of reality (B-B, C-C, D-D in
Bergsons first great diagram, see n. 10), the crystal-image is an elaboration or
an expression, rather, of the AO circuit (object O and its immediate or sponta-
neous image) around which the memory-image is articulated. In other words,
while the memory-image coincides with the dilation of consciousness inher-
ent in the time-image, the crystal-image corresponds to the smallest circuit or
the most contracted point, which must be presupposed by the wider circles.
Deleuze writes:
The cinema does not just present images, it surrounds them with a world.This
is why, very early on, it looked for bigger and bigger circuits which would
unite an actual image with recollection-images, dream-images and world-
images. . . . Should not the opposite direction have been pursued? Contract-
ing the image instead of dilating it. Searching for the smallest circuit that func-
tions as internal limit for all the others and that puts the actual image beside
a kind of immediate, symmetrical, consecutive or even simultaneous double.
The broad circuits of recollection or of dream assume this narrow base, this
extreme point, and not the other way around. . . . Ever vaster circuits will be
able to develop, corresponding to deeper and deeper layers of reality and
higher levels of memory or thought. But it is this most restricted circuit
[short-circuit (court-circuit)] of the actual image and its virtual image which
carries everything, and serves as internal limit. (1985, 9293/2001, 6869,
On the one hand, the flashback or the recollection-image remains an exter-

nal condition for the possibility of the time-imageindicating that the time-
image must find its justification elsewhere (say, for instance, in destiny). Here
the foundation of the time-image remains relative or contingent, that is,
baggy. On the other hand, the crystal-image (the short-circuit) constitutes the
internal condition for the reality of the time-image. As such, it embodies supe-
rior empiricisms exigencies for conditions of reality rather than possibility,
which must not only be internal, but also tightly fitted, to what they condition.
My contention is that the crystal-image holds the secret of Deleuzes supe-
rior empiricism. What does this mean? First, that the crystal-image yields an
experienceor rather it generates an experimentationof the perpetual foun-
dation of time.This is the aspect I will examine in the next section. Second, it
means that this experimentation lies beyond consciousness, beyond memory,
recollection, or dreams (since the dream-image still has to be attributed to a
dreamer, and the consciousness of the dream has to be attributed to a specta-
tor; in short, the dream-image does not present a point of indiscernability). In
115
the next chapter, I reinterpret this experimentation as the experience of death

in light of Deleuzes reading of Proust. We will show that ultimately the crys-
tal-image thus understood marks Deleuzes departure from Bergsonism. Finally,
to say that the crystal-image holds the secret of Deleuzes superior empiricism
means that the crystal-image, in all of its aspects and implications, embodies the
Deleuzean demand for pure immanence.This is because insofar as the crystal-
image marks the necessary interruption of linear narrative (or history), it is the
central figure informing Deleuzes nondialectical metaphysics of becoming.13
The Crystal-Image:Times Scission Rendered Visible
In Cinema 2, Deleuze writes:
There is no doubt that attentive recognition, when it succeeds, comes about

through recollection-images: it is the man I met last week at such and such a
place. . . . But it is precisely this success which allows the sensory-motor flux
to take up its temporarily interrupted course again. So that Bergson con-
stantly circles around the following conclusion, which will also haunt cinema:
attentive recognition informs us to a much greater degree when it fails than
when it succeeds. When we cannot remember, sensory-motor extension
remains suspended, and the actual image, the present optical perception, does
not link up with either a motor image or a recollection-image which would
re-establish contact. It rather enters into relation with genuinely virtual ele-
ments, feelings of dj vu or past in general (I must have seen that man
somewhere . . .), dream-images (I have the feeling that I saw him in a
dream . . .), fantasies or theater scenes (he seems to play a role that I am famil-
iar with . . .). In short, it is not the recollection-image or attentive recognition
which gives us the proper equivalent of the optical-sound image, it is rather
the disturbances of memory and the failures of recognition. (1985, 75/2001,
5455, emphasis in original)
Bergsons conclusion appears clearly in his discussion of aphasia in the

second chapter of Matter and Memory. But it is perhaps best articulated in his
essay on false recognition.14 There he argues that false recognition is due to
two concomitant factors; first, the diminution of psychological tension (or the
dilation implied in dreamlike states); second, the objective splitting of the
image (1996, 124/1975, 123). And then he adds, [T]here are morbid or
abnormal states which seem to add to normal life, to enrich it rather than to
lessen it. Delirium, hallucination, obsession are positive facts. They consist in
the presence, not the absence of something.They seem to introduce into spirit
certain new ways of feeling and thinking (ibid., 125/124). He contends that
such phenomena may in fact constitute the normal operation of the mind
simply, what keeps them from surfacing in most cases is the presence and con-
116
Cinematic Thought
stant activity of antagonistic mechanisms designed to ensure attention to life.

Bergson suggests that this must be because the formation of memory is never pos-
terior to the formation of perception; it is contemporaneous with it. Step by step, as
perception is created, the memory of it is projected beside it, as the shadow
falls beside the body. But, in the normal condition, there is no consciousness
of it (ibid., 130/128, emphasis in original). In fact, Bergson concludes, this
continuous splitting of the image conditions the very formation of recollec-
tion: Either the present leaves no trace in memory, or it is twofold at every
moment, its very up-rush being in two jets exactly symmetrical, one of which
falls back towards the past whilst the other springs forward toward the future
(ibid., 13132/130).
It appears that what ultimately conditions natural perception and normal
recognition (as folding over of past and present) is this originary splitting of the
image. It is this memory of the present (or the immediate coexistence of the
present with its past) that makes past and present communicate from within.
Here, what is to be encountered is the formation of an image with two faces,
actual and virtual at the same time (1985, 93/2001, 69).When the actual opti-
cal image crystallizes with its own virtual image on the most contracted circuit
(the AO circuit discussed earlier), what presents itself is the genetic element of
the objective illusion informing the birth of thought. This genetic element is
what Deleuze calls the crystal-image.
This crystal-image finally presents us with the true point of indiscernibil-
ity responsible for the genesis of thought. It does not suppress the distinction
between the two faces or the two sides of the real; it simply makes them unat-
tributable, each side taking the others role in a relation which must be
described as reciprocal presupposition, or reversibility (ibid., 94/69). This
exchange or reversibility is therefore not produced in the mind: it is not a sub-
jective illusion. Rather, it is the objective characteristic of certain existing
images that are by nature double (ibid.).
We are finally in a position to answer the question, what do we see in the
crystal? What we see in the crystal is none other than the perpetual founda-
tion of time: the continuous splitting of the present into two heterogeneous
directions, one that preserves all of the pastor spontaneous memorythe
other that makes all of the present passmemory as a function of the future
(ibid., 109/81).15 It is in this sense that we could affirm, at the beginning of
this chapter, that with the time-image, the image achieves its transcendental
status. We can now see that over and beyond recollection-images or dream-
images, the truth, the essence, or the ultimate power of the time-image lies in
the crystal-image. It is there that finally, time qua perpetual nonchronological
self-foundation becomes visible. In this cinema of the seer, the visionary
encounters time in person, a little bit of time in its pure state (Proust), the
very distinction between the two sides of the image that keeps reconstituting
itself (ibid., 110/82).16
117
Recapitulation
Before we go on to explore further the nature and the determinations of this

experimentation of time in its pure state in the next chapter, let me attempt to
summarize what we have seen so far.
I began by noting that in contrast to Bergson, Deleuze contends that the
cinematographic movement-image must be understood as a mobile section of
duration (or of concrete time) rather than an immobile section of abstract
movement.Thus, Deleuze explains, the movement-image presents an emanci-
pation (rather than an abstraction) of mobility from movement.This means that
insofar as the movement-image puts forth the qualitative change informing any
movement of translation, it constitutes the overcoming of the Eleatic paradoxes
that Bergsons philosophy is seeking. It appears that the mobility of the image
is not artificially added from without as in the mechanistic accounts of reality
Bergson tirelessly criticizes. Rather, the mobility is shown to be inherent in the
very production of the cinematographic image. For Deleuze, this means that
the cinematic process of production is not mechanistic: it is machinic. Since this
image remains inherently connected to the essential mobility of the real, then
we can say with Deleuze that the movement-image allows for going beyond
natural perception or usual experience to its sourcethis, of course, being one
of the central projects of Bergsonism.
As in Bergsons philosophy, it quickly appears that for Deleuze this source
of experience is dual: material and spiritual, actual and virtual.We know that in
Bergson the material side of the genesis of conscious experience is discovered
through the theory of pure perception.This theory argues for the necessity of
positing a primeval world of moving images constantly acting and reacting
upon each other.The deduction of consciousness consists in tracing the emer-
gence of a center (my body) from this acentered world of images. I argued that
in Cinema 1, Deleuze goes even farther in the direction of pure immanence
when he shows that the movement-image actually yields an experience of such
acenteredness. Pure perception is no longer a mere speculative methodological
artifice: with the cinema, it becomes an actual experience. One of the reasons
the cinema plays such a significant role in Deleuzes philosophy, then, is that it
can be shown to contribute to the elaboration of what I have called the mate-
rial transcendental, since it yields an account of the material genesis of con-
scious experience.
Further, I argued that in Cinema 2 Deleuze tracks down the other, the
mental or spiritual side of the source of consciousness. He holds that the image
characteristic of great postwar cinema (beginning with Italian neorealism and
Orson Welles) is marked by the irruption of a new element from within the
image. We could say that by portraying situations that outstrip the characters
motor capacities, such cinema tracks down the formation of interiority. No
longer subject to the rules of response and (re)action, the character involved in
118
Cinematic Thought
the pure optical and aural situation stemming from motor impotence records
rather than reacts; he becomes prey to visions rather than an agent of actions.
This is because this pure optical situation puts the senses into a direct relation
with time or thoughtwhich is to say, with the other, excessive side of the real:
in a word, with the Outside. Since the formation of interiority depends on the
powers of expansion of the image, it is ultimately shown to be dependent on
the forces of the Outside.The optical situation thus constitutes the passage from
the movement-image to the time-image.
The first implication of this passage consists in the reversal of the relation
between time and movement, whereby time is no longer the measure of move-
ment (as in the Aristotelian or, more generally, the metaphysical tradition);
rather, movement has become a perspective (or the measure) of time.The sec-
ond great implication consists in the introduction of a principle of readability
of the image. This means that in the description involved in the time-image,
the reference to the external object has not disappeared, but it has become sub-
ordinated to the internal elements and relations that tend to displace the object,
or even to replace it. Here we can begin to see the formation of a point of
indiscernability between the real and the imaginary, the objective and the sub-
jective, or the actual and the virtual. Accordingly, the third implication of this
passage from movement to time lies in the transformation of the function of
the camera, which is no longer relegated to following the characters move-
ments. Whether mobile or immobile, the camera subordinates the description
of a space to the functions of thought. According to Deleuze, this marks the
realization of Hitchocks dream of a camera-consciousness defined by the
mental relations it is capable of entering into. Finally, I argued that what is at
stake in this passage from the movement-image to the time-image is that the
cinema no longer simply makes us think: the cinema itself thinks.
I then suggested that this marks an implicit yet a crucial move on Deleuzes
part.While he embraces the Bergsonian insight in accordance with which the
mechanism of our usual knowledge is of a cinematographic nature (1998,
305/1998, 306), Deleuze radicalizes that insightor rather, he offers its precise
counterpoint. The significance of the cinema for Deleuzes philosophy fully
comes into focus when we realize that, in fact, it is not so much the mechanism
of our usual knowledge but rather the machinism of thought, which is of a cine-
matographic nature.This is important, because ultimately what it means is that
Deleuzes philosophy yields a conception of productive thought that needs to
be distinguished from Bergsons epistemological approachalthough Bergson,
as we saw, does ascribe a major role to creativity in thought.
At this point, I want to recall a hypothesis I have already put forth, which
will need to be confirmed in what follows. My hypothesis is the following:
While this idea of machinism is undoubtedly rooted in Bergsons seminal dis-
tinction between spiritual determination and material determinism, or
between duration (freedom, life) and mechanism, it goes one step farther in
119
the overcoming of sterile dualismthat is, in the affirmation of pure imma-

nence.This step I locate in the Deleuzean concept of the crystal-image.
The key to understanding the crystal-image lies in the Bergsonian idea
of the memory of the present. This idea, which establishes the immediate
doubling over or the immediate coexistence of the present with its own past,
is the necessary foundation for the true point of indiscernability Deleuze is
after. In this point of indiscernability lies the junction with the virtual plane,
which alone can deliver the past in itself. Only by thus delivering the past in
itself (rather than the old present it has been) can the image give us insights
into the genetic element of thought, testifying to the essentially productive
nature of thoughtrather than relegating thought to a more or less inade-
quate copy of the flowing real. Only then can the Bergsonian project of
overcoming dualism and transcendental idealisms contingent limitations be
realized.
In the final analysis, what the point of indiscernability presented in the
crystal-image embodies is the reciprocal presupposition, or the reversibility of
the actual and the virtual, the real and the imaginary, matter and spirit. As an
objectively dual image, the crystal-image testifies at once to the essentially dual
aspect of the real and to the immanent, continuous exchange between its two
sides.As Deleuze points out, what we see in the crystal is the spontaneous dou-
bling, the perpetual foundation of time qua splitting between past and future
within the present: a little bit of time in its pure state, as Proust most insight-
fully put it.
Toward the Proustian Image: Crystalline Life and the Race to the Tomb
In Cinema 2, Deleuze distinguishes between several states of the crystal. He writes:
What we see in the crystal is always the bursting forth of life, of time, in its
doubling or differentiation. However, in opposition to Renoir, not only does
nothing leave the crystalsince it keeps on growingbut it is as if the signs
of selection are reversed. In Fellini, it is the present, the parade of presents that
pass, which constitute the danse macabre. They run, but to the tomb, not
towards the future. (1985, 121/2001, 91)
Although the crystalline structure relies on the bipolarity of the image and
the constant exchange or perfect circuit between the two sides, it soon appears
that the crystal cannot remain undisturbed. In Renoir, the flaw characteristic of
the crystal is revealed in the depth of field. For example, The Rules of the Game
(1939) produces a circuit or coexistence of the actual image of living beings
and the virtual image of automata, the actual image of characters and the vir-
tual image of their roles during the party, the actual image of the masters and
their virtual image in the servants, and so on.Everything is mirror-images, dis-
120
Cinematic Thought
tributed in depth. But depth of field always arranges a background in the cir-
cuit through which something can flee: the crack (1985, 113/2001, 85).Thus
Deleuze continues:
Without recourse to violence, and through the development of an experi-

mentation, something will come out of the crystal, a new Real will come out
beyond the actual and the virtual. Everything happens as if the circuit served
to try out roles, as if roles were being tried in it until the right one were
found, the one with which we escape to enter a clarified reality (une ralit
dcante). (1985, 114/2001, 86)
What flees through the crack is a new Real: the scene launching itself
toward a future, creating a future as a bursting forth of life (1985, 117/2001, 88).
But while what we see in the crystal is always a bursting forth of life, it is only
in one of its states that this bursting forth appears as a fleeing toward the future.
In the Fellinian state of the crystal, on the contrary, this bursting forth
stems from the depths of the past. Amarcord (1973) depicts a group of schoolboys:
The timid one, the prankster, the dreamer, the good pupil, etc., who meet in
front of the big hotel as soon as the season is over; and, while the snow crys-
tals fall, each on its own and yet all of them together sketch a clumsy dance-
step or an imitation of a musical instrument, one going in a straight line,
another tracing circles, another turning round on the spot. . . . They lodge them-
selves in a depth which is no longer that of memory, but that of a coexistence where we
become their contemporaries, as they become the contemporaries of all the seasons past
and to come.The two aspects, the present that passes and goes to death, the past which
is preserved and retains all the seeds of life, repeatedly interfere and cut into each other.
(1985, 122/2001, 92, emphasis added)
I have highlighted the elements of the Fellinian crystal-image with

which we will meet again as we turn to the Proustian theme of the powers of
death and forgetting, constantly interfering with, yet at the very same time
always constituting the resurrections and transmutations involved in the narra-
tors apprenticeshipespecially as it is depicted in the final Guermantes mat-
ine crowning the revelations of Time Regained.
Finally, Deleuze suggests, there may be yet another state of the crystal,
when it is grasped in its decomposition. The work of Visconti testifies to this.
Most significantly, for us, Deleuze suggests that the most important element in
Viscontis crystals is the idea or the revelation that something comes too late:
This something that comes too late is not an accident that takes place in time
but a dimension of time itself. As a dimension of time, it is, through the crys-
tal, the one which is opposed to the static dimension of the past as this survives
121
and weighs in the interior of the crystal. It is a sublime clarity which is opposed
to the opaque, but it has the property of arriving too late, dynamically.As per-
ceptible revelation, the too-late is a matter of unity of nature and man, as world
or milieu. But as sensual revelation, the unity becomes personal. (1985,
12627/2001, 96)
Picture, for instance, the wifes pregnancy in The Innocent (1976), which
rekindles her husbands desire for her. But this rekindling of course happens too
late: the child is not the husbands, and the impossibility of forgetting that
plagues the characters precipitates the killing of the child, the killing of inno-
cence, albeit with a perfectly clear conscience, says the infanticide husband.
In fact, this impossibility of forgetting precipitates all of them to the grave
except the mistress, alone capable of accepting the radical unpredictability of
the future. In fact, Deleuze continues, this searing too-late explains the direc-
tion in which Visconti would have taken on a translation of Proust: the work
of art made from the pleas of aristocratic decadence and dereliction. For in the
end, the too-late conditions the work of art, and conditions its success, since
the perceptible and sensual unity of nature and man is the essence of art par
excellence, insofar as it is characteristic of it to arrive too late in all other respects,
except precisely this one: time regained (1985, 128/2001, 97).
122
6
Proust and Thought:

Death, Art, and the Adventures
of the Involuntary
What man can live and never see death?

Psalm 89
Proust does not in the least conceive change as a Bergsonian dura-

tion, but as a defection, a race to the grave.
Gilles Deleuze, Proust and Signs
But let a noise, a scent, once heard or once smelt, be heard or smelt
again in the present and at the same time in the past, real without
being actual, ideal without being abstract, and immediately the per-
manent and habitually concealed essence of things is liberated and
our true self which seemedhad perhaps for long years seemed
to be dead but was not altogether dead, is awakened and reanimated
as it receives the celestial nourishment that is brought to it. A
minute freed from the order of time has re-created in us, to feel it,
the man freed from the order of time.
Marcel Proust, Time Regained
One major difference between Bergsons and Deleuzes philosophies lies in their
respective accounts of the workings of thought. I have argued that this difference
123
comes into focus when we realize that for Deleuze it is not so much the mech-
anism of our usual knowledge (Bergson), which is of a cinematographic (or
cinmatique: kinetic) nature, but rather the machinism of thought.This is impor-
tant because ultimately it means that Deleuzes philosophy yields a conception
of productive thought that needs to be distinguished from Bergsons epistemo-
logical approach. In what follows, I intend to explicate this claim further. I will
examine the arrangements that Deleuzes thought establishes with Marcel
Prousts literature to engender extraordinary philosophical insights into the
nature, the genesis, and the workings of thought in relation to life, death,
art, and machinic becomings.
Death Is the Truth of Thought
Truth and Reality: From Bergsonian Intuition to Deleuzean Thought
Bergsons project of overcoming the dead ends of dualism culminates in his

affirmation of the absoluteness of knoweldge (as opposed to the relativity to
which Kants system had condemned it), which his method of intuition aims
to establish.As is paradigmatically instantiated in Kants transcendental idealism,
the scientific intellect has forsaken the living, ever-changing, and creative real
for the sake of securing its critical grasp on itself and its phenomenological
environment. The main problem with such an approach is that it fails to
acknowledge the fundamental distinction between two domains of knowing,
namely, the scientific (or pragmatic, spatial) and the philosophical (or specula-
tive, temporal).1 The Bergsonian method of intuition thus consists in using
intelligence against itself to return to the source of experiencenamely, dura-
tion, life, or the lan vital. For Bergson, this methodological return into the
temporal flow of creative evolution is precisely what defines the specific task of
philosophy. Finally, he says, it is only at the point of convergence or integration
between the two tendenciesscientific and philosophical, respectively most
capable of adopting and following the two movements of the realor the two
multiplicities, that truth may be found.2 As he puts it in one of his many letters
to his friend William James,
I began to read your Pragmatism the moment I received it by post and I have
not been able to put it down before finishing it. It is the admirably drawn pro-
gramme for the philosophy of the future. . . . When you say that for ratio-
nalism reality is ready-made and complete from all eternity, while for prag-
matism it is still in the making, you give the very formula of the metaphysics
which I am convinced we will come to, which we would have come to long
ago if we had not remained under the charm of Platonic idealism.Would I go
so far as to affirm with you that truth is mutable? I believe in the mutability
124
Proust and Thought
of reality rather than that of truth. If we can make our intuition accord with
the mobility of the real, would not this accord be something stable, and would
not truthwhich can only be this accord itselfparticipate in this stability?3
I suggest that despite his numerous strides toward a genuinely new philos-
ophy capable of grasping the real in its vitality, Bergson remains committed to
an otherwise conventional conception of truth as the stablethough not
immutableaccord with reality.This connotes a number of implications.
First, this implies that for Bergson the real can and should be distinguished
from the imaginary, and that it is philosophical thoughts primary task to secure
that distinction; in contrast, we saw that what Deleuze finds in the cinemato-
graphic crystal-image is precisely the point of indiscernibility between the real
and the imaginary necessary to gain insight into the genesis of time, thought,
and subjectivity.The second implication of Bergsons definition of truth is that
thoughts return to the source of experience must proceed from a voluntary
effort, on the part of the intellect to wring itself around to resist its natural ten-
dency to fall into the inertia of habit and to rejoin dead materiality. In short,
Bergson clearly insists on affiliating thought with spirit, memory, and life, on
the one hand, while aligning the intellect with habit, automatism, matter, and
death, on the other.These Bergsonian unmixings are always only the result of
a violent effort aimed at working out the exact nature of the mixesand con-
sequently the mode of their convergence and interaction. But it appears that
for him the spark of creation always has to be situated on the vital side associ-
ated with spirit and the will, whereas for Deleuze, as for Proust, spirit, art, and
thought will ultimately be aligned with the adventures of the involuntary and
the race to the grave. Third, this in turn suggests that for Bergson genuine
philosophical thought (or intuition) must be defined as a faculty capable of
adopting and following the vital movement of the realthereby implying that
creative evolution precedes thought or, more precisely, that thoughts creativity
is a function of evolutions creativity. In contrast, Deleuze will insist with Proust
that the creativity of thought must be first, and that the truth has to be pro-
duced.4 Ultimately, it seems that for Bergson thought remains equated with know-
eldge of reality (intuition, or what could be called superior recognition), a
knoweldge he calls truth, which stems from a personal effort of the will to
rejoin the ever-changing duration that subtends it, and which coincides with
spiritual freedom rather than material mechanism.
Now the account of thought we get from Deleuze appears quite different,
as it is explained in terms of accidental encounters with signs that force it to
think, in terms of impressions or affects that demand to be explicated, in terms
of processes of spiritualization by means of which worlds and subjects are
formed, in terms of a dark, timeless dimension of transpersonal reality out of
which truths and essences must be produced.This difference between Bergons
and Deleuzes conceptions of thought becomes most apparent when seen
125
through the Proustian lens of The Search for Lost Time.5 Let us then embark with
Deleuze on an experimental journey into The Searchs narrators continuous
struggle with his own inability to live, to write, to create a work of artin
short, to think beyond the chains of the intellect, beyond the inertia of habitual
life, and in and through the gripping anxieties of time lost, time wasted, and
time regained.
The Emergence of Thought, or, Arent We Thinking Already?
I intend this journey to convey that although Bergsons equation of thought

with the knoweldge of life opens up numerous avenues for the philosophy of
the future, it does not, in the end, yield an account of the very emergence of
thought. While his philosophy offers a thoroughly insightful account that
concludes that knowledge can and should be thoughtful, creative, and there-
fore truthful, it does not tell us why we would want to engage in such a dif-
ficult and painful quest. It all happens as if, like Plato, Descartes, Kant, Hegel,
and pretty much every philosopher before Nietzsche, Bergson remained
indebted, at least partially, to what, in Difference and Repetition, Deleuze calls
the dogmatic, orthodox or moral image of thought. Deleuze writes,When
Nietzsche questions the most general presuppositions of philosophy, he says
that these are essentially moral, since Morality alone is capable of persuading
us that thought has a good nature and the thinker a good will, and that only
the good can ground the supposed affinity between thought and the True
(1997, 172/1991, 132).
To be sure, Bergson does not subscribe uncritically to the first postulate
of the dogmatic image of thoughtin accordance with which thought has a
good naturesince for him genuine thought stems precisely from the resis-
tance to and the reversal of the intellects natural tendency. But is he not
embracing the second postulatethereby falling back into the firstof the
goodwill of the thinker, when he makes the effort of the will and voluntary
memory so central to his method, and when he makes attentive recognition
the model of knoweldge? Instead of this dogmatic image of thought, Deleuze
proposes a thought without an image: The thought which is born in
thought, that act of thinking which is neither given nor presupposed by rem-
iniscence but engendered in its genitality, is a thought without an image
(ibid., 217/167). But, he adds,What is such a thought, and how does it oper-
ate in the world? (ibid.).
The last chapter was dedicated to examining the conditions of such a
thought, and paradoxically, with the late Deleuze we found these conditions
enveloped in a certain kind of image: the crystal-image. But this image also was
the product of a fundamental reworking of Bergsons cinematographic model
of intellectual knowledge. In fact, I maintain that the Deleuzean crystal-image
of the 1980s provides the model for this thought without an image that
126
Proust and Thought
Deleuze has been after throughout his life. So far, however, following Deleuzes
fertile reading of Bergson, we have merely laid down the conditions for such a
thought.We have not yet given a positive account of itof what it is and of
how it operates in the world. My contention is that Prousts masterpiece,
together with Deleuzes reading of it, provides a privileged milieu for such an
account. If it is the case that Bergsons philosophy gives a descriptive account
of how knowledge can and should be thoughtful, as well as an implicit pre-
scription that it ought to be so, yet without telling us why we would engage in
such a quest; if it is true, as I am suggesting, that his implicit solution to the
resulting problems lies in his postulate of the goodwill of the thinker; then it is
precisely at this point that Proust intervenes, taking up the baton from Berg-
son (ibid., 115/85).
Deleuze says no less when, in the conclusion of the first part of Proust and
Signs, he writes:
If time has great importance in the Search, it is because every truth is a truth
of time. But the Search is first of all a search for truth. Thereby is manifested
the philosophical bearing of Prousts work: it vies with philosophy. Proust sets
up an image of thought in opposition to that of philosophy. He attacks what
is most essential in a classical philosophy of the rationalist type: the presuppo-
sitions of this philosophy.The philosopher readily presupposes that the mind as
mind, the thinker as thinker, wants the truth, loves or desires the truth, natu-
rally seeks the truth. He assumes in advance the goodwill of thinking; all his
investigation is based in a premeditated decision. (1998b, 115/2000, 94)
The thesis I develop here is the following. By determining anew the con-
ditions in accordance with which philosophical thought may, and indeed must,
go back to the source of experience (vital duration), by pointing the way of
resistance to intellectual knoweldges natural slope (which leads it to fuse with
habit, inertia, and death), Bergson has opened up avenues for what one may
call, following Gregg Lamberts insight, Deleuzes non-philosophy.6 However,
Bergson remains indebted to a philosophical, dogmatic image of thought that
posits truth as knoweldge of the real and presupposes the goodwill of the
thinker. In the language of the last chapter, we could say that the Bergsonian
image of thought does not quite deliver the point of indiscernibility between
the real and the imaginary that forms the kernel of the crystal-image and yields
the key to the genitality of thought, time, and subjectivity. As such, Bergsons
philosophy does not quite yield the thought without an image or the exper-
imentation of pure immanence that Deleuze is after.7 In short, although Berg-
sons entire uvre could be read as a genealogical quest for the source of experi-
ence, it may not, for that matter, also account for the genitality of thoughtthat
is, for the spark that provides the reason for the continual yet fortuitous gene-
sis of a thought that must not be equated with knowledge or representation.
127
He gives himself spirit, matter, and the image that lies in between, and then he
works out the causes (both mechanical and nonmechanical) in accordance with
which consciousness arises from them. In the end, these causes all fall under
the general heading lifeunderstood in its dual nature: actual and virtual,
memory and creation, positive movement in constant struggle with material
negativity, and so on. My contention, then, is that from a Deleuzean perspec-
tive, something is still missing from the Bergsonian account. In the final analy-
sis, what is missing is the why and how of thought: the event of thought.
For instance, what is it that happened to the man Henri Bergson to make him
embark on his own philosophical quest? What made him realize that traditional
science and philosophy were wrongheaded, and that knowledge was in dire
need of a new philosophy? I believe that these are the questions Prousts own
Search has the power to answer.
What is it that has to happen in order that the activity of thinking be born?
One very general answer could be death. As Maurice Blanchot saw, it is not
only life, which ultimately holds the key to the event of thought, but also
deathit is the confrontation with death from within a life, the irruption of
forgetting within memory, the incapacitation of the will by mortal anguish
which sparks the activity of thinking within thought. In The Experience of
Proust, Blanchot writes:
This anguish that surrounds the work with an ever more stifling horizon of
sadness finds its most complete expression in a feeling of death that no illu-
sion conceals. . . . But mortal anguish is not only expressed in the fact of death;
it is also profoundly linked to the conditions of life, experienced in the irreg-
ularities and slumbers that forgetting introduces into an awareness that is los-
ing itself and restores itself only by chance.Time lost [le temps perdu] is by no
means lost because of death, which, by the end, inevitably destroys that which
it could cause to appear; time is lost because one continually dies, and, except
for some fortuitous exception, one is ones own ruin, the definitive ruin of the
being who has lived such a moment of time. The feeling of time lost is the
experience of a loss, like that of death, a loss that probably has no sense, no
law, and that causes us to live each instant in the perspective of a double bot-
tomless abyss. (2001, 43)
To this experience of death Deleuze will add the thought of death.

This is because, as we will see, what happens in the last volume of The Search is
that this experience of death gets transmuted, transfigurated into the work of
art qua thought of death. Echoing Proust, Deleuze concludes that art is supe-
rior to life.
To sum up one last time the distinction I want to establish between Berg-
sons and Deleuzes conceptions of thought by means of Proust, I propose the
following, slightly twisted, syllogism:
128
Proust and Thought
1. For Bergson, art equals life (creation), and life is the truth of thought (intuition).
2. For Deleuze (following Proust), thought equals (the encounter with and the
transfiguration of) death (artistic production) and is the truth of life.
3. Therefore, death is the truth of thought.
If, as I hope to show, this formula does work, then we will have to con-
clude that Deleuze is neither rejecting Bergons philosophy nor is he, strictly
speaking, proposing an alternative for it. Rather, he is providing the
ground/unground missing from it, by clearing it from its dogmatic presuppo-
sitions. But in this clearing process, the very sense of life, death, truth, art, cre-
ation, production, and thought are being revaluated.
How Might Death Be Put to Work?
Upon The Searchs narrators belated realization of the full force of his grand-
mothers being dead, he declares:
I did not know whether this painful and for the moment incomprehensible
impression would ever yield up any truth. But I knew that if I ever did suc-
ceed in extracting some truth from the world, it would be from such an
impression and from none other, an impression at once particular and spon-
taneous, which had neither been formed by my intelligence nor attenuated
by my pusillanimity, but whose double and mysterious furrow had been
carved, as by a thunderbolt, within me, by the inhuman and supernatural blade
of death, or the revelation of death. (Proust 1999, 1329/1981, vol. 2, 78687)
In his invaluable essay, titled Time, Space, Forced Movement, and the
Death-Drive: Reading Proust with Deleuze,8 Keith Ansell-Pearson gives a
powerful analysis of the note on Proustian experiences from the second chap-
ter of Difference and Repetition.There, Deleuze concludes that the Proustian for-
mula a little bit of time in its pure state refers first to the pure past, the in-itself
of the past or the erotic synthesis of time, but more profoundly to the pure
empty form of time, the ultimate synthesis, that of the death-instinct which
leads to the eternity of the return in time (1997, 160/1993, 122). Beyond
memory,a little bit of time in its pure statethe crux of the Proustian rem-
iniscencethus refers to the timelessness of time: to Hamlets time out of
joint, emancipated from the Bergsonian duration; in a word, it refers to death.
Echoing Deleuze,Ansell-Pearson points out that this death seems to haunt life,
to highlight the contingent nature of our affections and attachments, and to rob
life of any meaning or sense. He asks, How can thought work the idea of
death, supposing it can? (2004, 184). More generally, with Deleuze and Ansell-
Pearson, we want to ask, how can death be put to work?
129
Let us already point out that Deleuze defines death as the last form of the
problematic, the source of problems and questions (1997, 148/1993, 112). It is
in this sense that we can say that death coincides with the very source of
thought,the non-being in which every affirmation is nourished (ibid.). Sim-
ilarly, in Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari claim that the experience of death
is the most ordinary occurrence within the unconscious, precisely because it
takes place in life and for life, in every passage and in every becoming (1972,
394/1994, 330). In what follows, I examine this idea of death and the function
it plays in Deleuzes inspired departure from the Bergsonian account of thought
as a function of life.
Samuel Beckett confirms this reading in accordance with which the
encounter with death forms the kernel of the Proustian epiphany.9 What is
revealed in the experience of irreparable loss, in the powerful and incompre-
hensible impression mentioned earlier, is not only the effect of time (change,
aging, deliquescence) but the very essence or force of time10the telescoping
of past and present, the cruel anachronism that resurrects not only the lost
object but also the lost subject. In Time Regained, Proust writes:
A moment of the past, did I say? Was it not perhaps very much more:
something that, common both to the past and to the present, is much
more essential than either of them? So often, in the course of my life, real-
ity had disappointed me because at the instant when my senses perceived
it my imagination, which was the only organ that I possessed for the
enjoyment of beauty, could not apply itself to it, in virtue of the
ineluctable law which ordains that we can only imagine what is absent.
And now, suddenly, the effect of this harsh law had been neutralised, tem-
porarily annulled, by a marvelous expedient of nature which had caused a
sensationthe noise made both by the spoon and by the hammer, for
instanceto be mirrored at one and the same time in the past, so that my
imagination was permitted to savour it, and in the present, where the
actual shock to my senses of the noise, the touch of the linen napkin, or
whatever it might be, had added to the dreams of the imagination the con-
cept of existence which they usually lack, and through this subterfuge
had made it possible for my being to secure, to isolate, to immobilisefor
a moment brief as a flash of lightningwhat normally it never appre-
hends: a fragment of time in its pure state. The being which had been
reborn in me when with a sudden shudder of happiness I had heard the
noise that was common to the spoon touching the plate and the hammer
striking the wheel, or had felt, beneath my feet, the unevenness that was
common to the paving-stones of the Guermantes courtyard and to those
of the baptistery of St Marks, this being is nourished only by the essences
of things, in these alone does it find its sustenance and delight. (1999,
2266/1981, vol. 3, 905)
130
Proust and Thought
How Can the Pure Past Be Saved for Us?
For Proust, the fundamental effect of involuntary memory is that it erases the
ineluctable and vital flowing forward of time that characterizes the Bergsonian
duration.To be sure, this is possible, because as Bergson saw not only does the
past coexist with the present (the passive synthesis of the memory of the pre-
sent) but also the entire past is preserved in itselfindeed, this is the very sig-
nificance of the Virtual. But as Deleuze notes:
The passive syntheses are obviously sub-representative. The question for us,
however, is whether or not we can penetrate the passive synthesis of memory;
whether we can in some sense live the being in itself of the past in the same
way that we live the passive synthesis of habit.The entire past is conserved in
itself, but how can we save it for us, how can we penetrate that in-itself with-
out reducing it to the former present that it was, or to the present in relation
to which it is past? How can we save it for us? It is more or less at this point
that Proust intervenes, taking up the baton from Bergson. (1997,
11415/1993, 84, emphasis in original)11
Thus it appears that the point at which Proust takes up the baton from Berg-
son is precisely the point where an accidental encounter with a random impres-
sion does not only reveal that the entire past survives virtually but also the point
where the pure past is saved for usby setting involuntary memory into action.
It is the point where art surpasses life, because thought is forcefully delivered in
and through the habitual, superficial self s confrontation with its own death.
Beckett gives a remarkable account of the painful and incomprehensible
impression in light of which the explosion of involuntary memory operates
a reorganization of habit (Deleuzes first synthesis of time) over and beyond
memory (the second synthesis of time), thereby revealing the empty form of
time (death, the third synthesis, the eternal return).12 On the narrators second
visit to Balbec, a year after his dear grandmothers death, he stoops down to
unbutton his boots and is suddenly filled with a divine familiar presence
that of his dead grandmother. Until then, the narrator had not fully realized
thus neither experienced nor mournedthe death of his grandmother, for the
person he had watched dying was so greatly diminished by the strokes she had
suffered that she was no longer quite the adored figure he had known all his
life, and who had consoled and cajoled him as the breakdown of his old habits
had gripped him with terror upon their first trip to Balbec. Beckett sums up
the revelation arising from the simple gesture of stooping down to unbutton
his boots in these terms:
Now, a year after her burial, thanks to the mysterious action of involuntary
memory, he learns that she is dead. . . . But he has not merely extracted from
131
this gesture the lost reality of his grandmother: He has recovered the lost
reality of himself, the reality of his lost self. As though the figure of time
could be represented by an endless series of parallels, his life is switched
over to another line and proceeds, without any solution of continuity, from
that remote moment of his past when his grandmother stooped over his
distress. (1957, 27)
Here Beckett seems to be attributing the work of extraction and recov-

ery of the past to the narrator, to a he or an Ialbeit an I cracked open
by the empty form of time. If we are to fully understand the nature and deter-
minations of this experimentation of time in its pure state, and consequently,
the redefinition of truth informing Deleuzes philosophy, then we ought to
inquire further into the relation between this cracked I and the empty form
of time.
While the accidentally encountered impression, as a sign, is that which
provides the occasion for the resurrection (or rather, the erection) of the pure
past, a difficult work of interpretation must take place in order for the very
essence or truth of the experience to be producedthat is, for the past to be
saved for us. Proust explains that the signs he stumbles upon in his everyday
experiences are like hieroglyphs, which appear to be representing only mater-
ial objects, but which in fact are hiding something else, a thought, which he
endeavors to discover. He writes:
No doubt the process of decipherment was difficult, but only by accom-

plishing it could one arrive at whatever truth there was to read. . . . In fact, both
in one case and in the other, whether I was concerned with impressions like
the one which I had received from the sight of the steeples of Martinville
or with the reminiscences like that of the unevenness of the two steps or the
taste of the madeleine, the task was to interpret the given sensations as signs
of so many laws and ideas, by trying to thinkthat is to say, draw forth from
the shadowwhat I had merely felt, by trying to convert it into its spiritual
equivalent. And this method, which seemed to me the sole method, what
was it but the creation of a work of art? (1999, 2271/1981 vol. 3, 912,
emphasis added)
In the image of thought provided by Proust, thought must not only cap-
ture the event of its own birthin a mystical experience marked by the eman-
cipation from time; if it is to yield any truth, it also requires the difficult work
of interpretation.Thus if we are to make any strides toward the workings of the
relation between the I and the empty form of time, then we now find our-
selves confronted with two crucial questions. First, who interprets? Second,
what does Proust really mean when he defines thinking in terms of this con-
version of a feeling into its spiritual equivalent?
132
Proust and Thought
The Ultimate Interpreter: Jealousy and the Strangers Within
Who is it, then, who interprets the signs? Of course, it cannot be the habitual,
superficial, social self ensnared in habitor the mystical experience could not
happen in the first place, and no actual thinking or drawing forth from the
shadow would take place. Could it be the deep self, which, as described by
Bergson in Time and Free Will, is at one with the durations virtual multiplicity of
mutually interpenetrating states? This is not likely either, since that self coincides
with a voluntary effort of contraction which, for Bergson, is equated with free-
dom. I suggest that in Proust the interpreters are not selves; rather, they are affects:
jealousy, anxiety, sorrowall of those dark, surprising, and troubling strangers
within that we habitually prefer to keep at bay, that we refuse to recognize or inte-
grate whenever they distatefully show up at the door.13 For, as Deleuze and
Guatarri point out,The affect is not a personal feeling, nor is it a characteristic;
it is the effectuation of a power of the pack that throws the self into upheavals and
makes it reel.14 But The Searchs narrator shamelessly and obscenely lets them in:
My first reaction had been to ask myself, angrily, who this stranger was who
was coming to trouble me.The stranger was none other than myself, the child
I had been at the time, brought to life within me by the book which, know-
ing nothing of me except this child, had instantly summoned him into his
presence, wanting to be seen only by his eyes, to be loved only by his heart,
to speak only to him. (1999, 2276/1981, vol. 3, 920)
As we will see, to claim that the interpreters of signs are not selves but
affects is to say that the difficult work of interpretation, the task of thinking
itself, is incumbent upon machinic becomings rather than subjects.This is why
Deleuze can claim, in Proust and Signs, that in the final analysis, the ultimate
interpreter is time (1998b, 157/2000, 12930).
In his assessment of Proustian semiology, Deleuze distinguishes between
four types of signsthe worldly signs (les signes mondains), the signs of love, the
material signs, and the signs of arteach type corresponding to the formation
of a world. The first world is the worldly circle of the socialites, peopled with
stereotyped and vacuous signs whose characteristic feature is that they do not
signify anything else but rather stand for what they replace, claiming to be
equivalent to it (for instance, Mme Verdurin makes a sign that she is laughing
with Cottard instead of actually laughing).The second world is that of love and
its deceitful signs. The beloved expresses a possible world unknown to us,
implying, enveloping, imprisoning a world that must be deciphered, that is,
interpreted. . . . To love is to try to explicate, to develop these unknown worlds
that remain enveloped within the beloved (1998b, 14/2000, 7, emphasis in
original).This remark points to the first determination of that which Deleuze
calls the sign: like Albertines lies, it is at once deceitful on the surface and
133
revealing of an implicated, enveloped, hidden truth on a deeper level (for

instance, the truth of her imprisoned homosexuality). The third type of signs
consists in the material signs of the world of sensuous impressions or qualities
(stooping over ones boots, Vinteuils little phrase, the cobblestones, the
madeleine).What distinguishes them from the deceitful signs of love from the
outset is that they immediately produce a prodigious joy, whose origin remains
mysterious. This mystery produces a certain imperative of a mental effort to
seek the signs significancealthough it often happens that we evade or put off
this imperative, out of laziness, impotence, or bad luck (ibid., 19/12). Finally, if
the sense of the sign does appear, it yields the concealed object it implicates (the
death of the grandmother or Combray in its purity, as they were never lived).
While Deleuze explicitly associates jealousy with the signs of love, he later
insists that Jealousy is the very delirium of signs (ibid., 167/138).As such, jeal-
ousy forms the veritable logic of the search: the logic of open boxes and sealed
vesselsof the obsession with and impossibility of immuring, appropriating,
containing the beloved, fused with the necessity to keep searching, to keep
developing the innumerable enveloped worlds she or he expresses. Jealousy thus
coincides with the imperative, autonomous, and endless demand, inherent in
love, to keep interpreting all of the signsendless for, even when love dies, even
when the beloved dies, the old, insecure, suffering, and jealous stranger within
may still be resurrected upon a chance encounter. Neither the narrators loss of
interest for Albertine the prisoner nor her deathher emancipation from
timewill calm his jealousy.This is because, as Beckett notes, they and their love
were amphibious, plunged in the past and the present, straddling so many scat-
tered times and places that the unification and possession of them all is impos-
sible.As Proust puts it,In order to be consoled, I would have to forget, not one,
but innumerable Albertinesand, Beckett adds,Not only I but the many Is
(1957, 43): the incommensurable plurality of Is.
I wish to emphasize the significance of this casting of affects (in particular,
of jealousy) in the role of interpreters of signs.What is at stake here is Deleuzes
revaluation of truth and of the genesis of thought in light of the nonphilo-
sophical image of Proust. In fact, what is at stake is no less than the Deleuzean
understanding of the relations between time, subjectivity, knowledge (as
apprenticeship rather than knowing, as we will see later), art, philosophy, truth,
essences, thought, and production. In the final analysis, then, what is at stake in
Prousts casting of the affect of jealousy as the ultimate interpreter upon which
the genesis of thought is incumbent is Deleuzes ontology of machinic becom-
ings. In Proust and Signs, Deleuze writes:
Jealous of Albertine, interpreter of Charluswhat is the narrator, ultimately,

in himself? To accept the narrator and the hero as two subjects (subject of
nonciation and subject of nonc) would be to refer the Search to a system of
subjectivity (a doubled, split subject) that is alien to it.There is less a narrator
134
Proust and Thought
than a machine of the Search, and less a hero than the arrangements by which
the machine functions under one or the other configuration, according to one
or another articulation, for one or another purpose, for one or another pro-
duction. (1998b, 217/2000, 181)
Finally, if the idea of death can be put to work, it is for the sake of the pro-
duction of truth. What Deleuze finds in Prousts literature is a monstrous and
an amphibious machine capable of putting the idea of death to work for the
sake of the future, of life, of a reading and a creation of concepts: of the geni-
tality of thought.Through Deleuzes lens, then, Prousts literary machine yields
an image of thought that vies with philosophy, a thought without an image
capable not only of following the movement of life (Bergson) but also of
remaining faithful to, and of becoming equal to, the event of life.
Here I am echoing (albeit in a different context) Ansell-Pearsons final
word on the difference between what he insighfully calls Deleuzes schizoana-
lytic reading of Proust and Julia Kristevas psychoanalytic slant in Time and
Sense. Ansell-Pearson writes:
What makes Proust a supremely modernist writer for Deleuze is the fact that he
constructs an individuating world from out of fragments, in which its parts are
produced as asymmetrical sections and exist as hermetically sealed boxes, non-
communicating vessels . . . in which there are gaps even between things that are
contiguous, gaps that are affirmations, pieces of puzzle belonging not to any one
puzzle but to many (AO, p. 51, pp. 4243).The whole of the novel is itself a
production but it too is produced as a part alongside other parts, it does not serve
to unify or totalize these parts.The psychoanalysis-inspired reading would refuse
to see becomings taking place in the novel and stress only the closed system of
supra-egotistical self.This is a self that has fully incorporated itself and feeds not
only on the idea of death but on the deaths the narrator stages, anticipates and
executes. . . . For [Deleuze] philosophy cannot be restricted to the territory of
subjectivity since subjectivity is a black hole. (2004, 19596)
This then draws to a close our answer to the first of the two crucial ques-
tions involved in the problematic of the relation between the I and the empty
form of time. If it is possible to talk of a self or a subject of The Search, then
this subject is the product rather than the source of experience: an essentially
plural and incommensurable body without organs whose necessary fragmen-
tation coincides with the affective and ideal incorporation of death.
Art as the Production of Essences
The second question we asked earlier was the following: What does Proust
really mean when he defines thinking in terms of the conversion of a feeling
135
into its spiritual equivalent? It is here that we must inquire into the role and
significance of what Deleuze calls the signs of art in Proust, for it is through
those that this conversion is effected. I am hoping that this inquiry into the
process of spiritualization informing the Proustian/Deleuzean revaluation of
truth and essences in terms of artistic production also will bring to light the
final and, in my view, most fundamental point of diffraction between Bergson
and Deleuze, namely, the difference between (voluntary) creativity and (invol-
untary) productivity.
The Apprenticeship: Knowledge and Learning
At the closing of the third chapter of Difference and Repetition, Deleuze establishes
a distinction between knowledge (savoir) and learning (apprendre). He writes:
The exploration of Ideas and the elevation of each faculty to its transcendent
exercise amounts to the same thing. These are two aspects of an essential
apprenticeship or progress of learning. . . . Learning is the appropriate name for
the subjective acts carried out when one is confronted with the objecticity of
a problem (Idea), whereas knowledge designates only the generality of con-
cepts or the calm possession of a rule enabling solutions. (1997, 21314/1993,
164, emphasis in original)
Clearly this distinction between the realm of Ideas (learning) and the realm
of concepts (knowledge) fits in with Bergsons insight, in accordance with which
philosophical thinking must be situated on the level of the position of true prob-
lems rather than the search for solutions. Says Bergson, A speculative problem
is solved as soon as it is properly stated. By that I mean that its solution exists
then, although it may remain hidden and, so to speak, covered up: the only thing
left to do is to uncover it. But stating the problem is not simply uncovering, it
is inventing (2001, 1293).And, he continues, invention here coincides with an
effort, which gives being to what did not exist; it might never have happened
(ibid.).This is why, in Deleuzes view, the first rule of the Bergsonian method of
intuition calls for applying the test of true and false to problems themselves, and
for reconciling truth and creation at the level of problems (1998a, 3/1988, 15).
Finally, to pose a true problem (to invent) consists in stating problems and solv-
ing them in terms of time rather than space.This is the third rule of intuition,
and according to Deleuze, it gives the fundamental meaning of intuition,
which consists in thinking in terms of duration (ibid., 22/31).
It thus appears that ultimately Bergson and Deleuze agree about the nature
of thinking. It must involve creation, invention, and for this very reason, it must
be situated on the temporal or nonlocal plane. However, I continue to affirm
that in the final analysis this temporal, nonlocal, or virtual plane on which
thinking must be situated does not operate according to the same determina-
136
Proust and Thought
tions for Bergson and Deleuze. While Bergson defines this temporal plane in
terms of vital duration (or the second synthesis, of memory), Deleuze relates it
to a third synthesis, of the empty form of time or the timelessness of time
that is, death. In other words, while both Bergson and Deleuze define thought
in terms of creation and invention, this creation does not quite mean the same
thing for them both. Hence the centrality of the theme of production in
Deleuzes account of truth and essences. Once again, this is where Proust takes
up the baton from Bergson.
In a typically iconoclastic move, Deleuze insists that,
Prousts work is not oriented to the past and the discoveries of memory, but
to the future and the progress of an apprenticeship (apprentissage). What is
important is that the hero does not know certain things at the start, gradually
learns them, and finally receives an ultimate revelation. . . .As a matter of fact,
a certain partial revelation appears in a certain realm of signs, but it is some-
times accompanied by regressions in other realms, it is drowned in a more
general disappointment or even reappears elsewhere, always fragile, as long as
the revelation of art has not systemized the whole. (1998b, 36/2000, 26)
Thus this systemization or unity of the Searchin a word, its truthis

the result of a long, painful, and discontinuous process of learning; in short, it
is the result of the subjective acts carried out when one is confronted with the
objecticity of a problem (Idea) (1997, 214/1993, 164). This result consists in
the revelation of art, but what does this objecticity of the problem consist in?
What does this Ideathe fundamental element of thoughtconsist in?
In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze explains, It is the signs which cause
problems and are developed in a symbolic field.The paradoxical functioning of
the facultiesincluding, in the first instance, sensibility with respect to signs
thus refers to the Ideas which run throughout all the faculties and awaken each
one of them in turn (ibid.). This is precisely why Proust and Signs constitutes
such a priviledged milieu for the exploration of the Deleuzean understanding
of thought: it is there that Deleuze engages in his most extensive study of those
signs that cause problem thereby entering into certain configurations with
the Ideas that run the machine of the activity of thinking. Now if they are to
run thoughout all the faculties and awaken each one of them in turn, then
these Ideas (or intensities) cannot coincide entirely with the material element
of thought. Rather, they must be the result of a process of spiritualization. In
the Search, it is art that has the power to effect this spiritualization.
Spiritualization and Style:Thinking without an Umbrella
In Proust and Signs, Deleuze points out that the superiority of the signs of art
over all others lies in the fact that only the signs of art are immaterial (1998b,
137
51/2000, 39, emphasis in original).Thus,It is only on the level of art that the
essences are revealed, for while the wordly signs, the signs of love, and even the
sensuous signs bring us closer to the essence, they always fall back into the trap
of the object, into the snare of subjectivity (ibid., 51/39).
The material signs are material both in their emission (odors, flavors, loved
faces are still matter) and in their development or explication. Deleuze writes:
The madeleine refers us to Combray, the cobblestones to Venice, and so on. . . .

So that each time memory intervenes, the explanation of the signs still
involves something material. . . . Proust often speaks of the necessity that
weighs upon him: that something always reminds him of or makes him imag-
ine something else. But whatever the importance of this process of analogy in
art, art does not find its profoundest formula here. As long as we discover a
signs meaning in something else, matter still subsists, refractory to spirit. On
the contrary, art gives us the true unity. . . .The essence is precisely this unity
of sign and meaning as it is revealed in the work of art. Essences or Ideas, that
is what each sign of the little phrase reveals. . . .The superiority of art over life
consists in this: all the signs we meet in life are still material signs, and their
meaning, because it is always in something else, is not altogether spiritual.
(1998b, 53/2000, 40)
The absolute privilege of art over life is that it reveals the essence or Idea
qua true unity, but this unity of sign and sense is neither simple nor immutable.
This is because it coincides with the junction of the two multiplicities, of dif-
ference in kind and difference in degree, of absolute difference and repetition,
of spiritualization and materialization. Of course, this absolute or ultimate dif-
ference is not empirical; it is no more the extrinsic difference between objects
than it is the difference between subjects. Rather, the essence revealed in the
work of art is the difference that constitutes being and makes us conceive being
(1998b, 53/2000, 41). As such, it is not only individual but also individualizing
(ibid., 56/43). In Prousts inimitable words:
Real life, life at last laid bare and illuminatedthe only life in consequence
which can be said to be really livedis literature, and life thus defined is in a
sense all the time immanent in ordinary men no less than the artist. But most
men do not see it because they do not seek to shed light upon it. . . . But art,
if it means awareness of our own life, means also awareness of the lives of other
peoplefor style for the writer, no less than colour for the painter, is a ques-
tion not of technique but of vision: it is the revelation, which by direct and
conscious methods would be impossible, of the qualitative difference, the
uniqueness of the fashion in which the world appears to each one of us, a dif-
ference which, if there were no art, would remain for ever the secret of every
individual. . . . Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world only, our own, we
138
Proust and Thought
see that world multiply itself and we have at our disposal as many worlds as
there are original artists, worlds more different from one another than those
which revolve in infinite space, worlds which, centuries after the extinction
of the fire from which their light first emanated, whether it is called Rem-
brandt or Vermeer, send us still each one their special radiance. (1999,
2285/1981, vol. 3, 93132, emphasis added)
Like the great modern cinema examined in the last chapter, then, litera-
ture holds the power to yield the only true life, the only truth, because it alone
has the visionary character necessary for revealing the multiple, self-altering,
and transpersonal essence that habitually lies enveloped within the material
signs and the abstract subjects. If art is superior to life, it is not so much because
it is opposed to it or transcends it. Rather, art is the true art of living:In short,
this art which is so complicated is in fact the only living art (1999,
2285/1981, 93132).
As the unity of sign and sense, the true unity or essence revealed in the
work of art is also, at the same time, the unity of life and art, of impressions
and imagination, of the actual and virtual sides of the real. Indeed, the work
of art is fundamentally visionary because in its double movement it yields an
image of thought that vies with philosophy: on the one hand, it goes back up
the slope down which habit and the intellect tumble, thereby revealing the
absolute and necessarily implicated ultimate difference (in kind); this is the
movement Deleuze calls spiritualization. On the other hand, art develops this
implicated difference, it communicates this essence or incarnates it in a style.
In so doing, art transmutes matter, forms a spiritualized matter. Echoing
Proust, Deleuze writes:
At the same time that essence is incarnated in a substance, the ultimate qual-
ity constituting it is therefore expressed as the quality common to two differ-
ent objects, kneaded in this luminous substance, plunged into this refracting
medium. It is in this that style consists. . . .Which is to say that style is essen-
tially metaphor. But metaphor is essentially metamorphosis and indicates how
the two objects exchange their determinations, exchange even the names that
designate them, in the new medium that confers the common quality upon
them. . . .This is because style, in order to spiritualize substance and render it
adequate to essence, reproduces the unstable opposition, the original compli-
cation, the struggle and exchange of the primordial elements that constitute
essence itself. (1998b, 6162/2000, 4748)
Now this refracting medium and the site of this exchange, what could it
be but the very telescoping of past and present, the minute freed from the
order of time, the transcendental experience coinciding all at once with the
vision of the birth of time, the emergence of thought, and the event of a life?
139
Be it through producing cinematographic crystal-images or great literature, the

work of art is superior to life because it is the only means of recovering Lost
Time (1999, 2287/1981, vol. 3, 935).
The time has now come to put an end to this exploration of Deleuzes
revaluation of thought in light of Prousts artistic apprenticeship. But we are
now, finally, in a position to risk an answer to the second problem, stated at the
opening of this section.What does Proust really mean when he defines think-
ing in terms of the conversion of a feeling into its spiritual equivalent? What
he means is that the activity of thinking can only be sparked by the chance
encounter with an impression; that an involuntary sensitivity to signs is thus a
precondition for any true thinking to take place; that this sensivity often trans-
lates as a certain courage in the face of strange, disturbing, destabilizing affects
(jealousy, mortal anguish, profound sorrow); that this courage consists in a cer-
tain force, an obscene necessity to learn, accompanied by the perversethat is,
unconscious and unintentionalwillingness not to know; that in this uncon-
scious force lies a powerful becoming-artist, which constitutes the milieu for
the struggle and exchange between the actual and the virtual determinations
of the Real. In short, if to think is to convert a feeling into its spiritual equiv-
alent, then to think is to give up on the habitual and intellectual opinions
crowding conscious life; it is to dive into the abyss of the empty form of time,
to confront the chaos, the darkness, and the madness that are always lurking
thereand to draw out planes from them. In this consists precisely the defini-
tion of thought we get from Deleuzes and Guattaris late What Is Philosophy?:
What defines thought in its three great formsart, science, philosophyis
always confronting chaos, laying out a plane, throwing a plane over chaos (tirer
un plan sur le chaos) (1991, 186/1994, 197).15 To think, then, is always to think
without an umbrella.
140
CONCLUSION
Bergson-Deleuze Encounters:
Machinic Becomings
and Virtual Materialism
Movement occurs not only, not primarily, by filiative productions

but also by transversal communications between heterogeneous
populations. Becoming is a rhizome, not a classificatory or
genealogical tree. Becoming is certainly not imitating, or identify-
ing with something; neither is it regressing-progressing; neither is it
corresponding, establishing corresponding relations; neither is it
producing, producing a filiation or producing through filiation.
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus
There are cases where old age produces not eternal youth but a sov-
ereign freedom, a pure necessity in which one enjoys a moment of
grace between life and death, and in which all the parts of the
machine come together to send into the future a stroke that cuts
across all ages:Titian,Turner, Monet.
Deleuze and Guattari, What Is Philosophy, trans. modified
Our experimental journey through Bergsons and Deleuzes revaluation of the

transcendental in terms of the virtual has carved out some meandering, criss-
crossing paths that may not have reached any final destination after all. This is
141
because in my view, they form the transversals necessarily subtending an

encounter between Bergson and Deleuze. They embody at once the decep-
tively simple creativity of Bergsons thought, the complexity of Deleuzes rela-
tionship with Bergsonism, and the originality of Deleuzes own philosophy.
Here, I briefly recapitulate my findings to sketch out the final image of a pos-
sible Bergsonism of the future. It appears that four main questions must drive
this inquiry. First, what does Deleuze find in Bergson? Second, why the image,
why this fascination with the image on Deleuzes part? Third, why read
Deleuze after Bergsonor why reread Bergson now that we have Deleuze?
And finally, what is the philosophical status of those machinic becomings that
Deleuze opposes to all other conceptions of being, evolution, and production?
What Does Deleuze Find in Bergson?
One most general answer would be: a nondialectical way of thinking change or
evolution. This happens through Bergsons theory of multiplicities, which,
Deleuze claims, is Bergsons greatest invention. As early as Time and Free Will,
the word multiplicity is no longer used in its usual sense, as an adjective (e.g.,
number is multiple, or the thing can be one or multiple) but as a veritable
substantive (e.g.,number is a multiplicity). Now, as Bergson shows in the sec-
ond chapter of Time and Free Will, to say number is a multiplicity does not
mean the same thing at all as saying a multiplicity of numbers. In fact, when
we use the word multiplicity as a substantive, what happens is that we thereby
indicate that we are situating ourselves on an entirely different plane, which
implies a displacement of all thought: for the dialectical opposition of the one
and the many we have substituted a typological difference between multiplici-
ties.1 Philosophical problems are no longer posed in the form of the question
Is it one or multiple? but rather What type of multiplicity is itquantita-
tive or qualitative? actual or virtual? For Deleuze, as for Bergson, such a dis-
placement coincides with a move away from the abstraction that plagues dialec-
tical thinking and toward the kind of superior empiricism capable of grasping
things in their singular, genetic, differential, and self-altering essence.
A second answer to this question, which is intimately connected to the first,
would consist in saying, what Deleuze finds in Bergson is a new way of think-
ing causality. I have attempted to show that, on the one hand, one of the roles
of the virtual, the duration, or the lan vital is precisely to provide an alternative
to mechanical causality. On the other hand, I have suggested with Deleuze that
for that matter the virtual is in no way indeterminateremember, the role of
thought is not to precipitate us into chaos or madness once and for all but rather
to draw a plane of consistency (science), a plane of composition (art), or a plane
of immanence (philosophy) from it (1991, 186/1994, 197). In fact, I have argued
that much of the cinema volumes is dedicated to discovering the rigorous deter-
142
Conclusion
minations informing the virtual itself, as well as those governing the mutually
constitutive relations between the actual and the virtual.
In other words, echoing Keith Ansell-Pearson, we could say that what
Deleuze finds in Bergson is a rethinking of the part-whole relationship.2 In
Cinema 1, Deleuze writes:
It [the plane of immanence] is a set, but an infinite set. The plane of imma-
nence is the movement (the facet of movement) which is established between
the parts of each system and between one system and another, which crosses
them all, stirs them all up together and subjects them all to the condition
which prevents them from being absolutely closed. It is therefore a section;
but, despite some terminological ambiguities in Bergson, it is not an immo-
bile and instantaneous section, it is a mobile section, a temporal section or
perspective. It is a bloc of space-time, since the time of the movement which
is at work within it is part of it every time. . . . This is not mechanism, it is
machinism. (1983, 87/2001, 59)
Thus if the role of philosophy, as most explicitly defined in What Is Phi-

losophy?, is to draw a plane of immanence, and if drawing a plane of immanence
consists in grasping the precise relations between parts, wholes, and to thereby
determine rigorously the spatial and temporal elements involved in these rela-
tions (i.e., intensities, preindividual singularities, signs, and images), then it
seems that what Deleuze finds in Bergson is a paradigmatic instantiation of the
kind of philosophical thinking he wants to embrace.
A third answer to this first driving question, and one that would perhaps
encompass all others, would be to say that what Deleuze finds in Bergson is a
genuine philosophy of Life.This is not only true of Creative Evolution. From the
theory of multiplicities through Matter and Memorys assessment of the nature
and functioning of the virtual whole of memory, to Creative Evolutions exami-
nation of the processes of differentiation of species and individuals on the basis
of the lan vital and the tendency theory, we could say that everything in Berg-
son leads to a return of a thought that had been lost in the abstract skies of
analysis to its most fundamental, vital springs.3
Finally, there is yet another way of answering this first question.We could
say that what Deleuze finds in Bergsonism is an alternative to phenomenology.
This is most patent in Cinema 1, where Deleuze gives an extensive rereading
of the theory of pure perception and its implications. The formula Deleuze
cherishes to describe the difference between Husserl and Bergson has now
become famous: All consciousness is consciousness of something (Husserl); all
consciousness is something (Bergson).4 Husserlian phenomenology and
Bergsonism both endeavored to respond to the crisis that plagued psychology
at the end of the nineteenth century, namely, the unbridgeable gap between
materialism and idealism, that is, the tenacious idea that in consciousness there
143
are only unextended images, whereas in space there are only extended move-
ments. Both Husserl and Bergson tried to overcome this duality of movement
and image, but they did so in different ways. On the one hand, phenomenol-
ogy located this overcoming in consciousness transcendent being-in-the-
world: the subjects natural perception is the basis of its anchoring in the
world, and the gestalt or sensible form organizes the perceptive field as a func-
tion of a situated intentional consciousness. On the other hand, Bergsons
approach consists in deducing conscious perception from moving matter: con-
sciousness is no longer the transcendent light needed to reveal an otherwise
obscure matter; on the contrary, matter equals pure light, and consciousness is
the opaque screen through which some of it gets filtered to become conscious
perception.This marks a reversal of the tradition. Most notably, it makes Berg-
son an immanentist. In What Is Philosophy?, Deleuze and Guattari write:
Will we ever be mature enough for a Spinozist inpiration [of immanence]? It

happenend once with Bergson: the beginning of Matter and Memory marks out
a plane that slices through the chaosboth the infinite movement of a mat-
ter that continually propagates itself, and the image of a thought that every-
where spreads as in principle pure consciousness (immanence is not imma-
nent to consciousness but the other way around)? (1991, 50/1994, 4849)
In fact, yet another way of defining this difference between Bergsonism

and phenomenology revolves around the status they respectively ascribe to
natural perception. In short, it has to do with their respective conceptions of
the image.This, then, leads to the second guiding question.
Why the Image?
Why this fascination with the image on Deleuzes part? Why did he write two
books with image in their title (the two cinema books)? Why is this distinc-
tion between the movement-image and the time-image (and the whole spec-
trum of other types of images he introduces, such as the perception-image, the
action-image, the affection-image, the pulsion-image, the crystal-image, etc.) so
central to Deleuzes own thought in the 1980s? Furthermore, why is the deci-
sive third chapter of his 1968 Difference and Repetition called The Image of
Thought?5 And why does his last published book (with Guattari, namely, their
1991 What Is Philosophy?) ultimately confirm Difference and Repetitions defini-
tion of philosophy as a thought without an image?
Some answers to these questions rush forward. First, it seems quite obvious
that books whose explicit project consists not in a history of the cinema but in a
taxonomy (a classification of the images and signs invented by cinematic
thinkers)6 would take images as their object of inquiry.Yet while Deleuze engages
144
Conclusion
in minute analyses of films and auteurs, it appears quickly that this taxonomy is
not limited to the cinema, and that in fact it aims at opening us up to a thinking
of both the very nature of reality (the movement-image) and the conditions of
experience (the time-image).This twofold task, in turn, aspires to liberate thought
and experience from the yoke of representation (reduction of difference to the
same), and of the psycho-transcendental presuppositions that accompany it (the
privileging of natural perception, common sense, and the transcendence of con-
sciousness). In this respect, the cinema books seem to fall fully in line with Dif-
ference and Repetition. Moreover, we have seen that if by image Deleuze only
meant the kind of immobile section of movement that Bergson had in mind
when he criticized the cinema, then it would make sense for Deleuze to call for
a thought without an image. However, Deleuze ends up subjecting this origi-
nal notion of image to a reinterpretation that culminates in the crystal-image.
This crystal-image is not only emancipated from Representation, it also yields the
very vision of the genesis of time, thought, and subjectivity that the logic of Rep-
resentation and Critical philosophies had obstructed.
The cinema books also explicitly present themselves, at least in part, as
commentaries on Bergson. Of course, the centrality of the notion of image in
Matter and Memory has been discussed extensively: since, Bergson notes, the
image is neither a thing nor a representation, neither simply matter nor pure
spirit, it is a privileged starting point for a philosophy animated by the project
of overcoming the dead ends of dualismand we must keep in mind that
Deleuzes constant drive toward pure immanence also must be understood as
aligned with such overcoming. Connectedly, as noted earlier, the image is the
nexus of the difference between Bergsonism and phenomenologyand it is
of course one of Deleuzes ambitions to provide an alternative to the phe-
nomenological thinking that dominates the philosophical landscape of the
twentieth century.
In this respect, following Lawlors astute analysis, it is worth adding that
while the study of perception plays a fundamental role in Bergsons ontology
of memory, his philosophy is not ultimately based in a primacy of perception
(Merleau-Ponty); rather, it relies on the primacy of memory. In other words, as
a phenomenology of perception, phenomenology is always based in an inten-
tional consciousness: it never really escapes the philosophy of consciousness. In
contrast, we have strived to show that Bergsons philosophy is a philosophy of
the unconscious, since it is not intentionality that forms perception but mem-
ory (Lawlor 2003, 28).
Thus while the image is traditionally equated with presence, the Bergson-
ian image consists, rather, in a deepening or a virtualization of the present.This
virtualization of the present that we find in Bergson provides the springboard
for Deleuzes conception of time as an ever-renewed splitting between past and
future (the crystal-image).7 Indeed, we could add that Deleuzes radicalization
of this fundamental splitting or doubling of time inaugurates his departure from
145
Bergson and a return to the Kantian insight that the time is essentially out of
joint (Hamlet) and consequently, I is [and remains] an other (Rimbaud).
This, then, takes us to the third guiding question.
Why Read Deleuze after Bergson?
If, as I have been arguing, Deleuze is so thoroughly inspired by Bergson; if he

finds in his method of intuition, his ontology of the Virtual and his concept of
the image the means to go beyond (or below) dialectical thought, the logic of
representation and phenomenology; if, in short, Deleuze finds in Bergson the
new conception of the transcendental necessary for a philosophy of pure
immanencethen why read Deleuze after Bergson? Does Deleuze really have
something to contribute to thought that was not already there, at least implic-
itly, in Bergson? Of course, the answer for me is yes.
It is tempting to suggest one sole answer to this question: what Deleuze
contributes to thought that was not already there in Bergson is Becoming.While
this would seem to contradict the first answer to the first question (namely, that
Deleuze finds in Bergson a nondialectical way of thinking evolution), I must
insist that it does not. One reason Deleuzean Becoming cannot be reduced to
Bergsonian Duration is that if the philosophy of Becoming must be defined as
a thought without an image, then it cannot in any way be founded on recog-
nition. In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze writes:
Like Bergson, we may well distinguish between two kinds of recognition

that of the cow in the presence of grass [automatic recognition] and that of a
man summoning his memories [full recognition]: the second can serve no more
than the first as a model for what it means to think.We said above that the Image
of thought must be judged on the basis of what it claims in principle, not on
the basis of empirical objections. However, the criticism that must be
addressed to this image of thought is precisely that it has based its supposed
principle upon extrapolation from certain facts, particularly insignificant facts
such as Recognition, everyday banality in person; as though thought should not
seek its models among stranger and more compromising adventures. (1997, 176/1993,
135, emphasis added)
Here, in one of the very few remarks in which Deleuze explicitly points
to a limitation in Bergsons approach, we can further locate his departure from
his master. I have suggested that this departure consists in a different, more rad-
ical conception of transcendental experience, inspired by his reinterpretation of
the Bergsonian vision of the world as metacinema.While Bergson concludes
from this that the mechanism of our usual [i.e., intellectual, analytic, pragmatic,
nonphilosophical] knowledge is of a cinematographic nature, Deleuze con-
146
Conclusion
tends that it is the machinism of thought, which is of a cinematographic nature.

For Deleuze, then, the cinema does not only imitate our thinking, and it does
not only make us think, it itself thinks. Ultimately we could say with Deleuze
that in contrast to Bergson
we no longer believe in a whole as interiority of thoughteven an open one;

we believe in a force from the outside which hollows itself out, grabs us and
attracts the inside. We no longer believe in an association of imageseven
crossing voids; we believe in breaks which take on an absolute value and sub-
ordinate all association. It is not abstraction, it is those two aspects that define
the new intellectual cinema. . . .The brain cuts or puts to flight all internal
associations, it summons an outside beyond any external world. (1985,
276/2001, 212)
The Deleuzean brain no longer coincides with a delay in which the cone
of memory inserts itself, as Bergson saw it. Following more recent discoveries
in the neurosciences, the brain could now be described as a complex diagram
riddled with interruptions, fragmented by irrational cuts (the cinematic faux-
raccord), pervaded with little cerebral deaths, as Steven Rose put it.8 With
Deleuze, the Bergsonian delay has been radicalized to the point where mem-
ory (understood as the survival of the past in the present) loses its primacy. Ulti-
mately, while both thinkers seek to go beyond experience and consciousness,
to their source (namely, the ontological unconscious), their respective philoso-
phies do not yield the same experiencewhich means that they do not have
the same conception of the unconscious.
Bergson equates the virtual unconscious with the ontological or the meta-
physical dimension primarily determined by a principle of continuity: memory
as the preservation of the past in the present. It must be noted that for him this
principle of continuity is inseparable from heterogeneity and the creation of the
new: as a qualitative multiplicity, duration cannot be divided without changing
in kind. This also means that all actual quantitative distinctions find their rea-
son in a deeper, often hidden, yet contant process of self-alteration. But for
Bergson what drives this process is life, now equated to creative evolution. For
Deleuze, however, what drives this process is death, fragmentation, discontinu-
ity, and the consequent necessity of machinic arrangements for conceiving of
change and evolution. In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari write:
How can we conceive of a peopling, a propagation, a becoming that is with-

out filiation or hereditary production? A multiplicity without the unity of an
ancestor? It is quite simple, everybody knows it, but it is discussed only in
secret. We oppose epidemic to filiation, contagion to heredity, peopling by
contagion to sexual reproduction, to sexual production. Bands, human or ani-
mal, proliferate by contagion, epidemics, battlefields, and catastrophes . . . the
147
difference is that contagion, epidemic, involves terms that are entirely hetero-
geneous: for example, a human being, an animal, and a bacterium, a virus, a
molecule, a microorganism. Or, in the case of the truffle, a tree, a fly, and a pig.
These combinations are neither genetic nor structural; they are interking-
doms, unnatural participations. (1980, 295/1987, 24142)
Accordingly, the inorganic account of thought we get from Deleuze must

be distinguished from Bergsons organic epistemological model. This distinc-
tion becomes particularly prominent in Deleuzes reading of Prousts uvre as a
Literary Machine. There, Deleuze insists on maintaining a distinction
between creation and production. On the one hand, the Bergsonian philo-
sophical image of thought is driven by a creative effort which, Deleuze argues,
remains a voluntary activity. On the other hand, Prousts nonphilosphical image
of thought relies on machinic production, defined by involuntary work.
Which Machinic Becomings?
To be sure, Bergsons conception of the creative evolution of life is to be distin-

guished from the traditional evolutionist accounts in terms of simple filiation,
genealogy, and adaptation.The first chapter of Creative Evolution introduces the idea
of an original impetus (llan vital) to confirm Bergons own brand of internal [or
immanent] finalism. His famous eye example functions as an empirical proof.
The true problem at stake between mechanism and teleological (or exter-
nal) finalism could be stated as follows: in light of (1) the incredible complex-
ity of the eye machine, (2) of the perfect coordination of its parts, and (3) of
the simplicity of the act of vision, from where does the (4) analogous structure
between the eye of the vertebrate and the eye of the mollusc come? Darwins
hypothesis of the accumulation of small accidental variations fails to account for
the resemblance between eyes along two distinct lines of evolution; his idea of
insensible variations to explain the conservation of these variations by means of
natural selection is not very helpful eitherfor, if they do not hinder the eyes
function, they do not serve it either.The alternative hypothesis, in accordance
with which variations would be sudden,9 seems to lessen the difficulty of
accounting for the resemblance between the two organs and the selective
preservation of variations. But it raises another quite formidable problem con-
cerning the subsistence of the coordination of all the parts of the functioning
eye along two diverging lines of evolution (1998, 6566/1998, 6465). A third
hypothesis would appeal to the identity of causes (i.e., light) between the two
organs. Here the idea would be that although vertebrates and molluscs have
evolved separately, they have both remained exposed to the influence of light.
As a physical cause, light would bring forth definite effectsin this case, a con-
tinuous variation in a constant direction.The increasingly complex eye would
148
Conclusion
be something like the deeper and deeper imprint of light on a matter that pos-
sesses a special aptitude for receiving it. But a new problem arises.
The problem that this mechanistic account of evolution raises has to do with
the equivocation between the passive and active senses of the word adaptation.
While it is conceivable that the pigment-spot of the lower organisms could have
been produced physically, by the mere action of light (passive adaptation), it is
very hard to see how this accounts for the complex eye of the vertebrate, which
does not only receive an imprint but also reacts positively to external circum-
stancesas an organic structure, it does not only submit passively to the influ-
ence of its environment, it also appropriates its advantages, it solves a problem.10
In short, Bergson contends, there is a difference in kind between the pigment-
spot eye of the lower organisms and the complicated eye of the vertebrate. And
while the latter has probably evolved from the former, Bergson insists that from
the fact that we pass from one thing to another by degrees, it does not follow that
the two things are of the same nature (1998, 71/1998, 70).Then he adds:
Now, living matter seems to have no other means of turning circumstances to

good account than by adapting itself to them passively at the outset.Where it
has to direct a movement, it begins by adopting it. Life proceeds by insinua-
tion.The intermediate degrees between a pigment-spot and an eye are noth-
ing to the point: however numerous the degrees, there will still be the same
interval between the pigment-spot and the eye as between a photograph and
a photographic apparatus. Certainly the photograph has been gradually
turned into a photographic apparatus; but could light alone, a physical force,
ever have provoked this change, and converted an impression left by it into a
machine capable of using it? (7172/7071, emphasis added)
Thus Bergson clearly rejects all materialist reductionist explanations of

evolution. We could multiply the observations and examples indefinitely. At
best, we will find that one same physical-chemical cause does not elucidate the
analogy of structure between the two organs, any more than the combination
of different causes (i.e., accidental variations) accounts for the similarity of
effect (the simple act of vision).Whether we like it or not, we must appeal to
some inner directing principle in order to account for this convergence of
effect across different evolutionary processes (1998, 77/1998, 76). Of course,
this inner principle is what he calls the vital impetus.
From a Bergsonian point of view, there would be yet another hypothesis
to consider, namely, neo-Lamarckism.According to Lamarck, living beings vary
by use or disuse of their organs, and they pass on the variations thus acquired
to their descendents.The variations that result in a new species would thus not
be merely accidental, nor would they be governed by some sui generis deter-
minism independent of considerations of utility (ibid.). The advantage of this
view over all the others is that it admits of an effort on the part of the living
149
being to adapt to the circumstances of its environment. Of course, this effort

could simply be mechanically elicited by the pressure of external circumstances.
But it also could imply consciousness and will. Regardless, neo-Lamarckism is
the only evolutionary theory that might explicate the construction of identical
complex organs on diverging lines of developmentfor it is conceivable that
the same effort to turn circumstances to good account might have the same
result, especially if the problem put forth by the circumstances only admits of
one solution (ibid., 78/77). However, Bergson continues, the question remains
as to whether the hereditary transmission of acquired characteristics is conceiv-
ablefor how else could the efforts of individual organisms, which would each
have produced small differences, have resulted in the transmission of enormous
amounts of accumulated variations, all in the same direction, involved in the pas-
sage from the pigment-spot of the infusorian, to the eye of the mollusc and the
vertebrate (ibid., 84/85)? Given that in 1907 the transmission of acquired char-
acteristics seems at best to remain the exception rather than the rule, neo-
Lamarckism is no more capable than other mechanistic accounts of solving the
problem of the analogy of organ structure across diverging lines of evolution.11
The single advantage of neo-Larmackism over other mechanistic doctrines
lies in its admission of an effort at the heart of evolution. It allows for a con-
ception of evolution that leaves room for the kind of spontaneity that life man-
ifests through a continuous creation of formswhich means that evolution as
a whole cannot be entirely predetermined. It also tries to account for the accu-
mulation of variations in a definite (and not merely an accidental) direction.
But for Bergson it is clear that this effort cannot simply be mechanically
elicited. It must be of a psychological naturewhich is to say, it cannot simply
be the result of the combination of physical and chemical causes. Furthermore,
Bergson adds, this effort cannot simply be the conscious effort of the individ-
ualor it would be limited to a few cases and would not account for vegetal
evolution at all. Finally, he concludes:
A hereditary change in a definite direction, which continues to accumulate

and add to itself so as to build up a more and more complex machine, must
certainly be related to some sort of effort, but to an effort of far greater depth
than the individual effort, far more independent of circumstances, an effort
common to most representatives of the same species, inherent in the germs
they bear rather than in their substance alone, an effort thereby assured of
being passed on to their descendants. (88/87, emphasis added)12
Notice that throughout this discussion leading up to the necessity of posit-

ing one common vital impulse at the origin of creative evolution, Bergson has
made extensive use of the metaphor of the machine. Notice also that this
metaphor always shows up in the context of his refutation of mechanism. In
the end, Bergson writes:
150
Conclusion
For us, the whole of an organized machine may, strictly speaking, represent the
whole of the organizing work (this is, however, only approximately true), yet
the parts of the machine do not correspond to parts of the work, because the
materiality of this machine does not represent a sum of means employed, but a
sum of obstacles avoided: it is a negation rather than a positive reality. . . .
Therefore the creation of the visual apparatus is no more explained by the
assembling of its anatomic elements than the digging of a canal could be
explained by the heaping-up of the earth which might have formed its banks.
(94/93, emphasis added)
I contend that it is this metaphor that Deleuze is playing off of when he

distinguishes between mechanism and machinism (1983, 87/2001, 59).
But for Deleuze and Guattari, becoming can no longer be defined in terms
of organic evolution, however creative. For them:
Becoming is always of a different order than filiation. It concerns alliance. If

evolution includes any veritable becomings, it is in the domain of symbioses
that bring into play beings of totally different scales [quantitative series] and
kingdoms [qualitative series], with no possible filiation. There is a block of
becoming that snaps up the wasp and the orchid, but from which no wasp-
orchid can ever descend. (1980, 291/1986, 238, emphasis in original)
Once again, we could say that the most fundamental feature of Deleuzean
becoming is incommensurabilityof container and content, of parts and
wholes, of the implicated essence and its explicated representation, of ascen-
dence and heredity, of the actual and the virtual.This principle of incommen-
surability finds its reason in the third order of time and truth, in the empty form
of time or the idea of death that Deleuze finds it necessary to add to the
Bergsonian dual, vital tendencies.
In his chapter The Three Machines in the second edition of Proust and
Signs, Deleuze insists on distinguishing between three orders of truth.The first
order is that of memory: of the most singular reminiscences and essences, of the
natural and artistic signs that intervene in the production of time regained.This
machine may be compared to the cinematographic apparatus Bergson was so
critical of at the end of Creative Evolution.The second order of truth is that of
the pleasures and pains that remain unfulfilled in themselves and refer to some-
thing else, which may very well remain unperceived; such are the worldy signs
and the signs of love. They produce effects of resonance between the present
and the past that are a function of involuntary memory; they produce alliances
that intervene in the production of time lost (e.g, jealousy).This machine cor-
responds to the Proustian telescope that characterizes artistic production.
Now the third machine or the third order of truth concerns the link
between the first two. In Deleuzes view, it is none other than the movement
151
of the text itself.And this movement, as Keith Ansell-Pearson points out, is nec-
essarily a forced movement. As such, it is catastrophic, for it fits into the first
two orders and would seem to negate any principle of meaning or value. Is not
death lurking away in each and every moment? (2004, 187). Is not extinction
threatening each and every species, each and every line of evolution?
We encountered this catastrophic forced movement in the memory of the
dead grandmother.The ecstatic joy that accompanies the return of the beloved
grandmother upon the simple gesture of stooping down over the boots very
quickly turns into an intolerable anguish as the pairing of the two moments
breaks down and yields the disappearance of the earlier one in a certainty of
death and nothingness (ibid.). A contradiction must be solved between the
first two orders and the thirdin particular, between the survival inherent in
the second order and the nothingness of the third. This contradiction is not
resolved in the memory of the grandmother, which is why it demands further
exploration (1998b, 189/1988, 15758). It turns out that this forced movement,
embodied in the very movement of the Search for Lost Time, doubles the move-
ment of duration, from past to presentyet in the contrary direction, which
sweeps away the first two moments, emphasizes the gap between them, and
pushes the past still farther back into time.This forced movement is none other
than the idea of death.
Since the first two orders were productive, their reconciliation raised no
special problem. But the third order seems entirely unproductive. The contra-
diction here reaches its most acute form, because no filiation, no evolution, and
no creation of form or sense seem to rise out of this encounter.This is precisely
why Prousts uvre constitutes a paradigmatic instantiation of Deleuzean
machinic becomingswhy Deleuze can claim that Proust takes up the baton
from Bergson. Unlike Bergsons organic machines, which solve seemingly
impossible problems through the continuous production of living forms that
endure in time, Prousts literary machine engages incommensurability by step-
ping out of the vital duration and into the idea of death.
Closing
Is this contradiction between Bergsons organic machines and Prousts mon-

strous machines insurmountable? Could we solve it somehow? What would be
at stake in such resolution?
Perhaps what is at stake in the contradiction between Bergsonian survival
and Proustian death is matter. More precisely, what might be at stake between
vital duration and the idea of death as the empty form of time is a new under-
standing of materiality: matter in its virtuality; matter essentially imbued with
an ever-contracting and expanding time, with a time irreducible to its physical,
spatial coordinates; matter as pure potential, as impossible transversal commu-
152
Conclusion
nication, as transpersonal reality, as proliferation of genders and as nomadic

populations; matter as that which exceeds all systems of identity and subjectiv-
ity; matter as monstrous becoming.
Such matter can only be conceived through the thought of pure imma-
nence that Deleuze tirelessly requires of himself, that he tracks down through-
out the history of philosophy, in works of art and in scientific endeavors. In so
doing, Deleuze is profoundly faithfulbut not so much to a certain institu-
tional image of thought, to an orthodoxy always in search of clear and distinct
ideas.What Deleuze is faithful to is an endless quest for the eventfulness of life,
for universal freedom, for a thought capable of communicating with the real
qua becoming itself. He writes (with Guattari):
Becoming produces nothing other than itself . . . what is real is the becoming
itself, the block of becoming, not the supposedly fixed terms through which
that becoming passes . . . this is the point to be clarified: that a becoming lacks
a subject distinct from itself: but also that it has no term, since its term in turn
exists only as taken up in another becoming of which it is the subject, and
which coexists, forms a block, with the first.This is the principle according to
which there is a reality specific to becoming (the Bergsonian idea of a coex-
istence of very different durations, superior or inferior to ours, all of them
in communication). (1980, 291/1987, 238)
If we were to sketch a Bergsonism for the future, then we would have to

travel with Deleuze to an empty place, a place of discomfort and confusion
where individuals (rhythms of duration) have to grasp themselves as events, and
grasp the events effectuated in them as other individuals (rhythms of duration)
grafted onto them.13 This would be possible because in this place, Time itself,
as the ever-renewed splitting between past and future (the crystal-image),
would have become sensible (Proust).This place would have to be produced by
a machine of the third order, coming to join the preceding two (fragments,
memories, selves), forcing them into monstrous movements, visions, irreconcil-
able transcendental experiences. This machine could be a literary machine, a
cinematographic machine, a philosophical machine even: a brain machine
always. And in each case it would have to be compared to an optical instru-
ment, like the magnifying, the deforming glasses that the optician of Combray
handed down to the prospective buyerslike Prousts book, thanks to which
he provided his readers with the means to read within themselves. For in the
final analysis, Deleuzes superior faithfulness to such Bergsonismthis virtual
materialismmay very well be our only hope for radically ungrounding all
fascistic systems sprawn by the transcendent image of thought, be they systems
of subjectivism, nationalism, racism, sexism, or dogmatism.
153
Notes
Introduction.Virtual Empiricism:
The Revaluation of the Transcendental
1. Deleuzes first major work on Bergson, La Conception de la diffrence chez

Bergson, first appeared in Les tudes Bergsoniennes, vol. IV, 1956. It is reprinted in Lle
dserte et autres textes, pp. 4372.Whenever I refer to this text here, it will be to the le
dserte version. Also appears in translation in The New Bergson, pp. 4264.
2. In 1917 and 1918, Bergson was sent to Washington as an unofficial representa-
tive of the French government. It seems he was instumental in convincing President
Wilson to send 2 million American soldiers to the Western front.This, by all accounts,
played a decisive role in the outcome of the Great War. Furthermore, due to his high
intellectual and political stature, Bergson found himself, as early as 1917, at the center of
the discussions that eventually led to the formation of the League of Nations. For more
detailed information on these aspects of Bergons multifaceted personality, see Philippe
Soulezs and Frdric Wormss (2002) comprehensive biography, Bergson.
3. In a section of A Thousand Plateaus, titled Memories of a Bergsonian, Deleuze
and Guatarri define involution as follows:. . . the term we would prefer to use for this
form of evolution between heterogeneous terms is involution, on the condition that
involution is in no way confused with regression. Becoming is involutionary, involution
is creative.To regress is to move in the direction of something less differentiated. But to
involve is to form a block that runs its own line between the terms in play and beneath
assignable relations (1980, 292/1987, 23839).
4. See Bergsons Leons sur la Critique de la Raison Pure, in Cours III.
5. In their introduction to Bergson: Key Writings, Keith Ansell-Pearson and John
Mullarkey (2002, 12) explain that William James compared the effects of Matter and
Memory to a Copernican revolution on a par with Berkeleys Principles of Human Know-
155
Notes to Introduction
eldge and Kants Critique of Pure Reason. See also W. Jamess letter to Bergson dated
December 14, 1902, in Mlanges, 567.
6. Introduction to Metaphysics. In uvres, 1432. Trans. Introduction to Meta-
physics in Creative Mind, 200.
7.While the French term esprit is often translated as mind, I find this choice of
translation particularly misleading. Lesprit can mean mind, but it also is inseparable
from spirit. If Bergson does mean mind when he uses esprit, then it must definitely
be understood in its virtual sense, and never in its reductive materialist sense of the
brain. While Bergsonism cannot and should not be reduced to some elaborate ver-
sion of spiritualism (or idealism), it is no more to be confused with simple material-
ism. His whole philosophy is precisely an attempt at overcoming such simplistic
dualisms.
8.This formula, borrowed from Marcel Proust, is the one that Deleuze constantly
appeals to in order to refer to the virtual, from his 1964 Proust and Signs, through his
1966 Bergsonism to his 1991 What Is Philosophy? (with Guattari).
9. See, for instance, the provocative collected papers of the 1997 Bergson et les neu-
rosciences symposium held in Lille, France.
10. For a helpful examination of these aspects of Deleuzes thought, see Manuel
Delandas (2002) Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy.
11.That said, let us note that a number of excellent books on Bergson have been
published recently in the English language. Of particular depth and scope are Keith
Ansell-Pearsons (2002) Philosophy and the Adventure of the Virtual, Leonard Lawlors
(2003) The Challenge of Bergsonism, and Ansell-Pearsons and Mullarkeys (2002) first
English language collection of Bergsons most significant texts, Bergson: Key Writings.
12. Again, on the relation between Bergson and Deleuze, see Ansell-Pearsons Phi-
losophy and the Adventure of the Virtual; see also Ronald Bogues (2003) Deleuze on Cin-
ema. For a more general enagagement with the role of the virtual in Deleuze and Guat-
tari, see Brian Massumis (2002) Parables for the Virtual and his (1992) Users Guide to
Capitalism and Schizophrenia. For particularly acute and helpful readings of Difference and
Repetition, see James Williamss Gilles Deleuzes Difference and Repetition and Miguel De
Beisteguis (2004) masterful Truth and Genesis.
13. In his discussion of the Kantian critique at the end of Creative Evolution, Berg-
son writes:
By regarding intelligence as pre-eminently a faculty of establishing relations,
Kant attributed an extra-intellectual origin to the terms between which the
relations are established. He affirmed, against his immediate predecessors, that
knoweldge is not entirely resolvable in terms of intelligence . . .
Thereby he prepared the way for a new philosophy, which might have
established itself in the extra-intellectual matter of knowledge by a higher
effort of intuition. Coinciding with this matter, adopting the same rhythm and
156
Notes to Chapter 1
the same movement, might not consciousness, by two efforts of opposite

direction, raising itself and lowering itself by turns, become able to grasp from
within, and no longer to perceive from without, the two forms of reality, body
and mind? . . .
But in this direction Kant himself would not go.
He would not, because, while assigning to knowledge an extra-intel-
lectual matter, he believed this matter to be co-extensive with intellect or less
extensive than intellect.Therefore he could not dream of cutting out intellect
in it, nor, consequently, of tracing the genesis of the understanding and its cat-
egories. . . . So that not only was it necessary to posit the intellectual form of
knowledge as a kind of absolute and give up the quest of its genesis, but the
very matter of this knowledge seemed too ground down by the intellect for
us to be able to get it back in its original purity. It was not the thing-in-
itself, it was the refraction of it through our atmosphere. (1998,
35758/1998, 35759)
14.This idea of philosophy as the creation of concepts is a leitmotiv of Deleuzes.
It is most explicity articulated in What Is Philosophy? For example, So long as there is
a time and a place for creating concepts, the operation that undertakes this will always
be called philosophy, or will be indistinguishable from philosophy even if it is called
something else (1991, 14/1994, 9).
15. While Bergsons philosophy is entirely geared toward accounting for change,
novelty, and the creativity of all evolutionary processes, we could say that he does not
go so far as to give a full-blown positive explication of the very source, spark, or secret
of creation.While he shows very clearly and convincingly that time is and must be cre-
ative, he does not go quite so far as to tell us how time itself is created (or produced).
He gives himself spirit (duration, memory), but he does not quite give us an account of
the conditions of the emergence of spirit itself (which might explain why he has been
subjected to vague accusations of mysticism by such people as Sartre and Merleau-
Ponty). I argue in Chapter 5, and again in the Conclusion, that Deleuzes immanent
account of the emergence of thought from material vibration in terms of production
can be precisely interpreted as filling this gap.
Chapter 1. Bergsons Genealogy of Consciousness
1. Originally published in French as Essai sur les Donnes immdiates de la conscience

in 1889.The French pages numbers, from the PUF (Quadrige) edition of 2001, will be
given first.
2. Letter from Bergson to William James dated June 27, 1907, in Mlanges, 72627.
Trans. Melissa McMahon, Bergson: Key Writings, 362.
3.We will return to a detailed examination of this claim in the second chapter of
this book.
157
Notes to Chapter 1
4. For a detailed discussion of the three different kinds of causalities, see Creative
Evolution (1998, 7274/73). There Bergson distinguishes between causes acting by (1)
impelling (impulsion)e.g., the billiard balls; (2) releasing (dclenchement)e.g., the spark
that blows up the powder; (3) unwinding (droulement)e.g., the gradual relaxing of the
spring that makes the phonograph unwind the melody on the cylinder. He points out
that only in the first case, really, does cause explain effect; in the others the effect is more
or less given in advance, and the antecedent invoked isin different degrees of course
its occasion rather than its cause (74/73). His point is that the billiard ball causality
only applies to inanimate matter. In contrast, such mechanical determinism cannot be
assumed in the realm of life, because there duration (heterogeneous multiplicity) oper-
ates.Yet most scientists and philosophers do not hesitate to use the word cause unques-
tioningly, which then makes them liable to equivocation.
5. Notice that in this second case Bergson is uncovering a natural mistake of the
intelligence very comparable, in what I call its retroactive anticipation, to the Eleatic
illusion concerning the nature of motion.
6. This critique of language is limited to common language for common use
where by common I mean generalized and useful for communication. It could thus be
argued that the case of genuine literary or poetic creation escapes such critique, for its
very nature consists precisely in capturing profoundly subjective and singular states, or
even generating new feelings and new ideas, which by definition are not generalizable,
at least at the moment of their creation.We will say more about the specific temporal-
ity of art, and its relation to subjectivity, in the second part of this book, dedicated to
Deleuze. For an insightful account of Bergsons philosophy of language, see Leonard
Lawlors The Challenge of Bergsonism (2003,7079).
7. It may sound simplistic to dismiss such a prominent fact of human existential
experience as psychological conflict or internal dilemma. However, I believe that Berg-
sons point here is not so much to negate the existence of such an experience as it is to
suggest that this kind of experience is the product of a psychological misconception
(mechanistic associationism) rooted in a metaphysical error (the confusion between
duration and space). The rest of this discussion will endeavor to show that ultimately
Bergson wants to claim that just as the sterile problems of dualism turn out to be false
problems once screened through the lens of philosophical intuition, internal conflicts
turn out to false conflicts once they have been subjected to consciousness effort of
introspection and consequent rejoining of duration.
8.The use of the term psychological in relation to Bergsonism is not without prob-
lems. At times, Bergson seems to encompass the whole realm of the spiritual within it.
But as we get involved more in depth with Bergsons theory of memory in Matter and
Memory, we will see that there are two ways in which we may understand the meaning
of spirit according to Bergson. From the point of view of the irreducible difference
between matter and memory, spirit excludes matter entirely; it is synonymous with
memory, or the pure past, which as such does not have any material existence. But from
the point of view of immediate consciousness, or duration, spirit coincides with the cre-
158
Notes to Chapter 1
ative unification of matter and memory, present and past, and so on.Thus while in the
monistic framework, it all happens as if the psychological were identical to the spiritual,
from the point of view of the dualistic problematic, the psychological is the opposite of
the spiritual. For consistency and clarity, I limit the scope of the term psychological to the
realm of the actual, the present, the materialized aspect of consciousness. In this I am
following Deleuze, who insists on limiting the psychological to the present to bring out
the ontological significance of Bergsons theory of memory, as well as to contrast Berg-
sons conception of the unconscious with Freuds. Deleuze writes,Strictly speaking, the
psychological is the present. Only the present is psychological; but the past is pure
ontology; pure recollection has only ontological significance (1998a, 51/1988, 56).
9. In fact, I take Bergson to be doing much more than suggesting this. He makes
the relationship between science and philosophy one of the core issues of his work as a
whole. Although this was already perceptible in Time and Free Will, it becomes increas-
ingly obvious as we move farther into Matter and Memory.While Time and Free Will tack-
les more particularly mathematics and psychology, and Matter and Memory addresses in
more detail the insufficiencies of cognitive science, it is in Creative Evolution that Berg-
son most explicitly thematizes the problem of the relationship between philosophy and
the sciences in general. In the Preface to Matter and Memory, he diagnoses this relation-
ship as a vicious circle, in reference to the equivocal understanding of the idea of soli-
darity between consciousness and the brain (or the mental and the physical). Faithful
to his constant self-imposed demand for precision in philosophy, Bergson starts out by
asking something to the effect of Solidarity, bien sr, but what kind of solidarity are we
here talking about? (1997, 5/1991, 12).
10.The charge of optimism frequently has been opposed to Bergsons philosophy.
In The Two Sources, however, he is careful to distinguish between superficial optimism
and true empirical optimism. He writes, No, suffering is a terrible reality, and it is a
mere unwarrantable optimism to define evil a priori, even reduced to what it effectively
is, as a lesser good. But there is an empirical optimism, which consists simply in noting
two facts: first, that humanity finds life, on the whole, good, since it clings to it; and then,
that there is an unmixed joy, lying beyond pleasure and pain, which is the final state of
the mystic soul. In this twofold sense, and from both points of view, optimism imposes
itself, without any necessity for the philosopher to plead the cause of god (1997b,
277/1935, 261). Bergson further introduces the notion of great or metaphysical opti-
mism, which consists in beg[inning] by assuming as solved the problem to be solved
(1997b, 306/1935, 287).We will see, when we turn to Bergsons method of intuition in
the fourth chapter, that while Bergson endorses this metaphysical optimism, this last
remark must be understood on the basis of his own specific conception of true and false
problems.
11.Very generally speaking, this critical work both based in and directed at a pos-
itive philosophy instantiates the main characteristics of what Deleuze will call superior
or transcendental empiricism.This method, I argue in what follows (but most specif-
ically in Chapter 4), Deleuze borrows from Bergson and develops further into his own.
159
Notes to Chapter 1
12. Indeterminate positions in relation to an eventual subject, since the distinc-

tion between inside and outside, or space in general, has not, as yet, been generated.
From the objective point of view of science, though, the relations between images are
fully determined in accordance with universal laws, and they are so a priori.The point
at issue here may finally be brought back to the problem of the Kantian transcendental
forms. For Kant, the forms must exist prior to any experience, as a condition of its pos-
sibility; for Bergson, on the contrary, they must be cogenerated with the conscious sub-
ject.
13.The term movement-image is introduced by Deleuze in his cinema books, where
he establishes a distinction between the movement-image and the time-image. For now
it suffices to point out that since the realm of pure perception excludes real duration
(i.e., memory, time), we are only dealing with movement-images.
14. For a tentative refutation of this argument and of Bergsons metaphor of the
central telephonic switchboard, see Jean Delacours Matire et mmoire la lumire des
neurosciences contemporaines, in Bergson et les Neurosciences, 2327.
15.This will be the point of departure of Deleuzes cinema works, which famously
claim that the brain is the screen.This claim inspired the title for Gregory Flaxmans
(2000) interesting collection of essays, The Brain Is the Screen: Deleuze and the Philosophy
of Cinema.
16. In Bergsons view, this abstraction (or what he also calls intellectualism) betrays
both the metaphysical confusion between space and time, mentioned earlier, and the
consequent psychological confusion between present and past, or perception and mem-
ory (1997a, 47/1991, 48) that I address later.
17. However, as Leonard Lawlor (2003) insighfully notes in The Challenge of
Bergsonism, echoing Derrida (in La Voix et le phnomne, 117; Speech and Phenomena, 104),
while phenomenological consciousness is rooted in the body, it is rooted in the body as
flesh. This flesh is, in turn, defined as corporeal intentionality. Thus, Lawlor concludes,
with phenomenology we have not really escaped from the philosophy of consciousness
(2003, 28). Such philosophy of consciousness (where consciousness is equated with
intentionality) is precisely what Bergsonism offers an alternative for. We saw that for
Bergson the body is a machine (a central telephonic switchboard)albeit a moving one.
As Lawlor points out, the machine runs slower in the exact measure that it becomes
more complicated.We will see that this slowing down of the machine is what allows for
memories to be selected and inserted into the presentto the extent that in the fourth
chapter of Matter and Memory, Bergson writes, Every perception is already memory,
and We perceive, practically, only the past (291/15). Thus, Lawlor concludes, captur-
ing the heart of the difference between phenomenology and Bergsonism, while phe-
nonemonology always relies on a primacy of perception (Merleau-Ponty), Bergson-
ism is a primacy of memory (2003, 28).
18. Barbaras, Le Problme de la perception, in Le Magazine Littraire. Bergson,
Philosophe de notre temps 386 (April 2000): 47 (my translation).
160
Notes to Chapter 2
19. In Mind-Energy, first published in 1919.

20. This is a key argument running through all of Bergsons works. We saw an
instance of it when we examined the illusions subtending both science and metaphysics
in his 1889 Time and Free Will. In his 1932 The Two Sources, Bergson indeed thematizes
this practical, natural, hence necessary, displacement of reality informing normal expe-
rience, in terms of a myth-making function (fonction fabulatrice). He goes so far as to
identify this myth-making function with intelligence, as one of the two sources of
morality and religion. I argue that this also is one of the major inspirations for Deleuzes
elaboration of transcendental experience over and above the limitative conditioning
that Kants transcendentalism has imposed on experience.
21. Again, this is precisely what I read Deleuze as taking issue with when he sug-
gests such a thing as transcendental experience. Furthermore, we will see that Bergsons
method of intuition is indeed directed at establishing the possibility of intuiting the
Outside. We can already see that for both Bergson and Deleuze, intuition cannot be
equated to Kants conception of the intuition involved in empirical experiencean
intuition that, as Bergson points out, always remains infra-intellectual (1998, 359/1998,
360).
22. As far as I can tell, this is the first time, in Matter and Memory, where Bergson
uses the term the unconscious.
23. In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze will indeed identify this original constitu-
tive act in terms of the first synthesis of time, in the shape of habit, which may be
equated to the lowest degree of memory.
24.We will see that this survival of the past lies at the core of the notion of virtu-
ality that Deleuze elaborates; it is also, by the same token, the basis for both the Bergson-
ian metaphysics and the Deleuzean ontology.
25.This Bergsonian order of discontinuous successive vibrations, I take it, coincides
with that which Deleuze, in the fourth chapter of Difference and Repetition, will call pre-
individual singularities.
26. Frdric Worms, Introduction Matire et Mmoire de Bergson (1997, 98,
emphasis added).
Chapter 2. Introducing Memory:

From the Psychological to the Virtual
1. For, as Bergson shows in Creative Evolution, scientific research on living organ-

isms such as embryology cannot be reduced to the study of lifeless entities such as math-
ematics. In other words, science is multiple.
2. As we advance farther into the examination of Bergsons project, it will become
clearer that his conception and practice of metaphysics differ importantly from the tra-
161
Notes to Chapter 2
ditional systems that Heidegger was condemning. On this issue of the contemporary rel-
evance of metaphysics, see Miguel De Beisteguis (2004) Truth and Genesis for a pro-
foundly illuminating study of Deleuzes confrontation not only with Heidegger but also
with Aristotle and Dun Scotus.
3. Lawlor,Lasctisme et la Sexualit, le progrs thique dans Les Deux sources de la
morale et de la religion, in Annales Bergsoniennes I, Bergson dans le sicle, 23142.
4.There lies the essence of Deleuzes technical notion of the event; defined by sin-
gularity, the event belongs to the order of Life as a heterogeneous, hence essentially cre-
ative and unpredictable, multiplicity. It must be contrasted to the Hegelian notion of
moment (Augenblick) which, belonging by definition to the dialectical history of the
phenomenology of consciousness, is always already inscribed, through an operation of
retroactive anticipation, within an organic totality.
5. Notice that while in the empirical examination of the memorizing process,
habit-memory was first, since it is phenomenologically closer to the consciousness that
performs the self-examination; but in the theoretical interpretation of the facts
described, representation-memory becomes first, since it is metaphysically prior to
habit-memory.
6. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1991), Freud revises his theory according to
which all dreams are wish-fulfillments in light of the repetitive anxiety dreams of the
victims of traumatic neuroses. From the existence of those repetitive anxiety-dreams
besides dreams whose function is the fulfillment of repressed desires, Freud induces the
existence of a death-instinct (Thanatos), which he characterizes as independent of the
until then uniquely sovereign Eros.
7. For an account of the experience of the sublime as a genetic condition for
thought, see for instance Cinema 2:A clich is a sensory-motor image of the thing. . . .
We therefore normally perceive only clichs. But if our sensory-motor schemata break
then a different type of image can appear: a pure optical-sound image without
metaphor, brings out the thing in itself literally, in its excess of horror or beauty, in its
radical or unjustifiable character (32/20, trans. modified). For an account of thought
defined as the creation of concepts, see for instance What Is Philosophy?: As Michaux
says, what suffices for current ideas does not suffice for vital ideasthose that must be
created (195/207).
8. Bergson is there alluding, for either case of inhibited recognition, to experiments
conducted by such scientists as Charcot, Mller, or Lissauer in the late 1880s.
9. In The Challenge of Bergsonism (2003), Leonard Lawlor compares the difference
between these two states of recognition to the difference between a black-and-white
and a color photograph. In contradistinction to Merleau-Pontys phenomenology of
perception in terms of the primacy of perception, Bergsons account could be called
a primacy of memory, precisely because, in his view, it is memory that provides the
added detail that transforms the black-and-white picture into a fully colored one. See
especially, pp. 2730.
162
Notes to Chapter 2
10. In Bergsonian terms, the real object is reflected in a mirror-image as in the

virtual object which, from its side and simultaneously, envelops or reflects the real: there
is a coalescence between the two. There is a formation of an image with two sides,
actual and virtual (1985, 92/2001, 68).We will reserve the full examination of this point
of indiscernibility for Chapter 5.
11. In the next chapter, we will examine in more detail this mnemonic schema,
which Bergson also calls the dynamic schema.
12. Bergson illustrates this whole process with the following diagram (1997a,
115/1991, 105):
In Cinema 2, Deleuze suggests that it is this first diagram that marks the introduction
of what I call transcendental experience.
13. Again, see Prousts description of the madeleine recollection. He writes:
Very likely we may never happen on the object (or sensation, since we appre-
hend every object as sensation) that [the recollection] hides in; and thus there
are hours of our life that will never be resuscitated: for this object is so tiny,
so lost in the world, and there is little likelihood that we shall come across it.
Several summers of my life were spent in a house in the country. I
thought of those summers from time to time, but they were not themselves.
They were dead, and in all probability they would always remain so.Their res-
urrection, like all these resurrections, hung on a mere chance. One snowy
evening, not long ago, I came in half frozen, and had sat down in my room to
read by lamplight, and as I could not get warm my old cook offered to make
me a cup of tea, a thing I never drink. And as chance would have it, she
brought me some slices of dry toast. I dipped the toast in the cup of tea and
as soon as I put it in my mouth, and felt its softened texture, all flavoured with
tea, against my palate, something came over methe smell of geraniums and
orange-blossoms, a sensation of extraordinary radiance and happiness; I sat
163
Notes to Chapter 3
quite still, afraid that the slightest movement might cut short this incompre-
hensible process which was taking place in me, and concentrated on the bit
of sopped toast which seemed to be responsible for all these marvels; then
suddenly the shaken partitions in my memory gave way, and into my con-
scious mind there rushed the summers I had spent in the aforesaid house in
the country, with their early mornings, and the succession, the ceaseless onset,
of happy hours in their train. And then I remembered. See Preface to Con-
tre Sainte-Beuve, in Du Ct de chez Swann (Paris: Folio Classique, Gallimard,
1988), 432. Reproduced in translation in Remembrance of Things Past, 1981, p.
20.
Yet I will show that it is ultimately in the different conceptions of time Deleuze
sees between Bergson and Proust that the difference between Deleuzes and Bergsons
philosophies can be located.
Chapter 3.The Unconscious as Ontology of the Virtual
1.We will examine later what, following William James, I call Bergsons Coperni-
can Revolution, which I believe coincides with his project of attaining the source of
experiencea source he locates beyond the turn at which experience becomes human
experience. He writes,But there is a last enterprise that might be undertaken [beyond
critical philosophy, which holds all knowledge to be relative and the ultimate nature of
things to be inaccessible to the mind]. It would be to seek experience at its source, or
rather above that decisive turn where, taking a bias in the direction of our utility, it
becomes properly human experience (1997b, 205/1991, 184, emphasis added). In fact,
he points out in his 1903 Introduction to Metaphysics that what defines philosophy
is an effort to transcend the human condition (uvres, 1425).
2. La Conception de la diffrence chez Bergson, in Lle dserte et autres textes
(Deleuze 2002), pp. 4372. Trans. Melissa McMahon, in The New Bergson (Mullarkey
1999), pp. 4264.
3. In The Introduction to Metaphysics, Bergson writes, One of the objects of
metaphysics is to operate qualitative differenciations and integrations (Oeuvres, 1423).
4. As could be expected, then, the differentiation we introduced earlier (Ch. 2)
between what I called the time of consciousness (or duration) and the time of the
unconscious (or the empty form of time) will ultimately be integrated; and it will be
integrated, I argue, on the basis of Bergsons complexification of the notion of duration
in reference to its virtual side.
5. Although individuation as a tendency is present throughout the organic world,
it also is everywhere disputed by the antagonistic tendency to reproduction. However,
while individuation is never perfect, Bergson does not hesitate to use the term individ-
ual as long as some systematization of parts precedes the fragmentation, and that the
164
Notes to Chapter 3
same systematization tends to reproduce in the detached fragments (1998, 14/1998, 15).
For a detailed examination of this notion of individuation, see Gilbert Simondons
(1995) LIndividu et sa gnse physico-biologique. See also Deleuzes discussion in the 4th
chapter of Difference and Repetition.
6. I carefully chose to use the term complementation here in order to convey both
the biological-like nature of the relation and the unpredictability of its outcome.
According to the Websters Dictionary (1996), complementation is a term borrowed
from genetics. It refers to the occurrence of a wild-type phenotype when two closely
related, interacting mutant genes are expressed in the same cell.
7. For an illuminating discussion of this issue of individuation in Bergson and
Deleuze, see Ansell-Pearsons (1999) Germinal Life, Ch. 2 (in particular his section on
The Death-Drive: Freuds Reworking of Weisman).
8.This notion of variable rhythms points to duration as the nexus of the problem-
atic of difference (hence, to a close connection between life and consciousness) as the
underlying positive reality. Bergson writes, The thread attaching [the solar system] to
the rest of the universe is doubtless very tenuous. Nevertheless it is along this thread that
is transmitted down to the smallest particle of the world in which we live the duration
immanent to the whole universe (1998, 11/1998, 1011).
9.This explosive force must be understood in terms of the gunpower causality
isolated by Bergson in Creative Evolution (see my first chapter, note 5, and 1998,
74/1998, 73).
10. For a detailed discussion of individuation in relation to reproduction, see Keith
Ansell-Pearsons (1999) discussion of Weismanns distinction between the soma and the
germ (which Deleuze appeals to in the second chapter of Difference and Repetition) in
Germinal Life (especially pp. 90114).
11. This is not the place to address the crucial issue of the relation and difference
between psychoanalysis conception of the unconscious and Bergsons. I just want to
insist that despite some striking similarities, Bergson does not, unlike Freud, limit the
unconscious to the negative residue of consciousness; rather, with Bergson, it is con-
sciousness that becomes a residue of the unconscious.
12. Interestingly, and in stark contrast to Deleuze, Bergson seems to be suggesting

here that schizophrenia (or the splitting of ones personality) is not a reality of psychic
life. Indeed, despite his account of freedom on the basis of a doubling of the self in Time
and Free Will, he holds a principle of absolute indivisibility of the personality. In his 1916
Madrid Conference, entitled Personality (Mlanges, 121535), Bergson analyzes clini-
cal cases of alleged split personality. Although he acknowledges the reality of the phe-
nomenon, he ascribes it to a survival mechanism on the part of the one normal per-
sonality. He writes, Let us suppose that the person sees itself threatened by a serious
mental illness, a complete disorganization of spirit following an excessive expense of
energy.Well, nature possesses what the Ancients called vis medicatrix, a capacity to resist
165
Notes to Chapter 3
and defend itself against the illness. . . . She will tell us: take this forced rest, forget your-
self.Thus, in such a case, nature imposes a forced rest on the person, during which she
dreams and lives a simplified existence, a life from which all the memories that form the
normal personality are absentmemories that are too burdensome for the weak forces
available to this normal personality.Thus, it is not a case of doubling up or of dissocia-
tion of personality: there is but one personality, the normal personality (1972, 1228, my
translation). Once again, Bergson is here privileging the simple and continuous nature
as the primary element, but he does this on the basis of the recognition of the neces-
sary phenomenon of doubling as the actualization of this ultimate simplicity. I believe
that the contrast between the evolution of consciousness and the evolution of life he
seems to be indicating in Creative Evolution is a provisional distinction, which the the-
ory of tendencies endeavors to resolve.
13. In Proust and Signs and the Logic of Sense, Deleuze picks up on this identifica-
tion between essence and alteration. He argues that this understanding of essence as
alteration (the Virtual) marks the reversal of Platonism (or the anti-logos) that he, fol-
lowing Nietzsche, is after.
14. Although I do not pretend to offer a comprehensive discussion of the differ-
ence between Husserl and Bergson, I am suggesting here that unlike Bergsonism,
Husserls famous declaration of intention of returning to the things themselves is com-
promised by his Cartesian framework.
15. Obviously, this contradicts what I said earlier about Bergson extending the effi-
cacy of duration to the things themselves. But I have to wait until he focuses on mem-
ory proper to expose the mechanism of the shift that awaits.
16. In other words, we could say that while the Kantlike conditions for the possi-
bility correspond to the question Why does memory actualize itself within experi-
ence?, the Bergsonian conditions for the reality of experience address the question,
Which one of those recollections gets actualized? In this distinction consists precisely
superior empiricisms philosophical import.
17.One must act as a man of thought and think as a man of action (1972, 1574,
my translation).
18. Indeed, this is precisely the problem that Bergsons and Deleuzes superior
empiricism is designed to overcome, by a genuine philosophy of positive difference.
19. Notice that the circularity that Bergson is here denouncing is indeed a repeti-
tion, on a deeper level, of the circularity that, according to him, plagues the association-
ist accounts of recognition. See especially the end of the section of the second chapter,
The Pendulum: Recognition versus Association, where Bergson points out against
Hume that the perception of a resemblance is an effect of association rather than its
cause. Indeed, I take each chapter of Matter and Memory to consist in a repetition, on a
deeper level (of the cone) of the preceding one. In accordance with the fundamental
Bergsonian prescription, the structure of the book as a whole is a perfect instantiation
of what it means to follow the movement of thought.
166
Notes to Chapter 3
20. The next chapter will be dedicated to examining this method and the way in
which it offers unprecedented avenues for thought and experience.
21. For a detailed account of the effort of reflection involved in the formation of
thought, see Bergsons Leffort intellectuel, in Lnergie spirituelle. Trans. H. Wildon
Carr, The Intellectual Effort in Mind-Energy.
22.And indeed, Prousts entire Remembrance of Things Past, his whole search for lost
time, testifies to the same idea, as ultimately it is to the difficultand for a long time
seemingly impossiblework of art that he ascribes the power to regain time lost,
which is to say to finally undergo what Bergson would call integral experience in all
of its profundity. I will, however, argue in Chapter 6 that in the end, in Deleuzes view,
the Proustian experience does not entirely coincide with Bergsons integral experi-
ence.
23. This is the second cone diagram (1997a, 181/1991, 162). The cone represents
memory.The AB base of the cone coincides with the widest, most expanded cicle, clos-
est to the dream state. S is the most contracted point, which marks the insertion of the
cone (memory) into the plan P (for present, I presume) of matter. Therefore, S is also
the site of action informed by memory.
A B
A B
A B
24. Once again, it seems to me that this psychological mechanism, which for Berg-
son also testifies to a corresponding ontological structure of experience, is instantiated
on numerous occasions in Prousts Remembrance of Things Past. I already referred to the
famous Madeleine example, but among other things, la petite phrase de Vinteuil plays
a similar role: every time the narrator hears it, it triggers a wealth of forgotten recollec-
tions or dispelled illusions. Moreover, and indeed for this very reason, each hearing of
the petite phrase is both the same and qualitatively different. This is because, as
Deleuze puts it in his Proust book,each sign has two halves: it designates an object [the
167
Notes to Chapter 4
little phrase, Combray], it signifies something different [hope, disappointment, love, loss
of love] (Proust and Signs, 37/27). But I will come back to this issue of signs and sense,
and how they relate to time and the unconscious, when I turn in Chapter 6 to Deleuzes
third synthesis of time, where he locates Prousts (and his own) departure from Bergson.
25. Notice the apparently aporetic structure of the puzzle thus posed. Notice, also,
that in a typical move, Bergson is already implying the temporal nature of the problem;
in fact, as can be expected, he will use his own conception of time as virtuality, or vari-
ability, in order to solve this otherwise inescapable paradox.
26.We will see that for Deleuze, too, this work of conversion is that which essen-
tially defines thought, except that Deleuze calls it the transversal and refers it to Prous-
tian rather than Bergsonian time.
27. For a detailed account of this issue, and duration as what allows Bergson to
restore the rights of a new monism, see Deleuzes Bergsonism, Ch. 4, One or Many
Durations?
28. Deleuzes Bergson, 18591941, in Lle dserte et autres textes, 42. In Cinema 2,
Deleuze picks up on this insight and carries it farther to account for an empty form of
time that grounds/ungrounds Bergsonian duration.
29.Thus Bergsons critique of the Kantian critique reaches so far as to question the
latters practical philosophy.To the Kantian account of morality in terms of duty based
in reason, Bergson retorts the following:Because we have established the rational char-
acter of moral conduct, it does not follow that morality has its origin or even its foun-
dation in pure reason.The important question is to find out why we are obliged in cases
where following our inclination by no means suffices to ensure that our duty is done.
That in that case it is reason speaking, I am willing to admit; but if it spoke only in its
own name, if it did anything other than rationally express the action of certain forces
[i.e., sensation and emotion] which dwell behind it, how could it struggle against pas-
sion and self-interest? (1997b, 86/1935, 85, trans. modified).
Chapter 4. Between Bergson and Deleuze:The Method

of Intuition as Transcendental/Virtual Empiricism
1. Integral experience (exprience intgrale) are the last words of Bergsons Intro-
duction to Metaphysics. For him, integral experience coincides with none other than
metaphysics itself. Obviously the word integral here refers not only to the complete-
ness of the kind of experience that metaphysics must be but also to the mode in which
this completeness, or wholeness, must be achieved (i.e., through a method comparable
to the mathematical integrationnot to be confused with reductionof difference).
My goal, in what follows, is to show that the method of intuition consists precisely in
achieving this wholeness by means of the two moments of differentiation and integra-
tion.
168
Notes to Chapter 4
2. See Bergsons discussion of Zenos paradoxes and the Eleatic illusion. For
instance, 2001a, 84/2001, 6566.
3. In the second introduction to The Creative Mind, Bergson writes, Intuition,
then, signifies first of all consciousness, but immediate consciousness, a vision which is
scarcely distinguishable from the object seen, a knoweldge which is contact and even
coincidence.Next, it is consciousness extended, pressing upon the edge of an uncon-
scious which gives way and which resists, which surrenders and which regains itself
(2001b, 1273/1965, 32).
4.Although Bergsons attack is here directed at such empirical psychologists as Mill
and Taine, I contend that its validity reaches as far as psychoanalysis. Although Freuds
thematization of the unconscious has opened up some promising ground for our under-
standing of the workings of memory, hence, of thought and subjectivity, the very ana-
lytic method he is proposing presupposes the separation of different psychical systems
(i.e., the ego, the id, and the superego). Even though he tries, in his later writings, to
overcome this separation through a dynamic model of the mind (see, for instance, his
1920 Beyond the Pleasure Principle and the fascinating treatment of Nachtrglichkeit
in his 1914 Wolfman case study), it remains that the separation is first, and the
dynamism artificially added onto it cannot mend the separation.Thus Freud himself was
guilty of confusing intuition and analysis, and therefore he was forced to ascribe the dri-
ving force of our psychical workings to negativity rather than inner vitality. The result
is the necessary loss of a positive connection between thought and world, mind and real-
itya subjectivism that easily evolves into neurosis.
5.The retrograde movement of the true is one of the subtitles of the first intro-
duction to The Creative Mind.
6. Deleuze writes, In short, each time that we think in terms of more or less, we
have already disregarded the differences in kind between the two orders, or between
beings, between existents. In this way we can see how the first type of false problems
[i.e., relying on the confusion between the more and the less, such as the problem of
possibility or the problem of disorder] rests, in the final analysis, on the second [i.e., badly
analyzed composites, such as the problem of freedom] (1998, 9/1988, 20).
7. Deleuze here refers us to a crucial note in the second introduction to Creative
Mind (unfortunately omitted from the 1965 translation), where Bergson recommends
a state of soul where problems disappear on the basis of intuitions capacity for creat-
ing an intellectual counterpart to the reductive intellectualism we have been criticiz-
ing. He writes, The illusion is not analyzed or dispelled since it does not make itself
known; but it would be were it to show itself; and those two antagonistic possibilities,
which are intellectual, cancel out intellectually, leaving place for nothing but the intu-
ition of the real (2001b, 1306, emphasis added, my translation). Similarly, in The Two
Sources, Bergson endeavors a critique of the myth-making function as a way of rejoin-
ing intuition, the only way for repressing the war instinct he has identified as defining the
human condition. There again, it is the method of intuition that provides us with the
169
Notes to Chapter 5
way for overcoming the human conditionan effort that ultimately defines meta-
physics (2001b, 1425/1965, 193).
8. I will return in more detail to this fundamental issue of the transvaluation of the
transcendental involved in Bergsons and Deleuzes works, and of the necessity that
Deleuze nevertheless insists on to retain the Kantian notion of a pure form to charac-
terize his new conception of time.
9. It is important to insist once again on this fundamental difference between the
Bergsonian-Deleuzean conception of the necessity informing the transcendental realm,
on the one hand, and the Kantian account, on the other.As I explained earlier, the Kant-
ian conditions of possibility are negative conditions of necessity in the sense that in
his view we would not be able to have any meaningful experience at all if it were not
for the positing of such conditions. In short, Kant claims that the forms of time and
space are logically necessary conditions without which phenomenological experience
would not be possible. However, as Bergson clearly suggests, Kants transcendentalism
fails to establish what I would call the necessity of the necessity. For instance, Bergson
writes, [The Kantian critique] gives itself space as a ready-made form of our percep-
tive facultya veritable deus ex machina, of which we see neither how it arises, nor why
it is what it is rather than anything else (1998, 206/1998, 205). In contrast, superior or
virtual empiricism searches for conditions of reality. It aims at generating the positive
categories of thought rather than determining them through analysis (ibid., 208/226).
In this sense, Bergson and Deleuze are looking for a deeper kind of necessity (i.e., how
and why the form of space is what it is rather than anything else). Beneath or beyond
the negative necessity invoked by transcendental idealism, superior empiricism points to
the fundamental positivity of the real and its conditions: in this consist both their inter-
nal necessity and the virtually unlimited field of their transformative and creative actu-
alization.
10. As we will see when we turn to Deleuzes Proust and Signs, such an intimate
relationship between the condition and the conditioned also is what, for him, defines
the essence.
11. Deleuze is here referring to Bergsons early demand, in Matter and Memory, that
Questions relating to subject and object, to their distinction and their union, should be
put in terms of time rather than space (74/71).
Chapter 5. Cinematic Thought:

The Deleuzean Image and the Crystals of Time
In the English language, the word cinematic refers to the art of making films. It
deals explicitly with cinematographic art. But I also chose to use the term cinematic here,
because it is an interesting faux ami in reference to the French language. In French, cin-
matique can be used interchangeably with cintique (kinetic). It thus refers primarily to
kinetic energy, understood as the quantity of work a body can produce due to the
170
Notes to Chapter 5
movement that animates it (Dictionnaire de langue franaise Littr). Used as a substantive,

cintique or cinmatique refers to the science whose object is the extent of the forces con-
sidered in the different movements they produce. In the context of this chapter, it is
highly significant that cinmatique also replaces the term mcanique (mechanics or
mechanical), which refers to the abstract science of movement (Dictionnaire de langue
franaise Littr).As I suggest throughout the chapter, Deleuzes Bergsonian reading of the
work cinema does seek to offer a nonmechanistic account of movement, as well as what
could be called a kinetic (or machinic) account of the emergence of thought from mate-
rial vibration.
1. Here I do not only have in mind Deleuzes 1956 article Bergsons Conception
of Difference and his 1966 Bergsonism but also the two cinema volumes of the early
1980s, which explicitly resonate with and respond to Matter and Memorys main theses
on perception, movement, and memory, as well as the more or less explicit references to
Bergson sprinkled throughout Difference and Repetition, A Thousand Plateaus, and the
numerous lectures, articles, and interviews that appear, among other places, in Negotia-
tions and Desert Island.
2. Dziga Vertov, Man with a Movie Camera, 1929.
3. Jean-Luc Godard, Passion (1982). Although no single narrative line is allowed to
take center stage, the film portrays a Polish director recreating in tableaux vivants a series
of celebrated paintings by Goya, Ingres, Delacroix, Rembrandt, and El Greco. But the
backers complain that there is no story. See Time Out Film Guide, pp. 99495.
4.This visionary situation of the actor reaches one of its most paradigmatic instan-
tiations in Werner Herzogs Heart of Glass (1976). In order to make the hallucinatory
atmosphere in which the film is bathed even more convincing, Herzog actually hypno-
tized his actors.Thus they not only appear to be in a trance, they actually are.They barely
move, they speak with difficulty, and their empty gazes stare into the void.
5. See, for instance, Federico Fellinis The Clowns (1970), in which documentary
interview material on now long-forgotten famous clowns is weaved with reconstruc-
tions of Fellinis childhood.The final slapstick yet highly pathetic funeral sequence cli-
maxes into a point of indiscernibility between past and present, objective and subjective,
real and imaginary. See also Orson Welles F for Fakes (1975) labyrinthine play of para-
doxes and ironies informing the author principle in art and his sarcastic treatment of
the original model/copy distinction.
6. Although I do not wish to treat the auditory aspect of the time-image here,
Deleuze makes explicit reference to Guattaris concept of the ritornello to describe it
a concept Guattari develops in reference to Prousts little phrase. As Deleuze puts it in
Cinema 2, The gallop and the ritornello are what we hear in the crystal, as the two
dimensions of musical time, the one being the hastening of the presents which are pass-
ing, the other the raising or falling back of pasts which are preserved (1985, 123/2001,
93). Of course, in such films as Godards Passion, Durass India Song (1974), or Resnaiss
Last Year in Marienbad (1961), the extensive use of off-screen voices and the general non-
171
Notes to Chapter 5
coincidence of sound and image contribute significantly to the decentralization, the

break with the action-image, and more generally the element of dissolution character-
istic of the time-image.
7.The term littralit does not exist in French. But both the double t and the con-
text are clear indications that what Deleuze has in mind here is not literalness (litral-
it), as the translators believe, but on the contrary the lack of literalnessprecisely due
to the literary (littraire) qualityof the world. Hence the necessity for introducing a
principle of readability of the image.
8. Although in the cinema books, Deleuze delves at length into a rigorous exami-
nation of the different types of signs that stem from different kinds of images, I do not
wish to focus on this aspect of his analysis here. I turn to an examination of signs in the
next chapter. Nevertheless, it seems worth noting that this process of displacement of
the actual object inherent in the time-imagea displacement that cannot be deemed
contingent, since it proceeds from the literary quality of the worldcoincides precisely
with the analysis that Walter Benjamin (1969) gives of The Image of Proust. Benjamin
writes,The outstanding literary achievement of our time is assigned a place in the heart
of the impossible, at the centreand also at the point of indifferenceof all dangers, and
it marks this great realization of a lifework as the last for a long time.The image of Proust
is the highest physiognomic expression which the irresistibly growing discrepancy between literature
and life was able to assume. This is the lesson which justifies the attempt to evoke this
image.We know that in his work Proust did not describe a life as it actually was, but as it was
remembered by the one who had lived it.And yet even this statement is imprecise and far too
crude. For the important thing for the remembering author is not what he experienced,
but the weaving of his memory, the Penelope work of recollection. Or should one call
it, rather, a Penelope work of forgetting? (1969, 19798, emphasis added). I have high-
lighted the elements that, in my view, mark a striking resonance between Deleuzes
account of the expanding powers that characterize the cinematographic time-image,
and Benjamins rendering of what he calls the image of Proust. In fact, I will strive to
show in what follows that it is precisely on the basis of the readability of the cinemato-
graphic image Deleuze introduces here that the connection between the time-image
and the image of Proust needs to be drawn.
9. In Matter and Memory, the Bergsonian term image-souvenir is translated as recol-
lection-image; in Cinema 2, it is translated as memory-image. I use both terms inter-
changeably.
10. 1997a, 115/1991, 105.Also refered to by Deleuze in Cinema 2 as Bergsons first
great diagram (see figure on top of page 173) (1985, 65 n. 4/289 n. 3).
11. Here Deleuze is referring to Bergsons seminal argument in Matter and Mem-
ory, for the necessary doubling of psychological and ontological memory, and for his
concomitant contention that there are several levels, planes or stories of consciousness.
Bergson explains, The same psychical life, therefore, must be supposed to be repeated
an endless number of times on the successive stories (tages) of memory, and the same
172
Notes to Chapter 5
act of the mind may be performed at various heights. In the effort of attention, the mind
(lesprit) is always concerned in its entirety, but it simplifies or complicates itself accord-
ing to the level on which it chooses to accomplish its evolutions (1997a, 115/1991,
105, trans. modified).
12. We explored this contention of his in the second chapter (especially the first
section, Memory and the Brain: Which Survival?). In Matter and Memory, Bergson
argues that such spontaneous memory (the immediate and automatic recording of every
detail independently of utility) conditions habit-memory (or the memory of the body
in accordance with which recollections insert themselves into the nascent movements
that coincide with perceptions).The latter is only a recollection to the extent that I can
remember having acquired it, but I can only remember having acquired it because I
implicitly appeal to spontaneous memory (1997a, 89/1991, 94). See also Memory of
the Present and False Recognition, in Mind-Energy (1996, 12425/1975, 12324).
13. In Nous avons invent la ritournelle, in Deux rgimes de fous (pp. 35256),
Deleuze establishes an important distinction between history and becoming. I return to
this in the Conclusion.
14. In Mind-Energy (1996, 11052/1975, 10952).
15. This is what Deleuze calls the 3rd diagram, which Bergson does not feel the
need to draw (1985, 109, n. 22/2001, 295, n. 23).
16. And, of course, in accordance with our earlier claim that the cinema itself
thinks, we must understand that the visionary here is no one in particular. In fact, it
173
Notes to Chapter 6
would have to be the cinematic process itself, which constitutes an arrangement

between all the people and the machinic processes involved in the production and
reception of the images.
Chapter 6. Proust and Thought:

Death, Art, and the Adventures of the Involuntary
1.As shown in the first chapter, Bergson argues that Kants distinction between the
phenomenal and the noumenal and his consequent notion of the transcendental fail to
acknoweldge the purely temporal or durational side of the real, thereby remaining
trapped in spatialized or abstract thinking. In short, Bergson argues that Kants inability
to overcome dualism (see the antinomies, the relativity of knowledge, and the affirma-
tion of the impossibility of intellectual intuition) stems from his inability to establish the
true dualism (the difference in kind between space and time, the actual and the virtual,
the quantitative and the qualitative multiplicities). Kant is thus unable to bridge the two
sides of the real: given that the two multiplicities have not been distinguished, no con-
vergence between them can be established.
2. In the absolute we are, we move and live. The knowledge we have of it is
incomplete, no doubt, but not external or relative. It is being itself, in its depths, that we
reach by the combined and progressive development of science and philosophy (1998a,
200/1988, 199, trans. modified).
3. Letter from Bergson to William James dated 27 June, 1907. Reproduced in
Mlanges (1972, 72627).Trans. Melissa McMahon. Bergson: Key Writings (2002, 36162).
4. No one has insisted more than Proust on the following point: that the truth is
produced, that it is produced by orders of machines that function within us, that it is
extracted from our impressions, hewn out of life, delivered in a work (1998b,
176/2000, 146).
5. Although the Random House Montcrieff translation of A la Recherche du temps
perdu I am using here is titled Remembrance of Things Past (1981), I much prefer to use a
direct translation of the French title, namely, The Search for Lost Time.
6. See Gregg Lamberts (2002) The Non-Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, especially his
first chapter, titled Philosophy and Non-Philosophy.
7. As I pointed out in the last chapter, although Bergson hypothesizes the theory
of pure or immanent perception to account for the emergence of thought, he does not
go so far as to claim that this is anything more than an in-principle experience. In my
view, it was precisely Deleuzes import to show that the great modern cinema could
indeed yield the experience of acenteredness that characterizes pure perception.
8. In Pli, vol. 15 (2004): 15897.
9. In his wonderful little monograph from 1957, simply entitled Proust.
174
Notes to Chapter 6
10. Note that in the last chapter, this revelation of the very force of time (and not
only of its effects) also constituted the nexus of the crystal-image.
11. Here Deleuze is refering to Prousts implicit criticism of Bergsons conception
of memory (and, I want to add, of Truth). Proust writes:
In spite of all that may be said about survival after the destruction of the brain,
I observe that each alteration of the brain is a partial death.We possess all our
memories, but not the faculty of recalling them, said, echoing M. Bergson, the
eminent Norwegian philosopher whose speech I have made no attempt to
imitate in order not to slow things down even more. But not the faculty of
recalling them.What then, is a memory which we do not recall? Or indeed,
let us go further. We do not recall our memories of the last thirty years; but
we are wholly steeped in them; why then stop at thirty years, why not extend
this previous life back to before our birth? If I do not know a whole section
of the memories that are behind me, if they are invisible to me, how do I
know whether in that mass that is unknown to me there may be some that
extend back much further than my human existence? . . . A common obliv-
ion obliterates everything. . . .The being that I shall be after death has no more
reason to remember what I have been since my birth than the latter to
remember what I was before it. (1999, 1496/1981, vol. 2, 1017)
12. In the third chapter of Difference and Repetition, Deleuze develops his critique of
representation (informed by common sense and identity) as the model for thought
through a reinterpretation of the Kantian notion of synthesis. For Deleuze, the first type
of synthesis (or repetition) coincides with the largely unconscious and bodily formation
of habit.The second type of repetition introduces memory and explains recognition: as
James Williams puts it in his Gilles Deleuzes Difference and Repetition (2003), we come to
recognize an actual thing and assign a fixed identity to it because habitual repetitions,
recorded and synthesized in memory, allow us to have a fixed representation of things.
But beyond recognition and representation, the third repetition (what Deleuze also calls
the eternal return,the empty form of time, and what I here propose to call death)
connects the first two repetitions to difference-in-itself: It explains how actual things
change in relation to virtual becomings (12). From the point of view of that third syn-
thesisor that superior, nonsubjective viewpointit now appears that habit and mem-
ory are the optical effects of daily life, which are only possible against a background of
virtual differences or intensities.
13. Although on rare occasions, the outcome of the work of interpretation is
crowned with joy, joy itself does not drive the work: it marks its contingent success.
14. A Thousand Plateaus, 294/240.
15. This last phrase is quite impossible to translate into English. In French tirer un
plan is literally to make a print from a negative. It thus suggests a movement of pulling
out, drawing out of some preexisting thing or state, but it also conveys the idea of a
reversal (between the negative and the print), a transformation or a conversion involved
175
Notes to Conclusion
in this movement. Furthermore, the word plan is insuperably ambiguous. It conveys all
at once the idea of a flat surface or a ground and a plan or a program. Thus when
Deleuze and Guattari define thought in all of its forms as that which tire des plans sur
le chaos, they are indicating at once all of the characteristics of their notion of the vir-
tual (or the revaluated transcendental): positivity, inherent dynamic or variability, neces-
sary interaction with the other side, and both its grounding (flat surface) and
ungrounding (plan to go beyond the ground) powers.
Conclusion. Bergson-Deleuze Encounters:

Machinic Becomings and Virtual Materialism
1. Deleuzes lecture The Theory of Multiplicities in Bergson, http://www. web-

deleuze.com. See also 2001b, 1409/1965, 176.
2. See Ansell-Pearsons (2002) insightful first essay, Introducing Time as a Virtual
Multiplicity, in Philosophy and the Adventures of the Virtual, 942. See especially the sec-
tion The Whole of Duration.
3. Most importantly, what characterizes this genuine philosophy of life is that for
Bergson as, more recently, for Raymond Ruyer, evolution does not go from one actual
term to another in a linear and homogenous series (like traditional evolutionism does),
but from a virtual to the terms that actualize it. See Raymond Ruyer, La gense des formes
vivantes. In Bergsonism (103/100), Deleuze makes reference to Ruyers Elments de psy-
cho-biologie (PUF), which I have been unable to locate or find any record of.
4. See, for instance, 1983, 8384/2001, 56, emphasis in original.
5. Decisive chapter in the sense that it is there that Deleuzes original accounts
of difference-in-itself and repetition-for-itself find their reason, in the overcoming of a
certain image of thought informed by forms of representation that always reduce dif-
ference to the same.
6. Cinema 1, Preface to the French Edition.
7. In Cinema 2, Deleuze writes, What constitutes the crystal-image is the most
fundamental operation of time: since the past is constituted not after the present that it
was but at the same time [cf. Bergsons memory of the present], time has to split itself
in two at each moment as present and past, which differ from each other in nature, or,
what amounts to the same thing, it has to split the present in two heterogeneous direc-
tions, one of which is launched toward the future while the other falls into the past
(109/81).
8. 1985, 275/2001, 211. See also Steven Rose, The Conscious Brain (1975).
9. Attributable to such naturalists as William Bateson (1894).
10.This follows from Bergsons demonstration of the utilitarian orientation of con-
scious perception, on the one hand, and of his conception of the dynamic schema, on
176
Notes to Conclusion
the other (his idea that a perception is already the beginning of an action). As he notes,
It may be claimed that considerations of utility are out of place here; that the eye is not
made to see, but that we see because we have eyes; that the organ is what it is, and util-
ity is a word by which we designate the functional effects of the structure. But when I
say that the eye makes use of light, I do not merely mean that the eye is capable of see-
ing; I allude to the very precise relations that exist between this organ and the appara-
tus of locomotion.The retina of the vertebrates is prolonged in an optic nerve, which,
again, is continued by cerebral centers connected with motor mechanisms (1998,
72/71).
11. As I noted before, my argument here does not concern the current validity of
Bergons scientific references as much as it tries to convey his conception of evolution
on his own terms. For more recent biological references regarding these issues, consult the
extensive bibliography that Keith Ansell-Pearson has compiled in his Bergsons Cre-
ative Evolution/Involution, in The New Bergson, 14667.
12. Note the striking relevance of this whole discussion to the current debates
between evolutionism and intelligent design! Note also that Bergsons vital impulse
does not in any way negate evolutionary theories. On the contrary, it refines them in
order to make room for both determinacy (directions of evolution) and indeterminacy
(spontaneity and creation of forms). As he puts it, Each of [these theories], being sup-
ported by a considerable number of facts, must be true in its way. Each of them must
correspond to a certain aspect of the process of evolution. Perhaps even it is necessary
that a theory should restrict itself exclusively to a particular point of view, in order to
remain scientific, i.e., to give a precise direction to researches into detail. But the reality
of which these theories takes a partial view must transcend (dpasser) them all. And this
reality is the special object of philosophy, which is not constrained to scientific precision
because it contemplates no practical application (1998, 85/1998, 8485).
13. The Logic of Sense, 208/177. Deleuze adds, We do not raise contrary qualities
to infinity in order to affirm their identity; we raise each event to the power of the eter-
nal return in order that the individual, born out of that which happens, affirm her dis-
tance with respect to every other event. As the individual affirms the distance, she fol-
lows and joins it, passing through all the other individuals implied by the other events,
and extracts from it a unique Event which is once again herself, or rather the universal
freedom (209/178, trans. modified).
177
References
Alliez, Eric, ed. 1998. Gilles Deleuze: une vie philosophique. Le Plessis-Robinson: Institut
Synthlabo.
Ansell-Pearson, Keith. 1997. Deleuze and Philosophy:The Difference Engineer. London and
New York: Routledge.
. 1999. Germinal Life. London and New York: Routledge.
. 2002. Philosophy and the Adventure of the Virtual. London and NewYork: Rout-
ledge.
. 2004. Time, Space, Forced Movement, and the Death-Drive: Reading Proust
with Deleuze. Pli 15: 15897.
Ansell-Pearson, Keith, and John Mullarkey, eds. 2002. Bergson: Key Writings. New York
and London: Continuum.
Antonioni, Michelangelo. 1960. LAvventura.
Badiou, Alain. 1997. Deleuze, la clameur de ltre. Trans. L. Burchhill. Paris: Hachette.
Deleuze, the Clamour of Being. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000.
Barbaras, Renaud. 2000. Bergson, philosophe de notre temps, in Magazine Littraire
386 (April 2000): 47.
Bateson, William. 1894. Materials for the Study of Variation: Treated With Special Regard to
Discontinuity in the Origin of Species.
Baugh, Bruce. 1993. Deleuze and Empiricism. Journal of British Society for Phenomenol-
ogy 24: 1, 1531.
Bazin, Andr. 2002. Quest-ce que le cinma? Paris: Les ditions du Cerf.
Beckett, Samuel. 1957. Proust. New York: Grove Press.
Benjamin,Walter. 1969. Illuminations. New York: Schocken Books.
179
References
Bergson, Henri. [1889] 2001a. Essai sur les donnes immdiates de la conscience. Paris:
Quadrige/PUF. Trans. F. L. Pogson Mineola. Time and Free Will. New York: Dove
Publications, 2001.
. [1896] 1997a. Matire et mmoire. Paris: Quadrige/PUF. Trans. N. M. Paul and
W. S. Palmer. Matter and Memory. New York: Zone Books, 1991.
. [1902] 1996. Leffort intellectuel. In Lnergie spirituelle, 15390. In Mind-
Energy (1975), 15490.
. [1903] 2001b. Introduction la mtaphysique. In La pense et le mouvant. In
uvres, 13921432. Introduction to Metaphysics. In The Creative Mind (1965),
159200.
. [1907] 1998. Lvolution cratrice. Paris: Quadrige/PUF.Trans. Arthur Mitchell.
Creative Evolution. New York: Dover Publications, 1998.
. [1907] 1972. Letter to William James, June 27, 1907. In Mlanges, 72627.Trans.
Melissa McMahon. In Bergson: Key Writings (Ansell-Pearson 2002), 362.
. [1908] 1996. Le souvenir du prsent et la fausse reconnaissance. In Lnergie
spirituelle, 11052. The Memory of the Present: False Recognition. In Mind-
Energy (1975), 11153.
. [1919] 1996. Lnergie spirituelle. Paris: Quadrige/PUF. Trans. H. Wildon Carr.
Mind-Energy.Westport: Greenwood Press, 1975.
. [1932] 1997b. Les Deux sources de la morale et de la religion. Paris: Quadrige/ PUF.
Trans. R. Ashley Audra and Cloudesly Brereton. The Two Sources of Morality and
Religion. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1935.
. [1934] 2001b. La pense et le mouvant. In uvres, 12491482.Trans. Mabelle L.
Andison. The Creative Mind. Totowa, New Jersey: Littlefield, Adams & Co, 1965.
. 1972. Mlanges. Paris: PUF.
. 1990. Cours I. Leons de psychologie et mtaphysique. Paris: Epimthe/PUF.
. 1995. Cours III. Leons dhistoire de la philosophie moderne; thories de lme. Paris:
Epimthe/PUF.
. 2001b. uvres. Paris: PUF.
Berkeley, George. 1999. Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues. CITY??:
Oxford University Press.
Blanchot, Maurice. 1969. LEntretien Infini. Paris: Gallimard.
. 2001.The Experience of Proust. In Faux Pas. Trans. Charlotte Mandell. Stan-
ford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Bogue, Ronald. 2003a. Deleuze on Cinema. New York and London: Routledge.
. 2003b. Deleuze on Literature. New York and London: Routledge.
. 2003c. Deleuze on Music, Painting, and the Arts. New York and London: Routledge.
180
References
Boundas, C.V. 1996.Deleuze-Bergson:An Ontology of the Virtual. In Deleuze:A Crit-

ical Reader, ed. Paul Patton. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Buchanan, Ian, ed. 1999. A Deleuzian Century. Durham and London: Duke University
Press.
Colebrook, Claire. 2002. Gilles Deleuze. London and New York: Routledge.
De Beistegui, Miguel. 2004. Truth and Genesis. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana
University Press.
Delacour, Jean. 1997. Matire et mmoire, la lumire des neurosciences. In Bergson et
les Neurosciences. Ed. Philippe Galois and Grard Forzy. Le Plessis-Robinson: Insti-
tut Synthlabo, 2327.
Delanda, Manuel. 2002. Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy. London and New York:
Continuum.
Deleuze, Gilles. 1962. Nietzsche et la philosophie. Paris: Quadrige/PUF, 1997.Trans. Hugh
Tomlinson. Nietzsche and Philosophy. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983.
. 1963. La philosophie critique de Kant. Paris: PUF. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and
Barabara Habberjam. Kants Critical Philosophy. Minneapolis: University of Min-
nesota Press, 1984.
. [1964] 1998b. Proust et les signes. Paris: Quadrige/PUF.Trans. Richard Howard.
Proust and Signs. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000.
. [1966] 1998a. Le Bergsonisme. Paris: Quadrige/PUF.Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and
Barbara Habberjam. Bergsonism. New York: Zone Books, 1988.
. [1968] 1997. Diffrence et rptition. Paris: Epimthe/PUF. Trans. Paul Patton.
Difference and Repetition. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.
. 1968b. Spinoza et le problme de lexpression. Paris: Les ditions de Minuit.
. 1969. Logique du sens. Paris: Les ditions de Minuit.Trans. M. Lester and C. Sti-
vale. Logic of Sense. London: Athlone Press, 1990.
. 1970. Thorie des multiplicits chez Bergson. http://www.webdeleuze.
com/php/texte.
. 1975. Kafka: Pour une littrature mineure. Paris: Les ditions de Minuit.Trans. D.
Polan. Kafka:Toward a Minor Literature. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1986.
. [1981] 2002a. Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation. Paris: ditions du Seuil.
Trans. Daniel Smith. 2005. Francis Bacon:The Logic of Sensation. University of Min-
nesota Press.
. 1983. Cinma 1: Limage-mouvement. Paris: Les ditions de Minuit.Trans. Hugh
Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. Cinema 1: The Movement-Image. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2001.
181
References
. 1985. Cinma 2: Limage-temps. Paris: Les ditions de Minuit.Trans. Hugh Tom-

linson and Robert Galeta. Cinema 2: The Time-Image. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2001.
. 1986. Foucault. Paris: Les ditions de Minuit.Trans. S. Hand. Foucault. London:
Athlone Press, 1988.
. 1988. Le Pli: Leibniz et le Baroque. Paris: Les ditions de Minuit.Trans.T. Con-
ley. 1993. The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque. London: Athlone Press.
. 1990. Pourparlers. Paris: Les ditions de Minuit.
. 1993. Critique et clinique. Paris: Les ditions de Minuit.Trans. Daniel Smith and
Michael A. Greco. Essays Critical and Clinical. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1997.
. 1996. Dialogues avec Claire Parnet. Paris: Flammarion. Trans. H. Tomlinson and
B. Habberjam. Dialogues with Claire Parnet. London: Athlone Press, 1987.
. 1998c. Empirisme et Subjectivit. Paris: pimthe/PUF. Trans. C. V. Boundas.
Empiricism and Subjectivity. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.
. 2001. Pure Immanence: A Life. Trans. Anne Boyman. New York: Zone Books.
. Lle dserte et autres textes. Paris: Les ditions de Minuit.Trans. Mike Taormina.
Desert Island and Other Texts (19531974). Semiotext(e)/SmartArt, 2003.
. 1956. La Conception de la diffrence chez Bergson. In Lle dserte et autres
textes (2002), 4372. Trans. Melissa McMahon. Bergsons Conception of Differ-
ence. In The New Bergson (Mullarkey, ed. 1999), 4265.
. 2003. Deux rgimes de fous. Paris: Les ditions de Minuit.Trans. Two Regimes of
Madness:Texts and Interviews 19751995. Trans.Ames Hodges and Mike Taormina.
Semiotext(e)/Foreign Agents, 2006.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Flix Guattari. 1972. LAnti-dipe. Paris: Les ditions de Minuit.
Trans. R. Hurley, M. Seem, and H. R. Lane. Anti-Oedipus. London: The Athlone
Press, 1994.
. 1980. Mille Plateaux. Paris: Les ditions de Minuit.Trans. B. Massumi. A Thou-
sand Plateaus. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986.
. 1991. Quest-ce que la philosophie? Paris: Les ditions de Minuit. Trans. Hugh
Tomlinson and Graham Burchnell. What is Philosophy? New York: Columbia Uni-
versity Press, 1994.
Derrida, Jacques. 1967. La Voix et le phnomne. Paris: PUF.Trans. David B.Allison. Speech
and Phenomena. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973.
Douglass, P. 1992.Deleuzes Bergson: Bergson Redux. In The Crisis of Modernism: Berg-
son and the Vitalist Controversy, ed. F. Burwick and P. Douglass, 36887. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Duras, Marguerite. 1974. India Song.
182
References
Durie, Robin. 2000. Splitting Time: Bergsons Philosophical Legacy. Philosophy Today
44: 15268.
Fellini, Roberto. 1970. The Clowns.
. 1973. Amarcord.
Flaxman, Gregory, ed. 2000. The Brain Is the Screen: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Cinema.
Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.
Freud, Sigmund. 1991a. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. In On Metapsychology, ed.
Angela Richards, 269338. Penguin Freud Library, vol. 11. Harmondsworth, Mid-
dlesex: Penguin Books.
. 1991b. The Wolf Man. In Case Histories II, ed. Angela Richards, 225366.
Penguin Freud Library, vol. 9. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books.
Gallois, Philippe, and Grard Forzy, eds. 1997. Bergson et les Neurosciences. Le Plessis
Robinson: Institut Synthlabo.
Godard, Jean-Luc. 1982. Passion.
Hayden, Patrick.From Relations to Practice in the Empiricism of Gilles Deleuze. The
Continental Philosophy Review 28:3 (July 1995).
Herzog,Werner. 1976. Heart of Glass.
Hude, Henri, ed. 1995. Bergson: Cours III. Paris: PUF.
Hyppolite, Jean. 1991. Bergson. In Figures de la pense philosophique I. Paris:
Quadrige/PUF. 44398.
Janklvitch,Vladimir. 1959. Henri Bergson. Paris: Quadrige/PUF.
Kant, Immanuel. 1998. Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. and ed. Paul Guyer and Allen W.
Wood. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Trans. and ed. Paul Guyer. Cambridge and
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Kristeva, Julia. 1994. Le Temps sensible. Proust et lexprience littraire. Paris: NRF
Essais/Gallimard.
Kwinter, S. 2001. Architectures of Time.Toward a Theory of the Event in Modernist Culture.
Cambridge and London: MIT Press.
Lambert, Gregg. 2002. The Non-Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. London and New York:
Continuum.
Lawlor, Leonard. 1998. The End of Phenomenology: Expressionism in Deleuze and
Merleau-Ponty. Continental Philosophy Review 31: 1534.
. 2000. A Nearly Total Affinity. The Deleuzian Virtual Image versus the Der-
ridean Trace. Angelaki 5:2: 5971.
Lasctisme et la sexualit: Le progrs thique dans Les Deux Sources de la morale et de la
religion. In Annales Bergsoniennes (Worms, ed. 2002). Trans. Valentine Moulard.
23142.
183
References
. 2003a.The Beginnings of Thought:The Fundamental Experience in Derrida

and Deleuze. In Between Derrida and Deleuze, ed. Paul Patton and John Protevi,
6783. London and New York: Continuum.
. 2003b. The Challenge of Bergsonism. London and New York: Continuum.
Lawlor, Leonard, and Valentine Moulard. 2004. Bergson entry in the Stanford Encyclo-
pedia of Philosophy (SEP). http://www.plato.stanford.edu/entries/bergson.
Massumi, Brian. 1992. A Users Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Cambridge and
London: MIT Press.
. 2002. Parables for the Virtual. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1964. Le Visible et linvisible. Paris: Gallimard. Trans. Alphonso
Lingis. The Visible and the Invisible. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press,
1968.
Moore, F. C. T. 1996. Bergson. Thinking Backwards. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Moulard,Valentine. 2002.The Time-Image and Deleuzes Transcendental Experience.
Continental Philosophy Review 35:3: 32545.
. 2004. Thought as Modern Art or the Ethics of Perversion. Philosophy Today
28897.
. 2005. Revolutionary Becomings: Negritudes Anti-Humanist Humanism.
Human Studies 30: 119.
Moulard-Leonard,Valentine. 2006.The Sublime and the Intellectual Effort:The Imag-
ination in Bergson and Kant. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 37:2:
13851.
Mullarkey, John, ed. 1999. The New Bergson. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Patton, Paul. 1994.Anti-Platonism and Art. In Deleuze and the Theater of Philosophy, ed.
C.V. Boundas and D. Olkowski, 14157. New York: Routledge.
Proust, Marcel. [19131927] 1999. la Recherche du temps perdu (Du ct de chez Swann,
lombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, Le ct de Guermantes, Sodome et Gomorrhe, La pris-
onnire, Albertine disparue, Le temps retrouv). Paris: Gallimard/Quarto. Trans. C. K.
Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin. Remembrance of Things Past (Vol. 1: Swanns
Way,Within a Budding Grove,The Guermantes Way;Vol. 2: Sodom and Gomorrha,The
Captive,The Fugitive,Time Regained). New York: Random House, 1981.
. 1988. Projet de Prface du Contre Sainte-Beuve. In Du Ct de chez Swann,
43135. Paris: Folio Classique, Gallimard.
. 1999. crits sur lart. Paris: GF Flammarion.
Pym, John, ed. 2005. Time Out Film Guide. London:Time Out Guides.
Renoir, Jean. 1939. La rgle du jeu (Rules of the Game).
184
References
Resnais, Alain. 1961. Lanne dernire Marienbad (Last Year at Marienbad).

. 1967. Je taime, je taime.
Rodowick, D. N. 1997. Gilles Deleuzes Time-Machine. Durham and London: Duke Uni-
versity Press.
Rose, Steven. 1975. The Conscious Brain. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
. 1993. The Making of Memory: From Molecules to Mind. New York:Anchor Books,
Doubleday.
Ruyer, Raymond. 1958. La gnse des formes vivantes. Paris: Flammaron.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1943. Ltre et le nant. Paris: Gallimard. Trans. Hazel E. Barnes. Being
and Nothingness. New York:Washington Square Press, 1984.
Simondon, Gilbert. 1995. LIndividu et sa gnse physico-biologique. Grenoble: ditions
Jrme Million.
Smith, D. W. 1996. Deleuzes Theory of Sensation: Overcoming the Kantian Duality.
In Deleuze: A Critical Reader, ed. P. Patton, 2957. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Soulez, Philippe, and Frdric Worms. 2002. Bergson. Paris: PUF.
Stancati, C., ed. 2001. Henri Bergson: Esprit et langage. Sprimont: Mardaga.
Tarkovsky, Andrei. 1989. Le temps scell. Paris: Cahiers du Cinma.
Verstraeten, P., and I. Stengers, eds. 1998. Gilles Deleuze. Paris:Vrin.
Vertov, Dziga. 1929. Man With a Movie Camera.
Visconti, Luchino. 1976. The Innocent.
Welles, Orson. 1975. F for Fake.
Williams, James. 2003. Gilles Deleuzes Difference and Repetition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press.
Worms, Frdric. 1997. Introduction Matire et mmoire de Bergson. Paris: PUF.
, ed. 2002. Annales Bergsoniennes I, Bergson dans le sicle. Paris: Epimethe/PUF.
Zourabichvili, Francois. 1994. Deleuze: Une philosophie de lvnement. Paris: PUF.
185
Index
abstraction, 19, 107, 118, 142, 147, apperception: unity of, 27, 94
160n16; of individual qualities, 75; apprenticeship, 121, 134, 136137, 140
intellectual, 12 a priori, 16, 37, 43, 56, 90, 159n10,
actual, the, 29, 39, 41, 4445, 47, 51, 57, 160n12; categories, 7; deduction, 28;
64, 83, 113114, 119121, 128, 142, form of sensibility, 11
143, 151, 159n8, 163n10; conscious- Aristotle, 34, 63, 66, 97, 162n2
ness, 40, 50, 69, 71; perception, 29, 41, art, 105, 123, 128129, 131141; genetic
4345, 46, 56, 68, 71, 74, 112, 114 condition for, 41; work of, 122, 126,
actualization, 48, 52, 57, 61, 73, 8182, 132
103, 166n12, 170n9; of consciousness, associationism, 17, 34, 43, 65, 158n7
27, 41, 53; of memory, 35, 52, 73; associationist psychology, 17, 4243,
process of, 14, 48, 52, 53, 57, 65; of 166n19
the virtual, 45, 51, 53, 72 attention, 4547, 117; effort of, 78,
affection, 22, 2628, 84, 99, 109 173n11; progress of, 51, 113; to life,
Albertine, 133134 41, 45
Amarcord, 121 Avventura, L, 109
analysis, 37, 49, 53, 79, 85, 9195, 103,
106, 169n4, 170n9 Bacon, Francis, 2
Ansell-Pearson, Keith: 3, 1213, 129, 135, Barbaras, Renaud, 27, 160n18
143, 152, 155n5, 156nn1112, 165n7, Beckett, Samuel, 130132, 134
165n10, 176n2, 177n11 becoming, 31, 35, 6366, 71, 106, 108,
Anti-dipus, 130 130, 140141, 146147, 151, 153,
Antonioni, Michelangelo: Avventura, L, 155n3, 173n13; block of, 2; experi-
109 ence of, 8; forces of 110; process of,
aphasia, 36, 4243 53, 83; universal 70
apparatus, 106107; cinematographic, 51; Being and Nothingness, 33
of locomotion, 177n10; muscular, 49; Bergsonism, 3, 5, 89, 87, 116, 142143,
photographic, 149; visual, 151 153, 156n7, 158n8, 160n17; and dif-
187
Index
Bergsonism (continued) of, 58; of place, 92; qualitative, 13,

ference, 71; and dualism, 19, 23, 57; 107, 118; quantitative, 92; voluntary
and duration, 90; and false problems, 29
95; of the future, 9, 142, 153; and Chiasm, the, 27
Husserl, 143, 166n14; and integral cinema, the, 105108, 111112,
experience, 4; and Kant, 34; and 115119, 144145, 171, 173n16;
metaphysics, 6364; and the Cinema 1, 118, 143; Cinema 2, 5, 41,
mind/body problem, 57; and move- 47, 84, 116, 118, 120; cinematic
ment-image, 118; and the paradox of image, 107108, 112; cinematic
the double, 34; and phenomenology, process, 174n16; cinematic thought,
144145; and recollection, 113; and 105; cinematograph, 106107; cine-
revolution, 3; and transcendental matographic art; 170, 172n8; cine-
empiricism, 76 matographic image, 108, 111, 118,
Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 41, 125, 140; cinematographic model of
162n6, 169n4 intellectual knowledge, 126; cine-
Blanchot, Maurice, 2, 29, 55, 128; The matographic nature, 119, 124;
Infinite Conversation, 5 metacinema, 106
body, the, 19, 2129, 3133, 3541, circuit, 5051, 107, 109110, 113, 115,
4446, 4849, 52, 7172, 85, 112, 117, 120121; short-, 115
114, 160n17, 173n12; without organs, clich, 110, 113, 162n7
135 coexistence, 38, 58, 62, 64, 66, 70, 85, 90,
brain, the, 3, 6, 15, 2227, 3233, 41, 117, 120121, 153
4346, 5657, 61, 70, 83, 147, 156n7, common sense, 3, 21, 145, 175n12
159n9, 160n15, 173n12, 175,11 concept, 83, 96, 100, 102103; of being,
63; creation of, 8, 41, 135; formation
Cartesian: era, 63; form 84; framework, of, 75; of life, 5859
166n14 condition, 19, 35, 51, 6970, 97, 100,
Cartesianism, 57, 63 102103, 115, 117, 122, 126128,
causality: billiard ball, 158n4; concep- 143, 157n15, 170,10; for the actual-
tion of, 16; gunpower, 165n9; ization, 51, 53; of experience, 3, 7, 51,
mechanical, 142; principle of, 18; tele- 53, 9091, 97, 100, 108, 145, 166n16;
ological, 83 genetic, 96, 101, 162n7; human, 6, 7,
cause, 15, 52, 62, 77, 158n4, 166n19; con- 86, 164n1, 169n7, 170n7; Kantian, 34,
ception of 59; for the fragmentation, 100, 101, 166n16; of necessity, 34,
61; of perception, 26; mechanical, 107 101, 170n9; negative, 46; for the pos-
central telephonic switchboard, 23, 31, sibility, 19, 34, 46, 73, 90, 9798, 115,
44, 160n14, 160n17 160, 170n9; pure, 99; for the reality,
cerebral: arrangement, 22, 57; centers, 73, 170n9; transcendental, 2, 7, 51, 81,
177n10; little deaths, 147; matter, 108; true, 58; virtual, 7, 45, 5152,
23, 31; substance, 31; variation, 26; 101
vibration, 23 cone, the, of memory, 72, 74, 101, 112,
change, 64, 123, 130, 142, 147, 149, 147, 166n19, 167n23
157n15; hereditary, 150; phenomenon connaissance. See knowing
188
Index
consciousness, 2, 56, 1319, 22, 2430, crystal, 117, 120122, 171n6; crystalline,
3650, 5253, 57, 6271, 77, 8182, 120; crystallization, 94; -image,
8587, 92, 94, 96, 99, 102, 115118, 114117, 120121, 125, 127, 140,
128, 143145, 150, 157n13, 158n7, 145145, 153, 175n10, 176n7, of
160n17, 162n4, 165n11, 166n12, time, 105
169n3; actual, 7, 50, 69, 72; actualiza-
tion of, 27, 53; camera-, 110111, death, 90, 125, 127131, 135, 137, 141,
119; conscious state, 12, 16; genesis of, 147, 151152, 175nn1112; in
21, 25, 55, 108; immediate, 14, 16, Amarcord, 121; as artistic production,
158n8, 169n3; phenomenon of; 19, 129; experience of, 116, 128, 130;
22, 28, 67; in Phenomenology of Spirit, -instinct, 129, 162n6; in Proust, 124,
75; planes of, 7880, 112, 172n11 152
continuity, 75, 49, 5960, 82, 92, 132, dj vu, 44, 116
147; of becoming, 65; and discontinu- delay. See cart
ity, 31, 50, 60; of existence, 70; hetero- Descartes, 63, 64, 74, 126
geneous, 76; sonorous, 49; of sound, determinism, 1517, 19, 34, 42, 48, 114,
49; in space, 69; of the unconscious, 119, 149, 158n4; determinist, 1516,
69 18
contraction, 7, 48, 53; degrees of, 86; dila- deterritorialization, 108
tion and, 101; effort of, 58, 133; levels difference, 6, 20, 2425, 30, 3435, 37,
of, 86; notion of, 45, 85; state of, 80 45, 53, 5758, 60, 62, 6466, 7377,
creation, 9, 8, 97, 105, 129, 136; of con- 82, 85, 87, 94, 112, 138, 165n11,
cepts, 135, 157n14, 162n7; of differ- 168n1, 175n12, 176n5; in degree,
ence, 85; effort of, 83; of forms, 150, 27, 30, 58, 62, 65, 7172, 8485,
152, 177n12; and invention, 137; 98100, 138; internal, 62, 73, 80, 98;
memory and, 128; movement of, 93, in kind, 16, 2728, 3031, 34, 56,
113; of the new, 147; poetic, 158n6; 58, 62, 71, 82, 84, 96, 98100,
and production; secrets of, 91, 138139, 149, 169n6, 174n1; of
157n15; spark of, 125; truth and, 96, nature, 30, 5658, 66, 72, 85; onto-
97, 136; of the virtual, 151; of a work logical, 62; philosophy of, 5657, 72,
of art, 132 85, 89, 166n18; qualitative, 17,
creative: abilities, 25; actualization, 170n9; 2829, 38, 40, 62, 64, 98; radical, 11,
effort, 148; emotion, 86, 100; evolu- 39, 51; temporal, 62
tion, 42, 45, 124125, 147148, Difference and Repetition, 45, 27, 56, 105,
150151; impulse, 58; integration, 18; 126, 129, 136137, 144145, 146,
involution, 105, 155n3; time, 157n15 156n12, 161n23, 161n35, 165n5,
Creative Evolution, 13, 15, 20, 22, 25, 42, 165n10, 171n1, 175n12
45, 5859, 6264, 93, 106, 143, 148, differential calculus, 4
151, 156n13, 158n4, 159n9, 161n1 discernment, 2526, 49
critique: Critique of Pure Reason, 27, discontinuity, 6, 31, 50, 60, 82, 147
156n5; Kants, 13, 9798; Kantian, 19, distance. See cart
42, 56, 64, 90, 156n13, 168n29, double, paradox of the, 14, 3435, 45, 57,
170n9; phenomenological, 27 61
189
Index
dream, 4041, 74, 78, 112115, 130, transcendental, 57, 159n11; virtual, 3,
162n6; anxiety dream, 162n6; dream- 7, 42, 57, 103, 170n9
er, 74, 115, 121; -life, 40; dream state, emergence, 103; of a center, 118; of con-
167n23. See also image sciousness, 19, 108; of a spirit,
dualism, 5, 12, 19, 21, 2324, 28, 31, 34, 157n15; of subjectivity, 8; of thought,
4445, 55, 5758, 62, 75, 84, 95, 99, 112, 126, 139, 157n15, 171, 174n7
101, 120, 124, 145, 158n7, 174n1, epistemology, 6, 13, 23, 48, 95
156n7, 158n7, 174n1 essence, 58, 62, 68, 78, 90, 102103,
dualist, 6 107108, 117, 123, 132139, 142,
dualistic: metaphysics, 89; monism, 58, 151, 166n13, 170n10
87; problematic, 159n8; project, 21; Europe 51, 113
tradition 75 event, the, 51, 74, 80, 128, 132, 135, 139,
duration, 23, 6, 12, 1421, 27, 30, 35, 162n4, 177n13
3841, 51, 5760, 62, 66, 7072, evolution, 2, 42, 6061, 77, 82, 142,
8286, 9095, 98103, 107, 118119, 146152, 155n3, 166n12, 176n3,
123137, 142, 146147, 152153, 177nn1112; cosmic, 90; of life,
157n15, 158n4, 158nn78, 160n13, 5860, 93; natural, 18; organic, 151;
164n4, 165n8, 166n15, 168nn2728; vegetal, 150. See also creative
Bergsonian, 123, 129, 131, 146, existentialism, 4, 30, 158n7
168n28; ontological, 58, 64, 91, 102; expansion, 7, 61; artistic, 9; experimenta-
psychic, 15; psychological, 64, 102; tion, 3, 115; of the image, 110; intel-
rhythms of, 58, 62, 72, 92, 94, 102, lectual, 51; powers of, 110, 112113,
153; vital, 127, 137, 152 119
la dure. See duration experience: actual, 53, 101, 118;
dynamic schema, 77, 7980, 93, 163n11, conscious, 38; of death, 128130;
176n10 empirical, 161n21; existential,
158n7; ground of, 11; grounding,
cart, 2227, 8384, 102103, 147, 53, 105; human, 56, 69, 76, 81,
177n13 102, 164n1; image of, 2; integral, 3,
effort, 7680, 8283, 92, 148, 150, 91, 167n22, 168n1; human, 81;
167n21; of abstraction, 75; of atten- mystical, 100, 132133; orders of,
tion, 78, 173n11; of contraction, 58; 36, 39, 4041; past, 19, 28, 36, 71;
intellectual, 18, 78, 8283, 8587, phenomenological, 170n9; philoso-
93, 112, 167n21; of intuition, phies of, 30; Proustian, 5152, 129,
156n13; of invention, 82, 84; of rec- 167n22; psychological, 34, 76, 91;
ollection, 66, 80, 84, 93; of reflec- real, 100, 108; reflective, 51; scientific,
tion, 77; of synthesis, 47; of the will, 60; of sense, 4950; sensible, 3;
14, 18, 38, 45 theory of, 30; transcendental, 91,
lan vital. See vital impulse 102, 139, 146, 153, 161nn2021,
Eleatic, 15, 92, 118, 158n5, 169n2 163n12; virtual, 108; visionary,
empiricism, 8990, 95, 97, 102; philo- 112113. See also condition; pure
sophical, 95; superior, 34, 100102, perception
108, 115116, 142, 166n18, 170n9; extensity, theory of, 28, 99, 101, 103
190
Index
F for Fake, 105, 171n5 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 75, 77,
feeling (sentiment), 17, 22, 69, 75, 78, 80, 126, 162n4; The Phenomenology of
84, 9294, 97, 100101, 132, 135, 140 Spirit, 75
Fellini, 120, 121, 171n5 Heidegger, Martin, 87, 162n2
finalism, 82; finality, 59; internal, 59; tele- heterogeneity, 5, 11, 12, 7273, 86, 147
ological, 148 Hitchcock, Alfred, 107, 109, 111, 119;
flashback, 113115 Vertigo, 107
fragment, 130, 135 Houdini, Harry, 79
fragmentation, 8, 61, 135 human condition, the. See condition
free will, 15, 1819, 51 Hume, David, 27, 43, 166n19
freedom, 2, 11, 1516, 1819, 21, 2526, Husserl, Edmund Gustav Albrecht, 143,
28, 34, 48, 53, 5859, 77, 9697, 100, 149, 166n14
119, 125, 133, 153, 165n12, 177n13
Freud, Sigmund, 41, 159n8, 162,6, idea: of death, 129030, 135, 151, 152;
165n11, 169n4; Beyond the Pleasure general, 7374, 7778; Idea, 136138;
Principle, 47, 162n6, 169n4 Ideas of Platonism, 34; ready-made,
force of time, 8, 23, 111, 140, 175n10 90
form of space 6, 11, 108, 170n9 idealism, 2129, 42, 49, 55, 57, 72, 75, 90,
form of time 6, 39, 81, 108, 129, 143, 156n7; Platonic, 124; transcen-
131132, 135, 137, 140, 151152, dental, 4, 45, 56, 90, 102104, 108,
164n4, 168n28, 175n12 120, 124, 170n9
Foucault, Michel, 29, 42; pendulum 42 idealist, 5, 21, 23, 67
future, 1617, 2930, 39, 66, 68, 71, 85, identity, 4, 63, 153, 175n12, 177n13
94, 97, 102, 117, 120122, 124, 126, illusion, 16, 23, 6970, 87, 9699, 103,
135, 137, 141, 142, 145 115, 117, 169n7
image, 2124, 142153; action-, 36, 144,
genesis: of conscious experience, 118; of 172n6; affection-, 144; Bergsonian, 72;
consciousness, 21, 25, 55, 108; of brain, 22; cinematic, 108, 112; cine-
thought, 117, 124, 127, 134; of time, matographic, 107, 111, 118, 172n8;
8, 112, 125, 145 dogmatic, 90, 126127; memory-, 33,
Godard, JeanLuc, 109, 171n3, 171n6 36, 3941, 43, 46, 50, 52, 6566, 112,
Gouhier, Henri, 63 114115, 172n9; movement-, 2224,
ground of experience, 11, 7677, 81, 96, 36, 107111, 118119, 144145,
102, 108 160n13; optical-sound, 110111, 116,
Guatarri, Flix, 2, 4, 11, 133, 155n3; What 162n7; past, 2829, 3536, 41, 47, 49;
is Philosophy?, 140141, 143, 162n7 perception-, 38, 50, 144; Proustian,
Guermantes, Chteau de, 121, 130 111, 172n8; pure optical, 112114;
recollection-, 73, 112117, 142n9; and
habit, 6, 13, 37, 40, 68, 74, 77, 8687, 90, schema, 8186, 93; sensory-motor,
94, 97, 125, 127, 131, 133, 139, 109, 162n7; spatial, 70; time-, 36,
161n23, 162n5, 173n12, 175n12; - 109111, 113115, 117, 119, 144145,
memory; 35, 71; -recognition, 43 160n13, 171n6, 172n6, 172n8; virtual,
Hamlet, 129, 146 52, 101, 113115, 117, 120
191
Index
immanence, pure, 3, 8, 101, 108, 116, involuntary, the, 52, 81, 123, 136
118, 120, 127, 142146, 153 involution, creative, 2, 42, 105, 155n3,
immanent process, 4, 13, 76, 97, 101, 108, 177n11
114, 120, 138
immediate data of consciousness, 12, 16, James,William, 2, 124, 155n5, 156n5,
27, 31, 40, 66, 74, 79, 103, 172n12 156n12, 157n2, 164n1, 174n3l;
impotence, 4, 29, 30, 66, 109, 112, 119, Pragmatism, 124
134 Je taime, je taime, 110
impuissance. See impotence jealousy, 133, 134, 140, 151
indeterminability, point of, 109
indetermination, center of, 15, 2629, Kant, Immanuel, 23, 11, 1415, 2021,
4849, 52 27, 31, 34, 45, 53, 56, 63, 81, 84,
individuation, 5860, 62, 164n5, 164n7, 9091, 93, 97100, 124, 126, 170n9,
164n10 174n1; Critique of Pure Reason, 27. See
inertia, 1516, 64, 125127 also critique
Infinite Conversation,The, 55 knowing, 75, 124, 133134
inhuman, 4, 56, 102103, 129 knowledge, 2, 3, 1920, 23, 29, 34, 45,
Innocent,The, 122 48, 56, 67, 9092, 94, 106, 119,
intellect, 18, 27, 45, 50, 82, 84, 87, 91, 124128, 134, 136, 146, , 157n13,
9698, 103, 124127, 139140, 164n1, 165n12, 174nn12
157n13, 169n7 Kristeva, Julia, 135
intellectual: attitude, 45; effort, 7778,
8387, 93, 112; illusion, 39, 46, 51, 63, Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste, 149; neo-
9799, 101102; recognition, 40, 44, Lamarckism, 149150
56; state, 45 Lambert, Gregg, 127, 174n6
intelligence, 7, 13, 15, 20, 26, 37, 4849, language, 14, 17, 4850, 73, 158n6
59, 67, 70, 90, 93, 9799, 124, 129, Lawlor, Leonard, 34, 145, 156n11,
156n13, 158n5, 161n20 158n16, 160n17, 160n34, 162n3
intensity (-ies), 45, 51, 65, 70, 72 Leibnitz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 59, 63;
intentionality, 25, 145, 160n17 Leibnitzian theory, 59
interval, 15, 50, 84; spatial, 25; temporal, lived reality, 3, 95; transcendental, 4; vcu
69 transcendental, 4
Introduction to Metaphysics,The, 15,
89, 91, 164n1, 164n3, 168n1 machine, 82, 135, 137, 141, 148153,
intuition, 14, 45, 56, 81, 89103, 160n17; cinematographic, 153; liter-
124129, 156n13, 158n7, 169nn34, ary, 135, 148, 152153
169n7: intellectual, 63, 174n1; machinic, 112, 118; arrangements, 147;
method of, 7, 13, 34, 58, 64, 87, 89, becomings, 124, 133134, 141142,
91, 94103, 106, 124, 136, 146, 148; processes, 112, 173n16; machin-
159n10, 161n21, 168n1, 169n7; of ism, 4; production, 148. See also pro-
matter, 31; paradox of, 91; present, duction
29; pure, 92; shape of, 55; of spirit, madeleine, 52, 132, 134, 138, 167n24
38; of the vital, 7 materialist, 4, 149, 156n7
192
Index
materiality, 48, 108, 112, 125, 141, 143, 157n15, 158n8, 160n13, 160nn1617,
151, 152 161n23, 162n9, 166nn1516, 167n23,
matter, 15, 21, 23, 2628, 3031, 42, 49, 169n4, 171n1, 172nn89, 172n11,
6170, 8485, 90, 101, 103, 125, 128, 173n12, 175nn1112, 176n7; actual-
138139, 144, 149, 152153, 156n13, ization of, 35, 52, 73, 78; conception
158n4, 167n23; cerebral, 6, 23, 31; as of, 25, 175n11; involuntary, 52, 81,
an ensemble of images, 21; gray, 24, 131, 151; psychological, 40, 58; proper,
83; intuition of, 31; and memory, 20, 3738, 64, 74, 166n15; pure, 30, 45,
25, 31, 35, 47, 57, 59, 65, 70, 72, 86, 65, 67, 72, 78, 101; spontaneous,
99, 158n8; metaphysics of, 58; and 3941, 117, 173n12; theory of, 3336,
perception, 2327, 31, 99; philosophy 45, 158n8; virtual, 5, 40, 4445, 57, 78,
of, 21; and representation, 23, 70; and 83; voluntary, 126. See also cone of
spirit, 3031, 35, 37, 5758, 76, memory; image: memory; habit: -
8384, 90, 103, 120, 145, 158n8; memory; matter: and memory; pre-
vision of, 27 sent: memory; recollection: -memory;
Matter and Memory, 3, 5, 6, 1921, 25, 31, representation: -memory
33, 38, 42, 44, 45, 53, 56, 59, 6465, metacinema. See cinema
76, 78, 83, 90, 100, 106, 114, 116, metaphysics: 2, 6, 13, 49, 56, 58, 63,
143144, 155n5, 158n8, 159n9, 9091, 93, 95, 98; of becoming, 116;
160n17, 171n1, 172n9, 173n12 of the real, 13, 89, 95
mechanic: accumulation, 83; -al, 128, Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 27, 145,
717; -al determinism, 158n4; appara- 157n15, 160n17, 162n9
tus, 107; arrangements, 40; causality, Mill, John Stuart, 169n4
142; cause, 107; law, 16; movements, mind/body problem, the, 56, 20, 25, 45,
107 57, 84, 157n13
mechanism, 4. 3536, 39, 40, 43, 106, Mind-Energy, 44, 161n19, 167n21,
114, 119, 143, 150, 151, 165n12, 173n12, 173n14
166n15; antagonistic, 117; of con- mobility, 5, 2223, 93, 99, 106107, 111,
sciousness, 28; inhibitory, 44; of 118, 125
knowledge, 106, 119, 124, 146; mater- modernity, 64
ial, 125; motor, 4546, 177n10; psy- molecular. See movement
chological, 81; 167n24; sensory- motility, 5
motor, 36; of unconscious, 30 motor schema, 4750
mechanistic, 112; account, 83, 118, movement: absolute, 8993, 102, 107;
149150, 171; approach, 1517; asso- abstract, 106107, 118; of actualiza-
ciationism, 34, 158n7; causality, 83; tion, 57, 73; consciousness of, 22;
conception of cause, 59; critique of, form of, 21; freedom of, 2526; of
59; doctrines, 150; finalism, 148; memory 65; molecular, 2324; of the
process, 118, self, 18 real, 102, 125; relative, 107; retrograde
memory, 2, 6, 8, 1315, 18, 2439, 4853, movement of the true, 9, 98, 103,
5559, 61, 6468, 7181, 83, 8586, 169n5; spiritual, 62; of thought, 66,
9395, 99, 101, 103, 112117, 128, 90, 100, 102, 166n19. See also image:
131, 137138, 143, 145, 147, 151152, movement-
193
Index
Movement-Image,The, 108 pendulum, 42, 86, 101; Bergsons 42;

Mullarkey, John, 12, 13, 155n5, 156n11, Foucaults, 42
164n2 percept, 7, 11
Multiplicity, 15, 17, 7172, 75, 80, 8384, perception, 2; actual, 41, 4345, 5657,
86, 89, 9496, 100, 124, 138, 68, 71, 74, 112, 114; cinematographic,
142143, 162n4; actual, 5, 12; discrete, 107; conscious, 26, 31, 67, 103, 106,
12, 15, 20, 65; of duration, 17; hetero- 108, 114, 144, 176n10; consciousness
geneous, 5, 14, 35, 51, 57, 6162, 64, in, 28; experience of, 108; material,
80, 92, 158; homogenous, 5, 14, 83; 38; of matter, 23; optical, 116; phe-
qualitative, 5, 12, 14, 17, 35, 48, 62, nomenology of, 145, 162n9; present,
80, 84, 147, 174n1; quantitative, 5, 12, 20, 4142, 4648, 52, 114; pure, 21,
14, 48, 62, 80, 84; virtual, 5, 7, 1213, 2425, 1731, 55, 76, 92, 101, 108,
80, 94, 133 118, 160n17, 174n7; reflective, 52;
subjective, 92; theory of pure, 2526,
Neo-Lamarckism. See Lamarck, Jean- 83, 143. See also images: perception-;
Baptiste past: perception
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 2, 27, 87, 110, 126 phenomenal realm, 3
noumenal, 3, 56, 174n1 phenomenological: account, 82;
Nouvelle Vague, 109 approach, 56; consciousness, 160n17;
novelty, 2, 157n15; of Bergsonism, 12, 64, critique, 27; environment, 124; expe-
76, 87; possibility of, 16; reduction of rience, 100, 170n9; image of experi-
98 ence 2; inquiry, 19; thinking, 145
nuance, 17, 48, 72, 82; of difference 6, 71; phenomenology, 19, 24, 30, 63, 75,
of duration, 85; of memory, 74; quali- 143146, 160n17, 162n4, 162n9
tative, 87; sui generis, 85 Phenomenology of Spirit, The, 75
photograph, 7879, 106, 149, 162n9
ontology, 55, 57, 6364, 84, 89, 91, plane, 136, 140, 142, 144; of composition,
9596, 134, 145147, 159n8, 161n24, 142; of consistency, 142; of conscious-
172n11. See also unconscious: onto- ness, 7778, 80, 112, 172; of experi-
logical ence, 69, 72; of immanence, 34, 111,
order of time, 52, 57, 6869, 123, 139, 142143; of memory. See memory;
151 physical, 83; temporal, 137; virtual,
orthodoxy, 87, 153 114, 120, 136
Outside, the, 29, 119, 147, 161n21 point of contact, 6, 13, 26, 71, 86
uvres, 63, 164n1 point of diffraction, 5, 8, 105
positive:
Passion, 109, 171n3, 171n6 positivity, 62, 7677, 9798, 170n9,
past: actualization of, 73; existence, 51; 176n15
perception, 39; preservation of, 6, 64, power (puissance), 30, 55, 6162, 67, 78,
147; pure, 36, 56, 66, 71, 81, 129, 80, 102, 108, 110
131132, 158n8; unconscious, 71; vir- pragmatism, 68; metaphysical, 2, 3;
tual, 52. See also experience: past; Pragmatism, 124
image: past; survival: of the past preindividual singularities, 3, 143, 161n25
194
Index
present: abstract, 71; actual, 40; concrete, automatic, 41, 45, 49, 112, 149; com-
66, 71; doubling of, 44; eternal, 71; plete, 48, 49; definition of, 42; false,
intuitions, 29; memory of, 50, 113, 116, 173,12; intellectual, 44, 51, 56;
117, 120, 131, 176n7; state of con- intelligent, 3940; logic of, 110; phe-
sciousness, 16; virtualization of, 53, nomena of, 30, 35; superior, 125. See
73, 114, 145. See also perception also habit: -recognition
problem: false, 6, 15, 19, 77, 95100, 136, recollection, 29, 31, 3638, 40, 4252,
158n7, 159n10, 169n6; true, 23, 45, 6771, 73, 7580, 82, 8487, 93, 95,
57, 97, 136, 148, 159n10 97, 99, 109, 112, 114, 117117,
production, 3, 4, 100, 129, 134135, 137, 159n8, 163n13, 166n16, 167n24,
141142, 147148, 151152, 157n15; 172nn89, 173n12; memory, 80. See
artistic, 129, 136, 151; machinic, 9, also image: recollection-; unconscious:
118, 148, 174n16; of the new, 2, 59; of recollection
truth, 135 Renoir, Jean, 120
Proust, Marcel, 2, 5, 89, 116117, representation, 3, 14, 21, 2327, 31,
120140, 148, 151152, 156n8, 3640, 44, 47, 50, 6771, 73, 7580,
163n13, 167n22, 167n24, 168n26, 82, 8487, 93, 95, 97, 99, 102, 112,
170n10, 171n6, 172n8, 174n4, 114, 127, 145146, 151, 175n12,
175n11; Proust and Signs (Proust et les 176n5; -memory, 35, 46, 114, 162n5
signes), 5, 127, 133134, 137, 151, reproduction, 60, 62, 147, 164n5, 165n10
156n8, 168n24, 170n10; Proustian Resnais, Alain, 110, 171n5
epiphany, 130. See also experience: revaluation, 2, 58; of thought, 140; of the
Proustian transcendental, 141; of truth, 134, 136
psychoanalysis, 2, 61, 165n11, 169n4; revolution: Bergsonian, 3; Copernican, 3,
Kristevas, 135 90, 164n1, 155n5
psychology, 6, 67, 143, 159n9; of memo- Riemanian geometry, 12
ry, 5558; and ontology, 9596 Rossellini, Roberto, 113; Europe 51, 113
Rules of the Game,The, 120
quantum physics, 4
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 33, 157n15; Being and
race to the grave, the, 123, 125 Nothingness, 33
real, the, 23, 6, 14, 20, 26, 39, 50, 56, 63, schema, dynamic. See dynamic schema
69, 76, 90, 9698, 101, 109110, 112, science, 13, 1921, 24, 34, 45, 49, 6364,
114, 117121, 123125, 127, 139, 67, 73, 80, 83, 93, 9495, 128, 140,
140, 153, 163n10, 170n9, 174n1; 142, 159n9, 160n12, 161n1, 161n20,
articulations of, 99101; as becoming, 171, 174n2
65, 69; impossible, 102; intuition of, Search for Lost Time, The, 126, 152,
169n7; mobile, 96; secrets of, 91 167n22, 174n5
realists, 5, 21, 37 self, 1719, 123, 132133, 135; deep, 133;
recognition, 3637, 40, 4245, 4950, 52, deep-seated, 17; as dual, 41; funda-
73, 81, 114, 146, 162nn89, 166n12, mental, 18, 39; split, 14
166n19, 175n12; action-, 43; attentive, self-alteration, 4, 13, 73, 102, 139, 142,
41, 45, 4748, 81, 112113, 116, 126; 147
195
Index
sensation, 14, 22, 28, 49, 5253, 6567, survival, 3536, 152, 165n12, 175n11;
78, 8587, 130, 132, 163n13, 168n29 Bergsonian, 152; in itself, 7071; of
sense, 4850, 52, 58, 71, 99, 128129, matter, 35; of the past, 28, 31, 34, 56,
152; Bergsonian, 95, 102; inner, 12; of 70, 103, 147, 161n24; of past images, 29
intuition, 103; of life, 129; materialist, synthesis of time, 47, 53, 68, 129, 131,
156n7; and motor schema, 48; and 137, 161n23, 168n24, 175n12
sensibility, 74; and signs, 81, 134,
138139, 168n24. See also common teleology: 7, 59, 82
sense temporality, 2930, 158n6
sensibility, 22, 2627, 7477, 84, 90, 96, tendency (ies), 1314, 45, 57, 5965,
137 7075, 90, 96, 101103, 124, 164n5;
sensory-motor system, 23, 2728, 3537, antagonistic, 6061, 164n5;
4041, 66, 72, 102, 109112, 114 Bergsonian, 62, 51; intellectual, 99;
Sentendium, the, 27, 76 motor, 43, 49; natural, 18, 85, 98,
sentiment. See feeling 125126; opposite, 15, 19, 42, 47, 57,
shot, 106108 98, 100; qualitative, 20; theory of, 58,
sign(s), 81, 86, 111, 132134, 136140, 62, 70, 89, 143, 166n12; virtual, 61,
143144, 151, 167n24, 172n8 94, 95
Simondon, Gilbert, 86, 165n5 thinking, 17, 31, 62, 74, 90, 101103,
simultaneity, 15, 19, 30 105, 116, 126128, 132133,
source of experience, 14, 56, 76, 90, 118, 135137, 140, 142143, 145, 174n1
124125, 127, 134, 164n1 Thousand Plateaus, A, 11, 141, 147
soul, 1718, 84, 89, 95, 100, 159n10, Time and Free Will, 11, 1315, 19, 22,
169n7 3839, 45, 48, 51, 59, 62, 64, 89, 94,
Soulez, Philippe, 155n2 96, 100, 133, 142, 159n9, 161n20,
space, 15, 18, 27, 3031, 3435, 5051, 165n12
56, 6162, 6769, 92, 97, 99, 102, Time-Image, 108
108, 111, 136, 139, 144, 158n7, Time Regained, 121122, 126, 130, 151
160n12, 160n16, 170n9, 170n11, Time and Sense, 135
174n1 transcendence, 3, 5, 30, 109, 117118,
Spinoza, Baruch, 2 120, 124, 136, 139, 141, 144145
spiritualization, 125, 136139 transcendent exercise of the faculties, 1
spontaneity, 1619, 22, 25, 34, 35, 42, 48, transcendental, the, 51, 53, 71, 9798,
97, 100101, 150, 177n12 111, 141, 146, 170n8, 174n1, 176n15;
style, 137139 exercise, 136; form, 51, 53, 84, 100,
subjectivism, 13, 7576, 153, 169n4 108, 160n12; function, 108; insights,
subjectivity, 4, 9, 27, 30, 42, 45, 47, 64, 114; material, 11, 108, 118; realm,
68, 125, 127, 134135, 138, 145, 153, 170n9; status, 108, 117. See also condi-
158n6, 169n4; indetermination and, tions; empiricism; experience; ideal-
4849; memory as, 35, objectivity ism, unconscious
and, 76, 100; and relativity, 91 Two Sources of Morality and Religion,The
succession, 12, 30, 38, 51, 58, 66, 71, 90, (Two Sources), 15, 18, 20, 42, 86, 89,
94, 164n13 100, 161n20
196
Index
unconscious, the, 14, 25, 29, 36, 4042, 111, 113114, 119121, 140143,
45, 5253, 57, 61, 6671, 8081, 86, 147, 151, 156n8, 156n12, 163,10,
92, 96, 99, 101103, 114, 130, 140, 174n1, 176n15. See also empiricism:
147, 159n8, 161n22, 162n11, 168n24, virtual; memory: virtual
169nn34, 175n12; Bergsonian, 31; virtualization, 53, 73, 113114, 145
existence of, 67; objective, 67; onto- Visconti, Luchino, 121122; Innocent,The,
logical, 6, 68, 82, 85, 90, 92, 95, 99, 122
102, 103; philosophy of, 145; prob- Visible and the Invisible,The, 27
lematic of, 36; recollection, 73; state, vision, 28, 74, 78, 109, 138139, 145,
67; subjective, 67; time of, 39, 164n4; 148149, 169n3
transcendental, 53; unconsciousness, 6; vital impetus. See vital impulse
virtual, 56, 71, 147. See also mecha- vital impulse (lan Vital), 7, 20, 42, 58,
nism: of unconscious 6062, 72, 86, 90, 100, 124125, 131,
ungrounding, 153, 176n15 142143, 148149
unity, 27, 38, 50, 5860, 62, 71, 77, 80,
86, 122, 138139, 147 Welles, Orson, 105, 118, 171n4; F for
utility, 17, 23, 29, 3842, 6869, 71, 149, Fake, 105, 171n5
164n1, 173n12, 177n10 What is Philosophy?, 140141, 143,
162n7
variability, 38, 58, 62, 168n25, 174n15 Worms, Frdric, 31, 35, 3839, 50,
Vertigo, 107 152n2, 161n26
virtual, the, 4, 6, 14, 31, 36, 3940, 42,
4447, 5158, 6266, 69, 7173, 77, Zeno of Elea, 63, 93, 106; Zenos para-
8183, 86, 8991, 95, 102103, 108, doxes, 15, 169n2
197
S SUUNNYY s se erri ie es s i inn CCoonntte emmppoorraarryy F Frre enncchh TThhoouugghhtt
t
t
h PHILOSOPHY
PHILOSOPHY
h
g
g
u
u
o
o
h
h
T
T
The
Therelationship
relationshipbetween
betweenBergsons
Bergsonsand
andDeleuzes
Deleuzesworks
works
h
h
c
c
has
hasyet
yettotobebeexplored
exploredfully,
fully,and
andthe
theauthor
authormakes
makesa astrong
strong
n
n
case
casefor
fora afundamental
fundamentalcontinuity
continuityinintheir
theirthought.
thought.Her
Her
e
e
r
r
focus
focuson
onthem
themasasadvocates
advocatesofofa apost-Kantian
post-Kantianphilosophy
philosophy
F
F
ofoftranscendental
transcendentalexperience
experiencebrings
bringstotothe
thefore
forethe
the
y
y
fundamental
fundamentalontological
ontologicaland
andepistemological
epistemologicaldimensions
dimensions
r
r
a
a
ofoftheir
theirthought.
thought.
r
r

Ronald
RonaldBogue,
Bogue,
o
o
author
authorofofDeleuzes
DeleuzesWake:
Wake:Tributes
Tributesand
andTributaries
Tributaries
p
p
m
m
e
e
t
t
n
n
o
o
C
C
n
n
i
i
State
StateUniversity
UniversityofofNew
NewYork
YorkPress
Press
s
s
www.sunypress.edu
www.sunypress.edu
e
e
i
i
r
r
e
e
s
s
Y
Y
N
N
U
U
S
S
S SUUNNYY s se erri ie es s i inn CCoonntte emmppoorraarryy F Frre enncchh TThhoouugghhtt

Valentine Moulard-Leonard - BERGSON-DELEUZE ENCOUNTERS PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Valentine Moulard-Leonard - BERGSON-DELEUZE ENCOUNTERS PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

S SUUNNY Y s se erri ie es s i inn CCoonntte emmp poorraarry y F Frre enncchh TThhoouugghhtt

S SUUNNY Y s se erri ie es s i inn CCoonntte emmp poorraarry y F Frre enncchh TThhoouugghhtt

David Pettigrew and Franois Raffoul, editors

The Creation of the World or Globalization by Jean-Luc Nancy, translated

State University of New York Press

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever

For information, contact

Production by Eileen Meehan

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

1. Bergsons Genealogy of Consciousness 11

3. The Unconscious as Ontology of the Virtual 55

4. Between Bergson and Deleuze:

6. Proust and Thought:

Conclusion. Bergson-Deleuze Encounters:

The Philosophy Department of the University of Memphis has served as my

intelligence she generously spreads, for her down-to-earth good-heartedness,

To philosophize would be easy if ready-made ideas were not con-

The transcendental form of a faculty is indistinguishable from its

the unconscious depths of European thought. Nevertheless, Bergsons contri-

While Kants invaluable contributions to modern thought have become

Briefly Mapping Our Experimental Journey

I begin by focusing on Bergsons genealogy of consciousness in terms of the

In the sixth chapter, through an inquiry into the Proustian influence on

The percept is the landscape before man, in the absence of man. . . .

In Time and Free Will,1 Bergson endeavors to demonstrate a traditionally over-

homogenous could be distinguished from one another (2001a, 73/2001, 98,

The Immediate Data of Consciousness

Duration (la dure) and the Two Multiplicities

As Gilles Deleuze saw, what is at stake in Bergsons distinction between the

The Split Self

The Two Causalities: Determinism and the Free Act

According to Bergson, the problem of freedom is a false problem: it deals with

to reconstruct the movement by means of positions; but since these positions

irresistibly influenced by anothers will.Yet Bergson asks, does it not show us as

writes,The external manifestation of this internal state will precisely be what

This distinction is mirrored in the Two Sources of Morality and Religion,

From a Bergsonian point of view, then, the willinformed as it is by its past

The Role of the Body

Preliminary Remarks: Science and Philosophy

toward universal peace in the combination of mystical aspiration and tech-

If philosophy is to escape Kantianism, then, it must expand the critical pro-

The World of Images

In his attempt at lessen[ing] greatly the theoretical difficulties which have

Yet, Bergson continues, there is one particular image that progressively

Between mobility and consciousness, there is an obvious relationship. No

Consciousness is thus primarily the consciousness of movements received

Pure Perception and Beyond

If it is the case that there is only a difference of complication of movement

Here again, however, we must beware of radical distinctions. Unconscious

From Presence to Representation: Discernment

Beyond Pure Perception (1): Affection

Several corrections must be brought to the theory of pure perception once we

Beyond Pure Perception (2): Memory

the role of consciousness, or the body, with regard to knowledge, or self-con-

kind between pure perception and memory. Bergson is particularly interested in

Subjectivity and Memory

We are now in a position to clarify the aforementioned claim that Bergsons

If we begin by isolating man on the instantaneous island of his pre-

conservationbut rather that it is the other way aroundis already providing

Memory and the Brain:Which Survival?

themselves must be otherwise preserved (ibid.). This implies, as Bergson will