Klossowski, Deleuze, and Orthodoxy

Author(s): Eleanor Kaufman

Reviewed work(s):
Source: Diacritics, Vol. 35, No. 1, Whispers of the Flesh: Essays in Memory of Pierre
Klossowski (Spring, 2005), pp. 47-59
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4621024 .
Accessed: 13/04/2012 12:43

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Diacritics.

http://www.jstor.org
 DELEUZE, AND
KLOSSOWSKI,
ORTHODOXY

ELEANORKAUFMAN

Among the many strangeand wonderfulthings to be found there, PierreKlossowski's

oeuvre is a preeminentillustrationof what divides univocity and equivocity and there-
fore serves as one of the twentiethcentury'smost instructivemodels for thinkingthe
complexity of the dialectic. Univocity and equivocity are significantboth in theirroots
in Scholastic philosophy, as the idea that Being is expressed in either one or several
senses, and as belonging to a longstandingframeworkthat helps demarcatethe dif-
ferences, nuancedyet significant,among membersof the extraordinarygenerationof
Frenchintellectualsof which Klossowski was a part.Thus,these terms,apartfrom their
theological and philosophicalimport,will serve as a heuristicfor renarratingpoints of
filiation and divergence among a series of prominentFrench thinkers,primarilyBa-
taille, Klossowski, and Deleuze, but also extendingbackwardto Sartreand forwardto
Badiou to frame the series. I will approachthis in segmented fashion, first opposing
Bataille's dialectic of transgressionto Klossowski's more univocal methodof disjunc-
tive synthesis. When juxtaposed with Deleuze's Spinozist affirmationof univocity,
however, Klossowski would seem to be more on the side of the equivocal. Whereas
Deleuze criticizes the realm between the univocal and the equivocal as the lukewarm
space of the analogical, my contentionis that this middle realm allows for a space of
movement and reversal that escapes the pitfalls Deleuze locates in the dialectic, and
does so withouta strictadherenceto Spinozistunivocity.WhereasBataille andDeleuze
remaincloser to Klossowski in the tenorof theirthought,I will nonethelesssuggest in
conclusion that Sartreand Badiou are actuallycloser to Klossowski on a formallevel,
in that each poses a similarlyanalogicalchallenge to the thoughtof the dialectic.
For many reasonsBataille and Klossowski can be pairedtogether.They were con-
temporaries,both born aroundthe turnof the century,both writing in a variety of lit-
erary and philosophical genres, including pornographicor semi-pornographicfiction,
andworkingoutsidethe academy.Both wrote studiesof Nietzsche, of Sade, andradical
economic treatises.They were friendsand fellow membersin the late 1930s of the Col-
lege of Sociology, which was modeled aftera secret society, the memberstaking great
interest in such topics as sacrifice and headlessness. Bataille and Klossowski wrote
abouteach other.Both were at differentpoints obsessed with RomanCatholicism,both
at different points preparedto enter monastic orders, both in different fashions fell
away.As might easily be imagined,theirfiction is an outrageousmixtureof the sacred
and the profane, including sexual encountersand other desecrationsstaged at church
alters and the like. Both work in that realm where pornographyand theology come
together.Yet while the more familiarBataille uses pornographytowardtransgressive
aims, the lesser-knownKlossowski uses a more nuancedand interestingmechanismof
boredomto elaboratean intrinsicallydisjunctivestructure.
Even boredom,for Bataille, partakesof the transgressive.In his novella The Story
of the Eye, the narratordescribesoffhandedlyhow he and his companionSimone have
just found theirfriendMarcelle'sbody. She has hung herself. The narratorand Simone

diacritics / summer 2005 diacritics35.1:47-59 47

take the body down andhave sex for the firsttime next to it. Then the narratordescribes
the boredomthat ensues even in the face of death:"We were perfectly calm, all three
of us, and that was the most hopeless part of it. Any boredomin the world is linked,
for me, to that moment and, above all, to an obstacle as ridiculous as death. But that
won't preventme from thinkingback to that time with no revulsion and even with a
sense of complicity.Basically,the lack of excitementmadeeverythingfar more absurd,
and thus Marcelle was closer to me dead than in her lifetime, inasmuchas absurdex-
istence, so I imagine, has all the prerogatives"[59-60]. This is actually an unusually
meditativemomentin Bataille's story of murder,priests, bullfights,and constantsex.1
Here his narratorlinks boredom to death, and to a reflection on the absurdboundary
between life and death. But by commentingon boredomin this specific situation,that
of two young people discoveringtheir friend's dead body, the text enacts anythingbut
boredom.Whetherone finds it shockingor humorous,the disjunctionbetween the situ-
ation and the understatedcommentaryproducesa strongeffect of somethingjarring,of
something that must be noticed, of something flagrantlyperverse.I would categorize
this type of jarringdynamic,where the commentaryis an understatementof the event,
as a transgressivedisjunction:the two aspects-the event and its narration-do not go
together.
Klossowski, on the other hand, employs another form of disjunction, one that
Deleuze refers to as "the disjunctive synthesis."In this form of disjunction,the two
terms in question are not restrictive,exclusive, or at odds with each other-a sort of
noncontradictorycontradictionas it were. Such is the fashion in which Klossowski
combines a pornographicnarrativeand a theological discoursein his trilogy TheLaws
of Hospitality.In the firstvolume, Robertece soir, the centralcharacterRoberte(mod-
eled very strikinglyafter Klossowski's wife, Denise Marie Roberte Morin-Sinclaire)
is a staunchatheist and inspectress of censorship. She is agitatingto have the works
of her husbandOctave banned. Octave, an aging professor of Scholastic philosophy,
is an ardentCatholic and authorof erotic fiction based on the works of the Marquisde
Sade. When Roberte finds herself thinking about the pornographicwritings in ques-
tion, her thoughtsmaterializeand accost her.Their aim is to replace the disjunctionof
impurethoughtsand a pure body with the preferabledisjunctionof pure thoughtsand
an impurebody. While accostingRoberte,a fantasticalHunchbackgives the following
speech (mixed with a descriptionof his physical actions):

"Whetherit is conceived in itself or not, there is no being rid of it, it re-

turns constantlyof its own accord, and if there is somethingthat determines
that existence be existence, in that somethingyou have its essence." (Words
which, coming from inside her skirt,Roberteonly confusedly makes out, for
to dodge the blow that landed on his neck, the Hunchbackhas burrowedhis
face between Roberte's thighs and it is with his nose pressed to the Inspec-
tress'underpantieshe continues): "Butfrom the momentit is this whichallows
or does not allow existence, which allows or does not allow naming, would
one have the right to name it censorship as if there had always been censor-
ship? For the fact one can no longer name it God can hardly be otherwise
explained than by somethingin existence which henceforthforbids that it be
namedGod.".... Robertestrikesa second blow, which is deadenedby her own
skirt which she raises to discover him again: it is with a strange smile that

1. In a rareacerbicmoment,Deleuzecommentsin "OntheSuperiority of Anglo-American

Literature" that "thelittlesecretis generallyreducibleto a sad narcissisticandpiousmastur-
bation. . . GeorgesBatailleis a veryFrenchauthor.He madethe littlesecretthe essenceof
literature,witha motherwithin,a priestbeneath,an eyeabove"[47].

48
 the Hunchbackgazes at her,her arm lifted high,fingers shining on the leather
handle of the crop brandishedabove the rich braids of hair thatframe a face
gone scarlet, dilated nostrilsflutteringfrom indignation,when, uponthepoint
of strikinga thirdtime,Robertefeels her wrist seized.... [49-50, translation
modified]

What we see in this passage is an oddly verbose and idiosyncratic description of

Roberte's attack by the Hunchback,itself interwoven with a convoluted speech that
ranges from a brief discussion of existence and essence in Scholastic philosophy to
the question of censorship, and finally to the question of God's existence. Arguing
that both the thing censored and God must exist in orderfor their existence to be then
so fervently denied, the Hunchbacksimultaneouslyspeaks from underneathRoberte's
skirt.While we see the disjunctionbetween sex and philosophy as in Bataille, here it
is not bound up with death so as to renderit transgressive,but ratherbound up with
God so as to renderit boring.In this case, boringis not so much the uninterestingas it
is the smoothing over, the making uniformand nonshockingof an otherwise flagrant
disjunction.Boring is here the markerof a constancy of form and content, of descrip-
tive language and what it describes, though this does not mean, as will be addressed
in what follows, that the disjunctterms are collapsed or entirely integrated.Whereas
for Bataille there is disjunctionbetween the descriptionand the thing described,Klos-
sowski makes the pornographicof a piece with Scholasticphilosophy,detailingboth in
a floridand arcanelanguagewhich in its overbearingqualityserves to undermineeven
furtherany distinctionof pornographiccontent and philosophicform.
It is to describethis nontransgressivelinkingof pornographyandtheology thatDe-
leuze, in "Klossowski or Bodies-Language,"coins the term "pornology,"in conjunc-
tion with an elaborationof the concept of "disjunctivesynthesis."I quote at length:

Theologyis now the science of nonexistingentities, the mannerin which these

entities,divineor anti-divine,ChristorAntichrist,animatelanguageand make
for it this glorious body which is dividedinto disjunctions.Nietzsche'spredic-
tion about the linkbetweenGod and grammarhas been realized;but this time
it is a recognizedlink, willed, acted out, mimed, "hesitated,"developedin all
the senses of disjunction,and placed in the service of the Antichrist,Dionysus
crucified.If perversion is the force proper to the body, equivocity is that of
theology; they are reflectedin one another.If one is thepantomimepar excel-
lence, the other is reasoningpar excellence.... It is this that accountsfor the
astonishing character of Klossowski'soeuvre: the unity of theology and por-
nographyin this veryparticularsense. It mustbe called a superiorpornology.
It is his own way of going beyond metaphysics:mimeticargumentationand
syllogistic pantomime,dilemmain the body and disjunctionin the syllogism.
The rapes of Roberte punctuate reasoning and alternatives; inversely, syl-
logism and dilemmasare reflectedin the postures and the ambiguitiesof the
body. [281-82]

There are two movements at work in Deleuze's presentationof Klossowski. The first
and predominantone is the emphasison disjunction,even dualism,thatinformsnearly
every sentence in the passage above: Christand Antichrist,God and grammar,equiv-
ocity and perversion,theology and pornography.Indeed, it is more nearly a series of
dualisms, for if equivocity and later "the ambiguitiesof the body" fall each to its own
side of the disjunctionin question, they redouble this division by in turn serving as
markersfor an ongoing dualism. For example, Klossowski returnsrepeatedlyto the

diacritics / summer 2005 49

questionof the ambiguitiesof the body, to whathe denotes as "solecism."This is a term
thatKlossowski links to Quintillian'sInstitutioOratoriaand glosses as follows: "some
think there is solecism in gesture too, whenever by a nod of the head or a movement
of the hand one uttersthe opposite of what the voice is saying" [97].2 Thus, we might
find a small gestureof beckoningthat occurs alongside an otherwisehostile stance. In
Klossowski's fiction,this gestureis always made with the hands,which arethe primary
erotic locus (as opposed to the genitalia in Bataille). Klossowskian perversionis the
disjunctionbetween the positioningof the handsand the stance of the rest of the body,
often envisioned in the form of tableauxvivants. (This is dramatizedin his description
in The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes of the imaginarypainterTonnerre's"Belle
Versaillaise,"where "with one of her sparklinghands, the palm pressed against this
leech's face, she is still fending off but provokinghis attemptsto fasten on by giving
him a foretasteof her satiny skin; meanwhile,leaning an elbow on the armof the easy
chair, she lets her right hand hang, idle" [119].) Thus, if solecism refers to the body
working in two directionsthat oppose each other,then equivocity, insofar as it marks
the seemingly more disembodiedrealm of reasoning,refers to the Scholastic debates
about the question of Being being said in one or more than one sense (this might be
traced back, though it is not the project at issue here, to the split between Aquinas's
model of analogy andDuns Scotus's moreproperlyunivocal propensities).Like the so-
lecism, equivocity signals thatthereis more thanone thing going on, often exactly two
things, even within a body-or a philosophical construct such as being-that might
generallybe counted as one. Deleuze clearly emphasizesthis dualismin his readingof
Klossowski, and does so in a strikinglyfavorablefashion that would seem to align his
thoughtquite seamlessly with Klossowski's.3
Yet Deleuze's own work,his properthought,if it can be called that,simultaneously
shuns the dualisticand the dialectic in favor of a more Spinozistnotion of the one. This
is the second movement barely discernible in the passage above, and one that I will
elaboratein what follows. Despite Deleuze's impressive catalogue of the disjunctions
in Klossowski's work, his strongestpronouncementcomes at the moment he departs
from the list of dualismsin orderto emphasizethe underlyingunivocity:"Itis this that
accounts for the astonishingcharacterof Klossowski's oeuvre: the unity of theology
and pornographyin this very particularsense. It must be called a superior pornol-
ogy." What for Deleuze is astonishingin Klossowski is not the disjunctionsper se, but
theirparticularunity,a unity markedby the neologism "pornology"and the superlative
term"superior."It is not difficult,then, to demarcatethe differentialbetween Bataille's
transgressivedisjunction,which remains on the side of the dialectic, and Deleuze's
nondialecticaldisjunction,which favors univocity.What is more challenging is situat-
ing Klossowski's position, which falls in between; it is at once explicitly preoccupied
with the set of Bataillean dualisms circulating around the discrepancy between the
sacred and the profane, yet flattensthem in a nonjarring,indeed boring, fashion that
gives them an ultimateunity and would seem quite proximateto Deleuzian univocity.

2. For a discussion of Klossowski'slicense in employingthis term, a term itself generally

equated with linguistic slippage or poetic license, see TracyMcNulty'sThe Hostess: Hospital-
ity, Ethics, and the Expropriationof Identity,whichprovides a superboverview of Klossowski's
hospitalitytrilogywithparticularattentionto thefigure of the hostess and the excess she embod-
ies: improperto law, to religion, and ultimatelyto the host himself the hostess is in McNulty's
reading at the core of the relationof hospitality,and beyond that at the very heart of being.
3. I makethisargumentin myTheDeliriumof Praise:Bataille,Blanchot,Deleuze,Fou-
cault, Klossowski, and wouldhere seek to revise it somewhat,developingthe theological hesita-
tions I voice there [109].

50
 In the spiritof situatingKlossowskiandisjunctionmidwaybetween thatof Bataille
and of Deleuze, I will turnto one of Deleuze's course lectures from 1973-74, which
performsa similar overview and mappingof Scholastic philosophy,situatingthe ana-
logical as the middle term between the equivocal and the univocal. Deleuze begins
the seminar-part of a larger rubricfocused on some of the material informing his
capitalismand schizophreniaprojectwith Guattari,and thus not specifically on Scho-
lasticism-with the injunction:"I must pass by a kind of terminologicaldetour."He
then goes on to devote the rest of the session to delineatingthe differencesbetween the
equivocal, the univocal, and the analogical,and I will dwell at length on his mapping
of Scholastic thought.Deleuze defines equivocity as follows:

Those who were called the partisans of equivocity,no matterwho they were,
argueda very simple thing: that the differentsenses of the word "being"were
without common measure and that, in all rigor-and what is interestingin
theology are always the limitpoints at which heresypeeks out.... Wellthen,
the heretical point of equivocity is that those who said that being is said in
several senses, and that these differentsenses have no commonmeasure,un-
derstood that at the limit they would have preferred to say: "God is not,"
rather than to say "He is" to the extent that "He is" was a utterancewhich
was said of the table or the chair. Or else He is in such an equivocal manner,
such a differentmanner,withoutcommonmeasurewith the being of the chair,
with the being of man, etc... that, all thingsconsidered,it's muchbetterto say:
He is not, which means: He is superior to being. But if they had a sense of
wordplaythis became very dangerous, it sufficedthat they insist only a little
on "God is not." If they were discreet they said "God is superior to being,"
but if theysaid "Godis not," that could turnout badly.Broadlyspeakingthey
werepartisans of what is called the equivocityof being. ["Seminar"]

On the one hand,this passage capturesthe jarringaspect in the examples from Bataille
presentedat the outset: in Bataille's fiction, the event and its narrationare quite strik-
ingly "withoutcommon measure";to the contrary,in Klossowski's fiction the porno-
graphic content and the philosophical discussion are, in true Sadean fashion, of the
commonest measure. In this regard, Klossowski might seem at some remove from
Deleuze's sense of equivocity. On the other hand, if we turn to one of Klossowski's
lesser known and more impenetrableworks, La monnaie vivante (Living Currency),
this questionof being withoutcommon measureturnsout to be at the heartof the mat-
ter at hand.
Klossowski's essay-lengthbook La monnaievivanteis one in a series of works in
the wake of May '68 that articulatea theory of libidinal economy througha synthesis
of key Freudianand Marxianthemes. In this work from 1970, which coincides with
Lacan's seminar 17 L'enversde la psychoanalyse (The OtherSide of Psychoanalysis)
and anticipatesDeleuze and Guattari'sAnti-Oedipusand Lyotard'sLibidinalEconomy,
Klossowski postulates that industrialproductionis in no way distinct from the vo-
luptuous pulsions of bodies. In outlining this claim, the details of which I will leave
aside,4 Klossowski distinguishes between the phantasmand the simulacrum.While
the simulacrumserves as an approximationor mode of equivalence in an exchange
economy, the phantasmis that which is outside equivalence:"In orderfor there to be
simulacra,theremust be an irreversibleground,this realitybeing inseparablefrom the

4. I outlinethisargumentandciteLyotard's marvelousgloss of it in chapter6 of TheDe-

liriumof Praise.Inaddition,chapter5 addressesthefeministpotentialofRoberte'sparticipation
in herattacks.

diacritics / summer 2005 51

phantasmthat dictatesthe reality of perversebehavior.Sade affirmsthat the phantasm
acting in the organismand its reflexes remainsineradicable;Fouriercontests this: the
phantasmis reproducibleinasmuch as it is a simulacrum"[26, my translation].The
split that Klossowski situatesbetween Sade and Fourieris precisely the fracturethat
lies at the heartof his own oeuvre. On the one hand,La monnaievivantefalls more to
the side of Sade in its affirmationthat the phantasmis fundamentallyoutside a system
of equivalences (and similarly, in the language of equivocity-which is not that of
equivalence-the phantasmand the simulacrumare not ultimately said in the same
sense). Yet, on the other hand, there is also the sense, following Fourier,in which the
simulacrumis indistinguishablefrom the phantasm.This would amount to the idea,
generallycontestedin Klossowski's version of libidinaleconomy,that,inasmuchas the
simulacrumserves to express Platonic original form, and this simulacralquest for the
originalor the individual- which is also the hiddendrive of the mercantileeconomy-
is itself inseparablefrom thatoriginal,the counting as the thing cannotbe demarcated
from the thing. This laterformulation,postulatedbut never entirely affirmedby Klos-
sowski, would fall more squarelyin the camp of the univocal thanthe equivocal.
Deleuze continueshis seminarwith a useful distinctionbetween the univocity and
the equivocity of being:

Then there were those who were partisans of the Univocity of being. They
riskedeven more because what does this mean, univocity,in oppositionto the
equivocity of being? And all the treatises of the Middle Ages are filled with
long chapterson the univocityor equivocityof being, it's very interesting.But
those who said that being is univocal, supposing that they had done so and
were not immediatelyburned, what did that mean? That meant: being has
only one sense and is said in one and the same sense of everythingof which it
is said. Here onefeels that if the equivocistsalreadyhad such a possible sin in
themselves,the univocists were thinkerswho told us: of everythingwhich is,
being is said in one and the same sense-of a chair,of an animal, of a man or
of God. Yetagain, I'm simplifyingeverythingbecauseperhaps theydidn'tdare
go thatfar, perhaps there'sonly a single thinkerwho would have gone thatfar,
perhaps none, but in the end there is this idea. ["Seminar"]

This single unnamedthinkermight seem to be at a far remove from the theatricalityof

Klossowski's disjunctions,which maintaina manic energy of oscillation, especially in
the fictionalworks,between the mind and the body, between the simple substancesand
the composite ones, and between the freneticpornographicnarrativeand the endlessly
arcanephrasingsof the philosophicaldisquisition.Yet one might arguethat Spinoza's
excessive focus on the shortcomingsof the prophetsin A Theologico-PoliticalTreatise
has its own form of hilariousmania ("as I have said, the prophetswere endowed with
unusually vivid imaginations,and not with unusually perfect minds" [27]), and that,
when all is said and done, thereare many tracesof a Spinozist univocity to be found in
Klossowski's oeuvre. An example of the latter is Klossowksi's Baphomet,where the
"purebreaths"-one in the form of the spirit of Saint Teresa-"insufflate" the body
of a dead boy page. Here, the breath,the boy, and Saint Teresa,in their almost absurd
inseparability,serve as a marvelouslyliteral illustrationof the Spinozist notion of the
mind as an idea of the body: the simple purebreathboth encompassesand is delimited
by what these (dead) bodies can do.
It is the aim of these brief examples to indicate the way in which Klossowski's
oeuvre falls, once again, in the middle, at times on the side of equivocity,at times more
aligned with the univocal counterpart.But it is not my point thereby to suggest that
Klossowski is hardto pin down, or thathis work collapses the distinctionbetween that

52
 .......
.. ..... ........

......
...........~i ~i!ii
..-...
...........f::
ol• ii• •:!:~
iiii~ ••i•
•. .•:•

N• . ..•.. •::• :::::•::''

"": •••

~
~~~~~~~~~~~lA :.. ..........
.OP
O••.•••i• •:~ !:
imzx.i!ii~iil.. ~•. .....!ii•....
X: W
Oii• •i~iiii ili•iX i• ~
•ii7:•:•!•
•i.:i:.:i,•.•:iii:::i!•
!:..
i••i:
....'• • • •
•,ii,• ,!qX
e:?;
4•i•.i•
???:
:•
,',••,
p iL:•
•.•:,'••:•::•:•.:•?
ii•:.... . .•: •:
•'•%'AM .. A? •

:••• .. •/
,:,,::,.•,::H A ••i•
147i

......:.:.............. . ...

! i~i!i~iiiii~i~
iiii i
~~iii~i~ •!ii••ii~•i~~iii••:i••i!i::.i?•
:IN
i~
iiiil
~......
~ ~ ~ ~..........iiii
~~~~~~~~X
•?i~~i••Z
~~iiii ~~~
.. ..!ii:•ii~ii~ii•••~Z
i
..........:•
?i.i
::•
:•.•ii
•:.?•ii
.?•!•.: ••.ii InX
:i.ii:•~i:(i:i..:..,i••:
!iiii~.i!.?:ii.••i :...•
•:i•:•ii
?•??:i..!:?i?

iiiiiX:.
a-A
,zii~

Diana Cooper
Emerger(detail) (2005-06)
of Bataille and Deleuze, or between the equivocal and the univocal. Klossowski's vac-
illation is unsettling(perhapsthis is why his workis on the orderof an acquiredtaste,or
so often goes unread);indeed, it maintainsunfalteringlythe distinctionbetween terms,
even when it would seem to fall to one side or the other. It is in this maintainingof
distinctionthatKlossowski's work bears an orthodoxyat odds with the touted slippage
and multiplicity of the poststructuralistmoment, even though slippery and multiple
might seem to be termsthatepitomize its very terrain.
Deleuze's seminaron scholastic philosophy groups such orthodoxyratherdispar-
agingly underthe Thomistbannerof the analogical:

And then inevitablythere are those who were between the two, between the
univocists and the equivocists. Those who are between the two are always
those who establish what we call orthodoxy.Thesepeople said that being is
not univocal because it's scandal; to claim that being is said in one and the
same sense of God and of theflea is a terriblething, we mustburnpeople like
that; and then those who say "being is said in several senses which have no
common measure," we no longer know where we are with them: there is no
orderanymore,there'sno longer anything.Thusthese thirdpeople said: being
is neither equivocal nor univocal, it's analogical. Here we can say the name,
the one who elaborated a theory of analogy on the basis of Aristotle, Saint
Thomas,and historicallyhe won. Being which is analogical meant:yes, being
is said in several senses of that of which it is said. Only these senses are not
withoutcommonmeasure:these senses are governed by relations of analogy.
["Seminar"]

For Deleuze, the orthodoxis akin to the damnedposition of the lukewarm,being nei-
ther hot nor cold, univocal nor equivocal, but trying to smooth things over by having
it both ways. Such is clearly the tenor of Deleuze's pronouncementsin this seminar,
which echo and develop similar argumentsin Difference and Repetition.But being in
the middle, at least in a geographicalif not a philosophicalsense, is somethingDeleuze
defends with greateloquence in "Onthe Superiorityof Anglo-AmericanLiterature"or
even in his meditationswith Guattarion metallurgy(a practicesuspendedin an oddly
utopian fashion between the sedentaryand the nomadic) in A ThousandPlateaus. In
this regard,it is not so much the middle position of the analogical-between the equiv-
ocal and the univocal-that is at issue as much as the way it aligns with a notion of
categoryratherthan concept.
Deleuze elaboratesthe distinction between categories and concepts with the ex-
ample of the lion:

Whycategories and not concepts? Whatdifferenceis there between the con-

cept of causality or quantityand the concept of lion? ... one calls categories
the concepts which are said of everypossible object of experience.Lion is not
a category because you cannot say "lion" of everypossible object of experi-
ence. On the other hand, everypossible object of experience has a cause and
is itself cause of other things. There,that clarifies everything.The categories,
thusdefined,are strictlyinseparablefrom an analogical conception;one calls
categories the concepts which are said of every possible object of experi-
ence, or what amounts strictly to the same thing: the differentsenses of the
word "being."And the categories in Aristotle are presented as the different
senses of the word "being," exactly as in Kant the categories are definedas
the concepts which are said of everypossible object of experience. Therefore
there'sno question of a thoughtproceeding by categories if it does not have,

54
 as background,the idea that being is analogical, which is to say that being is
said of what is in an analogical manner.["Seminar"]

As opposed to concepts, categoriesareboth too universal(said of every possible object

of experience) and too differential(equivalentto being as it is said in several senses as
opposed to the one sense of the Spinozist univocal, which Deleuze goes on to elabo-
rate and champion). Lion, on the other hand, belongs to the realm of the concept in
its singularspecificity. It is striking,as an aside, that Barthesin "MythToday"keeps
returningto a phrasefrom his old Latintextbookthat states, "my name is lion," and he
highlightsthis phrase'sfunctionof demonstratinggrammaticalexemplarityratherthan
portrayingany individuallion or the singularityof lion-ness, giving Barthes'slion an
analogical aurathat contrastswith Deleuze's more conceptuallion.
In any case, Deleuze's problem with the analogical categories seems to be one
of stasis. They are too fixed at both ends of the spectrum,in their universalityin the
big picture and in their minute differences in the small one, so that each is ultimately
an immobile reflection of the other;analogy is thus mired in a representationallogic.
Deleuze elaboratesthis attack on analogy in the concluding pages of Difference and
Repetition:

In effect, the genus in relationto its species is univocal, while Being in rela-
tion to the genera or categories themselves is equivocal. The analogy of be-
ing implies both these two aspects at once: one by which being is distributed
in determinableforms which necessarily distinguishand vary the sense; the
other by which being so distributedis necessarily repartitionedamong well-
determinedbeings, each endowedwith a uniquesense. Whatis missed at the
two extremitiesis the collective sense of being [&tre]and theplay of individu-
ating differencein being [6tant]. [303]

Once again, the analogical model is stuck in a static generality at the one end and
a static specificity at the other, ratherthan a more uniform model of "individuating
differences," which is for Deleuze the breakthroughinauguratedwith Duns Scotus
and culminatingin Spinoza: "This programmeis expounded and demonstratedwith
genius from the beginning of the Ethics: we are told that the attributesare irreducible
to genera or categories because while they areformally distinct they all remainequal
and ontologically one, and introduceno division into the substance which is said or
expressed throughthem in a single and same sense" [DR 303]. What this critiqueof
analogy assumes rathercontentiously is that analogy is itself static, that it can only
speak or signify in a single andunivocal fashion. In a footnote to his essay "TheSoul of
Reciprocity(PartTwo),"JohnMilbankcountersDeleuze's position againstanalogy on
exactly these grounds,thatDeleuze falsely accuses analogy of being univocal and thus
partakingof the absolutizing synthesis of the (Hegelian) dialectic. Milbank cites De-
leuze's conclusion to Differenceand Repetition:"Univocitysignifies thatbeing itself is
univocal, while thatof which it is said is equivocal;precisely the opposite of analogy"
[DR 304]. Milbankretorts:"Of course, precisely not. Analogy speaks analogously of
the analogical and so trulydoes escape dialectic. Whereas,if one says that the equivo-
cal univocally is, then a dialectic after all ensues: being is also equivocal, differences
are a veil for the same sameness"[505].
Insofaras Milbankcan be categorizedas a proponentof radicalorthodoxy,andthis
orthodoxytranslatesinto a model of "analogyspeakinganalogouslyof the analogical,"
I would like to propose that a similar structureis at the heartof Klossowski's radical
orthodoxy,which, while sharingmany affinities with Deleuzian thought, differs spe-
cifically in its relationto the possibilities it affirmsfor the analogicalabove and beyond

diacritics / summer 2005 55

the univocal.Whetherone labels this, with Milbank,an escape from dialectics or, with
Deleuze, a superiordialectic (not unlike his characterizationof Klossowski's "superior
pornology"),what is crucial is maintainingthe possibility of "speakinganalogously."
This is dramatizedin absolutelyliteralfashion by the speech of the simple substances,
cited above, that attackRoberte.They might be said to be fightingagainstthe Deleuz-
ian assertionthat "univocitysignifies that being itself is univocal, while that of which
it is said is equivocal"(that is, the person is univocal, while its thoughts and gestures
are equivocal) by assertingthatbeing is equivocal (the differencebetween simple and
composite substances),while that of which it is said is univocal (these substancescan
materializeor change shape into their opposite but remain one substance). In short,
where one would think there is one thing (one person, one form of speaking), there
are in fact two, and where one would thinkthere are two (bodies and language,that of
which being is said), theirboundaryis dissolved and they are shown to have the poten-
tial of metamorphosisinto one.
I would contend,following Milbank,thatKlossowski is not dialecticalin the fash-
ion of Bataille. But neitherdoes he smooth over Batailleantransgressionwith a simple
univocity; rather,he explores a mobile and chiasmic mode of analogy. Instead of the
transgressiveper se, in Klossowski there is always a movement of reversal at stake,
where the oscillating form this reversaltakes surpassesthe perversionof the content.
The Hunchbackand Guardsmando not rape Roberte in Roberte ce soir for the trans-
gressive potentialof the act alone, or with the exclusive aim of provinga philosophical
point. Ratherthey attackher to demonstratethat she entertainsa disjunctionbetween,
on the one hand,her actions on the censorshipcommitteeand, on the other,her person-
al fantasies, and that this disjunctionis disingenuousbecause it affirmsa unity where
there is in reality a duality.But the matterdoes not end here at the equivocal. Instead,
at issue is the fact that simple substanceslike the pure breathsthat materializeto ac-
cost Roberteare generallydisallowed such materialization,such duality,and therefore
are incapable of the equivocity that Roberte glibly passes off as univocity. In thus
approximatingthe equivocal by materializing(the simulacrumof the phantasm),by
representingthe equivocal, as it were, the purebreathsinitiate a movementof reversal
that serves to display the hidden bifurcationof Roberte's seemingly unified actions.
By mimetically reproducinga simulacrumof the equivocal, they expose the way that
Roberte has all along-and this before she met her husbandOctave, as we see in the
"RomanImpressions"section of TheRevocation-been miming or simulatingthe uni-
vocal (illustratingMilbank's assertionthat "if one says that the equivocal univocally
is, then a dialectic after all ensues"). The pure breaths,though they are mute, speak
analogously of this simulation and thereby upend any straightforwarddialectic that
this series of reversalswould seem to entail. In a similarfashion, the excessive play of
identities between Vittorio and Binsnicht that is dramatizedin The Revocation of the
Edict of Nantes (or between K. and Th6odorein Le souffleur)is not so much about lo-
cating eithera dual or a singularidentityas it as aboutthe dizzying oscillation itself. In
this regard,Klossowskiananalogy is analogy of movement,even when it is movement
immobilized in the tableau vivant, or in the photographin Roberte ce soir in which
Vittoriomanagesto capturethe burningRoberte.

AlthoughBataille and Deleuze certainlysharewith Klossowski the same constellation

of philosophicaland aesthetic concerns, the mobile model of analogy outlined above
is one that Klossowski arguablyshareswith two unlikely bedfellows, SartreandAlain
Badiou.ThoughSartremightbe seen as an unfailingapologistfor existentialisthuman-

56
ism and Badiou as a relentless proponentof what he terms the fidelity to a process of
truth,and each in his fashion as expoundinga model for political action-and none of
these things bearing a resemblanceto anythingrecognizablyKlossowskian-it is my
contentionthat the three thinkersnonethelessoverlap in their insistence on a mode of
dualismthatboth employs and challenges a model of dialectics aimed at synthesis.
For his part,Sartreenvisions a two-tieredrealmcomposed of a phantasmlikeinert
term (the in-itself in Being and Nothingness,the practico-inertin the Critiqueof Dia-
lectical Reason) and the privileged active term that reflects the mutualembeddedness
(even a sort of synthesis) of both terms (the for-itself praxis). Insofar as the active
term serves as an animatingcatalyst for the inert term-the way a group of people
united only because they are waiting for the same bus (the practico-inert,Sartre'sclas-
sic model of seriality in the Critique)might be transformedinto somethinglike a bus
riders'union-it might seem that the two blend into one and the same thing, like the
simulacrumcollapsed into the phantasm.This is one of many ways in which Sartre's
dualistic system would seem to aspire to a reconciliationor synthesis of its opposing
terms,a utopianunivocity not dissimilarto Deleuze or Spinoza.Yet, as in Klossowski's
La monnaie vivante, this synthesis is evoked but not properlyachieved. For Sartreis
ever at pains to keep his terms separate,not so much in the spirit of a multiplicityor
equivocity,but ratherin the inimitablefashionof carefullyopposedtermsthatnonethe-
less undergostrangereversals,so thatthe lesser andmore statictermbecomes suddenly
animated(the stone that,seemingly out of the blue, is equatedwith a god).5Thoughthe
contentof SartreandKlossowski's fictionandphilosophycould not be more dissimilar,
there exists a proximityof method-a sort of antidialecticalyet mobile form of anal-
ogy-that has never to my knowledge been remarkedupon. If Bataille, Klossowski,
and Deleuze might all be characterized,and not unfaithfully,as reactingagainstSartre,
it seems somehow fittingthat Klossowski's mode of reactiontakes the form of a sole-
cism: an overt nonengagementakin to rejectioncoupled with a shy if not perversenod
in the form of a sharedmethod.
In a similarvein, Badiou has no obvious affinitieswith Klossowski and never en-
gages with him explicitly.Indeedhis recuperationof questionsof truthanduniversalism
are at a far remove from Klossowski's Nietzscheanism(thoughboth sharea heterodox
fascination for Christianity,Badiou in his celebrationof the apostle Paul, a Christian
Baphometor Antichristif ever therewas one). Yet if the force of Klossowski's disjunc-
tions-his superiorpornology- resides in the juxtapositionof the corporealand the
theological, or of bodies and languages,Badiou's unavowed and for this perhapseven
more perversedisjunctionis within the world of numberand numbers.6 Given his ex-
plicit interestin mathematicsand set theory,it is fittingthatnumberstake on the status
of conceptualpersonaein Badiou's work, being not unlike the pure breathsor simple
substancesof Klossowski's fiction. Put in Klossowskianterms,Badiou's oeuvre might
be considered an elaboratechoreographybetween the phantasmaticpurity of the one
and the dialectical materialismof the two. Badiou writes in Le siecle that "thecentury
is a figure of non-dialecticaljuxtapositionof the Two and the One. On the one hand,

5. Sartre writes in the Critique: "Butit is man who invests things with his own praxis, his
own future and his own knowledge.If he could encounterpure matter in experience, he would
have to be either a god or a stone" [181-82].
6. See not only Badiou's Le nombre et les nombres, but also the discussion in his recent
Logiques des mondes of the currentworld orderas being governedby a dual discourse of bodies
and languages. He critiques this world order,what he labels "democraticmaterialism,"for be-
ing stuckin the two termsof "bodies"and "languages"and not attunedto the thirdterm,which
is the truththat surgesforth as a ruptureand exceptionfrom thefirst two. This is at odds with his
more Klossowskianemphasison the pure two (such as the love relation) in other writings.

diacritics / summer 2005 57

the desire of division- war;on the otherthe desire of fusion andunity,peace" [91-92].
His study of the concept of a century,itself a phantasmaticunit, hinges on readingsof
a series of authorsthat are markedby a vacillationbetween a dualism and a univocity
(Balzac, Freud,Saint-JohnPerse, Celan, and Mao arejust a few of the figures treated
accordingto this rubric).
Badiou drawsdirectlyon Deleuze's notion of disjunctivesynthesis,yet, like Klos-
sowski, is somewhatat odds with Deleuze's impetus towardthe purely univocal. This
comes out most forcefully in Badiou's pointed critique of Deleuzian univocity in his
Deleuze: TheClamorof Being. Badiou stateshis differenceswith Deleuze aroundwhat
he perceives as a noncoincidence of the multiple and the One in Deleuze's thought.
Whereas Badiou affirms the category of the multiple, he is suspicious that the pur-
portedunivocityof the One is actuallya two in disguise. As Badiouqueriesin a fashion
entirelyparallelto Milbank'sdefense of analogy outlinedabove, "Is the nominationof
the univocal itself univocal?"[27], and he goes on to gloss why the very assertionof
univocity makes visible the fact thatunivocity also tries to encompass somethingapart
from its nomination.Thus there is a differentialbetween the thing and its nomination
(the phantasmand its simulacrum,or as Deleuze puts it in TheLogic of Sense, the name
of the thing and what the name of the thing is called [29]). Badiou maintainsthat

what emerges over the course of these experimentsis that a single name is
never sufficient, but that two are required. Why? The reason is that Being
needs to be said in a single sense bothfrom the viewpointof the unity of its
power and from the viewpoint of the multiplicityof the divergentsimulacra
that thispower actualizes in itself. Ontologically,a real distinctionis no more
involved here than, in Spinoza, between naturanaturansand naturanaturata.
Yet,a binary distributionof names is necessary; it is as though the univoc-
ity of being is therebyaccentuatedfor thoughtthroughits being said, at one
moment,in its immediate "matter,"and, in the next, in its forms or actual-
izations. In short: in order to say that there is a single sense, two names are
necessary. [28]

AlthoughDeleuze compellingly argues,especially in his work on Spinoza,thatunivoc-

ity is expressed as equivocity-with the caveat that the apparentequivocity is really
just a function of the multiplicityof expressionbut does not contradictthe notion of a
single underlyingsubstance,of being ultimately having just one sense-Badiou sees
this "doublemovement"as falling outside a pure and simple univocity [36].
The attemptto name this errantmovement,to pinpointthatthing thatescapes from
the One, but without which the One wouldn't be one, is remarkablyclose to the Klos-
sowskian suspensionbetween univocity andequivocity thatis at issue here. If Badiou's
unabashedespousal of truth grants him a form of orthodoxy,then his animationof
numbersinto charactersthat circulatelike the pure breathscombines with this ortho-
doxy to confer on him a reactionaryradicalismthatis, at least in this respect,worthyof
Klossowski's Octave.7

7. The epithet "reactionaryradicalism" is used provocatively,but in this instance "reac-

tionary"refers to Badiou'sspecific embraceof termsunderfire in muchcontemporaryparlance
(truth, universalism,the pure love of the heterosexualcouple, and so forth) and his interest in
extremelytaboo topics, such as the way National Socialism might initially appear to resemblea
truthprocess. Even Badiou'satheistic espousal of the Apostle Paul has a parallel with Octave's
Sadean-inflectedfascination with the Catholic Church.Yetboth engage simultaneouslyin a radi-
cal reflectionon the limitsandpotentialitiesof the dialectic. For moreon this oxymoronicquality
in Badiou, and its relationto number,see myforthcomingAt Odds with Badiou:Politics, Dialec-
tics,andReligionfromSartreandDeleuzeto LacanandAgamben.

58
 WORKS CITED
Badiou, Alain. Deleuze: The Clamorof Being. Trans.Louise Burchill.Minneapolis:U
of MinnesotaP, 2000.
des mondes. Paris:Seuil, 2006.
-. Logiques
-. Le nombre et les nombres.Paris:Seuil, 1990.
Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism.Trans. Ray Brassier. Stanford:
-.
StanfordUP, 2003.
-. Le siecle. Paris:Seuil, 2005.
Barthes,Roland. "MythToday."Mythologies.Trans.Annette Lavers. New York:Hill
and Wang, 1972. 109-59.
Bataille, Georges. Story of the Eye. Trans.JoachimNeugroschel. San Francisco:City
Lights Books, 1987.
Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition.Trans.Paul Patton. New York:Columbia
UP, 1994.
-. "Klossowskior Bodies-Language."TheLogic of Sense. Trans.MarkLesterand
CharlesStivale. New York:ColumbiaUP, 1990.
-. "On the Superiorityof Anglo-AmericanLiterature."Dialogues. By Deleuze
and Claire Parnet.Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and BarbaraHabberjam.New York:
ColumbiaUP, 1977. 36-76.
-. "Seminaron Scholasticism and Spinoza." 14 January1974. See www.webde-
leuze.com.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Fe61ixGuattari.Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia.
Trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane. Minneapolis:U of Min-
nesota P, 1983.
-. A ThousandPlateaus. Trans.Brian Massumi. Minneapolis:U of MinnesotaP,
1987.
Kaufman,Eleanor.At Oddswith Badiou: Politics, Dialectics, and Religionfrom Sartre
and Deleuze to Lacan and Agamben.New York:ColumbiaUP, forthcoming.
-. The Delirium of Praise: Bataille, Blanchot, Deleuze, Foucault, Klossowski.
Baltimore:Johns HopkinsUP, 2001.
Klossowski, Pierre.TheBaphomet.Trans.Sophie Hawkes and StephenSartarelli.New
York:Marsilio, 1988.
-. La monnaievivante.Paris:Eric Losfeld, 1970. Photographsby PierreZucca.
- . Robertece soir and TheRevocationof the Edict ofNantes. Trans.AustrynWain-
house. New York:MarionBoyars, 1989.
. Le souffleur.Paris:Minuit, 1960.
Lacan,Jacques.Le siminaire 17: L'enversde la psychoanalyse. Paris:Seuil, 1991.
Lyotard,Jean-Franqois.LibidinalEconomy.Trans.Iain HamiltonGrant.Bloomington:
IndianaUP, 1993.
Milbank, John. "The Soul of Reciprocity,Part Two: Reciprocity Granted."Modern
Theology 17.4 (Oct. 2001): 485-507.
McNulty, Tracy. The Hostess: Hospitality,Ethics, and the Expropriationof Identity.
Minneapolis:U of MinnesotaP, 2006.
Sartre,Jean-Paul.Being and Nothingness. Trans.Hazel E. Barnes. New York:Wash-
ington Square, 1984.
-. Critique of Dialectical Reason. Trans.Alan Sheridan-Smith.London: NLB,
1976.
Spinoza, Benedict de. A Theologico-Political Treatise.Trans.R. H. M. Elwes. New
York:Dover, 1951.

diacritics / summer 2005 59