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extend access to SubStance
Charles J. Stivale
the Deleuzogu
productive forc
Tournier's text
sarily acts on
taneously" (A
displacement,
ticular semioti
course provides
through the f
progression wi
territoriality o
progressive nom
where the "war-machine" exceeds the dictates of the State and must be
The War-Machine
fundamentally at odds
assemblage of creative f
constitutes a transform
passage of mutant flows
The conflict of Gilles d
exteriority and interiorit
the war-machine. In the i
vassal to Charles VII, and
of the feudal State. How
of Jeanne d'Arc, especiall
15), will
the sim unleash
desire, the "mutant flo
"becoming" entirely out
trast of Jeanne d'Arc w
indeed, she did seem to
it furiously pounded the
refers not only to Jean
machine which envelops
order she and it will st
machine that Jeanne harn
justice, one of incompre
qualed pity as well.... th
ture, another origin than
It is to this "other spe
Gilles de Rais is attracte
from a particularly bac
coming" which Tournie
fusion of sanctity and w
Jeanne as the body obey
21). "Jeanne," Gilles con
voices and bad voices....
were always those of ev
"You have not come onl
You must also save the
voice. Jeanne, I never wa
a saint of me!" (18; 26).
During the subsequent
ticular kind of love for J
share in the field, but m
speed and affect which
he proclaims to
Paris:
" I have communicated with your blood. I am bound to you forever. Hence-
forth I shall follow you wherever you go. Whether to heaven or to hell!"
(23-24; 33)
This vow will determine the destiny of Gilles de Rais once Jeanne
d'Arc is captured by the English, tried and found guilty of heresy and
witchcraft, and burned at the stake despite the futile efforts of Gilles to
liberate her. Even before her execution, following her capture, his life had
taken on new dimensions: "Neither war nor politics held his interest....all
that mattered to him now was that personal, mystical adventure that had
begun on the day that he had met Jeanne" (27; 36). After witnessing her
execution, with her cries, "Jdsus! J6sus! Jesus!" ringing in his ears, "some-
thing had changed inside him: he had the face of a lying, pernicious,
dissolute, blaspheming invoker of devils" (35; 45). The process of "becom-
ing" a unique, malevolent and perverse war-machine, had thus begun.
Tournier describes how, ". .. A beaten, broken man, he went on and buried
himself in his fortresses in the Vendee. For three years, he became a cater-
pillar. When the malign metamorphosis was complete, he emerged, an
infernal angel, unfurling his wings" (35; 45).
"Becomings"
A woman rushes
house. The horsem
horse. With loud
now standing, m
lord's voice is heard.
"Well?"
The horseman opens his cloak. A young boy is clinging to him. He falls
down, then tries to rise clumsily.
This nomadic pursuit is the very stuff of legend, of myth, of fairy tales
of the witch called La Meffraye (she who arouses fear); of the woodcutter's
son Poucet (Tom Thumb) who "saves" his brothers from the woods by
leading them to the chateau of Tiffauges ... never to emerge (46-48; 58-61).
And the "torrent of black smoke, gushing out of the castle's biggest chim-
ney" ("torrent defum6e noire, vomi par la plus grosse chiminde du chdteau"), this
"stink of burning flesh" (49; "puanteur de charogne calcinde" 62), disturb even
Gilles's confused confessor, the Reverend Eustache Blanchet. He agrees t
undertake a mission on behalf of his obsessed seigneur, "after a particularly
delirious night." Having learned that in Florence "scientists, artists and
philosophers, it seemed, had combined their forces and intelligence t
create a new golden age that would soon spread to the whole of mankind
Blanchet is dispatched to "investigate these novelties on the spot. Perha
he would bring back to the Vendee some teaching, some object, even
perhaps some man capable of tearing the seigneur de Rais from his dar
chimeras" (50; 63). Thus, the priest is propelled into the coordinates of new
"spaces" and of mutant, "ambulant science."
as a means of communicat
Gilles and Jeanne fough
nomadism and migratio
'exterior,' over all the fl
It is this "capture of flow
tions, which restrict spee
measure in detail the re
386; MP 479)-that Tourn
"becomings," and this d
striated space of the feu
the "recruitment," both f
in the ambiguous "savou
the chateau's chimney (5
tion of a "smooth space"
The smoke and odor whi
of this war-machine's "
relative movement, but in
this open, smooth space
assemblages (aural, visual,
to the striated space par e
off a surface and 'allocat
breaks" (ATP 481; MP 60
During his stay in Flore
cleric, Francesco Prelati
poverty of his master's
tine city space, striking
thermore, the splendor of
interiority, the spectacle
73), and this frightening
houses and gibbets inspi
thodox religious and sci
the panacea is wealth," P
on earth to cure all the
would do? He would be
72).
Referring to Floren
proclaims, "We must plun
plunge into the darkness
even the Devil "might h
Given these predilectio
receive the tale that Blanc
master: "He su
wolf. He drink
79-82). Prelati t
death was tow
Jeanne's execut
thing wild abo
Moreover, Prel
but rather that
driven by his p
"Some use must
raised upward!
when Prelati lea
soul" to return-
Siege of OrlIans
Jeanne who sub
understood the
concludes, "I am
direction. ..How
dimension that
"listened with p
that man's des
science "nourish
description-"ha
child-like quality
which Prelati e
We shall see wel
when heated by
Nomadic Science
The tale's fourth segment thus commences with the return of Blanch
and Prelati to the smooth, horizontal space constituted by Gilles's w
machine in the Vend&e countryside, a space now set for the developm
of a horizontal, "nomadic science" opposed to the royal science's pract
of "reproduction, iteration and reiteration" (ATP 372; MP 460). The alt
nate model, as Deleuze and Guattari describe it, "consists in being d
tributed by turbulence across a smooth space, in producing a movem
that holds space and simultaneously affects all of its points, instead
being held by space in a local movement from one specified point t
To succeed in hi
his hands on," pa
boys, "to convinc
from heaven and that the alchemical science alone could enable him to
cross it" (86; 107). In the heights of the alchemical laboratory in the attic of
the chateau, Prelati and Gilles explore what Deleuze and Guattari call the
"ambulant science," "the connection between content and expression in
themselves, each of these two terms encompassing form and matter," a
matter "essentially laden with singularities (which constitute a form of
content)," and an expression "inseparable from pertinent traits (which con-
stitute a matter of expression)" (ATP 369; MP 457). Tournier writes, for
"the pilgrim of the sky-as the searching alchemist is called"-the scien-
tific experiments with "the fundamental ambiguity of fire, which is both
life and death, purity and passion, sanctity and damnation" are "an art as
much as a technique," resulting in "the phenomenon of inversion, as an
excess of cold causes a burning, or as the paroxysm of love merges with
hate" (87; 108). Such a process, declares Prelati, explains Jeanne's destiny,
her agony at the stake having been "the zero level at which a benign
transmutation was to begin," preceding her eventual rehabilitation,
and submitted
statue, throug
definitively "i
"went to the st
God" (101; 125).
Thus, to evinc
which "allows th
and rise up aga
437; MP 545), G
ascension throug
this threat, Gill
"You have no r
I have no wish t
Help!" (105-106
parently sincere
the decree of ex
"For my part I
brought against
the heaviest poss
for my infamy. B
if your charity
wretched of her
As Prelati exp
tribunal, his ap
Gilles's destiny
lovers of subtle
a "benign inver
says Prelati, w
"malign inversi
would lead direc
This faith in t
serenely by Gill
you, therefore
have followed me in my
guiding light, amidst the
distant bell: 'Jeanne! Jeann
Thus, the fact that "the c
nor justified by Prelat's mo
of Evil into Good" hardly q
For the ambiguity, parad
criticizes this text are, in f
nity. What Davis calls th
urgent enigma of ethical
petually recurring dilem
spawned more than its sh
ambiguity in Tournier's
illuminds to apply as well t
Indeed, Gilles's condemna
buying of this or that parc
No, you are not judges: y
creditor" (103; 127)-recall
for individual "ethical lim
themselves so frequently t
Mireille Rosello concludes
perhaps to denounce) all f
Christian justice and the j
'delirium,' are basically n
sacrifice" (94; my translatio
State-sanctioned operation
Tournier maintains, and t
Gilles et Jeanne are part of
and context, both scriptura
Throughout this analysis,
areading along nomadolog
the State apparatus (i.e. i
war-machine by "royal
metamorphoses, of "becom
"smooth space" and "ambu
Such an appropriation be
developed not through a "
through "the drawing of
smooth space and of the m
526). While Gilles de Rais'
SubStance
tive brutality, th
ing to a do with
but assembling,
well as Prelati's
characteristic of
Gilles's case, tow
limited, barbar
paratus which a
"becoming." As
the affect and th
the chanson de g
400; MP 498), ev
towards the sm
damnation), a sp
coded and captu
Finally, Tournie
lends itself to an
an "assembling"
seeking the met
Wayne
An early version
part of a panel on
Ronnie Scharfman
ABBREVIATIONS USED
The following abbreviations are used for Deleuze and Guattari's texts:
ATP A Thousand Plateaus.
NOTES
1. Davis outlines how Tournier alters the historical texts and documents on the
life and trial of Gilles de Rais (notably, Bataille's Le Procks de Gilles de Rais) to his own,
literary ends, "to complete the story told in the historical texts" (130), or as Tournier
himself puts it, to write "dans les blancs laissis par les textes sacris et historiques" ("in
the blanks left by the sacred and historical texts") (Gilles et Jeanne, 5; 9).
2. Bogue has coined this somewhat ungainly term to reflect accurately the col-
laboration of Deleuze with Guattari. My study has also gained from Stephen
Muecke's "The Discourse of Nomadology: Phylums in Flux," Art & Text 14 (1984):
24-40.
3. For example, Joseph Garreau, "Reflexions sur Michel Tournier," The French
Review 58.5 (1985): 682-691.
4. "Haecceity" is a term which Deleuze and Guattari utilize (borrowing haec-
ceitas, "thisness," from Duns Scotus) to designate the heterogeneity, the positionality,
speed, duration and affects of individuated entities without subjectivization (ATP
260-265; MP 318-324).
5. Davis notes that Tournier "regards the possibility of describing mixed states
('faux sedentaire,' 'nomades sedentarises,' 'voyageur sidentaire,' 'vagabond
immobile') as a triumph of the intellect over binary oppositions. He attempts to
overcome the limitations of the dichotomy by rejecting absolute barriers between
opposites, and so the nomad in his texts is never entirely independent of the sedentary
order" (196).
6. Developing Michel Serres's insights, Deleuze and Guattari summarize the
characteristics of the eccentric, nomad science: "1) First of all, it uses a hydraulic
model, rather than being a theory of solids treating fluids as a special case;... 2) The
model in question is one of becomings and heterogeneity, as opposed to the stable, the
eternal, the identical, the constant. .... 3) One no longer goes from the straight line to
its parallels, in a lamellar or laminar flow, but from a curvilinear declination to the
formation of spirals and vortices on an inclined plane: the greatest slope for the
smallest angle. . . . 4) Finally, the model is problematic, rather than theorematic:
figures are considered only from the viewpoint of the affections that befall them:
sections, ablations, adjunctions, projections. One does not go by specific differences
from a genus to its species, or by deduction from a stable essence to the properties
deriving from it, but rather from a problem to the accidents that condition and resolve
it" (ATP 361-362; MP 447-448). See Serres, La naissance de la physique dans le texte de
Lucrnce. Fleuves et turbulences (Paris: Minuit, 1977).
WORKS CITED
Bogue, Ronald. Deleuze and Guattari. New York & London: Routledge, 1989.
Davis, Colin. Michel Tournier. Philosophy and Fiction. Oxford: Clarendon Pres
Deleuze, Gilles, an
neapolis: Universit
schizophrenie II. Pa
Foucault, Michel. T
1978. (Trans. of La
Tournier, Michel.
Boston: Beacon Pre
Tournier, Michel.
(Trans. of Gilles et
appear in the text
Rosello, Mireille. "
qu'il ait la rage,'"St