Melancholic Biunivocality

Began the day by mulling over Deleuze and Guatarri’s exposition of ‘biunivocal relationships’ in a suitable state of melancholy. Recall the deification of genus Homarus:

“God is a lobster, or a double pincer, a double bind. Not only do strata come at least in pairs, but in a different way each stratum is double (it itself has several layers). Each stratum exhibits phenomena constitutive of double articulation. Articulate twice, B-A, BA. [...] Both articulations establish binary relations between their respective segments. But between the segments of one articulation and the segments of the other there are biunivocal relationships obeying far more complex laws” [ATP 40-41].

Double articulation, then, is the process by which strata become stratified. But what does it mean to say this relationship is ‘biunivocal’?  Mark Bonta and John Protevil’s (2004) exegises, normally enligtening, is of no help; their Deluzoguattarian glossary (a paradoxical project, I realize) lacks an entry for ‘Biunivocal’. Other entries on related topics -  ‘Strata’, ‘Stratification’ and ”Faciality’ – likewise fail to mention bunivocality. What, then,  is this thing, this biunivocality?

Reading ‘biunivocal’ from within the complex associational matrix of the English language – ‘biunivocal’ itself is Massumi’s word choice, after all – is itself a Deluezoguatarrian expedition of and…and…and. ‘Univocal’, according to the OED:

A. adj.

1. a. Of symptoms, signs, etc.: Indicative of, signifying, or denoting one thing; certain or unmistakable in significance. Chiefly Med. Obs.

b. Of terms, etc.: Having only one proper meaning or signification; admitting or capable of a single interpretation or explanation; of which the meaning is unmistakable; unambiguous.
Opposed to EQUIVOCAL a. 2. Now esp. in Logic.

c. Mus. (See quot.) Obs. rare⁰.

2. Uniform, homogeneous; not exhibiting variation or deviation; confined to one kind or nature.
Freq. in the latter half of the 17th c., esp. in the writings of Jeremy Taylor; in some instances it is difficult to determine the precise sense.

3. Of or belonging to, characteristic of, things of the same name or species; esp. in univocal generation, normal or regular generation between male and female members of the same species. Obs.

b. Of actions, causes, etc. Obs.

4. Made, uttered, etc., with or as if with one voice. Of consent, etc.: Unanimous. Obs.

In what sense then, biunivocality in ATP? All of the above, of course.  Each strata is univocal: indicative of, signifying, or denoting one thing having only one proper meaning or signification; homogeneous through the process of overcoding; of or belonging to things of the same name or species (e.g., the inorganic, organic, or alloplastic strata); of actions and causes in the sense that collectively strata are “actualized systems with homogenized components operating at or near equilibrium/steady state/stability” (Bonta and Protevi 2004: 150); and made and uttered with or as if with one voice, which quite nicely captures the associated ideas of multiplicity, overcoding, homogenaity, vocality, and resonance all at once. Thus, the biunivocal relationship between two voices – each articulating its own univocal monophony – produces a biunivocal polyphonic texture which is emergent in character. The nomenclature ‘BIunivocal’ then, is a recognition of the importance of interaction in producing complex emergent effects/behavior.  One wonders, of course, if this reading holds true in the original french [The quasi-musical metaphor of biunivocality has strong tie-ins to the music of Steve Reich - a paper which I intend to write one day, but will not discuss at length here].

Melancholy intrudes in the imagery of biunivocal: two who are speaking, but not listening. Two people talking past each other, as it were. Undoubtedly this is a reflection of the English language, within which the notion of asymetric reciprocal interactions is difficult to express – witness ‘asymetric reciprocal interaction’ – but nevertheless, biunivocality says nothing about whether the other is listening or not. It posits only the act of vocality itself, but not receiving, decoding, interpreting. At its strictest interpretation, biunivocality posits no understanding, no reaction, no interaction, only independent articulation. [Note that this strict interpretation is exactly opposite the one intended by Deleuze and Guattari]

Guattari passed away in 1992, near Bloise, a town 185 km southwest of Paris – of what, neither Brittanica, nor Wikipedia, nor several other internet sources disclose. Undoubtedly, this is because Guattari is often overlooked as a necessary univocal composite of the biunivocal Deleuze and Guattari. Deleuze simply gets all the attention, a fact of which he was well aware. After Guattari embarked on his last line of flight, Deleuze wrote a short article in the Winter Chimeres (1992-93) entitled ‘For Felix’, in which he wrote, not “about the books we wrote together, but about the books he [Guattari] wrote on his own” (Deleuze 2006: 382). Deleuze’s short piece concludes:

“Felix’s work is waiting to be discovered or rediscovered. That is one of the best ways to keep Felix alive. Perhaps the most painful aspects of remembering a dead friend are the gestures and glances that still reach us, that still come to us long after he is gone. Felix’s work gives new substance to these gestures and glances, like a new object capable of transmitting their power” (Deleuze 2006: 383).

Three years later, Deleuze commited suicide. A heavy smoker incapacitated by lung cancer, he had recently undergone the removal of a lung and a tracheotomy. “Chained like a dog” to his oxygen machine (Goodchild 1996), unable to speak, and unable to bear the chronic, tumorous pain, Deleuze chose to self-defenestrate from his Paris apartment rather than languish in agony. Jacques Derrida (1995) wrote an elegiac memorial to the great man in Tympanum, poignantly entitled ‘I’ll have to wander all alone’. Derrida’s article is at once heartrending and cathartic, sprinkled with personal remembrance and philosophical engagements wthi Deleuze’s life.  Derrida’s conclusion is particularly melancholy:

“I will continue to begin again to read Gilles Deleuze in order to learn, and I’ll have to wander alone in this long conversation that we were supposed to have together” (Derrida 1995).

Only Derrida’s voice echoes back from the halls of the dead, a lone monophony lost in a still, quite place of solitude.

Bonta, Mark and Protevi, John. 2004. Deleuze and Geophilosophy: A Guide and Glossary. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press

Deleuze, Gilles. 2006. Two regimes of Madness: Text and Interviews 1975 – 1995. New York: Semiotext(e).

Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. translated by Brian Massumi.

Derrida, Jacques. 1995. ‘I’ll have to wander all alone’. Tympanum 1, http://www.usc.edu/dept/comp-lit/tympanum/1/derrida.html; accessed 07.02.09

Goodchild, P. 1996. Deleuze and Guattari: An Introduction to the Politics of Desire. London: Sage

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