Becoming Crystal

‘On Gilbert Simondon’ (1966)

IT IS SYMPTOMATIC of Deleuze's twofold thought that some scholars read his work as a celebration of deterritorialization and schizophrenia, while others consider it a celebration of a vitalist monism that relies on the overall oneness of all things. In the light of my introduction, both of these readings miss the point. What makes Deleuze's work singular is precisely that it aligns these two extremes in such a way that at a philosophical point-at-infinity, schizophrenia and monism become identical. How to think the paradox of this conceptual simultaneity?

My initial proposition is that Deleuze defines the subject of philosophy as a living entity – an assemblage of crystals or desiring-machines as the ‘molecular machines or micro-machines’ that denote the ‘non-organic system of the body’ (DI: 219) – that negotiates its life-course within two complementary multiplicities. One physical, the other metaphysical; one actual, the other virtual. This twofold vectorization is why Deleuzian philosophy addresses to an equal degree both physical and metaphysical registers. In terms of physics, Deleuze develops a philosophical theory of the crystallization and individuation of molar material aggregates from within the extensive multiplicity of an anonymous, informal life that he conceptualizes variously as atomic (The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, What is Philosophy?), as molecular (Anti-Oedipus, A Thousand Plateaus) or as photonic (Cinema 1 ' 2).