Radical Philosophy #123 by Radical Philosophy

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He has a grip on the unavailability to twentiethcentury painting of ʻsimple figurationʼ, and on some of the reasons for that. He says, ʻPainting has to extract the Figure from the figurativeʼ (8). ) Later, ʻthe Figure is opposed to figuration…ʼ Even if ʻsomething is nonetheless figured (for instance a screaming Pope)ʼ, there is a ʻsecondary figuration [which] depends on the neutralization of all primary figurationʼ (37). We might ask what this neutralization is like. Presumably it doesnʼt mean that one no longer sees the screaming Pope.

There is a ʻunion that separatesʼ which is constituted by ʻan immense space–timeʼ (84, 85). There are a number of distinct similarities between this analysis and that of the structure of Proustʼs novel in Proust and Signs. 7 In Deleuzeʼs analysis, these suspended vessels are not simply the containers of essences hanging at different levels in time. 8 As the narrator suggests, the sheer multitude of fragments may serve to give a false ʻimpression of continuityʼ, an ʻillusion of unityʼ. So far, this would seem to be the kind of illusion that Georges Poulet, for example, entertains.

In spite of its name, this body isnʼt exactly organless. While the ʻorganismʼ ʻis defined by determinate organsʼ, the body without organs ʻis [thus] defined by an indeterminate organʼ. It is finally defined ʻby the temporary and provisional presence of determinate organsʼ (48). This is a bit messy: does a constantly shifting set of determinate organs constitute an indeterminate organ? It is at this point that Deleuze returns to the two alternative routes open to painting as he conceives it: to ʻconserve the figurative coordinates of organic representationʼ, or else to turn toward ʻabstract formʼ and invent ʻa properly pictorial cerebralityʼ (53).