DELEUZE AND GUATTARI IN CULTURAL STUDIES

N G I V I N G T H I S S P E C I A L

issue the title of ‘D eleuze and Guattari in C ul-

tural Studies’, there is no sense in w hich we are really trying to fool anybody.

A fter all, it’s not as if D eleuze and Guattari are not already here. C ertainly, then,
this issue is not going to make any grandiose claim s about cultural studies needing
to take them on board. That would be a silly and very tardy pronouncem ent: just
pick up many of the w ritings by Law rence Grossberg, Dick  Hebdige, M eaghan
M orris, Stephen M uec ke, Elspeth Probyn, M cKenzie Wark, and others and you
w ill nd an ongoing and active engagem ent w ith the work of D eleuze and Guat-
tari. O r, further, ip over their A Thousand Plateaus and you w ill see it referenced
on  its  back  cover  as ‘Philosophy/C ultural  Studies’. This  offers  a   rst  clue  –
D eleuze and G uattari in cultural studies might require us to ask fresh questions
about  the ‘place’ of  philosophy  in  cultural  studies. To  m ake  it  a  slightly  more
‘D eleuzean’ question, of  w hat  use  is  philosophy  to  cultural  studies?  W hat  is  it
that cultural studies do with philosophy?

There is, of course, the snide answer to this latter question, w hich tends to

com e m ost often from  outside cultural studies: ‘In cultural studies, philosophy is
there for w indow  dressing. Philosophy serves to add a dash of color to the average
cultural  studies’ essay  –  “Let’s  see, hm mm, a  N ietzschean   oor  covering, an
A lthusser-inspired  armchair, and  a  brightly  colored  Benjamin  drape. M aybe  a
vase from the H egel dynasty, with a trendy Zizek bouquet, and the room  is com-
plete.” ’ O r, philosophy  arrives  in  cultural  studies  w ith  an  elliptical ‘oomph’ –
‘ “There we go”: that weighty, closing quote from Foucault on “power” coupled
w ith  the  opening  epigraph  from  Adorno  should  seal  my  essay  off  from   any
simple-headed critique.’ In fact, this special issue began its life as a pair of con-
ference panels organized for the 1997 International Communication A ssociation
conference  as  an  initial  response  to  this  very  view point. O n  the  chief  D eleuze
and  G uattari  discussion  group  on  the  World  W ide  Web, a  one-line  snickering
joke  bounced  around, disappeared, and  periodically  resurfaced  throughout

Gregory J. Seigworth and
J. Macgregor Wise

INTRODUCTION
DELEUZE AND GUATTARI IN
CULTURAL STUDIES

C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S 1 4 ( 2 ) 2 0 0 0 , 1 3 9 – 1 4 6

http://w w w.tandf.co.uk/journals/routledge/09502386.htm l

several  months  in  1996. The ‘joke’, such  as  it  is, read: ‘sometimes  I  think  that
cultural  studies  is  full  of  frustrated  interior  decorators’. Subsequently, a  fair
number of responses arrived to af rm the statement, each one essentially offer-
ing assent: ‘ha ha good one’, ‘absolutely’, etc. No one m ounted a serious coun-
tercharge  in  defence  of  cultural  studies; although  som eone, the  son  of  interior
decorators, did w rite in to defend his parents and their profession from such an
untow ard com parison.

The answer that tends to com e from inside cultural studies is a bit different

but  may  be, in  the  end, just  as  problematic. ‘Cultural  studies  plays  practice  to
philosophy’s theory. Philosophy thinks. C ultural studies acts’. W hen one tries to
nesse  such  a  know ingly  troublesome  mind/body  split, it  goes  som ething  like
this: ‘philosophy  thinks  acting  w hile  cultural  studies  puts  thought  into  action.
Philosophy  is  cultural  studies  in  its  quiet, re ective  moments: when  it’s  not
running and jum ping and knocking things over’. But the dichotom ous rhythm of
such a conceptualization leaves a lot to be desired. The apparent movement from
re ection to action, no matter how  well rehearsed and nuanced, is bound to be
a  little  bit  jerky. Perhaps  that  slashing  line  between  philosophy  and  cultural
studies  –  at  once, cutting  and  connecting  –  on  the  back  cover  of  A  Thousand
Plateaus is  not there  to  be continually  leaped  over  (jump  over there  and re ect
for w hile/jum p over here to take action) but, rather, it is a line upon w hich we
must place ourselves.

W hat better w ay to place ourselves on the line than in squaring up to the

m ost comm onplace response to the question of philosophy’s use w ithin cultural
studies, nam ely, cultural  studies’ detour  through  theory. The  detour  through
theory  has long been  one of  the core organizing tropes of cultural studies and,
along  w ith  the  idea  of  articulation, is  considered  central  in  distinguishing  its
project (at least in its British and A merican con gurations). Cultural studies have
never  been simply critical  political  practice, and  neither  has  it been  simply  the
theorization of culture. A s m ost usually described, the detour through theory is
an  eminently  pragm atic  m ethodology  that  begins  in  the  speci cs  of  a  situation
(on the ground, as it were), and then theorizes about that situation (the detour).
H owever, all  such  detours  must  return  to  the  original  road  eventually  and  the
key element of the detour through theory is the return to the concrete w ith the
theory as a political tool, intimately connected to that circumstance in question.
Therefore, as  Stuar t  Hall  has  w ritten, cultural  studies  are  concerned  w ith  the
‘politics  of  theory. N ot  theory  as  the  w ill  to  truth, but  theory  as  a  set  of  con-
tested, localized, conjunctural  know ledges, w hich  have  to  be  debated  in  a  dia-
logical w ay’ (1992: 286).

Philosophy often becom es a grazing ground for those seeking theoretical

tools, but in so doing, the distinctiveness of philosophy itself as a practice col-
lapses. But, if we follow D eleuze and Guattari, we m ight see interesting and pro-
ductive parallels between cultural studies and philosophical practice. In their nal
collaborative book, D eleuze and Guattari (1994) argue that philosophy’s project

C U L T U R A L S T U D I E S

1 4 0

is  the  production  of  concepts. Concepts  are  not  universals, and, as  H all  w rote
about  theory  above, are  not  about  a  search  for  truth. Concepts  are  events,
organizations  against  chaos, cuts  in   uxes  of  m ovem ent, passages  of  intensity.
They  are  not  representative, not  propositional, and  –  because  they  singularly
belong to their ow n unique situation – they do not articulate cleanly w ith other
concepts. That  is, concepts  as situationally  circum scribed intensities  are always
the  product  of  particularly  local  circumstances, historically  and  geographically
bounded (even if they range across the globe); they are, as Lawrence G rossberg
has described cultural studies,‘radically contextual.’ D eleuze and Guattari w rite,
‘Of course, new  concepts must relate to our problems, to our history, and, above
all, to our becom ings’ (1994: 27).

C oncepts are not descriptors of events, but they are crucial in giving shape

to  events. Concepts  do not so  much  combine the  stages of the  detour  through
theory, theory-tussle, and return to the concrete, as they cut across these stages
transversally. The tidy linearity of ‘detouring’ is interrupted and thrown out of
any recognizable sequence. Travelling by concept is, to begin with, an incorpo-
real transform ation of the context from within the context. Concepts are movement
in  place: a  hop, a  skip, and  a  jum p  w ithout  departure. ‘The  task  of  philosophy
when it creates concepts, entities, is always to extract an event from things and
beings, to  set  up  the  new   event  from   things  and  beings, alw ays  to  give  them  a
new  event: space, tim e, matter, thought, the possible as events’ (1994: 33). There
are, of course, signi cant differences that should be m arked between philosophy
and  cultural  studies  (these  are  different  projects, after  all). But  D eleuze  and
Guattari  point  to  a  presum ption  that  quite  often  goes  unacknow ledged  in  the
detour  through  theory. In  its  presumption  of  the  detour  through  theory  as  a
practical  necessity, it  is  not  so  much  that  cultural  studies  does  not  know   in
advance w hat theory is, nor even what theory might be of use. But rather, in the
detour  through  theory, the  implicit  assum ption  is  that  cultural  studies  know s
where theory is. The spatial trajectory and temporal stages of the detour assumes
that  theory  (concepts)  are  elsew here  and  not  already  in the  context  or  situ-
ation/event; the detour through theory is then a transcendence of the situation
(literally  leaving  the  ground  to  take  to  the  air), w hereas  D eleuze  and  Guattari
argue for a single plane of imm anence: utter univocally – ‘the concept speaks the
event’ (1994: 21). Concepts are not arrived at, then, through a departure from
the im manent space of an event, and so there is no need to go elsew here (m aking
this truly ‘radically contextual’).

Perhaps it is that concepts and contexts (events/situations) arrive with a

simultaneous kind of halation-effect. H alation is what happens w hen the bright-
ness-intensity  of  a  photographic  image  exceeds  the  boundaries  of  its  object. A
concept emerges not as separable or external thing but, rather, as that w hich  is
intagliated or extruded and, thus, can serve  to unfold the real  but  near-imper-
ceptible atm osphere of these  sorts of effects. The concept, thus created, enters
the  picture  in  the  overbloom ed  space  of  an  halation: still  in  the  situation  and

I N T R O D U C T I O N

1 4 1

working in the context of its (the event’s) ‘about’– not unlike the w ay in w hich
an  incorporeal  vapour  hovers  over  a  battle. This  is  w hat  D eleuze  and  Guattari
m ean  w hen  they  ask  for  a  concept  that  is  equivalent  to  the  event. Concept-
creation  is  som ething  that  takes  place  on  the  same  processual  line  as  the  event
but alw ays from w ithin the event’s bloom -space: offering a w ay of sustaining it,
keeping alive, so that it can be relayed further dow n the non-linear line. This is
D eleuze and Guattari’s vitalism  of the concept. But there are also those moments
w hen  concepts  die  or  w hen  a  concept  deser ves  to  die  (although  generally
D eleuze and Guattari choose to go for supercession or teasing away from other-
w ise tired or weary concepts): like the concept of the ‘subject’. A s Deleuze notes,
a concept dies ‘w hen new  functions in new   elds discharge it. This is also w hy it
is never very interesting to criticize a concept: it is better to build the new  func-
tions and discover the new   elds that m ake it useless or inadequate’ (1991: 94).
A  concept w ill live as long as the bloom that gave it its rise is still vibrant.

N one of this is meant to argue that cultural studies should become a philo-

sophical project, or vice versa. But rather to say that a D eleuzo-Guattarian phil-
osophy of both the generation and discovery of concepts, follow ing them as they
m oult and shift, traversing strata and space-time, can nd a useful resonance in
cultural studies work.

O ne of the prim ary presum ed dangers in cultural studies’ ‘ irtation’ w ith

theory or philosophy is that of seduction: the seduction of ideas and discourses
about ideas. This  is  the  danger  that com es  with  a  certain theoretical glibness  –
one  that  views  itself  as eminently  transferable  into  various  different  situations:
an explanatory grid that one lifts up and presses dow n upon a world that w rig-
gles  beneath it. But a concept should never remain still – for to be adequate to
its event or its context, it must be prepared to meet the world (its world) wriggle
for w riggle. H all (1992) w rites that theory should be a struggle, and points out
the  profound  dangers  of  theoretical   uency. A nd  Deleuze  and  G uattari (1994)
argue that philosophy is not about discourses or discussions (‘Every philosopher
runs  away  w hen  he  or  she  hears  someone  say, “let’s  discuss  this” ’(p. 28)), ‘but
rather  one  of  creating  concepts  for  the  undiscussable  problem  posed’ (p. 28).
This is one of the reasons D eleuze disliked travelling, especially to conferences.
H e says, hum orously, that academics ‘travel by hot air’ and that:

[I]ntellectuals  are  wonderfully  cultivated, they  have  view s  on  everything.
I’m   not  an  intellectual  because  I  can’t  supply  view s  like  that, I’ve  got  no
stock of view s to draw  on. W hat I know, I know  only from something I’m
actually  working on, and if I come  back  to  something  a  few  years later, I
have to learn everything all over.

(D eleuze, 1995: 137)

Sometimes, then, while the life span of a concept often extends no further than
the w idth of its emergence into context, it can also begin its fade along the

C U L T U R A L S T U D I E S

1 4 2

leading edge of the rst shadow that falls across mem ory. May be, though, the
most enduring concepts are those that persist across the gaps in forgetting, rising
up to shake off their lm (or even layers) of sediment and only half-rem em ber-
ing w hat they had said before – but, just as well, since in each new instantiation,
their language would have to be stuttered anew.

This is w hy Stuart Hall’s other ‘metaphor for theoretical work: the m etaphor

of  struggle, of  wrestling  w ith  angels’ (1992: 280)  suits  us  better. Rather  than
maintaining  a  slashing  line  (that  severs  more  than  it  connects)  between
theory-building  and  political  action, H all  offers  a  more  positive  in ection  by
describing it as a necessary (and, we w ill add, mutual) ‘tension’ that exists, w ithin
cultural  studies, between  its  political  project  and  its  theoretical  work. It  is  a
tension that H all says has ‘something to do w ith the conditions and problems of
developing intellectual and theoretical work as a political practice . . . [C ]ultural
studies  as theoretical practice [and not a detour into one!]  . . . must go on and
on  living w ith  that  tension’ (1992: 281–282). W hereas H all draw s on Antonio
Gramsci and his concept of the ‘organic intellectual’ as a way not to resolve this
tension but to live with it (to keep it alive as m otivating force), Walter Benjam in
makes  this  tension  even  more  explicitly  productive. In ‘The  Author  as  Producer’,
Benjam in (1978) describes the author as an individual w ith two chief duties:‘ rst
to induce other producers to produce, and second to put an im proved apparatus
at  their  disposal. And  this  apparatus  is  better  the  more  consum ers  it is  able  to
turn  into  producers  –  that  is, readers  and  spectators  into  collaborators’ (Ben-
jamin, 1978: 233). This is to argue, then, that the w riter of cultural theory and
criticism  is never merely an interpreter or a translator of culture into discourse
but  is, instead, someone w ho acts as  an integral  part of a  relay (w ho, by  neces-
sity, w ill  transform   w hat  is  transm itted  as  well  as  alter  the  apparatus  of  trans-
mission) in an always open-ended circuit of cultural theory/practice.

G illes Deleuze conceives of the relation between theory and practice in a

very sim ilar m anner. In an interview w ith M ichel Foucault (1972/1977), he
argues that:

From the m oment a theory m oves into its proper domain [always local and
related to a limited eld], it begins to encounter obstacles, w alls, and block-
ages w hich require its relay by another type of discourse (it is through this
discourse that it eventually passes to a different dom ain). Practice is a set
of relays from one theoretical point to another, and theory is a relay from
one practice to another. N o theory can develop w ithout eventually encoun-
tering a wall, and practice is necessary for piercing this w all.

(Foucault, 1972/1977: 206)

Practice, for D eleuze, should not be understood then as the direct application of
theory onto a par ticular set of circumstances. The theoretical does not evaporate
into its instantiation in the practical. Instead, they maintain a cer tain degree of

I N T R O D U C T I O N

1 4 3

co-existence: alw ays present – one w ithin the other – at the same m om ent. W hat
needs to be emphasized is this: N o m atter how  differently em bodied or deployed,
one  does not w holly  leave the practical to detour through the theory (nor  vice
versa). Theory  and  practice, as  H all’s  alternative  m etaphor  suggests, exert  a
mutual tension  that can  never  be  separated  out  to  offer  a  point  for  com pletely
transcendentalist departure. Instead of cutting and separating, Deleuze looks to
w hat is connected  or shared in this relation: namely, that both theory and prac-
tice  are  forms  of  action, means  of  overcom ing, w ays  of  m oving. And  both  can
provide w ays of being moved (affectively/em otionally) – maybe this is w hat still
needs to be further unlocked along the line that joins cultural studies and phil-
osophy: how  m ovement enters the world (a world, a life)  and how  to assure its
continued w riggling.

In a cultural studies that reconceives its relationship with philosophy as such

– not as a detour into theory but as a struggle w ith angels – the earlier formu-
lation  of  concept-creation  inhabiting  the  bloom-space  of  a  halation  could  be
slightly  redirected. Thus, cultural  studies  is  less  about  concept-creation  (let’s,
indeed, leave that task – for the most part – to philosophy) and m ore about strug-
gling  w ith  angels  and  stealing  halos. ‘H alos’, w rites  Giorgio  Agam ben
(1990/1993), are inessential supplements ‘added to perfection – som ething like
the vibration of that which is perfect, the glow  at its edges’ (p. 56). A rriving like
a  gift after  a  being’s possibilities have been  all  but  consum ed, a  halo  is  an  indi-
cator of the most minute of differences, revealing that a change has entered the
world – gradually and very sm all, but there nonetheless as potentiality.

Certainly, there are mom ents w hen, in the midst of all kinds of everyday

struggles (and not just those w ith angels), cultural studies feels a certain futility
or despair about its potential to affect change. A s H all states:

Anyone  w ho  is  into  cultural  studies  seriously  as  an  intellectual  practice,
must feel, on their pulse, its ephem erality, its insubstantiality, how  little it
registers, how  little we’ve been able to change anything or get anybody to
do anything.

(Hall, 1992: 285)

A t these tim es, the answer to the question of w hat cultural studies should do with
philosophy becomes clearer. Philosophy’s usefulness for cultural studies is to be
found in its in nite patience (or, ironically, w hat Brian M assum i calls in his essay
here: the bloom of philosophy’s ‘glow ing uselessness’), the in nite patience (of
m illennia and not just decades) that must always transpire alongside and in the
m idst of those more giddy moments of running and jum ping and knocking things
over.

Although the essays that follow do run, jump, and dance, they are, even more

so, movements in place or stationary journeys; that is, they m ake them selves at
home in the various banalities of everyday life – patiently accreting and folding

C U L T U R A L S T U D I E S

1 4 4

out layers of affect, conjugating often subtle lines of force, and calling into atten-
tion those becoming-indiscernible zones w here a politics nds the fullest reson-
ance for its effectivity. Reading through these essays, we follow the workings of
machines that cut through strata and institutions and watch concepts as they
wriggle and transform both them selves and the strata from w hich they arise. A ll
told, they represent trajectories through the space of cultural studies.

So, w hy these essays? They are, to say the least, diverse in form and content.

They are also diverse in their apparent engagem ent w ith either cultural studies
or  D eleuze  and  Guattari. That  is  the  point. Each  essay  is  a  trajectory, a  line  of
ight. Some are rather direct engagem ents w ith D eleuze and G uattari (Bogard’s
sm oothing machines, W ise’s musings on hom e and territory), others are projects
where D eleuzo-G uattarian thought is so deeply ingrained as to not to appear an
explicit  engagem ent  (M assum i’s  essay  on  science, philosophy, and  ar t, Seig-
worth’s  on  banality). Som e  are  more  direct  engagem ents  w ith  cultural  studies
(M assum i’s critique at the end of his essay, questioning w hether cultural studies
may have lost a crucial opportunity to become a different kind of inter vention-
ist  project; Seigworth’s  call  for  a  rethinking  of  a  place  for banality  in  cultural
studies; Stivale’s engagement with French Cultural Studies and the becom ings at
the intersection of intellectual work and dancing bodies). Crucially, none of the
essays  is about D eleuze  and/or  Guattari or  Cultural  Studies per se. Explication
was  never  the  point  for  this  issue. We  take  Deleuze  and  Guattari  and  cultural
studies  along as travelling  companions, like the bobbing bead  that  accompanies
Greg W ise on his journeys between work and home.

D eleuze and G uattari’s work forces us to attend to the very processes and

effects of cultural studies research itself. Their work is not a solution for cultural
studies’ troubles, and their work in itself is not going to be redemptive. But w hat
this work can do is to shift some of the questions that we ask, and offer new ways
of engaging with those movements and halations that sometimes rise and fall
along the edges of our attention.

R eferences

Agam ben, G iorgio (1993[1990]) The Coming Community, trans. M . H ardt, M in-

neapolis: University of M innesota Press.

Benjam in, Walter (1978) ‘The Author as Producer’, Re ections, trans. E. Jephcott,

London: N ew Left Books: 220–38.

Deleuze, G illes (1991) ‘A Philosophical Concept . . .’, in E. Cadava, P. Connor and

J.-L. Nancy (eds) Who Com es After the Subject? N ew York: Routledge: 94–5.

— — (1995[1990]) Negotiations, trans. M . Joughin, N ew York: Colum bia U niversity

Press.

— — and G uattari, Félix (1994) What is Philosophy? trans. H. Tom linson and G.

Burchell, New York: Colum bia U niversity Press.

I N T R O D U C T I O N

1 4 5