I

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 Ž 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 Ž 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

Cultural Studies ISSN 0950-2386 print/ISSN 1466-4 348 online © 2000 Taylor & Francis Ltd

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 afŽ 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
Ž 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 conŽ 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 speciŽ 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 Ž nal
collaborative book, D eleuze and Guattari (1994) argue that philosophy’s project

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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, signiŽ 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

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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 Ž 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 Ž 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 Ž 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

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leading edge of the Ž 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 Ž 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:‘Ž 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 Ž 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

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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 inŽ nite patience (or, ironically, w hat Brian M assum i calls in his essay
here: the bloom of philosophy’s ‘glow ing uselessness’), the inŽ 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

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out layers of affect, conjugating often subtle lines of force, and calling into atten-
tion those becoming-indiscernible zones w here a politics Ž 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.

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Foucault, M ichel (1977[1972]) ‘Intellectuals and Power’, Language, Counter-Memory,

Practice

, trans. D. F. Bouchard and S. Sim on, Ithaca: Cornell U niversity Press:

165–96

H all, Stuart (1992) ‘Cultural studies and its theoretical legacies’, in L. G rossberg, C.

Nelson and P. Treichler (eds) Cultural Studies, N ew York: Routledge: 277–86.

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