Gilles Deleuze: Proust et les signes
Chapter 1: “Les types de signes”
(p.9) “recherche doit être pris au sens fort, comme dans l’expression “recherche de la vérité.”
“…le temps perdu n’est pas simplement le temps passé; c’est aussi bien le temps qu’on perd, comme dans l’expression “perdre son temps. Il va de soi que la mémoire intervient comme un moyen de recherche, mais ce n’est pas le moyen le plus profond; et le temps passé intervient comme une structure du temps, mais ce n’est pas la structure la plus profonde.”
Though I agree with Deleuze that “memory intervenes as a method [means] of research [or recovery],” I don’t think that that statement follows from what he’s said.
I’m not sure that I agree with Deleuze of the platonism of Proust (p.10). To view the rediscovery that occurs as simply learning (apprendre, apprentissage) seems too limiting, I don’t think it fully accounts for what is at stake, though I’ve yet to figure out precisely what is at stake myself.
“Le Recherche est tournée vers le futur, non vers le passé.” (p.5)
I’m inclined to agree, but I’m not entirely sure why.
“Apprendre concerne essentiellement les signes. Les signes sont l’objet d’un apprentissage temporel, non pas d’un savoir abstrait.”
Again, I’m not sure I agree. Certainly, the rediscovery—or perhaps more accurately the recreation—(in Deleuze’s term “apprentissage”) that takes place is in part temporel, but it is also uniquely spatial, and further, I’m not sure what Deleuze means by “un savoir abstrait”. If he means, “an abstact knowledge”, does he mean it in a projected sense, as the product of the Recherche, or does he mean it in a more personal (anthropomorphic) sense, as in the savoir of a particular person. Either way, Proust’s world seems thoroughly abstract to me, and I mean this at two levels. First, it is the product of both simple (short) and complex (protracted) metaphors and metonymies, and thus is necessarily abstract (the products of metaphor and metonymy being abstract—though interestingly, a “good” metaphor often speaks to us in a very non-abstract way, it is somehow felt through experience more than it is thought, and it is in fact precisely the difficulty in thinking it that can make such “good” metaphors so arresting, that despite not being easily parsed in a conceptual sense, they are still somehow true to the nature of our experience). Second, I think a good argument can be made (and perhaps I should make one) that all language involves a process of abstaction. My first approach to this argument would be to argue that all signs are abstractions, or, to put it more simply, they are abstract concepts, though that terminology is perhaps a little redundant.
(p.11) “La Recherche se présente comme l’exploration des différents mondes de signes, qui s’organisent en cercles et se recoupent en certains points. Car les signes sont spécifiques et constituent la matière de tel ou tel monde.”
I agree with the first of these two sentences. The Recherche is certainly “the exploration of the different worlds of signs”, but it is perhaps more accurately the exploration of the way those different worlds are created by the relationships between the signs of which they are constituted. (or) The Recherche is not simply about the exploration of different worlds of signs, it is the exploration of how worlds come into being, and in the Recherche, worlds come into being through the association of signs. “Association” is perhaps a bad word, as it recalls Saussure’s term for the paradigmatic axis (associative). By the “association” of signs in Proust, I mean both syntagmatic and paradigmatic relationships, metonymic and metaphoric (Jakobson), and perhaps more importantly, the intertwinning of the two. There is no world in the Recherche without these relationships, and thus to call signs the material of the worlds in Proust seems to me to place the focus in the wrong place. I’m not even sure that Deleuze and I fundamentally disagree. It certainly takes at least two signs to make a metaphoric or metonymic connection, and thus signs are certainly the buidling blocks of the worlds in Proust. But it is not the signs which make the worlds different. In fact, I don’t think one could even say that the worlds in Proust share the same underlying signs. Though they certainly share signifiers, their signs are not the same because referents do not exist separately in the Recherche. They are always only understood in discursive (metonymic and metaphoric) connection to each other. In doing away with the notion of an underlying, pre-existing reality, Proust has also jettisoned the independence of signs (there’s certainly a good citation from Barthes here, I think from Mythologies, though it might be in “The Structural Analysis of Narrrative (récit)).
Chapter 1: “Les types de signes”
(p.9) “recherche doit être pris au sens fort, comme dans l’expression “recherche de la vérité.”
“…le temps perdu n’est pas simplement le temps passé; c’est aussi bien le temps qu’on perd, comme dans l’expression “perdre son temps. Il va de soi que la mémoire intervient comme un moyen de recherche, mais ce n’est pas le moyen le plus profond; et le temps passé intervient comme une structure du temps, mais ce n’est pas la structure la plus profonde.”
Though I agree with Deleuze that “memory intervenes as a method [means] of research [or recovery],” I don’t think that that statement follows from what he’s said.
I’m not sure that I agree with Deleuze of the platonism of Proust (p.10). To view the rediscovery that occurs as simply learning (apprendre, apprentissage) seems too limiting, I don’t think it fully accounts for what is at stake, though I’ve yet to figure out precisely what is at stake myself.
“Le Recherche est tournée vers le futur, non vers le passé.” (p.5)
I’m inclined to agree, but I’m not entirely sure why.
“Apprendre concerne essentiellement les signes. Les signes sont l’objet d’un apprentissage temporel, non pas d’un savoir abstrait.”
Again, I’m not sure I agree. Certainly, the rediscovery—or perhaps more accurately the recreation—(in Deleuze’s term “apprentissage”) that takes place is in part temporel, but it is also uniquely spatial, and further, I’m not sure what Deleuze means by “un savoir abstrait”. If he means, “an abstact knowledge”, does he mean it in a projected sense, as the product of the Recherche, or does he mean it in a more personal (anthropomorphic) sense, as in the savoir of a particular person. Either way, Proust’s world seems thoroughly abstract to me, and I mean this at two levels. First, it is the product of both simple (short) and complex (protracted) metaphors and metonymies, and thus is necessarily abstract (the products of metaphor and metonymy being abstract—though interestingly, a “good” metaphor often speaks to us in a very non-abstract way, it is somehow felt through experience more than it is thought, and it is in fact precisely the difficulty in thinking it that can make such “good” metaphors so arresting, that despite not being easily parsed in a conceptual sense, they are still somehow true to the nature of our experience). Second, I think a good argument can be made (and perhaps I should make one) that all language involves a process of abstaction. My first approach to this argument would be to argue that all signs are abstractions, or, to put it more simply, they are abstract concepts, though that terminology is perhaps a little redundant.
(p.11) “La Recherche se présente comme l’exploration des différents mondes de signes, qui s’organisent en cercles et se recoupent en certains points. Car les signes sont spécifiques et constituent la matière de tel ou tel monde.”
I agree with the first of these two sentences. The Recherche is certainly “the exploration of the different worlds of signs”, but it is perhaps more accurately the exploration of the way those different worlds are created by the relationships between the signs of which they are constituted. (or) The Recherche is not simply about the exploration of different worlds of signs, it is the exploration of how worlds come into being, and in the Recherche, worlds come into being through the association of signs. “Association” is perhaps a bad word, as it recalls Saussure’s term for the paradigmatic axis (associative). By the “association” of signs in Proust, I mean both syntagmatic and paradigmatic relationships, metonymic and metaphoric (Jakobson), and perhaps more importantly, the intertwinning of the two. There is no world in the Recherche without these relationships, and thus to call signs the material of the worlds in Proust seems to me to place the focus in the wrong place. I’m not even sure that Deleuze and I fundamentally disagree. It certainly takes at least two signs to make a metaphoric or metonymic connection, and thus signs are certainly the buidling blocks of the worlds in Proust. But it is not the signs which make the worlds different. In fact, I don’t think one could even say that the worlds in Proust share the same underlying signs. Though they certainly share signifiers, their signs are not the same because referents do not exist separately in the Recherche. They are always only understood in discursive (metonymic and metaphoric) connection to each other. In doing away with the notion of an underlying, pre-existing reality, Proust has also jettisoned the independence of signs (there’s certainly a good citation from Barthes here, I think from Mythologies, though it might be in “The Structural Analysis of Narrrative (récit)).
posted by E at 9:04 PM
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