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Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque

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Merely a passable English translation of Le Pli, a late masterpiece by the sublime Gilles Deleuze, would merit five stars on the amazon.com scale, but alas...!
The explanation of how such a travesty can be perpetrated must involve both the necessity of publishing that presses upon young academics - if you can believe it, this Tom Conley is a professor of French! - and the frenetic pace of production that afflicts the publishing industry as any other under the reign of capitalism. (That's some excuse!)

"Comment aurait-il une volonté libre, celui dont `la notion individuelle renferme une fois pour toutes ce qui lui arrivera jamais'?" When I came to this on page 94 of the French edition, it translated itself automatically, unproblematically, as: "How could he have a free will, he of whom `the individual notion encloses once and for all what will ever happen to him'?" But here's Conley [pg.69]: "How could there be free will, a will whose `individual notion encloses once and for all those who will never come to it'?" Now this is an interpretation that would have occurred to no one without Professor Conley's help. (Thanks a lot!) Besides the question of what Conley's sentence could possibly mean in the context of Deleuze's thought in this passage, the "individual notion" is indisputably not that of "free will" because "volonté" is feminine and the pronoun "celui" is masculine! The most amazing thing about Conley's performance is that most of this sentence is not even new Deleuzian prose, expressing a novel late-twentieth-century idea, but a direct quote of Leibniz, referring to a well-known aspect of his system: The "individual notion" of each monad includes everything that will ever happen to that monad and is thus seemingly - that is the question! - an obstacle to the monad's possession of free will. (In the back of his book, Conley lists the editions of Leibniz that Deleuze himself would have consulted and informs us that he has relied upon previous English translations, where available. Elsewhere he has "directly translated Deleuze's quotations or translations of material taken from those texts...")
Where does Conley's "those" come from? - the fantasmal subjects he has performing the hallucinated action of "never coming to" the will whose individual notion nevertheless encloses them once and for all (huh?!?). There is no plural pronoun in Deleuze/Leibniz's sentence, but Conley finds one by disassembling the idiom "une fois pour toutes" ("once and for all," "definitively"). Likewise, he interprets "arrivera" literally, "will come to," rather than idiomatically, and accurately, as "will happen." (I have detected a tendency toward overliteralness in another Conley effort, where he seems to show off his awareness of what the actual French "really" says. In this case, however, he has totally missed the primary meaning!)

When Conley writes the exact opposite of the French edition, one may suspect that a compositor has dropped a negative. But too often the confusion is clearly Conley's own - for example, when Deleuze [pg. 61] says "prime numbers are primitive/original because..." and proceeds with their definition, Conley [pg. 45] says "the first numbers ["one, two, three..."?] are primary..." Whatever that would mean.

And then there are matters of taste. Where Deleuze describes a state of indecision and the contemplation of his options of spending the evening at a nightclub or staying in and working [pg. 95], Conley changes Deleuze's "le bruit des pages" to "the hum of the word processor" [pg. 70]. Anyone who's ever seen (or read about) Deleuze's fingernails would be unable to picture him typing. Why did Conley decide that Deleuze's phrase needed updating? The philosopher's longhand seems symbolic of the time he took to formulate his thought and the infinite care he took in transmitting the thought of others.

This translation is still better than nothing for someone interested in Deleuze and unable to read him in French. But since the real shame is that, with this on the market, no one is likely to undertake another English translation anytime soon, it is to be hoped that Tom Conley will seek to correct some of the flaws of his effort.

Please forgive me for commenting on an English translation that I have not read, but honestly I was put off from purchasing the English edition by the complaints of several reviewers, so I purchased a French edition instead. I am familiar with Deleuze and Leibniz, but not a specialist in either per se. I read French well enough, but not with the acumen of a French professor. However, Deleuze's French is deliberate and concise, startlingly brilliant and terse. Moreover, the substantive content of the text is not particularly difficult for anyone who has some mastery of the philosophical issues behind Leibniz' mathematics and the development of the calculus or a general mastery of Deleuze. After spending a few days with the French text, I find it highly unlikely that a Harvard French professor with the complicity of the University of Minnesota Press would botch such an important translation. Just for example, one reviewer complained about the word "corps." In Leibniz's philosophical writings on mathematics, natural philosophy, or the mathematical qua philosophical problem of the continuum, for example, he uses the word "body" and "bodies" any number of times in mathematical contexts ... for example "On Minima and Maxima: On Bodies and Minds" (1672-73), "On Body, Space, and the Continuum" (1676), "A Body is not a Substance" (1679), just to name a few. If you are interested in Deleuze's wonderful little book and can't read the French with as much profit or pleasure as an English translation, I suspect you needn't worry about the quality of the translation. With all due respect to the opinions of others... Stuart MacNiven, Rutgers University

I agree with the earlier reviewer who indicated that the fault here lies with the translator and not with Deleuze's book. I wish to add a point, however, to emphasize the inappropriateness of having a literature professor, with an obvious lack of knowledge of the thinkers in question (Deleuze and Leibniz, in this case), undertake a translation of this kind. In addition to the misapprehensions of the French pointed out by the earlier reviewer, there is a whole area of vocabulary that was entirely lost on the poor translator - namely, that of mathematics. Deleuze is in general agreement with Michel Serres that an interpretation of Leibniz's system is impossible without reference to his mathematical work. In Serres's formulation, the mathematics provides the models that illustrate the system. What flummoxed professor Conley is that many French mathematical terms are also ordinary French words, that have common, non-technical usages. (The same is true of English, think of words like root, field, power, etc.) Whenever such mathematical terms are used, Conley is oblivious to the fact that mathematics is even being discussed and renders the words with their everyday meanings. Whole passages are rendered completely incomprehensible when, to pick just one example, he translates "corps" as "body." A "corps", in algebra, is what is called a "field" by English-speaking mathematicians. The book abounds in such instances. That's the sort of error you expect from automated translation software. You generally expect a human translator to base his work on an understanding of the context in which words are used.

Deleuze's book is, at least for no other reason, a worthwhile read for its sheer imagination. Secondly, it is worth reading as it shows just what is so wonderfully interesting about Leibniz. If you know Leibniz, read this book, even just a single section, and then you will understand why there do exist, in small obscure places, Leibnitians. If you are looking for a splendidly imaginative perspective, read up.

I find Deleuze's earlier books on figures from the history of philosophy (Nietzsche, Kant, Spinoza, Hume) far more interesting and coherent than his collaborations with Guattari. However, this book finds itself in the middle of these two tendencies: no, it's Deleuze on his own, he's writing about a major (but overlooked)philosopher in a manner that can only be deemed: schizophrenic. And since Leibniz's philosophy is schizo at times, the pairing is near perfect (the best of all possible worlds).

The opening image of the Baroque is a bit vague, but then again, Deleuze has always been short on precise connections and plentiful on creative and unorthodox imageries. Some sections are plain impossible to decipher. The are best imagined than really thought-through. For example, how is Deleuze using Leibniz's calculus? I'm still lost. I'll probably never understand. But somehow, I think that he may be right about this--whatever he may be suggesting in evoking the calculus. The book is also full of other interesting and elusive scientific theories in the realm of physics, mathematics, and set-theory. (I don't know much about any of these subjects and so I shall remain silent on these matters.)

Unlike the earlier writings on the history of philosophy where Deleuze remained faithful in his readings, "The Fold" is definitely a performance of Deleuze-Leibniz--more Deleuze than Leibniz but Leibniz as, shall we say, a creative inspiration? In this sense, "The Fold" is closer to Deleuze's book on Foucault in that he creates a new philosopher: a cyborg, built out of love, remembrance, and a goal towards the future.

But then again, does Deleuze top Leibniz in outrageousness? Who was more out-there? Somehow, I think that Leibniz was a bit more out there...

I read Deleuze books because they have teeth. His books are the philosophical equivalent of a Francis Bacon painting: you will not walk away from the experience without a few bite marks left in your psyche.

The Fold, however, fails spectacularly on a number of levels. It not only has no teeth, it has no skull. It doesn't even have a spine. There is, in short, nothing predatory about it at all.

And that's too bad because it should have been a great book: the premise, after all, is quite intriguing. Consciousness is the result of matter that has been folded and folded and folded until exteriority has become interiority. A fresh idea, in other words. It may be a materialistic theory, but it's a good one and even has the ring of plausibility about it.

Instead, what we get is a book with one fresh idea and the rest is a rather academic exposition of the ideas of Leibniz. No fun at all. Philosophers like Slavoj Zizek and Alain Badiou have insisted that Deleuze's collaborations with Guattari are inferior to his stand alone projects, but I beg to differ. Maybe if Guattari had been along for the ride, this wouldn't have been such a stiff exercise. We would have gotten fold theory as applied across the spectrum of the arts: what happens in Modernist art, for example, when you apply fold theory to cubism or abstract expressionism? And what about civilizations? Maybe they enfold other smaller societies within them, like endosymbiontic cells that gobble up smaller cells which become permanent members of the cell's newly complex architecture?

Nothing of the kind.

Instead Deleuze begins by insisting that the basic idea of the Baroque is that it is a function, not a trait, namely a function of folding matter in variously intricate ways. It is a vision of life as though it were a Baroque house with two stories, the lower story, with windows, corresponding to the pleats of matter, while the upper, windowless story with folded drapes hanging from the wall, corresponds to the folds of the soul. Thus the Cartesian separation between mind and body as two separate substances is here overridden by the idea that all matter, living and non-living, is composed of matter that is variously folded. The soul is simply matter that has been infinitely folded into unimaginable complexities, producing interiority. There is no distinction between mind and matter, for mind is infinitely folded matter.

Thus a fold is always folded within a fold and the smallest unit of matter is not the atom but a fold. Thus, the model for the sciences of matter is origami, the Japanese art of folding paper.

Thus, to unfold is to grow, whereas to fold is to diminish, to reduce. A dead organism is simply one that has begun to contract in on itself, and this includes the soul, "which remains right where it was, in a part of the body, however reduced it may be." However, if the soul remains localized to a part of the body, then how do we explain what happens when we cut a worm in two which then regrows into two independent worms? In which half of the cut worm was the soul located?

The lower story of the house includes both inorganic and organic matter, while the upper story refers to consciousness, or the realm of souls.

This book suffers from what Zizek terms a "parallax view" between Deleuze and Leibniz, that is to say, a misalignment with regard to their world views, for whereas Deleuze is a thoroughgoing materialist, Leibniz was nothing of the kind. His philosophy of monads was a gigantic vision of every speck of matter, whether animate or inanimate, inhabited by a cosmos of tiny living souls. It is a sort of philosophical recasting of ancient, archaic animism, and it is a worldview that is thoroughly "incompossible" with that of Deleuze who was, though a metaphysician, nonetheless, primarily a materialist.

It is as though The Fold constituted an attempt on the part of Deleuze to put on Leibniz's philosophy as a mask in order to see what the world might look like through, and by means, of it. The resulting view, though interesting, is not one of Deleuze's best books.

He spends pages analyzing Leibniz's Principle of Sufficient Reason and his theory of incompossible worlds but it remains difficult to see what any of this has to do with Deleuze's particular and rather unique way of looking at the world.

Maybe Deleuze was just getting tired. This was, after all, his penultimate book, followed only by his last collaboration with Guattari, What is Philosophy?, a book which, though good, was also the weakest of their collaborative efforts.

When he died--by throwing himself out of a window--Deleuze was reportedly at work on a book about Marx, a manuscript which, so far, has never surfaced. It would be interesting to see what he would have done with Marx, since Anti-Oedipus is heavily influenced by him, and revises him in interesting ways.

But that's another story.

SEE ALSO MY YOUTUBE VIDEO "GILLES DELEUZE'S DIFFERENCE & REPETITION DISCUSSED BY JOHN DAVID EBERT"

--John David Ebert, author of "The New Media Invasion" (McFarland Books, 2011) and "Dead Celebrities, Living Icons" (Praeger, 2010)

While my French is not good enough to judge others, I find it very easy to believe that this translation is not good. I found this book the most difficult of Deleuze's works, and I think the translator did not understand his task. To recover I needed to undertake a rereading of Leibniz so I could see through the English text before me and re-establish the original terms and questions.

Still, if you do not read French well, this very important book should not escape you even in this edition. Leibniz was a giant at the watershed between faith and science who was able to span this divide and think with complexity and innovation about the soul and mathematics. Since then, few can handle either vocabulary with such perspective, and almost none, save Deleuze, have tried to understand the demands of both.

If one does not, as almost all do, take for granted the givens of the centered subject and the rational world, their mutual differences demand a theory as powerful as the complexities they evoke. This book attempts to place that theory in play again with vigor.

I want to review the contents and the summary of this book if possible. thank you.