#plateau10

Author: Magda Wisniowska - Munich, April, 2020.

What do I hear if not myself? I hear the other voices of animals. When I hear myself speak, I also inseparably hear the gnashing of the teeth of an animal in the agony of death. The voice of the animal is in me… (Leonard Lawson, ‘Following the Rats: Becoming Animal in Deleuze and Guattari’, 170)

When do I hear myself speak? All the time would be the simplest answer. As soon as a thought appears, I hear it said, by me, silently, in my head. Or perhaps not so silently as it drowns out all other sounds, not just the sounds of my body such as my breathing or my pulse, but other voices, those that Leonard Lawson identifies as belonging to animals.It is my voice that kills the animals within. The moment I hear myself speak is also the moment in which I hear the animal dying.

The presence of the voice in my head is how Leonard Lawson introduces the traditional philosophical problem of auto-affection. What makes us autonomous as human beings (and confers upon us a dignity and right to domination) is the ability to hear ourselves speak, immediately, at the very moment we make a sound. On the other hand, philosophers such as Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida show that what we consider to be auto-affection is in fact a hetero-affection, arguing that there is never such a thing as pure presence, a concept that Kant already had introduced as a ‘crack in the self.’ In his 2008 essay for SubStance, ‘Following the Rats’, Lawson argues that specifically in Plateau 10 of A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari undermine the concept of human auto-affection by enlarging it, so that it encompasses the animal in the process of becoming, the becoming-animal. His essay is effectively a close reading of this chapter.

How can I then hear the animal instead of me? First of all I need to rid myself of my own subjectivity. This does not happen in a dramatic fashion, with a great effort and loud bang, but slowly and almost imperceptibly. Listen to how F. Scott Fitzgerald describes it, in a 1936 article for Esquire,

Of course all life is a process of breaking down, but the blows that do the dramatic side of the work—the big sudden blows that come, or seem to come, from outside—the ones you remember and blame things on and, in moments of weakness, tell your friends about, don't show their effect all at once. There is another sort of blow that comes from within—that you don't feel until it's too late to do anything about it, until you realize with finality that in some regard you will never be as good a man again. The first sort of breakage seems to happen quick—the second kind happens almost without your knowing it but is realized suddenly indeed. (https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/a4310/the-crack-up/)

Lawson describes it as a process of ageing. Just as wrinkles deepen around my forehead and eyes, cracks appear in the depth of my soul. The moment I realise I am old is also the moment I become aware that I have lost a part of myself. Two consequences follow, both producing change: either I am lost, not to be found, or become aware of choices that were previously unavailable to me, when I was my old self. To choose the second option, that of having more choices, is to become open to the world in its multiplicity. Again, hear Fitzgerald, or rather how his friend allegedly comforted him,

“Instead of being so sorry for yourself, listen—”, she said. (She always says Listen," because she thinks while she talks—really thinks.) So she said: “Listen. Suppose this wasn't a crack in you—suppose it was a crack in the Grand Canyon.” (https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/a4310/the-crack-up/)