Third Series of the Proposition

So we began with the paradox of becoming (i.e. how could something real be in a constant state of flux?). Then we moved to the paradox of surface effects (i.e. the surface is actually a symptom, an epiphenomenon of other things -- what appears to be "real" on the surface actually betrays its own depths, the hot mixtures in the deep dark kettle, etc.).

Next, we read about the structuration of sense. Deleuze delineates the difference between different kinds of propositions: denotation, manifestation, and signification. The important takeaway is that propositions are not a prioris -- they exist in relation and conjugation with one another. The example he gives is What the Tortoise Said to Achilles. That is, statements are only "true" insofar as they are verified by a proposition external to the logic of the statement. E.g. "If A and B are true, then Z is true" is a proposition in and of itself, whose veracity can only be checked by adding on another proposition ad infinitum.

Deleuze says that we are carried along in this logic as in a circle, "the circle of the proposition" (p.17). Propositions are recursive, and it is the shifting from one proposition to the next that unlocks the being of becoming, the emotive "truth" of the statement, its sense. Imagine a circle -- it is the circulation of a point on that circle that propels sense up into another dimension. Epiphanies come out of a blind spot, unexpected. Sense, the feeling of "things making sense," is exactly like that. Sense cannot always be empirically verified, but we can always feel it. The same is true for nonsense. There is something undefined in the circulation of the signifying chain. It is within this gap or aleatory point that becoming (i.e. the unlimited) lurks, ready to creep up out of the blind spot and create the instantiation of sense.

The recursive chain of propositions bind us to our personal identifications. The breaking of this chain can result in a loss of identity, an apocalypse of meaning. (18)

On page 20, Deleuze compares the proposition to a Mobius strip. If you break open the strip, untwist it (and this strip in particular may have infinite folds), and lay it flat you get what he cites from Borges elsewhere as a "labyrinth which is composed of a single straight line, and which is indivisible, incessant." (Kant's Critical Philosophy) What is a straight-line labyrinth of infinite length? -- the Aion, becoming, the unlimited, the unmeasurable, the DNA of this whole book.

The unlimitedness of sense relates to the fact that sense is found neither in the expression not the expressed, neither the signifier nor the signified. Sense is the undefinable edge or limit that binds one to the other and is synonymous with neither because its place is actually a gap or non-space. On the Mobius strip, it is the undefinable edge of the piece of paper. "It is exactly the boundary between propositions and things." (22)

The takeaway for New Pioneerism -- to pioneer, we need to concentrate not on the surface, nor the depths of everyday objects. We need to find that point of transition where an object turns from banal to special, from object to das Ding. By circulating between the object and its use, its causes, and its multiple readings in society, we can propel its sense into a new dimension. For example, you set a skater in a park -- watch him try to map the territory, the curbs, the benches, the rails until the geography rises above mere "park" and into a sensory, emotive experience capable of making the heart race and blood pound. Through skating the park, "sense" rises to the surface.

Important takeaway for this chapter: "The event is sense itself." (22) This the productive, affirmative moment of all life. This is the feeling of an epiphany.