Affectus Becoming l’Affect

Chapter 5 specifies the precise but silent moment in which Deleuze breaks with Spinoza. For Spinoza, affectus refers to an individual’s passage or (in Deleuze’s terms) ‘becoming’ between two states. Deleuze generalises and radicalises this idea of becoming such that it no longer takes place between two states of one individual but, rather, between two heterogenous individuals. The gesture makes Deleuze both more and less traditional than the tradition. As what takes place between individuals, on the one hand, Deleuze gives affect an autonomy that would be unthinkable in the philosophical tradition according to which sensations derive from and belong to a pre-existent being. On the other hand, however, the same affective autonomy remains complicit with the tradition in a way neglected by Deleuze and influential commentators: Deleuze dematerializes and disembreduces, affect ends up suppressing the bodyodies affect in order to render it autonomous. In light of which, however, I do not simply unearth grounds on which to question Deleuze’s materialism. It is not even enough to say Deleuze is less materialist than the most ideal philosopher. Purely idealist readings miss a more brutal consequence. Namely, because Deleuze also recognizes the irreducibility of the materiality that he reduces, affect ends up suppressing the body again and again ad infinitum.