2. A Problematic Alterity

Depraz points out that before Immanuel Kant's Copernican revolution, the object was the centre around which the subject had to orbit and adjust its perception and knowledge to it.Footnote ¹¹ However, following Kant's transcendental project, the subject was placed at the centre and the object started to adjust its appearance to the rules and acts of the subject, gaining its meaning from it. Indeed, the subject became the site of the constitution of all a priori conditions underlying the experience. However, as noted by Depraz, phenomenology discloses their co-dependence and co-adjustment, rather than the conformity of the subject to the object or vice versa. In phenomenology, the subject and the object appropriate their senses through a relation that correlates them to each other. This relation, according to Depraz, is the “intentional relation of alterity.”Footnote ¹²

Therefore, Husserl's phenomenology marked a break with all dualistic and static conceptions of the subject and object, that is, the so-called opposition of consciousness, as inside, and the object, as outside.Footnote ¹³ Husserl proposed another conception of the object, framing it as the intentional correlate of consciousness. He conceived the object not as a form of exteriority, but as an intentional noema, characterized by the alterity of the object to consciousness. Depraz stresses that Husserl's concept of intentionality emphasized the relation between the object and the subject, instead of stressing the terms of this relation.Footnote ¹⁴ Intentionality is then conceptualized as a relation, whose mode is the alterity of the object to consciousness, the aboutness of consciousness toward something other than itself. Intentionality names this relation of otherness and entails an overt transcendence of alterity: “the object is the other of consciousness.”Footnote ¹⁵

Depraz's formulation of Husserl's phenomenology draws heavily on the concept of alterity. According to Depraz, there is “the structural alterity which is common to consciousness and the world.”Footnote ¹⁶ This alterity structures the relations between consciousness and the world. Then, from this, Depraz makes the important move to the claim that this relation of alterity leads to a ‘connaissance’ or more precisely a ‘co-naissance,’ a co-birth of its terms. In fact, what is at stake is that the intentional relation of alterity is not found between the subject and the object qua predetermined entities; instead, it is a relation that constitutes its terms. In the last chapter of Transcendence et Incarnation, Depraz ontologizes the relation of alterity and articulates the possibility of a ‘transcendental alterology’ that is characterized by an original self-alterity, “an alterity that constitutes the transcendental ego.”Footnote ¹⁷ In this line of thought, the transcendental ego is no longer the agent of constitution but is itself constituted by an a priori alterity. Depraz's insistence on the primacy of the relation of alterity and its genetic power resonates with Deleuze's concern to account for the genesis of subjectivity (rather than presuming it) by according an ontological priority to the relation of difference. After all, the differential relation in Deleuze's thought equally expresses the primacy of the relation compared to its terms as well as its transcendental and constitutive character.Footnote ¹⁸ Now, if we pursue the path sketched through this apparent affinity between Depraz and Deleuze, we might regard the phenomenological relation of alterity as a reciprocal differential relation that corresponds to a problematic field that actualizes itself in its solutions. Deleuze's problematic structure is an ontological field that enacts the actualizations, which are, indeed, the cases of solution to the Ideal problems. The problem, “as transcendental instance,”Footnote ¹⁹ is resolved by being actualized in diverse spatio-temporal relationships and being incarnated in actual individuals. For instance, as Deleuze notes, “[a]n organism is nothing if not the solution to a problem … such as the eye which solves a light ‘problem.’”Footnote ²⁰ Now, reading Depraz with Deleuze, the constituted subject can be seen as the actualized solution that solves the problem of alterity. The genetic alterity, according to Depraz, constitutes the self. She writes, “I apperceive myself as other than myself, traversed by this alterity that constitutes me as a self … alterity is first.”Footnote ²¹ Then, she adds, “the ego decenters towards the genetic alterity that constitutes it.”Footnote ²² Thus, applying a Deleuzian twist, the phenomenological relation of alterity can be regarded as a differential relation that characterizes a problematic field and gives rise to certain actualized solutions, namely, the constituted objects and subjects.

In a differential phenomenology, if we can envisage such a combination, alterity would become genetic, differential, and problematic and as a differential relation would refer to a problematic field, whose solutions are actualized and incarnated in the constituted subjects and objects. Then, the phenomenological relation of alterity as a differential relation would be constitutive and productive, and as a co-naissance would give birth to its terms.Footnote ²³ This genetic alterity, discovered at the source of the constitution of the subject and the world, would not be exhausted in its constitutions but would repeat itself as a latent self-alterity inherent in the subject and the world.

This differential phenomenology can be constructed by extracting Depraz's proposed metaphysics of alterology and relating it to Deleuze's philosophy of difference. However, in what follows, I only focus on Depraz's account of Husserl's intersubjectivity (and not her own metaphysics) and investigate how it is related to Deleuze's Other-structure.

3. Phenomenology of the Other

In the Fifth Meditation of the Cartesian Meditations, Husserl inquiries into the problem of intersubjectivity and attempts to offer a transcendental ground for the experience of the Other (Hua Reference Strasser1). Husserl is concerned with the transcendental analysis of a pure Other, to clarify the underlying conditions of the experience of the alter ego, as well as the objectivity of the whole world, as an infinite sphere of what is alien to one's consciousness and irreducible to it. The experience of the Other involves empathizing with the inner life [Seelenleben] of the alter ego. Empathy [Einfühlung] is our peculiar experience of the alter ego that consists in apperceiving the inner life of the Other in our inner perception without living [erlebt] it (Hua Reference Kern13, 187).

In the Fifth Meditation, to tackle the problem of intersubjectivity, Husserl proposes an additional reduction — as he puts it, a peculiar kind of reduction. This new bracketing that is performed within the transcendental attitude “disregards all constitutional effects of intentionality relating immediately or mediately to the other subjectivity and delimits first of all the total nexus of that actual and potential intentionality in which the ego constitutes within himself a peculiar ownness.”Footnote ²⁴ This new reduction suspends anything that does not belong to the ego's primordial ‘sphere of ownness’ and all intentionalities related to the other egos. In fact, Husserl appeals to this sphere of the solipsistic experiences of the ego to study what is specifically peculiar to the ego and discover the phenomenological conditions of the experience of an alter ego that resides in the primordial sphere of ownness.Footnote ²⁵

Husserl unfolds the phenomenological structure of the sphere of ownness and illuminates what is found in this Otherless attitude. In this primordial sphere without others, the ego encounters the perspectival appearances of things. Any perspectival appearance is composed of two elements: something that appears and someone that it appears for — “the appearance of something for someone.”Footnote ²⁶ The perspectival appearances presuppose an embodied subject in space and any horizonal appearance of the objects is correlated with my state of being situated in a primordial ‘here’ (Hua Reference Kern13, 239; Hua Reference Fleischer11, 298). The appearance is always accompanied by an unthematic experience of the position and movement of one's body. This unthematic experience as a form of bodily self-awareness forms our kinesthetic experience (Hua Reference Biemel4, 55). The body is the centre around which the ‘egocentric space’ unfolds (Hua Reference Biemel9, 392). Husserl calls this embodied subject with its lived body and kinesthetic self-awareness as the ‘Leib’ or the flesh [Chair]Footnote ²⁷ being differentiated from the ‘Körper’ or the objective body (Hua Reference Biemel4, 144).

Therefore, following Husserl's reduction to the sphere of ownness, what is experienced is indeed the Leib qua unthematic kinesthetic self-awareness. As Husserl notes, “[t]he primary [ursprünglich] givenness of a body [Leib] can only be the primary givenness of my body and of no other” (Hua Reference Kern14, 7).Footnote ²⁸ Thus, I originally experience my body as a zero-body [NullKörper] (the zero point of my orientation), as “the unity of my stream of consciousness,” (Hua Reference Kern13, 265) and a primordial ‘I can’ and ‘I do.’ In this primordial sphere, before any encounter with the other egos, I am only a Leib without any apperception of my objective body. Husserl then argues that, for the constitution of our objective body, a self-objectivation (or ‘incorporation’) of the Leib is required. In fact, a subject, already existing bodily, needs to be self-objectified and incorporated into an objective body. As Iso Kern puts it, “[m]y own internally felt and perceived body must receive some sense of an outer body from the corresponding external body” — it must receive the sense of a human body.Footnote ²⁹ The question then arises: how is the self-objectivation of the Leib achieved?

Husserl demonstrates that the self-objectivation of the Leib is made possible by encountering the Other. The experience of the Other conditions my capacity to take an external perspective on my flesh and, thereby, experience my body as an object. When the Other enters my field of perception, my lived body encounters the body of the Other, which does not yet belong to a subject with an inner life and, therefore, does not have any fleshy (charnelle, in Depraz) dimension. It is just through the process of ‘coupling’ or ‘pairing’ [Paarung], as an associatively constitutive component of my experience of the alter ego, that my flesh is put in relation with the body of the Other ego.Footnote ³⁰ The body of the alter ego is a similar Footnote ³¹ body to mine and enters into a phenomenological pairing with me. As a result of the process of pairing, the objective body of the Other appropriates its state of being flesh from mine, and my flesh appropriates its state of being an objective body from the Other.Footnote ³² As Dan Zahavi puts it, “it is only via another subject's perception of my body and through an appropriation of this perspective that I can adopt a reifying and abstractive view on my body, regarding it as an object among other objects.”Footnote ³³ As the dynamic of pairing is indispensable, it is worthwhile to spell it out more closely before exploring Deleuze's Other-structure.

Depraz draws attention to Husserl's account of the ‘transfer in imagination’ as a central concept that underlies the dynamic of pairing.Footnote ³⁴ In passage 53 of Cartesian Meditations, Husserl describes the ‘transfer in imagination’ as the possibility of changing any ‘there’ to a potential ‘here’ through one's kinesthetic capacities. The Other ego is characterized by its primordial ‘there’ as a centre to which a sphere of appearance is manifested. Before pairing with the alter ego, in my primordial sphere, I am only a flesh [Leib] without an objective body, and by contrast, the alter ego is merely an objective body lacking a flesh with an inner life. When the alter ego enters my field of perception and pairing is inaugurated, the ego that is in essence anchored to ‘here’ transposes itself to ‘there’ in my imagination and, consequently, the alter ego (that was thus far perceived as an objective body) by analogy with my flesh appropriates its fleshy [charnelle] dimension and becomes incarnated, in Depraz's terms, with a flesh. Simultaneously, the alter ego that is anchored to ‘there’ is also transposed from ‘there’ to ‘here’ in my imagination and, consequently, my flesh appropriates an objective body in analogy with the objective body of the alter ego or, in other words, is incorporated with an objective body.Footnote ³⁵ As a result of this dynamic, the ego attains the possibility of apprehending itself as its own exterior. In this simultaneous but asymmetrical process, the objective body of the Other appropriates a flesh by resemblance to my flesh and, in turn, my flesh appropriates an objective body by resemblance to the body of the Other. My flesh is incorporated with an objective body, and the body of the alter ego is incarnated with a flesh.Footnote ³⁶ This is a form of ‘constitutive kinship’ between the ego and the alter ego, as Depraz claims, which requires the accomplishment of a double apperception. It is a relation of co-revelation, the co-naissance of one by the other, a co-union, a unity that lets the difference be.Footnote ³⁷

4. The Other as Structural Self-Alterity

Let us now investigate Deleuze's account of the Other in his article on Tournier in Logic of Sense.Footnote ³⁸ Deleuze's article is devoted to Tournier's novel, Friday or the Other Island, which according to Deleuze, attempts to analyze the characteristics of a world without Others. Deleuze starts his analysis of this novel discussing the effects of the Others in our habitual world.

According to Deleuze, the first effect of the Others corresponds to the organization of a ‘marginal world,’ a mantle or ‘background’ around each object of perception. This background forms a space, in which other objects can come forth. When I consider an object, I bring it forth, and when my attention is diverted, this object falls into the background. In fact, the reason that the new object that comes under my attention does not injure me or collide with me is that I had felt the “preexistence of objects yet to come” along with an entire field of ‘virtualities and potentialities’ having the potential of being actualized.Footnote ³⁹ This background as the field of potentialities with its marginal existence is made possible through the presence of others. Deleuze stresses, “[t]he part of the object that I do not see I posit as visible to Others,” so when I posit the part that is visible to me, I also posit the invisible parts as visible to Others.Footnote ⁴⁰ Therefore, all parts or objects that are visible to the Other, although not visible to me, come together and form an objective world in virtue of their state of being perceived by the Other. Thus far, Deleuze's remarks about the Other are inextricably linked to Husserl's conception of intersubjectivity.

As it was shown, in Husserl's sphere of ownness the flesh is disclosed as a lived body having primordial kinesthetic self-awareness — a transcendental ‘I can’ that is able to perceive the objects from its ‘here,’ accompanied with a non-thetic awareness of its ability to change its place in space (‘I can’) and perceive the objects from other perspectives. This non-thetic awareness of the ability to change my primordial ‘here’ resonates with Deleuze's marginal existence of a field of possibilities. The field of possibilities is a space that entails the possibility of changing my ‘here’ to ‘there,’ and the non-thematic awareness of this possibility is embedded within my flesh. This possibility constitutes a background, as Deleuze notes, which smoothly absorbs the objects. Thus, when my attention is diverted from an object, the object is not abruptly annihilated, but continues to exist for the Other, or for my flesh, with its inscribed possibility of being there. This ‘virtual being there’ absorbs the objects in a background instead of vanishing them. Thus, Deleuze's field of possibilities and virtualities can be conceived of as a space constituted by Husserl's primordial ‘I can’ and kinesthetic self-awareness, which characterizes one of the aspects of the flesh. The flesh is a transcendental ‘I can’ that implies, by virtue of the Other, the marginal existence of a field of possibilities and virtualities. Accordingly, it might be suggested that what is disclosed in Husserl's peculiar third reduction is the flesh, wherein the Other as structure, the structure of the possible, is inscribed in it. In fact, following the suspension of the other egos in the sphere of ownness, what is disclosed is not a solipsist ego, but rather a flesh endowed with an inherent Other-structure (in Deleuze's terms) and a form of self-alterity (in Depraz's terms).

The self-alterity of the flesh to itself [l'altérité charnelle à soi] is, indeed, the spatial alterity that characterizes the incarnated kinesthetic experience of the flesh and its sensitive motility.Footnote ⁴¹ The flesh is heterogeneous due to its quality of moving sensations: “The flesh is its differentiated movements of sensations.”Footnote ⁴² It is the coordinating centre, inscribed in a flow. But, “the flesh is not a radical heterogeneity; otherwise, it would be a pure mobile flow without a point of orientation. It is a centred heterogeneity while the centre is itself fluid.”Footnote ⁴³ The primordial ‘I can’ represents the centrality of the flesh and as a capacity of self-centralization orchestrates the fluid dimension.

The inner alterity of the flesh precedes the perception of the alter ego and the process of pairing.Footnote ⁴⁴ In the sphere of ownness, before encountering the alter ego, the flesh experiences its spatial kinetic alterity and the otherness is not yet accorded to the Other ego. Likewise, when Deleuze describes the disappearance of the Other from Robinson's world, he also indicates a stage in which the Other-structure is not actualized or filled with real objects and subjects. What is at stake here are different modes and moments of alterity: the alterity of the flesh to itself, and the alterity of the alter ego to the ego. We can regard the alterity that is inherent in the flesh as the first moment of Deleuze's Other-structure and call it the ‘Other-flesh.’ The second moment of the Other-structure is realized when it is filled with the body of the others; when the ego and the alter ego encounter each other and, in the course of pairing, get incorporated and incarnated. This moment of the Other-structure can be called the ‘Other-alter ego,’ insofar as the alter ego fills and actualizes the Other-structure. Besides, in this second moment of the Other-structure, parallel to the process of pairing and self-objectivation of my body, the objective world is also constituted and objectified.

Accompanying Tournier on the island without others, Deleuze inquiries into the characteristics of an Otherless world and asks what will happen to our perception in a world without Other egos. One of the answers, found in Robinson's lived experience in the Otherless island, is that his consciousness and the island blend into one. Deleuze claims that in a world without Others, the consciousness cannot distinguish itself from its object. This remark concerning the unification between the consciousness and its object as a consequence of the absence of Others may not be immediately obvious. However, this unification can be elucidated referring to the suggested moments of the Other-structure, that is, the Other-flesh and the Other-alter ego. In reverse order, if we eliminate first the other egos from the Other-structure, the objective world will be reduced to a world of the ‘I’ (as a flesh). This would be the first stage toward the merging of the consciousness and its object. In the second stage, if the Other-flesh is also annihilated, it will entail the elimination of the ‘I can’ and, thus, the removal of the field of possibilities as a marginal world. Without the field of possibilities and the correspondence of appearance to an original ‘I can,’ the world will no longer be the world of my consciousness; rather, it will become my consciousness. As it was shown, the flesh underlies the structure of the perspectival appearance as ‘the appearance of something for someone.’ When this structure is eliminated, the object will lose its state of appearing to consciousness. In fact, the elimination of the Other-flesh will dissolve the field of possibilities, along with its reference to the original ‘I can.’ Without this reference, the perspectivity of consciousness will be lost and, as a consequence, the island will no longer be the island of consciousness and, thus, the consciousness of the island will become the island. In short, the annihilation of the Other-structure, in the first stage, will dissolve the objective space that is tied to the alter ego (incorporation in pairing) and, then, in the second stage, it will fade the egocentric space (‘I can’ and ‘here’) that is weaved into the flesh.

5. Temporal Alterity

Thus far, showing the interlacement between the flesh and the Other, characterized by the Other-flesh, our analysis has indeed explored the spatial alterity of the Other-structure, insofar as it lives a primordial ‘I can,’ tied to the locus of the Other (‘there’). However, following Deleuze, the Other also involves a temporal dimension. He writes, “I am nothing other than my past objects, and myself is made up of a past world, the passing away of which was brought about precisely by the Other. If the Other is a possible world, I am a past world.”Footnote ⁴⁵ Deleuze maintains that the distinction between consciousness and its object is not merely due to the spatial dimension, that is, the Other-flesh, but it corresponds also to the temporal dimension of the Other-structure. In fact, the consciousness and its object are distinguished in virtue of their distinct temporalities, insofar as the ‘I’ implies a past world and the Other carries a possible world. Then, Deleuze claims that the absence of the Other “allows consciousness to cling to, and to coincide with, the object in an eternal present.”Footnote ⁴⁶ The eternal present is the time accorded to the object. Without the structure of the Other, which was supposed to enable the temporal alterity and otherness, the ‘I’ coincides with the object in an eternal present. This coincidence with the object's eternal present is the effect of the dissolution of the temporal dimension of the Other-structure or, in other terms, the dissolution of the possibility of temporal alterity. This is why Robinson without the Others, according to Deleuze, becomes the consciousness of the island — “the consciousness the island has of itself” — or even, becomes the island, as he stresses.Footnote ⁴⁷

Therefore, as this analysis clarifies, Deleuze's Other-structure is the alterity with spatial and temporal dimensions. In other words, temporality and spatiality are, indeed, two modes of alterity or otherness within the Other-structure. Without this self-alterity of the Other-structure, the consciousness will be co-present with its object in an infinite ‘here’ and will coincide with it in an eternal present.

Husserl's analysis of time-consciousness also offers a similar insight. Husserl asks how the consciousness of a temporal object (like a melody) is made possible (Hua Reference Boehm10). He shows that if encountering a temporal object only involved the consciousness of a series of isolated present moments or punctual ‘nows,’ we would not be able to experience the temporal extension of the object since the momentary flashes would eliminate and overwrite one another. We would have no experience of an enduring object, and being deprived of the feeling of a continuous flow, we would have no sense of an enduring consciousness. As Robert Sokolowski describes this situation, “all we would have would be sheer presence. No sense of pastness could ever have been disclosed to us.”Footnote ⁴⁸ This “sheer presence” echoes Deleuze's description, insofar as it also sketches the state of being co-present with the full presence of instantaneous encounters and coinciding with the eternal present of the object because of being deprived of the sense of past. Without the sense of pastness, even a presumed capacity of remembering would only call back and present the earlier moments as another present and not as past. Accordingly, the mode of being past would not differentiate itself from the mode of being present. Deleuze attributes the possibility of this differentiation to the Other. He claims that the self is the past world, but the passing away of this past world is brought about by the Other. It is the Other-structure that is responsible for the differentiation of the past. Now the question is: if the Other-structure involves inner alterity, as was the case with the Other-flesh, in what sense does it differentiate the sense of pastness? The answer lies in Husserl's treatment of the above problem and his so-called triple structure of primal impression-retention-protention.

Husserl argues that our immediate impressions must already entail a sense of past and future. We are always co-conscious of what has just passed and what is about to come. The primal impression is accompanied by the echo [Nachklang] of the ‘retentions’ of the consciousness of just-passed phases and the ‘protentional’ intentions of the not-yet-present phases of the object (Hua Reference Boehm10, 324; Hua Reference Biemel9, 202). The present, which is elapsed and retained, also encompasses its prior retentions and, hence, establishes a continuum of retentions. For Husserl, retentions and protentions condition the sense of past and future. A retention unthematically gives the elapsed present as just-past. Indeed, it is the intuition of an absence that is necessarily intertwined with the present impression. Every retentional modification, which modifies the whole continuum of retentions, paradoxically introduces an absence that is presented. As Sokolowski notes, its identifiability as past depends on its “relentless passage into absence”: “An original absencing takes place within retention, but this absencing is given or presented.”Footnote ⁴⁹ Retention and protention incorporate a form of absencing, as stressed by Eugen Fink, a “de-presencing” or “de-presentification” [Entgegenwärtigung].Footnote ⁵⁰ As Nicholas de Warren describes this absencing, “[r]etentional intentionality runs counter to the givenness of an original impression … [it] ‘de-presentifies’ in the sense of ‘emptying,’ or reversing, the intuitive fullness of the now.”Footnote ⁵¹ Therefore, retention introduces an incessant becoming-other or self-alteration in the primal impression. And, this perpetual retentional modification is not an alteration, negation, or differentiation of an original impression “from the outside.” Instead, “an original impression necessarily succumbs to, or becomes its own retentional modification.”Footnote ⁵²

Hence, the primal impression necessarily is intertwined with, or becomes its own Other because its inscribed self-alterity allows for the differentiation of past and future and the consciousness of temporal succession and duration. Without this temporal self-alterity, such a differentiation would not be possible. Now, it is clear why Deleuze could attribute this differentiation to the Other-structure and its inner alterity. The temporality of the living present is just made possible when it stands outside of itself — when it is endowed with the retentional and protentional alterity. Our impressions become temporal only by self-absencing, by emptying and becoming Other. Hence, the self-alterity resides at the origin of temporality and constitution.

Framing this constitutive alterity, Depraz claims that the “otherness (in the self) is temporally and spatially determined” and “the ego is constituted … by this originally temporal and spatial self-alterity.”Footnote ⁵³ For Husserl, subjectivity is inconceivable without what is foreign to it (Hua Reference Kern14, 244). This foreignness, as noted by Depraz, corresponds to Husserl's Urhyle or Urimpression (Hua Reference Kern15, 385): “what is foreign to the ‘I’ inside the ‘I.’”Footnote ⁵⁴ The hyletic core of every living present represents somethings that is non-egoic or alien to consciousness, the facticity that escapes the active contribution of the ego.Footnote ⁵⁵ This hyletic affection is inseparable from the primal impression, as there can be no time-consciousness without the hyletic facticity. According to Depraz, “[t]he primary temporalizing begins with the hyletic affective anstoß, which is constitutive for (if not constitutive of) time … this hyletic affection has a constitutive role to play in the fulfillment of temporality” and “acts as a passive motivation for the process of egoic constitution.”Footnote ⁵⁶ This hyletic impression that characterizes ego's facticity and its passive openness to that which is alien to it implies the self-alterity of consciousness. Indeed, it is because of its structural self-alterity that consciousness can be open to and affected by that which is foreign to it.

Now, returning to Deleuze's Other-structure, we are in a position to summarize. The first moment of Deleuze's Other-structure has two dimensions or modes: the spatial mode of the Other-flesh and the temporal mode of the Other-hylé. The inner alterity within the first moment of the Other-structure is composed of spatial and temporal dimensions. This kinetic and hyletic alterity within the Other-structure are at the source of the constitution of the ego and the world.

Moreover, it is this inherent primordial alterity that conditions the apperception of the other egos as well as the ego's various forms of self-experience. This alterity opens the way for the apperception of the alter ego and dwells at the core of the ego's different forms of self-experience. Whenever the ego imagines itself, remembers itself, or reflects on itself, self-duplication and self-differentiation of the ‘I’ are manifested. This self-duplication is thoroughly analyzed by Depraz. The ‘I’ incessantly duplicates itself in the experiences of imagination,Footnote ⁵⁷ recollection,Footnote ⁵⁸ and reflectionFootnote ⁵⁹ and it is, in fact, the structural alterity of the ego to itself that enables such duplication and, then, various forms of self-experience.

6. The Expressivity of the Other

Let us now return once again to Deleuze's article on Tournier. As already pointed out, the Other-structure refers to the kinesthetic experience of the flesh as a structure of possibilities. Continuing his articulation of the Other, Deleuze employs the following formula: the Other = “the expression of a possible world; it is the expressed, grasped as not yet existing out of that which expresses it.”Footnote ⁶⁰ Elucidating this formula, Deleuze invites us to suppose that the Other perceives a terrifying thing, whereas I have not yet seen that scene. When the Other faces a frightening thing that I have not yet seen, it expresses a possible world to me, in this case, a possible frightening world. The terrified face, insofar as it is the expression of a possible world, bears no resemblance to the actual terrifying object; it has no resemblance to what has caused the fear, but rather implicates that frightening world, or in other words, envelops it. These are the terms used by Deleuze: the expression, implication, and envelopment of a possible world by the Other. The frightening world is implicated, contracted, and enveloped in the Other that gives rise to “a kind of torsion which situates what is expressed in the expressing.”Footnote ⁶¹ Let us now envision that I turn my head and see what the Other was seeing. As soon as I perceive what the frightening face was seeing, I ‘develop’ (in contrast to ‘envelop’) and ‘explicate’ a world that was thus far expressed by the Other; I explicate a possible world. As Deleuze puts it, “I do nothing but explicate the Other, as I develop and realize the corresponding possible world.”Footnote ⁶² In phenomenological terms, the possibility of turning any ‘there’ into a ‘here’ is, in fact, the possibility of explicating the Other, explicating a possible world that is implicated in and expressed by the Other. The Other implicates and expresses a possible world while the self is the development and explication of that possibility, “the process of its realization in the actual.”Footnote ⁶³

Now, the question is how the Other-structure as “the expression of a possible world” is related to the dynamic of pairing, which, as discussed, was regarded as the second moment of the Other-structure, namely, the Other-alter ego. How can we weave the Husserlian account of pairing into the Deleuzian theme of expression? The alter ego that I encounter in the process of pairing can be regarded as the expression of a possible world. The Other implicates a possible world and I can turn its corresponding ‘there’ to ‘here’ by explicating that possible world. My subjectivity always entails the development and explication of the actual world. The ‘I’ is the centre of the explication of the world. However, the peculiar fact is that, while the Other expresses a possible world, I am also included in its perceptual field and, therefore, part of that possible world. The Other expresses a possible world and, by doing so, expresses me as well, as a part of that expressed world. Encountering the Other, I apperceive myself as a part of the world that the alter ego is expressing. Therefore, when the ego, as the centre of explication encounters the alter ego, it enters into a conflictual situation: it takes part in what is implicated and expressed in the Other; it becomes the expressed within the expression of the Other. The ‘I’ apperceives itself as the possible that was expressed and implicated in the Other. Thus, the dynamic of pairing contributes to the constitution of an ego that is, at once, a centre of explication and an implicated centre. It is the explication of an actual world, insofar as it can transfer itself in imagination and turn any ‘there’ into a ‘here.’ Yet, it is an implicated centre, insofar as it is what the Other has implicated in a possible world. Hence, the flesh comprehends itself as the centre of development and explication of the world but it is also aware of itself as a possibility that the Other implicates and expresses. Apperceiving itself as a part of the world the Other expresses, the flesh becomes a part of the world and then gets objectified. This amounts to the self-objectivation of the flesh, or indeed incarnation in the dynamic of pairing.

The above status of explication-implication is a conflictual state and implies a tension that gives rise to a fractured I. To visualize this tension, we can conceive the explication as a form of opening or diastole, and the implication as a kind of contraction or systole.Footnote ⁶⁴ Then, for instance, when I see what the Other was seeing, the world that was contracted in his face is opened and developed for me. Accordingly, the ‘I’ is a centre of explication and opening and, yet, is itself implicated and contracted in the face of the Other. This simultaneous push and pull and the status of being the centre of the opening while being contracted in the Other portrays the conflictual state of the ‘I.’

7. The World without Others

After unfolding the conceptual implications of the Other-structure, we are now finally in a position to see how Deleuze's conceptualization of the “world without Others” expresses his endeavour to go beyond phenomenology. At the beginning of this article, Deleuze presents the Otherless world as a kind of phenomenological reduction to reveal the structure of the Other. However, ultimately the world without Others, far from being a mere methodological heuristic, ends up in Robinson's metamorphosis and, then, his great Health. In fact, Deleuze promises this Health just at the beginning of his article and writes, “the end, that is, Robinson's final goal, is ‘dehumanization,’ the coming together of the libido and the free elements, the discovery of a cosmic energy or of a great elemental Health which can surge only on the isle.”Footnote ⁶⁵ This valorization of the world without Others, I argue, echoes the well-known Deleuzian impetus to surmount the phenomenological flesh.Footnote ⁶⁶

As already discussed, the Other as structure constitutes a marginal existence of a world that regulates the transformations of form and background. This structure prevents the assaults from behind, insofar as it fills the world with a field of potentialities and virtualities and, indeed, in this way pacifies the world. This recalls Deleuze's claim in Foucault that “phenomenology is too pacifying.”Footnote ⁶⁷ It pacifies the world because constituting a background, as a field of possibilities, prevents surprises or assaults from behind. Moreover, the Other pacifies the world, insofar as it relativizes the not-known. It has the function of relativization of the non-perceived, as it carries “the sign of the unseen in what I do see.”Footnote ⁶⁸ Conversely, in an Otherless world, the non-perceived is not relativized. Tournier portrays such an Otherless world as a brutal opposition of the sun and the earth, with an unbearable light and an obscure abyss, wherein we face the battle of the perceived and the unperceived.Footnote ⁶⁹ This world is a harsh and black one that, along with the Other, has lost its potentialities as well as its ‘category of the possible.’ There are no more harmonious forms that gently surge from the background and are absorbed in it. However, what remains are the harmful abstract lines in a ‘groundless abyss.’ The objects cease to bend toward each other and, instead, appear threateningly as though without the relief of the Other they slap us in the face with their harsh lines and strike us from behind.Footnote ⁷⁰

Thus, the absence of the Other-structure for Robinson was at the outset revealed as a fundamental disorder of the world — nothing remained, but the harsh opposition of light and night. The world without its structure of possibilities had become harmful. However, Deleuze draws our attention to the fact that Robinson slowly discovered “that it is the Other who disturbs the world. The Other was the trouble.”Footnote ⁷¹ Given this new revelation, the consciousness becomes a phosphorescence internal to things, and “in this light, something else appears, an ethereal double of each thing.”Footnote ⁷² Robinson glimpses another island. The double of things is just liberated in the absence of the Other. The Other, Deleuze claims, imprisons the elements, whereas the liberated double in an Otherless world is “the new upright image in which the elements are released and renewed, having become celestial and forming a thousand capricious elemental figures.”Footnote ⁷³ The Other was the pacifying leveler, “and consequently the de-structuration of the Other is not the disorganization of the world, but an upright organization … it is the detachment of a pure element which at last is liberated.”Footnote ⁷⁴ The liberation of the four elements — earth, water, air, and fire — on the island, which is depicted as upright image, consists in raising the elements from their terrestrial configuration to a free state, that is, an aerial or celestial configuration. The liberation of these elements, as the building blocks of the cosmos, allows another organization of the elements and, thereby, the emergence of another island that entails Robinson's great Health.

Furthermore, when Friday appears on the island, Robinson does not experience him as an Other, because the Other qua structure has collapsed and can no longer be actualized by any person.Footnote ⁷⁵ He, instead, appears “in an entirely different way — he indicates another, supposedly true world …. Not an Other, but something wholly other (un tout-autre) than the Other; not a replica, but a Double: one who reveals pure elements and dissolves objects, bodies, and the earth.”Footnote ⁷⁶

Endorsing the world without Others, Deleuze attempts to defy the pacifying Other-structure, which is intimately tied to the phenomenological flesh; and, in doing so, he aims at substituting it with a BwO.Footnote ⁷⁷ The Other-structure that inscribes the flesh as one of its structural moments amounts to an ideal harmonization between the body and the world. The flesh is pre-oriented toward the world that conditions the coherence and harmony with the world. Alain Beaulieu plausibly shows that the concept of the BwO is, indeed, Deleuze's substitute to the phenomenological flesh.Footnote ⁷⁸ Here, I suggest that, in Deleuze's article on Tournier, the Other-structure, with all its structural modes and moments, namely, the Other-flesh, the Other-hylé, and the Other-alter ego, is replaced with a dismantled Other or a non-organic body, which stands against the structure.Footnote ⁷⁹ In fact, the Otherless world instead of conditioning the lived experience enables a limit-experience that is prone to the unlivable dimensions of life.Footnote ⁸⁰ It might be said that the Other-structure as the expression of a possible world is substituted with the Otherless world just to account for the ‘category of the impossible.’ The world without Others and the BwO are conceptualized to account for the conditions for going beyond the organism and reaching the limits of the lived body.Footnote ⁸¹

In Difference and Repetition, where Deleuze discusses the last stage of the genesis of representation, he invokes the Other-structure and describes it as an a priori Other “that ensures individuation within the perceptual world. It is not the ‘I,’ nor the self: on the contrary, these need this structure in order to be perceived as individualities. Everything happens as though the Other integrated the individuating factors and pre-individual singularities within the limits of objects and subjects, which are then offered to representation as perceivers or perceived.”Footnote ⁸² The Other is the condition that renders possible to perceive distinct objects and subjects in the perceptive field as identifiable and recognizable individuals. We have already seen how the Other-structure functioned as the condition of individuation by distinguishing consciousness from its object. As Deleuze clarifies in this passage, the Other integrates the individuating factors and pre-individual singularities within the limits of objects and subjects; however, he seeks a non-organic BwO that can liberate these pre-individual singularities. He attempts to dismantle the Other to liberateFootnote ⁸³ its organized and imprisoned alterity and, thus, condition the beginning of something wholly other and novel. In fact, Deleuze uses the phenomenological framework to describe the Other as a condition of representation (in the sense this term is used in Difference and Repetition), and then, his critique against representation, in favour of the ‘world of difference,’ takes on the form of seeking the Otherless world.

If we take Depraz's claim seriously — that original alterity is at the source of constitution and creation — then Deleuze's gesture of dismantling the Other-structure would amount to liberating this genetic alterity to untether the emergence and co-naissance of a wholly other world and subjectivity. Deleuze's imperative to disarticulate the Other-structure involves a decoupling (de-pairing) from the alter ego (of this world) and also a dis-structuration of the flesh; an imperative to liberate differential relations of alterity that are ossified in a specific organization in the flesh. The BwO is the site of such disarticulations. Deleuze is interested in pulling back every stratified determination to its moment of formation, such that renegotiating a new path is made possible. Here, also Deleuze by disarticulating the Other takes the flesh to its moment of formation to renegotiate a new beginning,Footnote ⁸⁴ because the flesh is just a stratified organization of relations and not the essential site of our subjectivity. Indeed, a new articulation of the relations of alterity — for instance, a new dynamic of ‘here’ and ‘there’ — would give rise to a new spatiality and a wholly other body-world. BwO, insofar as it is not a sedentary organization, fuels other compositions of the genetic relations of alterity and, hence, other modes of corporeality.

To sum up, the Other-structure guarantees the organization and sustainability of an objective world, perceivable by all others. It implies the convergence of the world to a unified objective world, perceived from all different perspectives [Umwelt]. Whereas, the Otherless world gives rise to something wholly different, to the BwO instead of the flesh, and to the other of the world rather than the world of the Other. It implies a wholly other world [Welt]Footnote ⁸⁵ with infinite divergent possibilities. “Solar and dehumanized,”Footnote ⁸⁶ Robinson, the subject of this Otherless world, far from being a pacifying flesh, is an intensive body subject to the excess of singularities, a disorganized body that being open to the limit-experience of the impossible is capable of unblocking the event.Footnote ⁸⁷ The Other-structure ensures that the world of the Other is our world, whereas the Otherless world erects the other of the world, in which, the coherency and harmony of the flesh with the world are substituted with discords and divergent series. This Otherless world does not seek to eliminate the concrete other egos but rather strives to condition a wholly other [un tout-autre] relation to the alter ego (as was the case with Friday). Therefore, Deleuze denigrates the phenomenological account of the Other, endowed with our established lived and livable experience, to open up a space for the limit-experience of the impossibleFootnote ⁸⁸ and the unlivable, to unlock the event and the conditions of the new.