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First Series of Paradoxes of Pure Becoming

Alice and Through the Looking Glass involve a category of very special things: events, pure events. When I say "Alice becomes larger," I mean that she becomes larger than she was. By the same token, however, she becomes smaller than she is now. Certainly, she is not bigger and smaller at the same time. She is larger now; she was smaller before. But it is at the same moment that one becomes larger than one was and smaller than one becomes. This is the simultaneity of a becoming whose characteristic is to elude the present. Insofar as it eludes the present, becoming does not tolerate the separation or the distinction of before and after, or of past and future. It pertains to the essence of becoming to move and to pull in both directions at once: Alice does nto grow without shrinking, and vice versa. Good sense affirms that in all things there is a determinable sense or direction (sense); but paradox is the affirmation of both senses or directions at the same time.

Plato invites us to distinguish between two dimensions: (1) that of limited and measured things, of fixed qualities, permanent or temporary which always presuppose pauses and rests, the fixing of presents, and the assignation of subjects (for example, a particular subject having a particular largeness or a particular smallness at a particular moment); and (2) a pure becoming without measure, a veritable becoming-mad, which never rests. It moves in both directions at once. It always eludes the present, causing the future and past, more or less, too much and not enough to coincide in the simultaneity of a rebellious matter. "'[H]otter' never stops where it is but is always going a point further, and the same applies to 'colder,' whereas definite quality is something that has stopped going on and is fixed;" "... the younger becoming older than the older, the older becoming younger than the younger -- but they can never finally become so; if they did they would no longer be becoming, but would be so."[1]

We recognize this Platonic dualism. It is not at all the dualism of the intelligible and the sensible, of Idea and matter, or of Ideas and bodies. It is a more profound and secret dualism hiddin in sensible and material bodies themselves. It is a subterranean dualism between that which receives the action of the Idea and that which eludes this action. It is not the distinction between the Model and the copy, but rather between copies and simulacra. Pure becoming, the unlimited, is the matter of the simulacrum insofar as it eludes the action of the Idea and insofar as it contests both model and copy at once. Limited things lie beneath the Ideas; but even beneath things, is there not still this mad element which subsists and occurs on the other side of the order that the Ideas impose and things receive? Sometimes Plato wonders whether this pure becoming might not have a very peculiar relation to language. This seems to be one of the principal meanings of the Cratylus. Could this relation be, perhaps, essential to language, as in the case of a "flow" of speech, or a wild discourse which would incessantly slide over its referent, without stopping? Or might there not be two languages and two sorts of "names," one designating the pauses and rests which receive the action of the Idea, the other expressing the movements or rebel becomings?[2] Or further still, is it not possible that there are two distinct dimensions internal to language in general -- one always concealed by the other, yet continuously coming to the aid of, or subsisting under, the other?

The paradox of this pure becoming, with its capacity to elude the present, is the paradox of infinite identity (the infinite identity of both directions or senses at the same time -- of future and past, of the day before and the day after, of more and less, of two much and not enough, of active and passive, and of cause and effect). It is language which fixes the limits (the moment, for example, at which the excess begins), but it is language as well which transcends the limits and restores them to the infinite equivalence of an unlimited becoming ("A red-hot poker will burn you if you hold it too long; and ... if you cut your finger very deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds"). Hence the reversals which constitute Alice's adventures: the reversal of becoming larger and becoming smaller -- "which way, which way?" asks Alice, sensing that it is always in both directions at the same time, so that for once she stays the same, through an optical illusion; the reversal of the day before and the day after, the present always being eluded -- "jam tomorrow and jam yesterday -- but never jam to-day"; the reversal of more and less: five night are five times hotter than a single one, "but they must be five times as cold for the same reason"; the reversal of active and passive: "do cats eat bats?" is as good as "do bats eat cats?"; the reversal of cause and effect: to be punished before having committed a fault, to cry before having pricked oneself, to serve before having divided up the servings.

All these reversals as they appear in infinite identity have one consequence: the contesting of Alice's personal identity and the loss of her proper name. The loss of the proper name is the adventure which is repeated throughout Alice's adventures. For the proper or singular name is guaranteed by the permanence of savoir. The latter is embodies in general names designating pauses and rests, in substantives and adjectives, with which the proper name maintains a constant connection. Thus the personal self requires God and the world in general. But when substantives and adjectives begin to dissolve, when the names of pause and rest are carried away by the verbs of pure becoming and slide into the language of events, all identity disappears from the self, the world, and God. This is the test of savoir and recitation which strips Alice of her identity. In it words may go awry, being obliquely swept away by the verbs. It is as if events enjoyed an irreality which is communicated through language to the savoir and to persons. For personal uncertainty is not a doubt foreign to what is happening, but rather an objective structure of the event itself, insofar as it moves in two directions at once, and insofar as it fragments the subject following this double direction. Paradox is initially that which destroys good sense as the only direction, but it is also that which destroys common sense as the assignation of fixed identities.

Notes

1. Plato, Philebus, 24, d., trans. R. Hackforth; Parmenides, 154-155, trans. F, M. Cornforth; in E. Hamilton and H. Cairns, eds. Plato: The Collected Dialogues (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961).

2. Plato, Cratylus, 437ff. With respect to the preceding, see appendix 1.

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