The subject suggests that the discussion will be of an ontological nature. What does “pure becoming” mean? It is paradoxical. Deleuze suggests that there is a sense in which two opposite things, on the same ontological level (e.g., a becoming today and a becoming tomorrow), occur at the same time. This is to say that the two oppsite things which occur at the same time are at the same temporal level. The things or senses are determinate in themselves, but at the same time they happen concurrently due to what is termed as pure becoming. This is what makes it a paradox. As Deleuze says, “This is the simultaneity of a becoming whose characteristic is to elude the present” (LOS 1). The holding power of the present is precisely what is at stake here. “Good sense affirms that in all things there is a determinable sense or direction (sens); but paradox is the affirmation of both senses or directions at the same time” (LOS 1). Deleuze suggests that Plato institutes a dualism here in order to tame the wild horse. Thus we have the world of nouns. A “chair” is no longer even this happening whose existence can at least be pointed at. (It seems to me that Hegel makes a somewhat similar move which acknowledges this phenomenon in the very first section of the Phenomenology of Spirit.) The pure immediacy of becoming must already be mediated in order for communication to even occur at all. A pure becoming, in order to be controlled, must be taken as a specific determinate instance of a fixed something, i.e., of a thing. Hardcore becoming has the quality of not being pidgeon-holed so easily (or at all). Two senses, determinate yet dynamic, trump common sense.
“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. . . 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” (LOS 2-3).
Work Cited
Deleuze, G. The Logic of Sense. trans. Lester, M., Stivale, C., ed. Boundas, C. (Colombia University Press: New York, 1990.)
