When I write research plans, I’m often struck by the criteria. Somehow I’m supposed to know in advance what is important to research and, more specifically what is important to research about something. In other words, I’m puzzled by how it is that the researcher knows this in advance, without having done the research. For me, it’s like, well, if I had done this already, I wouldn’t be suggesting it, now would I?
Then there is that specificity. It’s one thing to conduct research and another thing to conduct research on something, whatever that may be. The former is open-ended, to the point that it is not clear what it is that the researcher will be looking into. Simply put, that lacks the data or the material. The latter may or may not be open-ended, but it is less open-ended than the latter, for the simple reason that the data or the material has already been picked.
But even if we ignore the former and just focus on the latter, as is customary in research, there’s a difference between looking into something and looking into something again and, perhaps, again and again. Think of a book, let’s say a novel. You’re read it. You are already familiar with it. What are you doing if you already know it? Why ask for funding for research that concerns that book, that novel, regarding whatever it is that you already know is relevant to that book, that novel? You’ve already done the work.
There are two ways of reading a book, according to Gilles Deleuze. He (7) specifies the first and common way in ‘Letter to a Harsh Critic’:
“[Y]ou either see it as a box with something inside and start looking for what it signifies[.]”
There’s a catch with this, if you know how signification works, as he (7-8) goes on to mockingly add:
“[A]nd then if you’re even more perverse or depraved you set off after signifiers. And you treat the next book like a box contained in the first or containing it. And you annotate and interpret and question, and write a book about the book, and so on and so on.”
If you don’t know how signification works, you should by now. But, in case you are not sure, the thing with it is that it never ends. It’s infinite regress. A word can only be explained by other words, which can only be explained by other words. There are no signifieds, only signifiers. That’s why signification is occasionally referred to as a chain.
Another way of explaining that is that a book is a text, which only makes sense in the context of other texts, by which I mean that all texts are intertexts, that all textuality is intertextuality. You can never address just one text at a time, because there are no neatly isolated texts that function on their own.
There is, however, that second, that other way of reading a book. He (8) specifies this as well:
“[Y]ou see the book as a little non-signifying machine, and the only question is: ‘Does it work, and how does it work?'”
The focus is not on the signifiers, in hope of finding the signifieds, for the simple reason that there are none. The only signifieds you’ll ever find in any book or in anything are signifiers. They have been arbitrarily given the status of signifieds.
To be clear, this is an interesting phenomenon and worth researching. It helps us to understand why people tend to read books, listen to music, watch films, theater performances or television series or play video games in the first way, as explained by Deleuze (7).
The second way is as simple as he (8) suggests. A book or whatever it is that you are read, listen, watching or playing, does not contain any meaning in it. If we think of it as meaningful, it is still something that happens, there and then, in the act of reading, listening, watching or playing. In other words, meaning emerges in the act, as you read, listen, watch or play something. It either makes sense or it doesn’t, as Deleuze would explain in ‘The Logic of the Sense’.
If it doesn’t work, there’s a mismatch with the book and its reader. There are many kinds of books, just as there are many kinds of songs, theater performances, films, television series and video games. Marcel Proust (266) makes this clear in ‘Time Regained’:
[A] book may be too learned, too obscure for the simple reader[.]”
This has to do with how there are many kinds of writers and readers. In his (266), a writer can be too smart and the reader too dumb, and vice versa, so that the book is just way too difficult for the reader or way too easy for the reader. If they don’t match, reading the book, or listening to the song, watching the film, the theater performance or the television series or playing the game, is not going to work.
For Proust (266), the work, whatever it may be, i.e., not just a book or a novel, is “a sort of optic instrument”, i.e., a lens, that allows or, at least, helps people to see the world in a certain way. If there’s a match, it’s a clear and useful lens for the reader. If there isn’t a match, it’s a blurry and useless lens for the reader.
What’s also interesting about Proust’s (265-266) take is that he is one of the first, that I can think of, to point out that once the writing is done or, more broadly speaking, once the work is done, and therefore completed, it is up to the reader to make sense of the writing, or whatever the work in question happens to be. Why? Well, because, the author of the work is not the work. When you read something, or listen, watch or play something, whatever it may be, you are indeed engaging with that something and not with its author or authors. He (265) is very clear about this:
“In reality, every reader, as [the reader] reads, is the reader of [one]self”.
If not adamant about it, as he (266) goes on to add:
“The recognition of [one]self in the book by the reader is the proof of its truth and vice versa, at least in a certain measure, the difference between the two texts being often less attributable to the author than the reader.”
This is not to say that the writer, the author, is irrelevant. All books have their writers, their authors, and, as already noted, there are many kinds of books, as there are many kinds of other kinds of works. This may indeed mean that you, my dear reader, as a reader, may be too dumb to read certain books, to listen to certain songs, to watch certain films, theater performances or television series, and/or to play certain video games, just as you may be too smart to for all that, for certain kinds books, songs, films, theater performances, television series, and/or video games.
This mismatch is not really a problem though for the simple reason that there’s no shortage of things to read, listen, watch and play. So, if it’s not your thing, find something else. Deleuze is also very clear about it. He (8) points out in ‘Letter to a Harsh Critic’ that:
“If it doesn’t work, if nothing comes through, you try another book.”
To be clear, this doesn’t mean, he doesn’t mean, nor does Proust mean, that you can never understand something, that nothing can ever come through. You might have to read or engage with something else and then return to it. Or, maybe you are being too serious, overthinking. Maybe you need to drink a couple of beers to enjoy slapstick comedy.
What’s interesting about this second way of reading is that it’s not just about whether something comes through or not. Inasmuch something does come through, it’s also about how it comes through. Some of it is about you, as a reader (or listener, watcher, or player, etc.), like what your language skills are and what you know. Then some of it is about the writer, the author, as someone had to write it (or compose it, sing it, play it, record it, film it, script it, model it, etc.). However, it’s also how the two come together.
Nonetheless, what matters to the reader (or listener, watcher or player, etc.) is what matters the most and that is as simple as whether something comes through or not. Deleuze is (8) adamant about this:
“There’s nothing to explain, nothing to understand, nothing to interpret.”
Why, you might ask? Well, because what matters is that engagement, that encounter, that event, whatever you want to call it. It happens. This explaining, understanding and interpreting is secondary to it. If you get it, you get it. If you don’t, you don’t. That’s the difference between something coming through and nothing coming through, as he (8) goes on to reiterate:
“It’s like plugging into an electric circuit.”
Which is, by the way, nearly the same as what Valentin Vološinov (102-103) has to say about this in ‘Marxism and the Philosophy of Language”:
“Meaning is the effect of interaction between speaker and listener produced via the material of a particular sound complex. It is like an electric spark that occurs only when two different terminals are hooked together.”
For him, this is the active, pragmatic understanding, which is different from the passive, semantic understanding. He (103) also notes what the problem with the first reading is:
“Those who ignore theme (which is accessible only to active, responsive understanding) and who, in attempting to define the meaning of: word, approach its lower, stable, self-identical limit, want, in effect, to turn on a light bulb after having switched off the current. Only the current of verbal intercourse endows a word with the light of meaning.”
Indeed, you can’t have the lights on without the current. That’s the point Deleuze (8) makes about plugging into a circuit.
The two readings are also distinct in another way. According to Deleuze (8), the first reading is an enclosed reading, so that it is emphasized that it’s all in the book, or so to speak, whereas the second reading is an open reading, so that the book is not just about the book, but also about what’s outside the book. This is also what Proust means when he (265) states that one isn’t just reading a book, or engaging with whatever it may be, but about reading, or engaging with oneself. This is also the relation between the book, or whatever else it may be, and its writer, or whatever the corresponding activity happens to be. Deleuze (8) specifies this by adding that he and Félix Guattari didn’t write their first collaboration, ‘Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia’, just because. It was their interaction with other people, “a mass of people”, by which they mean “especially young people”, likely their students, that was the current that sparked for them, as he (8) points out.
Proust also comments on how this works from a writer’s perspective. He (226-227) states that there is a difference between intelligence and instinct, what he also refers to as intuition. He (227) reckons that the former deals with ideas that are formulated in a way that “have only a logical truth, a possible truth”, but their “selection is arbitrary.” He (227) contrasts this with the latter, noting that it is, alone, “a criterion of truth”. It is, for him (226), also nothing short of “genius” and “dictates duty”. By this he means that when you write out of instinct or intuition, there is no intention and therefore no selection. It is rather that you are compelled to write, as if it was your duty to write. Intelligence does not have this. It’s, for him (226), rather a matter of avoiding this duty to write. Those who rely solely on intelligence are happy to excuse themselves, to not write about something, but, instead write about something else, whereas those who rely on instinct or intuition have no excuses, as noted by him (226).
He (227) doesn’t shy away from emphasizing how superior instinct or intuition is when compared to intelligence, even though he has a lot of good to say about intelligence:
“Intuition alone, however tenuous its consistency, however improbable its shape, is a criterion of truth and, for that reason, deserves to be accepted by the mind because it alone is capable, if the mind can extract that truth, of bringing it to greater perfection and of giving it pleasure without alloy.”
It is also worth adding to this rather Spinozist take on the matter, as he (227) does, that intelligence also has its way of working like this:
“Intuition for the writer is what experiment is for the learned[.]”
He (227) does continue, but this is beside the point:
“[W]ith the difference that in the case of the learned the work of the intelligence precedes and in the case of the writer it follows.”
In other words, with intuition, you just know it, but can’t nor need to explain it. You just go for it and it works. Then you get the results. With intelligence, you know something beforehand and then you conduct the experiment, to check with it, to see if it is the case. Nonetheless, the two are alike, in the sense that they are both experimental.
I like the way Joshua Landy (81) summarizes this in his book ‘Marcel Proust: A Very Short Introduction’. Instinct or intuition is about the impression you get from something, that being the very thing or phenomenon in question, what it is that we are interested in. Intellect is expression you get from that impression, how you explain it, how you put it into words, which is, of course, not the same thing as the thing or phenomenon that you’re interested in.
Proust (246-248) also reckons that while intellect is useful, no doubt about it, because it provides us with the tools to make sense of reality, to classify it as such and such, but it fails to produce anything new, hence his love of art. He (248) comments on intelligence:
“[W]e do not know what a thing is until we have approached it with our intelligence. Only when the intelligence illuminates it, when it has intellectualised it, we distinguish, and with how much difficulty, the shape of that which we have felt[.]”
That’s how you turn impressions into expressions. Then again that’s all intellect is going to get you. It allows us to classify the world, to have these words for these things, but they are not those things, nor do they account for how those things come to be the way they are.
The problem, for me, is that there’s little room for instinct orintuition in research, even though it is needed. When you apply for funding, there are all these expectations. Firstly, and most importantly, you are supposed to be doing something new. This is where you need instinct or intuition. Secondly, you should already know the effects of doing something new, like what kind of scientific impact it will have in the field or discipline and/or what kind of social and/or economic impact it will have. This is where you need intellect, but the problem is that you cannot express any of this without having done the work. If you can express this, you have do the work already.
Simply put. these two expectations are contradictory. You cannot do something new if you already know what the effects the research will have. You can only do something new by not knowing what effects it will have.
There is another problem. When you apply for funding, there is also this expectation that you explain why you, as the applicant, want to do this and why you can do this, as opposed to doing something else and/or someone else doing it. To be more specific, it is expected that you express why this matters, why what you focus on is important, and why only you can do it. This is all about the intellect, but that’s not great when it comes to motivation. Instinct and intuition is way better when it comes to motivation. You get the job done, because you’re driven by your instinct or intuition. There is no hesitation, like there is with intellect. You know what you need to do and you just do it. It’s that simple. You already know and what’s left to do is put it into words, to use that intellect to explain things.
When you work this way, when you rely on your instinct or intuition, whatever you want to call it, things come to you very easily. Sure, do need your intellect, but that’s just to turn those impressions to expressions. You can’t expect to be able to do that if you aren’t good at expressing things, nor if aren’t familiar with what’s been already expressed, i.e., what’s been done before. That said, intellect won’t get you anywhere, except recycling what’s been done before, if you don’t have that instinct or intuition. To be clear, I believe everyone has that. It’s just that they’ve been told not to rely on their instinct or intuition, because that’s, supposedly, not what intellectuals do, even though, ironically, they can’t do anything new without it.
It is also difficult to explain this, how one approaches or even can approach one’s material or data in any other way except the first way, intellectually, finding some meaning, interpreting it and then expressing it. The second way of approaching it, instinctively or intuitively, to see if there’s something to it, if something comes through and then explaining not so much what comes through, but rather how it comes through, is just baffling to most people. This also applies to academics, like professors of x, y and z included, which is, to me, what’s baffling about all this.
Related to this, I’m often confused by that, like how on earth did someone ever get to be a professor, like having gone through some rigorous hiring process, outmatching all their competition, only to not know things like this. You’re supposed to be the best of the best and yet you know next to nothing or, more problematically, you can’t be arsed to care, to find out. When you read books, yes, entire books on something, written decades ago, what’s special about them is that people put effort into them, reading other books, book chapter and various articles. Just finding all that material before the internet must have been a pain. These days you can just search for something, a word or two will do, and you get an explanation in seconds, yet professors, again, the best of the best, cannot be arsed to do even that. To me, that’s just lazy, intellectual dishonesty. Look it up. It’s easy.
What I’d like to see in research is experimentality. Just pick up something that hasn’t already been turned into material or data and see what comes through. Don’t overthink it. Just plug in. Let it happen. I think Deleuze (8-9) explains this marvellously:
“This intensive way of reading, in contact with what’s outside the book, as a flow meeting other flows, one machine among others, as a series of experiments for each reader in the midst of events that have nothing to do with book, as tearing the book into pieces, getting it to interact with other things, absolutely anything … is reading with love.”
That’s also how he (9) recommends you read ‘Anti-Oedipus’ and, I guess, his other collaborations with Guattari. You might even enjoy that.
References
- Deleuze, G. ([1969] 1990). The Logic of Sense (C. V. Boundas, Ed., M. Lester and C. J. Stivale, Trans.). London, United Kingdom: Athlone Press.
- Deleuze, G. ([1990] 1995). Letter to a Harsh Critic. In G. Deleuze, Negotiations, 1972–1990 (M. Joughin, Trans.) (pp. 4–12). New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
- Deleuze, G., and F. Guattari ([1972] 1983). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (R. Hurley, M. Seem and H. R. Lane, Trans.). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
- Landy, J. ([2023] 2024). Marcel Proust: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
- Proust, M. ([1927] 1931). Time Regained (S. Hudson, Trans.). London, United Kingdom: Chatto & Windus.
- Vološinov, V. N. ([1927] 1976). Freudianism: A Marxist Critique (N. H. Bruss, Ed.; I. R. Titunik, Trans). New York, NY: Academic Press.