Deleuze and Beckett: An Immanent

Encounter

Magdalena Wisniowska

Royal Academy Schools, London

Abstract
Understanding the exact nature of Deleuzes debt to Kant forms a large
part of contemporary Deleuzian scholarship, a project made all the more
urgent since the publication of Meillassouxs critique of correlationism
in 2007. These Kantian readings present Deleuze as someone who
continues Kants transcendental project by reconsidering the nature of
immanent critique. Immanent critique is no longer seen here as part
of the critical enquiry into the possible conditions of experience, but
as a staging of an encounter with the genetic principle constituting
these conditions, the real condition common to both the human subject
and the world in which he or she lives. Such is the implicit demand
of genetic recasting: that critique in its immanent form is something
we can experience and learn. Presented with this demand, this essay
addresses the problem of staging this immanent form of critique. It looks
to Deleuzes essay on the work of Samuel Beckett, The Exhausted, to
suggest a possible site for such an encounter with constitutive principle.
Specifically, in Deleuzes discussion of . . . but the clouds . . . it finds a
theory of the image, which can be understood in genetic terms, as a
theory of the virtual. Thus the essay puts forward the thesis that Beckett,
in constructing the image through the exhaustive process, recreates the
virtual plane, in its openness and flux.
Keywords: Beckett, Kant, exhaustion, the virtual, the image

Deleuze Studies 8.2 (2014): 173198

DOI: 10.3366/dls.2014.0142
Edinburgh University Press
www.euppublishing.com/dls

174 Magdalena Wisniowska

I. Immanence
The starting point for this essay lies with a claim made by Christian
Kerslake in his 2009 study on immanence, Immanence and the Vertigo of
Philosophy: From Kant to Deleuze. When negotiating between Deleuze,
Spinoza and Hegel, he suggests that imagination, in its transcendental
form, is something we can encounter, empirically speaking, in the here
and now. More so, he argues that for Deleuze, immanent critique
consists precisely of such an encounter. He writes:
It is the transcendental imagination, which is ultimately constitutive for
human experience, and unless we learn the hidden art of the imagination
to which Kant alluded in his remarks on the Schematism, the human being
is destined to remain enclosed in the constituted frameworks of its finitude.
(Kerslake 2009: 20)

In Kants Critique of Pure Reason, the transcendental imagination is

capable of a hidden or, according to Pluhars translation secret, art
(Kant 1996: 213). It is able to mediate between the pure categories
of understanding (as derived from Aristotelian logical judgements) and
the pure forms of intuition (space and time) by producing schemas of
sensible concepts, rules according to which our intuitions are determined
by concepts. Though, as one of the conditions of possible experience,
transcendental imagination is essential for cognition, it itself cannot be
known, as in, it is not something we can divine from nature and lay
bare before ourselves (213). Yet Kerslake seems to suggest that this
hidden art this spontaneous productive capacity for schema might
be something we can learn. Indeed, if we do not acquire this kind of
talent, we are not performing Kants critical project correctly.
To understand more of the nature of Kerslakes claim, we must
further consider the context in which it is written. Despite Deleuzes
anti-Kantian position being well known, Kerslakes account belongs to a
strand in contemporary Deleuzian scholarship which seeks to unfold the
exact nature of Deleuzes debt to Kant, a task all the more urgent since
the publication of Quentin Meillassouxs critique of correlationism in
2007.1 Kerslake together with Daniel Smith (1996), Joe Hughes (2008,
2009) Levi Bryant (2008, 2009) and Edward Willatt (2009) sees Deleuze
as inheriting Kants critical project, to the extent that, like Kant, Deleuze
wishes to perform a critique of values upon which critique is founded
(Bryant 2009: 323). However, for Deleuze, these founding values are
not the kind described in the Critique of Pure Reason, comprising the
a priori forms of intuition, categories of the understanding and ideas

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of reason. Instead, he finds an alternative set of principles elsewhere,

with an altogether different character. Hughes repeatedly quotes from
Deleuzes The Idea of Genesis in Kants Esthetics (Hughes 2008: 1718;
2009: 4):
The first two Critiques indeed invoke facts, seek out the conditions from
these facts and find them in ready-made faculties. It follows that the first
two critiques point to a genesis, which they are incapable of securing on their
own. But in the aesthetic Critique of Judgement Kant poses the problem of
the genesis of the faculties in their original free agreement. Thus he discovers
a ground still lacking in the first two critiques. (Deleuze 2004a: 61)

The reference now is to the way in which Kant describes

transcendental imagination in the early chapters of the third critique,
the second moment of the judgement of taste. Here the pleasure of
beauty is different from the pleasure associated with the agreeable as
it derives from a state of mind in which the faculties of imagination
and understanding are in free play (Kant 1987: 21719). In Desert
Islands (Deleuze 2004a: 634), but also in Difference and Repetition
(Deleuze 2004b: 180, 183, 210) and other work on Kant (Deleuze 2008:
425), Deleuze emphasises how this free play of the faculties produces
a quickening or furthering of powers. When free, imagination is
that which arouses understanding, and understanding in turn is that
which puts imagination into play (Kant 1987: 296). Such arousal
is even more apparent in Kants discussion of the sublime, in which
imaginations confrontation with its limit is directly responsible for the
outpouring feeling of the suprasensible power of reason (Kant 1987:
226). Hughes, but also Kerslake, shows how Deleuze rewrites this kind
of productive confrontation as genetic principle, not simply responsible
for arousing feelings of the suprasensible, but responsible for the very
constitution of our subjectivity, with all its associated faculties.2
Setting Kerslakes argument into the above context, we begin to
understand why he might consider transcendental imagination to be
constitutive for human experience. He subscribes to the view of Deleuze
as a post-Kantian thinker, someone who responds to the demand for
the unconditioned self-grounding principle that must lie at the basis of
knowledge (Kerslake 2009: 18). This he finds in Kants concept of the
transcendental imagination, providing imagination is not reduced here
to its function in the Critique of Pure Reason, as the mere schematic
transcendent application of its synthesis, but is seen at its most
productive, whether in Heideggers existential ontology of constitutive
finitude or in the post-Romantics philosophy of the imagination.

176 Magdalena Wisniowska

For Kerslake, imagination in this constitutive sense takes over the role
usually granted to the Spinozian model of immanence, in which the
world is seen to be the expression of God and Gods divine infinity
is that in which the entire world participates (Deleuze 1992a: 176;
Kerslake 2009: 346). We can also see why, if Kants critical project is
to be continued correctly, it must uncover this kind of self-grounding
principle. Without learning more about the nature of transcendental
imaginations hidden art, Kants critical enquiry remains incomplete
and we are destined to remain with the simple conditioning of fact in
ready-made faculties, rather than sure to discover the genetic ground
of these faculties (Deleuze 2004b: 192). However, this kind of recasting
of Kants transcendental project still leaves the question of immanent
critique unanswered. What we cannot understand is how how is such
a principle to be uncovered? How is this hidden art of the imagination
to be uncovered, encountered and learnt?
This is the point at which my essay begins. I would like to suggest
that Deleuze does indeed stage his immanent critique as an encounter
with an unconditioned principle in Kerslakes terms, an encounter with
a productive sense of Kants transcendental imagination and he does
so most profoundly in his late essay on the work of Samuel Beckett. I
would like to propose The Exhausted as a site for this kind of immanent
critique (Deleuze 1998).

II. The Exhausted

At first glance, Deleuzes essay might not seem the best site for such
an encounter. The Exhausted makes no direct reference to the concept
of immanence and only broaches the question of the genetic principle
indirectly, through the concept of birth. We learn, for instance, that
to be exhausted is to be exhausted before birth (Deleuze 1998:
152). Similarly, Deleuze describes the one who is exhausted seated
in darkness, head sunk in crippled hands as an original witness,
present before being born (1556). However, the essay does not
expand on these few comments and these comments taken by themselves
should not be seen as evidence of immanent critique, though they
remain quietly suggestive. Primarily, the essay is meant to serve as a
postscript to the first French translation of Deleuzes television plays
and as such, represents Deleuzes first serious discussion of these works.
Although Deleuze had referred to Beckett prior to the publication of The
Exhausted notably in Difference and Repetition (Deleuze 2004b: 100)
and in Cinema I (Deleuze 2005: 6870) it is only here and in the essay

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The Greatest Irish Film (Becketts Film) (1998) that he examines the
work in depth.
Yet to see the essay as a piece of art criticism providing a necessary
introduction to Quad, Ghost Trio, . . . but the clouds . . . or Nacht und
Trume is equally problematic. For one, we learn very little about the
context of these works nothing about where and when they were first
staged, nothing of their actual staging, their complicated scripts and
exacting camera work, nothing of their historical or critical backgrounds
and nothing of their critical significance. Indeed, we learn very little
about them at all, except how they might pursue the concept of
exhaustion. In this sense Deleuzes essay is closest to how Levi Bryant
describes Deleuzes engagement with artwork in terms of a new theory
of aesthetics (Bryant 2009: 33). According to Bryant, Deleuze looks
to different artists (as well as novels and, of course, film) in order
to show how these might be seen as producing or individuating
different forms of sensibility (33). Taking his cue from Deleuzes work
in What Is Philosophy?, Bryant writes: The aim is not to represent these
artists or determine what they meant, but to analyse the percepts they
invented, and uncover the capacities for affecting and being affected
they have brought into the world (33). Bryants interpretation would be
convincing were it not for the fact that The Exhausted does not uncover
any such percepts or affects. It does not develop a theory of aesthetics
any more than a theory of art, and makes no reference to sensation,
perception or experience of any kind. Instead, we are simply presented
with a concept of exhaustion and then shown how this functions in
Becketts work generally and in the television plays specifically.
Thus the essay follows a very rigid structure and can be easily divided
into three parts. In the first third, Deleuze identifies his central concept
of exhaustion through contrast and comparison with the concept of
realisation. He then shows how Beckett enacts this concept of exhaustion
through the particular way he uses language in his novels, plays, and
radio and television pieces. In this second third of his argument, Deleuze
attributes to Beckett a kind of meta-approach, a manipulation of the
possibilities inherent in language. Finally, in the last third, he outlines
the role of exhaustion in each of the television plays individually. Only
in this sense can we see The Exhausted as staging a kind of immanent
enquiry, in that it provides an analysis of the principle of exhaustion first
put forward or contributed by Beckett (Deleuze 1998: 154).
What then is exhaustion, this principle to which most of Becketts
work is seen to adhere? For Deleuze, exhaustion is one way in which
we can approach the possible. Whereas in our everyday activity we tend

178 Magdalena Wisniowska

to realise the possible by pursuing certain goals, aims and plans, in
exhaustion these are renounced and all of possibility is affirmed (Deleuze
1998: 152). Deleuze also stipulates that only a truly exhausted person
can perform this kind of logical exhaustion, as only someone truly
exhausted can renounce all aims and plans. Thus logical exhaustiveness
and physiological fatigue are closely linked (1545).
We can see how this principle might be relevant to Becketts work,
if we think of Beckett as performing this kind of double exhaustion
through his use of language. Once again, the same kind of distinction
applies: whereas under normal circumstances we use language to name
the various projects we wish to realise, Beckett renounces such familiar
grammatical and syntactical structures precisely in order to affirm all
possible permutations. This kind of meta-construction Deleuze calls
language one, and he associates it most closely with the earlier novels
and theatre pieces. And just as logical exhaustiveness is dependent on
the persons physiological fatigue, so it is that we cannot consider the
exhaustion of words without the accompanying exhaustion of the voices
that utter them, including, necessarily and problematically, the writers
own. This kind of self-silencing Deleuze calls language two, and he sees
it as a feature of Becketts work from The Unnamable onwards.
More directly, we can also see how this same exhaustive principle
might apply to Quad, Ghost Trio, . . . but the clouds . . . or Nacht
und Trume, though in a somewhat different shape and form. All of
these later works pursue what Deleuze describes as the third language
of exhaustion, the exhaustive language of spaces and images. It is as if
we had reached a point at which the previous exhaustions of languages
one and two opened up a space for the extra-linguistic, which can only
now be adequately explored. In all cases, we are presented with either
a space (Quad, Ghost Trio and . . . but the clouds . . . ) or an image
(. . . but the clouds . . . and Nacht und Trume) that is indeterminate in
nature that is not one realised possibility, but seems to affirm them all.
So, for instance, in Ghost Trio the protagonist does not sit in a particular
room but in a grey rectangular space. When the camera zooms in, in
order to present the bed, the window or the door, they all appear as the
same grey rectangle. Similarly, the face of the woman who appears to
the protagonist of . . . but the clouds . . . is not the face of any particular
female character but a blurred close-up. Furthermore, Beckett often
seems to accentuate this any-space-whatever and indefinite image: in
Quad the four actors get to traverse all sides and diagonals of the square;
in Ghost Trio the protagonist opens the door, opens the window and
looks under the bed in successive order; and in . . . but the clouds . . .

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he lists all possible ways in which the woman had previously appeared
to him. And it must also be added, that like with the exhaustions of
languages one and two, this kind of more logical side of exhaustion is
accompanied by physiological fatigue. In . . . but the clouds . . . and in
Nacht und Trume we actually see the silent protagonist, sitting in the
dark, head down on crippled hands (Deleuze 1998: 155).

III. Immanent Readings

But what then of the concept of immanence, with which I introduced
this essay? How is this concept relevant to The Exhausted, when all
that seems to be discussed is the question of exhaustion and the way
in which this concept is played out in literature, theatre and television
plays? Where can we find the transcendental concept of imagination,
and with it, the staging of an immanent critique, in which the nature of
this transcendental imagination is learnt?
First of all, it must be said that in The Exhausted Deleuzes debt to
Spinoza is very much apparent. When Deleuze first distinguishes between
the exhaustion and the realisation of the possible, he makes the following
remark on the exhausted person and his state of exhaustion: That the
impossible should be asked of me, good, what else could be asked of
me. There is no longer any possible: a relentless Spinozism (Deleuze
1998: 152) From this we learn that the point at which we can no longer
come up with further possibilities is the point of Spinozism. Whatever
exhaustion may or may not be, it remains Spinozian in character. But to
begin reading The Exhausted in such a way is somewhat problematic,
because it involves us taking into account a reversal of terms.
To understand more of this reversal, we need to return to Kerslake
and the problem of immanent critique. Other than unfolding the exact
nature of Deleuzes debt to Kant, Kerslake is very good at showing how
for Deleuze, Spinozas ontology foreshadows post-Kantian attempts to
ground philosophy in genesis. According to Kerslake, Deleuze finds
an equivalent to the kind of unconditioned self-grounding principle
demanded by the post-Kantians, in Spinozas idea of expression. Because
Spinozas God is that which expresses itself in the world and the world
in turn is the expression of this God, we can construe the expressive
nature of this divine being as a prototypical immanent principle (Deleuze
1992a: 176).
Providing we keep to Kerslakes post-Kantian discussion of
immanence, the terms here are of the real rather than the possible.
The question is not of those conditions what Deleuze identifies as

180 Magdalena Wisniowska

the Kantian ready-made faculties of intuition, understanding and
reason which allow for the possibility of experience. These he dismisses
as mere conditioning (Deleuze 2004b: 192, 201, 216). Rather, Deleuze
always aims to uncover the genetic ground of the world shaped by
these faculties, the real ground that underlies our already constituted
experience. Kerslake (2009: 18, 83) but also to an extent Hughes
(2008: 1718; 2009: 34) and Smith (1996: 29) point to the wellknown passage from Difference and Repetition: In fact, the condition
must be a condition of real experience and not possible experience. It
forms an intrinsic genesis, not an extrinsic conditioning (Deleuze 2004b:
192). It might therefore seem strange that Deleuze alludes to Spinoza
when identifying exhaustion with the exhaustion of possibility. The
Exhausted clearly states that relentless Spinozism is the impossible
moment at which the exhausted person exhausts the possibility as a
whole. However, as Asja Szafraniec points out in her study of Beckett,
Deleuzes late essay calls for a reversal of these two terms (Szafraniec
2007: 1201). The possible here is not the same as the Kantian
possible, that Kantian world experienced under the conditions of the
transcendental subject. In fact, it is closer to the original self-grounding
principle associated with Spinoza, demanded by the post-Kantians and
described by Kerslake. Or as Deleuze writes, God is the originary, the
sum total of possibility. The possible is realised only in the derivative, in
tiredness, whereas one is exhausted before birth, before realising oneself,
or realising anything whatsoever (I gave up before birth) (Deleuze 1998:
152). We have encountered this concept of birth before, when first
introducing The Exhausted. I have described it as quietly suggestive.
We can now see how it might signify a great deal more, dealing with
that originary state which lies at the heart of any philosophical model
seeking a genetic approach to the problem of immanence.
Following on from this reversal of terms, we can also see how
immanent critique might be staged as an encounter with this originary
state. To pursue a course of relentless Spinozism both logical and
physiological exhaustion to the point at which there is no further
possibility, is to assume a state that in the Spinozian model is Gods only.
This, in a sense, is what Beckett achieves in his work, a certain Godlike presence. According to Szafraniec, just as Spinozas God exhausts
himself to become everything he understands, the writer exhausts himself
in the process of writing, to be a flux, which combines with all other
fluxes (Szafraniec 2007: 120). Anthony Uhlmann argues something very
similar in his 1999 study, although in this case, God does not represent
Absolutely everything but negatively, Absolutely nothing (Uhlmann

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1999: 14). Taking into account the three levels of Spinozas ontology,
he suggests that Becketts exhaustion is the exhaustion of modes or
individuated things, both in the attribute of extension and the attribute
of thought. It is this exhaustion of modes that requires the merging with
the plane of immanence, the univocity of Being or Spinozas substance
or God.
However, it must also be said that to read The Exhausted in this
Spinozian fashion is to follow a strand in Deleuzian scholarship which
tends to neglects its more Kantian aspects. Here I would like to turn
to Audrey Wassers recent essay on The Exhausted, A Relentless
Spinozism: Deleuzes Encounter with Beckett (2012). Like Szafraniec,
Uhlmann and others, Wasser begins by pointing out the Spinozian
element of The Exhausted. However, unlike other commentators, she
emphasises the carnal or passional nature of Spinozas thought in the
ontology of sense rather than essence or substance.3 For Wasser, it
is not Spinozian God that is key to understanding Deleuzes essay, but
rather Spinozas definition of affect as indicating a bodily change of state.
Specifically, she is interested in how such a definition of affect impacts
our understanding of thought, as also capable of being affected.
In her interpretation of Deleuzian transcendental empiricism, thought
changes with every sensible encounter. She uses the term encounter
in a post-Kantian fashion, to describe thoughts confrontation with a
sensible limit, familiar from the discussion of the sublime, especially
of the generative role it plays in Deleuzes recasting of Kants
transcendental project. For Wasser, every time something is sensed,
thought is forced to think, precisely because it is confronted with
something exterior and independent of it. Such a midpoint of thought
is useful when considering the double concept of exhaustion, because the
point of exhaustion the point at which we no longer have any further
possibility at our disposal might also be construed as a confrontation
with a limit. More so, it is a confrontation with a limit that has a
bodily aspect. Just as in Difference and Repetition Deleuze might be
seen as holding the respective fatiguing of the faculties responsible
for the transmission of shock to the final faculty of thought, in The
Exhausted physiological exhaustion is very much part and parcel of
the exhaustive process.4 As Deleuze emphasises, it is only when we are
sufficiently disinterested to pursue our goals, aims and plans that we
can arrive at the point of exhaustion (Deleuze 1998: 154). Thus for
Wasser, Becketts is not so much a relentless but a relenting Spinozism,
which in orienting Spinoza towards the corporeal, serves to make this
most abstract of universes a little more concrete (Wasser 2012: 1289).

182 Magdalena Wisniowska

This allows us to make the tentative conclusion that the constitutive
principle invoked in The Exhausted might be construed as a kind of
productive confrontation with a limit, familiar from Kantian discussions
of the sublime but also clearly at work in the exhaustive process. In this
sense, we can understand his as an immanent critique in the Kantian
tradition as the critique of the values upon which critique is founded,
in that this confrontation with limit is central to thought. Beckett, by
engaging with the exhaustive process, presents such a principle directly.
Quad, which Wasser discusses in detail, would be one such instance of
an immanent critique. Quad illustrates the constructive function of the
exhaustive process, its players tiring at the four corners but exhausting
the space in the middle (Wasser 2012: 12930).
Yet in light of the recent research carried out by Smith, Hughes, Bryant
and others, Wassers interpretation is also incomplete. To further expand
on how this might be the case requires a far more detailed account of
the genetic line that begins with sensibility and the material impression,
and proceeds via the creation of faculties to thought, and ultimately
representation. To do so, I would like to turn to Joe Hughes, whose
work on this problem of genesis in a Kantian context is exemplary.
Both in Deleuze and the Genesis of Representation (2008) and
in his introduction to Difference and Repetition (2009), Joe Hughes
convincingly argues that the midpoint of Deleuzian epistemology lies
not with the violence of the sensible encounter but with the creation
of the virtual. This is not to say that he dismisses Wassers kind
of genetic account entirely. According to Hughes, in Difference and
Repetition Deleuze does trace the principles of thought back to the
initial violent meeting between the subject and the unrecognisable,
fragmented object. Hughes would also agree that this shock results in
the creation of thought appropriate to this wounding difference (and,
of course, the entire series of faculties, sensibility, imagination and
memory, each dealing with the violence in its own way). However, for
Hughes, it is important that the process Wasser describes culminates in
the establishment of a future and open state of determinability, more
familiar to readers of Difference and Repetition as the virtual realm of
multiplicity (Deleuze 2004b: 21479).
From Hughes we learn that Deleuzes epistemology is always the
story of two asymmetrical halves. In the first, we get to see how the
virtual is established and the idea progressively determined. According
to the terms of Difference and Repetition, this process involves larval
subjects, repetitions and passive synthesis, and Wassers account is useful
insofar as it shows how the force of the encounter both constitutes

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a series of passive selves or larval subjects and causes these genetic

elements of unconscious subjecthood to be exceeded (Wasser 2012:
1303). However, to complete this trajectory of thought, the idea
must be brought back from its futuristic virtual horizon and actualised
in the present. Otherwise, it is very clear how the violence of the
sensible encounter might be seen to be disruptive of thought indeed,
responsible for its mutation but not how this violence might allow for
determination. While this shift of midpoint might seem overly technical,
it bears on the problem of unconditioned principle, in that it is the virtual
and not the encounter, which ultimately determines our knowledge of
the object.
Furthermore, such a shift of midpoint also has an impact on the
ontological aspect of Deleuzes argument, especially as presented by
Kerslake. Kerslake shows that Deleuze builds his concept of imagination
on Spinozian ideas of God and his expression. Imagination in its
productive form takes over the role previously granted to Spinozas
concept of God, as the one self-grounding principle. If there is a
Spinozian aspect here, in Hughess argument, it can also be found in this
discussion of virtual midpoint. We can rewrite the path that begins with
the encounter and leads via the idea back to determination, as the story
of how Being is wrestled from unindividuated beings so that it may be
restored to them as individuated.5 It takes place within the Nietzschean
world of the will to power, in which the only difference is the difference
in intensity. In such an intensive world, the point of determination
occurs with the thought of the eternal return, this defined as the moment
of awareness equal to the bodily experience of the world of intensity
and violence.6 While Hughes draws comparisons with Spinozas idea of
substance as that which is in itself and conceived through itself (Hughes
2009: 64), we might see how the figure God also meets these criteria.
Does this, however, impact our understanding of The Exhausted?
Can we still see it as an immanent encounter, in the sense of Kantian
immanent critique? If so, is it a pre-critical, metaphysical encounter
with a Spinozian God? Or rather, do we come here face to face
with the violence of the sensible encounter between body and material
impression? And where, in these very different accounts, can we find a
place for the virtual?

IV. The Virtual Image

Before answering, I would like to move away from these ontological
interpretations to consider one aspect of The Exhausted that these tend

184 Magdalena Wisniowska

to overlook. Wasser but also Bryden and Szafraniec all seem to ignore
the fact that Deleuzes essay culminates with the theory of the image. As
we have already seen, in the second part of his essay Deleuze shows how
Beckett uses language to reach a state of exhaustion. Deleuze identifies
the construction of three different successive meta-languages: the first
consisting of the exhaustion of words, the second of voices, and the
third of the extra-linguistic elements of space and image. Suggestively
for our consideration of immanent critique, he describes the final state
of exhaustion as the point of Imagination Dead Imagine (Deleuze
1998: 158). When Beckett does manage to exhaust words so that it no
longer is a question of a combinatorial imagination imagining a whole
of a series, and when Beckett does manage to exhaust voices, so that the
imagination sullied by memory is no longer pierced with unbearable
memories, absurd stories or undesirable company, then he achieves
this most difficult of points (158). At this immanent limit of language
appears the visual or aural image (158). It would seem, then, if we wish
to learn more about Deleuzes concept of the transcendental imagination
and how it may be encountered, we must examine the nature of this
unsullied image more closely.
The problem, however, is that the nature of this visual or aural
image is poorly understood. Many of the Spinozian accounts I have
referred to tend to overlook the concept of the image in favour of
the other extra-linguistic element mentioned in The Exhausted and
found in Becketts work, namely, the concept of space. We have seen
how Wasser, for example, focuses her discussion on Quad, in which
Becketts exhaustion of space is most apparent (Wasser 2012: 12930).
Mary Bryden also ends both of her essays on The Exhausted with
a discussion of this work (Bryden 1996: 901; 2002: 8991). Other
commentators simply shift our attention to other texts. Szafraniec (2007)
draws on Deleuzes Cinema books while Uhlmann in his essay Image
and Intuition in Becketts Film (2004) prefers a more Bergsonian
approach. The situation is not helped by the fact that Deleuze himself
is very vague at this stage of the argument. Or rather, the image presents
itself as vague.
If we look briefly at Deleuzes treatment of the image in the
second part of The Exhausted, we can see why the image might be
accompanied by a sense of confusion. On the one hand, Deleuze presents
the image as something singular, nothing more than a woman, a hand,
a mouth, some eyes (Deleuze 1998: 158). As the image is considered to
be free of both words and voices, this kind of sense of singularity feels
appropriate. On the other hand, Deleuze also describes the image as a

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185

process, something very much emphasised by Mary Bryden (Bryden

2002: 86). These women, hands, mouths and eyes that appear after the
exhaustions of languages one and two are not objects (though they
might appear this way from the objects point of view) but a process
(Deleuze 1998: 159). However, Deleuze seems to be unclear as to what
kind of a process the image is. At first, he describes the image as a
ritornello, something that comes and goes, like the patch of sky in
First Love (159). Once again we can see how such a definition of the
image is appropriate to Becketts work, evoking, for instance, the way
in which the face of the woman appears and disappears in . . . but the
clouds . . . . But then Deleuze also argues that the nature of the image
is self-dissipating (160). Thus the image is also known for its shortlasting, explosive character. It does not return but ends, quite suddenly,
in an explosion that captures all the possible (161).
If we consider this vague concept of the image in relation to the virtual,
however, then many characteristics of the image become clear. Before
engaging in such a comparison, let us first return to Hughes and his
account of Deleuzes genetic alternative to Kantian epistemology. So far,
I have shown how the genesis of thought can be traced back to an initial
encounter between the body and material object. The shock of this initial
encounter is then transmitted through the various faculties in an attempt
at interpreting this violence, and here Wassers account (2012) is useful
to understand more of this process. However, despite acknowledging the
virtuals constitutive role in the determination of the object, I have not
yet described how this violence constitutes the virtual. In order to show
the relation between the two the image of The Exhausted and the
virtual of Difference and Repetition we need to establish what happens
after the moment at which all the attempts at interpreting the violence
leading up to this breaking point are cast aside, together with all the
passive selves and larval subjects.
In Difference and Repetition Deleuze describes this virtual platform
in the following way:
The system of the future by contrast must be called a divine game since there
is no pre-existing rule, since the game bears already upon its own rules and
since the child player can only win, all of chance being affirmed each time.
(Deleuze 2004b: 142)

From this we learn that the virtual has two main characteristics.
First of all, the system of the future has no pre-existing rule. A
Kantian enquiry into conditions that allow for the possibility of
experience will not discover in this Nietzschean world a priori forms

186 Magdalena Wisniowska

of intuition, categories of understanding or idea of reason. The genetic
set of principles what in Difference and Repetition, Deleuze terms
ideas must be constituted, each time anew.7 However, these are
nothing more than mere differentials, valueless in themselves and only
acquiring a value when they enter a reciprocal relation with one another
(Deleuze 2004b: 21619).
Second, this system of the future has no subject, or at least, not the
kind of subject familiar from Kantian philosophy. Instead, the subject
of the future is appropriate to a system without pre-existing rules, a
contingent or aleatory point to the ideas valueless differential (Deleuze
2004b: 24751). The point at which the child player affirms all of chance
and throws the pair of dice is the aleatory point at which differential
ideas are placed in a reciprocal relation with each other. While it
might seem that this point takes on the role of Kantian apperception
in that it lends thought the kind of unity comparable to the I think,
we must remember that there is no unified consciousness in Deleuzian
epistemology. Here within the system of a dissolved self, the I is
always fractured (10810).
Keeping these characteristics of the virtual in mind, let us return to
Deleuzes theory of the image. The first characteristic of the image is its
singularity. After the respective exhaustions of words and voices, Beckett
leaves us with no more than a woman, a hand, a mouth (Deleuze 1998:
158). These singularities might be understood as indefinite because
in becoming free of both voices and words, they retain nothing of
the personal of the imagination sullied by memory and nothing of
the rational of the combinatorial imagination sullied by reason (158).
Interestingly enough for our comparison with the virtual, while these
singularities can be described as indefinite (we do not know, for instance,
what woman, whose face, what mouth is being referred to here), Deleuze
also describes them as determinate (160).
The indefinite/determinate state of image also helps us understand
why Deleuze describes it as a process and not an object. It is important
to remember here that at stake in Deleuzes essay is an exhaustive
process taking place on two different levels. This process is not easy; it
is exhaustive; it is draining. As Deleuze writes, to reach this point of the
image is extremely difficult and very few painters, musicians, writers
have managed to achieve it (Deleuze 1998: 1589). Once it is achieved,
however, this state is almost impossible to maintain. The effort required
to keep the image free from all associations is simply too great. This is
why the image tends to appear and disappear and eventually, to explode
in an act of self-dissipation.

Deleuze and Beckett: An Immanent Encounter

187

Indeed, it is this images act of self-dissipation which binds the third

language of exhaustion most closely with the virtual sphere. As we
have already learnt, the process of exhaustion takes place on two
different levels. On the one hand, it consists of the logical exhaustiveness
and we can see how its affirmation of chance echoes the description
of the child player with its throw of dice found in Difference and
Repetition. On the other hand, the affirmation of chance in logical
exhaustiveness is dependent on the fatigue of the one who exhausts.
As Deleuze argues, only someone who is sufficiently disinterested can
exhaust possibility in this way (Deleuze 1998:154). Therefore, we can
see Becketts constructions of languages one, two and three as his
successive attempts at reaching that state of fatigue which would allow
for logical exhaustiveness. While in the language one of words we might
still encounter characters responsible for the construction of inclusive
disjunctions, the silencing of voices of language two has a direct impact
on subjectivity. Again, as we have already seen, the narrators voice is
one of the many voices necessarily included in the exhaustive process. In
the language three of image, however, Beckett dispenses with the kind
of agency associated with languages one and two. No one exhausts the
image; the image exhausts itself.

V. . . . but the clouds . . .

Without making any claims at this early stage, it is worth noting a couple
of points. The concept of the virtual and the concept of the image seem to
share some important characteristics. For one, both can be understood
as a principle (though the exact nature of this principle is yet unclear).
The state of exhaustion in which the image participates more than
that, achieves is described by Deleuze as originary, as the sum of all
possibility. Realisation of determinate goals is, in this case, only the
derivative (Deleuze 1998: 152). Likewise, the virtual is that which
ultimately allows for the determination of the object. Both the virtual
and the image are characterised as indeterminate, either as indefinite
or without pre-existing rule (Deleuze 1998: 158; 2004b: 142). Both
also achieve such an indeterminate state in a similar way, by dispensing
with a certain kind of established subjective agency. The virtual subject
is no more than an aleatory point the exhausted person, disinterested
(Deleuze 1998: 154). We can, however, learn more.
The best example of this relation between the image and the virtual
can be found in the third part of The Exhausted, in Deleuzes discussion
of . . . but the clouds . . . , a short television play, first screened by the

188 Magdalena Wisniowska

BBC in 1976 as part of a longer programme dedicated to the work of
Samuel Beckett. The play follows the central characters attempts at the
recollection of a womans face. We see how he shuffles across a centrally
lit stage, east to west and west to east, changes his clothes off-screen
and eventually ends up in the mental sanctum in the north, where the
image had previously been seen.8 There, head in hands, he recalls how
on other nights she had appeared to him, to stay briefly, to linger and
to mouth the words of The Tower by W. B. Yeats, but the clouds in
the sky (Beckett 1984: 261). As we hear the protagonists account, the
image of a womans face invades our screen (Deleuze 1998: 170).
As this kind of sentimental examination of lost love (Ackerley
and Gontarski 2004: 77), it is not immediately apparent how . . .
but the clouds . . . engages with the more theoretical questions of
the virtual. However, it is worth noting that Deleuze introduces the
play by suggesting that in this work, Beckett returns to the postCartesian theories found in his earlier novel, Murphy (Deleuze 1998:
169). Specifically, he refers to chapter 6 of the novel, in which Beckett
distinguishes between the various zones of Murphys mind. From the
riotous potpourri of many metaphysical systems that this chapter
evokes (Fletcher 1965: 54), we learn that within the hollow sphere
of Murphys mind the universe assumes three distinct forms. Beckett
identifies the first form as the actual, the second as virtual and the third
as virtual rising to actual or actual falling to virtual (Beckett 2011:
107). Already here we gain an initial insight. There is a virtual at work
in . . . but the clouds . . . , and this virtual belongs to its protagonists
earlier counterpart, Murphy. There is also a second point to be gained.
Whereas Murphy has both mental and physical experience of the actual,
the virtual is mental only. Though Murphy enjoys all three forms of
his universe, if he wants to move from one zone to another indeed,
if he wishes to invoke the virtual state he can only do so according
to the law of inversion (Deleuze 1998: 169), by keeping his body at
rest.
Indeed, I would like to argue that Deleuze uses this reference
to Murphy to map the virtual/actual distinction onto the logical/
physiological distinction of exhaustion he has developed so far. For
Deleuze, the image is virtual in that, like Murphys virtual universal,
it is mental in nature. This is the one aspect of the image that Deleuze
emphasises in a particular section of the essay that has no equivalent
elsewhere. The sanctum in which the protagonist sits when invoking the
image has only a mental existence; it is a mental chamber (Deleuze
1998: 169). Similarly, what matters here is no longer the exhaustion of

Deleuze and Beckett: An Immanent Encounter

189

space, but the mental image to which it leads (169). We can therefore
conclude that the process of exhaustion is also such a mental activity.
At the very least, both the logic of exhaustion and Murphys mental
acrobatics conform to the same law of inversion. Both require a physical
or physiological exhaustion on the protagonists part.
Such a mapping of one distinction onto the other becomes even more
obvious in the following section, where Deleuze repeats many of his
former claims about the image, but this time keeping to his newly
established mental framework. He still insists that the image of . . . but
the clouds . . . raises the thing or the person to the state of an indefinite
(Deleuze 1998: 170). He also argues that the image cannot be separated
from the process of its own disappearance because the energy that the
image carries results in its self-dissipation (170). However, in this case
he presents the characteristics of the image as part of a mental activity.
When we first see the protagonist sitting at his desk, he states, When I
thought of her, it was always night. I came in (Beckett 1984: 259). But
then immediately, he corrects himself, No that is not right. When she
appeared it was always night. I came in (259). To raise something or
someone to the state of the indefinite is to call to the eye of the mind
(Deleuze 1998: 170).
The exhaustion of the image then, insofar as the image achieves a
state that is both indefinite and self-dissipative (Deleuze 1998: 170),
constitutes a mental process, which can be understood in virtual terms.
When the protagonist stops thinking and begins to call to the eye of
the mind, he begins to engage with this kind of virtual mental process
(170). However, we must also note that Deleuze evokes the virtual
indirectly, through a reference to Becketts earlier novel, Murphy. It is
still unclear how Murphys virtual relates to the virtual of Difference and
Repetition. This relation between the two different forms of virtuality
Deleuze only establishes later, in the final stage of his analysis, where
he explains, first, more about the kind of mental activity that Murphy
engages in when he puts the law of inversion into action; and second,
the consequences for the protagonist, whose call to the eye of the
mind is rewarded by the appearance and subsequent disappearance of
a womans face.
Regarding the state of exhaustion required of dissipating image,
Deleuze writes:
[The image] announces that the end of the possible is at hand for the
protagonist of . . . but the clouds . . . [. . . ]. There is no longer an image,
anymore than there is a space: beyond the possible there is only darkness,

190 Magdalena Wisniowska

as in Murphys third and final state, where the protagonist no longer moves
in spirit, but has become an indiscernible atom, abulic, in the dark . . . of . . .
absolute freedom. (Deleuze 1998: 170)

Once again Deleuze refers to the hollow sphere of Murphys mind to

make his point, but this time, to the experience Murphy has of its actual,
virtual and in-between forms. When Murphy first lies to rest, in order
to travel through the different zones of his mind, he initially encounters
a world that is very similar to our own, for which it acts as a kind of
parallel. In this zone of light Murphy can, for instance, enjoy mentally
reciprocating a kick that he had received physically, when in the physical
world. Providing he rests further, Murphy can then enter the second
zone of half-light, comprising forms without parallel (Beckett 2011:
110). This second, more unfamiliar world he can only enjoy through
contemplation, in the manner of Dantes Belaqua.9 But Murphys third
and final state belongs to the third zone of darkness in which there
are no forms, whether parallel or otherwise. Beckett describes it as a
flux of forms, a perpetual coming together and falling asunder of forms
(112). There are no elements or states, nothing but forms becoming and
crumbling into fragments of a new becoming (112). To engage in the
mental activity productive of the image to call something to the eye of
the mind is to therefore participate in this kind of state of flux.
If we now compare the two different forms of virtuality that
belonging to Murphy and that of Difference and Repetition their
mutual resemblance becomes clear. When Beckett describes the third
zone of darkness as a world without element or states, he also explains
that these forms become and crumble into fragments of a new becoming
without love or hate or any intelligible principle of change (Beckett
2011: 112). While a Spinozian aspect cannot be entirely dismissed, it is
difficult not to see this world as resembling the Deleuzian virtual realm of
multiplicity.10 Like the open system of the future, it has no pre-existing
rule. And furthermore, like this system, it has a mathematical equivalent.
Deleuze likens the idea to the reciprocally determined differential;
Beckett, the flux of forms, to a matrix of surds (113).
Similarly, Becketts description of Murphy evokes the kind of
subjecthood Deleuze associates with the open system of the future
and the progressive determination of the Idea. We have seen how the
child player, free of any prior associations, rules the open system of
the future. We have also seen how Ideas are progressively determined
at a contingent or aleatory point. In Nietzschean terms, the thought
of the eternal return is the moment of awareness equal to the bodily

Deleuze and Beckett: An Immanent Encounter

191

experience of the world of intensities. It is the blind, acephalic

(headless) and aphasic (speechless) point, at which powerlessness
is turned into power (Deleuze 2004b: 24950). Consider then the
following description of Murphy at this point: Here he was not free,
but a mote in the dark of absolute freedom. He did not move but was
a point in the ceaseless unconditioned generation and passing away of
line (Beckett 2011: 112). In the third zone of darkness, Murphy loses
the degree of sovereignty and freedom he found in zones one and two.
He can no longer reciprocate kicks or contemplate beatitudes. This last
zone is also not a zone through which Murphy can mentally traverse.
Whatever its treasures, they are not the kind among which he can move.
Rather, he becomes a point within the overall movement, reduced to a
mote within the general freedom.

VI. Birthplace
From our comparison it would seem that the relation between the two
concepts, the image of the third language of exhaustion and the virtual of
Difference and Repetition, is quite strong. Both involve the construction
of a mobile and fluctuating mental state in which the individual or the
subject responsible loses a sense of agency. So much we learn from
Deleuzes reference to Murphy and his third and dark state, described by
Beckett in terms of the virtual. Nevertheless, this still leaves one question
unanswered, the question with which I began this exploration of The
Exhausted. Does it follow that Deleuzes is an immanent critique in the
post-Kantian sense? Can we find in The Exhausted an encounter with
what Kerslake describes as the unconditioned self-grounding principle
that lies at the basis of knowledge? Is this what Beckett manages to
achieve with the making of the elusive image, the learning of Kants
transcendental imagination, understood by Deleuze as a constitutive,
genetic ground?
In Kerslakes Kantian terms, immanent critique would necessarily
encounter self-grounding principle in the guise of Kants transcendental
imagination, the hidden power, which in Deleuzes rewriting of Kants
transcendental project assumes a major constitutive role. In The
Exhausted we encounter such real conditions in the concept of the
self-dissipating image. For what else is the virtual with which Deleuze
introduces . . . but the clouds . . . ? This is Murphys virtual as presented
in Becketts early novel, the third form assumed by the hollow sphere of
Murphys mind, experienced as a mobile and dark world of continuous
becomings. We can conceive this virtual as a Spinozian world, the flux,

192 Magdalena Wisniowska

which combines all other fluxes, as described by Szafraniec (Szafraniec
2007: 120). We can also, by following Hughess interpretation, present
it as the midpoint of a trajectory that begins with the violence of the
sensible encounter and ends with the determination of the object. As
such, the virtual is constitutive of the actual world, an actual world that
the Kantian would recognise as his or her own, the world of distinct
objects, experienced by the individual subject.
We can see how the virtual of the self-dissipating image might be
construed as such a constitutive ground if we once more consider
Deleuzes remarks on God and origin. As we already know, Deleuze
introduces the distinction between exhaustion and realisation by writing:
God is the originary, the sum total of possibility. The possible is
realised only in the derivative, in tiredness, whereas one is exhausted
before birth, before realising oneself, or realising anything whatsoever
(I gave up before birth) (Deleuze 1998: 152). According to Spinozian
interpretations of The Exhausted, this one original God, the sum of
all possibility, is a Spinozian God, the one substance from which all
emerges. Equally, however, we can construe this originary God-like state
as the virtual realm of Difference and Repetition. The virtual too is
there before birth, in that it is before the determination of the world
of distinct objects and individual subjects.
Indeed, Hughess account shows how this world of extension and
quality must presuppose an altogether different world of intensities,
without such extensions and qualities. However, it needs to be noted that
this priority of the God-like state of the virtual the exhaustion before
birth is constitutive, in that it lies at the origin of such an objective
world. While ultimately all representation can be traced backed to the
initial material encounter in sensibility, Hughess account has shown
how this of itself is not sufficient for determination. Determination only
occurs in that moment when violence erupts to establish the Nietzschean
system of the future and with it, those ideas which give rise to the
principles of actualisation.
We can also see how Deleuzes discussion of the self-dissipating image
might answer the post-Kantian demand for a self-grounding principle
of subjectivity. When making the distinction between exhaustion and
realisation, Deleuze defines the time and place prior to birth as both
before realising anything whatsoever and before realising oneself
(Deleuze 1998: 152). In Kantian terms, the one who actively realises
different goals, aims and plans is nothing other than the individual
subject, negotiating the world of distinct objects; whereas the one who
is exhausted exists prior to the realisation and thereby prior to such

Deleuze and Beckett: An Immanent Encounter

193

subjectivity. In section II of this essay, I have mentioned two instances

in which Deleuze refers to birth. In the first instance Deleuze makes his
reference to the Spinozian God; in the second he writes:
Tiredness affects action in all its states, whereas exhaustion only concerns an
amnesiac witness. The seated person is the witness around which the other
revolves while developing all degrees of tiredness. He is there before birth
and before the other begins. (Deleuze 1998: 1556)

Prior to such subjectivity is the amnesiac, who is witness to the

other and this others endlessly tiring activity. A very specific kind of
subjecthood is at stake.
It is this very specific subjecthood of the seated person that
embodies self-grounding principle. If we return to our discussion of
the Deleuzian epistemology, this has shown that, just as the world of
objects presupposes the world of intensities, the world of a unified,
conscious subject presupposes passive and unconscious subjecthood.
I have referred to Wassers essay as a particularly good account of
the series of larval subjects and passive selves that form the first
half of Deleuzes epistemological trajectory. Yet I have also argued
that the type of figures dominating Becketts late work, notably the
seated protagonists of . . . but the clouds . . . or Nacht und Trume,
resemble the fractured subjects and passive selves of Wassers account
no more than they resemble the single unified consciousness of the
Kantian subject. Instead, Becketts figures are appropriate to the mobile,
fluctuating world to which they belong. Before birth and before the
other begins is the child player who throws the pair of dice, the
aleatory point at which differentials enter a reciprocal relation with
each other. Like Murphy in his third and final state, these subjectivities
embody a Nietzschean kind of intense self-awareness, their power of
determination arising from their seeming powerless. This is how we
ought to understand the seated protagonists of . . . but the clouds . . .
or Nacht und Trume: as those subjectivities sitting at the origin of
determination, presiding over the virtual platform.
Finally, we are in a position to discuss how The Exhausted might
stage its specific kind of immanent critique. Providing that we accept the
virtual of The Exhausted as the kind of self-grounding principle found
in Kantian readings of Difference and Repetition, we can reconstruct
Deleuzes essay as an encounter with such a principle. Going through
Deleuzes argument systematically and beginning with the between
exhaustion and realisation, we know that the possible is either something
we realise by setting goals, aims and plans, or it is something we exhaust,

194 Magdalena Wisniowska

precisely by renouncing these kinds of aims. Exhaustion incorporates
the sum total of possibility, whereas realisation is only derivative
(Deleuze 1998: 152). Mapping then the one distinction onto the other,
the possible corresponds to principle or condition, and the real to that
which is conditioned by this principle. In our terms, as derived from
Hughess reading of Difference and Repetition, the affirmation of the
possible as a whole corresponds to establishment of the virtual and,
in the same way, the process of realisation to the actualisation of the
virtual in the world of objects and subjects. Beckett, by renouncing the
aims associated with realisation, in fact renounces the conditioned.
The double exhaustion of logic and fatigue allows him to uncover what
in normal circumstances is obscured: the principle of the conditioned.
For Kerslake, this was the hidden power of Kants transcendental
imagination; in our case, this is the virtual realm of multiplicity. Through
this exhaustive process, Beckett uncovers that generative mixture of
openness and flux, hidden by the qualities and extension of the object
it actualises.
Continuing our systematic analysis, we can see the construction of the
three languages of exhaustion as Becketts way of staging his immanent
critique. The distinction with which Deleuze began his essay once again
applies. Just as Deleuze opposes the process of realisation to the process
of exhaustion, he opposes the language associated with realisation
with the type of language characteristic of Becketts late work. Under
normal circumstances we use language to help establish the aims of
realisation, to name these aims and to voice them. In other words, we
use language to construct our actual world. Beckett on the other hand,
first by exhausting words, then voices, and then finally those extralinguistic elements which appear in the absence of both word and voice,
disrupts the realising function of language to manifest the virtual. The
protagonist of . . . but the clouds . . . and the female face, the series of
television plays which includes . . . but the clouds . . . but also Quad,
Ghost Trio and Nacht und Trume, the third language of images and
spaces: all can be seen as Becketts way of recreating the conditions of the
virtual plane, without the actual that is conditioned by it. The following
remark only seems to confirm such an interpretation:

But the image is more profound because it frees itself from its object in order
to become a process itself, that is, an event as a possible that no longer needs
to be realised in a body or object, somewhat like a smile without the cat in
Lewis Carroll. (Deleuze 1998: 168)

Deleuze and Beckett: An Immanent Encounter

195

We can therefore conclude that to encounter self-grounding principle is

to encounter such a smile without the cat. Or rather, The Exhausted
places a demand on us: not to realise; not to name and voice; not even
to think (as the protagonist of . . . but the clouds . . . makes clear, the
woman appears not because she is thought, but only when invoked).
We must renounce all that has to do with the realisation of possibility,
and with this, a little of ourselves. If we loosen the grip of subjectivity
sufficiently to achieve that impossible tension of the image, an image no
longer bound by reason or memory, then we are free, like Murphy, to
move among our minds treasures.

VII. Conclusion
In the Critique of Judgment, Kant brings to the concept of transcendental
imagination a new aspect. Whereas the first critique presents imagination
as nothing more than a hidden power, a spontaneous synthetic capacity
thought necessary for cognition but ultimately unknowable, in the
third critique imagination assumes a more active role. In its free play
with the faculty of understanding, it quickens this power, and their
mutual arousal is something that can be felt. In The Exhausted
Deleuze shows how Beckett, in the exhaustion of the image, reaches
a state comparable to that of Kantian imagination (imagination here
reassuming its productive arousing role) in that Deleuze associates the
exhaustion of the image with a certain kind of freedom. Just as there is
freedom when imagination is no longer restricted by the determination
in concept, there is freedom to be found in the virtual state, in the
darkness of Murphys mind. Insofar as Becketts late television plays
achieve the remaking of this virtual state, the productive imagination
becomes something learnt.
Thus we can conclude that The Exhausted stages an immanent
critique, in that we uncover something of a hidden constitutive power
and we learn more about the nature of self-grounding principle;
however, we need to account for our own reversal of terms. That
Difference and Repetition is a rewriting of the first critique from the
point of view of the third is by now a well-rehearsed argument. In
contrast, I have read the The Exhausted in light of Difference and
Repetition Deleuzes third critique from the point of view of the
first to show how it adds to our understanding of the virtual in the
genesis of knowledge. In this sense, The Exhausted performs its own
kind of immanent criticism.

196 Magdalena Wisniowska

Notes
1. See especially the first chapter of Meillassouxs After Finitude (2008: 127),
where the critique of Kant is first laid out and is at its most explicit.
2. We can also include Bryant in this list, who refers to Deleuzes Nietzsche and
Philosophy (1992b) to argue Kants critique is incomplete. Despite denouncing
the transcendent, Kant does not show how the categories are a result of a
genesis (Bryant 2009: 323). What we require is a genesis of reason itself as
well as a genesis of the understanding and its categories (Deleuze 1992b: 85).
3. That Deleuzes is a philosophy of sense rather than essence or substance
is a central claim of his Kantian interpreters. See, for instance, how Hughes
introduces his phenomenological argument in Deleuze and the Genesis of
Representation (Hughes 2008: 1617).
4. Wasser draws on the account given in Difference and Repetition pp. 98100.
This is particularly appropriate, as Deleuze happens to refer to Beckett directly
when defining fatigues role in passive synthesis and the constitution of time as
a living present.
5. The epistemological slant of my essay prevents me from a more in-depth
discussion of ontological difference. For further reading of the ontological
argument in Difference and Repetition and the Deleuzian drawn trajectory of
Duns Scotus, Spinoza and Nietzsche see Hughes 2009: 53, 624. Badiou 1999
is another key interpreter.
6. Deleuze refers to the concept of the eternal return at various points in
Difference and Repetition. See especially pp. 3045 for the distinction he draws
between the thought of the eternal return and the feeling of the will to
power.
7. Deleuze shows how the idea is constituted in chapter IV of Difference and
Repetition (Deleuze 2004b: 21479). He introduces the idea as a Kantian
problem, proceeds through a discussion of modern calculus and develops the
concept by referring to other mathematical, biological, Marxist examples. In this
rather complex way, Deleuze aims to explain the precise nature of the new ideal
synthesis of difference.
8. Deleuze uses the term mental chamber to describe the dark space in which
the protagonist sits and evokes the image (Deleuze 1998: 169). In the play, the
protagonist simply states vanished in my little sanctum and crouched, where
none could see me, in the dark (Beckett 1984: 259).
9. Belaqua of Dantes Divine Comedy acts as a prototype, not only for Beckett
in his characterisation of Murphy, but also for Deleuze. Szafraniec notes the
similarities between the exhausted person and his predecessor Murphy, who
both, like Dantes Belaqua, do nothing that can be discerned (Szafraniec 2007:
122).
10. See P. J. Murphys essay for an explicitly Spinozian interpretation (Murphy
1994: 2257).

References
Ackerley, C. J. and S. E. Gontarski (2004) The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett,
New York: Grove Press.
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