The Aesthetics of Movement Variations on Gilles Deleuze and Merce Cunningham

270 Pages·2005·1.03 MB·English

The Aesthetics of Movement
Variations on Gilles Deleuze and Merce Cunningham

Camilla Damkjær
Doctoral dissertation 2005
In “co-tutelle” with l’Université Paris VIII
Department of Musicology and Performance Studies
University of Stockholm
S-106 91 Stockholm
Sweden

Abstract

This thesis is an interdisciplinary study of the aesthetics of movement in Gilles Deleuze’s
writings and in Merce Cunningham’s choreographies. But it is also a study of the movement
that arises when the two meet in a series of variations, where also their respective working
partners Félix Guattari and John Cage enter. It is a textual happening where the random
juxtaposition between seemingly unrelated areas, philosophy and dance, gives rise to arbitrary
connections.
It is a textual machine, composed of seven parts. First, the methodological architecture of
the juxtaposition is introduced and it is shown how this relates to the materials (the
philosophy of Deleuze and the aesthetics of Cunningham), the relation between the materials,
and the respective contexts of the materials. The presence of movement in Deleuze’s thinking
is then presented and the figure of immobile movement is defined. This figure is a leitmotif of
the analyses. It is argued that this figure of immobile movement is not only a stylistic element
but has implications on a philosophical level, implications that materialise in Deleuze’s texts.
Then follow four parts that build a heterogeneous whole. The analysis of movement is
continued through four juxtapositions of particular texts and particular choreographies.
Through these juxtapositions, different aspects of movement appear and are discussed: the
relation between movement and sensation, movement in interaction with other arts, movement
as a means of taking the body to its limit, movement as transformation. Through these
analyses, the aesthetics of Cunningham is put into new contexts. The analyses also put into
relief Deleuze’s use of figures of movement, and these suddenly acquire another kind of
importance. In the seventh and concluding part, all this is brought into play.

Key words: interdisciplinary studies, Gilles Deleuze, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Félix
Guattari, Francis Bacon, dance, philosophy, movement, choreography, the body,
heterogeneity, juxtaposition, representation, happening, chance.

© 2005: Camilla Damkjær
ISBN 91 86434 27 6
THEATRON-serien
Stiftelsen för utgivning av teatervetenskapliga studier
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Table of contents:

Opening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Introduction: Methods and materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Chapter 1: Movements and images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Chapter 2: L’Athlétisme of the material – Logique de la sensation and Torse . . . 77

Chapter 3: Moving to le rythme, from chaos to consistance
– “1837 – De la ritournelle” and Variations V . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

Chapter 4: How to construct a body in movement
– Untitled Solo, Suite by Chance and le corps sans organes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160

Chapter 5: Movements and transformations of desire
– le devenir and Beach Birds for Camera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206

Conclusion: The jeu of chance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250

List of abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
Résumé en français . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265

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Opening

This is an interdisciplinary study of the aesthetics of movement in Gilles Deleuze’s
writings and in Merce Cunningham’s choreographies. But it is also a study of the movement
that arises when the two are confronted in a series of variations. A series of variations that are
also inhabited by many more: most prominently by their respective working partners Félix
Guattari and John Cage. But on our way we will also meet seemingly peripheral characters
that suddenly play a part in the series.
It is a series of variations, but it is also a textual happening, where the random
juxtaposition between seemingly unrelated characters and areas, Deleuze and Cunningham,
philosophy and dance, gives rise to arbitrary meetings and connections. It is a textual
experiment where the juxtaposition becomes a machine that produces its own connections and
forces your sensation, imagination and thought in sometimes unforeseen directions. It is a
study of that which cannot be compared, that which can only be confronted in a meeting,
where the similarities and differences, the concordances and discordances, become happy
instances of chance.
The programme of the experimentation that I will put into action consists of seven parts.
Each is individual and yet relates to the whole. Between them non-linear lines are traced. Let
us play.
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Introduction
Methods and materials

“C’est peut-être que nous sommes en train de vivre d’une nouvelle manière les
rapports théorie-pratique.” (ID, 288)

In these variations methods and materials are intrinsically related and intertwined. The
method mimes the materials, learns from the way the materials relate to each other, and
indirectly takes into account the context that surrounds the materials. These three aspects
coexist and coincide. The smallest circuit sends us to the largest, which sends us back again. It
is a methodological ritournelle.

Questions and answers
Deleuze (following Bergson) insists that the question of right or wrong does not concern
the rightness of the answer, but whether the question is rightly or wrongly asked from the
beginning. It is through asking the right questions, and not confusing things that should not be
confused, that we get the right answers. The liberty of thought depends on the liberty to
formulate your own questions (B, DR).
But the material, too, asks questions. For instance, it can ask us questions indirectly
through making certain kinds of answers impossible. This is the case in the work of Merce
Cunningham. By deliberately making answers that rely on narration and psychology
impossible, he asks us, among other things, what signfication and interpretation is. By
blocking our usual answers, he forces us to ask our questions differently, and thereby to
reflect upon the possible methods we can use to approach his work.
My temporary answer to the above question is a methodological choice that does not lead
me away from Cunningham, searching for an explanation outside his work. It leads me into
the core of his work (or at least one aspect of it) through a mimétique relation to some of his
principles, namely, the principle of juxtaposing seemingly unrelated elements, such as dance
and music, deliberately keeping them separate, and letting them create their own connections
which do not refer to a master plot that defines the meaning. This choice, however, is not only
an answer to a question Cunningham’s work asks me, but also a series of questions raised by
my combination of materials. For how is it possible to deal simultaneously with something as
different and heterogeneous as the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and the choreographies of
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Merce Cunningham? Actually, this is probably the most important question that my materials
have asked me, as it concerns the very nature of the combination I am working with.

Methodological mimétisme – a textual happening machine
We have in the humanities become accustomed to all kinds of interdisciplinary
combinations of theory and aesthetic or social materials. But we are sometimes in danger of
being blinded by this familiarity. We risk forgetting the very nature of the combinations and
wiping out the differences between the materials. There is a risk that we take our method for
granted and forget to explain what we are actually doing. I would like to insist on the
differences between my materials, and reflect upon what this means for the possible ways in
which they can be combined. And as a matter of fact, the materials themselves contain
important reflections on this matter.
The work of Gilles Deleuze has already been frequently used in diverse interdisciplinary
studies. His work invites it (especially his collaborations with Félix Guattari) as it is already
in itself characterised by an interdisciplinarity that is hard to repeat and worthy of admiration.
The work of Deleuze is increasingly included in the canon of contemporary theory.
But I would like to insist on the fact that the work of Deleuze is not a “theory”, but a
philosophy in its own right, and I would like to consider it and treat it as such. This might
sound paradoxical as I am myself working on Deleuze in an interdisciplinary context.
However, my objection is not against an interdisciplinary approach to Deleuze – on the
contrary – but it has to do with the way I consider my materials to be related to each other.
His philosophy has to be considered as a work, an œuvre to be analysed in itself, and since it
is so intrinsically related to his writing it should not be extracted from it. His philosophy is an
object of analysis, not a theory to be applied. That is one reason why I have decided to work
through concrete analyses of particular texts and not with an overall comprehension of his
philosophy. The other reason is that I find that this is also the method that does most justice to
the work of Merce Cunningham.
Whenever we are writing about dance, the practice of dancing is already in a tricky
situation. As dance is a non-verbal phenomenon, it is hard to let it speak for itself. The work
of Merce Cunningham is extremely complicated, advanced and obviously the object of
serious reflection, and in order to do it justice, I believe we have to consider it in its own right
– not only as something to be explained by theory. Choreography is a way of thinking, not
least in the case of Cunningham, though it is more than hard to verbalise its philosophy.
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There are thus two basic principles behind my choice of method: the insistence on the
difference between my two materials, dance and philosophy, and an insistence on the equality
of the two parts of my materials (Gilles Deleuze and Merce Cunningham). This is my attempt
to answer the question of how we can treat such heterogeneous materials simultaneously
without neglecting the difference between them.
At this point a method that is structurally mimetic in relation to my materials enters into
the picture. For it is an inherent part of Cunningham and Cage’s aesthetics to reflect upon the
relation between heterogeneous materials, and the possible ways of putting them together in a
way that does most justice to all of them. Their answer is radical: one should not in any way
try to coordinate the two, but keep them separate, thus giving each the liberty of developing
freely. It is this kind of simultaneous coexistence that I hope for in creating a juxtapositon
between dance and philosophy. Methodologically I try to mime the material in my work in a
way that answers some of the questions the material poses.
This strategy, however, is not only structurally mimetic in relation to Cage and
Cunningham’s aesthetics but also in relation to Deleuze’s and Deleuze and Guattari’s
philosophy. On an over-all level it is a way of taking seriously, or perhaps taking literally, one
of the central aspects of Deleuze’s philosophy, namely that being expresses itself equally in
all attributes or in all things. Being, in this case, would thus express itself equally in
philosophy and dance, and the one should not be put in a hierarchical relation to the other. It
is a very hard principle to enact in practice, but it is a very important thing to keep in mind
methodologically.
Equally, the idea of juxtaposed analyses does not only owe something to Cage and
Cunningham. It is a textual happening that brings together heterogeneous materials to let them
arbitrarily create their own connections. But it is also, following Deleuze and Guattari, a
textual machine, in the sense of the word machine that they delevolop in L’Anti-Œdipe, which
through its functioning creates connections between various elements, body parts and organs,
to create an ever changing body of materials connecting. It works paradoxically, creating
connections and trying to undo them again once they have become too natural, too much
taken for granted. These are two models of the text as an aesthetic laboratory that I am using,
two models or methods that the materials themselves offer. It is a textual movement machine.
Miming, however, is not imitating. Working on Gilles Deleuze, we already have an
outstanding example of the difference between miming and imitating. Deleuze and Guattari,
in the chapter of Mille plateaux on le devenir, produce a model of transformation that is a
critique of mimesis, imitation, and representation. Nevertheless, one of the methods that
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characterise Deleuze’s work almost throughout his career, is his subtle way of miming his
materials. Miming in the manner almost of a ventriloquist, making his materials speak,
making for instance Henri Bergson, Baruch de Spinoza, Friedrich Nietzsche and others speak,
in a way that makes it hard to distinguish Bergson/Spinoza/Nietzsche from Deleuze and
Deleuze from Bergson/Spinoza/Nietzsche in the particular texts. But this ventriloquism has
nothing to do with imitation or even reproduction. Deleuze makes them speak with his own
voice, his own choice of perspectives, his own arguments. He does not deform the material,
but he forms his own material by making the material speak in his own way. This happens
both on the level of the content in his way of explaining the arguments, but also stylistically
through a very subtle kind of style indirect libre. He becomes one with the material and yet
transforms himself and the material into something else. He himself describes it as “arriver
dans le dos d’un auteur, et lui faire un enfant, qui serait le sien et qui serait pourtant
monstrueux” (PP, 15).
I am not trying to imitate this kind of ventriloquism, but I find the distinction useful to
explain that miming is not imitating, that using the methods of the material is not uncritical,
but a paradoxically critical gesture that allows me to reflect on what I do with the materials
and how the materials themselves propose methods of reflection. The way I practice
mimétisme1 is very different from that which Deleuze practices. Even if Deleuze almost
always stays very close to the texts he is working on, he is truly a ventriloquist in the sense
that it becomes almost impossible to tell that he is speaking for someone else. There is a zone
d’indiscernabilité between the two. Deleuze structures the argument his own way, often more
clearly than the original text, but he does not have that many references or quotations, and it is
only when reading the text he is working on, that we become aware how close he stays to it.
Here, however, I propose to stay close to the texts through analysing them explicitly, basing
my analysis on short extracts and quotations, analysing as much as possible the workings of
the text.

Distance through close reading
This kind of methodological mimétisme is an attempt to obtain distance through close
reading. Staying close to the material in the very structure of my work allows me to reflect
upon my own way of thinking. Through staying close, I gain distance.

1 Mimétisme is a way of proceeding by imitation, illustrated for instance by the zoological meaning of the word
designating species that imitate another species for example by taking on its colours in order to protect itself. Not
to be confused with Mimesis, representation or expression. Mimétisme is miming not representing.
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Deleuze is no easy philosopher to work with. Not only because his thinking and writings
are difficult, but also because they are overwhelming and almost seductive (though not
manipulative). Once you have become fascinated by his philosophy and the complexity of it,
it is very hard to let go. The risk of becoming Deleuzian is never far away. Furthermore, it is a
very particular philosophy. Though it is intrinsically intermingled with his interpretation of
other philosophers, it is something completely its own. This is even more the case when it is
considered within the context of his style and his vocabulary. It cannot be extracted from his
writing, and if it is, it is in danger of becoming a vocabulary that has lost its foothold and an
embellishment that has lost its meaning. When using only the vocabulary and the concepts,
the risk of becoming Deleuzian without actually gaining something through the complexity of
his thinking, is imminent.
Instead of staying as far as possible from Deleuze in order to keep the critical distance, I
believe it is necessary (or at least the most productive way for me) to stay close to the texts. In
order to keep the critical distance and not become too Deleuzian, I believe it is necessary to
undertake close readings of the texts and analyse how the philosophy creates itself in the
texts. By analysing the texts closely I would like to approach Deleuze’s philosophy in its
particularity, thus gaining distance to his philosophy as something “general” that can be
applied regardless of its context. By analysing closely how Deleuze’s philosophy is something
that is particular to him and his writings, I want to insert a device that keeps me at a critical
distance.
This strategy also springs from the conviction that his philosophy is incorporated in the
texts. At a first glance, the most striking thing about Deleuze’s and Deleuze and Guattari’s
style is that it is full of neologisms or rather new concepts. But their philosophy is more
incorporated in the text than that. It is inherent in the struggle of the text, the struggle of the
text to make sense or to not make sense, the struggle of thought to become incorporated in
writing. Therefore it can only be studied through a veritable struggle with the text. It is when
struggling with the text that we slowly begin to comprehend the philosophy. It is when
struggling with the material – whether it be the texts or the choreographies for that matter –
that we are forced to think. It is therefore deliberate if my analyses, hopefully, bear witness to
this struggle – even when the struggle is unresolved and the text stays obscure to the reader.
In my experience, sometimes it is even harder to understand the text once it has become too
clear. Furthermore, some of the aspects that I am interested in analysing are figures where
such struggles of the text become evident.
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But Deleuze’s thinking is not only incorporated in his texts; it is deeply tied up with the
French in which it is written. One has only to read a translation to realise that it does not have
the same effect on the reader. Even if the translation is correct, it does not leave the same
impression. Perhaps this is especially true of such writing as Deleuze’s, where nothing is
insignificant, neither stylistics, etymology, levels, nor connotations. Even when the
corresponding word in English is the same, it does not necessarily have the same history and
connotations. Therefore I will keep the quotations and the central concepts of Deleuze in
French. Hopefully, this combination of French and English is a compromise that is suitable. It
includes the geographical and cultural difference that the materials present us with: the
English of Cunningham and the French of Deleuze.

Movement analysis
The strategy of close reading not only owes something to Deleuze, but also owes
something to Cunningham and to dance. What I propose to analyse in parts of Deleuze’s
work, is his aesthetics of movement. It is through juxtaposing analyses of the aesthetics of
movement of Deleuze (and Guattari) and the movement aesthetics of Cunningham (and Cage)
in their respective materials that I hope to construct a text that produces connections between
the two. Movement is the line of thought that I am trying to follow throughout the
juxtaposition.
In order to analyse the aesthetics of movement of Deleuze, it is not enough to analyse what
he explicitly says about movement. Deleuze’s thinking does contain ideas about movement
that are explicitly explained. This is especially the case in his work on Bergson in the film
books. These ideas might amount to a philosophy of movement but cannot be said to be stated
as such. But it is also a philosophy in movement. Not only, as we might metaphorically say,
because it is always on the move, always changing subjects and forms. But also, more
concretely, because his writings contain many figures and procedures of movement. These are
not explained in the texts, but in my opinion they are of great interest. They are figures of
thinking where thought is struggling with itself. Sometimes they are even obscure points in
the text, containing something that is unrevealed. In order to try to analyse and to understand
these figures and procedures of movement, a movement analysis of the text is necessary.
And this is another attempt to put the analysis of Cunningham and of Deleuze on the same
level. Not only do I try to consider both the philosophical and the choreographic material as
ways of thinking, I also try to consider both materials as ways of moving, and I propose to do
a movement analysis of both.
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