Transcript
You have selected a format as an ABC primer, you have indicated to me some themes, and in this, I do not know exactly what the questions will be, so that I have only been able to think a bit beforehand about the themes For me, answering a question without having thought about it a bit is something inconceivable. What saves me in this is the particular condition: should any of this be at all useful, all of it will be used only after my death. So, you understand, I feel myself being reduced to the state of a pure archive for Pierre-André Boutang, to a sheet of paper, so that lifts my spirits and comforts me immensely, and nearly in the state of pure spirit, I speak after my death, and we know well that a pure spirit if you've made tables turn. But we know as well that a pure spirit is not someone who gives answers that are either very profound or very intelligent. They can be cursory. So anything goes in this, let's begin, A-B-C, whatever you want. So anything goes in this, let's begin, A-B-C, whatever you want.
Claire ParnetWe begin with "A," and "A" is "Animal." We can cite, as if it were you saying it, a quote from W.C. Fields: "A man who doesn't like animals or children can't be all bad." We'll leave aside the children for the moment, but domestic animals, I know that you don't care for them much. And in this, you don't even accept the distinction made by Baudelaire and Cocteau-cats are not any better than dogs for you. On the other hand, throughout your work, there is a bestiary that is quite repugnant; that is, besides deers that are noble animals, you talk copiously of ticks, of fleas, of a certain number of repugnant little animals of this kind. What I want to add is that animals have been very useful in your writings, starting with Anti-Oedipus, through a concept that has become quite important, the concept of "becoming-animal" So I would like to know a bit more clearly what is your relationship to animals.
What you said there about my relation with domestic animals. . . It's not really domestic, or tamed, or wild animals that concern me, or cats or dogs . . . The problem, rather, is with animals that are both familiar and familial. Familiar or familial animals, tamed and domesticated, I don't care for them, whereas domesticated animals that are not familiar and familial, I like them fine because I am quite sensitive to something in these animals. What happened to me is what happens in lots of families, there is neither dog nor cat, and then one of our children, Fanny's and mine, came home with a tiny cat, no bigger than his little hand, that he found out in the country somewhere, in a basket or somewhere, and from that fatal moment onward, I have always had a cat around the house. What do I find unpleasant in these animals- although that certainly was no major ordeal-I can handle it. What do I find unpleasant? I don't like things that rub against me . . . and a cat spends its time rubbing up against you. I don't like that, and with dogs, it's altogether different: what I fundamentally reproach them for is always barking. A bark really seems to me the stupidest cry. . . There are animal cries in nature, a variety of cries, and barking is truly the shame of the animal kingdom. Whereas I can stand much better ( on the condition that it not be for too long a time) the howling at the moon, a dog howling at the moon. . .
Claire Parnet. . . at death. . .
. . . At death, who knows? I can stand this better than barking. And since I learned quite recently that cats and dogs were cheating the Social Security system, my antipathy has increased even more. What I mean is. . . What I am going to say is completely idiotic because people who really like cats and dogs obviously do have a relationship with them that is not human. For example, you see that children do not have a human relationship with a cat, but rather an infantile relationship with animals. What is really important is for people to have an animal relationship with an animal. So what does it mean to have an animal relationship with the animal? It doesn't consist of talking to it. . . but in any case, I can't stand the human relationship with the animal. I know what I am saying because I live on a rather deserted street where people walk their dogs, and what I hear from my window is quite frightening, the way that people talk to their animals. Even psychoanalysis notices this! Psychoanalysis is so fixated on familiar or familial animals, on animals of the family, that any animal, in a dream, for example, is interpreted by psychoanalysis as being an image of the father, mother, or child, that is, an animal as a family member. I find that odious, I can't stand it, and you only have to think of two paintings by the Douanier Rousseau, the dog in the cart who is truly the grandfather, the grandfather in a pure state, and the war horse is a veritable beast. So the question is, what kind of relationship do you have with an animal? If you have a human relationship with an animal . . . But again, generally people who like animals don't have a human relationship with animals, they have an animal relationship with the animal, and that's quite beautiful. Even hunters-and I don't like hunters- but even hunters have an astonishing relationship with the animal. . . And you asked me also . . . Well, other animals, it's true that I am fascinated by animals like spiders, ticks, fleas . . . They are as important as dogs and cats. And there are relationships with animals there, someone who has ticks, who has fleas, what does that mean? These are relationships with some very active animals. So what fascinates me in animals? Because really, my hatred for certain animals is nourished by my fascination with many other animals. If I try to take stock vaguely of this, what is it that impresses me in an animal? The first thing that impresses me is the fact that every animal has a world, and it's curious because there are a lot of humans, a lot of people who do not have a world. They live the life of everybody, that is, of just any one and any thing. Animals, they have worlds. What is an animal world? It's sometimes extraordinarily limited, and that's what moves me. Finally, animals react to very few things. . . Cut me off if you see that . . . Yes, so, in this story of the first characteristic of the animal, it's really the existence of specific, special animal worlds. Perhaps it is sometimes the poverty of these worlds, the reduced character of these worlds, that impresses me so much. For example, we were talking earlier about an animal like the tick. The tick responds, reacts to three things, three stimuli, period, that's it, in a natural world that is immense, three stimuli, that's it: that is, it tends toward the extremity of a tree branch, it's attracted by light, it can wait on top of this branch, it can wait for years without eating, without anything, in a completely amorphous state. It waits for a ruminant, an herbivore, an animal to pass under its branch, it lets itself fall. . . It's a kind of olfactory stimulus. . . the tick smells, it smells the animal that passes under its branch, that's the second stimulus: light first, then odor. Then, when it falls onto the back of the poor animal, it goes looking for the region that is the least covered with hair. . . So, there's a tactile stimulus, and it digs in under the skin. For everything else, if one can say this, for everything else, it does not give a damn. . . That is, in a nature teeming [with life], it extracts, selects three things.
Claire ParnetAnd is that your life's dream? That's what attracts you to animals?
That's what constitutes a world, that's what constitutes a world.
Claire ParnetHence, your animal-writing relationship, that is, the writer, for you, is also someone who has a world. . . It's more compl-Yes, I don't know, because there are other aspects: it is not enough to have a world to be an animal. What fascinates me completely are territorial matters. With Félix [Guattari], we really created a concept, nearly a philosophical concept, with the idea of territory. Animals with territory-ok, there are animals without territory, fine- but animals with territory, it's amazing because constituting a territory is, for me, nearly the birth of art. How an animal marks its territory, everyone knows, everyone always invokes stories of anal glands, of urine, of. . . with which it marks the borders of its territory. But it's a lot more than that: what intervenes in marking a territory is also a series of postures, for example, lowering oneself/lifting oneself up; a series of colors, baboons, for example, the color of buttocks of baboons that they display at the border of territories. . . Color, song, posture: these are the three determinants of art: I mean, color and lines-animal postures are sometimes veritable lines- color, line, song-that's art in its pure state. And so, I tell myself that when they leave their territory or return to their territory, it's in the domain of property and ownership. It's very curious that it is in the domain of property and ownership, that is, "my properties," in the manner of Beckett or Michaux. Territory constitutes the properties of the animal, and leaving the territory, they risk it, and there are animals that recognize their partner, they recognize them in the territory, but not outside the territory. Which one?
That's what I call a marvel. . . I don't recall which bird, you have to believe me on this. . . So, with Félix-I am leaving the animal subject, I pass on to a philosophical question because we can mix all kinds of things in the Abécédaire. I tell myself: philosophers sometimes get criticized for creating barbaric words. But, put yourself in my place: for certain reasons, I am interested in reflecting on this notion of territory, and I tell myself, territory is defined in relation to a movement by which one leaves the territory. So, to address this, I need a word that is apparently "barbaric." Henceforth, with Félix, we constructed a concept that I like a lot, the concept of "deterritorialization." We've been told that it's a hard word to pronounce, and then asked what it means, what its use is. . . So this is a beautiful case of a philosophical concept that can only be designated by a word that does not yet exist, even if we later discover that there are equivalents in other languages. For example, I happened to notice that in Melville, there appears all the time "outlandish"- I pronounce poorly, you can correct it yourself-but "outlandish" is precisely the equivalent of "the deterritorialized," word for word. So, I tell myself that for philosophy- before returning to animals- for philosophy, it is quite striking: it is sometimes necessary to invent a barbaric word to account for a notion with innovative pretensions: the notion with innovative pretensions is that there is no territory, without a vector of exiting the territory; there is no exiting the territory, that is, deterritorialization, without at the same time an effort of reterritorializing oneself elsewhere, on something else. All this functions with animals, and that's what fascinates me. What is fascinating generally is the whole domain of signs. Animals emit signs, they ceaselessly emit signs, they produce signs. That is, in the double sense, they react to signs- for example, a spider, everything that touches its web, it reacts to anything, reacts to signs- and they produce signs- for example, the famous sign, is that a wolf sign, a wolf track or something else? I admire enormously people who know how to recognize [tracks], for example, hunters-real hunters, not hunt club hunters, but real hunters who can recognize the animal that has passed by. At that point, they are animal, they have with the animal an animal relationship. That's what I mean by having an animal relationship with an animal.
Claire ParnetAnd this emission of signs, this reception of signs, is there a connection with writing and the writer, and the animal?
Of course. If someone were to ask me what it means to be an animal, I would answer: it's being on the lookout. It's a being fundamentally on the lookout.
Claire ParnetLike the writer?
The writer, well, yes, on the lookout, the philosopher, on the lookout, obviously, we are on the lookout. For me, you see, the ears of the animal: it does nothing without being on the lookout, it's never relaxed, an animal. It's eating, [yet] has to be on the lookout to see if something is happening behind its back, on either side, etc. It's terrible, this existence "aux aguets." So you make the connection with the writer, what is the relation between the animal and the writer. . .?
Claire Parnet. . . you made it before I did. . .
That's true... One almost has to say that, at the limit. . . Awriter, what is it? He writes, he writes "for" readers, of course, but what does "for" mean? It means toward them, A writer. . . He writes toward his readers, in a way, he writes "for" readers. But one has to say that the writer writes also for non-readers, that is, not intended for them, but "in their place." So 'for" means two things: intended for them and in their place. Artaud wrote pages that nearly everyone knows, "I write for the illiterate, I write for idiots." Faulkner writes for idiots. That doesn't mean so that idiots would read, that the illiterate would read, it means "in the place of" the illiterate. I mean, I write "in the place of" barbarians, I write "in the place of" animals. And what does that mean? Why does one dare say something like that, I write in the place of idiots, the illiterate, animals? Because that is what one does, literally, when one writes. When one writes, one is not pursuing some private little affair. They really are stupid fools; really, it's the abomination of literary mediocrity, in every era, but particularly quite recently, that makes people believe that to create a novel, for example, it suffices to have some little private affair, some little personal affair- one's grandmother who died of cancer, or someone's personal love affair- and there you go, you can write a novel based on this. It's shameful to think things like that. Writing is not anyone's private affair, but rather it means throwing oneself into a universal affair, be it a novel or philosophy. Now what does that mean?
Claire ParnetSo this 'writing for," that is, "intended for" or "in the place of," it's a bit like what you said in A Thousand Plateaus about [Lord] Chandos by Hofmannstahl, in the very beautiful phrase: 'the writer is a sorcerer because he sees the animal as the only population before which he is responsible."
That's it, absolutely right. And for a very simple reason, I think it's quite simple. . . It's not at all a literary declaration what you just read from Hofmannsthal, it's something else. Writing means necessarily pushing language-and pushing syntax, since language is syntax- up to a certain limit, a limit that can be expressed in several ways: it can be just as well the limit that separates language from silence, or the limit that separates language from music, or the limit that separates language from something that would be, what? Let's say, the wailing, the painful wailing. . .
Claire ParnetBut not the barking, surely!
Oh, no, not barking, although who knows? There might be a writer who is capable. . .. The painful wailing? Well, everyone says, why yes, it's Kafka, it's Metamorphosis, the manager who cries out, "Did you hear? It sounds like an animal," the painful wailing of Gregor. Or else the mass of mice, one writes for the mass of mice, the mass of rats that are dying because, contrary to what is said, it's not men who know how to die, but animals, and when men die, they die like animals. Here we return to cats, and I have a lot of respect. . . Among the many cats that lived here, there was that little cat who died rather quickly, that is, I saw what a lot of people have seen as well, how an animal seeks a corner to die in. . . There is a territory for death as well, a search for a territory of death, where one can die. We saw the little cat slide itself right into a tight corner, an angle, as if it were the good spot for it to die in. So, in a sense, if the writer is indeed one who pushes language to the limit, the limit that separates language from animality, that separates language from the cry, that separates language from song, then one has to say, yes, the writer is responsible to animals who die, that is, he answers to animals who die, to write, literally, not "for"-again, I don't write "for" my dog or for my cat- but writing "in the place of" animals who die, etc., carrying language to this limit. There is no literature that does not carry language and syntax to this limit that separates man from animal. . . One has to be on this limit. . .. That's what I think. . . Even when one does philosophy, that's the case. . . One is on the limit that separates thought from non-thought. You always have to be at the limit that separates you from animality, but precisely in such a way that you are no longer separated from it. There is an inhumanity proper to the human body, and to the human mind, there are animal relations with the animal... And if we were finished with "A", that would be nice. . .