Becoming is what?
by savage on Monday 25 April 2005
An early attempt at understanding literary theory
Plato's Myth of the Cave teaches that anyone with intelligence would remember that the eyes may be confused in two ways and from two causes, coming from the light into darkness as well as from darkness into light. This reversal of language, this duality of words in which both the statement and the contradictory statement are true is one of the fundamental principles of the paradox of becoming.
Becoming is a state of motion, pulling in two directions at once, right and wrong, left and right, near and far, too much and not enough, etc. Insofar as becoming pulls in two directions at once, existing within both the future and past simultaneously, becoming then can never be fixed to a finite moment. Thus becoming can never be examined in the same way as a moment of time might be considered, for the state of becoming is always in a state of flux. Deleuze describes that at the same moment that one is larger than one was one is also smaller than one becomes. This is the simultaneity of a becoming whose characteristic is to elude the present (39). The instant one was to try to extract becoming from its natural state of flux in order to examine it, becoming would elude the examiner and all that would be left was that which has become. The instant that becoming is brought into the present it is no longer becoming but is become.
Becoming is a state in action. It can not be described as one event in a sequence of events, for to be so would to have become. Becoming then is not the isolated island, a stationary moment in time of an event but the action existing on in the lands occupied by past and future, pulled by both past and future, interacting with past and future, one with both past and future; becoming is the matrix in which both past and future may and must exist simultaneously.
If becoming is forever in a state of motion how can it ever be known at all? Deleuze speaks of Plato's distinction between two dimensions: one of limited and measured things, of fixed qualities, permanent or temporary which always presuppose pauses and rests; and two, a pure becoming without measure, a veritable becoming-mad, which never rest (39). Thus, without that which is not becoming, all would be indefinable, all would be maddening. There would be no present for becoming lives not in the realm of the now, but between what is and what will be, before the future but after the now, bridging the two but never touching the shores of either. Becoming then is that which brings the present to the future without being either.
Plato's Cratylus explains, in part, this paradoxical relation in regards to the acquiring the knowledge of beauty. True beauty cannot be found in the natural world for everything in nature is in a constant state of flux. Thus if something were to be of true beauty, before one could comment, the beauty would no longer exist as true beauty for it cannot stay the same to be analyzed. Socrates continues to build off this example presupposing this model true for all things, and if so, then nothing can ever be truly known for everything is always in a state of change. Knowledge too cannot continue to be knowledge unless continuing always to abide and exist. But if knowledge, as all else, is in a continual state of change, then there can be no knowledge. And if there can be no knowledge than there can be no one to know and nothing to know. Socrates argues, however, that if there is anything that is known, and if that which is known exist ever, than everything cannot be in a continual state of flux.
Where does this lead then? As with the nature of paradox it leads in both directions at once. If everything was in a continual state of becoming than there would be no knowledge and nothing to be known to exist. Yet if everything was in the stasis of become, there would be no change. Then the only remaining option is for the possibility of both the becoming and the become. Socrates argues that knowledge needs to have stability in order to be known. Deleuze argues that sanity needs pauses to avoid madness. The paradox of becoming would argue that madness needs sanity to be known, and, of course, sanity needs madness to be known.
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