The strategic zone, however, is a continually evolving diagram or map on which the local and diffuse “microphysics of power” (F 25) is operational in a relation that indissolubly links two variables: “unformed and unorganized matter” and “unformalized, unfinalized functions” (F 34). At first glance, the pair of matter and functions here in the strategic zone look like the previous pair of the visible and the articulable in the zone of strata. Nevertheless, as Deleuze writes,
The diagram is no longer an auditory or visual archive but a map, a cartography that is coextensive with the whole social field. It is an abstract machine. It is defined by its formal functions and matter and in terms of form makes no distinction between content and expression, a discursive formation and a non-discursive formation. It is a machine that is almost blind and mute, even though it makes others see and speak. (F 34)
Simply put, we can see the strategic zone as an abstract machine while we can see the zone of strata as a concrete machine. “The concrete machines are two-form assemblages or mechanisms, whereas the abstract machine is the informal diagram” (F 39). What does this informal diagram look like anyway? From the archive of the articulable and the visible (knowledge) to the diagram of function and matter (power), a couple of facts must be contrasted point by point lest confusion arises.
To begin with, to answer the above question about this informal diagram, we must first look into Foucault’s definition of power. According to Deleuze, “Foucault’s definition seems a very simple one: power is a relation between forces, or rather every relation between forces is a ‘power-relation’” (F 70). Five major points can be summarized about Foucault’s definition of power. “In the first place we must understand that power is not a form . . . and that the power relation does not lie between two forms, as does knowledge. In the second place, force is never singular but essentially exists in relation with other forces, such that any
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force is already a relation, that is to say power: force has no other object or subject than force” (F 70). In other words, what constitutes power is relations between unformed or informal forces while what constitutes knowledge is the relations between two forms. Also, the word “power” already implies a relation between forces that know nothing about subject or object. The remaining three of Foucault’s great theses on power are as follows: “power is not essentially repressive . . . it is practiced before it is possessed . . . it passes through the hands of the mastered no less than through the hands of the masters . . .” (F 71). It is noticeable from these three statements that power, unlike knowledge that is possessed, is all about strategic exercise that is practiced between the mastered forces and the mastering forces. That is to say, “[a]n exercise of power shows up as an affect, since force defines itself by its very power to affect other forces [active affects] . . . and to be affected by other forces [reactive affects]. . . . The power to be affected is like a matter of force [unformed pure matter], and the power to affect is like a function of force [non-formalized pure functions]” (F 71-72). These five major points serve as illuminating footnotes to Foucault’s simple but concise definition of power: a relation between forces.
Secondly, to answer the above question about this informal diagram, we must know how Foucault’s power is different from knowledge from the following five arguments from Deleuze in his book on Foucault. In the first place, the difference between the audiovisual archive and the power diagram can be first illustrated by the following fact:
Knowledge concerns formed matters (substances) and formalized functions, divided up segment by segment according to the two great formal conditions of seeing and speaking, light and language: it is therefore stratified, archivized, and endowed with a relatively rigid segmentarity. Power, on the other hand, is diagrammatic: it mobilizes non-stratified matter and functions, and unfolds with a very flexible segmentarity. (F 73)
We can draw upon Deleuze’s argument that knowledge is contrasted with power in the fact that knowledge consists of a relatively rigid segmentarity of two formal and stratified archive of stable forms (discursive statements and non-discursive visibilities) in space of exteriority, whereas power is made up of a very flexible segmentarity of informal and non-stratified diagram of mobile, diffuse, and non-localizable forces (in their irreducible encounter between active affects that act upon others and reactive affects that are acted upon by others) in space of Outside.
In the second place, Deleuze contrasts receptivity of power’s ability to be affected with spontaneity of power’s ability to affect: “For the power relation has no form in itself, but establishes contact between unformed matter (receptivity) and unformalized functions (spontaneity). On the other hand, relations of knowledge, on each side, deal with formed substances and formalized functions by using the receptive kind of visible element, or the spontaneous kind of articulable element” (F 77). It is remarkable to notice from Deleuze’s words that what distinguishes the power relation from the relation of knowledge is whether it is an informal or a formal pair of spontaneous function and receptive matter. Nevertheless, we must realize that this pair works not only, as mentioned above, respectively within informal (power-relation) and formal (relation of knowledge) pairs, but also between the informal, non-stratified diagram of forces (power pole) and the formal archive (knowledge pole). To put it differently, on a larger scale, the power pole can be regarded as the spontaneous differential relation whose virtually unknown power virtualizes and differentiates particular features and distributes “individual points in a field of vectors”; contrariwise, the knowledge pole can be considered as the receptive “integral curve” which undergoes the effect of actualization or integration of particular features “in their neighborhood” to make them actually known in seeing and speaking (F 78).
In the third place, this mathematical understanding leads us to Deleuze’s observation of
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Foucault’s primacy of power over knowledge.
In what sense is there primacy of power over knowledge, and of power-relations over relations of knowledge? The answer is that the latter would have nothing to integrate if there were no differential power relations. It is true that the former would fade and remain embryonic or virtual without the operations that integrate them; this is what leads to mutual presupposition. (F 81-82)
If we see power as virtual and knowledge as actual, an irreducible encounter also certainly takes place between the power pole (differential relations) and the knowledge pole (integral relations), and a “non-place” also exists between these two poles. A mutual presupposition is irreducible because the formal categories of knowledge must pass through seeing and speaking in order to actualize the affective categories of power (F 77). In terms of this account, we might have reservations about two impressions that it makes: first of all, the primacy of power over knowledge seems to imply the uni-directional becoming from the virtual to the actual; secondly, power is unquestionably virtual. Constantin Boundas, as argued earlier, has introduced us to the reversible nature of virtual and actual relations in Deleuze’s ontology schema of the power of becoming (virtual/real ↔ actual/real ↔ virtual/real), so it is easy for us to dispel the first wrong impression. For the second, Deleuze has been notoriously ambiguous about the “virtual” status of the power diagram and the space of the outside in his book on Foucault. For example, Deleuze writes, “relations between forces will remain transitive, unstable, faint, almost virtual, at all events unknown, unless they are carried out by the formed or stratified relations which make up forms of knowledge . . .” (F 74; emphasis mine). This phrasing “almost virtual” apparently disqualifies power-relation for its purely virtual status. What’s more, Deleuze always gives us the impression that “forces [in power diagram] operate in a different space to that of forms, the space of the Outside. . .” (F 87); consequently, we tend to see the power diagram as the
outside itself. Nevertheless, Deleuze again surprises us by saying that “diagram stems from the outside but the outside does not merge with any diagram, and continues instead to ‘draw’
new ones. In this way the outside is always an opening on to a future: nothing ends, since nothing has begun, but everything is transformed” (F 89). The only possible interpretation for this is that Deleuze’s “outside” covers not just the diagram (there is no denying that the forces of the outside enter into a power-relation in strategic zone; therefore, diagram is certainly part of the outside), but also the great unknown topological space beyond the line of the outside.
Despite his ambiguity about the diagram and the outside (and their partial overlapping), Deleuze seems to build up his argument finally to the higher primacy of the outside over the diagram after the primacy of power over knowledge. This gives us a visual impression that a virtual stream flows down from the outside, to the diagram (power), and finally to the archive (knowledge) in Deleuze’s book on Foucault. From the above argument, we have come to realize that power qua purely virtual power needs a second thought.
In the fourth place, Deleuze argues: “If power is not simply violence, this is not only because it passes in itself through [affective] categories that express the relation between two forces . . . but also because, in relation to knowledge, it produces truth, in so far as it makes us see and speak. It produces truth as a problem” (F 83). Here, the violence inflicted upon thought is no ordinary violence because it is caused by the intrusive claws of the outside.
“Thinking [not the innate exercise of a faculty] does not depend on a beautiful interiority that would reunite the visible and the articulable elements, but is carried under the intrusion of an outside that eats into the interval and forces or dismembers the internal” (F 87). In such a fashion, the intrusive claws of the outside tear off the eternal face of knowledge to make it problematic.
In the fifth and last place, Deleuze writes:
If the variable combinations of the two forms, the visible and the articulable,
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constitute strata or historical formations, the microphysics of power, on the contrary, exposes the relations between forces in an informal and non-stratified element. In this way the supersensitive diagram does not merge with the
audiovisual archive: it is like the a priori element presupposed by the historical formation. However, there is nothing lying beneath, above, or even outside the strata. The relations between forces, which are mobile, faint and diffuse, do not lie outside strata but form the outside of strata. (F 84)
It is interesting to notice that before Deleuze’s proclamation “the outside does not merge with any diagram” (F 89), he declares that “the supersensitive diagram does not merge with the audiovisual archive” (F 84). Despite Deleuze’s no-merger announcement, there is still a mutual presupposition between outside and diagram, or diagram and archive. The case in point here suggests that a priori element (diagram) precedes any historical formation (archive), and the former envelopes the latter exactly as its outside. More comparative details between knowledge and power are given in the following table.
Table 2.2
Comparison between Knowledge and Power