Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of percept and affect foster understanding of the
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interrelationship of the individual, architecture, and the cosmos. “Percept,” denoting an idea of space that has its own life, promotes further insight to the post-catastrophic cities the Survivors rebuild in Shikasta, and the idea of “affect” illuminates how the Survivors become-imperceptible and enter “a zone of indiscernibility” with the cities. Deleuze’s theory of sensation (percept and affect) sheds light on how Johor’s inheritors, the Survivors, open into and become the city, SOWF, and the cosmos.
Johor leads the Survivors in rebuilding the cities without any commands or plans.
He just walks while the Survivors follow him silently. Kassim describes the scene:
In the evening he just walked away from the town and about three hundred people followed us, though he had not said one word about their coming too. It was cold that night, and it was wet and misty, and we were all pretty miserable, but we walked on steadily with George and still not a word had been said about what was happening. (Shikasta 239)
The wordless testimony of the act of rebuilding strips the subject and the object of their concrete entities and connects them to the cosmos in which Johor/George dwells. The Survivors are becoming more and more like George because they mutate along with the expansion and transformations of the cities. As Kassim travels around Shikasta, he sees
“everywhere buildings are collapsing and not being rebuilt. All the centre was quite empty” (Shikasta 239). He can neither understand the purpose of the destruction nor exact an explanation from Johor-George, who tells him merely that “the new cities are functional” (Shikasta 239). Johor says, “Wait a little and you will see” (Shikasta 239). In my reading, the city becomes functional because the act of rebuilding subverts the old dichotomies between victim and persecutor, and between human and nonhuman, so that the parts are no longer separate from the cosmic whole and the link or the Lock is reestablished and invigorated among individuals, architectural arrangements, and stellar
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alignment or cosmic force.
In Shikasta, the city is not the object to be “seen” or “perceived” by the human, but an object with its own life, which can grow organically and “dance” or “co-evolve”
together with the individuals. The Survivors are not perceiving subjects, not architects that design rebuilding plans. The lack of blueprints for the cities distinguishes the Survivors from the Giants and Natives in the ancient times, who measure architectural features so they correspond with stellar alignments. To accomplish this, they establish the Lock, which is implemented by the cosmic Master Plan. But now, after the catastrophe, the Survivors establish a unique symbiotic relationship with the cities as artists who become one with the metamorphosis of the cities.
Only when Johor-George leads the Survivors, the mutant outsiders, to rebuild the cities do we witness a whole new way of connecting individuals and space, replacing the corresponding relationship between the Giants and the ancient cities. The Survivors’ act of rebuilding the cities is voluntary and intuitive, an act of becoming-city, during which the Survivors and the cities become “indiscernible.” Kassim records the amazing act of rebuilding:
There were about twenty of us doing this. Suddenly we all knew quite clearly where the city should be. We knew it all at once. Then we found a spring, in the middle of the place. That was how this city was begun. It is going to be a star city, five points. We found the right soil for bricks nearby and for adobe. There is everything we can need. We have already started the gardens and the fields.
Some of us go into the decaying town every day to get bread and stuff, to keep us going. The first houses are already up, and the central circular place is paved, and the basin of the fountain is made. As we build, wonderful patterns appear as if our hands were being taught in a way we know nothing about. (Shikasta
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239)
The relationship of the city to the Survivors is symbiotic because neither precedes the other. The Survivors “[s]uddenly all knew quite clearly where the city should be” without making any plans or building with subjective consciousness. The Survivors “become the city” in the artistic act of rebuilding it. In the process of becoming-city, they pass into the city. In “The Space of Man: On the Specificity of Affect in Deleuze and Guattari,” Claire Colebrook notes that “the striving to think space or life in general needs to be carried beyond its human territory” (205). The percept’s relationship with the perceivers explains the evanescence of the subject (the Survivors) in the process of rebuilding the city. In
“The Paterson Plateau: Deleuze, Guattari and William Carlos Williams,” T. Hugh Crawford appropriates Francois Zourabichvili’s explanation to explore the percept’s relationship with the perceiver:
[T]he relation to the landscape is no longer that of an autonomous and pre-existent inner life and an independent external reality supposed to reflect this life….it is somewhat ironic that the percept, which is at least provisionally linked to perception, marks the moment when the self becomes imperceptible.
(74)
The elevation of the percept above human territory enables the self to pass into the landscape and thus become imperceptible. In Shikasta, the Survivors, like Ahab,
metamorphoses with the organic city in an act of becoming-city, which is not a subjective or an objective perception but a percept that connects both in “a zone of indiscernibility.”
As the Survivors build, they observe that “wonderful patterns appear as if our hands were being taught in a way we know nothing about.” They are unaware of what contour the city will develop because they are not the dominating consciousness behind the act of rebuilding; instead, they pass into the city and evolve with it so that, not until the patterns
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of the city have materialized, are they able to observe them.
How significantly different, despite seeming similarities, is this organic interaction from the relatively static relationship of the Giants and the geometrical cities in the ancient time, constricted by the cosmic Master Plan and its Canopean architects. Back then, the Natives, the ancestors of human beings, are under the guidance of the Giants.
They know that there is a harmonious interconnection between mental and spatial
configuration, and that this interconnection is their link to divinity. The Natives can form a corresponding relationship with the milieu and galactic alignment. While arrangements of stones in the cities are determined by galactic alignment, each individual Native who is compatible with the city can be received into the city and form a symbiotic relationship with it. In the ancient time, a symbiotic relationship of human beings, the earth, and the galaxy is considered paramount. It is called “Necessity.” Shikastans, both Giants and Natives, do everything out of Necessity instead of desire and greed. The perfect
proportion of giving and receiving between the Shikastans and their milieu comprises a kaleidoscopic matrix of Necessity. The Shikastans’ building of the cities follows
Necessity, which places emphasis on the benefits of the whole cosmos instead of personal desire. The spaces, contours, and structures of the cities are pre-determined in order to reinforce the correspondence between galactic alignment and the Natives’ mental disposition, and are the foundation of communication between Canopus and Rohanda (Shikasta’s name before degeneration):
The cities were established where the patterns of stones had been set up according to the necessities of the plan, along the lines of force in the earth of that time. These patterns, lines, circles, arrangements were no different from those familiar to us on other planets, and were the basis and foundation of the transmitting systems of the Lock between Canopus and
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Rohanda…now poor Shikasta. (Shikasta 39)
The transmitting systems can be maintained only when the galactic arrangement, spatial patterns, and mental disposition are kept in balance. The Lockk is established but not complete because it needs “continuous care.” Right after the Lock occurs, the Giant mind is not directly attuned to Canopus’ wave but needs adjustment and readjustment.
The strict correspondence between the stones and galactic alignments is first maintained by the ceaseless efforts of the Giants. “They were measuring, by means of a device I was unfamiliar with, of wood and a reddish metal, the vibrations of a column of polished black stone that stood where two avenues intersected,” as Johor describes (Shikasta 23). The maintenance of the Lock is strengthened by the creation of the new cities, and the Natives are taught to help the Giants to establish the cities and stone alignments as the transmitting system. The correspondence between the stones and galactic alignments is embodied by the cities’ geometrical shapes.
Each individual on Rohanda/Shikasta seems to enclose and express infinite
possibilities in accordance with the symbiosis of his or her inner rhythm and outer milieu.
Nevertheless, as mentioned above, the actions caused by personal love or desire are not following the law of Necessity and should be expelled from the system. Are individual differences allowed to exist in the symbiotic relationship between the individuals and the ancient city even though they are not following the cosmic plan and Necessity? The degeneration of Shikasta provides the galactic messenger, Johor, with the chance to perceive the problematic nature of the cosmic plan. What appears to be a perfect symbiotic system is, in fact, a “transcendental” system based on the implementation of the cosmic Master Plan. The nature of the cosmic plan is exclusive since individual divergences are not incorporated into the system. If individual differences are not woven into the tapestry of the collective, the individual act will easily fall prey to the trap of
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individualism. More importantly, the psycho-spatial correspondence between the individuals and the city implies the separation of the two and impedes the crossing of boundaries between them. Separation of the individual from the environment lays bare the isolation of the individual. When the Degenerative Disease of Individualism takes sway, the “perfect” symbiosis of the individuals and the city dissolves.
Although the evolving cities may seem to replicate the ancient geometrical cities, the expansion of the cities, for instance the scalloped edges of the Round City, illustrates the stark difference between the ancient geometrical cities and the evolving cities. After the catastrophe of World War III, which ends phase two, the cities become simultaneously mathematical and organic without being entirely conditioned by the cosmic plan and serve as the nexus between the inside and the outside, the Survivors and the cosmic force SOWF. The interrelationship of the individual, the house, and the cosmos serves as an appropriate frame for explicating the relationship of the Survivors, the city, and the cosmic force SOWF in Shikasta.
Table 2.1
Percept and affect Individuals (subjective
perceptions) and the house (Objective perceptions)
House percept Cosmic forces or affect
Shikasta
TheSurvivors(subjective perceptions) and the cities (Objective perceptions)
City percept SOWF
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I first explore the relationship of the Survivors and the city. How can the city serve simultaneously as the concrete frame and the nexus between the individual and the cosmos? Because the city can be interpreted as both material and immaterial. In Deleuze
on Music, Painting and the Arts, Ronald Bogue denotes the work of art as a material
artifact and a being of sensation:This suggests that although the artwork as material artifact (“house” in the first sense of the term) is in relation with other material bodies and the physical world and hence not isolated and self-contained, the artwork as “being of sensation” is distinct from the material artifact, just as percepts and affects are distinct from the perceptions and affections, experienced by human beings.
(169)
The material city frames the territory and supports the inhabitants. The inhabitants build a territorial house for themselves. The incorporeal city enables communication between the inhabitants and the cosmos. The house as a “being of sensation” is different from its material being just as percepts and affects are distinct from human perceptions and affections. In Shikasta, the Survivors and the cities are stripped of their perceptions and become indiscernible one from the other. The act of rebuilding the cities is analogous to what Deleuze and Guattari define as artwork-creating, through which the percept can be extracted from perceptions, and the subject is transported from subjective perceptions. In Deleuze and Guattari’s artistic example in What is Philosophy, the affect is achieved by means of the art material. For them, “the aim of art is to wrest the percept from
perceptions of objects and the states of a perceiving subject, to wrest the affect from affections as the transition from one state to another: to extract a bloc of sensations, a pure being of sensations” (167).
Deleuze and Guattari’s architectural example is an apt frame for explaining the
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artistic relationship between the Survivors and the post-catastrophic evolving cities.
Bogue explains that “the concept of the house emphasizes the non-human dimension of the aesthetic. But the figure of the house suggests as well something of the artwork’s relation to human experience. In one sense, the house may be seen as the paradigmatic material artwork” (168). The house is both the material frame and the immaterial artwork.
The city is seen as a concrete support when it frames the territory for its inhabitants (the Survivors) and becomes immaterial when it is perceived from the non-human dimension of the aesthetic. For Deleuze and Guattari,
Art in this regard is a functioning part of our inhabiting of the world, one of the ways whereby we build a territorial home for ourselves, structure and orient our bodies, frame and delimit space, but also a means whereby we
communicate with the outside, the artwork serving as a filtering membrane that permits an interchange and circulation of forces across its surface. (Deleuze on
Music, Painting, and the Arts 168)
On the one hand, the territorial house orients us in the spatial coordinate and delimits space; on the other hand, it also enables us to communicate with the outside by serving as a filtering membrane. In Shikasta, the evolving city functions as the selective membrane that permits interchange between the Survivors and the cosmic force SOWF.
When the city undergoes a process of becoming-immaterial, it no longer blocks communication between the Survivors and the cosmos but, instead, enables interaction.
The evanescence of the material city and its becoming immaterial can be shown through the city’s becoming light and airy after the catastrophe, as Kassim observes: “Again these buildings are strange considering what we are all used to, of bricks and adobe and dried grass screens and lacquered paper. Everything is very light and airy” (Shikasta 237). The cities undergo a process of becoming-transparent or becoming-light as their immaterial
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dimension is revealed via the Survivors’ act of rebuilding. The airy atmosphere of the buildings enables the Survivors to surpass the boundary between human and nonhuman and link to the cosmic force. Its link to the cosmic force can be felt but not described directly through the first city’s spot: “It is high up here, very high, with marvelous tall sky over us, a pale clear crystalline blue, and the great birds circling in it” (Shikasta 239). The city is close to the “crystalline blue” that implies the crystalline spaceship and Canopus, Shikasta’s galactic mother.
After being stripped of the “perceptions of objects and the states of a perceiving subject,” the Survivors and the city are free from spatial limitation and dissolve into each other. The cities and the individuals lose their spatial contours in the act of becoming.
There is no longer human psyche that molds space; instead, the individual surrenders control of the patterns of the cities and evolves with the cities instinctively. The Survivors pass into “the landscape and are themselves part of the compound of sensations,” as Deleuze and Guattari put it (What is Philosophy 169). The landscape (the cities) subsists in an instant that is transformed into eternity. The Survivors, as artists, enter eternity along with the cities—in defiance of our normal concepts of space and time.
In the process of becoming, the Survivors and the cities are elevated to the state of the indistinguishable. Deleuze and Guattari employ the examples of music and literature to delineate how the invisible force is rendered visible
(as music may be said to make the sonorous force of time audible, in Messiaen for example, or literature, with Proust, to make the illegible force of time legible and conceivable). Is this not the definition of the percept itself—to make perceptible the imperceptible forces that populate the world, affect us, and make us become? (What is Philosophy 182)
With the criss-crossing of percept and affect, the percept enables the imperceptible to be
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perceptible and the illegible to be legible. In Shikasta, the act of rebuilding the cities connects the Survivors, and us as readers, with the imperceptible force SOWF, propelling organic, symbiotic evolution. Deleuze and Guattari say that “cosmic forces themselves are what produce zones of indiscernibility in the broken tones of a face, slapping, scratching, and melting it in every way, and these zones of indiscernibility reveal the forces lurking in the area of plain, uniform color (Bacon)” (What is Philosophy 182).
Cosmic forces engender zones of indiscernibility, and we glimpse cosmic forces via these zones. Cosmic forces dissolve boundaries between elements and connect them in new ways. In Shikasta, the cosmic force SOWF enables delimitation of and connection between different beings such as the Survivors and the cities. Their indiscernible
relationship enables them to encounter SOWF and form a compound of sensation with it in an act of becoming-cosmos or becoming-SOWF, forming a trinity of the individual, the cities, and the cosmos. They are becoming-indiscernible because SOWF triggers them to surpass natural differentiation and form a bloc of sensation, a zone of indiscernibility. The transition from subjective and objective perceptions to percept and affect is accomplished because the focus is transferred from the individual to the cosmos. The transition is “like a passage from the finite to the infinite, but also from territory to deterritorialization”
(What is Philosophy 180).
This transition is vividly illustrated by Deleuze and Guattari’s example of the house in What is Philosophy: they consider “the artwork a territorial house opening onto the cosmos, a monument erected on a plane that constitutes a ‘universe’ (185; 196). Artists introduce their audience to the cosmos via the artwork, the house, in this case, which opens onto the cosmos, and, as Boque says, “when we become with the artwork, we, too, open to the cosmos and ‘become’ universe” (169). In Shikasta, in the process of
becoming-city, the Survivors evolve with the landscape, the city. The territorial city opens