development, SOWF becomes distorted by Shammat’s parasitism, turning the Shikastans into purveyors of evil. It is not until the Survivors’ rebuilding of the cities that SOWF recovers its previous function as a cosmic force and circulates freely among the Survivors and the cities. SOWF can change not only the atmosphere of the cosmos but also its own nature. Ultimately, it is an immanent force of becoming that bathes everything in its wave and at the same time an immanent force that can be affected by everything in it. SOWF is not a state of being, but a “multiplicity, a becoming, a segment, a vibration,” to borrow Deleuze’s description of the immanent force of becoming in a Thousand Plateaus (252).
Now I explore what purifies the cosmic force and enables it to transform the cosmic plan, the individuals, and the cities.
Affect Revealed in the Three Stages of the Development of SOWF
The three phases of human-city interaction reflect the three stages in the internal development of SOWF itself. In its first stage, recorded in the ancient time, the cosmic force is sufficient, enabling the relationship of the inhabitants (Giants and Natives), architectural arrangements, and galactic alignments to become harmonious so that the Lock,9 a cosmic bond, is established and incorporates the minds of the Giants into the Canopean system:
Shortly after that the Lock was established, and was a success, making
missions and special envoys unnecessary. The minds of the Giants—or to put it accurately, factually, the Giant-mind—had become one with the mind of the Canopean System, at first partially, and tentatively, but it was an ever-growing and sensitizing current. (Shikasta 15)
9 Lock, exactly, is the bond between Canopus and Shikasta.
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The Lock makes possible the free flow of information and ideas between the colonizing planet Canopus and the colonized planet Shikasta. Thanks to the Lock, the Giants can be linked to SOWF, and they evolve into a collective mind that can tune into SOWF, cosmic vibrations, what Lessing terms as Ur-mind, and communicate with Canopus:
The "mind" shared between Rohanda and Canopus did not mean that every thought in every head instantly became the property of everyone at once. What was shared was a disposition, a ground, a necessary mesh, net, or grid, a pattern which was common property, and was not itself static, since it would grow and change with the strengthenings and fallings off of emanations. If one individual wished to contact another, this was done by a careful and specific
“tuning in.” (Shikasta 25)
The Lock enables common sharing of information and ideas between Rohanda (Shikasta) and Canopus. The Giants can tune into the dynamic cosmic “pattern” that traverses all the beings in the cosmos and communicate with Canopus. Everything seems so perfect when SOWF makes the cosmos work harmoniously. However, the cosmic harmony created by Canopus is nothing more than a “harmony” on the cosmic or transcendental scale, established from the point of view of the Canopean colonizers. The pre-established harmony by which Canopus colonizes the whole cosmos may cause personal suffering. In the first stage of the internal development of SOWF lies a discrepancy between the welfare of the whole cosmos based on wholehearted submission to the collective, called the Necessity, and the personal grief that results from separation of lovers in accordance with the vibrations of the cities. That is, the correspondence between individuals and the Lock is based on a colonizing power that is transcendental and mechanical, which cannot incorporate individual differences or divergences created by personal love. Those born to be individuals who correspond to the circle-shaped city must separate from their lover if
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their lover possesses a different temperament.
In Shikasta, basically, there is a reciprocal relationship between the cosmic Master Plan and the cosmic force SOWF. The cosmic Master Plan generates the cosmic forces the Lock and SOWF. Canopus feeds the Shikastans with the cosmic force and establishes the Lock while the bond between the Natives and the Giants is adequately mature. The way Canopus judges whether the Natives and the Giants are mature is by measuring the level of their adherence to the cosmic plan. The plan engenders SOWF, which is also
conditioned by Necessity, and the cosmic forces SOWF and The Lock enrich and modify the plan. Ironically, because the cosmic Master Plan requires submission of individuals to the whole, it also hinders the cosmic force SOWF. The Shikastans’ activities in their daily lives, including such things as building and breeding, are regulated by pre-established rules, which are executed strictly according to the need of the Lock and the cosmic Master Plan rather by the free flow of the energy of love:
There would be a careful, controlled building of new, well-sited cities, and there was no shortage of places suitable for the Necessity. Natives who chose to, and were considered suitable by general consent, might have several
progeny in the first hundred years of their lives. After that, while sex continued as a pleasure and a balancing force, the breeding mechanisms became
inoperative, and they entered a long, energetic, vigorous middle age. (Shikasta 20)
The cosmic Master Plan limits the free flow of the energy of love because Canopus is not yet aware of the value of divergent elements in the cosmos and considers everything from an authoritative, hegemonic viewpoint. It is not until the galactic messenger Johor
enlightens Canopeans about the value of divergent elements that they realize that Canopus is not the center of the cosmos and deviations should be incorporated into the
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cosmic Master Plan.
In the second stage of the internal development of SOWF, the divergences not only destroy the reciprocal relationship of the cosmic Master Plan and SOWF but also trigger modification of both. In the Golden Age, the ancient time, the stellar misalignments caused by Canopus’s neglect of cosmic alignment subvert the harmonious relationship of individuals, architecture, and the galaxy. Stellar misalignment sabotages the functions of SOWF and the Lock, and seriously affects the reciprocal interaction of the transcendental cosmic plan and the immanent cosmic forces, the Lock and SOWF. The disconnection of the cosmic plan from cosmic forces results in the Century of Destruction. Shikasta degenerates for at least three reasons besides stellar misalignment: the Degenerative Disease of Individualism, the Shammats’ parasitism, and a consequent dwindling of SOWF.
Johor claims that “disobedience to the Master Plan was always, everywhere, the first sign of the Degenerative Disease” (Shikasta 32). The Giants’ refusal to leave Shikasta is an act of betraying the cosmic Master Plan. The idea of Individualism, the possessive “I,”
disconnects individuals from the cosmic force SOWF and the free flow of information facilitated by the Lock. The Giants become so possessed by individualism that they forget the concept of enemy, ignore the existence of Shammat, which poisons the cosmic force, and remain too complacent even to receive warnings of lurking Shammatan agents. The Shammatans thrive on the degeneration of the Shikastans. Johor observes,
“For one thing,” I insisted, "the more the Natives degenerate, the more they weaken and lose substance, the better that will be for Shammat. Do you see? The worse the quality of the Canopus/Shikasta flow, the better for
Shammat! Like to like! Shammat cannot feed on the high, the pure, the fine. It is poison to them. The level of the Lock in the past has been far above the
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grasp of Shammat. They are lying in wait, for the precise moment when their nature, the Shammat nature, can fasten with all its nasty force onto the substance of the Lock! (Shikasta30)
Degeneration of the Shikastans enables Shammat to tap the Canopean force SOWF, which is too pure for them to receive as is, and to destroy the Lock between Canopus and Shikasta. Shammat seizes the opportunity to distort SOWF by employing the jetting column, Effluon 3, originally programmed by the Canopeans to send out love, and
“Shammat's agents prowled and lurked, feeding the spirit of hatred, antagonism, unreason, contention” (Shikasta 228).
SOWF is recovered in the third stage of its own internal development, i.e., in the third stage of the relationship between the Shikastans and the cities, because the Survivors’ act of rebuilding the cities realigns the cities and the Survivors with the cosmos and reconnects them with the cosmic force SOWF. Because the population has been reduced to 1%, SOWF is sufficient to bathe all Survivors in the energy of love. The recovery of SOWF is predicted: “In due time—I did not say thousands upon thousands of years!—this trickle would become a flood. And their descendants could bathe in it as they played now in the crystal rivers” (Shikasta 49). Kassim describes how SOWF redeems the Survivors from the previous Century of Destruction: “And this will go on for us, as if we were being slowly lifted and filled and washed by a soft singing wind that clears our sad muddled minds and holds us safe and heals us and feeds us with lessons we never imagined” (Shikasta 240). The “soft singing wind” heals individuals from the woes and wounds of the previous ages and returns them to the connection with Canopus, which endows them with lessons and information. Betsy Draine says, “Like divine grace, the Canopean substance-of-life washes away the human tendency toward error and provides the strength for conduct and belief in harmony with Canopean law” (Substance Under
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Pressure 154). The cosmic force SOWF redeems the Survivors from their errors and fall
and modifies the cosmic plan so that the relationship of the Survivors, the city, the cosmic plan, and SOWF can be reconfigured. In the Survivors’ relationship with the cities, divergent elements and the centrifugal force of the previous age are incorporated again into the cosmic Master Plan, and again SOWF blossoms. The cosmic plan is expanded and transformed so that it no longer controls the cosmic force SOWF and is instead modified by it. The static, mechanical, authoritative, colonizing cosmic plan allows itself to be at one with the fecund energies of symbiosis and love.Having delineated the three stages of SOWF, I now explore how, in Deleuze and Guattari’s conception, affect enables us to become with it. I have referred to SOWF as a Deleuzian immanent cosmic force, which affects us by sweeping us into zones of
indiscernibility. Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of affect well decodes the relationship of SOWF, the cosmic Master Plan, the Survivors, and the cities. Their idea of “affect”
actually derives from Spinoza’s concept of “affect.” In Ethics, Spinoza defines “affect” as
"the modifications of the body whereby the active power of the said body is increased or diminished, aided or constrained, and also the ideas of such modification" (Spinoza 130).
For Spinoza, affect means the flow and oscillation of an intensive force. The active power of the body can be strengthened or diminished, and the ebb and flow of power are
demonstrated in the body. In a similar line of thinking, for Deleuze and Guattari, the term
“affect” means “the ability to affect and be affected,” as the translator Brian Massumi defined it in his forward to A Thousand Plateaus:
AFFECT/AFFECTION. Neither word denotes a personal feeling (sentiment in Deleuze and Guattari). L'affect (Spinoza's affectus) is an ability to affect and be affected. It is a prepersonal intensity corresponding to the passage from one experiential state of the body to another and implying an
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augmentation or diminution in that body's capacity to act. L'affection
(Spinoza's affectio) is each such state considered as an encounter between the affected body and a second, affecting body (with body taken in its broadest possible sense to include "mental" or ideal bodies). (xvi)
We should distinguish “affect” (Spinoza's affectus) from “affection” (Spinoza's affectio).
“Affect” is not interpreted as a personal feeling but as a “prepersonal intensity” that passes from one state of the body to another. On the other hand, “affection” represents the actualized prepersonal intensity. When affect is captured by bodies, the affecting body is influencing the affected body. The body’s power to act determines whether the body is affecting or affected; if the body’s power to act is strengthened, it functions as the
affecting body and vice versa. In Parables for the Virtual, Brian Massumi points out that affect oscillates between the virtual and the actual. He says, “The autonomy of affect is its participation in the virtual” (45). This refers to affect or the affecting power that is not yet captured by any bodies. On the other hand, the affecting body and the affected body signify affect’s connection to the actual. Massumi explains that “[a]ffects are virtual synesthetic perspectives anchored in (functionally limited by) the actually existing, particular things that embody them” (45). The prepersonal affect is embodied in subjective and objective perceptions just as Massumi describes: “Formed, qualified, situated perceptions and cognitions fulfilling functions of actual connection or blockage are the capture and closure of affect. Emotion is the most intense (most contracted) expression of that capture” (45). On the virtual side, impersonal affect surpasses the boundary between subjectivity and objectivity while, on the actual side, impersonal affect is captured and expressed as the individual’s cognitions and emotions.
Now I return to the question of how SOWF can influence individuals and make them become with it. The answer lies in viewing SOWF through the lens of affect. (1)
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SOWF is the prepersonal intensity that bathes all the elements on Shikasta. (2) SOWF possesses the power to affect and modify the cosmic plan so as to incorporate different elements. (3) SOWF is “affected” and distorted by Shammat or Individualism, which is demonstrated as Taufiq’s and the Giants’ divergences from the cosmic plan. At this point, SOWF is “affected” and corrupted by individualism. (4) SOWF is restored to its force after incorporating divergences. The mutual interaction between SOWF and the cosmic plan can be seen in the three stages of the internal development of SOWF itself.
Table 2.2: (How the prepersonal affect, SOWF, evolves with the other forces)
Stage Relationship
Stage One The cosmic plan conditions SOWF
Stage Two The divergences (stellar alignment, Individualism, Shammat’s parasitism) distort SOWF and lead to the disconnection between the cosmic plan and SOWF.
Stage Three SOWF modifies and affects the cosmic plan in a positive way.
In the first stage of the internal development of SOWF, even though the cosmic plan has to follow SOWF, the authoritative cosmic plan gradually conditions the free flow of SOWF since, at this stage, Canopeans are not aware of the value of defects and are trapped in their own complacency, considering themselves the center of the cosmos. This complacent, enclosed attitude inhibits the free flow of SOWF. Also, the Canopean requirement of total submission of individuals to the whole further alienates individuals and disconnects them from SOWF. Johor describes Canopus’ complacent attitude, and, therefore, lack of awareness, in viewing Shikastans: “Their practical intelligence is
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developing even better than expected, and this is a sound and healthy basis for what we plan when we establish the Lock” (Shikasta 14). The Natives have to submit to the genetic plan set by Canopus, and their practical intelligence is already calculated. Their lives and developments are programmed in advance. This ignorance of individual differences causes unhappiness that foreshadows the divergences of the Giants and Taufiq later. In this way, the free flow of SOWF (affect) is conditioned by Canopus’
cosmic plan since the rules of the cosmic plan, such as genetic mandates, try to boost the population of Shikasta by experimenting on different species instead of allowing the population to develop naturally according to its correspondence with the cosmic force of affect, SOWF.
In the second stage of the internal development of SOWF, SOWF is distorted by cosmic deviations, such as stellar misalignments, the Giants’ refusal to leave Shikasta, Taufiq’s betrayal, and Shammattan parasitism, all of which sap the supply of SOWF. In the ancient time of golden cities on Shikasta, the immanent flow of the Lock and SOWF are still functioning; nevertheless, stellar misalignment, Individualism and Shammattan parasitism turn the abundant age of Rohanda into the Century of Destruction, during which the cosmic Master Plan becomes ossified rules that subsume the virtual force of the Lock and SOWF. The cosmos under Canopean colonial control becomes a cosmos of pre-established rules allowing no room for heterogeneous, contingent elements. Stellar misalignments; degeneration of correspondence among individuals, the cities, and SOWF;
the Degenerative Disease of Individualism; and the Shammatans’ parasitism—all these distort the cosmic force of love, SOWF, paralyze the cosmic Master Plan, and bring about the fall of Rohanda/Shikasta. The Shammatans, who have awaited the chance to corrupt Shikasta for a long time, can finally prosper in this degenerate atmosphere. “On Shikasta there were enemies, wicked people, enemies of Canopus, who were stealing the SOWF.
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These enemies enslaved Shikastans, when they could. They did this by encouraging those qualities that Canopus hated. They thrived when they hurt each” (Shikasta 49). The Shammatans steal SOWF by manipulating the skill of Effluon 3, which is originally used to send out energy of love. They distort SOWF so as to turn the Shikastans into
transmitters of evil forces. In Johor’s dream, he realizes that Shammat is the shadow that intercepts the “silvery cord of our love”:
But while I had been unconscious, I had had a dream or vision, and I knew now the secret of the Shammat column. I saw the old Rohanda glowing and lovely, emitting its harmonies, rather as one does in the Planets-to-Scale Room.
Between it and Canopus swung the silvery cord of our love. But over it fell a shadow, and this was a hideous face, pockmarked and pallid, with staring glaucous eyes. Hands like mouths went out to grasp and grab, and at their touch the planet shivered and its note changed. The hands tore out pieces of the planet, and crammed the mouth which sucked and gobbled and never had enough.
(Shikasta 46)
Shammat is parasitical, surviving by plundering the force from other planets. It robs the Shikastans of their connection with Canopus by distorting SOWF and corrupts them. The Giants and Natives deviate from their original symbiotic survival. The Giants build cities that fail to follow the stellar and stony alignments representing the cosmic plan, and the Natives move into proportionally inappropriate cities. The incompatible relationship between the inhabitants and the cities (habitats) embodies the degeneration of Shikasta.
The Shikastans no longer follow the laws of Canopus and are possessed by Degenerative Disease of Individualism.
When SOWF (affect), the free flow of prepersonal intensity, is captured or blocked by individualism and Shammat’s parasitism, its prepersonal property is eradicated. The
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free flow of information, love, and symbiosis is intercepted by cosmic rules and corrupted by Shammatans. Although such negative divergences do trigger undesirable cosmic evolution, the negative power pumped into SOWF actually enriches SOWF and
free flow of information, love, and symbiosis is intercepted by cosmic rules and corrupted by Shammatans. Although such negative divergences do trigger undesirable cosmic evolution, the negative power pumped into SOWF actually enriches SOWF and