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914: ONE OR SEVERAL WOLVES? D 33

 

in Meinong and Russell we find a distinction between multiplicities of 

magnitude or divisibility, which are extensive, and multiplicities of dis-

tance, which are closer to the intensive. And in Bergson there is a distinc-

tion between numerical or extended multiplicities and qualitative or 

durational multiplicities. We are doing approximately the same thing 

when we distinguish between arborescent multiplicities and rhizomatic 

multiplicities. Between macro- and micromultiplicities. On the one hand, 

multiplicities that are extensive, divisible, and molar; unifiable, 

total-izable, organizable; conscious or preconscious—and on the other 

hand, libidinal, unconscious, molecular, intensive multiplicities 

composed of particles that do not divide without changing in nature, and 

distances that do not vary without entering another multiplicity and that 

constantly construct and dismantle themselves in the course of their 

communications, as they cross over into each other at, beyond, or before 

a certain threshold. The elements of this second kind of multiplicity are 

particles; their relations are distances; their movements are Brownian; 

their quantities are intensities, differences in intensity.

 

This only provides the logical foundation. Elias Canetti distinguishes 

between two types of multiplicity that are sometimes opposed but at other 

times interpenetrate: mass ("crowd") multiplicities and pack multiplici-

ties. Among the characteristics of a mass, in Canetti's sense, we should note 

large quantity, divisibility and equality of the members, concentration, 

sociability of the aggregate as a whole, one-way hierarchy, organization of 

territoriality or territorialization, and emission of signs. Among the char-

acteristics of a pack are small or restricted numbers, dispersion, 

nonde-composable variable distances, qualitative metamorphoses, 

inequalities as remainders or crossings, impossibility of a fixed 

totalization or hierar-chization, a Brownian variability in directions, lines 

of deterritorial-ization, and projection of particles.

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 Doubtless, there is no 

more equality or any less hierarchy in packs than in masses, but they are 

of a different kind. The leader of the pack or the band plays move by 

move, must wager everything every hand, whereas the group or mass 

leader consolidates or capitalizes on past gains. The pack, even on its own 

turf, is constituted by a line of flight or of deterritorialization that is a 

component part of it, and to which it accredits a high positive value, 

whereas masses only integrate these lines in order to segment them, 

obstruct them, ascribe them a negative sign. Canetti notes that in a pack 

each member is alone even in the company of others (for example, 

wolves on the hunt); each takes care of himself at the same time as 

participating in the band. "In the changing constellation of the pack, in its 

dances and expeditions, he will again and again find himself at its edge. 

He may be in the center, and then, immediately afterwards, at the edge 

again; at the edge and then back in the center. When

 

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4 □ 1914: ONE OR SEVERAL WOLVES?

 

the pack forms a ring around the fire, each man will have neighbors to the 

right and left, but no one behind him; his back is naked and exposed to the 

wilderness."

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 We recognize this as the schizo position, being on the periph-

ery, holding on by a hand or a foot. . .  As opposed to the paranoid position 

of the mass subject, with all the identifications of the individual with the 

group, the group with the leader, and the leader with the group; be securely 

embedded in the mass, get close to the center, never be at the edge except in 

the line of duty. Why assume (as does Konrad Lorenz, for example) that 

bands and their type of companionship represent a more rudimentary evo-

lutionary state than group societies or societies of conjugality? Not only do 

there exist bands of humans, but there are particularly refined examples: 

"high-society life" differs from "sociality" in that it is closer to the pack. 

Social persons have a certain envious and erroneous image of the 

high-society person because they are ignorant of high-society positions and 

hierarchies, the relations of force, the very particular ambitions and 

projects. High-society relations are never coextensive with social 

relations, they do not coincide. Even "mannerisms" (all bands have them) 

are specific to micromultiplicities and distinct from social manners or 

customs.

 

There is no question, however, of establishing a dualist opposition 

between the two types of multiplicities, molecular machines and molar 

machines', that would be no better than the dualism between the One and 

the multiple. There are only multiplicities of multiplicities forming a single 

assemblage, operating in the same assemblage: packs in masses and masses 

in packs. Trees have rhizome lines, and the rhizome points of 

arbor-escence. How could mad particles be produced with anything but a 

gigantic cyclotron? How could lines of deterritorialization be assignable 

outside of circuits of territoriality? Where else but in wide expanses, and 

in major upheavals in those expanses, could a tiny rivulet of new intensity 

suddenly start to flow? What do you not have to do in order to produce a 

new sound? Becoming-animal, becoming-molecular, becoming-inhuman, 

each involves a molar extension, a human hyperconcentration, or 

prepares the way for them. In Kafka, it is impossible to separate the 

erection of a great paranoid bureaucratic machine from the installation of 

little schizo machines of becoming-dog or becoming-beetle. In the case 

of the Wolf-Man, it is impossible to separate the becoming-wolf of his 

dream from the military and religious organization of his obsessions. A 

military man does a wolf; a military man does a dog. There are not two 

multiplicities or two machines; one and the same machinic assemblage 

produces and distributes the whole, in other words, the set of statements 

corresponding to the "complex." What does psychoanalysis have to say 

about all of this? Oedipus, nothing but Oedipus, because it hears nothing 

and listens to nobody. It flattens everything, masses and packs, molecular 

and molar machines,

 

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