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52 D 10,000 B.C.: THE GEOLOGY OF MORALS

 

the speeds and rates of its substances; and it can experience itself only in a 

milieu of exteriority that measures the comparative advantages of the asso-

ciated milieus and the differential relations of the intermediary milieus. 

Milieus always act, through selection, on entire organisms, the forms of 

which depend on codes those milieus sanction indirectly. Associated 

milieus divide a single milieu of exteriority among themselves as a func-

tion of different forms, just as intermediate milieus divide a milieu of 

exteriority among themselves as a function of the rates or degrees of a sin-

gle form. But the dividing is done differently in the two cases. In relation to 

the central belt of the stratum, the intermediate strata or milieus constitute 

"epistrata" piled one atop the other, and form new centers for the new 

peripheries. We will apply the term "parastrata" to the second way in which 

the central belt fragments into sides and "besides," and the irreducible 

forms and milieus associated with them. This time, it is at the level of the 

limit or membrane of the central belt that the formal relations or traits 

common to all of the strata necessarily assume entirely different forms or 

types of forms corresponding to the parastrata. A stratum exists only in its 

epistrata and parastrata, so that in the final analysis these must be consid-

ered strata in their own right. The ideally continuous belt or ring of the 

stratum—the Ecumenon defined by the identity of molecular materials, 

substantial elements, and formal relations—exists only as shattered, frag-

mented into epistrata and parastrata that imply concrete machines and 

their respective indexes, and constitute different molecules, specific sub-

stances, and irreducible forms.

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We may now return to the two fundamental contributions of Darwinism 

and answer the question of why forms or types of forms in the parastrata 

must be understood in relation to populations, and degrees of develop-

ment in the epistrata as rates or differential relations. First, parastrata 

envelop the very codes upon which the forms depend, and these codes nec-

essarily apply to populations. There must already be an entire molecular 

population to be coded, and the effects of the code, or a change in the code, 

are evaluated in relation to a more or less molar population, depending on 

the code's ability to propagate in the milieu or create for itself a new associ-

ated milieu within which the modification will be popularizable. Yes, we 

must always think in terms of packs and multiplicities: a code does or does 

not take hold because the coded individual belongs to a certain population, 

"the population inhabiting test tubes, a flask full of water, or a mammal's 

intestine." What does it mean to say that new forms and associated milieus 

potentially result from a change in the code, a modification of the code, or a 

variation in the parastratum? The change is obviously not due to a passage 

from one preestablished form to another, in other words, a translation 

from one code to another. As long as the problem was formulated in that

 

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10,000 B.C.: THE GEOLOGY OF MORALS □ 53

 

fashion, it remained insoluble, and one would have to agree with Cuvier 

and Baer that established types of forms are irreducible and therefore do 

not admit of translation or transformation. But as soon as it is recognized 

that a code is inseparable from a process of decoding that is inherent to it, 

the problem receives a new formulation. There is no genetics without 

"genetic drift." The modern theory of mutations has clearly demonstrated 

that a code, which necessarily relates to a population, has an essential mar-

gin of decoding: not only does every code have supplements capable of free 

variation, but a single segment may be copied twice, the second copy left 

free for variation. In addition, fragments of code may be transferred from 

the cells of one species to those of another, Man and Mouse, Monkey and 

Cat, by viruses or through other procedures. This involves not translation 

between codes (viruses are not translators) but a singular phenomenon we 

call surplus value of code, or side-communication.'

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 We will have occasion 

to discuss this further, for it is essential to all becomings-animal. Every 

code is affected by a margin of decoding due to these supplements and sur-

plus values—supplements in the order of a multiplicity, surplus values in 

the order of a rhizome. Forms in the parastrata, the parastrata themselves, 

far from lying immobile and frozen upon the strata, are part of a machinic 

interlock: they relate to populations, populations imply codes, and codes 

fundamentally include phenomena of relative decoding that are all the 

more usable, composable, and addable by virtue of being relative, always 

"beside."

 

Forms relate to codes and processes of coding and decoding in the 

parastrata; substances, being formed matters, relate to territorialities and 

movements of deterritorialization and reterritorialization on the 

epis-trata. In truth, the epistrata are just as inseparable from the 

movements that constitute them as the parastrata are from their 

processes. Nomadic waves or flows of deterritorialization go from the 

central layer to the periphery, then from the new center to the new 

periphery, falling back to the old center and launching forth to the new.

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The organization of the epistrata moves in the direction of increasing 

deterritorialization. Physical particles and chemical substances cross 

thresholds of deterritorialization on their own stratum and between strata; 

these thresholds correspond to more or less stable intermediate states, to 

more or less transitory valences and existences, to engagements with this 

or that other body, to densities of proximity, to more or less localizable 

connections. Not only are physical particles characterized by speeds of 

deterritorialization—Joycean tachyons, particles-holes, and quarks 

recalling the fundamental idea of the "soup"—but a single chemical 

substance (sulfur or carbon, for example) has a number of more and less 

deterritorialized states. The more interior milieus an organism has on its 

own stratum, assuring its autonomy and

 

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