Microsoft Word Deleuze, Guattari- a thousand Plateaus

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8 □ 10,000 B.C.: THE GEOLOGY OF MORALS

 

states, and also on the impact of exterior forces on the formation of expres-

sion. There may be a greater or lesser number of intermediate states 

between the molecular and the molar; there may be a greater or lesser num-

ber of exterior forces or organizing centers participating in the molar form. 

Doubtless, these two factors are in an inverse relation to each other and 

indicate limit-cases. For example, the molar form of expression may be of 

the "mold" type, mobilizing a maximum of exterior forces; or it may be of 

the "modulation" type, bringing into play only a minimum number of 

them. Even in the case of the mold, however, there are nearly instantane-

ous, interior intermediate states between the molecular content that 

assumes its own specific forms and the determinate molar expression of 

the outside by the form of the mold. Conversely, even when the multiplica-

tion and temporalization of the intermediate states testify to the endo-

genous character of the molar form (as with crystals), a minimum of 

exterior forces still intervene in each of the stages.

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 We must therefore say 

that the relative independence of content and expression, the real distinc-

tion between molecular content and molar expression with their respective 

forms, has a special status enjoying a certain amount of latitude between 

the limit-cases.

 

Since strata are judgments of God, one should not hesitate to apply all 

the subtleties of medieval Scholasticism and theology. There is a real dis-

tinction between content and expression because the corresponding forms 

are effectively distinct in the "thing" itself, and not only in the mind of the 

observer. But this real distinction is quite special; it is only formal since the 

two forms compose or shape a single thing, a single stratified subject. Vari-

ous examples of formal distinction can be cited: between scales or orders of 

magnitude (as between a map and its model; or, in a different fashion, 

between the micro- and macrophysical levels, as in the parable of 

Eddington's two offices); between the various states or formal reasons 

through which a thing passes; between the thing in one form, and as 

affected by a possibly exterior causality giving it a different form; and so 

forth. (There is a proliferation of distinct forms because, in addition to 

content and expression each having its own forms, intermediate states 

introduce forms of expression proper to content and forms of content 

proper to expression.)

 

As diverse and real as formal distinctions are, on the organic stratum the 

very nature of the distinction changes. As a result, the entire distribution 

between content and expression is different. The organic stratum never-

theless preserves, and even amplifies, the relation between the molecular 

and the molar, with all kinds of intermediate states. We saw this in the case 

of morphogenesis, where double articulation is inseparable from a com-

munication between two orders of magnitude. The same thing applies to

 

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0,000 B.C.: THE GEOLOGY OF MORALS D 59

 

cellular chemistry. But the organic stratum has a unique character that 

must account for the amplifications. In a preceding discussion, expression 

was dependent upon the expressed molecular content in all directions and 

in every dimension and had independence only to the extent that it 

appealed to a higher order of magnitude and to exterior forces: The real dis-

tinction was between forms, but forms belonging to the same aggregate, the 

same thing or subject. Now, however, expression becomes independent in its 

own right, in other words, autonomous. Before, the coding of a stratum was 

coextensive with that stratum; on the organic stratum, on the other hand, it 

takes place on an autonomous and independent line that detaches as much 

as possible from the second and third dimensions. Expression ceases to be 

voluminous or superficial, becoming linear, unidimensional (even in its 

segmentarity). The essential thing is the linearity of the nucleic sequence.

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The real distinction between content and expression, therefore, is not sim-

ply formal. It is strictly speaking real, and passes into the molecular, with-

out regard to order of magnitude. It is between two classes of molecules, 

nucleic acids of expression and proteins of content, nucleic elements or 

nucleotides and protein elements or amino acids. Both expression and 

content are now molecular and molar. The distinction no longer concerns a 

single aggregate or subject; linearity takes us further in the direction of flat 

multiplicities, rather than unity. Expression involves nucleotides and 

nucleic acids as well as molecules that, in their substance and form, are 

entirely independent not only of molecules of content but of any directed 

action in the exterior milieu. Thus invariance is a characteristic of certain 

molecules and is not found exclusively on the molar scale. Conversely, pro-

teins, in their substance and form of content, are equally independent of 

nucleotides: the only thing univocally determined is that one amino acid 

rather than another corresponds to a sequence of three nucleotides.

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' What 

the linear form of expression determines is therefore a derivative form of 

expression, one that is relative to content and that, through a folding back 

upon itself of the protein sequence of the amino acids, finally yields the 

characteristic three-dimensional structures. In short, what is specific to the 

organic stratum is this alignment of expression, this exhaustion or detach-

ment of a line of expression, this reduction of form and substance of expres-

sion to a unidimensional line, guaranteeing their reciprocal independence 

from content without having to account for orders of magnitude.

 

This has many consequences. The new configuration of expression and 

content conditions not only the organism's power to reproduce but also its 

power to deterritorialize or accelerate deterritorialization. The alignment 

of the code or linearity of the nucleic sequence in fact marks a threshold of 

deterritorialization of the "sign" that gives it a new ability to be copied and 

makes the organism more deterritorialized than a crystal: only something

 

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