Vibration, Singularity, Event: Deleuze and Badiou on Poetic Language

Abstract

Here I first look at Badiou's ＂analytic＂ view of poetic language in Handbook of Inaesthetics, where he distinguishes it from logical-mathematical language. Whereas mathematics is ＂thought that exists precisely inasmuch as it is thinkable,＂ poetry is an unthinkable thought and a pure event, a pure singularity that cannot ＂name＂ the very ＂power of language＂ that it manifests. I then contrast this with Deleuze's theory of poetic language, which emphasizes the physicality of voice and sees the poem itself as a totalized, vibrating or ＂stuttering＂ language-body. After suggesting how Mallarme's three ＂fan＂ (eventail) sonnets easily fit the Deleuzian notion of poem as vibrating body, I turn to Badiou's reading of passages from Mallarme's ＂Monologue of a Faun＂ and from a pre-Islamic ode by the Arab poet Labid ben Rabi'a. I will suggest that Badiou and Deleuze, who both look at poetic language as a singular event, also both note the indeterminacy or disappearance of the difference between the poem's ＂outside＂ (form) and ＂inside＂ (content). Thus finally I briefly explore Badiou's and Deleuze's approaches to Mallarme's long poem ＂Un Coup de Des,＂ where once again we see these two thinkers' predictable differences but also their common awareness that we finally cannot distinguish between a poem's form and content, between the indefinitely delayed ＂dice-throw＂ taken as the driving force or utterance of the poem and taken as its actualization, its meaning.