𝐁𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐈𝐬 𝐈𝐧𝐯𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐍𝐞𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐑𝐞𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐍𝐨𝐫 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧
”What matters on a path, what matters on a line, is always the middle, not the beginning or the end.
We are always in the middle of a path, in the middle of something.
The boring thing about questions and answers, about interviews, about conversations, is that usually it’s a matter of taking stock: the past and the present, the present and the future.
This is why it is even and always possible to say of an author that his first work already contains the whole, or on the contrary that he is ceaselessly renewing himself, transforming himself.
In every case it is the theme of the embryo which evolves, sometimes on the basis of a preformation in the seed, sometimes on the basis of successive structurations. But the embryo, evolution, are not good things.
Becoming does not happen in that way. In becoming there is no past nor future-not even present, there is no history.
In becoming it is, rather, a matter of involuting; it’s neither regression nor progression.
To become is to become more and more restrained, more and more simple, more and more deserted and for that very reason populated.
This is what’s difficult to explain: to what extent one should involute. It is obviously the opposite of evolution, but it is also the opposite of regression, returning to a childhood or to a primitive world.
To involute is to have an increasingly simple, economical, restrained step.
It is also true for clothes: elegance as the opposite of the overdressed where too much is put on, where something more is always added which will spoil everything.
Experimentation is involutive, the opposite of the overdose. It is also true of writing; to reach this sobriety, this simplicity which is neither the end nor the beginning of something.
To involute is to be ‘between’, in the middle, adjacent.”
(Deleuze & Parnet: Dialogues II, Columbia University Press, 2007, p. 28ff.)
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