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Dialogues@RU is published
annually
by the
Writing Program at
Rutgers, The State
University of New Jersey
Volume 4
Fall 2005
By Frankie Dintino
This tangential remark about the line of flight deserves further explanation. According to Deleuze and Guattari, lines of flight are "marked by quanta and defined by decoding and deterritorialization" ( A Thousand Plateaus 222). In other words, these lines break through the strata and codes imposed on us. Given the conditions of control societies, this may seem like a good thing. However, lines of flight are not without their dangers, namely that of "the line of flight crossing the wall, getting out of the black holes, but instead of connecting with other lines and each time augmenting its valence, turning to destruction, abolition pure and simple, the passion of abolition " ( A Thousand Plateaus 229) . In other words, there is always a danger that the line of flight might take one from a path of deterritorialization to one of pure destruction. In their analysis, Deleuze and Guattari associate this transformation of the line of flight with fascism:
There is in fascism a realized nihilism. Unlike the totalitarian State, which does its utmost to seal all possible lines of flight, fascism is constructed on an intense line of flight, which it transforms into a line of pure destruction and abolition. ( A Thousand Plateaus 230)
Fascism first rears its head with the establishment of the proper name ("fight club") and an institutionalized set of rules. Later, when fight club gives way to Project Mayhem, it becomes more apparent that Jack's line of flight has become destructive, veering towards fascism. Here we find a number of "space monkeys" indoctrinating new members, donning black shirts, and screaming slogans over megaphones. Additionally, instead of grounding identity in a concept of masculinity, the individual's identity in the project is subordinate to the whole: "in Project Mayhem, we have no names" (Fincher). This is microfascism in full force, a perfect example of a line of flight turning into a line not of production but of abolition and destruction.
In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze places the signifier of late-capitalism on the order of simulacra: "the simulacrum and the symbol are one; in other words, the simulacrum is the sign in so far as the sign interiorizes the conditions of its own repetition" (67). In A Thousand Plateaus this notion is present in spirit, but it is for the most part usurped by the "circularity of signs" and the "multiplicity of circles or chains" (113). The elements of the "regime of signs" serve as points of subjectification, as demonstrated for instance in Jack's relationship with his furniture. In Fight Club it is precisely this regime of signs and its resulting subjectification that are under attack. The fight is unique in that it offers a retreat into a pre-signifying regime of signs, because the body takes the place of language as an enunciator of the human condition: "sometimes all you could hear were flat, hard packing sounds over the yelling" (Fincher). These are corporeal significations - that is, signifying agents of the body. The adversarial relationship which the fight club has to traditional linguistic signification is made clear by the first rule: "The first rule of fight club is you do not talk about fight club" (Fincher). Thus, the fight club interdicts the traditional linguistic sign.
And yet, despite this, the fight club and later Project Mayhem have their own logic of inscription. Deleuze and Guattari, in their earlier work Anti-Oedipus analyzed particularly well the unique nature that capitalism has with writing: "the [capitalist] axiomatic does not need to write in bare flesh, to mark bodies and organs, nor does it need to fashion a memory for men" (250). In other words, society has in a certain sense reached "the end of history." In one of the polemics of the film, Tyler Durden declares before the others at the club: "we are the middle children of history ¾ no purpose or place. We have no great war, no great depression" (Fincher). Arguably, history still exists; it is merely a history without the event, or even perhaps, the event as simulacra (Derrida). To give an example from personal experience of the event as simulacra, there is that event whose proper name coincides with the date of its occurrence. I recall that on September 11, 2001, after being surrounded non-stop by the repeated images of the planes crashing into the World Trade Center buildings, there was one response that was both extremely common and unsettling: "I feel like I'm watching a movie." It is as if, in our simulated culture, our only models for such a horrendous event come from films, that is, from things which are themselves copies, on the order of simulacra. To this history without event of late capitalism, Deleuze and Guattari contrast a memory of the body which they call "cruelty":
Cruelty has nothing to do with some ill-defined or natural violence that might be commissioned to explain the history of mankind; cruelty is the movement of culture that is realized in bodies and inscribed on them, belaboring them. . . . The sign is a position of desire; but the first signs are the territorial signs that plant their flags in bodies.( Anti-Oedipus 145)