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215 Appendix 2 What Is a Trait? We must not confuse a trait with the traditional ways in which we have thought about language.1 It is not a sense or meaning; it is not a proposition ; it is not even a sentence, phrase, or a word. A trait is smaller than these linguistic forms; if we say that it is a kind of form, it is one that is minimal or micrological. But it is best to say that a trait is non-formal; it is not yet or no longer a unit or a unity. A trait is non-linguistic insofar as traits do not necessarily carry a meaning; a trait is prelinguistic (or proto-linguistic) insofar as language is made of traits and contains them. A trait is not invisible, but it is frequently covered over by maximum or macrological units such as words, phrases, and sentences. A trait therefore is a very small (abstract) element such as a cry or a murmur.2 It is a singularity or an event. In this regard, a trait is material or corporeal. It has something to do with a body and a location: a trait of a face, a tic, or the trait of a voice, a lilt. A trait, however, is also variable, repeatable, or transformable, which makes it incorporeal or spiritual. The repeatability of the trait is what makes it haunt anyone who encounters it. The cry of the wolf in the night recurs in a nightmare. It is the repeatability of the trait that makes it retreat or withdraw; a trait, so to speak, “retraits.” Retreating , the trait becomes; it becomes a multiplicity. It has always been a multiplicity, prior to any subject who might speak it. Traits are the voices of no one, or, more precisely, they are voices of everyone: a clamor. Traits refer back to past uses and ahead to future uses, but also they refer across, down, or up to other traits. But they never refer to an absolute origin or an absolute purpose. They are inherently mobile. They never refer back 216 · Appendix 2 to a repressed content. They never refer to “something” unthought, even though their withdrawal gives us more to think about. What there is more to think in the trait is its indeterminacy; it remains indeterminate in its uses or occurrences. A trait is undecidable. Traits then are not forms but functions. Being large, a form is composed of many functions. Functions are informal; they have only little, micrological details. We already mentioned that a face, for example, has a form, but it is composed of many traits or features; besides a tic, there is a mole. A poem, for example, has a form, its verses and the spatial arrangements of words and punctuation. But within the poem, there are functions of rhyme and alliteration. These poetic traits may be extracted and repeated differently than they were in the poem; repeated into a different milieu or repeated more rapidly or more slowly, they may be used differently and then they produce different outcomes. Because the traits are informal, each function is indeterminately plural. For instance, the function of disguising oneself contains at least two possible uses: exhibition and concealment. We see the undecidability of the function of disguise in animals. Animals disguise themselves at times in order to exhibit themselves so that, through the exhibition, they are able to attract something that can serve as a mate; at other times, they disguise themselves in order to conceal themselves so that, through the concealment, they are able to attack something that can serve as nourishment. A warrior therefore dresses himself for battle in a way that he may hide from the enemy.3 The function of disguise is inherently variable, without an absolute purpose or origin. Although the warrior extracts the function of disguise from the animals, he does not become an animal. The warrior becomes a woman, since women too disguise themselves. So the warrior becomes woman so that woman may become something else. What does the woman become? The woman does not become a man. Disguising herself, she becomes an animal who exhibits herself, not so that she may attract a mate, but so that she may be able to attack an enemy. She becomes a warrior-animal. This sequence is only one possible line of becoming in the disguising function. We must note that in the sequence, in any sequence whatsoever, there is no reciprocity. In...

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