Decalcomania, Mapping and Mimesis

In the second place, singularities possess a process of auto unification, always mobile and displaced to the extent that a paradoxical element traverses the series and makes them resonate. . . .

—Gilles Deleuze¹

Zero: Resonance

What if these two terms, 'decalcomania' and 'mapping' are already in resonance before a decision separates them as such? Not only because Deleuze refers here and there to 'resonance,' but also, and mainly, because of the lure of the word, or an invitation by Nietzsche to a resonance that destroys, disturbs, and produces noise when it comes to questions like the immediate and the event in Deleuze? And what if this paradoxical element is nothing more than 'mimesis' itself?

Therefore, 'resonance' in different senses of the word:

1) Physics and Chem. (i) Generally, a condition in which a particle is subjected to an oscillating influence (as an electromagnetic field or another particle) of such a frequency that a transfer of energy occurs or reaches a maximum.

2) Mech. (i) A condition in which an object or system is subjected to an oscillating force having a frequency close to that of a natural vibration of the object or system; the resulting amplification of the natural vibration.

3) Electr. The phenomenon of an oscillating signal (as an electric current or electromagnetic radiation) producing an effect upon an oscillating current of the same frequency; the condition in which a circuit or device produces the largest possible response to an applied oscillating signal, esp. when its inductive reactance balances its capacitative reactance.²

Definition of resonance, as one can follow in the entries above was modeled, at least initially, on a relationship between a source and another object on which this source acts upon, say, as in a relationship between a model and a copy: obviously a definition which is heavily predetermined with positing the source as the origin of resonance. However, with the unfolding of the quantum theory,³ there arises, in contrast, a second definition which replaces the first definition by distributing the privilege of being the source or the origin of resonance among all the objects, thereby eliminating the question of the source from its privileged position. One also observes in the second definition that each object, without the necessity of an originator, is always already in vibration, and resonance is what happens between those vibrating multiplicity of 'sources.'

Deleuze refers to a concept of resonance,⁴ especially in The Logic of Sense (2003), whenever it is a matter of defining a relationship between 'two series,' or, developing a strategy against the return of the Hegelian dialectics so that any moment of 'aufhebung' is avoided. One question to be raised here is whether the distribution of this concept of 'resonance' in the philosophy of Deleuze functions as it is supposed to function. And, if so, does he want us to presume that it is this second definition of resonance that he has in mind whenever he refers to this term in order to explain, say, the relationship between model and copy in a simulacrum,⁵ between singularities,⁶ between chaos and the image of thought, between bodies and events, between actual and virtual, etc?

Despite all the nuances included in the concept of resonance in Deleuze, I will initially offer in this article that the question of resonance is closely related to the question of 'the first' in Deleuze's philosophy. 'Decalcomania' and 'mapping' in this sense are only two areas of my investigation of the question of "the first" by means of which I will foreground the problematic position of mimesis in Deleuze. And the question of mimesis will be taken into consideration later in relation to 'simulacra,' 'actualisation/counter-actualisation,' 'Dionysian machine' and, 'the image of thought' with the intention of raising the following question: Is there something else which puts the Deleuzian 'resonance' into resonance?

One

Bearing in mind this question of resonance, let us concentrate for a while on the problematique relationship between 'decalcomania' and 'mapping...