Deleuze 1993

The Pleats of Matter

labyrinth -- continuous labyrinth -- "multiple because it contains many folds" (3)

"matter tends to spill over in space, to be reconciled with fluidity at the same time fluids themselves are divided into masses" (4)

fundamental notions of the curvature of the universe:

• fluidity of matter
• elasticity of bodies
• motivating spirit as a mechanism

"matter thus offers an infinitely porous, spongy, or cavernous texture without emptiness, caverns endlessly contained in other caverns" (5)

body essentially esastic -- hardness as well as fluidity

"That is what Leibniz explains in an extraordinary piece of writing: a flexible or an elastic body still has cohering parts that form a fold, such that they are not separated into parts of parts but are rather divided to infinity in smaller and smaller folds that always retain a certain cohesion. Thus a continuous labyrinth is not a line dissolving into independent points, as flowing sand might dissolve into grains, but resembles a sheet of paper divided into infinite folds or separated into bending movements, each one determined by the consistent or conspiring surroundings." (6)

folds always folded in folds --= always caverns in caverns

unfolding not the opposite of folding, but "follows the fold up to the following fold" (6)

world is infinitely cavernous because "everywhere there can be found 'a spirit in matter'" -- worlds existing in tiny bodies (7)

whether organic or inorganic, matter is all one (7)

plastic forces: impossible to go from matter to organism; plastic forces preform them -- organs born from other organs (7)

• living matter doesn't exceed mechanical processes, but rather "mechanisms are not sufficient to be machines"
• in our mechanisms, each part is not its own machine, but simply a part; for the organism, each mechanism is infinitely machined, each part its own mechanism

"A mechanism is faulty not for being too artificial to account for living matter, but for not being mechanical enough, for not being adequately machined." (8)

"the organic body thus confers an interior on matter, by which the principle of individuation is applied to it: whence the figure of the leaves of a tree, two never being exactly alike because of their veins or folds." (8)

folding-unfolding enveloping-developing involution-evolution

"The organism is defined by its ability to fold its own parts and to unfold them, not to infinity, but to a degree of development assigned to each species." (8)

every animal is double -- heterogeneous, heteromorphic creature butterfly folded into caterpillar that unfolds into the butterfly (9)

"For Leibniz, as for the Baroque, the principles of reason are veritable cries: Not everything is fish, but fish are teeming everywhere. . . . Universality does not exist, but living things are ubiquitous." (9)