i hav received several private posts doubting the importance of actual
and virtual to AO and ATP. i have been told that deterritorialization
and reterritorialization are the most important conceptrs to thse
works and they have nothing to do with actual and virtual. i'll
try to explain the resonance between actual and virtual and de and re-
territorialization.
to begin with, however, content and expression and abstract machine and
concrete machinic assemblage appear to me to 'fit' actual and virtual
more easily than de- and reterritorialization, but virtual and actual
are nonetheless very much at work here. content can be thought of as the
virtual and expression the actual. like content and expression, actual
and virtual are in reciprocal determination yet do not resemble each other.
expression is the actualization of virtual content. so too the abstract
machine is the virtual content of the expression (actualization--
differenCiation in DIFFERENCE & REPETITION) of machini assemblages.
who deterritorializes? the abstract machine. who gets reterritorialized?
machinic assemblages. thus the intensive energy of the virtual bifurcates
(deterritorializes, this is the 'event') and is actualized (differenCiated,
folded) onto and within machinic assemblages (reterritorialization).
intensive deterritoralization, extensive reterritoralization. energy and
bifurcation coalesced into matter. energy is the de (which is virtual)
and gravity that comes with matter is the reterritorialization.
this is a very simplified and perhaps strained link between de- and re-
territorializtion and the virtual and actual. but i certainly think it
is there. but content and expression and abstract machine and machinic
assemblage definitely resonate well with virtual and actual. agian,
the fold is the differenCiator of the differenciated. the deterritoralizer
of the reterritorialized. the mediates between the actual and virtual.
the virtual unfolds into the actual. the word 'unfold' is use repeatedly
in D&R when describe the 'communication' between virtual and actual.
See also page 105 of THE FOLD. there is a diagram of virtual and actual
and possible and real. Deleuze is carefull to distinguish between possible
and virtual and the actualization of the 'event' in the pages that
immediately follow this diagram.
chris
------------------