This article was downloaded by: [Mariela Burani]

On: 19 February 2013, At: 20:13

Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954
Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,
UK

Contemporary French and

Francophone Studies
Publication details, including instructions for authors
and subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gsit20

Deleuze's Spider, Proust's

Narrator
Patrick M. Bray
Version of record first published: 29 Nov 2012.

To cite this article: Patrick M. Bray (2012): Deleuze's Spider, Proust's Narrator,
Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, 16:5, 703-710
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17409292.2012.739444

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/termsand-conditions
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.
Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sublicensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly
forbidden.
The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any
representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to
date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be
independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable
for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages
whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection
with or arising out of the use of this material.

Contemporary French and Francophone Studies

Vol. 16, No. 5, December 2012, 703710

DELEUZES SPIDER, PROUSTS NARRATOR

Downloaded by [Mariela Burani] at 20:13 19 February 2013

Patrick M. Bray

ABSTRACT Gilles Deleuzes conclusion to Proust et les signes proposes that the
Proustian narrator is as blind as a spider. This would seem to amount to a
problematization of the theorizing aspect of the novel, of the narrator as theorist, since
theory, from the Greek theorein, to view, implies the capacity to visualize a problem,
to see the outward aspect of an object. I argue by following Deleuzes convoluted thread
and comparing his text to references to spiders and blindness in Barthes and in de Man,
that Prousts Recherche could be thought of as a machine that fabricates paradoxically
blinding theoretical insights. To understand the novel as producing theory not only puts
into question the notion of aesthetics as a mode of thought independent from politics and
philosophy, it also forecloses any appraisal by the literary critic or philosopher, since novels
encompass both form and concept, the visible and the readable.
Keywords: Proust; Deleuze; Theory; Spider; Blindness; Novel

At the enigmatic conclusion of his essay Proust et les signes, Gilles Deleuze
compares the narrator of A` la Recherche du temps perdu to a spider, an animal
incapable of sight or other sensory perception other than an acute attention
to the vibrations of a web; this spider weaves a web, the novel itself, and
reads the web as an interpreter of signs. Deleuzes interest in the animal, in
becoming animal, is well known, but has peculiar implications in a Proustian
context. To imply, even metaphorically, that Prousts narrator is a spider
(blind and reduced to a limited territory) constitutes a flagrant disregard for the
central role of optics and vision in the Recherche and contradicts much of what
Deleuze argues in the rest of his work. By refusing any distinction between
the hero and the narrator as two different entities, and by rejecting the function
ISSN 1740-9292 (print)/ISSN 1740-9306 (online)/12/0507038 2012 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17409292.2012.739444

Downloaded by [Mariela Burani] at 20:13 19 February 2013

704

CONTEMPORARY FRENCH AND FRANCOPHONE STUDIES

of the narrator as subject, Deleuze transforms him into a machine that makes
and interprets signs. Prousts blind spider feels in its BodywithoutOrgans but
cannot understand the world around it, it cannot theorize. Therefore, Deleuzes
reading would seem to amount to a problematization of the theorizing aspect of
the novel, of the narrator as theorist. Theory (from the Greek theorein, to view)
implies the capacity to visualize a problem, to see the outward aspect of an
object. I argue that by following Deleuzes convoluted thread, Prousts Recherche
could be thought of as a machine that fabricates paradoxically blinding
theoretical insights. To understand the novel as producing theory not only puts
into question the notion of literature as a mode of thought independent
from politics and philosophy, it also forecloses any appraisal by the literary critic
or philosopher, since novels encompass both form and concept, the visible and
the readable. I suggest that in order for the critic to theorize, to see truth in a
novel, she or he has to imagine the narrator, and the text itself, as blind.
Deleuzes Proust et les signes was published in four different editions, with
two major sections added. The first edition in 1964, now simply part one of the
final edition, makes the famous argument that A` la Recherche du temps perdu is not
a book about memory or even time but rather a book about the apprenticeship
of a writer who learns how to interpret signs. The second and third editions,
from 1970 and 1971, added part two on the Machine litteraire, which argues
that while Prousts novel proposes a theory of essences, he is not in fact a
Platonist, but rather affirms an Anti-Logos, an aesthetic of differing levels and
especially of fragmentation that resists any totalizing wholes or touts. The
final edition from 1976 added a conclusion first published elsewhere, called
Presence et fonction de la folie LAraignee. Through these various additions,
Deleuze shifts his emphasis from the narrator as an interpreter of signs and a
distiller of essences, to the novel itself as a machine producing signs, and finally,
in the new conclusion, to the madness of Charlus (who is master of Logos), the
madness of Albertine (who is unable to become an individual), and the madness
of the hero who is not a subject but rather des agencements ou` la machine
fonctionne [assemblages where the machine functions] (217). That Deleuze
does not see the interest in distinguishing between the narrator and the hero or
in granting them subjectivity is understandable given the unstable nature of all
texts, but what follows in the last two pages of the conclusion is perplexing.
First he says that Proust presente ce narrateur comme incapable de voir, de
percevoir, de se souvenir, de comprendre . . . etc. [Proust presents this
narrator as incapable of seeing, of perceiving, of remembering, of understanding . . . etc.] (217). He further argues that le narrateur na pas dorganes
[the narrator has no organs], but qualifying this statement he writes ou na
jamais ceux dont il aurait besoin, quil aurait souhaites [or never has the one
that he needs, that he wants]. The narrators comic inability to understand the
world around him until after the fact, what in the rest of Deleuzes study
confirms his apprenticeship in signs, here becomes a permanent state of being,

DELEUZES SPIDER, PROUSTS NARRATOR

as Deleuze proposes that le narrateur est un enorme Corps sans organes [the
narrator is an enormous BodywithoutOrgans] (218). Deleuze then makes the
leap from this BodywithoutOrgans to the image of a spider:

Downloaded by [Mariela Burani] at 20:13 19 February 2013

Mais quest-ce que cest, un corps sans organes? Laraignee non plus ne voit
rien, ne percoit rien, ne se souvient de rien. [. . .] La Recherche nest pas
batie comme une cathedrale ni comme une robe, mais comme une toile
[But what is a BodywithoutOrgans? The spider does not see anything either,
does not perceive anything, does not remember anything. [. . .] In Search of
Lost Time is not built like a cathedral or a dress, but like a web/text]. (218)
For Deleuze and Guattari of course a BodywithoutOrgans is not literally
without organs, but a body where organs are not privileged or systematizedit
can be associated with smooth space, with the plane of immanence, it is haptic as
opposed to ocular. Whether a spiders web is smooth space or not probably
depends on the point of view of the spider or the fly. Real spiders do have
limited eyesight, and so are not entirely blind. They may read and interpret
signs, but they weave their web beforehand, whereas in Deleuzes reading of
Proust, intelligence only occurs after the fact. A spider is not terribly good
at reading signs, and if it has no memory as Deleuze says, then how can the
narrator-as-spider complete his apprenticeship? It is true that in La Prisonnie`re,
the narrator seems driven mad by jealousy as he casts about insanely for signs
of Albertines lascivious behavior, but in Le Temps retrouve when he hides away in a
maison de sante and thus deprives himself of any effective sensory input, the novel
goes silent, the machine stops functioning.
Deleuze further qualifies his statement, arguing that the narrator has
no organs in the sense that meaningful perception only happens involuntarily:
il na pas dorganes pour autant quil est prive de tout usage volontaire et
organise de ses facultes. En revanche, une faculte sexerce en lui quand elle est
contrainte et forcee de le faire (he has no organs in as much as he is deprived
of any voluntary and systematic usage of his faculties. On the other hand, a
faculty is exerted in him when it is constrained and forced to) (218).
Understanding, intelligence, or vision can only come after an involuntary
encounter with a sign. The narrators prolific, often comical, passivity is here
turned into a positive force since it allows him to remain open to future stimuli:
for Deleuzes Proust we only truly think when we are forced to think by
some outside stimulus. Yet the revelations about essences and the image of
time in the novel happen not from throwing a web on the outside world,
but from the intensive effort of reading what the narrator calls the internal
book of signs.
If a real spider is hardly a BodywithoutOrgans, and if the novels hero
as writing apprentice cannot be a blind and forgetful spider, then why does
Deleuze insist on this metaphor? Deleuze doesnt get the metaphor from

705

Downloaded by [Mariela Burani] at 20:13 19 February 2013

706

CONTEMPORARY FRENCH AND FRANCOPHONE STUDIES

the novel since, in the thousands of pages of the Recherche the word araignee
only shows up four times and never in relation to the narrator. In the Abecedaire,
his filmed interview with Claire Pernet from 19881989, Deleuze talks about
being fascinated by spiders, fleas, ticks, and other creatures precisely because
they inspire hatred or repugnance. Animals, for Deleuze, have their own worlds,
created by limited perceptions and needs; animals have territories just as artists
do, since they both live in reduced worlds of signs, perceptions, and postures.
Instead of thinking about the narrator/hero of the Recherche as an avatar of
Proust himself, as the charming figure who eats Madeleines and gets excited
about flowering trees, Deleuzes metaphor serves to remind us of what is truly
fascinating and repugnant about the narrator, about his specific posture
and restricted world. Proust may or may not be able to change our lives, but
his narrator is certainly not a subject, not a role model that would serve
towards a stable sense of self, but rather his narrator would strive towards
the becoming-animal of the artist who attempts to shake off the burden of the
organized human body towards greater articulation or agencement in a
literary machine producing signs.
This undoing of subjectivity through becoming-spider in a literary text
has a distinct echo in Roland Barthes Le Plaisir du texte, published only a few
years earlier. Barthes writes:
Texte veut dire Tissu; [. . .] perdu dans ce tissuecette texturele sujet sy
defait, telle une araignee qui se dissoudrait elle-meme dans les secretions
constructives de sa toile. Si nous aimions les neo-logismes, nous pourrions
definir la theorie du texte comme une hyphologie (hyphos, cest le tissu et
la toile daraignee). [Text means Fabric; [. . .] lost in this fabricthis
texturethe subject undoes itself, like a spider which dissolves itself in
the constrictive secretions of its web. If we like neologisms, we might
define the theory of the text as an hyphology (hyphos is fabric and spider
web)]. (86)
Writer and reader alike dissolve in the interlacing of a perpetually becoming
text. For Barthes, this dissolution of the spider into the fabric of its web
constitutes the very image of textual theory. Yet if the writer, reader, and subject
dissolve and the text continually reworks itself, Barthes cannot resist suggesting
a theory and a defining term for this unpredictable process: hyphology the
paradoxical Logos of fabrics or webs. Even as the reading and writing subject
disappears, the critic or theoretician of literature gains a new perspective on
the text, acquires a vision or theory denied others caught in the web of the text.
If theory derives etymologically from a Greek verb for to view or to see,
and visual metaphors dominate our theoretical vocabulary (speculate, insight,
clarity, enlightenment, and point of view), then according to Barthess

Downloaded by [Mariela Burani] at 20:13 19 February 2013

DELEUZES SPIDER, PROUSTS NARRATOR

hyphologie, the text as spider web blinds the spider itself, but the reader as
theorist gains a perspective on a limitless textual horizon.
Deleuzes description of the Recherches narrator/spider as incapable of
seeing, of perceiving, like Barthess hyphology, denies the text theoretical
vision in order to propose its own theory of desire and text. Deleuze plays
in these last two pages of his work with the literal and figural meaning of sight as
the ability to see with the eyes and the ability to understand or perceive
consciously. Prousts novel according to Deleuzes conclusion would then be
an ever-expanding web of connections relaying the external stimuli of signs,
woven blindly and unconsciously by a narrator-spider.
But throughout the rest of Proust et les signes, Deleuze seems to say the
opposite by employing a quite different visual vocabulary, borrowed in large part
from Proust, such as hieroglyphs, telescopes, and points of view. This different
visual vocabulary affirms the narrators ability to see, conceptualize, and theorize
the signs around him. The various signs that need to be interpreted by the
narrator in his apprenticeship are hieroglyphshieroglyphs are of course
visual representations of words and sounds as graphic figures, objects, people,
or usually animals (though strangely the Egyptians did not have hieroglyphs of
spiders). The hieroglyph would combine the visible and the readable into
one sign, but a sign where the disjunction between the visible and enunciable
would be apparent, similar perhaps to Deleuzes description of the diagram
in his 1986 book Foucault: Tout savoir va dun visible a` un enoncable,
et inversement [All knowledge goes from a visible towards an expressible,
and vice versa] (4647).
Art is privileged for Deleuzes Proust because of this unity of an immaterial
sign with its meaning (sens) as essence: a work of art is a world of signs,
of hieroglyphs, but ces signes sont immateriels et nont plus rien dopaque:
du moins pour lil ou loreille artistes [these signs are immaterial and are no
longer opaque: at least for the eye or ear of the artist] (64). The revelation of
essences, according to Deleuzes Proust, is the exclusive domain of art, and the
artists eye is the most attuned to this sort of truth, as opposed certainly to
the philosophers since as Deleuze says Prousts novel proposes an image of
thought that rivals and critiques philosophy.
Unsurprisingly, according to Deleuze the novel constructs itself as a work
of art or as a machine (a telescope as Deleuze says) that grants access to truth,
to essences for whoever reads it, though artists have a particularly fine eye for
discerning this truth. But where does this leave either the philosopher or the
critic, whose job it is to search for meaning and truth in an obscure text, and
who the novel itself implies might not be the ideal reader? Must the critical
reader imagine the text as blind in order to claim to have an original insight?
Paul de Man famously poses these and similar questions in Blindness and Insight
from 1971, a few years before Deleuzes conclusion to Proust et les signes and

707

708

CONTEMPORARY FRENCH AND FRANCOPHONE STUDIES

Downloaded by [Mariela Burani] at 20:13 19 February 2013

Barthes Le Plaisir du texte. For de Man, the critic must suppose blindness in
the text to be read or in a prior reader, while ignoring his or her own inherent
blindness:
Within the structure of the system: text-reader-critic (in which the critic
can be defined as the second reader or reading) the moment of blindness
can be located differently. If the literary text itself has areas of blindness,
the system can be binary; reader and critic coincide in their attempt to make
the unseen visible. [. . .] In the more complicated case of the non-blinded
authoras we have claimed Rousseau to bethe system has to be triadic:
the blindness is transferred from the writer to his first readers, the
traditional disciples or commentators. These blinded first readers [. . .]
then need, in turn, a critical reader who reverses the tradition and
momentarily takes us closer to the original insight. (de Man 141)
Here de Man uses blindness figuratively for texts, but then claims Rousseau
to be a non-blind author of what can only be assumed to be partially blind texts.
The case of Prousts novel is even more complex, since the blindness of the
hero may be corrected later by the diegetic narrator or for that matter by
Proust, who is at least as non-blind as de Man claims Rousseau to be. Moreover,
the theoretical digressions in Prousts novel, from the myriad general laws to
the extended discussions on art, politics, and philosophy, while potentially valid
on their own, also participate in a system of meaning within the greater fictional
text. While the hero at one particular point in the novel may proclaim a general
law that manifests his own blindness, this blindness might be corrected
elsewhere in the text.
Vincent Descombes 1987 book Proust: Philosophie du roman, while
acknowledging the fact that Prousts theories are embedded in a novel,
nevertheless insists on distinguishing a pseudo-Marcel who would be an
unpublished fin-de-sie`cle philosopher from Marcel the narrator who writes an
astonishing novel. As Descombes sums up his own argument on the back
cover of his book: le roman proustien est plus hardi que Proust theoricien
[the proustian novel is more daring than Proust the theoretician]. If Deleuze
sees Prousts novel mounting an attack against philosophy, Descombes mounts a
counter-attack, based in part on this misreading, or blinded reading, of the role
of theory in the novel, specifically of the confusion of Proust with his narrator
and his hero. Descombes interprets the pseudo-Marcels theory of the novel as
one that conflates subjectivity with perspectivism, or the nave belief in the
particularity of a point-of-view, leading to a solipsism that the pseudo-Marcel
can only solve by positing the communicability of a work of art. For Descombes,
incredibly, a solipsist cannot be a character in a novel, since a novelist tells a
story about relationships between people (a host of counter-examples abound,
such as Gerard de Nervals Aurelia, and most of Michel Houllebecqs work).

Downloaded by [Mariela Burani] at 20:13 19 February 2013

DELEUZES SPIDER, PROUSTS NARRATOR

The actual novel Proust wrote, as opposed to the one the pseudo-Marcel would
like to write, offers the reader a convincing sociological study of Prousts era: it
is clear and truthful as opposed to the obscurity of the theoretical passages
that Descombes is convinced are a` peine intelligibles [barely intelligible].
Descombes thus denies any legitimacy to the novels unique theory of
points-of-view, claiming without apparent play on words that it is too obscure.
To return one last time to Deleuzes Proust et les signes, art signs lead to the
revelation of essences, which for Deleuze can be compared to Leibnizs monads,
or to the unique quality of each subjects point of view. Deleuze elaborates
on this twenty years later in his work on Leibniz, Le Pli. This is precisely what
Descombes ridiculed in his pseudo-Marcel, but Deleuze explains that the point
of view is not to be confused with the subject who occupies this point, but
rather the point of view, the essence, is what individualizes the subject
essence is enfolded in the subject, captured or imprisoned in this subject
it differentiates. The point of view is difference itself, an essence that is
immaterial. As Deleuze says in relation to metaphors produced by the literary
machine in Proust et les signes
lessence singulie`re, le Point de vue superieur aux deux moments qui
resonnent [. . .] Combray dans son essence, tel quil ne fut pas vecu;
Combray comme Point de vue, tel quil ne fut jamais vu [singular
essence, Point of view superior to the two moments which resonate [. . .]
Combray in its essence, such that it had not been lived; Combray as Point of
view, such that it had never been seen]. (1998, 183)
Point of view as essence can only be what has never been seen before. As
Hele`ne Cixous writes in her essay En octobre 1991, the point of view, le
Point de vue is not only an opinion, as in English, or a perspective as in French,
but also point de vue or no view at all, blindness (Cixous 119). Deleuzes
spider may be such a disturbing metaphor not because, or not simply because on
the surface it does not at all correspond to the Proustian narrator, but because if
we critical readers are to spin our own textual webs after Proust, if we are to
gain a point of view on a work of art, we too must become as blind, as delirious
as Deleuze says, as a spider, lest we get caught in the web of our own textual
metaphors.

Works Cited
Barthes, Roland. Le Plaisir du texte. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1973.
Cixous, Hele`ne. En octobre, 1991 . . . Du feminin. Grenoble: Le Griffon dargile,
Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 1992.
Descombes, Vincent. Proust: philosophe du roman. Paris: Editions de minuit, 1987.

709

710

CONTEMPORARY FRENCH AND FRANCOPHONE STUDIES

Downloaded by [Mariela Burani] at 20:13 19 February 2013

Deleuze, Gilles. Interview with Claire Parnet. LAbecedaire de Gilles Deleuze.

Dir. Boutang, Pierre-Andre. Paris: Editions Montparnasse, 1996.
. Foucault. Paris: Editions de minuit, 1986.
. Le Pli: Leibniz et le baroque. Paris: Editions de minuit, 1988.
. Proust et les signes. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1998 [1964].
de Man, Paul. Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism.
1971 Second Edition. Minneapolis, MN: U of Minnesota P, 1983.
Proust, Marcel. A` la recherche du temps perdu. Ed. Jean-Yves Tadie. 4 volumes. Paris:
Gallimard, 19871989.

Patrick M. Bray is Assistant Professor of French at Ohio State University. He is the

author of The Novel Map: Space and Subjectivity in 19th-Century French Fiction
(forthcoming fall 2012). He is working on a new project, tentatively titled The Price of
Literature, on the place of theory in the novel.