ABSTRACT
Although many Deleuzian concepts (“rhizome”, “nomads”, “deterritorialization”) and claims (“we are made up of lines”, “the unconscious is a factory”) might initially seem to have a metaphorical status, Deleuze insists that they must be understood literally. I will argue that in fact the problem of the status of Deleuze’s concepts is not well-posed in terms of the literal-versus-metaphorical distinction. “There are no literal words, neither are there metaphors”, Deleuze writes. “There are only inexact words to designate something exactly”. But what is the nature of the “inexactitude” that goes beyond the literal and the metaphorical? To answer this question, I will provide a reading of the theory of sense developed by Deleuze in his 1969 text Logic of Sense, and argue that Deleuze’s concepts—and their components—must ultimately be comprehended as intensities.
