freeing the line

"Creations are like mutant abstract lines that have detached themselves from the task of representing a world, precisely because they assemble a new type of reality that history can only recontain or relocate in punctual systems" (ATP, p. 326).

I wanted to focus this post around the structure of becoming and the distinction to the structure of memory because it strikes me as a very complicated distinction which I'm still trying to grasp. These structures are imagined as if on a graph, with vertical and horizontal axes; however, they both behave very differently. Memory's structure employs a point system--referring to a located coordinate and moving to the next--a narrative structure moving serially from one place to another, like the electric energy that flows sequentially through a circuit board.
On the other hand, the structure of becoming is a line-system, or block-system. In the example of the wasp and the orchid, the line/block system does not merely link the two species together in a unity--it passes between them and creates "a shared proximity" mediated by time and space. In this way, becoming is a liberating process because it is always a movement of deterritorialization that illuminates an affinity or symbiosis on the in-between level: the wasp "becomes a liberated piece of the orchid's reproductive system," while the "orchid becomes the object of an orgasm in the wasp" (326). The liberation is in the sense that in this system of becoming, each organsim exceeds the reproductive faculty of their respective species.
What really interests me is how these two systems--memory and becoming--or punctual and linear--interact with each other in the act of creation. "One elaborates a punctual system or didactic presentation...with the aim of making it snap" (326). Creativity is liberated in this opposition, when the creator stands against the structure of memory, against the opressive narrative of history. To wrap this up I want to return to the first quote. The mutant abstract lines of creation are liberated from the punctual system of history by creating a new sphere of existence, "because they assemble a new type of reality..." All of the references to Lovecraft and werewolves and vampires, lead me towards the horror genre, where the impact of the creature is precisely in the sheer possiblity and implication of its creation. Like in Frankenstein, what scares us most is how the urge for creation in itself facilitates the possiblity for the genesis of a new subjectivity in opposition to the world it was borne into.
"Werewolf"
Lucas Cranach Sr. (ca 1510)