Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies 41.

2
September 2015: 171-191
DOI: 10.6240/concentric.lit.2015.41.2.08

Forging the Passage In and Out: Zola and Deleuze on

the Edge of the World
Shuling Stéphanie Tsai
Department of French
National Central University, Taiwan

Abstract
By adopting an experimental approach to observe his society in mutation, Zola
seeks to conceptualize the status of “homme modern” by enquiring into an
inner motive (milieu intérieur) that puts into question critical analysis. This
inner motive involves an alterity in the dynamic construction of modern
subjectivity. We take La Bête humaine as an example by which to approach
Zola’s concept of an inner motive, and we enquire into the notion of “limit” in
Deleuze’s interpretation of Zola. In his preface entitled “Zola et la fêlure”
(Logique 373), which is dedicated to Zola’s La Bête humaine, Deleuze
explains that the term “instinct” actually refers to the immobility that
perpetuates a given way of life, or a given mode of being that combines desire,
life, labor and language. Deleuze then describes the fracture of modernity as a
“cerebral void” that functions as a transmitter between the modes of seeing
and speaking. We consider how Deleuze’s reading alters our understanding of
Zola’s view of modern man in the 19th century in regard to his ethical relation
with himself and with others. We argue that for Zola, the fracture is actually a
passage leading to force in the matter (la puissance dans la matière), which is
the very structuring force of Life. This fracture should be conceived more in
terms of a limit, in which modern man is pushed to confront the alterity (or
unknown nature) within himself.

Keywords
nature, creation, form of life, fracture, French contemporary thought,
19th-century French literature, E. Zola, G. Deleuze
172 Concentric 41.2 March 2015

On the edge of the modern world, É mile Zola “falls” into a passage from
external reality to the search for an unknown nature embedded within every
existence. For this late 19th-century French novelist, modernity marks the entry into
a new world configured by numerous modes of narrative, be they scientific,
economic, political, philosophical, artistic or literary. This age, Zola feels, is a
critical period in which the place of “homme moderne” (modern man and woman,
“homme” in French refers to both man and woman, with no distinction) has yet to
be defined. By adopting an experimental approach for observing his society in
mutation, Zola seeks to conceptualize the status of “homme modern” by enquiring
into an inner motive (milieu intérieur) that puts into question critical analysis. This
inner motive involves two aspects of engagement in the dynamic construction of
modern subjectivity. On the one hand, a person’s way of life is commonly framed
by an external environment of material conditions and socio-political relationships.
On the other hand, each person always feels some sort of anguished concern to
“find one’s own language” for personal expression (Zola, Le Roman experimental
211). The issue here resides in the perpetual need to (re)formulate not only the
unformulated nature of outside reality, but also the unknown nature embedded
within every existence (77). Humans are caught between different forms of life and
modes of expressions. They wander in the world until “falling” into a breach or a
fracture, where they confront the inner motives that strive to bring about the
formation of life.
For Zola, it is through enquiry into the unknown nature that art and literature
strive to be liberated from any religious constraint. The modernity of art and
literature should therefore be reoriented toward capturing “the sense of the real” (le
sens du réel) by way of an experimental method (89). We use Zola’s La Bête
humaine as an example for approaching his perceptions of the inner motive, and to
enquire into the notions of “limit” or “fracture” in Deleuze’s understanding of
Zola’s work. In the preface entitled “Zola et la fêlure” (Logique 373-86), which is
dedicated to Zola’s La Bête humaine, Deleuze translates Zola’s references to an
unknown nature by using the notion of a fracture, or a “cerebral void,” which acts
as a transmitter between the modes of seeing and speaking. However, we must ask
how Deleuze’s reading alters our understanding of Zola’s view of modern man in
the 19th century in regard to an ethical relation with himself and with others. We
argue that the notion of limit as the human condition is a passage that helps us to
bridge the gap between Zola and Deleuze. Deleuze turns the limit of knowledge
into a point of transmission between dispositive modes. For Zola, the “limit”
 Shuling S. Tsai 173

actually leads to a passage that involves “sinking” into the unknown nature and
experiencing its force as “the sense of the real.”
In 1865, Zola started to conceptualize his naturalist approach in the light of
Taine’s Nouveaux Essais de critique et d’histoire. In developing this approach, Zola
refers to three major sources: the preface of Balzac’s La comédie humaine, Claude
Bernard’s Introduction à l’étude de la médecine expérimentale and the idea of
representation according to Taine. For Zola, these “naturalists” deny that people are
independent beings of reason. They are, in this view, not superior beings, inherently
healthy or self-reliant, nor are they capable of achieving truth and virtue by their
own efforts. However, Zola argues later in Le Roman expérimental that as an
“expérimentateur,” it is essential for a modern man to “reason” at the critical
moment “when the creative idea arrives,” demanding a reformulation of life in
different types of conflicts (Le Roman 51). It is thus of particular interest to note
how Zola uses the term “puissance” (force) in association with “temperament” to
designate the “characters” in his early writings. In the preface to the second edition
of Thérèse Raquin, Zola clearly points out that what he tries to study in this novel is
not “characters,” but “temperaments”: “In Thérèse Raquin, I wanted to study
temperaments, not characters.”1 Zola further explains that he intends to illustrate the
“strange unions” that can be established between two different temperaments, for
example, the contact of a “nature nerveuse” with a “nature sanguine” (42). What is
worth our attention here is the “human condition” produced by the contact between
different natures in certain situations. Although Henri Mitterand suggests that Zola
stops using the term “temperament” in his notes for Rougon-Macquart (prepared
during the few months after writing the preface to Thérèse Raquin), he nonetheless
quotes an interesting paragraph of Zola’s text in regard to a new mode of narrative:
“Understand each novel thus: first posit a human (physiological) case and put two
or three forces (temperaments) in the presence of one another; establish a struggle
between these forces; and then lead the characters to the denouement according to
the logic of their particular being, with one force absorbing the other or
others . . . .”2

1
“Dans Thérèse Raquin, j’ai voulu étudier des temperaments et non des caractères” (Thérèse
Raquin 42).
2 “Comprendre chaque roman ainsi : poser d’abord un cas humain (physiologique); mettre en

présence deux, trois puissances (tempéraments); établir une lutte entre ces puissances; puis
mener les personnages au dénouement par la logique de leur être particulier, une puissance
absorbant l’autre ou les autres . . . ” (Ecrits 21; emphasis in original). Special thanks to the
reviewer for suggesting the English translation.
174 Concentric 41.2 March 2015

According to Mitterand, the elaboration of Zola’s “naturalism” extends over

three phases. The first phase, from 1866 to 1874, marks the period when Zola
associates with writers who are commonly known as “realists” (such as Balzac,
Taine or les Goncourt), and whom he calls “naturalists.” The second phase extends
from 1875 to 1881, at which time Zola seriously works on a theory of literary
naturalism and proposes research into “the natural and social condition” as found
through his observations and analyses of documents. The last phase ends around
1890, and according to Mitterand, this is the phase when Zola attempts to “soften”
his approach to naturalism in a move toward symbolism. He opens the door to an
inquiry into the “obscure” and the “mysterious” aspects of life (Ecrits 10). This, we
argue, leads his experimental method toward the problematic encounter with a
“limit.” Mitterand suggests that we should not seek to apply Zola’s critiques to the
reading of his novels (as the “roman naturaliste” and the “discours naturaliste” are
not homologous). Nevertheless, at the same time, Mitterand suggests paradoxically
not to commit the reverse error—of denying any relation between the theory in the
Roman expérimental and Les Rougon-Macquart (Le Roman 7-10). It seems that
there is not much left to say about Zola’s naturalism after Mitterand’s erudite study
of how the term has been used in the three different lexical fields of literature,
philosophy and art in Europe since the 17th century. However, the preface of
Deleuze’s work does shed new light upon our ways of understanding Zola’s
naturalism. Or more precisely, Deleuze’s reading of Zola inspires us to revisit
Zola’s literary naturalism and his critique of the human condition.
This study, therefore, responds to the current trend of revitalizing our
understanding of Zola’s canonical works. For example, Susan Harrow takes insight
from the critical reflections of Barthes, Deleuze, Michel de Certeau and Anthony
Giddens in offering her model for reading “the modern body” as revealed under
various kinds of pressure in Zola’s works. 3 Hannah Thompson enquires into the
signifying power of clothing in the Rougon-Macquart, using an approach that
involves feminist and queer theory.4 The objective of our study is to look for the
passage between reflecting upon the forms of representation (of the modern body,
for example) and discovering the force in the matter as a movement of the
Unknown. The modulation of this force leads us toward the limits of representation
and toward an awakening of the inner motive in being human, through which the

3 Special thanks to the reviewer for indicating this precise reference. Harrow, Susan. Zola, the
Body Modern: Pressures and Prospects of Representation. Oxford: Legenda, 2010.
4 Thompson, Hannah. Naturalism Redressed: Identity and Clothing in the Novels of É mile Zola.

Oxford: Legenda, 2004.

 Shuling S. Tsai 175

sense of the real is permanently under reconstruction. Zola redefines the ethic of his
novels by stressing the importance of the measure adopted by each modern man in
regard to the unknown nature of humanity.
With the full expansion of Paris as a city of modernity at the turn of the
century, Zola looks for a new formula to produce an exact expression of the social
being as a modern man. The notion of limit as the human condition is a passage that
helps us to bridge the gap between Zola and Deleuze. Although Zola would agree
with Deleuze about “the limit” in terms of “representation” on the level of discourse,
their understandings are quite different. Deleuze turns the limit of knowledge into a
point of transmission between dispositive modes. For Zola, the “limit” actually
leads to a passage that involves “sinking” into the unknown nature and experiencing
its force as “the sense of the real.”
The point to be made is that in his explanation of Zola’s “unknown nature,”
Deleuze changes the focus of perception. He shifts Zola’s focus on the
phenomenological ground to a focus on the “threshold of epistemologization,” or
the “threshold of formalization” of disciplines: “Knowledge is a practical
assemblage, a ‘mechanism’ of statements and visibilities. There is therefore nothing
behind knowledge. That is to say, knowledge exists only according to certain
widely varying ‘thresholds,’ which impose particular layers, splits and directions on
the stratum5 in question” (Deleuze, Foucault 1988: 51).6 For Zola, the question of
the limit points not only to the threshold of formalization, but also to a limit of the
very system of human life in terms of a “closed world” (“le monde clos de
Gervaise,” as indicated by the title of L’Assomoir). Deleuze illustrates the ever-
changing modes of viewing and speaking, but this approach leaves important
questions unanswered. How exactly can a conditioned mode of life be renewed and
recreated? Or are changes in condition nothing but an illusion of endless
substitutions, all of them confined within the same method and system?

Deleuze, Reader of Zola: Fracture as Cerebral Void

5
Deleuze defines “stratum” in terms of immobility and “strata” as mobility: “A given stratum
retains a unity of composition in spite of the diversity in its organization and development. The
unity of composition relates to formal traits common to all of the forms or codes of a stratum, and
to substantial elements, materials common to all of the stratum’s substances or milieus. The strata
are extremely mobile. . . .” (Deleuze and Guattari 502)
6 “C’est dire que le savoir n’existe qu’en function de ‘seuils’ très variés, qui marquent autant de

feuillets, de clivages et d’orientations sur la strate considérée” (Deleuze, Foucault 1986: 58).
176 Concentric 41.2 March 2015

In his preface entitled “Zola et la fêlure” (Logique 373),7 which is dedicated to

Zola’s La Bête humaine, Deleuze points out that the term fêlure (fracture) does not
refer to a biological failure of mental health, but to a grey zone of confusion
between different visions of life. Like a crevasse appearing in our view of life, a
fracture breaks suddenly through our sense of focus and balance. In terms of the
body, this fracture arises not from biological genes, but from a cerebral “void.” The
fracture is thus distinguished from instinct, which Deleuze refers to as a “condition”
in terms of an embodiment of the socio-historical context. The instinct, or the
temperament surrounding the fracture, designates the condition of life in general.
More precisely, instinct involves the condition of conserving a modality of life that
is determined by a socio-historical context (for example, that of the Second Empire).
Around the borders of the fracture, instinct looks for objects of desire (wine, money,
power or sex) in the form of commodities that are available at the time and that
correspond to a certain modality of life as fashioned by a socio-historical stratum.
Therefore, by the term “instinct,” Deleuze refers to the immobility of a habitual way
of life: that is to say, the socio-historical context as a given condition, or
conditioned mode of life. In Foucault’s terminology, instinct can be conceived as a
system that perpetuates a mode of desire, life, labor and language (Deleuze,
Foucault 1988:128).8 However, instinct, as Deleuze points out, actually denotes two
modes of the operating life force: the effort to perpetuate a certain mode of life (or a
confined system of stratum) and the instinct to embrace the risk of destroying an
established system of codes and territoriality, by way of destratification or
deterritorialization.
In seeking to describe this contradictory experience, the question to be asked
is in what way is the inside “Void” (le grand Vide intérieur) according to Deleuze
(Logique 376)? If Deleuze translates Zola’s “unknown nature” with the terms
“fracture” and “cerebral void,” how does this reading alter our understanding of
Zola’s view of modern man in the 19th century? What, according to Zola, is
“instinct” in regard to the nature that is unknown?
What intrigues Deleuze in his reading of Zola is the function of the fracture in
terms of a semiotic emptiness, or a cerebral void. Fracture, as the limit of perception
and expression, is either occluded as something forever imperceptible, or else it
bursts forth as a new intensity, experienced in the void between perceptions. On the
topic of established ways of life, Deleuze and Zola may share the same view of the

7 Deleuze, Gilles. “Zola et la fêlure.” Logique du sens. Paris: Minuit, 1969.

8 “Ces forces, c’est la Vie, c’est le Travail et c’est le Langage: triple racine de la finitude, qui va
faire naître la biologie, l’économie politique et la linguistique” (Foucault 1986: 134)
 Shuling S. Tsai 177

world as a vast number of other writers who describe the formation (or the folding
of “Man-form” according to Foucault) by systems. 9 However, in what way do
Deleuze and Zola differ with regard to the fracture? In La Bête humaine, the system
described is the confined world of the railroad, in which every character lives
strictly according to a determined set of rules and values—“une existence
d’horloge.” We can easily find examples to see how people’s life is controlled by
the exact train schedules: “On the following day, a Sunday, every church clock in
Le Havre had just struck five when Roubaud came down into the station concourse
to begin his day’s work” (La Bête humaine 1996: 65).10 This code of the railroad
world dictates not only the mode of social life, but also the expression of passions
and emotions. Even the affair between Roubaud’s wife Severine and the train driver
Jacques is “regulated” by train schedules: “Severine, at twenty minutes to three, had
reached the Rue Cardinet too early for the appointment she had made with Jacques.
This was where he lived, at the top of a tall building, in a narrow room to which he
seldom went except at night to sleep; and even then he was absent twice a week, the
two nights he spent at Le Havre between the evening express and the morning
express” (La Bête humaine 1996: 136; emphasis added).11
This perpetual condition of life paves the way for the inherited “crack” to link
with a limited selection of objects for desire. This modality of life confines every
character’s range of sensations and expressions. All of the “natures” (as Zola refers
to the “characters” in the novel) are closely attached to the system of the railroad, as
chefs, employers or relatives. Right from the beginning of the novel, Zola carefully
depicts the restricted living conditions of the railroad workers—how the residents
get into fights over living space, as everyone is confined in the same place and in
the same condition. The characters work, live, socialize, travel, love and hate within
the enclosure of this world: their World as a strictly regulated spatio-temporal
system. Nevertheless, in every existence regulated by the modern world, “le grand
Vide” or the Fracture as implicit violence is virtually embedded, as Deleuze points

9 “Ce qui revient à dire que, lorsque les forces dans l’homme entrent en rapport avec des forces

de finitude venues du dehors, alors et alors seulement l’ensemble des forces compose la forme-
Homme (et non plus la forme-Dieu)” (Deleuze, Foucault 1986: 134).
10 La Bête humaine, trans. by Roger Pearson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. “Le

lendemain, un dimanche, cinq heures du matin venaient de sonner à tous les clochers du Havre,
lorsque Roubaud descendit sous la marquise de la gare, pour prendre son service” (Zola, Les
Rougon-Macquart IV, 1053).
11 “Séverine, à trois heures moins vingt, s’était trouvée en avance, rue Cardinet, au rendez-vous

qu’elle avait donné à Jacques. Il habitait là, tout en haut d’une grande maison, une étroite chambre,
où il ne montait guère que le soir pour se coucher ; et encore découchait-il deux fois par semaine,
les deux nuits qu’il passait au Havre, entre l’express du soir et l’express du matin” (1118).
178 Concentric 41.2 March 2015

out: “Everything rests on the paradox, that is, the confusion of this heredity with its
vehicle or means, or the confusion of what is transmitted with its transmission—the
paradox of this transmission which transmits nothing other than itself: the cerebral
crack in a vigorous body or the crevice of thought. With the exception of accidents,
as we shall see, the “soma” is vigorous and healthy. But the “germen” is the
crack—nothing but the crack” (Logic 2004: 360; emphasis added).12
The major event in the novel is a murder, which is plotted and executed by
Severine with her husband Roubaud, the vice station chef of Le Havre city. “Who
killed Grandmorin, the president of the West Railroad company?” is the issue for
almost the entire novel, until Severine finally confesses to Jacques Lantier, a train
driver with whom she falls in love. The layering of perceptions and expressions, of
visibility and invisibility, and of speakable and unspeakable, constitutes the plot of
the story. Roubaud stabs to death the boss of the West Railroad company,
Grandmorin, who, as the guardian of Severine, had been taking sexual advantage of
her since she was a little girl. Jacques Lantier, an honest and hard-working driver of
the locomotive, happens to spot the murder scene when the train goes by. This man,
who suffers from an obscure instinct to kill women in his sexual relationships, later
becomes Severine’s lover and ends up strangling her to death. Lantier is not sure
about who killed Grandmorin. During numerous trials, the readers witness a parade
of different perspectives and narratives of what happened. They realize that the
truth can be too costly to handle for various people and for various reasons. As a
consequence, all of the characters in the story die because of their confined modes
of living. Their limited ways of seeing are demonstrated by their ways of narrating.
In this roman noir, everyone has an instinct to kill, as killing seems to be the
ultimate, or the “only” adequate expression of passion. Severine kills for freedom;
Roubaud (Severine’s husband) and Flore (Lantier’s godmother Phasie’s daughter,
who loves Lantier in vain) out of jealousy; Misard, Phasie’s husband, poisons his
wife in daily meals for her money. The judge, by convicting an innocent man, kills
to save the company’s name from scandal and to defend the Empire, whose
economic power depends largely on the railroad company. To top this, Jacques
strangles Severine, who had urged him to kill her husband whose love is violently
possessive. Curiously enough, Jacques’ murder of Severine is deferred by many

12 “Tout repose sur le paradoxe de cette hérédité confondue avec son véhicule ou son moyen,

de ce transmis confondu avec sa transmission, ou de cette transmission qui ne transmet pas autre
chose qu’elle-même: la fêlure cérébrale dans un corps vigoureux, la crevasse de la pensée. Sauf
accidents que nous allons voir, le soma est vigoureux, sain. Mais le germen est la fêlure, rien
d’autre que la fêlure” (Logique 373).
 Shuling S. Tsai 179

interruptions until after the locomotive (named Lison) “dies,” crushed in a

catastrophic train accident plotted by Flore, who is desperate for Jacques’s love.
The locomotive Lison turns out to be the objet phantasmé in the novel. “She” is the
“true passion of life” for Jacques, and is “la bête humaine” who witnesses all men
and women turning themselves into “human beasts” for the sake of love or money.
In this novel, we clearly see that heredity is not the only drive that pushes men or
women to kill. An ensemble of encounters between the characters leads to a series
of deaths as they confront the limits that threaten their existence. We can also say
that life is enfolded into many modes of living or dying, and what is at stake here is
the truth, filtered and dispersed in the different modes of narrative.
Murder is examined here as a force bursting out of a lacuna, or a fracture
between two natures that appears in an encounter. It is like a chasm that appears
between two limited modes of perception, an instant of conflict where violence
could be executed in myriad ways. Therefore, in the macroscopic juridical system,
the microscopic motives are sometimes hard to identify (or are even imperceptible
to the killers themselves), and the truth therefore becomes yet harder to grasp or to
face. However, if the fracture is the origin of violence, does this mean that man
under the impact of the fracture, can do nothing about the instinct of killing in
response? In putting forward the notion of the fracture, what is Deleuze proposing
concerning the situation of modern man? How does Zola’s point of view differ from
that of Deleuze?

Filters of Screens in the World

Zola partially shares Deleuze’s view concerning narrativity and intratextuality.

If we read La Bête humaine in the light of Zola’s theory of the screen, we can see
that the major murder event is reported in a series of méta-récits (meta-narratives)
given by different characters in the novel. Each narrative lays out a spectrum of the
perceptions and expressions actualized by each individual. As a consequence, the
truth of the crime never appears distinctly by itself. Sarah Capitanio points out the
modernity of La Bête humaine in its narrative mode. She states that the novel’s
intratextuality (in terms of the shifting focalizations and movements between
narrations) casts out any fixed idea concerning Zola’s naturalist approach (116).13 It

13 The novel was interpreted in a film by Jean Renoir in 1938, and was a great commercial
success at the time. The director was especially praised for his takes on trains and railroad scenes.
Renoir is both creative and faithful to Zola’s concern about the workers’ conditions. Nevertheless,
the complex layering of perceptions in the novel is replaced by a single focalization of the camera
180 Concentric 41.2 March 2015

is especially interesting to note that Jacques Lantier’s woman-killing instinct, which

he once thought had been cured by his love affair with Severine, is re-activated by
Severine’s confession and account of the crime. By means of her storytelling, the
couple is pushed to confront the fracture between them. The inheritance of genes
for Zola is never sufficient by itself to explain human actions.
For both Zola and Deleuze, instinct is to be interpreted as a perpetuating mode,
or a system of configuring an object of desire (in terms of the empirical social
interest). The fracture marks not only the limit of a certain system of configuration
(e.g., the beautiful as the desired), but also the possibility of delinking from the
structures of power or knowledge. Although an instinct can be perpetuated by
means of reason (instrumentalized as doxa) the fracture that emerges from affect is
often triggered accidentally by encounters between at least two natures, and this
interaction points to a modulating force. For Deleuze, however, the modulating
force remains on the level of discourse, even when it pushes a person to the
vanishing point of his subjective perspective. In that case, what role does Deleuze
see for this “force” of discourse in helping modern man to construct an ethical
relation with himself?
According to Deleuze, answering the question of how the subject is produced
would require accounting for every position taken and each specific way of seeing,
speaking and acting. In other words, the “condition” of the subject is always in
process. We can also say that the subject’s condition emerges at each instance of
encounter between beings, as these encounters will eventually affect the
constitution of conscious perceptions. Deleuze distinguishes two axes of
perceptions: the macroscopic and the microscopic orders. The macroscopic order
enfolds the “passage from one perception to another” as the “condition of great
composite folds, or draped forms” (for example, the passage from the Monarchy to
the Empire). The microscopic level, however, “no longer distinguishes minute
perceptions” (Deleuze, The Fold 87). It is on the border between these two levels
that we come to understand Deleuze’s intention to free conscious perception from
constraint by any single-folded modality of perception. The essential idea in
Deleuze’s theory of minute perceptions lies in the assumption that “every conscious

to attain a “realist” impression of objectivity. At the beginning of the film, the monologue from
Jean Lantier about his “fracture” is actually cut in half, in favor of a simplified explanation
concerning heredity. Monica Filimon points out that “the novel better preserves its value as an
experiment, while the film operates more within a Panopticon structure of discipline and
punishment” (85). The film was later re-adapted as a Hollywood movie by Fritz Lang in 1954.
 Shuling S. Tsai 181

perception implies the infinity of minute perceptions that prepare, compose, or

follow it” (87). Perceptions enfold the World. We would like to further suggest that
the fracture, as Deleuze describes it, designates not only the “dead end” of a stratum,
but at the same time points to a “transitional turning point” between the myriad
modes of organizational filters (in terms of what is visible) or of translations (in
terms of what can be enunciated).14
It is clear that for both Deleuze and for Zola, every subject configures in fact a
mi-lieu between networks of forces and an “intra/inter-textuality.”15 We are forever

14 In Le Pli (The Fold), Deleuze parallels arguments by Leibniz and Descartes by focusing on a

Cartesian map of the darkness-clarity-confusion-distinction. As explained by Leibniz, “C’est que

le clair, chez Leibniz, sort de l’obscur et ne cesse d’y plonger.” ( Le Pli 119) (“. . . clarity comes
out of obscurity and endlessly is plunging back into it” (The Fold 89).) The color green, as a clear
perception, is the result of a network of differential relations, among which certain monads are
drawn into clarity, each from its own position. We can say that any perceived “object” only
comes forth as such through the selection and combination of monads. The formulation of an
object operates always on a ‘third term that stands between at least two heterogeneous parts in a
different relation. In other words, the object always “stands out” in a mi-lieu, and is always ready
to be modified in its way of expression. An object involves a psychic mechanism of perception, or
an automatism that functions in two ways—universally and individually. For the case of a
universal mechanism and an individual mechanism, the dichotomy of subject-object is “actualized”
by way of the modes of perception. What distinguishes the differences between objects is the
degree of chiaroscuro, because “l’actualisation est différente suivant chaque monade, et ce n’est
jamais le même vert, au même degré de clair-obscur, que deux monades perçoivent” (Le Pli 119)
(“actualization is different for each monad. Never do two monads perceive the same green in the
same degree of chiaroscuro” (The Fold 89).) For each “subject” of perception, an exclusive
differential relation functions according to a favored degree of chiaroscuro (90). Deleuze points
out that if Descartes favors clarity, Leibniz begins in obscurity. By bringing into play Descartes’s
light and Leibniz’s darkness, Deleuze postulates that “le clair lui-même dépende de ce qui n’est
connu qu’obscurément. Car il appartient au clair de sortir de l’obscur, comme à travers un premier
filtre auquel succèderont beaucoup de filtres, pour le distinct et le confu, etc.” (Le Pli 120)
(“clarity itself depends on what is only fathomed obscurely. For clarity has to emerge out of
darkness, as if through a first filter that would be followed by many other filters, for what is
distinct, what is confused, and so on” (The Fold 90-91).) Deleuze thus compares differential
relations with “filters”: “Mais, comme les filtres changent de nature à chaque niveau, il faut dire
que le clair est relativement obscure et absolument confus, de même que le distinct est
relativement confus et absolument inadéquate.” (Le Pli 121) (“. . . what is distinct remains
relatively confused, since filters change their nature at each level, we must admit that clarity is
relatively obscure and absolutely confused, just as what is distinct remains relatively confused
and absolutely inadequate. ” (The Fold 91).)What is distinct or obscure depends mainly on ways
of organizing filters. The organization of differential relations produces different modes of
perception. A filter is a way through which a virtual selection or combination of monads comes
into its instant of spatio-temporal “actualization.” We can also say that a potential relationship
between a subject and its object is actualized by way of the organizations of filters.
15 According to Deleuze’s reading of Foucault, from the 19th century, it is the Fold (le Pli) that

dominates the formation of the finitude of “forme-Homme” (form-man) in between plans of

182 Concentric 41.2 March 2015

caught in between the folding of plans of organization and forever desire an

“outside” reality.16 We can further associate Zola’s “milieu” with what Deleuze and
Foucault mean by the notion of an “outside” (dehors), which operates always at the
limit or at the frontier of a given condition. Every closure of stratum opens up to a
relative outside, and every process of subjectification participates in the enfolding
of every historical milieu. As every singularity is molded or territorialized into a
modality of “subject being,” this very site of subjectification always confronts the
bloc-line, or the risk of deterritorialization and the possibility of reshaping the
relation to oneself. In La Bête humaine, all the “temperaments” end up “killing”
someone while their power over some sort of “possession” or “territory” is menaced
by others. Our question, however, still remains unanswered. For Zola, is there an
inside that is closely related to the outside? Does Zola really view the inside as “the
grand Void” (le grand Vide)? Or does the interior, in the obscure light of a
movement from the “unknown,” require a “natural man” to forge the passage from
the outside in and the inside out?

The Place of Modern Man and the Creative Idea

For Zola, the importance of the naturalist approach lies in its concern for “the
individual machinery of each man” rather than any general application of method
imposed on the study of man or nature. It is precisely the instance of an in-between,
prior to the constitution of a subject-object dichotomy, that puts each man into
question in terms of his “singularity” in regard to a community. Zola replaces the
study of “a psychological abstraction” with the study of “a product of air and sol” a
direct quotation, or extrapolation which is governed both by physical or chemical
laws and the influence of a social milieu at the same time. 17 Nevertheless, it is
important to note that, for Zola, man changes with the social milieu—as it is

spatio-temporal organisation of life: “Ce qui revient à dire que, lorsque les forces dans l’homme
entrent en rapport avec des forces de finitude venues du dehors, alors et alors seulement
l’ensemble des forces compose la forme-Homme et non plus la forme-Dieu.” (Foucault 1986:
135-36)
16 Charles J. Stivale, in his article on Deleuze’s reading of Zola, examines two distinct ways in

which the fictional subject is constituted through contrasting modes of textualizing history: “. . . it
is the interior/exterior functioning of the dimensions of knowledge, power, and thought that the
mode of le plissement brings into perceptive . . .” (Stivale 144).
17 Le personnage n’y est plus une abstraction psychologique, voilà ce que tout le monde peut

voir. Le personnage y est devenu un produit de l’air et du sol, comme la plante. (Le Roman
expérimental 223 )
 Shuling S. Tsai 183

produced by himself. The social milieu does not designate simple class differences
or a dispositive of discourses, but more precisely, the individual mechanism of
desire that oscillates between animality and sociality. This mechanism engenders
the theory of the screen, which interposes itself between the act of creation and the
writer’s or the artist’s “eye” (l’oeil). The “optical logic” of man is not only limited
by the affect of his social milieu, but more importantly, by the screen that is adopted
by the viewing subject.
In describing the role of a “screen” (écran), Zola explains that every work of
art is like a window opened to the process of creation, and that the naturalist
approach takes into account the way by which one adopts the viewing screen. As
seen through our screens, objects are always more or less deformed according to the
nature of the screen. Zola insists that “there is no more exact and real creation, but
creation modified by the milieu through which its image passes.” 18 Such
deformation is inevitable, and an exact depiction of reality is simply impossible.
The depiction depends on how the artist shapes his working condition in relation
with the “milieu” through the creation of “windows.” It is the web of little screens
or windows as an ensemble that creates the milieux, which determines the modes of
expression. Images have to traverse a milieu, and this milieu inevitably modifies the
image, no matter how pure and transparent it seems to be (413). Zola views all
schools of art and literature as “studies of screens”—“écran classique,” “écran
romantique,” “écran réaliste.” What is important to grasp is that, for Zola, all
screens have to be accepted as having equal merit.
That said, however, Zola also feels that to be a modern man involves
searching for his personal expression by way of screens—while confronting his
inner alterity. The task of modern man in terms of observer, experimenter, translator
or novelist, lies precisely in deciding how to capture the force of an “idée
expérimentale qui advient” (the advent of an experimental idea). The inner milieu is
to be grasped as a recurrent obscurity that demands to be “known,” but
paradoxically can only be “experienced” in terms of what it is not, by way of
literary or artistic creation of forms (or screens). In other words, unlike Deleuze,
Zola is not satisfied with the forever changing modes of discourse that (re)shape the
human condition. The novelist is even more intrigued by the measure (or screen)
adopted, who is constantly finding himself caught in the gap between the common

18On n’a plus la création exacte et réelle, mais la création modifiée par le milieu où passe son
image (Le Roman expérimental 412 ).
184 Concentric 41.2 March 2015

representation (doxa) and his need for a “real” expression in regard to the unknown
nature of humanity.

On the Edge of the World

In the second part of his preface, Deleuze seems to turn the outside in and to
associate the fracture with the instinct of death. If the little instincts of death find
their expressions in fixed ideas, then the grand Instinct of Death becomes the
hidden locomotive that silently drives every pursuit for an object of desire towards
the “end.” At first, it sounds as if Deleuze views “death” as the “common” instinct
that establishes all connections between the characters in La Bête humaine. If desire
is assumed to be provoked by the instincts of death in the name of love or passion
(that is, if we substitute “objects of desire” with “death objectified”), then desire
leads every hero and heroine toward crimes equivalent to murder. The spider web
of the Grand Instinct locks every subject into the community of Death. “La bête
humaine” refers mainly to Jacques Lantier, the major character of the novel, and
secondarily to the locomotive Lison that Jacques particularly loves to drive. Both
machines (the man and the train) diligently participate in the work and life as
confined by the railroad world. Both machines carry within them their own ways of
life, including an obscure drive that tends to cancel out the existing model of life.
According to Deleuze, it is the inheritance from a “cerebral void” rather than from
biological genes that causes the notable (or the speeding movement that alters the
condition of life), which Zola illustrates in terms of deadly violence—with the
machine out of control, leading to murder or fatal accident.
It is important to note, however, that instead of being the “place, witness,
agent” (lieu, témoin, agent), Lison, the “objet phantasmé,” is transformed into the
essential convertor that links every occasion of encounter. Deleuze then compares
this theme with that seen in Zola’s epic Rougon-Macquart series by positing Death
(Lison the Locomotive, or the symbol of Modernity) as the transmitter that marks
the border between the death-oriented ontological discourse of being and a
“naturalist” mode of narrative. The discourse of Death as End marches towards its
own fracture, and then turns itself towards another direction of thinking in which
death is viewed as a “transition.” The train, as the emblematic symbol of Modernity,
bears within its life the fracture of its own limit, or death. The marching train of
Death actually refuses to die.
Some critics relate the Deleuzian fracture to Freudian concept of a Death
instinct. Others associate the alterity that Zola sees in man with an inner demon. For
 Shuling S. Tsai 185

example, Damian Catani points out that Deleuze provides a powerful alternative to
a Lombrosian reading of Zola’s atavism in his article “Zola et la fêlure” (Zola and
the crack-up): “Where Lombroso defined atavism as criminal urges that have
visible physiological manifestations in the individual, such as the shape of the
forehead or a protruding jaw, Deleuze on the contrary takes a proto-Freudian view
by identifying the crack with the death drive that lurks beneath all other instincts”
(73). Keith Ansell-Pearson relates the alterity in man to death and demons, basing
this opinion on Zola’s letter to a Dutch journalist. As Ansell-Pearson points out,
“Zola’s aim in La Bête humaine was to link murder with an ancient hereditary
impulse buried over by the sedimented layers of civilization, to show the ‘caveman’
dwelling deep within the civilized man of modernity” (129-30).
Nevertheless, we argue that for Zola, the fracture is not the “origin” translated
into different figures in their respective discourses, but rather a passage leading to
force in the matter (la puissance dans la matière), which is the very structuring
force of Life. For Zola, this fracture should be conceived more in terms of a passage,
in which modern man is pushed to confront the alterity (or unknown nature) within
himself. Rather than being a victim manipulated by the regulated system and
possessed by objects of desire, modern man adopts a scientific method for
analyzing material phenomena, while reserving an important role for intuition.
In referring to a scientific method, Zola means to emphasize the importance of
documentation, including the formation of epistemology, the intertextuality of
discourses and the archiving of knowledge. Nevertheless, according to Zola, any
scientific method that offers possibilities for inquiries into “the truth” should take
into account the limits of its approach, because the “real” eventually alters any fixed
representation by its movement of permanently ongoing construction. That said, we
need to note that the difference between Deleuze and Zola is precisely related to the
process of creating. To grasp the notion of “creation,” man needs to find a balance
between his subjective power or capacity and the limit adopted to measure his
approach in regard to the unknown nature. We would like to argue that Zola
actually renounces formulating any pre-established laws or rules of any kind,
including rules for “naturalism” as a “theory.” Zola himself protests in The
Experimental Novel that he is indeed wrongly accused of being a “fatalist.” The
misunderstanding of Zola’s determinism was already so widely spread at the time
that it is essential to quote the entire passage in which Zola made the point, loud and
clear, that he is not a fatalist:
186 Concentric 41.2 March 2015

I reach thus the great reproach with which they think to crush the
naturalistic novelists, by treating them as fatalists. How many times
have they wished to prove to us that as soon as we did not accept free
will, that as soon as man was no more to us than a living machine,
acting under the influence of heredity and surroundings, we should
fall into gross fatalism, we should debase humanity to the rank of a
troop marching under the baton of destiny. It is necessary to define
our terms: we are not fatalists, we are determinists, which is not at
all the same thing. (The Experiment Novel 29)

He rejects the notion that the theory of screens is a “school” of thought that assumes
predetermined laws and rules.19 Zola invests all his energy in analyzing encounters
that entail new configurations in the forms of peoples’ lives, and he seeks to
experiment with the mechanisms of social movement. He hopes to better examine
how the formulation of adopted screens effects the constitution of the milieux and of
the subject-object dichotomy.
However, what Zola values most of all is not the discovery or the transition of
screens, but rather the production and the awareness of this very production of
personal or “natural” screens. He seeks to understand how we create and share the
screens that project our sense of the real—our sensations, perceptions and
expressions of “reality.” For Zola, the operation of screens is not limited by the
simple idea of a “simulacra of objects.” This operation functions in the midst of a
web of conditions, all of which are changing at the same time. This conditionality
highlights the very questionable nature of any adopted screen. Zola sees this
question as residing not only in language, but more importantly in the awareness of
the measure used in regard to the unknown nature when adopting any kind of screen.

Forging Alterity from the Inside Out

We postulate that by means of an experimental method, Zola seeks to capture

a critical moment (le sens du réel) that breaks the narrative of world-discourse into
a passage yielding to the movement of the unknown. This movement leads to a
mythical breaking point at which a man “sinks” into the “fracture” in regard to his

19 “Chaque école a ceci de monstrueux qu’elle fait mentir la nature suivant certaines règles.
Les règles sont des instruments de mensonge que l’on se passe de main en main, reproduisant
facticement et mesquinement les images fausses, mais grandioses ou charmantes, que l’Ecran de
génie donnait dans toute la naïveté et la vigueur de sa nature” (Le Roman éxperimental 414).
 Shuling S. Tsai 187

inner otherness, and this alterity reintroduces chaos into the wordly forms of life.
This crisis is a critical passage which bridges the way from mode de vie to a
modulation of Life yet to be (re)formulated. That crisis is the moment when the
creative idea surges in to request a reformulation of Life.
The creative idea, as inspired by the experimental method of Claude Bernard,
is actually modified by Zola into the “experimental idea.”20 The difference between
these two concepts is essential for our grasping the notion in terms of a “limit.”
Although Claude Bernard looks into a vivisection of human experience, intending
to grasp the creative idea from the “inside,” Zola looks for another way to approach
the interior milieu. In approaching the unknown nature as a means to capture the
sense of the real, Zola considers the interactions of at least two heterogeneous
elements (or temperaments) in various situations where the social dispositive
collapses against the inner necessity. He argues that the inner motive in a living
machine needs a body as a medium for expression—as if the function of the body
was to carry out experiments on all possible modes of existence. The experimental
idea, as a motif of uncertainty, can never be defined until it includes the bodily
matter in its formation.21
The becoming of a subject is thus a process always in flux between forms that
are never distinct by themselves. Zola therefore conceptualizes the notion of the
limit at different levels: as the limit of subjective perspective, the limit of
established knowledge, the limit of human language, and finally, the limit that turns
into a fracture, which diverts the mind from wandering in the image-world and
leads it downward through the passage of in-spiration toward the inner motive. It is
the very mi-lieu that alters the nature of the perceptual screen through which we
observe and construct the world. The importance of this idea lies in the potential of
“modern man” for awakening to a call from the movement of the unknown, which
demands to be reformulated whenever life is constrained to a fixed modality. It is
worth noting that Colette Becker and Agnes Landes suggest two axes for reading

20 Bernard, Claude. Introduction à l’étude de la médecine expérimentale, Paris, Garnier

Flammarion, 1966.
21 Zola is a reader of Aristotle, and the creative idea he writes of is actually related to the “act”

(energeia) described in Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Alain Milon notes: “Dans la mesure où l’acte est
le résultat d’un état final achevé- l’entéléchie-, cet acte s’inscrit dans les limites de la réalisation
possible. On dit en fait que l’être en puissance est devenu en acte lorsqu’il a reçu une forme, et
cet acte avec une forme c’est la matière qu’Aristote définit comme l’ensemble des conditions
devant être réalisées pour que la forme puisse apparaître” (Milon 121).
188 Concentric 41.2 March 2015

Zola’s novels, such as Au Bonheur des Dames.22 On the one hand, we can approach
the text through the method of narratology, and analyze the procedure of description
through the interior focalization carried out by Denise, the heroine, at the beginning
of the novel. On the other hand, the metaphor of the department store as a gigantic
machine that devours men and women can lead us to read the same passage through
a scope of visionary imagination.23 Following these two axes of reading, we can
then turn to approach the notion of fracture in terms of a movement of anamorphous
perceptions.24 This movement is the critical moment in which modern man finds his
place for measuring the adopted screen in an interstice between perceptions.
We would like to stress that for Deleuze, the process of creation is equally
important for the subject. It is actually by virtue of engaging oneself in the constant
oscillation between the institutional molaire and the singular moléculaire that one
endures, by means of creating the human condition of existence. By such creativity,
we turn subjectivity into subjectification and discover an “esthetic existence”
(Deleuze, Foucault 101). The subject who speaks in the name of “I” embodies
multiple singular positions, which are always ready to be re-organized. As Deleuze
comments on Foucault’s approach to the condition of subject formation, “He does
not write a history of institutions but of the conditions governing their integration of
different relations between forces, at the limits of a social field. He does not write a
history of private life but of the conditions governing the way in which the relation
to oneself constitutes a private life. He does not write a history of subjects but of

22 Becker, Colette, and Agnes Landes, Au Bonheur des Dames, coll., profile d’une oeuvre,
Hatier, 1999.
23 “Certains details de la description montrent que l’image est affranchie de tout réalisme . . .

bien loin d’une plate exactitude documentaire, le romancier interprète et amplifie la réalité”
(Becker and Landes 95). We can thus relate Zola to Blanchot, as Blanchot’s preoccupation resides
in approaching the point at which the mode of narrative is pushed to face the void, where a
fascinating force emerges to turn the subjective gaze into an ab(y)me. (The word could be
expressed in English as “recursive abyss.”) The semiotic emptiness then falls into an in-spiration
of interpretation.
24 After all, life is about finding the balance point and replacing the mania by measuring one’s

proximity in regard to the unknown nature. How do we forge the interior fire into a work of art?
As Jean Borie points out, this tension involves a machine caught between an interior fire that
animates and a will that works to create. Zola values the creation of a modern man who stands
between the human and the bestial. It takes a modern man or woman to face his/her own alterity
as embedded in his/her existence, and to engage in the effort of forging the force into the form
(Borie 114). As Roger Pearson, the translator of La Bête humaine says: “The essential focus of
the book is not so much on the inevitability of defeat as on the drama of resistance: yes, the beast
will out—for now; but what Zola calls the ‘strength derived from education’ is increasing with
every generation, and the overriding value of La Bête humaine lies in its contribution to that
education” (La Bête humaine 1996: ix).
 Shuling S. Tsai 189

processes of subjectivation, governed by the foldings operating in the ontological as

much as the social filed” (Foucault 116; emphasis added). Deleuze finally
postulates that “every perception is hallucinatory, because perception has no object”
(Foucault 93).
For Zola, however, perceptions are not hallucinatory. They provide
opportunities to reflect upon one’s possible measures.for the sense of the real. For
Zola, every existence embodies a nature that echoes with an inner force. In the
midst of conflicts between natures, finding a balance of powers requires that
modern man measures the ethical distances within himself and in relation to others.
Zola decides to write a novel about the railroad because this institution has radically
changed people’s modes of perception and their ways of life in the second half of
the 19th century. Railroads, being rapidly and widely developed under the reign of
the Second Empire, inaugurated a world of modernity in which the human condition
was from then on inseparable from industrial infrastructure and scientific
technology.25 It is Zola’s project to express the impact of industrial innovation and
technology upon the human mode of existence in all its dimensions—material,
physical, mental, spiritual and biological. He seeks to translate this multi-level
impact into its literary forms. In crossing the border between science and literature,
Zola looks for a new approach to describing the human condition by virtue of an
experimental mode of description: “We cease to remain among the literary graces
of a description clothed in a fine style; we are busy studying the exact surroundings,
stating the conditions of the exterior world, which correspond to the interior
conditions of the characters” (The Experimental Novel 233). Does human nature
evolve? As Roger Pearson points out: “Seen from the vantage-point of the present,
this novel which juxtaposes the marvels of technology with the depradations of the
human beast seems to stand prophetically on the threshold of a century which has
witnessed both the magic of the aeroplane and the massacres of the Somme, the
wonder of a lunar landing and the abyss of the Holocaust” (La Bête humaine 1966:
ix). On one side, Zola questions the context of the World as a system that enfolds
labor, language, life and desire. On the other side, Zola tries to capture the sense of
being “human” in search of one’s place in the world through creating a balancing
point between different forces in accordance with the movement of the unknown.

25 According to David Harvey, “The volume of traffic expanded twice as fast as industrial

output at the same time as it shifted to the rail system and away from other modes of transport”
(109).
190 Concentric 41.2 March 2015

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About the Author

Shuling Stéphanie Tsai, currently teaching as professor in the French Department at National
Central University, was fellow (2009-2010) at Cornell University’s Society for the
Humanities (USA), and invited professor (2010-2011) at IETT University of Jean-Moulin
Lyon III (France). She has been director of undergraduate and master program in French
Department of Tamkang University (2002-2006). Her research interests include French
contemporary theory, translation theory and comparative literary theory. She is currently
doing research on the influence of Zola on contemporary thinkers in France as well as in
China in the 20’s.

[Received 26 January 2015; accepted 29 April 2015]