The domain of sense is necessarily subject to a fundamental fragility, capable of toppling over into nonsense: the ground gives way to a groundlessness, a sans-fond. (without foundation)
The reason for this is clear. Sense is never a principle or an origin; rather, it is an effect, it is produced, and it is produced out of elements that do not, in themselves, have a sense. Sense, in other words, has a determinate relation with nonsense
Deleuze, however, distinguishes between two very different types of nonsense. The first is that of Lewis Carroll, who remains at the surface of sense and, like children, makes use of the non-signifying elements of language in order to construct the portmanteau words (snark = shark + snake; frumious = furious + fuming) and nonsensical phrases (“’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe”) that populate his writing. If Logic of Sense is in part a reading of Carroll’s work, it is because no one knew better than Carroll about the conditions for the production of sense, which Deleuze elucidates in detail: the extraction of differential elements or pure event, their organization in multiple series, and most importantly, the aleatory point or paradoxical element that links the series (the ideal “quasi-cause” that produces the effect of sense out of nonsense).
But there is a second type of nonsense, which is more profound than the surface nonsense found in Lewis Carroll. This is the terrifying nonsense of the primary order, which found expression in the writings of Antonin Artaud. Sense is what prevents the sonorous language from being confused with the physical body (noise). But in the primary order of schizophrenia experienced by Artaud, there is no longer anything to prevent propositions from falling back onto bodies, which mingle their sonorous elements with the olfactory, gustatory, and digestive effects of the body (Artaud’s cris-souffles: “ratara ratara ratara Atara tatara rana Otara otara katara
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