A miracle is an object or event that not only obliges us to reflect with wonder upon phenomena that seemingly transgress or suspend natural and scientific laws, but has a radically transformative effect upon our lives.
Although often attributed to a deity or demon, I prefer to think of miracles without agency and as part of a materialist metaphysics vaguely based upon Deleuze's work on the potential of things to differ from themselves.
In other words, I conceive of miracles as:
(i) A fateful inward folding of the outside ...
Like Deleuze, I regard the entire universe as an origamic process of folding and unfolding that creates an interior that is a doubling of the outside, rather than something that develops autonomously and separately from that which is external to it.
And this is true also, one might note, of the way in which the self is formed; the concept of the fold allowing Deleuze to think not only about the production of human subjectivity in a non-essential manner, but also about inhuman possibilities of becoming.
(ii) A momentary actualisation of virtual chaos that shatters the parameters of the everyday, thereby allowing all things - good and evil - to become possible ...
Although often attributed to a deity or demon, I prefer to think of miracles without agency and as part of a materialist metaphysics vaguely based upon Deleuze's work on the potential of things to differ from themselves.
In other words, I conceive of miracles as:
(i) A fateful inward folding of the outside ...
Like Deleuze, I regard the entire universe as an origamic process of folding and unfolding that creates an interior that is a doubling of the outside, rather than something that develops autonomously and separately from that which is external to it.
And this is true also, one might note, of the way in which the self is formed; the concept of the fold allowing Deleuze to think not only about the production of human subjectivity in a non-essential manner, but also about inhuman possibilities of becoming.
(ii) A momentary actualisation of virtual chaos that shatters the parameters of the everyday, thereby allowing all things - good and evil - to become possible ...
To think of miracles only in terms of what benefits mankind or as the work of a heavenly Father, is a laughable mix of anthropocentric conceit and moral stupidity. Ultimately, the great advantage of thinking in terms of the miraculous and loving fate is that one no longer has to believe in such a loving God or subscribe to a model of sentimental humanism.
Note: readers interested in this area of Deleuze's work might like to see The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, trans. Tom Conley, (University of Minnesota Press, 1992) and 'Foldings, or the Inside of Thought (Subjectivation)', the final section of Foucault, trans. and ed. by Seán Hand, (The Athlone Press, 1988).
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