Suely Rolnik gives us a vital anecdote showing how Deleuze functioned as a schizoanalyst for her. In the conclusion to a letter to her, Deleuze writes: « “Never lose your grace, that is, the power of a song”.
Another word for grace is provided by Deleuze in DIALOGUES: charm: « charm is not the person. It is what makes people be grasped [NB: « saisir », one could almost translate « prehended »] as so many combinations and as so many unique chances that such a combination has been drawn (p 5, translation modified by me).
Another word for the « power of a song » is style. In his ABC Primer he gives a very good defintion when discussing Edith Piaf: « she has this way of singing off-key and then constantly catching the false note and making it right, this kind of system in imbalance that constantly is catching and making itself right. For Deleuze, this seems to be the case in any style » (O as in Opera).
Rolnik interprets this notion of grace and song in terms of desire: it is always possible to bring desire back after it breaks down … this gift appears where one least expects it ». In Rolny’s case the gift came from singing a popular song and being « vitalised », stimulated to get rid of the carapace constraining her body and heart, confining her to the mediocre intensities of the « pale pain of an inane life ».
For Deleuze grace and « dis-grace » are intimately linked. It is the « dis-gracious » points of craziness or fragility, of lived deconstruction, that are occasions of grace. Lulu’s cry and Rolnik’s song express the cracking open of carapaces, « opening onto a spiritual life capable of creating its own forms » (Deleuze’s seminar, 17-05-83, my translation). Grace: weaken, crack, open, create, individuate.
AGENT SWARM 
Terence, thanks for the link to the Miller book. So far, I have only taken a look at Levi Bryant’s Foreward and scanned a few of the sections which Miller wrote. Still, that is enough to get me to want to make a few comments.
First of all, grace is certainly love; at the very least, it is a necessary aspect of love. Grace is also often described as a gift. In fact, Levi notes that what he refers to as « traditional theology understands grace as an unexpected gift ». This notion that grace in particular – and being loved in general – is a gift derives from the sense, experience, or realization that love is not earned; love is not warranted as something which one deserves as if a reward for something one has done or for some achieved quality in one’s being. This is why love ultimately gets (and is to be) regarded as a matter independent of preference. Such a way of understanding love and grace is very traditional despite the fact that the theological tradition has so often seemed intent in practice on relegating (deeper considerations into the nature of this) love to an at best secondary station while paying what amounts to mere lip service to the supposedly core significance of this love.
Levi says that the « theology [Adam Miller] proposes » is one in which « God is not a transcendent superman or sovereign king, but a ‘weak’ God, a fellow traveler with the world’s objects. » This theology, according to Levi, « sidesteps the three options afforded by traditional Western theology », but Miller’s theology – at least as described by Levi – is not so very non-traditional as Levi suggests, even if such a theology seems very different from the way the vast majority of self-proclaimed believers express their thinking. For instance, in the book Love’s Endeavour, Love’s Expense (first published in 1977) – and especially beginning with the third chapter, The Phenomenology of Love – W. H. Vanstone delves into the nature of what is meant by love and finds that in its most unmitigated form it is kenosis, a self-giving which is not limited, which does not even seek to control, and which is not detached or aloof.
Vanstone says: « If God is love, and if the universe is His creation, then for the being of the universe God is totally expended in precarious endeavour, of which the issue, as triumph or as tragedy, has passed from His hands. For that issue, as triumphant or tragic, God waits upon the response of his creation. He waits as the artist or as the lover waits, having given all … [The artist] is faced with the problem of working within a self-chosen form; and the solution to the problem must be worked out in the creative process. The problem arises not because the artist has chosen the ‘wrong’ form but because he has chosen some kind of form … The problem is present in all creativity, in every process of imparting oneself to that which is truly other than oneself: one must ‘find the way’ in which, through risk and failure and the redemption of failure, the other may be able to receive. »
In a context wherein God’s alleged omnipotence or sovereignty is (in effect) regarded as the most sacrosanct belief, the precariousness which Vanstone describes would seem to put forth what Levi might refer to as a « ‘weak’ God », but in a context in which love is regarded as most sacrosanct, precariousness is not a matter identical to weakness.
Relatedly, there is also the matter of the difference between authority and power wherein authority has no power (see Arendt and Levinas for two relatively recent thinkers who have addressed this matter). By this understanding, God and love are properly regarded as a matter of authority rather than power. God might not be considered a philosophical term; it might be restricted to theology, but there is nothing about the nature of love or the difference between authority and power which justifies regarding them as non-philosophical matters. And, yet, has philosophy been at all more concerned – or even more adept at dealing – with such issues than have theology? I think not, and this is all the more unfortunate in that philosophy does not have the expressive restrictions with which theology as tradition has hamstrung itself.
J’aimeJ’aime
Hello Michael, thanks for your comments. On overcoming expressive restrictions, this is why I chose the examples of Feyerabend and Deleuze, because they come close to theological vocabulary and ideas without staying in that proximity. Feyerabend finds « grace » in talking to women and playing with an abnormal dog (« Spund »). Nothing in the traditional account of grace makes this impossible or even surprising. Yet it is not the sort of example we are used to. Nor are Deleuze’s examples of Lulu’s cry and Piaf’s missed notes. I think this is the point of Miller’s approaching the subject via Bruno Latour, and I find him most convincing when he is unpacking Latour’s general metaphysics, and less so when he is considering Latour’s explicit pronouncements on religion, which I find a little weak.
I agree that you don’t even have to be into total immanence to take up such examples, although it helps. I spent 12 years in a Catholic school, so I know full well that love is grace and vice versa, and kenosis and self-giving. Still the context Miller « ports » these notions into, insofar as it is immanent, pluralist, and atheological, transforms the meaning.I think the interest of this sort of translation points both ways. It shows that if one goes supple on the doctrine, theological concerns can be translated into more up to date language. Conversely, it shows that seemingly « non-religious » language has spiritual and theological overtones that may go unnoticed without that sort of juxtaposition.
J’aimeJ’aime
Speaking of charm and music (if not song specifically) and grace, Vladimir Jankélévitch is well worth a look, particularly in his work, Music and the Ineffable, which was first published in 1961 (in French, of course) and was later translated by Carolyn Abbate. As but one example, Jankélévitch says, « Technical analysis is a means of refusing to abandon oneself spontaneously to grace, and abandonment is the request that the Charm makes of us. » As Arnold Davdison notes in his essay, The Charme of Jankélévitch, which is placed at the very beginning of Abbate’s translation (sort of as a pre-preface or pre-forward), Jankélévitch in no way means to deride technical analysis; instead, Davidson says, « Jankélévitch, with his absolute mastery of musical technique, never turned his back on the necessity of » what Davidson chooses to refer to as « aesthetic intuition. » Actually, I think that the grace to which Jankélévitch here refers goes beyond (even in Jankélévitch’s mind) any determinate conception of aesthetics. I certainly see a very close relationship between the abandonment characteristic of grace and the kenosis mentioned previously.
Your points about « traditional account[s] », « translation », and « seemingly ‘non-religious’ language has spiritual and theological overtones » are good and important. One of the quotes in the Peacock review to which you linked says: « It may be, Latour suggests, that ‘exactly in the same way that Paul declared circumcision to be no longer the sign of a pious soul, belief in God should be discarded' », and that statement is fine if its meaning is more fully captured with a parallel addendum of « as a sign of a pious soul. » An insufficient number of thinkers emphasize what I will call the non-necessity of any manner of expression (one of the reasons that I, too, like Feyerabend is that he seemed to fully relish such a non-necessity). When Vanstone says that « one must ‘find the way’ in which … the other may be able to receive », he is in essence going beyond – if not rejecting – devotion to (certainly insistence upon) particular manners of expression. He does this because it is not belief that matters most; instead, what matters most is the gracious love which beliefs at best can only serve to introduce. Of course, this love, this grace has no determinate manner of expression; this love, this grace has no determinate manner in which it is to be effected (regardless of whether grace is a transcendent matter or not).
So, it is certainly the case that « theological concerns can be translated into more up to date language » (or alternative manners of expression) when it is realized that those concerns ultimately regard the nature of love and a devotion to effecting that love in life and lives. This means that even those who reject religion and (maybe especially) religious language can speak what seems to typically be thought of as religiously or spiritually even without (explicit) reference to God; it is just a matter of whether what is referred to as love or grace is considered to be particularly important. Likewise, those who would be described as religious or spiritual are no less religious or spiritual – and they are no more atheological – for discussing such a matter without (explicit) reference to God.
J’aimeJ’aime