The Event

I’m still having a little trouble wrapping my head around “the event”, which is funny considering my précis was supposed to explain it. I find I can only describe it using the same words as Deleuze and Guattari; according to them the event “is not part of the eternal, but neither is it part of time—it belongs to becoming.” (158) So basically the event is non- temporal, which is contrary to how we might usually think of an event, however it is part of the birth or becoming of…what? It would seem the event itself, as it is the event that exists between instances, not time. Since the event is no longer temporal, it is a meanwhile, which is to say it has a certain permanence. But all these meanwhiles are put on top of each other and are in zone of indescernibility where they can’t be separated. This is all fine and good I suppose, however later D&G write, “Nothing happens there, but everything becomes, so that the event has the privilege of beginning again when time is past. Nothing happens, and yet everything changes, because becoming continues to pass through its components again and to restore the event that is actualized elsewhere, at a different moment.” (158) Now what in the world are they trying to say here? I have an inkling to what it is; possibly trying to explain how the event can become and yet never change, however this just seems flawed. The idea that nothing happens and everything changes seems like an “A = -A” argument. Later they go on to say the concept that apprehends the event. I suppose it is the concept that links the event to others like it, but D&G don’t say that. They seem to assert that every event of a type are the same event. I understand that we have to try to comprehend D&G within their own system but there gets a point at which it seems I have no choice but to agree with them otherwise their system doesn’t work for me. I don’t believe that their explanation of the event is a very good argument, and it seems a little bit too abstract. In my mind, they’re trying to force temporal things into a non-temporal system. If they had said that each event was individual and temporal and the concept linked together the events of the same type into a “relationship” that was non-temporal, thus making them have a sort of immortality, then I might agree with them, especially cause I bet they would be better at describing it than me. But they don't.