concrete rules and abstract machines

“The fold is predicated on two paradoxes of Leibniz’s thought: the paradox of the monad and the conception of the baroque world as a two-tier world. The most fundamental attribute of the monad, Deleuze reminds us, is the erasing of the distinction between inside and outside. The origin of the word monad is neoplatonic, and in Leibniz, it takes on the metaphysical element of the soul or the subject: the monad denotes the oneness that envelops a multiplicity and the multiplicity that unfolds the oneness (see Antonioli 111, and passim). The monad is like a constant and uninterrupted coming and going between the soul and the body, a movement that cancels out the boundary between the sensible and the intelligible world. The monad is a mirror and a perspective onto the world, yet it draws its perceptions from within itself, because it is a unity without doors nor windows. In the two-tier world of the baroque, each soul is distinct and bears its own singular viewpoint. The souls, like the monads, are at the higher tier of the world and do not act upon each other; they draw their perceptions from within an infinite set of perceptions. At the lower tier is organic and inorganic matter subject to forces that draw it into a curvilinear movement. Baroque matter is “porous” and “spongy”, distinct yet inseparable from the soul.” -Remapping the Affinities between the Baroque and the Postmodern: The Folds of Melancholy & the Melancholy of the Fold. Stamatina Dimakopoulou