Becoming Line: On Some Features of Philosophy in Salut, Deleuze!

Doxa opposes the conceptual 'heights' of philosophical writing to the 'low' realms of popular imagery. While a philosophical comic book thus appears as impossible hybrid, the non-conceptual or affective components of thinking and the possibility of 'mental images' or 'noosings' both challenge the division between intellectual speculation and graphic depiction. In this context, Martin tom Dieck's and Jens Balzer's comic book Salut, Deleuze! may at times be shrugged off as mere illustration and reductionist popularization of thought. Meanwhile, the comic book seems to attempt the transformation of pictorial likeness into a decidedly Deleuzian, non-individual and machine-like principle of 'faciality'. From there, it heads for a deterritorialization of face and landscape and leaves classical concepts of codification or individuality behind. In so doing, Salut, Deleuze! adumbrates a graphic 'line of flight' and hints at philosophy's vital connection to nonphilosophy.