Deleuze’s concept of fabulation (or fabulation) comes primarily from his engagement with Henri Bergson’s philosophy, particularly in the context of art, storytelling, and the creation of myths. Fabulation, for Deleuze, is deeply connected to the power of fiction and the imagination to create new forms of collective life and to challenge established ways of thinking. Below is a detailed explanation of fabulation as Deleuze conceptualizes it:
1. Fabulation in Bergson
Deleuze draws on Bergson’s idea of fabulation (fabulatory function), which refers to the human capacity to create myths or fictions. For Bergson, fabulation originally served as a kind of evolutionary function, helping to foster social cohesion by creating shared beliefs or myths that unite people. However, Bergson also recognized its creative potential for imagining alternative realities.
2. Fabulation as Collective Storytelling
For Deleuze, fabulation is not just about creating myths in a traditional sense but about generating new ways of thinking, living, and imagining. It involves:
• Telling stories that create a people who do not yet exist.
• Fabulation as a political and artistic act of inventing narratives or visions that challenge dominant ideologies and allow for new forms of life and collective existence.
In this sense, fabulation is an act of becoming: creating and imagining futures that escape the limits of the present.
3. Fabulation in Cinema
In Cinema 2: The Time-Image, Deleuze discusses fabulation in relation to the role of cinema in producing new narratives and images of life. Here, fabulation refers to the power of cinema to:
• Give voice to the oppressed or marginalized.
• Create new ways of seeing and experiencing the world.
• Invent alternative histories or futures that break with established conventions.
This aligns with his idea that art, especially cinema, has the power to fabricate new worlds and disrupt dominant systems of representation.
4. Fabulation and Minoritarian Politics
Fabulation is closely tied to Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of minor literature or minoritarian politics:
• It is the capacity of marginalized groups to invent new ways of speaking and living.
• Fabulation is a means of resisting hegemonic narratives and creating a space for the emergence of new subjectivities.
For example, in a political sense, fabulation might involve inventing stories that reimagine a community’s identity, allowing it to assert itself against oppressive structures.
5. Fabulation and Art
For Deleuze, fabulation is also central to the role of art. Artists, like storytellers, engage in fabulation by creating:
• Figures of thought and imagination that disrupt the status quo.
• New myths and narratives that resonate with collective desires and potentials.
Art becomes a form of fabulation when it does not merely represent the world but actively creates new possibilities for being and thinking.
6. Fabulation and the Future
Fabulation is fundamentally forward-looking. It is the creation of myths, stories, and narratives that anticipate or bring into being a future community:
• It is not bound by the past or the present but is oriented toward the not-yet-realized.
• Fabulation is thus an act of becoming-other—a way of imagining and creating futures that break with existing realities.
Summary
In Deleuze’s thought, fabulation is the creative act of imagining and inventing new narratives, myths, and ways of living that challenge dominant systems of representation and open up possibilities for collective transformation. It is a political, artistic, and ethical practice that enables individuals and communities to reimagine their existence and their futures.
