Inspired by Spinoza, Deleuze’s question on the body does not address a presupposed essence, but rather a series of potentialities that are actualized in becoming, forces that are formed in the body’s encounters with other bodies. For both Spinoza and Deleuze, the most pressing question is ‘what can a body do?’: “We know nothing about a body until we know what it can do […] what its affects are, how
they can or cannot enter into composition […] with the affects of another body […] either to exchange actions and passions with it or to join it in composing a more powerful body” (Deleuze and Guattari 257). Deleuze’s thinking on the film image unmistakably draws from his philosophy of bodily forces. The image is an instance of becoming where body and brain become indistinguishable, where virtual forces are constantly becoming actual forms, forms that decompose back into the virtual, only to become actual again. In these brief remarks, I would like to follow Deleuze’s nonanthropomorphic method and address the powers of the kind of scene that is capable of mobilizing thought for itself as well as its audience.