Introduction: Lewis Carroll's Three Types of Esoteric Word

In the preface to The Logic of Sense, Deleuze spells out his aims in this book. He writes that in Lewis Carroll's work one finds a ‘chaoscosmos’ or paradoxical unity of ‘sense and nonsense’, ‘but’ that

Firstly, this marriage of language and the unconscious – or this paradoxical unity of sense and nonsense – appears to allude to the work of the Lacanian school, which he later adds has ‘completely renewed the general problem of the relations between language and sexuality’. Secondly, to contribute something original, in light of Lacan's work – but also, it is implied, because Lacan's work has not yet reached its own ground (as conceived by Deleuze) – Deleuze is saying here that we need to turn to the work of Carroll, so as to examine ‘what else’ language and the unconscious are connected with. This third term, it is implied, is more fundamental than either language or the unconscious taken separately, underlying them both and accounting for the importance of their relation.

It is clear, not least from the book's title, that this third term is ‘sense’ or more precisely ‘the Univocity of sense’, in short univocal sense understood as ontologically bypassing what are termed ‘sense’ and ‘nonsense’, or language and the unconscious/sexuality/the body, respectively, when taken separately. For Deleuze, univocal sense is both the ontological ground of, as well as being produced by, the articulation of the unconscious/sexuality and language, bodies and language or, more fundamentally, being and thinking.