A fold, a cuff.
There is a somewhat renowned (in certain circles, I guess) critique of Alain Badiou on Deleuze's concept of the fold. Badiou says that the fold is, for Deleuze, a return to his style before his work with Guattari, a classicism of philosophy that fails to affirm a proper pluralism. The problem, for Badiou, lies in the figure of the fold, in how it retains an outside/inside by nature of its figure.
Badiou however is rather blind for Deleuze's emphasis on the movements of the fold; it is not the fold that is what is at stake, but to fold. Perhaps he never read more than the title of the book, which is indeed somewhat misleading.
The tension between the figure and action seem to leave some space, nonetheless. Perhaps that is where the cuff comes in?
In Le pli Deleuze, right at the start, makes clear what the action of the fold is, where it tends to: a middle.
"Il n'en forme pas moins une façon de représenter ce que Leibniz affirmera toujours, une correspondance et même une communication entre les deux étages, entre les deux laby rinthes, les replis de la matière et les plis dans l'âme. Un pli entre les deux plis ?" (6)
A fold between two folds. Could that be another definition of the cuff?
This is so important, Halbe, and the cuff is useful for me with respect to thinking of the act of enveloping, which, as you say, he is clear about.
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