Image courtesy of DALL-E.
Deleuze may be considered one of the last noteworthy thinkers to engage in systematic metaphysics, and one of the only among that exceptionally brilliant generation of the French postmoderns whose shadow we live under today.
But Deleuze is not a simple thinker. And he is often one of the prime targets of those who accuse humanities theorists of being dogmatically verbose. Whether or not Deleuze himself falls into deliberately obscurantist prose is I believe an open question, though nearly all who talk in his parlance are guilty of congealing hazy word soup, more often than not.
I have been re-reading Difference and Reptition, the magnum opus of Deleuze's metaphysics before he entered a partnership with Guattari which had controversial impacts on the quality of his later work.
Here I hope to break down in a succinct, and at least slightly clearer frame, the ideas Deleuze sought to put forth in the introduction to his book. The density and philosophical sophistication of these ideas though are rather off-putting and assume the reader has a very thorough intimacy with the questions and conceptual parlance of philosophy across the Western tradition.
But for those initiated in these metaphysical questions, I believe it is a rather illuminating read. One that brings systematicity to thinkers like Kierkegaard and Nietzsche who seem so intrinsically anti-systematic themselves.
It is the "latest and greatest" of metaphysical tracts, and I do not believe a successor has yet been published in the West, at least to my knowledge.
(This summary will undergo a few iterations of clarification. It remains still in its early stages.)
Introduction - Repetition and Difference
I - Repetition vs. Generalities
Things are typically reduced to some generality. Cats, dogs, and muffins. A number of particulars fall under each of these general species. A generality which erases the particularity and individuality of that which it subsumes. The universal dilutes the richness of variety.
But this is not the way it has to be. Instead of reducing all things to generalities, Deleuze would like to introduce an alternative: repetition.
How can we understand what it is to be general? Generality can be divided into two classes: cycles and equalities. Cycles are a qualitative order of resemblances while equalities are a quantitative order of equivalences. The blueness of the sky today indicates that we have clear weather, something we also had two days ago. The generality tricycle includes all vehicles with the quantitative equivalence of three wheels. In both, generality presupposes the substitution of various particulars while still maintaining some sense of generality. It is rooted in this exchange. You can swap in your idea of your dog with my idea of my dog, and we've still got a "dog" in mind. The particulars come and go through this trade which support this more general idea.
By contrast, repetition is concerned with singularities that cannot be exchanged or substituted for one another. Reflections, echoes, doubles, and souls cannot simply be swapped in the way generalities can. Repetition does not swap in and out it merely strikes again. Repetition is rooted thus in theft and gift. It goes as it comes.
By its nature, repetition occurs in relation to something that is singular, something that is without equal. This is externally true but perhaps also internally true. There is a sense in which repetition interiorizes and reverses itself. The Bastille falls in 1789 as a historical event. But it is celebrated every year and in this sense falls again and again. This singular fall celebrates and repeats itself for every subsequent year it is celebrated. The holiday repeats itself through its annual re-enactment.
In this way, the generality of the particular (i.e. a dog) exists in opposition to the universality of the singular (i.e. Fido). This surfaces prominently in the case of art. Art is a repetition which reiterates singular things, even if it is as simple as a vase of flowers. It is a singularity that repeats. At the same time, the art itself has no general concept in itself but yet it remains universal as it belongs universally to the vase of flowers.
To draw this out further, generality belongs to law. Law determines the resemblances between its subjects, and their equivalence to designated, common terms. Think of how we apply law to designate animals into their classes and species. In cases like this, repetition is impossible for pure subjects of general law because these can only be particulars. A general idea of bumblebee cannot repeat itself, as it lacks that singular bumblebee. This is an empty form of difference. One cannot simply say that the same bumblebee repeats itself by remaining its constant itself. At some deeper level, any constant dissolves into a variable. Permanence always dissolves upon some foundational bedrock, no matter how deep.
Repetition is more like a miracle than a law. As Deleuze says, “If repetition exists, it expresses at once a singularity opposed to the general, a universality opposed to the particular, a distinctive opposed to the ordinary, an instantaneity opposed to variation and an eternity opposed to permanence. In every respect, repetition is a transgression.” (2-3)
Natural phenomena are produced in a free state where all inferences are possible among the cycles of resemblance. The world unfolds in chaotic free play. To understand it, we must siphon and snip off minuscule components to analyze. Scientific experimentation encloses phenomena within a territory of minimal variation. Controls, isolation, replicability, etc. In this way, phenomena are transformed from a quantitative generality (cycle) to a quantitative generality (equality). Resemblances are unpacked to identify equality between subjects.
Repetition only emerges here in the movement from qualitative to quantitative, and yet undergirds both of these orders. But one should not mistake a qualitative difference of kind for a quantitative difference of degree for the two are fundamentally separate.
Repetition refers to a singular power that differs in kind from generality. It should not be assumed from the law of nature as the Stoics erroneously do in their philosophy of ethics. In their view, the morality of Good and Evil is merely a test of repetition. Evil ensnares us in despair or boredom while choosing Good is a repetition, an act out of duty. And because of this conscience rests on an ambiguity which supposes that moral law is both external to and superior to natural law. But yet moral law also must conform to natural law, bringing the self in accordance to nature. Moral law is thus built on a generality. A generality of habit as a second nature. The obligation to make a habit of acquiring natural habits.
However habit never produces repetition. Action and intent remain comparable variables across real world cases. If repetition were possible here, it would appear beneath the generality of perfection and integration, and these rest on an entirely different power.
Instead, repetition is opposed to moral and natural law. Moral can be overturned in two ways: (1) by ascending toward the principles and challenging the moral law as something derived from something else or (2) by descending toward consequences and analytically breaking down the applicability of these principles, reducing them toward absurdity. The first is the way of irony, the second the way of humor. Repetition belongs to both humor and irony as transgression and exception, singularity that opposes the particulars established in the law of generality.
II - Repetition in Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Peguy
Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Peguy all elevate repetition as a superior pathos and pathology in thought and language, though they do so in different ways. All three oppose repetition to generality and share these four points:
- Repetition makes something new as a free act of will.
- Repetition is opposed to nature. It is by the most interior repetition of will that change occurs, in the eternal return of Being.
- Repetition is opposed to moral law. It suspends ethics. It is the logos of the singular. The solitary private thinker stands as an individual against the particular public moralist, operating from generality.
- Repetition is opposed to general habit and particular memory. Habit is built upon the idea that a little Self extracts something new from an external repetition, but it contemplates an external generality. Memory grabs up particulars out of this contemplation. These are past-bound, while repetition is the thought of the future. Forgetting is a power of positivity.
Kierkegaard's God and Nietzsche's Dionysus both overcome philosophy. Both reject Hegel's false movement which is mediation through some abstract motion. It cannot be a representation of movement, for this is already mediated as representation. Rather one must produce a movement that affects the mind outside representation. This is theater, the root of real movement. Movement is not opposition or representation but repetition through drama.
Nietzsche grounds repetition in eternal return, itself built on the death of God and dissolution of the Self. For Kierkegaard, there is an alliance between God and rediscovered self. But doesn't Kierkegaard merely reinject the aesthetic repetition he ardently condemns? This is a problem that cannot be solved here or now but this does provide a theatrical confirmation of the irreducible difference between generality and repetition.
III - Four Blockages of Concepts
A concept may conceptualize a particular existent thing, i.e. that Socrates right there. This concept extends over one singular entity and thus infinitely comprehends it. This infinity of comprehension is not virtual nor indefinite but actual. Predicates in the moments of concepts are preserved through this. They have an effect on their subject, causing remembrance, recognition, memory, or even self-consciousness. Consequently, representation is the relation of a concept to its object under this double aspect of memory and self-consciousness.
A "vulgarized Leibnizianism" may be derived from this. Difference entails that every determination is conceptual in the last instance and belongs to the comprehension of a concept. The principle of sufficient reason states that there is always one concept per particular entity. Additionally, according to the principle of the identity of indiscernibles, there is one and only one entity per concept. When these two principles are combined, difference is thought of as conceptual difference.
However, a concept may be obstructed at each level of its predication. Something that prevents it from forming fully. Deleuze ennumerates one artificial blockage, and three natural ones: discrete, alienated, and repressed.
When a predicate is determined, the predicate must remain fixed in the concept while becoming something else when it subsists in its entity. In this case, the comprehension of the concept is infinite. It becomes other in the thing as a resemblance. In this way the determination of a predicate may remain general. If there is a resemblance between a particular and this predicate, it may be applied to it. It is applicable to an infinite number of particulars and so the concept has an infinite comprehension. While this is true, it remains logically blocked. The concept's comprehension no longer applies to one singular entity but to many more, so no individual can correspond to this concept "here and now". Comprehension and extension of a concept are thus inversely related.
Taking this into account, the principle of difference as difference opens up a space ot apprehend resemblances. When we classify entities, the determination of a species as this species presupposes a continuous evaluation of resemblances. Resemblance is not a partial identity, only because the predicate in the concept is not a part of that thing.
This create an artifical blockage which is distinct from a natural blockage of the concept. A concept taken at a particular "here and now" is rendered finite, it is assigned to that instant, its extension is equal to one, and it will naturally tend toward an infinite comprehension of that one thing with discrete extension. But this concept will tend to proliferate over multiple entities. Twins can participate in the same conceptual singularity. This discrete extension is a natural blockage of the concept, different in kind from an artificial, logical blockage.
A discrete extension is a true repetition in existence rather than an order of resemblance in thought. Generality is merely a logical power of concepts, and repetition is a testament to the limitation of the concept. As Deleuze puts it, "Repetition is the pure fact of a concept with finite comprehension being forced to pass as such into existence" (13). This can be considered from the perspective of language. Words are linguistic atoms which are necessarily finite in their comprehension as they are objects of nominal definitions. The comprehension of the concept cannot be infinite because a word can only be defined by a finitude of words. It is speech and writing which are acts of repetition which render "here and now" existence to words.
If these are natural blockages considered with discrete extension and finite comprehension, are there others? Given a concept with indefinite comprehension (i.e. virtually infinite). One can always think of it as subsuming perfectly identical yet plural objects. By contrast, the actual infinite distinguishes each concept's object from every other object. In this case, the concept is indefinitely the same for distinct objects. This demonstrates that there are real, non-conceptual differences between objects. One example of these non-conceptual determinations are the repetitions of space and time.
A real opposition is not a maximum of difference but a minimum of repetition reduced to the double of echo and return. A repetition which defines itself. Again in Deleuze's words, "Repetition thus appears as difference without a concept, repetition which escapes indefinitely continued conceptual difference." It was Kant's observation that no matter how deep you can go into a concept, it may always be repeated by making a subsequent object for it (e.g. left and right, positive and negative).
Concepts with indefinite comprehension but without memory are concepts of Nature. They must always exist in the mind which observes it. Nature is an alienated mind that is opposed to itself. The objects that lack memory correspond to these concepts. Nature repeats, and novelty passes to the mind that represents itself. The mind has a memory and thus acquires habits, forming concepts by subtracting out "extraneous" content from the repetition it observes.
Concepts with finite comprehension are nominal concepts. These are not all the cases of natural blockages. A particular representation with infinite comprehension may exist with memory but without self-consciousness. A comprehensive representation is in itself, as it has the memory which embraces the particularity of an event, but it lacks the for-itself of consciousness or recognition. It lacks remembrance which works through the memory. In this way, consciousness establishes a profound relation between the subject and the representation. The representation is related like a free faculty which is not confined to any of its products. Each product is thought and recognized as being in the past, the occasion of a determining change in inner meaning.
Without a consciousness for memory, knowledge is only a repetition of the object. It is re-enacted again and again without being known. Repetition is merely the unconscious of a free concept which Freud describes as repression. This is the third case of blockage and concerns the concepts of freedom. The less one remembers, the less consciousness one is of remembering the past, and thus the more one repeats it. Self-consciousness functions as a recognition which renders it the faculty of the future.
Repetition can be tragic or comic. Repetition always appears twice, once in each aspect. The hero repeats because he is separated from an essential, infinite knowledge. A blocked representation which is the root of the irony. But the nature of this blockage depends on the nature of the drama. In a tragedy, this is a forbidden, esoteric knowledge. What are the reasons the hero does not know what he should to prevent the repetition? In a comedy, this is a repressed knowledge which is immediate, natural common sense. The hero comedically repeats the mistake until he recognizes the knowledge.
So now the discrete, the alienated, and the repressed are the three cases of natural blockage and correspond to nominal concepts, concepts of nature, and concepts of freedom respectively. Across all three, a conceptual identity of representation can be invoked to account for repetition. Each element of the repetition possesses a real distinction but has the same concept. Repetition is a difference without concept. An indifferent difference, if you will.
But so long as we invoke an absolute conceptual identity for distinct objects, we are restricted to purely negative explanation. It does not matter that this explanation is grounded in concepts. In the case of discrete blockage, repetition occurs because nominal concepts naturally possess finite comprehension. For alienated blockages, repetition occurs because concepts of nature naturally lack memory. For repressed blockages, the concept of freedom remains unconscious while memories and representations remain repressed. that which repeats does so because it does not remember. In all three, negation is involved to explain the blockage.
However, a natural blockage requires a positive metaconceptual force to explain it fully. Here, we can start with Freud's death instinct. Freud postulates the death instinct as a positive principle for repetition. For him, the pleasure principle is merely psychological, while the death drive is transcendental.
This may seem a strange claim because death is typically the largest negation of all. One can understand this better by turning to masks and costumes. A repetition constitutes itself only by disguising itself. Repetition does not lie underneath a mask or facade; it is formed by them. There is no first term repeated. Nothing can be isoalted or abstracted from a repetition in which it is formed. There is no bare, raw repetition underneath because repetition is essentially symbolic. Difference may be included in repetition by way of disguise, but not by symbol. The variations of repetition do not express some external compromise between warring forces of repressor and repressed, nor is it some form of negative delimitation. Variations are themselves the differential mechanisms which belong to that which is repeated. In essence, the repeated cannot be represented and must therefore be signified.
To return to Freud, Eros must be repeated by its nature. Death is the transcendental principle that gives repetition to Eros and submits it to repetition. Freud frames this as a primary repression upon which repetitions are determined in the death instinct. But this is not a sufficient explanation. Freud argued that we can stop the repetition by merely seeking the memory and installing ourselves in it and thus use knowledge to connect past and present, to draw the identity between resistance and representation. In this frame, repetition thus both renders us ill and healthy. Transferences selects masks in this drama where the roles are erotic but the authentication of these roles is thanatonic.
III. Static and Dynamic Repetition
So why is it that repetition cannot be explained by the form of identity in concepts or representations? In the case of art, artists reproduce a figure not by juxtaposing two separate instances, but by combining elements of successive instances. The dissimilarities of the coming and passing of instances gives definition to the object, from what appears and from what is missing. The logical relation of this causality is inseparable from a physical process of signals. The signal is a sign with two aspects: (1) the productive dissymetry and (2) the cancellation. There is an internal difference at play here that is not fully symbolic.
And it is this lack of symmetry which is the origin of the causal process which allows us to divide repetition into two types (1) overall abstraction and (2) the acting cause repeated. The former is a static repetition resulting from the work and refers back to a single concept as an external difference. The latter is a dynamic bodily movement of an internal difference which carries its moments from each distinctive point to the next.
These different orders of repetition cannot be reduced to one another. In the dynamic order there is no represenative concept, only an idea. Think of rhythm and symmetry. This inequality is its most positive element.
Returning to nominal concepts, we should ask the question, does the identity of a nominal concept explain the repetition of a word? The repetition of words in a literary sense transcends a mere homonym. It doubles the meaning and as Deleuze puts it, "inscribes the maximum difference within repetition" (22). Both Roussel and Peguy use this to take language to its limits, Roussel through similarity and selection, while Peguy does so through contiguity and combination. They substitute the typical vertical repetition of distinct points with a horizontal repetition of ordinary words.
The reproduction of the Same is not a motor of bodily movements. The simplest imitation is a difference of the inside and outside. Learning thus occurs in the interplay of sign and response, not through reproducing the Same. Signs involve this heterogeneity in three ways: (1) in the object which emits the sign, (2) in the signs themselves as enveloping some other object, and (3) in the response the signs elicit.
We are confronted with repetition when we are confronted by identical elements who possess the same concept. They must be understood pronominally, as a singularity within that which repeats. They should not be thought of as repeated and repeater but as two forms of repetition. In all cases, repetition is difference without a concept. In one case difference is external to the concept, as a difference between objects represented by the same concept, such as the indifference of space in time. In the other case repetition includes both itself and difference in the otherness of the Idea.
They can be divided like so:
| Repetition of the Same | Repetition in Difference |
|---|---|
| Identity of concept | Difference |
| Negative | Positive |
| Conjectural | Categorical |
| Static | Dynamic |
| Repetition in effect | Repetition in cause |
| Extensive | Intensive |
| Ordinary | Singular |
| Horizontal | Vertical |
| Explicated | Enveloped |
| Revolving | Evolving |
| Equality/Symmetry | Inequality/Dissymetry |
| Material | Spiritual |
| Inanimate | Demonic |
| Bare | Covered |
| Accuracy | Authenticity |
These two kinds of repetition are not independent of each other. The repetition in difference causes the blockage of concepts in the repetition of the Same. The bare repetition does not exist prior to its own disguises. And every repetitive structure thus fits this mold. As Deleuze puts it, “[R]epetition displays identical elements which necessarily refer back to a latent subject which repeats itself through these elements, forming an ‘other’ repetition at the heart of the first” (25).
We started by separating generality from repetition, then in distinguishing two forms of repetition. These two distinctions are linked for the consequences of the first only appear in the second. Repetition without interiority would be impossible to understand. The inner repetition reconciles the singular and the general.
And it is these two orders of repetition which allow us to recapture generality. Variation occurs often under the governance of general laws but there remains the play of singularities. A repeating of generalities are masks of a singularity appearing again and again. This repetition in Difference is at the very core of all repetition. It is primary to it.
In this sense, difference is intrinsically conceptual, and repetition is extrinsic difference with a common concept. The principle of individuation has been trapped because it does not understand that difference can be internal without also being conceptual. For example, there is a sequential and internal construction of space that precedes the representation of space as a whole that is exterior.
This internal genesis consists of intensive quantity related to Ideas rather than concepts of the understanding. This presents a spatial order of extrinsic differences and a conceptual order of intrinsic differences harmonized by the intensive differential element. There are thus repetitions which are not merely extrinsic differences and there are also internal differences which are neither intrinsic nor conceptual. The mistake of the philosophy of difference up until this point is to confuse the concept of difference with conceptual difference, a dangerous error as it remains in a difference mediated by representation.
So what then is the concept of difference? What is the essence of repetition? And how do these two intersect?
That is what the following chapters of this book attempt to settle.