Date: Wed, 29 Apr 1998 08:45:10 -0700 (PDT)
From: Alexander Glage <glage-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Deleuze and Phenomenology






Just to continue along Marcus's line of thought:

Some relevant passages from *Difference and Repetition* would be found
in the "Repetition for Itself" and "Image of Thought" chapters, such
as the following from the former:

"Every organism, in its receptive and perceptual elements, but also in
its viscera, is a sum of contractions, of retentions and expectations.
 At the level of this primary vital sensibility, the lived present
constitutes a past and a future in time.  Need is the manner in which
this future appears, as the organic form of expectation.  The retained
past appears in the form of cellular heredity.  Furthermore, by
combining with the perceptual syntheses built upon them, these organic
syntheses are redeployed in the active syntheses of a psycho-organic
memory and intelligence (instinct and learning).  We must therefore
distinguish not only the forms of repetition in relation to passive
synthesis but also the levels of passive synthesis and the
combinations of these levels with one another and with active
syntheses." (p. 73 in the English translation)

I think Marcus is quite right to note Deleuze's insistence upon a
sensibility prior to perception or thought, even as, in a sense, those
very organic processes themselves can be likened to thought processes,
or to "contemplation" as Deleuze would say. That is, there is for
Deleuze a kind of organic memory, a retention or "contraction" which
occurs even at the cellular level, and which itself forms a kind of
"condition" for higher level memory, that is, for more "active"
syntheses of intelligence and learning.  Living organisms, whether
human or otherwise, all display this "primary vital sensibility,"
which in every case is the condition of their perserverence, insofar
as all life, even at the most basic and non-cognitive levels, can
maintain itself only on the condition that it in some sense has the
capacity to "perceive" difference, to note changes in the environment,
to go after nourishment and flee danger.  Sensitivity to difference is
presupposed by all life, at the level of the flesh, for without any
such sensitivity the organism would be incapable of distinguishing
anything, much less food from foes.  "Need...is the organic form of
expectation."  Yet in order to perceive difference, or even to
experience need, syntheses must already be carrying themselves out. 
And this then becomes a characteristically Deleuzean circle:
difference (in the form of intensities) and synthesis (in the form of
organic memory) both seem to presuppose each other.  They are each the
condition of possibility of the other.  (And of course, there is a lot
of room for a comparison to Hegel here, who exalted negativity
itself--that is, the power to distinguish, to negate, to perceive as
other or different--to the status of an absolute...)

So the point to remember here is not that organic memory is a matter
of our bodies passively repeating everything they encounter, but
rather that the retentions which occur at the "purely" organic level
are so numerous, so complex and compounded, that their most profound
positivity must always already be difference, or, to employ another
Deleuzean term, must always already be a sum of "intensities" which
are themselves the soil upon which higher functions depend. 
 Again, there is a lot of Bergson here, insofar as the concept of
duration must come into play.  Retention, whether at the organic or
intellectual level, always presupposes a duration, a contraction of
time, a repetition of a past which exists only, or shall we say
already, as past.  Bergson put this (very Kantian) point better than
anyone: Every consciousness of the present is always already memory. 
(Or something like that.)

Interestingly enough, I think that there is no reason to consider
Deleuze's thinking on this as "un-Kantian."  Deleuze was never one to
shy away from the term "transcendental," and indeed in *Difference and
Repetition* he employs it often.  So why should we be so quick in our
exclusion of Kant from the Deleuzean terrain?  To be fair, this is
more a complaint against Deleuze than it is against Marcus: Deleuze
inherited a healthy suspicion of Kant from Bergson (who, incidentally,
was much more Kantian than he cared to admit), yet I feel that there
is really no reason to exclude the possibility that both Bergson and
Deleuze are just continuing in a tradition that is clearly Kantian in
its focus, insofar as both seem deeply concerned with the "conditions
of possibility" not only of thought and knowledge, but ultimately of
conscious life itself (and who if not Kant can be named as the
philosopher who first and most rigorously made such transcendental
conditions of consciousness a proper topic of philosophy?).

In other words, whether you're talking about transcendental conditions
of cognition (e.g., space, time, and, perhaps most importantly,
synthesis itself) like Kant, or the no less transcendental conditions
of organic memory/syntheses like Deleuze, in each case you're speaking
primarily of what Deleuze calls "passive synthesis," that is,
syntheses which take place far beyond the supervision of our
desire/will, yet which nevertheless are what make our existence as we
know it possible...

Here's another passage from *Difference and Repetition* which seems
relevant, and which again makes me think that Deleuze's is aptly
described as Kantian (and I, for one, do NOT mean that as a criticism):

"It is true that on the path which leads to that which is to be
thought, all begins with sensibility.  Between the intensive and
thought, it is always by means of an intensity that thought comes to
us.  The privilege of sensibility as origin appears in the fact that,
in an encounter, what forces sensation and that which can only be
sensed are one and the same thing, whereas in other cases the two
instances are distinct.  In effect, the intensive or difference in
intensity is at once both the object of the encounter and the object
to which the encounter raises sensibility.  It is not the gods which
we encounter: even hidden, the gods are only the forms of recognition.
 What we encounter are the demons, the sign-bearers: powers of the
leap, the interval, the intensive and the instant; powers which only
cover difference with more difference."  (144-5).

Sorry to go on for so long, but I feel that Marcus's posts have really
been going in the "right" direction towards an understanding of what
Deleuze was trying to do...

Alexander Glage
_________________________________________________________
DO YOU YAHOO!?
Get your free -AT-yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com