Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 03:27:53 -0800 (PST)
From: Paul Bryant <levi_bryant-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Deleuzian Repetition


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I was wondering if anyone might want to comment on an apparent difficulty pertaining to Deleuze's account of repetition in DR.  Throughout DR Deleuze distinguishes between bare or surface repetition which gives rise to all the illusions of the model of recognition and the same, similar and identical, and a deeper or spiritual repetition which produces the former form of repetition as an effect and cloaks and hides itself even as it produces itself.  These two repetitions seem to correspond to the syntheses of habitus and memnosyn respectively.  Deleuze claims that repetition changes nothing in the object that repeats (each repeating object is a discrete event and independent of all the others), but does change something or produce something new in the mind that contemplates this repetition.  Deleuze's example here is the tick-tock of a clock.  From the point of view of the object each tick-tock is a discrete and independent event, but the mind draws a difference from all these events producing a synthesis that generates the living present:  Namely, the mind now anticipates that a tock will follow a tick and that a tick preceded a tock.  The synthesis of these two elements is something other than the repeating elements themselves and for Deleuze constitutes dimensions of the living present.

This generates a first problem or difficulty which strikes me as somewhat minor, but which is still worth responding to:  In Distinguishing between the object that repeats and the mind that draws a difference from these repetitions, does Deleuze adhere to some minimal dualism that might call into question his claim that being is spoken univocally?  I call this problem minor because Deleuze seems to want to claim that this form of synthesis belongs to organic and material life itself, which suggests that there is only a difference in degree between mind and object, rather than a difference in kind.  For instance, Deleuze will claim later in the same section that we are all made of contractions of light, air, earth, water.  Moreover, Deleuze takes special care to point out that these are syntheses that occur IN the mind, rather than BY the mind.  In emphasizing that these are syntheses that occur IN the mind, rather than BY the mind, I take it that Deleuze is rejecting any transcendence on the part of the subject and asserting the continuity between mind and the objects it contemplates.  As Deleuze claimed earlier in his book on Hume, the mind is identical with the contents belonging to mind, and is not a transcendence external to and above these contents.  But if this is the case, then it would be at least interesting to determine what Deleuze means by mind.

The synthesis mentioned above is the synthesis of habitus which Deleuze claims 1) constitutes the living present, 2) the brute form of surface repetition or repetition of the same, and 3) generates the image of thought or the model of repetition.  If habitus constitutes or produces the model of recognition, then this is because it reduces all instances or discrete events of repetition to mere instances of one and the same repetition and anticipates that the future is composed of generality.  Following Bergson, Deleuze now asks a strange question.  The brute repetition of habitus accounts for how the living present as a system of anticipations and retentions is produced, but does not account for how it is possible for the present to pass.  Consequently, Deleuze claims, we must point to a deeper repetition that explains how it is possible for the present to pass.  I won't get into all the reasons explaining why this is a good question to ask, but suffice it to say, Deleuze claims that if we are to account for how it is possible for the present to pass, then we must refer to a pure form of memory which constitutes a past that was never present.  Here Deleuze articulates the pure past in terms of Bergson's famous cone of memory, composed of multiple levels of memory in various degrees of relaxation and contraction that all co-exist with one another and which actualize themselves in passing experience.  This memory or pure past isn't your memory or my memory, but is a dimension of all being for Deleuze which actualizes itself in the production of beingS.  In other words, both you and I and any other object are ourselves actualizations of this multi-layered cone of the pure past.  Here Deleuze is very careful to point out that this pure past or memory isn't a container for a passing present that comes to fill it, but actually pre-exists any actualized experiences and renders them possible.  Deleuze claims, moreover, that the brute repetitions of habitus are themselves the most relaxed degree of this pure past.  So here we seem to encounter two more problems that are of a more serious nature.

First, everyone knows that one of Deleuze's central questions was that of how it is possible to create something new.  Deleuze seems to want to use this pure past as a way of explaining this.  Somehow, through the actualization of various levels of this pure past, something new is created.  Deleuze's favorite example here is Proust's _Rememberance of Things Past_.  The Combray described in Proust's great novel is not Combray as it was actually lived, but something like the spiritual essence of Combray, a Combray that was never itself present.  But if this pure past pre-exists any passing of the present, if the pure past is always what it is, then how is it creating anything new rather than just monotonously repeating the various levels and rhythms of this pure past.  I suspect that I've missed something crucial in Deleuze's account of the pure past here, but I cannot figure out what it is.

Second problem, and I think the more serious one, if Deleuze wishes to claim that habitus is itself the most relaxed degree of this pure past, then how is Deleuze to avoid swallowing up everything in the past. Between the contracted past of various levels and rhythms of spiritual or depth repetition and the most relaxed degrees of brute repetition or habitus, there would only be a difference in degree rather than a difference and kind.  But if this is the case, two consequences seem to follow.  First consequence:  The pure past which is supposed to be differential and freed from the monotony of the same, similar and identical paradoxically produces the same similar and identical.  Second consequence:  there never was any present and the flowing impressions of duration contribute nothing new or novel to our experience or to being because the pure past was always already present and pre-existed anything that came to be in the course of experience.  In fact, we might point to a third consequence such that under Deleuze's account of the pure past anything like the openness of the future seems impossible by virtue of there being nothing but the repetitions of the various levels of the pure past.  Deleuze's account of time seems to fall apart here in such a way that the dimensions of present and future are ultimately nothing but illusory effects of an ontological past and nothing new is really created at all.  (Here I'd like to distinguish between two senses of the new.  On the one hand there is the new in the sense of change, such that we cannot anticipate the precise qualities and intensities that will come about in future experience.  On the other hand, there is the new in the sense of new forms of perception, life, experience like those invented by an artist, a philosopher, an engineer or in organisms that later evolve.  Of these two senses of the new, the former strikes me as trivial and as already recognized since Plato-- Plato saw the world of appearances as a pure flux of change, cf. the _Parmenides_ --while the latter strikes me as of philosophical interest insofar as it calls into question anything like a selfsame transcendental subject with an unchanging constitution...  In other words, there's a way in which the latter form of novelty constitutes a radicalization of the Kantian Copernican Revolution insofar as it now becomes possible to account for the conditions of a production of sensibility in and through sensibility-- the reconciliation of the two senses of the aesthetic --rather than treating the structure of thought as invariant and the same throughout history and the movement of time.  This would be the difference between asking after the conditions of all possible experience (Kant) rather than the conditions of real experience (Deleuze).  The former is unable to account for real forms of life and experience such as those found in a snake or in Van Gogh in any but a negative and psychologistic way, while the latter in principle would be able to do so).

I really haven't been able to find any suitable solutions to these problems for myself, so I'd be interested in anything others on the list might have to say regarding them.  It might be noticed that I haven't mentioned the third sythesis-- that of the eternal return --which might ultimately solve these problems.  Unfortunately I find this doctrine extremely obscure and vague, so I'd be interested in any account of it that others might have as well.  With respect to the eternal return Deleuze claims that the ordinal relationship between past, present and future constitutes the form of change itself in such a way that the form of change does not itself change.  I take this to mean that experience is always such that there is a past that is determinate or elapsed and a future that is open, seen from the persective of a present.  Futurity always already belongs to experience in such a way that experience can never be completely swallowed up by the orders of generality and brute repetition.  But it's very difficult to see how Deleuze is able to reconcile this claim with the claims that he makes about the pure past. 

Best Regards,

Paul



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I was wondering if anyone might want to comment on an apparent difficulty pertaining to Deleuze's account of repetition in DR.  Throughout DR Deleuze distinguishes between bare or surface repetition which gives rise to all the illusions of the model of recognition and the same, similar and identical, and a deeper or spiritual repetition which produces the former form of repetition as an effect and cloaks and hides itself even as it produces itself.  These two repetitions seem to correspond to the syntheses of habitus and memnosyn respectively.  Deleuze claims that repetition changes nothing in the object that repeats (each repeating object is a discrete event and independent of all the others), but does change something or produce something new in the mind that contemplates this repetition.  Deleuze's example here is the tick-tock of a clock.  From the point of view of the object each tick-tock is a discrete and independent event, but the mind draws a difference from all these events producing a synthesis that generates the living present:  Namely, the mind now anticipates that a tock will follow a tick and that a tick preceded a tock.  The synthesis of these two elements is something other than the repeating elements themselves and for Deleuze constitutes dimensions of the living present.

This generates a first problem or difficulty which strikes me as somewhat minor, but which is still worth responding to:  In Distinguishing between the object that repeats and the mind that draws a difference from these repetitions, does Deleuze adhere to some minimal dualism that might call into question his claim that being is spoken univocally?  I call this problem minor because Deleuze seems to want to claim that this form of synthesis belongs to organic and material life itself, which suggests that there is only a difference in degree between mind and object, rather than a difference in kind.  For instance, Deleuze will claim later in the same section that we are all made of contractions of light, air, earth, water.  Moreover, Deleuze takes special care to point out that these are syntheses that occur IN the mind, rather than BY the mind.  In emphasizing that these are syntheses that occur IN the mind, rather than BY the mind, I take it that Deleuze is rejecting any transcendence on the part of the subject and asserting the continuity between mind and the objects it contemplates.  As Deleuze claimed earlier in his book on Hume, the mind is identical with the contents belonging to mind, and is not a transcendence external to and above these contents.  But if this is the case, then it would be at least interesting to determine what Deleuze means by mind.

The synthesis mentioned above is the synthesis of habitus which Deleuze claims 1) constitutes the living present, 2) the brute form of surface repetition or repetition of the same, and 3) generates the image of thought or the model of repetition.  If habitus constitutes or produces the model of recognition, then this is because it reduces all instances or discrete events of repetition to mere instances of one and the same repetition and anticipates that the future is composed of generality.  Following Bergson, Deleuze now asks a strange question.  The brute repetition of habitus accounts for how the living present as a system of anticipations and retentions is produced, but does not account for how it is possible for the present to pass.  Consequently, Deleuze claims, we must point to a deeper repetition that explains how it is possible for the present to pass.  I won't get into all the reasons explaining why this is a good question to ask, but suffice it to say, Deleuze claims that if we are to account for how it is possible for the present to pass, then we must refer to a pure form of memory which constitutes a past that was never present.  Here Deleuze articulates the pure past in terms of Bergson's famous cone of memory, composed of multiple levels of memory in various degrees of relaxation and contraction that all co-exist with one another and which actualize themselves in passing experience.  This memory or pure past isn't your memory or my memory, but is a dimension of all being for Deleuze which actualizes itself in the production of beingS.  In other words, both you and I and any other object are ourselves actualizations of this multi-layered cone of the pure past.  Here Deleuze is very careful to point out that this pure past or memory isn't a container for a passing present that comes to fill it, but actually pre-exists any actualized experiences and renders them possible.  Deleuze claims, moreover, that the brute repetitions of habitus are themselves the most relaxed degree of this pure past.  So here we seem to encounter two more problems that are of a more serious nature.

First, everyone knows that one of Deleuze's central questions was that of how it is possible to create something new.  Deleuze seems to want to use this pure past as a way of explaining this.  Somehow, through the actualization of various levels of this pure past, something new is created.  Deleuze's favorite example here is Proust's _Rememberance of Things Past_.  The Combray described in Proust's great novel is not Combray as it was actually lived, but something like the spiritual essence of Combray, a Combray that was never itself present.  But if this pure past pre-exists any passing of the present, if the pure past is always what it is, then how is it creating anything new rather than just monotonously repeating the various levels and rhythms of this pure past.  I suspect that I've missed something crucial in Deleuze's account of the pure past here, but I cannot figure out what it is.

Second problem, and I think the more serious one, if Deleuze wishes to claim that habitus is itself the most relaxed degree of this pure past, then how is Deleuze to avoid swallowing up everything in the past. Between the contracted past of various levels and rhythms of spiritual or depth repetition and the most relaxed degrees of brute repetition or habitus, there would only be a difference in degree rather than a difference and kind.  But if this is the case, two consequences seem to follow.  First consequence:  The pure past which is supposed to be differential and freed from the monotony of the same, similar and identical paradoxically produces the same similar and identical.  Second consequence:  there never was any present and the flowing impressions of duration contribute nothing new or novel to our experience or to being because the pure past was always already present and pre-existed anything that came to be in the course of experience.  In fact, we might point to a third consequence such that under Deleuze's account of the pure past anything like the openness of the future seems impossible by virtue of there being nothing but the repetitions of the various levels of the pure past.  Deleuze's account of time seems to fall apart here in such a way that the dimensions of present and future are ultimately nothing but illusory effects of an ontological past and nothing new is really created at all.  (Here I'd like to distinguish between two senses of the new.  On the one hand there is the new in the sense of change, such that we cannot anticipate the precise qualities and intensities that will come about in future experience.  On the other hand, there is the new in the sense of new forms of perception, life, experience like those invented by an artist, a philosopher, an engineer or in organisms that later evolve.  Of these two senses of the new, the former strikes me as trivial and as already recognized since Plato-- Plato saw the world of appearances as a pure flux of change, cf. the _Parmenides_ --while the latter strikes me as of philosophical interest insofar as it calls into question anything like a selfsame transcendental subject with an unchanging constitution...  In other words, there's a way in which the latter form of novelty constitutes a radicalization of the Kantian Copernican Revolution insofar as it now becomes possible to account for the conditions of a production of sensibility in and through sensibility-- the reconciliation of the two senses of the aesthetic --rather than treating the structure of thought as invariant and the same throughout history and the movement of time.  This would be the difference between asking after the conditions of all possible experience (Kant) rather than the conditions of real experience (Deleuze).  The former is unable to account for real forms of life and experience such as those found in a snake or in Van Gogh in any but a negative and psychologistic way, while the latter in principle would be able to do so).

I really haven't been able to find any suitable solutions to these problems for myself, so I'd be interested in anything others on the list might have to say regarding them.  It might be noticed that I haven't mentioned the third sythesis-- that of the eternal return --which might ultimately solve these problems.  Unfortunately I find this doctrine extremely obscure and vague, so I'd be interested in any account of it that others might have as well.  With respect to the eternal return Deleuze claims that the ordinal relationship between past, present and future constitutes the form of change itself in such a way that the form of change does not itself change.  I take this to mean that experience is always such that there is a past that is determinate or elapsed and a future that is open, seen from the persective of a present.  Futurity always already belongs to experience in such a way that experience can never be completely swallowed up by the orders of generality and brute repetition.  But it's very difficult to see how Deleuze is able to reconcile this claim with the claims that he makes about the pure past.

Best Regards,

Paul