Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2001 15:05:32 -0500
From: "B. Metcalf" <bmetcalf-AT-ultranet.com>
Subject: Re: Deleuzian Repetition


Hi Paul,

>>>>

<excerpt>

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. 

</excerpt><<<<<<<<

It seems to me that in trying to understand these complexities we need to
notice that Deleuze is showing us a sub-representative level of passive
syntheses beneath the active (representational) synthesis.  (DR84)"The
passive syntheses are obviously sub-representative."  The passive
syntheses are composed of two forms of repetition.  The first draws
difference from repetition.  The second includes difference at the heart
of repetition.  The point I want to emphasize is that the forms of
repetition are SUB-REPRESENTATIVE.  This means that the two series of
repetition (the bare and the clothed-spiritual) must not be thought of as
a homogeneous series of continuity between mind and the objects it
contemplates.  That would still be representation of an object to a
subject.  (DR23) " . . .rather than the repeated and the repeater, the
object and the subject, we must distinguish two forms of repetition . .
."  These two forms (series) of repetition are heterogeneous.  They are
at the sub-representative level rather than the homogeneous level of
representation.   


>>>>

<excerpt>

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? 

</excerpt><<<<<<<<

It seems to me that it is only the heterogeneity of the two forms of
repetition at the sub-representative level that overcomes the dualisms of
the representational level (such as the dichotomy of how the object is
represented to the subject).  Only sub-representational heterogeneity
overcomes representational dualisms. 

>>>>

<excerpt>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.

</excerpt><<<<<<<<

*But Deleuze is not asserting any continuity between the mind and the
objects it contemplates.  (DR75)"there is no continuity apart from that
of habit . . .no other continuities apart from our thousands of component
habits, which form within us so many . . .contemplative selves . . ."
Any continuity between the mind and the objects it contemplates would
still be homogeneous representation of the object to a subject.  That
would be (DR74) " . . .the sensory-motor habits that we have
(psychologically) [but not] the primary habits [sub-representative] that
we are; the thousands of passive syntheses of which we are organically
composed." 

>>>>

<excerpt>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.

</excerpt><<<<<<<<

*The subject Deleuze speaks of in Chapter II of D&R as the
(p70)"for-itself of repetition, an originary subjectivity which
necessarily enters into its constitution", is not the subject which
represents an object (or action) to itself. (p75)"Underneath the self
which acts are little selves which contemplate . . ."  (p78)"Selves are
larval subjects; the world of possible syntheses constitutes the system
of the self, under conditions yet to be determined, but it is the system
of a dissolved self."  (79)"The self does not undergo modifications, it
is itself a modification."  This is not a self that can be represented to
itself as an object.  Rather, these (p77)"thousand intertwinings"---these
(p78) "thousands of habits of which we are composed" are at the
sub-representative level.  They are molecular.  We *are* contemplations
and contractions (the two forms of repetition of Habitus).

>>>>

<excerpt>

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.

</excerpt><<<<<<<<

*Now we are in the second synthesis of time---the first passive synthesis
of Habitus is extended in the form of the second passive synthesis of
Mnemosyne (involuntary memory of the pure past).  The pure past is the
pure, a priori past, in general or as such.  With this second synthesis
of time we again have two forms of repetition.  (82)"In one case
[Habitus], the present is the most contracted state of successive
elements or instants which are in themselves independent of one another.
In the other case [Mnemosyne], the present designates the most contracted
degree of an entire past, which is itself like a coexisting totality."
(84)"Between the two repetitions, the material and the spiritual, there
is a vast difference.  The former is a repetition of successive
independent elements or instants; the latter is a repetition of the Whole
on diverse coexisting levels . . .Difference is drawn from one in so far
as the elements of instants are contracted within a living present.  It
is included in the other in so far as the Whole includes the difference
between its levels . . .the present always contracts difference, but in
one case it contracts indifferent instants; in the other case, by passing
to the limit, it contracts a differential level of the whole . . ."

>>>>

<excerpt>

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.

</excerpt><<<<<<<<

*The two forms of repetition of the second synthesis are the
heterogeneity of the extended passive synthesis described above (Habitus
extended into Mnemosyne-Eros).  Therefore, the forms of repetition in the
sub-representative passive synthesis provide the heterogeneity necessary
for real difference.

>>>>

<excerpt>  

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.

</excerpt><<<<<<<<

*I believe it is the eternal return (the third synthesis of time) that
solves the problems. (DR296-7).  It breaks the cycles of the first two
syntheses and distributes before and after (through Aion, the pure empty
form of time) on a straight (ordinal) line of time.  Time is "out of
joint".  The empty form of time, that immutable form of change, is the
univocity of time.  It has no possible mnemic or empirical content.
There is no longer a time defined by a cardinal succession (or an
empirical determination of time subordinate to movement).  Rather, all
cardinal succession is now a mode of an unchanging form (univocity) of
time.  That is, just as with the nomadic distribution of space where
(p36)"there is no longer a division of that which is distributed but
rather a division among those who distribute themselves in an open
space", so it is with time.  With the pure, empty form of time there is
not a division of a cardinal, empirical determination distributed in a
form subordinate to movement.  Rather, there is a nomadic distribution in
an open, pure empty form of time.  


Aren't these three syntheses of time just what D&G will later call
'territorialization' (first synthesis), 'relative deterritorialization'
(second synthesis), and 'absolute deterritorialization' (third
synthesis)?


Beth

>>>>