Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 14:23:27 -0800 (PST)
From: Paul Bryant <levi_bryant-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Deleuzian Repetition


--0-473629505-1008714207=:28617


 Hi Mark,

<<Hi Paul, perhaps the "pure past" is that time, just
before sleep shuts out the lights, when talkative
Reason has already said good-night (and not a creature
is stirring, not even..) when smooth sheets of past
have a direct line to.. when what to my wondering eyes
should appear but.. (I'll spare you the details ;)
Suffice it to say that Eros and Mnemosyne are free to
play..>>

Bergson certainly describes memory in these terms.  According to Bergson memory can be described as the plane of dreams, while perception/matter can be described as the plane of action.  In Bergson, when we turn away from the body and action a certain madness ensues wherein an endless succession of memory-images play off one another without any order or reason.  I find the body and any sustained analysis of the actual in terms of its own properties to be almost entirely lacking in Deleuze's *earlier works* (with the possible exception of NP)...  I wonder if this might be the source of some of the obscurities encountered in trying to understand his account of actualization and individuation.

<<The pure past is the dream, thru which we usually
sleep, although Beckett's Exhausted does it walking,
and Emerson talks of this "Experience" where "Sleep
lingers all our lifetime ... All things swim and
glitter... Ghost-like we glide through nature, and
should not know our place again". Object x of the
dream "as the immanent limit of the series of virtuals
... the pure past assuming thereby the status of a
former present, albeit mythical, and reconstituting
the illusion it was supposed to denounce,
resuscitating the illusion of an original and a
derived" (D&R 109).>>

I take it the object = x would here be those shining or singular points around which the actualization of the memory/dream concrese or condensate as it is elaborated and unfolded?  First we reach back into the pure past for an event = x placing ourselves directly in that past and then we gradually unfold it and give it form as we actualize it?

<<Likewise Deleuze, even in 1968 or so, was saying that,
while "Eros leads its life as a cycle ... the opposing
element can only be Thanatos at the base of memory"
(D&R 109). But, I will say, "becoming desexualized and
forming a neutral displaceable energy" may ultimately
be "serving Thanatos" (111), only as a superstructure,
not as a base, Socrates' necrophilia not withstanding
-- there are many slower means of dissipation just as
honorable..>>

Perhaps, but I'm really having a hell of a time figuring out just what this thanatos is or why it's even necessary...  It's always struck me as a sort of supplement or add on that doesn't really need to be there.  The secondary literature seems to agree with me on this, given the paucity of extended analyses on Deleuze's eternal return and thanatos.  Most of them just end up repeating Deleuze term for term, quote for quote, rather than explaining the function its serving in his overall "system" of thought.  Eternal return has become a sort of messianic vision.

<<"The essential point, however, is the persistence of
the triadic structure" (D&R 92). Thanatos / Eschaton
can never plunge completely into ultimate Singularity
while Eros and Mnemosyne still slip away on either
side.. Peter Sloterdijk finds that Heidegger forgets
being-in the world while becoming lost between
coming-into and going-out-of the world. Similarly, CS
Peirce charged Hegel with being blind to Secondness
and sublimating Firstness directly under Thirdness --
Really, the past insists, the present exists, that the
future persists.. It only becomes a dualism if one
forgets the aion betwixt the tick and the tock!>>

Now you're getting somewhere!  What is the connection you see between secondness and the eternal return?  In Peirce, at any rate, secondness is the possibility of surpise, the sheer resistance of the world.  Such suprise is only possible in successive time where time unfolds between past, present and future such that the becoming-present of the future can never be fully captured by any system...  The reality of change.  We could then think of three time:

1) Habitus:  The time of anticipation and retention belonging to motor activity in day to day live.

2) Memnosyn:  The pure past in which events are preserved and dated and from which meaning becomes possible.

3) Eternal Return:  The time of succession and change, of seriality in which futurity is open, surprise is possible, and meaning and habit are both exceeded.

This is a loose articulation, but do you have something akin to this in mind?

<<Try these _Empiricism and Subjectivity_ pair a doxes
on for size: "the imagination reflects affection",
but, "something within the affections escapes all
reflection... Imagination, as it reflects on the forms
of its own stability, liberates these forms, and
liberates itself from them ... The power of the
imagination is to imagine power... It is in this sense
that reflection and extension are one" (59) -- that
is, univocal, reflecting "the fundamental link between
artifice and fancy" (61). 

As we continue through the hall of mirrors: "the
illusion is no less real than the understanding which
denounces it; culture is a false experience, but it is
also a true experiment" (62). Perhaps that's
transcendental empiricism in a nut shell?>>

Although Deleuze is deeply influenced by Hume and takes up some Humean teachings, I think his transcendental empiricism is radically different than Humean empiricism.  As I see it, Deleuze is much closer to process philosophy than Humean empiricism.  But I won't tell that story now.  At any rate, Hume is driven by an atomism of impressions, whereas for Deleuze-Bergson impressions cannot be atoms in and of themselves but must be the result of a process of individuation and differentiation.  Experience, in Deleuze, is not built up from atoms, but results from dissociations or divergences of a whole that is never given in and of itself.  Hume = from parts to whole.  Deleuze = from whole to parts.

<< Or, as the
needle strikes a similar vein: "a critique of rules by
rules" (72). A view outside the self from inside the
self?
----
I've also found _Empiricism and Subjectivity_ very
helpful for understanding the three syntheses of time
in _Difference and Repetition_, revealing the "secret
coherence" here. But, the "Platonic reminiscence"
seems distracting to me, with "the pure past of the
Ideas ... as immemorial model [of] the Same and the
Similar... [which] introduces movement into the soul
rather than time into thought" (88). Still, flowing
below, the unfolding of the syntheses of time here
follows the same schema as in _Empiricism &
Subjectivity_ pages 94-96. >>

I admit that I don't like the idea of treating the pure past as something that preserves itself in and of itself and would much prefer a psychologistic naturalism that places memory in the brain.  But then we run into the Bergsonian problem of explaining how images (which are matter) can store images.  If you want to treat perception as something that places us directly in things by showing how images are real and not simply mental copies, then you can no longer maintain the position that treats memories as mental copies of images (perhaps).

<<Here, in D&R, however, Deleuze is schizoanalyzing the
great characters of human history - from Oedipus to
Socrates, from Saint Paul to Martin Luther.. It is not
how they are similar that matters, it's how they
differ while maintaining a "secret coherence" where
what is eternally returned is the surety of
metamorphosis and the ruin of representation -- BUT, I
would deny that power to Thanatos *alone* without,
always, Eros & Mnemosyne.. (Thanatos is bin Laden in
his cave, seeing only shadows on the wall, sniffing
funeral-pyre fumes, preparing for the big blow-out,
eternal return of the martyr..)>>

Or, to put it differently, memory and repition both pertain to singularities rather than general types, which is why a philosophy of repetition and memory is able to overcome Kantian, Hegelian, Platonic and Aristotlean formalism/categorialism/substantialism while still explaining how something *like* forms or types are produced even if only transitorially.

<<Having a life-yet-to-come, _Empiricism and
Subjectivity_ picks up the three syntheses and tends
to more worldly matters: "We embark upon a
transcendental critique when, having situated
ourselves on a methodologically reduced plane that
provides an essential certainty" (the certainty of
Thanatos and death) "we ask: how can there be a
given?" On the other hand, "The critique is empirical
when, having situated ourselves in a purely immanent
point of view ... we ask: how can the subject be
constituted in the given?" (E&S 87). >>

In DR, at any rate, Deleuze contests the notion of the given altogether.  The question is no longer one of how a subject can be constituted from the given (the question of atomism really), but how a given subject can be produced out of virtual conditions.  Or something like that.

<<Ultimately: "we formulate three problems: what are the
characteristics of the subject in the case of belief
and invention? Second, by means of what principles is
the subject constituted in this way? ... Finally, what
are the various stages of this synthesis ... First, in
relation to time... To speak of the subject now is to
speak of duration, custom, habit and anticipation" --
habit here is NOT just a bare or brute repetition! --
"the thrust of the past and the elan toward the future
- are, at the center of Hume's philosophy ... It is
not necessary to force the texts in order to find in
the habit-anticipation most of the Bergsonian /duree/
or memory... the subject, at root, is the synthesis of
time -- the synthesis of the present and the past in
the light of the future... this synthesis is
productive, creative, and INVENTIVE" (E&S 92-94).>>

In DR Deleuze identifies habit with brute repetition while also maintaining that it is animated by a more profound spiritual repetition.  Habit is not the last word, but only a stepping stone.  Moreover, Hume seems to confound memory with mechanical and sensory-motor memory in such a way that he seems unable to account for the datability and singularity of *memories*.  When I memorize something I need not rehearse each repetition I went through in order to produce the motor-schema I evoke in recalling it...  Not so when I recollect Sept. 11th or the Florida election debacle...  These are dated events, not motor-schemas.  As a general rule I only push Deleuze's readings of others so far as they allow me to understand texts he wrote in his proper name, rather than assimilating these texts to his works on others (wouldn't it be strange to call Deleuze a transcendental realist because he wrote a book on Kant?).  This might not be the most Deleuzian strategy, but I'm mostly interested in understanding DR and LoS, rather than being a Deleuzian.


Best Regards,

Paul



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Hi Mark,

<<Hi Paul, perhaps the "pure past" is that time, just
before sleep shuts out the lights, when talkative
Reason has already said good-night (and not a creature
is stirring, not even..) when smooth sheets of past
have a direct line to.. when what to my wondering eyes
should appear but.. (I'll spare you the details ;)
Suffice it to say that Eros and Mnemosyne are free to
play..>>

Bergson certainly describes memory in these terms.  According to Bergson memory can be described as the plane of dreams, while perception/matter can be described as the plane of action.  In Bergson, when we turn away from the body and action a certain madness ensues wherein an endless succession of memory-images play off one another without any order or reason.  I find the body and any sustained analysis of the actual in terms of its own properties to be almost entirely lacking in Deleuze's *earlier works* (with the possible exception of NP)...  I wonder if this might be the source of some of the obscurities encountered in trying to understand his account of actualization and individuation.

<<The pure past is the dream, thru which we usually
sleep, although Beckett's Exhausted does it walking,
and Emerson talks of this "Experience" where "Sleep
lingers all our lifetime ... All things swim and
glitter... Ghost-like we glide through nature, and
should not know our place again". Object x of the
dream "as the immanent limit of the series of virtuals
... the pure past assuming thereby the status of a
former present, albeit mythical, and reconstituting
the illusion it was supposed to denounce,
resuscitating the illusion of an original and a
derived" (D&R 109).>>

I take it the object = x would here be those shining or singular points around which the actualization of the memory/dream concrese or condensate as it is elaborated and unfolded?  First we reach back into the pure past for an event = x placing ourselves directly in that past and then we gradually unfold it and give it form as we actualize it?

<<Likewise Deleuze, even in 1968 or so, was saying that,
while "Eros leads its life as a cycle ... the opposing
element can only be Thanatos at the base of memory"
(D&R 109). But, I will say, "becoming desexualized and
forming a neutral displaceable energy" may ultimately
be "serving Thanatos" (111), only as a superstructure,
not as a base, Socrates' necrophilia not withstanding
-- there are many slower means of dissipation just as
honorable..>>

Perhaps, but I'm really having a hell of a time figuring out just what this thanatos is or why it's even necessary...  It's always struck me as a sort of supplement or add on that doesn't really need to be there.  The secondary literature seems to agree with me on this, given the paucity of extended analyses on Deleuze's eternal return and thanatos.  Most of them just end up repeating Deleuze term for term, quote for quote, rather than explaining the function its serving in his overall "system" of thought.  Eternal return has become a sort of messianic vision.

<<"The essential point, however, is the persistence of
the triadic structure" (D&R 92). Thanatos / Eschaton
can never plunge completely into ultimate Singularity
while Eros and Mnemosyne still slip away on either
side.. Peter Sloterdijk finds that Heidegger forgets
being-in the world while becoming lost between
coming-into and going-out-of the world. Similarly, CS
Peirce charged Hegel with being blind to Secondness
and sublimating Firstness directly under Thirdness --
Really, the past insists, the present exists, that the
future persists.. It only becomes a dualism if one
forgets the aion betwixt the tick and the tock!>>

Now you're getting somewhere!  What is the connection you see between secondness and the eternal return?  In Peirce, at any rate, secondness is the possibility of surpise, the sheer resistance of the world.  Such suprise is only possible in successive time where time unfolds between past, present and future such that the becoming-present of the future can never be fully captured by any system...  The reality of change.  We could then think of three time:

1) Habitus:  The time of anticipation and retention belonging to motor activity in day to day live.

2) Memnosyn:  The pure past in which events are preserved and dated and from which meaning becomes possible.

3) Eternal Return:  The time of succession and change, of seriality in which futurity is open, surprise is possible, and meaning and habit are both exceeded.

This is a loose articulation, but do you have something akin to this in mind?

<<Try these _Empiricism and Subjectivity_ pair a doxes
on for size: "the imagination reflects affection",
but, "something within the affections escapes all
reflection... Imagination, as it reflects on the forms
of its own stability, liberates these forms, and
liberates itself from them ... The power of the
imagination is to imagine power... It is in this sense
that reflection and extension are one" (59) -- that
is, univocal, reflecting "the fundamental link between
artifice and fancy" (61).

As we continue through the hall of mirrors: "the
illusion is no less real than the understanding which
denounces it; culture is a false experience, but it is
also a true experiment" (62). Perhaps that's
transcendental empiricism in a nut shell?>>

Although Deleuze is deeply influenced by Hume and takes up some Humean teachings, I think his transcendental empiricism is radically different than Humean empiricism.  As I see it, Deleuze is much closer to process philosophy than Humean empiricism.  But I won't tell that story now.  At any rate, Hume is driven by an atomism of impressions, whereas for Deleuze-Bergson impressions cannot be atoms in and of themselves but must be the result of a process of individuation and differentiation.  Experience, in Deleuze, is not built up from atoms, but results from dissociations or divergences of a whole that is never given in and of itself.  Hume = from parts to whole.  Deleuze = from whole to parts.

<< Or, as the
needle strikes a similar vein: "a critique of rules by
rules" (72). A view outside the self from inside the
self?
----
I've also found _Empiricism and Subjectivity_ very
helpful for understanding the three syntheses of time
in _Difference and Repetition_, revealing the "secret
coherence" here. But, the "Platonic reminiscence"
seems distracting to me, with "the pure past of the
Ideas ... as immemorial model [of] the Same and the
Similar... [which] introduces movement into the soul
rather than time into thought" (88). Still, flowing
below, the unfolding of the syntheses of time here
follows the same schema as in _Empiricism &
Subjectivity_ pages 94-96. >>

I admit that I don't like the idea of treating the pure past as something that preserves itself in and of itself and would much prefer a psychologistic naturalism that places memory in the brain.  But then we run into the Bergsonian problem of explaining how images (which are matter) can store images.  If you want to treat perception as something that places us directly in things by showing how images are real and not simply mental copies, then you can no longer maintain the position that treats memories as mental copies of images (perhaps).

<<Here, in D&R, however, Deleuze is schizoanalyzing the
great characters of human history - from Oedipus to
Socrates, from Saint Paul to Martin Luther.. It is not
how they are similar that matters, it's how they
differ while maintaining a "secret coherence" where
what is eternally returned is the surety of
metamorphosis and the ruin of representation -- BUT, I
would deny that power to Thanatos *alone* without,
always, Eros & Mnemosyne.. (Thanatos is bin Laden in
his cave, seeing only shadows on the wall, sniffing
funeral-pyre fumes, preparing for the big blow-out,
eternal return of the martyr..)>>

Or, to put it differently, memory and repition both pertain to singularities rather than general types, which is why a philosophy of repetition and memory is able to overcome Kantian, Hegelian, Platonic and Aristotlean formalism/categorialism/substantialism while still explaining how something *like* forms or types are produced even if only transitorially.

<<Having a life-yet-to-come, _Empiricism and
Subjectivity_ picks up the three syntheses and tends
to more worldly matters: "We embark upon a
transcendental critique when, having situated
ourselves on a methodologically reduced plane that
provides an essential certainty" (the certainty of
Thanatos and death) "we ask: how can there be a
given?" On the other hand, "The critique is empirical
when, having situated ourselves in a purely immanent
point of view ... we ask: how can the subject be
constituted in the given?" (E&S 87). >>

In DR, at any rate, Deleuze contests the notion of the given altogether.  The question is no longer one of how a subject can be constituted from the given (the question of atomism really), but how a given subject can be produced out of virtual conditions.  Or something like that.

<<Ultimately: "we formulate three problems: what are the
characteristics of the subject in the case of belief
and invention? Second, by means of what principles is
the subject constituted in this way? ... Finally, what
are the various stages of this synthesis ... First, in
relation to time... To speak of the subject now is to
speak of duration, custom, habit and anticipation" --
habit here is NOT just a bare or brute repetition! --
"the thrust of the past and the elan toward the future
- are, at the center of Hume's philosophy ... It is
not necessary to force the texts in order to find in
the habit-anticipation most of the Bergsonian /duree/
or memory... the subject, at root, is the synthesis of
time -- the synthesis of the present and the past in
the light of the future... this synthesis is
productive, creative, and INVENTIVE" (E&S 92-94).>>

In DR Deleuze identifies habit with brute repetition while also maintaining that it is animated by a more profound spiritual repetition.  Habit is not the last word, but only a stepping stone.  Moreover, Hume seems to confound memory with mechanical and sensory-motor memory in such a way that he seems unable to account for the datability and singularity of *memories*.  When I memorize something I need not rehearse each repetition I went through in order to produce the motor-schema I evoke in recalling it...  Not so when I recollect Sept. 11th or the Florida election debacle...  These are dated events, not motor-schemas.  As a general rule I only push Deleuze's readings of others so far as they allow me to understand texts he wrote in his proper name, rather than assimilating these texts to his works on others (wouldn't it be strange to call Deleuze a transcendental realist because he wrote a book on Kant?).  This might not be the most Deleuzian strategy, but I'm mostly interested in understanding DR and LoS, rather than being a Deleuzian.

Best Regards,

Paul