Preface (notes and discussion)

[glowingwabbit]

The following are my preliminary notes from the 1st three paragraphs of the Preface. I apologize in advance for the lack of organization. I will be organizing and developing them. I won’t typically do this, unless people want me to. However, I felt it was important to get this board started, and to show everyone that I am currently working on the book.

A lot of the questions I ask in these notes cannot be answered yet, so they are merely suggestions of things that we could start thinking about.

*** Key points from the 1st three paragraphs***

- Placing the text in a historical context.
- How the book responds to Modern life
- New understanding of difference and repetition
- Important concept: Simulacrum

(xix-xx)

What is everyone’s thought about reading the Preface first? The common way to read a book is to start with the Preface and read on to the conclusion. However, Deleuze thinks that the preface should be read at the end, and the conclusion should be read first. It would appear that Deleuze is trying to break or reverse the image of the book, and the way in which we read it. I agree with this idea of changing the way in which we read a book. So why start with the Preface? By stating that the Preface should be read at the end, it appears that Deleuze is offering a prescription of how to read his book. But isn’t he against such prescriptions or models? If a book is meant to be read from Preface to conclusion, then we reverse this by reading the conclusion first. But Difference and Repetition is a book where we are told to read the conclusion first, so we should reverse this by reading the Preface first. For me, one of the key aspects to understanding Deleuze’s thought is to go against it, otherwise, he becomes the new model or image of thought. I don’t think Deleuze wants to be an institution for thought, but rather encourages us to think for ourselves, to think and live differently.

“the conclusion of which could make reading the rest unnecessary”…Should we just skip the book and read the conclusion? I almost feel that Deleuze is kidding us here, because to just read the conclusion would be to look for easy answers and solutions. Deleuze is interested in problems not solutions, questions not answers. I think it is important that we struggle with the problems of this book, and to suggest new problems and make new connections.

Another reason I think it is important to read the Preface first is that Deleuze puts his project in a historical context. Deleuze writes “the subject dealt with here is manifestly in the air” (xix). How is the subject of difference and repetition a sign of the times? Are we approaching a new paradigm, or has there already been a paradigm shift? Deleuze mentions a few “signs” that things are changing or have changed:

- Heidegger and ontological difference
- The project of structuralism
- Contemporary literature
- Discovery of the power of repetition in the unconscious, language and art

Is anyone familiar with any of these? If anyone knows of any sources on the web, let me know. I am always interested in doing more reading, especially if it helps to understand this text.

Are all these signs really to be attributed to Anti-Hegelianism? I don’t really know much about Hegel, so if anyone here does, any information would be really appreciated. I am especially interested in learning more about Hegelian dialectics.

The world of representation is defined by the primacy of identity (xix). How is Deleuze challenging this, that is, how is he opening up a new world of difference to combat the world of representation? I know that this question cannot be answered yet, but I think it is something we should start thinking about.

Modern thought – born of the failure of representation, the loss of identities, and the discovery of subterranean forces (xix)

How has representation failed? What are these forces lurking below representation? Have they always been there?

***What is simulacra? I think that this concept is extremely important for understanding the text we are reading. I understand simulacra in terms of Plato’s concept of the Idea, where simulacra eludes the action of the Idea (Plato) and contests both the model and copy at once. In this sense, it exists in and of itself, without reference to or grounding on a model. It is unmediated difference—difference in-itself. This is just my understanding. Does anyone have a different interpretation?

How is the modern world one of simulacra?

“All identities are only simulated, produced as an optical ‘effect’ by the more profound game of difference and repetition” (xix). …We have to look at the intensities and becomings that exist beneath identities…What is this new understanding of difference and repetition?

Enemies of difference in-itself: the Same and the Negative

Difference in-itself is not conceptual difference.

Thinking of difference and repetition seems to be historically specific to capitalism. They emerge at the moment when the most stereotypical and mechanical repetitions appear to have taken over the forces of life. Yet “we endlessly extract from them little differences, variations and modifications” (xix).

What are these “secret, disguised and hidden repetitions” (xix)?

In simulacra, repetitions play upon repetitions, and difference upon differences…repetitions repeat themselves, while the differentiator differentiates itself (xix)…Is this similar to Foucault’s interpretations of interpretations? In what way does the simulacra present us without a foundation? Simulacra and Unheimlichkeit…

“The task of life is to make these repetitions coexist in a space in which difference is distributed” (xix)

Two lines of research (xx):

1) Pure difference – Difference without negation; and as not subordinated to the identical (difference between, difference from)…How do we keep difference in-itself from becoming another identity?
2) Complex Repetition – Hidden repetition – where the differential is disguised or displaced

How are they related? Theme: the inseparability of difference and repetition: “The perpetual divergence and decentering of difference corresponded closely to a displacement and disguising within repetition” (xx).

[whomoi]

perhaps u miss the mark, as Derrida reads-writes sarl, through '©' so u can start it again, a little bit of repetition? any-différance de deleuze, à '©' part-producer-recorder-consumer of 'capitalism and schizophrenia'....it works! ''

[1423]

Thanks for getting us moving! Lots to digest already...

I interpret the first paragraph as a self-effacing joke: a preface describes what a book was intended to be, while the conclusion describes what it turned out to be, so if you read the conclusion you'll realise the intentions described in the preface were not implemented.

Are all these signs really to be attributed to Anti-Hegelianism? I don’t really know much about Hegel, so if anyone here does, any information would be really appreciated. I am especially interested in learning more about Hegelian dialectics.

Same here - I think Deleuze is trying to create a third alternative to identity (Plato's eternal forms) and negation (Hegel's progress through contradiction), but I don't know enough about either to be confident about that!

Modern thought – born of the failure of representation, the loss of identities, and the discovery of subterranean forces (xix)

How has representation failed? What are these forces lurking below representation? Have they always been there?

Here's my premature attempt to interpret this: representation presupposes identity (A represents B whereas B really is B). But once identity is brought into question (does B remain identical to itself over time, does it contain conflicting forces, where are its boundaries, is it capable of change, do its parts also have identities?), representation collapses and we need a new way to describe the relation between, for example, the mask and the face. The mask repeats the face, disguises it, differs from it without being identical or contradictory... so that's the image I've been using to try and understand this passage. I think this might tie into your interpretation of simulacra?

How is the modern world one of simulacra?

Perhaps it contains what were formerly representations, but can no longer function as representations because the identity of their referents has been called into question? So the representations become simulacra. But I'm probably misunderstanding this because I'm more familiar with Baudrillard's later use of the word than Nietzsche's, which I guess Deleuze is referring to... or simulating. ;-)

Thinking of difference and repetition seems to be historically specific to capitalism. They emerge at the moment when the most stereotypical and mechanical repetitions appear to have taken over the forces of life. Yet “we endlessly extract from them little differences, variations and modifications” (xix).

Possibly this relates to The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction - there is no longer a distinction between the authentic original and the inauthentic copy; two repetitions may differ, but they do so on an equal footing. We can no longer even say "two repetitions of a work may differ" because representation has collapsed - there is no original to which they refer and from which they differ, they are just repetitions of each other, and they differ from each other. The relationship of difference is bidirectional, ie we cannot say 'A differs from B' or 'B differs from A' but rather 'A and B differ'. (But this is just speculation on my part.)

What are these “secret, disguised and hidden repetitions” (xix)?

Massumi talks about habit in his User's Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia. I don't know if habit is prominent in Deleuze's thought but that's how I interpreted that sentence: repetition confronts us when we find ourselves performing habitual actions.

In what way does the simulacra present us without a foundation?

Maybe a representation is grounded in an original, whereas a simulacrum is ungrounded? (But again, I'm probably bringing in baggage from Baudriillard.)

How do we keep difference in-itself from becoming another identity?

Good question! Perhaps this relates to the new image of thought mentioned in the Preface to the English Edition - can we find a way of using concepts without presupposing identities that those concepts refer to?

[stondibe]

- Discovery of the power of repetition in the unconscious, language and art

Is anyone familiar with any of these? If anyone knows of any sources on the web, let me know. I am always interested in doing more reading, especially if it helps to understand this text.

As someone from [e-mail] pointed out:

The ontology of "Difference and Repetition" is better understood with the psychoanalytic 'compulsion to repetition and the drive to death' as 'enemy' - beside the announced Hegel."


Is anyone more familiar with Freud and his repetition compulsion
able to say in what sense could Deleuze have this concept in mind as an 'enemy' (if so) while working on his concept of repetition?

[stondibe]

***What is simulacra? I think that this concept is extremely important for understanding the text we are reading.

"A common definition of the simulacrum is a copy of a copy whose relation to the model has become so attenuated that it can no longer properly be said to be a copy. It stands on its own as a copy without a model. Fredric Jameson cites the example of photorealism. The painting is a copy not of reality, but of a photograph, which is already a copy of the original. Deleuze, in his article "Plato and the Simulacrum," takes a similar definition as his starting point, but emphasizes its inadequacy. For beyond a certain point, the distinction is no longer one of degree. The simulacrum is less a copy twice removed than a phenomenon of a different nature altogether: it undermines the very distinction between copy and model. The terms copy and model bind us to the world of representation and objective (re)production. A copy, no matter how many times removed, authentic or fake, is defined by the presence or absence of internal, essential relations of resemblance to a model. The simulacrum, on the other hand, bears only an external and deceptive resemblance to a putative model. The process of its production, its inner dynamism, is entirely different from that of its supposed model; its resemblance to it is merely a surface effect, an illusion"

From
Brian Massumi: REALER THAN REAL
The Simulacrum According to Deleuze and Guattari
www.brianmassumi.com/textes/REALER%20THAN%20REAL.pdf

[happydays]

glowingwabbit:
to my knowledge, there's no worthwhile literature on Heidegger and Deleuze--at least not in English. I can suggest some texts in French that deal with Deleuze's critique of phenomenology, but I have to add that, in my view, they don't say much about Heidegger, either explicitly or implicitly.

as for Hegel, well, that's a huge topic and I don't think that people are ever going to agree on their similarities/dissimilarities. one way to think about that might be to carefully plot the strategies D uses to ensure the non-coincidence of being and concept. but, again, that seems like a different project.

as for psychoanalysis, yes, I think it's important here and there's work done on that. there's Christian Kerslake's book, which I like a lot, there's one by Keith W. Faulkner, and there's a collection of essays on psychoanalysis, D, and Derrida. there's of course more than that, but that's what came to mind.

[stondibe]

Chapter by chapter outline by John Protevi:
www.protevi.com/john/DG/DR.pdf

[whomoi]

it comes to bit that, perhaps, the problem why it is an 'enemy' what it means by deleuze where, a bit lengthy citation perhaps gives some clue, to trace out some citations like in deleuze' Nietzsche, he wrote somehow of Freud's notion of 'compulsion to repeat' in term of Nietzsche's eternal return... on the other hand, at least, from Freud's beyond pleaser principle and Reichien contention of 'death drive' to a-o, it is somewhat linked but a-similar problematique...so let it be read-write-bit in rigor if there is much interest in it...

[stondibe]

There are more sketches from Protevi that can be useful for our reading:
www.protevi.com/john/DG/index.html

I'll paste here some passages from the first lecture.


PREFACE

A "generalized anti-Hegelianism" is "in the air." Identity is primary in the world of representation, but "the modern world is born of the failure of representation." (Cf. Foucault’s Order of Things, and, after DR, his Inaugural Address at the Collège de France (French: L’Ordre du discours; strange English title as “The Discourse on Language” for the wiles of Hegel, for whom being “anti” is perhaps already subsumed in his system?)

We see difference and repetition rather than identity and contradiction. Hegel confines difference to a horizon of identity; in this way difference is negation leading to contradiction. See the "Determinations of Reflection" section of Book II of the Science of Logic, "Essence." Also very important for Derrida.

Difference and repetition: the simulacrum. Identities are produced by difference and repetition.

Two converging lines of research: "concept of difference w/o negation" and "concept of repetition" in which mechanical repetition
finds its raison d'être in a "hidden repetition in which a 'differential' is disguised and displaced."

The aggression of thought in grappling with problems vs the beautiful soul who shirks from battle.

Philosophy books as detective novel and science fiction.

Detective novel: empiricism. Undoing classic oppositions of temporal
/ non-temporal, historical / eternal, particular / universal.

Science fiction: Impersonal individuations and pre-individual
singularities. Writing at frontier of ignorance.

Use of the history of philosophy: reproduction with a monstrous
difference.

[stondibe]

DELEUZE’S ENCOUNTERS WITH OTHERS IN DR

DR includes engagements with Plato, Aristotle, Scotus, Spinoza,
Leibniz, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, and Bergson.

With Aristotle and Hegel, the engagements are uniformly critical, and with Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Bergson they are largely positive.

Plato, Kant, Leibniz and Freud are the interesting cases. Deleuze
treats them as what the early Derrida would call "marginal," inscribing openings or gestures toward differential thought in their writing, but not following up on them.

With Plato we get the simulacrum, with Leibniz the notion of "vicediction" and the glimpse into the world of divergent series (followed up on by Borges in the notion of the garden of bifurcating paths), and with Freud the rethinking of death. There's also the very important though largely unmarked influence of Simondon, from whom the notion of individuation is taken.

But perhaps the encounter with Kant’s transcendental philosophy is
most important.

[stondibe]

TRANSCENDENTAL PHILOSOPHY

Transcendental philosophy in its technical modern form was inaugurated by Kant with the distinction between transcendent and transcendental.

“Transcendent” objects refer to those which are thought but cannot be experienced (they are beyond experience, that is, they transcend” experience), that is, there is either no sensory data corresponding to them (the soul, God) or there is no way of synthesizing the totality of the object (the world).

“Transcendental,” on the other hand, refers to the method of looking for the universal and necessary conditions of possibility of any rational experience. That is, it works backward from experience to what must be if that sort of experience is to be possible.

Deleuze will criticize Kant for copying the transcendental field in the image of the empirical field. That is, empirical experience is personal, identitarian and centrifugal: there is a central focus, the subject. (Kant has a Cartesian heritage then: the vital importance given to subjective consciousness, that is, the “I think” or cogito.) All our experiences are tagged as belonging to us. Kant says this is only possible if we can posit the TUA, the Transcendental Unity of Apperception, that is, the possibility to add “I think” to all our judgments: “ the cat is on the mat.”

Deleuze will instead want to have the transcendental field be differential: the virtual is the condition for real experience, but it has
no identity. Identities of the subject and the object are products of differential processes. Deleuze still wants to work back from experience, but his rule is that the condition should not resemble the conditioned. As the empirical is personal and individuated, the transcendental is impersonal and pre-individual. The Deleuzean virtual is not the condition of possibility of any rational experience, but the conditions of genesis of real experience.

[1423]

A couple of thoughts about differentiation: the translator's preface makes a distinction between (mathematical) differentiation and (biological) differenciation. Mathematical differentiation has some characteristics that I think might help to illuminate what Deleuze means by "a concept of difference" and "difference in itself".

Differentiation in mathematics can be thought of as a relationship between functions. The result of differentiating a function is another function that describes the first function's rate of change: if we think of the first function as a fluctuating line, the second function is another fluctuating line whose height at any given point is equal to the slope of the first function at the same point: positive if the first function slopes up at that point, negative if it slopes down. Now the interesting thing is that the first and second functions are, so to speak, equal in status: difference stands on an equal footing to that which differs. Among other things, that means you can differentiate the second line to produce a third line (the difference of the difference), and so on...

For example, imagine the first line represents the height of a yo-yo, varying with time. Differentiating it gives a second line: difference in height with respect to time is speed, so the second line is the speed of the yo-yo. Differentiating again gives a third line: difference in speed with respect to time is acceleration, so the third line is the yo-yo's acceleration. The point here is that we can't say that position is 'more real' than speed or acceleration, or prior to them in either a conceptual or a causal sense. Difference is not an effect caused by that which differs, it is a thing in itself.

The second interesting thing about differentiation is that it only applies to functions that vary continuously: a line that jumps instantly from one height to another can't be differentiated, because its slope at that point is undefined - if a yo-yo teleports from one place to another, its speed is undefined and therefore so is its acceleration. So differentiation always concerns continuous change (not necessarily gradual, but unbroken); I wonder whether this might be useful for thinking about a difference that is not based on identity or negation.

I don't want to fall into the trap of 'mathematicalising' Deleuze and I'm certainly not trying to suggest that this is 'what Deleuze means' by difference, but maybe the analogy with mathematical differentiation can be useful, if only by helping us find the places where it doesn't work. :-)

[1423]

Some notes about pages 1-6 of the introduction:

Cycles as a symbol of resemblance, not repetition. (Mentioned again on p6 in the context of cycles in nature and natural law.)

Exchange vs gift - Baudrillard's "impossible exchange".

"Reflections, echoes, doubles and souls" - the first three are examples of repetition; are souls given here as examples of singularities produced by repetition, or also as examples of repetition itself (eternal return)?

Paradox of festivals that repeat the unrepeatable - Lyotard talks about oral cultures repeating the past in order to consume it, and Foucault makes a related point, opposing festivals to museums, in Of Other Spaces (written at roughly the same time as D&R).

Opposing repetition to history: the anti-Hegelianism we were warned about. But then isn't this a Hegelian comment on p2, "the fact that one can pass by degrees from one thing to another does not prevent their being different in kind" - quantitative difference becomes qualitative difference? This also recalls Reid's argument about the general who was flogged as a boy. Or perhaps the point here is that just because two things that differ to a sufficient degree are not identical, it doesn't follow that two things that do not so differ are identical - in other words identity is not just a matter of resemblance?

"Law" on p2 is the natural law or the law of history. Repetition has a "miraculous" power to defy the laws of history, which demand change. Repetition is "eternal" (p3) and essential.

Universal/particular/singular are Kant's judgements of quantity.

In a scientific experiment, repetition is an effect that appears when moving from the order of resemblance to the order of equality, which happens when we classify phenomena as 'the same'.

Reflections, echoes, doubles - it is not that the reflection simply resembles the reflected, as if by chance, but neither are they exchangeable for one another. They are linked by necessity (by fate?), but they are neither similar nor equivalent; they are in a sense identical without being equivalent - they share an identity, like doppelgangers, and that makes them uncanny. They defy the principal that a thing can only be identical with itself. Reid again, discussing Locke: "if the same consciousness can be transferred from one intelligent being to another, which he thinks we cannot show to be impossible, then two or twenty intelligent beings may be the same person."

"Fidelity" as a possible link between repetition and duty (p4). Here repetition is again opposed to the law of nature, as a power granted by moral law. However, this places the moral law in the same position with respect to the natural law as the natural law occupies with respect to the subject, ie it simply subjects nature to a higher natural law, that of habit. "As a result, habit never gives rise to true repetition." (p5) So the intent here is perhaps not to equate repetition with fidelity, but to distinguish it from habit and place it outside morality (as with N's eternal return)? "If repetition is possible, it is as much opposed to moral law as it is to natural law." (p5)

Irony as a form of repetition - again, two entities (in this case two meanings) that are neither similar nor equivalent, and absolutely unexchangable, but that share an identity.

Repetition and difference are nowhere to be found in Kant's table of categories. Protevi says D&R is a rewriting of Kant.

Affirmative difference: affirms itself first, rather than that from which it differs. D ascribes this to N.

In natural law, things with preexisting identities are forced to move and change - but D makes difference prior to identity - there is difference, and when it reaches a sufficient intensity (the Hegelian shift from quantitative to qualitative again), identities are created. So the Kantian subject is no longer assumed but must emerge from the same inherently multiple manifold as the objects he or she perceives.

[stondibe]

So we are finally moving from Preface to Introduction and here is link to that text in pdf quote-friendly format

www.topologicalmedialab.net/xinwei/classes/readings/Deleuze/Difference-and-Repetition/English/DifferenceRepetition01.pdf

[stondibe]

Deleuze begins with opposing generality and repetition:

"...generality expresses a point of view according to which one term may be exchanged or substituted for another. [...]
Repetition as a conduct and as a point of view concerns non-exchangeable and non-substitutable singularities. [...]
If exchange is the criterion of generality, theft and gift are those of repetition. There is, therefore,an economic difference between the two." (par 2)

Mentioning a different economy makes me think of possible implications for the real economy. Money is what makes everything exchangeable. I think I remember (although very vaguely) Deleuze saying something in TPlateaus about the ability of some primitive societies to manage all exchanges intuitively and with high precision, which is lost after adopting money as the means of exchange. Any thoughts on alternative economy based on gift (and theft ;D ) coming from Deleuze or your own? Anyways, money is turning into toilet paper these days...