Deleuzes Difference and Repetition in one paragraph: Throughout the history of Western philosophy, beginning with Plato and its foundation for representational thought, difference has been subordinated to identity and conceived on the basis thereof. When representational thought has sought to integrate difference into itself it tends toward orgiastic representation, in contrast to Aristotelian organic representation. The two most important moments of orgiastic representation can be found in the Hegelian dialectic and Leibnizs infinitesimal analysis. However, in both Hegel and Leibniz we find only an appearance of difference in itself, never difference as such, for difference is always subordinated to and placed within the purview of a higher unity. This privileging of unity and identity has been carried on through the philosophical tradition in the image of thought. Difference is not the differentiation between a set of self-identical elements but rather the condition of those elements, the transcendental condition of the given. It is in this regard that D&R offers a transcendental-empiricism which takes as its beginning point the diverse, and posits a differential ground as the condition of the diverse. Deleuze will call this the inversion of Platonism. Others will call it the inversion of the binary between identity and difference, but this is a simplistic characterization. Deleuze does not do away with identity, similarity, unity, etc., altogether. Rather, Deleuze simply gives identity a more proper grounding in a morphogenetic metaphysics that operates with difference as its guiding power. Thus, difference is not the diverse, it is that by which the diverse is given as diverse. This differential ground is the virtual. A wholly real (as opposed to the merely possible) realm of differential relations between intensive forces which acts as the transcendental condition of the actualities which are manifest in extensive qualities on the plane of actualities. The name for this morphogenetic process is (indi)-different/ciation and refers to the movement from a differential virtual ground to constituted form. Identity, unity, similarity, still persist, but they have their condition in difference. Difference has become primary to identity.
Posted on: Sat, 07 Jun 2014 06:19:14 +0000
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