Difference and Repetition III

This is a final post on the book. I'll just put all that emerged from reading about half of the work here. I've put it aside for another day when I feel like another bout of intellectual flagellation:

Difference in itself

About sixteen pages into the chapter (page 52), just before Deleuze discusses Hegel and Leibnitz, he begins to discuss "the Small and the Large". This seems to be an important moment in the discussion because it appears that through these, the "infinite" is discovered "within representation", and this promises to be a way for difference to break the mold of identity, of being just secondary or negative, where "organic representation" gives way to "orgiastic representation". I find what immediately follows, as well as the discussion of Hegel and Leibnitz to be difficult to follow (Which is why I now own a copy of Phenomenology of Spirit and probably have to work through that some time soon...) What happens with the discovery of infinity within representation appears to be a simultaneous experience of extremes: "a short-sighted and a long-sighted eye are required in order for the concept to take upon itself all moments ...." Is Deleuze suggesting that a moment like this forces the breakdown of representation and allows pure difference to emerge? What confuses me most at this moment is the way "the concept" is mapped onto "the Whole" and why this is important to the argument.

Repetition for itself

The hardest element, for me, is the third notion of time, the passive synthesis of memory. I can't really put a handle on what this third experience of time/memory is. I get the sense that the first synthesis (the passive synthesis) is a kind of instinctual, habitual whirring of impulses, that the second (the active synthesis) involves memory, recording and signification, but the third thing is difficult to get at. Despite what Deleuze says about Hegelian dialectic being a false, abstract movement of thought, he seems to involve in that kind of dialectical thought in unearthing this third synthesis: he seems to suggest that we know of this third synthesis because of a kind of joining of "Habitus" and "Mnemosyne" (page 101 in my edition, about 11 pages into the chapter).

Deleuze seems to be clearest when he uses Proust as an example and says that this is actually "reminiscence ... an involuntary memory which differs in kind from any active synthesis associated with voluntary memory" (page 107 in my edition, about 17 pages into the chapter). I don't think he's differentiating active and passive memory on the grounds of volition, the will or the act of deliberately trying to remember something (or is he?) even though there is the sense that the active synthesis of memory requires self-consciousness to put it into effect. He seems to be saying that there is an unconscious (?) element to memory itself, that escapes the active synthesis of memory but persists (or as he puts it "insists") as a "pure past" that is "beneath representation".

Another thing that came to my mind as I was reading this was the possible links that this has with Anti-Oedipus and the three synthesis that Deleuze and Guattari lay out in the open sections of the book. I think there are some similarities between the first two pairs, because in both cases there is a correlation between the instinctual/connective (the first synthesis) and the recording of the second synthesis. It's the third pair that doesn't quite seem to match up because in Anti-Oedipus the focus seems to be consumption and residual production of a sense of "subjectivity", while in Difference and Repetition, the third synthesis, involves some kind of presence that is never properly remembered.

A Wiki Interlude

Everyone uses Wikipedia. I depend on it for all sorts of things, from the names of obscure anti-popes to figuring out if there really is a Foucault's Pendulum (apparently there are several scattered around the globe). But I've never really thought about contributing to the entries: the world seems full of really knowledgeable people who are most willing to spend hours either churning out information or copying it from existing sources.
But of course, that all changed when I embarked on reading John Gower's Confessio Amantis, a longish Middle English poem that has lived in the shadow of the Canterbury Tales (like how Pound's Cantos have lived in the shadow of Eliot's Wasteland), over the weekend. There's already a decent entry on Wikipedia but I've decided to get in on the fun by listing the various 'tales' that appear in the poem. I'm sure the information is readily available in books or elsewhere on the Internet. But the redeeming illusion that we're contributing to something when the object of study doesn't immediately turn in a profit or change a life, is always comforting.

Difference and Repetition II

A difficult moment from the Introduction:

The introduction actually begins in a rather enchanting fashion. Delueze tries to show how "generality" and "repetition" are extremely incompatible concepts. He demonstrates that the "general" relates to that which can be exchanged, the substitutable, to laws that may be applied; whereas "repetition" involves the return of the singular, that it is "a necessary and justified conduct only in relation to that which cannot be replaced." Some of the writing is extremely moving. For instance: "The repetition of a work of art is like a singularity without concept, and it is not by chance that a poem must be learned by heart. The head of the organ of exchange, but the heart is the amorous organ of repeitition."

After dealing with what repetition opposes, and the distinction between "false" and "true" movement, Deleuze turns to specifying a "third opposition [between repetition and generality] from the point of view of concepts or representation". And then the going gets tough.

His discussion of artificial and natural "blockages" to a concept is baffling. I don't quite see how "the concept" (which enters the discussion at this point) stands in for or is related to "representation". Does "the concept" belong to a category of thought objects that are somehow "false" because they are abstractions and which only exist via representation?

Anyway, he seems to suggest that there is a certain limitation to "the concept" as regards to its ability to completely confer absolutely differentiated identity, which leads to paradoxical phenomena such as "twins" who are individuals but cannot be differentiated in conceptual terms. What I have difficulty getting is how this links up to "repetition". Is he suggesting that in spite of the failure of "the concept", in spite of these blockages that put limits, the actual existence of these things argue for some quality that proves their existence apart from "the concept"? This seemed to be an interesting and important moment for me because apart from "Epicurean atoms", he uses "words" as an example. What seems to be at stake here is the distinctiveness of identity that is based on an "abstract" or categorical definition of "self". Delueze seems bent on upsetting that cornerstone of thought – "the concept" – in order to radicalize what comes out of thought.

He later goes on to describe repetition as "difference without a concept, repetition which escapes indefinitely continued conceptual difference." This seems to be another pithy formula (!?) that appears to tie everything up nicely and relate all the terms but one that I can't quite unpack. Is he suggesting that it is only in getting at "repetition" that we get at something truly new and entirely singular?

"Perhaps the mistake of the philosophy of difference , from Aristotle to Hegel via Leibnitz, lay in confusing the concept of difference with merely conceptual difference, in remaining content to inscribe difference in the concept in general. In reality, so long as we inscribe difference in the concept in general, we have no singular Idea of difference, we remain only with a difference already mediated by representation. We therefore find ourselves confronted by two questions: what is the concept of difference -- one which is not reducible to simple conceptual difference but demands its own Idea, its own singularity at the level of Ideas? On the other hand, what is the essence of repetition -- one which is not reducible to difference without concept, and cannot be confused with the apparent character of objects represented by the same concept, but bears witness to singularity as a power of Ideas?"

Difference and Repetition I

I've been struggling with a text by Gilles Deleuze over the last week or so. It's Difference and Repetition and reading Deleuze is probably the quickest way to demonstrate to one's own lack of intellectual finesse. Anyway, in order to extract what I can from the book, I've decided to do a series of posts that "opens up" the text via quotations, questions and "workings out" of the ideas presented in Difference and Repetition.

I'm glad (or perhaps I should be embarassed) to say that I've hung around Deleuzean thought for quite long while. It's been at least ten years since I first started reading Anti-Oedipus. I know that sounds silly but there are difficulties in his thought that I think forces (or seduces?) the reader back to him. Also, there is that vast referentiality that is involved such that to understand a single concept more precisely, one has to reader three or four OTHER people that Deleuze refers to in a single breath. I don't have a background in academic philosophy (though much may be imbibed because one is literate) so there bound to be philosophical catch-phrases that are thick with meaning that I'll miss. Part of the difficulty as well!

Perhaps the most well-known contribution of Delueze (and his later collaborator, Felix Guatarri) is rhizomic 'structure'. In an attempt to dismantle top-down / bottom-up hierarchies and systems of thought, organization and being, they propose a counter structure, that of the rhizome. They oppose this to the more traditional 'aboreal' (tree-like) structures, which schematize from the root the the crown, and that dominate most spheres of knowledge. Instead, they posit a multiplicity of centers and a dense networks of relation and force that emerge out of these different networks. Obviously, they've been credited as prophets of sorts for the wonderful world of the internet, which seems to be the human endeavor that resembles the rhizomic most closely.

Difference and Repetition is an early work (and one of Deleuze's PhD theses) and Deleuze's project involves thinking how we might think "difference" in-itself. I guess the starting point has to do with the way we usually quickly gloss over the idea of "difference". We normally think of differences as the identifiable features that are manifest between two or more objects. But this isn't good enough for Deleuze who thinks that this makes difference a mere adjunct to "identity", merely a conceptual, representational idea.

In effect, Deleuze's project ends up as a crazy meditation on the dominance of "representation" in Western philosophy. He attempts to dismantle the tyranny of the "original-copy" relationship that is the basis of transcendental thought by demonstrating that difference can be "affirmative". He does this because he thinks that while difference has been invoked by a great many philosophers in the Western tradition, they have merely been, well, dancing with shadows. Taking on "difference" in 1968 would have been significant because of the growing disenchantment with structuralism and emergence of now well-enshrined dogma that semiotic phenomena merely operate through a network of arbitrary difference. Deleuze isn't content with the revolutionary insights and freedoms that "arbitrary" affords: he wants "difference".

From the Preface:

"We tend to subordinate difference to identity in order to think it (from the point of view of the concept or the subject: for example, specific difference presupposes an identical concept in the form of a genus). We also have a tendency to subordinate it to resemblance (from the point of view of perception), to opposition (from the point of view of predicates) and to analogy (from the point of view of judgement). In other words, we do not think difference in itself. With Aristotle, Philosophy was able to provide itself with an organic representation of difference, with Leibnitz and Hegel an orgiastic representation: it has not, for all that, reached difference itself."

Spicing the Grail

My annotations on Jack Spicer's poem, The Holy Grail, are back on-line. I decided to just put everything on a google.page since I was having such bad luck with free hosting services.

The pages are best viewed with Firefox or Netscape. They don't work too well with IE and not at all with Safari. Apparently 27% of Internet users use Firefox, so that ain't too bad!

http://spicingthegrail.googlepages.com/Jack.htm

Give me some Moore

One of the things that I've been reading quite fervently is the comics of Alan Moore. While my attention was first drawn to The Watchmen, V for Vendetta and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen several years ago, a chance conversation with a real comics freak (yooo hooo Andrew, how's Nottingham?) keyed me on to explore some of his other stuff.

Thus far, I've managed to read From Hell, which I definitely need to re-visit because I rushed through it while I was in back home. It's extremely learned and well-researched, and because it's filled with an amazingly arcane references to Free Masonry, it's almost like a comic book version of Eco's Foucault's Pendulum.

I also managed to read the Swamp Thing run that was the first major thing that Alan Moore did for DC and which sort of introduced him to America. His meditations on Nature, metaphysics and the fragility of human relations through, a comic about a glorified plant, is pretty amazing. I managed to get my hands on a collected DC Universe stories of Alan Moore, which features some amazing Superman and Batman tales as well. In that, he has short quirky stories, just two to three pages long, which are really original pieces of story telling.

I'vce just finished several issues of his Tom Strong series and Promethea. With these comics, Moore toys with comics conventions and more generally, the boundaries between fiction, the imagination and the Real.

There is a series of six videos from a BBC programme on YouTube which profiles Alan Moore and they're quite interesting. The best moment in the videos happens when he actually shows his extremely detailed (and indulgent) "script" for the illustrators (this is in the 4th video) and when he explains why he wants to dissociate himself from the film adaptations of his work (video 5). And here they are:

Part 1	Part 2
Part 3	Part 4
Part 5	Part 6

Strange Fictions

Apart from watching quite a few of the Star Wars movies (after I caught the "Revenge of the Sith" on TV), I haven't been watching much else owing to the fact that I'm burdened with memorizing the strange inflections of Old English and exploring the even stranger comics of Alan Moore (hmmm I might just write an entry about that ...).

Anyway, one thing that I finally watched (yes, I'm always several years behind), was "O Brother Where Art Thou?" This was promising because of the supposed inspiration from Homer's Odyssey. I didn't find that many parallels, either between the protagonist or the plot (some people who obviously know both works much better than I do have found extensive links) but I was pleased that the soundtrack was so brilliant. It's really one of those films (like Almost Famous) where the music becomes a character in the mix. Of course, in "Brother", music is crucial to the protagonists because they end up making a hit record that (they don't know about as they continue their scoundralling -- which is a nice comment on the way the workings of the media has shifted so tremendously, and I suppose a backward glance on the idea that Homeric performance and transmission may have been aural in nature ...) but the rest of the film is bouyed up by music that I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit that I enjoy (my common justification for liking "old time gospel and country blues": "it may not sound interesting but it's really fun to play").

Of course, writing this entry reminds me that I have watched something else: a little Spike Lee film on the IFC called "Bamboozled". It's a satirical look at big networks and an attempt to re-work "African-American" steroetypes. It was a pretty strange experience (with so many layers of irony that it became quite difficult to locate some ground beneath your feet -- whatever happend to that U2 song/Rushdie book anyway ...) The film stars Damon Wayans as a VERY middle class (read "white") black television executive who decides to mock his network (and his boss, who's a white guy who thinks he's "into black culture") by scripting an extremely offensive variety show: based on the black-face minstral shows of the 20s and 30s (see DVD cover left). Of course, things get out of hand and the show becomes a hit, with tragic consequences for all involved. Jada Pinkett-Smith is excellent in this, as Wayans' assistant!

When the Deal Goes Down

I'd like to think Bobby Dylan and I go back a long way. After all, I first got to know him in a real low-point of his career. I've still got it some where -- a cassette tape of 1990's "Under the Red Sky"-- probably Dylan's worst outing. Why I didn't just give up on him and put more effort studying for the 'O' levels, had a lot to do with a handsome copy of his complete lyrics that the National Library had in its Reference section. Reading through it, I couldn't imagine how he'd even recorded that horrible 1990 album.

Of course I quickly got acquainted with the rest of his earlier and much earlier work and he's been a constant companion ever since. Anyway, I came across this video from his new album "Modern Times". It's a pretty listenable ballad that manages to turn quite a mundane line: "When the Deal Does Down" into a rather lyrical refrain. One of the central features of Dylan's work, the "choric" nature of that last line to each verse. Anyway, here's the video, drenched in nostalgia (the man's 65!) with references to his roots (born in Minnesota) and influences ("Bound for Glory"). It's all about Scarlet Johansson with Dylan's haunting voice back there somewhere. Some of the video was supposedly shot at Coney Island on the Cyclone(though this footage doesn't make it to the video, she's there at the amusements and the beach) and opens with a shot of the Statue of Liberty!





"We eat and we drink, we feel and we think
Far down the street we stray
I laugh and I cry and I'm haunted by
Things I never meant nor wished to say
The midnight rain follows the train
We all wear the same thorny crown
Soul to soul, our shadows roll
And I'll be with you when the deal goes down"

The Power of Gmail

Ever wondered what your email was really about? In this world of words, we write lots of email but how often do we stop and wonder about what we're really saying in that sea of language. Now you never have to worry about not REALLY knowing what you were writing about. Because GMAIL, tells you, through their wonderful ads.

For instance, thought that you were conversing with a friend about school? Not really, you were really revealing your deep-seated desire for violence. You really want to KUNG-FU someone to death:



Thought that you were seriously concerned about a friend's love life and were really offering a listening ear so that your friend's love-lorn woes could receive some kind of emotional catharsis? How wrong you were. All you were really interested in was helping them find somebody else and making sure that they started producing babies in the process:


Thought you were engaged in a high-falutin' academic discourse about an intellectual topic most obscure in nature? Not a chance. You were really looking for the quickest way to avoid having to write that thesis yourself:

Shamelessly Advertising

Here's a shameless advertisement.

A few of us have started a blog where we write about / analyze Singaporean politics or current affairs. I suppose this is just like the thousands of blogs that do the same. However, I maintain that the project is still important and worth everyone's while. For the following reasons:

1. The production of political discourse is for everyone. So getting into the act, no matter how late in the play, is crucial in any kind of formation of political sensibilty.

2. The typical Singaporean political blog is marked out by its cult appeal. We, on the other hand, intend to keep this blog circulating within an intimate community (ie amongst people that we already know). Yes, so to all three of you who are regular readers of this blog, welcome to that intimate community.

3. We welcome contributions. Just email me if you think you have something to write about. At the moment, there are four of us who are supposed to be regular writers (of course only two of us have posted ... ) but hey! that's the nature of spur of the moment projects, ain't it? There is almost no editorial policy (I probably will only correct very bad grammar ... but of course ...)

Anyway, here it is : http://meetthepeoplesession.blogspot.com/