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On p. 76 of Gilles Deleuze’s “Difference and Repetition”


source: http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=32346519&size=sby the Benevolent Quintet


Repetition, replication, or the “copy and paste culture” is widely acknowledged as being at the heart of cyberculture, a source of its celebration, but mostly the cause of its vilification. Criticisms focus on the lack of originality, the proliferation of banality and boredom, the suppression of creativity that the infinite replication of web content produces. Just half of a line from p. 76 of Deleuze’s “Difference and Repetition” might turn though this debate on its head:


  • “Difference inhabits repetition“


What then if what gets repeated every time a featured Youtube video is replayed or embedded, or when a particular message is cross-posted is not its one unique identity? What if the 72,224,506 times that the “Evolution of Dance” video has been viewed till now did not amount to replaying the same thing again and again, the comical performance of different dancing genres and styles? What if all these almost infinite replications were about the production of difference: enacting positions about the clash or convergence of cultures, positions about the relationship between mind and body, and anything else we can’t think of? Admittedly, Deleuze’s book is complex and at times obscure, possibly only philosophy fiends have the courage to read it thoroughly. This is, however, its brilliance: texts need not include just accessible ideas, but propose just an idea.


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2 comments

  1. Ο/Η rajan krishnan :
    May 27th, 2008 at 18:59

    I think philosophy is committed to make our ideas clear and not to muddy them – however complex a text is. The Deleuzian maxim about difference inhabiting repetition is to be taken in a phenomenological sense – the event of watching the same video in Youtube cannot be repeated without a shade of difference. Here the text is the encounter. A watching the video is different from B watching the video. When A watches the video again he is A’. A’ watching the video is different from A, B and B’ watching the video. And so on… We both step and do not step in the same river; we are and we are not – as Heraclitus apparently said in 6th century BCE.


  2. Ο/Η DeleuzeScholar :
    June 5th, 2008 at 23:19

    Hi, just came upon this during a google search and thought I might comment while I was here.

    I thought that, to begin with, I would address the comment above.

    1. The statement that difference inhabits repetition is absolutely NOT to be taken in a phenomenological sense.

    2. The concept of “shades of difference” is exactly what Deleuze wants to get away from: representation always subordinating difference to identity.

    I think you are exactly right in thinking that “This is, however, its brilliance: texts need not include just accessible ideas, but propose just an idea.” However, keep in mind that (as Deleuze writes in D&R) “difference is not diversity”.


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