Reflections on Time and Politics

8. Repetition and the Three Syntheses of Time

8 Repetition and the Three Syntheses of Time how does difference become the structure of time as such, rather than an event occurring in time? For Deleuze, it is a matter of repetition. Repetition must not be confused with generality, which belongs to the domain of law (Deleuze 1994, 2) and presents a ‘‘qualitative order of resemblances’’ and a ‘‘quantitative order of equivalences’’ (1).1 Law relies on abstraction and closed systems (3) to sanction reiterations of identity, as though two events or two things could ever really be the same. Law and generality treat the differences between repetitions with indifference, as secondary or accidental, but genuine repetition does not allow this and so breaks law and identity. Repetition, in short, repeats difference. And yet, Deleuze argues, we must distinguish levels of repetition: ‘‘To repeat is to behave in a certain manner, but in relation to something unique or singular which has no equal or equivalent . And perhaps this repetition at the level of external conduct echoes, for its own part, a more secret vibration which animates it, a more profound, internal repetition within the singular’’ (1). Within the multiplicity of actual repetitions and their differences, then, is a constitutive repetition of internal difference, which synthesizes, or ‘‘contracts,’’ differences. Internal difference is an immanent, ontological difference capable of carrying out the requisite synthesis. The error of traditional metaphysical philosophy , Deleuze maintains, is that it never reaches this ‘‘difference in itself’’ because it confuses it ‘‘with a merely conceptual difference’’ (27), seeking to accommodate difference to identity rather than elaborating a concept of difference that differs from both identity and identity’s conception of difference. Even the Hegelian alternative, speculative contradiction, aims 1. For Bergson (1998, 223–31), the confusion and conflation of these two orders, which he calls the generality of genera and of law, reduces vital order and repetition to geometrical organization. 87 Repetition and the Three Syntheses of Time to secure identity, specifying the identity of a thing by differentiating it from everything it is not while simultaneously mediating this difference. Contradiction , however, is the maximum form of difference, and therefore the only difference able to fill this synthesizing role, ‘‘only to the extent that difference is already placed on a path or along a thread laid out by identity’’ (49–50). Moreover, it achieves its end only abstractly. A more concrete disjunctive synthesis, which maintains the heterogeneity of the relations it brings together, implies a ‘‘second-degree difference’’ (117) or differenciator exceeding the terms of identity, resemblance, and equality. Deleuze thus holds this differenciator to be an enigmatic difference, whose only ‘‘identity’’ can be as that which differs from itself, never being where it might indicate it is. Deleuzean repetition here converges with Lacanian repetition. For Lacan, repetition is never mere reproduction but mimicry, not passive adaptation to or copying of surroundings but active inscription2 of the subject into a picture (Lacan 1981, 99) through the assumption of the perspective of the gaze of the Other. Mimicry thus involves disguise, camouflage, and masquerade: ‘‘To imitate is no doubt to reproduce an image. But at bottom, it is, for the subject, to be inserted in a function whose exercise grasps it’’ (100). Ultimately, mimicry works by lure—a sexual lure,3 playing on desire—and need not accurately mirror reality (see 111–12). It evokes the power of the simulacrum as an appearance pretending to be the truth behind appearances—an appearance that masquerades as an essence by hiding the fact that there is nothing behind the mask (112). Deleuze similarly holds that in the game of repetition the differenciator generates masks, yet there is no essence, no identity beneath the masks, only difference.4 Masquerade effects the appearance of essence, identity, and resemblance . These, however, are only simulations arising from ‘‘a primary difference or a primary system of differences’’: In accordance with Heidegger’s ontological intuition, difference must be articulation and connection in itself; it must relate different to different without any mediation whatsoever by the identical, 2. ‘‘The most radical problem of mimicry is to know whether we must attribute it to some formative power of the very organism that shows us its manifestations’’ (Lacan 1981, 73). 3. ‘‘It is no doubt through the mediation of masks that the masculine and the feminine meet in the most acute, most intense way’’ (Lacan 1981, 107). 4. ‘‘Behind the masks, therefore, are further masks, and even the most hidden is still a hiding place, and so...