We've talked about the active and passive synthesis. We've talked about elements and cases. These are both different ways of passing from one repetition to another through a difference that draws something new from the first repetition, and hence imagines a new thing that can itself be repeated in the second repetition. Deleuze paints these two as orthogonal axes.
Between a repetition which never ceases to unravel itself and a repetition which is deployed and conserved for us in the space of representation there was difference, the for-itself of repetition, the imaginary. Difference inhabits repetition. On the one hand - lengthwise, as it were - difference allows us to pass from one order of repetition to another: from the instantaneous repetition which unravels itself to the actively represented repetition through the intermediary of passive synthesis. On the other hand - in depth, as it were - difference allows us to pass from one order of repetition to another and from one generality to another within the passive syntheses themselves. The nods of the chicken's head accompany its cardiac pulsations in an organic synthesis before they serve as pecks in the perceptual synthesis with grain. And already in the series of passive syntheses, the generality originally formed by the contraction of 'ticks' is redistributed in the form of particularities in the more complex repetition of 'tick-tocks', which are in turn contracted. In every way, material or bare repetition, so-called repetition of the same, is like a skin which unravels, the external husk of a kernel of difference and more complicated internal repetitions. Difference lies between two repetitions.
The cover art for my edition, with its 2D matrix of "differences" and "repetitions", does a pretty good job of illustrating the concept.
Before moving on, I should probably restate each of these two axes one more time to make sure I understand them. Loyal readers should feel free to skip this part if it seems repetitive.
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The first axis, lengthwise, moves us from repetition-in-itself -- which basically doesn't exist, or is some sort of vanishing limit in a world of pure atomic flux -- to repetition-for-us -- which is where we can perceive and count the repetitions of a thing like a chiming clock by using our memory and understanding. In the middle, we pass through repetition-for-itself, which is the passive synthesis. The middle point is the moment of creation of a subject and a thing simultaneously. It draws a general difference from the world, which means that it constitutes itself as a subject that contracts disparate moments into a form, but it only does this by positing itself as some particular thing that can be repeated in turn.
The constitution of repetition already implies three instances: the in-itself which causes it to disappear as it appears, leaving it unthinkable; the for-itself of the passive synthesis; and, grounded upon the latter, the reflected representation of a 'for-us' in the active syntheses.
It's tempting to rephrase the two ends of this first axis as process and product. For example, wheat in general IS the form of a process of contracting earth and humidity, but any particular stalk of wheat is one product of this process that must be taken up as an element in further contractions. That "must" is an important aspect of this story, because without it, we just have the abstract idea of wheat, without any actual wheat. It's the key to the fractal circularity and self-reference of the concept Deleuze is trying to create. It's the key to the "unraveling" he talked about above, where external difference is taken up in more complicated internal repetitions. I think it's also the key to time and immanence, but I see this only dimly, so we'll have to come back to that.
The second axis, in depth, takes us from elements to cases. Both elements and cases are types of passive synthesis; any given synthesis could be of either type and there's a natural tendency to move from one type to another. Elements get contracted into cases, which themselves serve as new elements that repeat and are contracted in turn. The movement along this second axis is again characterized by the way that the general difference drawn from repetition that forms an element (there exists an A, tick-tick) is converted into a particular difference (A1 and A2, or A and B, tick-tock) that defines a repeating case. So we can go from one passive synthesis to another, ie. move in a dimension orthogonal to the one defined by the active-passive axis.
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In either case, the movement is from one repetition, through general difference, to another repetition. Then that second repetition moves through particular difference to yet another repetition. Etc ... The circular structure is quite a mouthful to describe if you try to trace it out fully. I think the idea is not just that the process continues indefinitely higher, constructing new larger units of repetition as it goes, but also that we can follow it inductively in the opposite direction, ever deeper, by realizing that there are smaller units underlying any unit we might have taken as given. For what it's worth, here's my attempt to capture all this in a diagram. Your mileage may vary.
There's clearly a curious structure here that I've tried to illustrate with my loopdeloops. Difference lies between two repetitions. But in one case it's a general difference, and in the other case it's a particular difference. Which means that the particular difference is serving as a general difference between another set of repetitions. As a result, we can reverse the formula.
Difference lies between two repetitions. Is this not also to say, conversely, that repetition lies between two differences, that it allows us to pass from one order of difference to another? Gabriel Tarde described dialectical development in this manner: a process of repetition understood as the passage from a state of general differences to singular difference, from external differences to internal difference - in short, repetition as the differenciator of difference.
The footnote at the end of this quote is also worth reading. I don't know a whole lot about Gabriel Tarde beyond this little pamphlet I read maybe 5 years ago. But I think I still understand what Deleuze wants to get at by flipping our perspective on what is between what.
From this point of view, repetition is between two differences; it is what enables us to pass from one order of difference to another: from external to internal difference, from elementary difference to transcendent difference, from infinitesimal difference to personal and monadological difference. Repetition, therefore, is not the process by which difference is augmented or diminished, but the process by which it 'goes on differing' and 'takes itself as its end'.
The idea that difference-in-itself is something, or better yet, some process, that can keep on differing, that can go to this formless extreme, was the core idea of the first chapter. We already know from Deleuze's history of univocity that the high point of thinking difference-in-itself is Nietsche's Eternal Return. So the way for difference to be exactly what it is, the way for it to continue its endless process of differing, is through repetition. Difference is another fractal concept. Each difference is composed of a whole host of smaller differences ad infinitum, and the way we pass from one difference to another is through a repetition which differentiates difference.
In the very next paragraph Deleuze will start to talk about the fact that the present necessarily passes. It is part of the definition of the present, of duration, as it is constructed by the passive synthesis. To illustrate the point he asks us to imagine a perpetual present that would not pass.
We could no doubt conceive of a perpetual present, a present which is coextensive with time: it would be sufficient to consider contemplation applied to the infinite succession of instants. But such a present is not physically possible: the contraction implied in any contemplation always qualifies an order of repetition according to the elements or cases involved.
To synthesize a perpetual present we would need to consider all the instants of the universe together. He says this isn't physically possible because contracting the entire history of the universe together as one thing would imply its repetition. Contraction is actually defined in this recursive fashion, as something that must be repeated, as something that refers inherently to an outside, to another entity. Can "all of time" be repeated though? And where would you have to sit down to dinner to see two copies of the universe? And yet, conceiving of the entire universe as repeating again and again is exactly what the Eternal Return is asking us to do. So while it may not be physically possible, I suspect at some point Deleuze will provide another way this synthesis that contracts the whole universe into one present can happen.
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