The Disparate

The words "disparate" and "disparity" have appeared a few times already.  So far I have been reading them as synonyms for simple difference.  But with the introduction of the dark precursor, Deleuze finally gives us a definition of the term, which makes clear that the disparate isn't the same as just an ordinary, first degree, difference.   The disparate is what happens when two different series of differences are related.  It raises difference to a power to become difference in-itself, the differentiation of difference, or second degree difference.

We call this dark precursor, this difference in itself or difference in the second degree which relates heterogeneous systems and even completely disparate things, the disparate.

After introducing the term, he immediately goes on to talk about the question of the size of a difference.  After seeing this, suddenly the earlier mentions of the disparate that we saw in the introduction and chapter 1 began to take on a new meaning for me.  Since the term has been used pretty sparingly so far, I think I'll just collect all the passages in which it has been mentioned so that we can examine it more closely. 

For it is not the elements of symmetry present which matter for artistic or natural causality, but those which are missing and are not in the cause; what matters is the possibility of the cause having less symmetry than the effect.  Moreover, causality would remain eternally conjectural, a simple logical category, if that possibility were not at some moment or other effectively fulfilled. For this reason, the logical relation of causality is inseparable from a physical process of signalling, without which it would not be translated into action. By 'signal' we mean a system with orders of disparate size, endowed with elements of dissymmetry; by 'sign' we mean what happens within such a system, what flashes across the intervals when a communication takes place between disparates. The sjgn is indeed an effect, but an effect with two aspects: in one of these it expresses, qua sign, the productive dissymmetry; in the other it tends to cancel it. The sign is not entirely of the order of the symbol; nevertheless, it makes way for it by implying an internal difference (while leaving the conditions of its reproduction still external). 20

Signs involve heterogeneity in at least three ways: first, in the object which bears or emits them, and is necessarily on a different level, as though there were two orders of size or disparate realities between which the sign flashes; secondly, in themselves, since a sign envelops another 'object' within the limits of the object which bears it, and incarnates a natural or spiritual power (an Idea); finally, in the response they elicit, since the movement of the response does not 'resemble' that of the sign. 22

Everywhere, couples and polarities presuppose bundles and networks, organised oppositions presuppose radiations in all directions. Stereoscopic images form no more than an even and flat opposition, but they depend upon something quite different: an arrangement of coexistent, tiered, mobile planes, a 'disparateness' within an original depth. Everywhere, the depth of difference is primary. 51

Repetition is the formless being of all differences, the formless power of the ground which carries every object to that extreme 'form' in which its representation comes undone. The ultimate element of repetition is the disparate [dispars], which stands opposed to the identity of representation. Thus, the circle of eternal return, difference and repetition (which undoes that of the identical and the contradictory) is a tortuous circle in which Sameness is said only of that which differs. 57

That which is or returns has no prior constituted identity: things are reduced to the difference which fragments them, and to all the differences which are implicated in it and through which they pass. In this sense, the simulacrum and the symbol are one; in other words, the simulacrum is the sign in so far as the sign interiorises the conditions of its own repetition. The simulacrum seizes upon a constituent disparity in the thing from which it strips the rank of model. 67

If it is true that representation has identity as its element and similarity as its unit of measure, then pure presence such as it appears in the simulacrum has the 'disparate' as its unit of measure - in other words, always a difference of difference as its immediate element. 69 

These quotes make clear that the disparate has been a technical term all along.  If we try to put them all together though, we encounter a certain slipperiness in the definition.  The disparate as dark precursor is some sort of force or agent that causes the two series of differences to resonate.  But because they resonate, they then form a single system of which the two series of differences form two disparate sides.  So, 'the' disparate is actually already two things (the system as a whole and its two sides) as befits a something which is nothing but difference.  

Understanding how a difference can already be two differences, which can then give rise to even more difference, helps us connect the coupled oscillators we discussed before with the signs and signaling mechanisms we find in those quotes about the disparate.  Signs are what appear between two oscillators when they become coupled into a single signaling and communication system.  From the perspective of the two series involved, these signs are external, passing from one side to another as exchanges of energy and information.  These signs express the "productive dissymmetry" between the oscillators, which I take to simply mean the fact that there are two different sides required, and not a single one.  However, they tend to cover over or cancel this dissymmetry because the coupling results in a resonant feedback loop that creates a single system and drives the individual parts into behaviors that they would never have been capable of alone.  That is, this resonant forced movement feeds back to produce even more difference.   It produces more quantitative difference in the amplitude of oscillation of each of the original series, and brings into existence a new qualitative difference -- the existence of the disparate system as a whole.   From the perspective of the whole system it creates, the difference is now internal, and the sign is interiorized within the system, becoming the sign of the differentiation of two sides of that single system.  

Now I think the idea that the simulacrum "interiorizes the conditions of its own repetition" makes more sense.  From the perspective of the coupled system, the signs that pass back and forth between the sides, transmitting and retransmitting a resonance, so to speak, are exactly what keeps the whole system resonating as a unit.  It's a bit like a bell whose vibrations make it capable of striking itself; the simulacrum is a sign capable of repeating itself in a feedback loop.  When a sign system becomes self reinforcing like this you can almost think of it as the cause of itself, or at least, to allude our earlier dynamic systems interpretation of the sign, as the trigger of itself.  With a feedback loop you come close to getting something from nothing, or at least getting what looks like a relatively stable thing from a condition of continuous circulation.  Which is precisely to say that you get a repetition (in time) without having had an initial model to copy it from.  The whole simulacrum system looks like it sprung from the head of Zeus fully formed because it hides an internal difference that creates an external repetition.  Hence the description of the disparate as the "unit of measure" of a pure presence, a pure arising of some unit from what we shouldn't call nothingness, but the chaos of difference in-itself.

Finally, if we relate this reflection on the relationship between difference and disparity back to the concept of embryogenesis, we can add something to our understanding of the theme of size, of the question of the large and the small.  The disparate, as the difference of difference, the in-itself of difference, is the differenciator of difference.  It differentiates differences at the same time as it gathers them into a single system.  The metaphor of the coupled oscillators illustrates the gathering that produces a single resonant system as its endpoint.  The metaphor of the embryo illustrates how a single differentiator -- the egg -- already contains within it a multiplicity of potential differences that appear as a stepwise series of coupled differences.  Morphogenesis generally is a process in which quantitative differences in the flow of amniotic fluid or the concentration of Sonic hedgehog become qualitative differences in final morphology, like, say two hands with five fingers each.  This is exactly the differentiation of an initial difference into more difference, the coupling of a series of chemical differences to a series of morphogenetic differences.  

Thinking further along these lines, we also might want to reconsider the idea I proposed that the large and the small might by analogy to harmonic overtones.  I was thinking of the question of size in terms of the difference between the two series involved, as if it were a question of comparing the relative size of their fundamental frequencies.  But now that we're being more careful with the terms, we can see that this would actually be a question about the size of the disparity -- how different are these series of oscillating differences, or how big is the second order difference -- and not the size of the first order difference.  It now seems to me that Deleuze instead intends for large and small to apply directly and absolutely to the first order difference -- difference proper in his terminology.  Large differences are intensive and qualitative.  They can't be divided without transforming into something else.  They are the morphological differences in our example.  By contrast, small differences are extensive quantities that can be continuously divided like the chemical concentrations in the embryo.  

In this reading, every disparity contains within itself both a small and a large difference, corresponding to the two sides that it simultaneously links and differentiates.   The disparate actually defines these two orders of magnitude and in each case causes them to resonate.  So while they may have absolutely different characteristics, they are defined as relative sides of a single movement of their differentiator, the disparate.  In this sense difference (well, technically disparity I guess) is never between the large and the small, since it actually creates them.  I feel like I have just reinvented Spinoza's system of attributes and modes.