stankovic, sasa thesis.pdf - Atrium - University of Guelph

knowledge as a kind of third to the contingent knowledge and the necessary knowledge.
Repetition is the knowledge that repeats difference as a power. It repeats the object that does not
exist, inasmuch as it does not exist. For if it existed repetition would not be possible. The object
would already be known. I develop these arguments in chapter 6.
However, my analysis of the relationship between Kant and Deleuze does not end there.
In some sense, this is only the beginning. Or as I have said earlier, I agree with Kerslake but only
to an extent. While I think that establishing such a relationship between Kant and Deleuze is
valuable, it does not actually go far enough. The problem is that such an encounter between Kant
and Deleuze happens exclusively on Deleuze’s terms. In other words, it is Deleuze’s important
misinterpretation of Kant in Žižek’s sense that allows Deleuze to be influenced by Kant in the
first place. “Precisely when one philosopher exerted a key influence upon another, this influence
was without exception grounded in a productive misreading…” (Žižek ix). However, if we
remain on this level of analysis that I perform in chapters 5 and 6, the most that we establish is
that Deleuze’s Kant influences Deleuze. In other words, the most that we show is that Deleuze’s
productive misreading of Kant allows him to develop his own philosophy. But Deleuze is
already aware of this. In his lectures on Kant he claims that “we are all Kantians”
(www.webdeleuze.com). For this reason, I am actually interested in a further question. What
would it mean to say that it is not just Deleuze’s Kant but rather that it is Kant himself who
influences Deleuze?
The reader will notice that I rarely, if ever, put Kant and Deleuze into a direct dialogue. I
doubt that such a confrontation is fair to Kant because Deleuze has had the chance to read and
write about Kant whereas Kant has never had the chance and pleasure to read Deleuze. Instead, I
propose a different strategy. This thesis is composed of two parts. And each of these parts stands
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