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

separating out the subject from the object, it does repeat whatever being is. However, since that
being is univocal that means that repetition itself happens within that being. Repetition is of
being. “There is therefore nothing repeated which may be isolated or abstracted from the
repetition in which it was formed, but in which is it also hidden” (DR 17). At times Deleuze
borrows Nietzsche’s notion of perspectivism to talk about his repetition. For example in The
Time-Image Deleuze writes: “‘perspectivism’ [is] not defined by variation of external points of
view on a supposedly invariable object (the ideal of the true would be preserved). Here, on the
contrary, the point of view [is] constant, but always internal to the different objects which [are]
henceforth presented as the metamorphosis of one and the same thing in the process of
becoming. Perspectives…express the metamorphoses of an immanent thing or being” (TI 144).
What is repetition? I cannot answer this question at this point. In a sense, this whole chapter
answers this question. For now we can just say that repetition is a kind of passive activity. The
reason why it is a passive activity is because it does not issue from the Cogito in opposition to
the object. Instead, it issues from the passive self that is indistinguishable from its object and that
for that reason we do not even have the right to call the object. Furthermore, that repetition is a
passive activity that issues from the univocal being means that the univocal being is
characterized by a particular power. Repetition just is the demonstration of that power. Deleuze
calls this power of the univocal being that the passive self repeats ‘difference.’ “Being is said in a
single and same sense of everything of which it is said, but that of which it is said differs: it is
said of difference itself” (DR 36).
The univocal being is the kind of being that differentiates itself. “However, instead of
something distinguished from something else, imagine something which distinguishes itself - and
yet that from which it distinguishes itself does not distinguish itself from it” (DR 28). One
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