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

demonstration of this power of differing is the repetition of the passive self. If the univocal being
is the ground of philosophy we can say that it comes to the surface, it comes to be recognizable (I
am using this word in its colloquial sense) as the repetition of the passive self. “It is as if the
ground rose to the surface, without ceasing to be ground. There is cruelty, even monstrosity, on
both sides of this struggle against an elusive adversary, in which the distinguished opposes
something which cannot distinguish itself from it but continues to espouse that which divorces it.
Difference is this state in which determination takes the form of unilateral distinction. We must
therefore say that difference is made, or makes itself, as in the expression ‘make the difference.’
(DR 28). This is why Deleuze understands repetition in terms of the power of difference.
Repetition one might say is the only thing that individualizes the self within the univocal being.
It is what makes it different than other passive selves. “Returning is thus the only identity, but
identity as a secondary power: the identity of difference, the identical which belongs to the
different, or turns around the different. Such an identity, produced by difference, is determined as
‘repetition’” (DR 41). Repetition is nothing other than the power of difference. In Gilles
Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition James Williams argues that “the most important definition
of repetition in the chapter on repetition for itself is that the ‘for itself’ of repetition is difference
– there is no repetition of the same thing for any other thing, only an open variation that occurs
within the individual” (Williams 92).
It is in this context that we ought to understand the question of what kind of philosopher
Deleuze is. That repetition is the activity of the passive self means that repetition as an activity
can only happen in the univocal being. It is only when the self becomes passive that it can repeat
in the first place. That the Cogito imposes the concept and therefore confronts the object means
that the Cogito is not in the univocal being. In other words, the Cogito is free. It transcends the
178