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

domain that we have had to extend to include the organic as such? Hume says precisely that it is
a question of the problem of habit” (DR 73). Deleuze radicalizes Hume’s passive synthesis.
It is not the case that organisms are a priori capable of contemplation. If that were the
case there would be organisms before there is contemplation. But for Deleuze organisms are
nothing other than contemplations. “What organism is not made of elements and cases of
repetition, of contemplated and contracted water, nitrogen, carbon, chlorides and sulphates,
thereby intertwining all the habits of which it is composed?” (DR 75). In this sense,
contemplation is not something that an organism has. So how is contemplation possible?
Contemplation never happens on its own. “To contemplate is to draw something from. We must
always first contemplate something else...in order to be filled with an image of ourselves” (DR
74-5). Deleuze argues that repetition in the object is the condition of contemplation. “In
considering repetition in the object, we remain within the conditions which make possible an
idea of repetition” (DR 71). However, that does not mean that contemplation is something that
repetition in the object imparts on organisms. In fact, repetition in the object is not a repetition at
all. “The rule of discontinuity or instantaneity in repetition tells us that one instance does not
appear unless the other has disappeared – hence the status of matter as mens momentanea.
However, given that repetition disappears even as it occurs, how can we say ‘the second,’ ‘the
third,’ and ‘it is the same’? It has no in itself” (DR 70). In this sense, repetition in the object must
be the condition of contemplation in a different sense. “Repetition changes nothing in the object
repeated, but does change something in the mind which contemplates it” (DR 70). What does
repetition change in the mind that contemplates it? “Whenever A appears, I expect the
appearance of B. Is this the for-itself of repetition, an imaginary subjectivity which necessarily
enters into its constitution? Does not the paradox of repetition lie in the fact that one can speak of
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