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

what prevents it from being coextensive with time” (DR 79). Contemplation cannot both be the
constitution of the living present and the passage of the living present. In other words,
contemplation cannot go beyond itself. It is a particular duration. For this reason, Deleuze
argues, there has to be another time in which the living present passes. “This is the paradox of
the present: to constitute time which passing in the time constituted. We cannot avoid the
necessary conclusion – that there must be another time in which the first synthesis of time can
occur” (DR 79). What is this other time? This other time is not a time in the same sense in which
the living present is a time. The living present is a time in the sense that it designates a way of
being. However, this other time refers to the power that makes the living present or a way of
being pass to another. Therefore it is a time as becoming. This power, Deleuze argues, exists
within the living present or within a way of being itself. It is contemporaneous with it. “It gives
us the reason for the passing of the present. Every present passes, in favour of a new present,
because the past is contemporaneous with itself as present...Its manner of begin
contemporaneous with itself as present is that of being posed as already-there presupposed by the
passing present and causing it to pass” (DR 81-2). Deleuze calls this other time the pure past
because it is not a past that ever was, but is rather the power of time to turn every ‘it is’ into ‘it
was.’ It is the power of time to pass. In this sense, Deleuze argues, the pure past is the synthesis
of all time. “The past does not cause one present to pass without calling forth another, but itself
neither passes nor comes forth. For this reason the past, far from being a dimension of time, is
the synthesis of all time of which the present and the future are only dimensions...It is the in-
itself of time as the final ground of the passage of time. In this sense, it forms a pure, general a
priori element of all time” (DR 82). Here Deleuze asks an important question. “The question for
us, however, is whether or not we can penetrate the passive synthesis of memory; whether we
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