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

thinking, being and self - in other words, not a particular this or that but the form of
representation or recognition in general. This form, nevertheless, has a matter, but a pure matter
or element. This element consists only of the supposition that thought is the natural exercise of a
faculty, of the presupposition that there is a natural capacity for thought endowed with a talent
for truth or an affinity with the true…” (DR 131). What can be a better philosophical beginning
than the individual whose very existence is characterized by abstract thought? However, Deleuze
argues, such a philosophical beginning comes with a price. That the Cogito is characterized by
such an abstraction means that it cannot but understand the univocal being as its object, the
object that is identical to the concept. However, that the Cogito understands the univocal being
as the object that is identical to the concept means that it annuls the power of difference.
“Difference is not and cannot be thought in itself, so long as it is subject to the requirements of
representation” (DR 262). This is a problem because the power of difference names precisely its
own origin. Deleuze argues that the power of difference as the repetition of the passive self is
precisely what produces the individual and the concept. “When difference is subordinated by the
thinking subject to the identity of the concept (even where this identity is synthetic), difference in
thought disappears. In other words, what disappears is that difference that thinking makes in
thought, that genitality of thinking, that profound fracture of the I which leads it to think only in
thinking its own passion, and even its own death, in the pure and empty form of time” (DR 266).
In Germinal Life Keith Ansell Pearson puts it well: “Deleuze is committed to the seemingly
extravagant claim that all phenomenology is epiphenomenology, since, his argument goes, it
fails to penetrate the more profound individuations that are implicated in the creative evolution
of difference and repetition” (Pearson 87). Deleuze argues that thinking difference is important
because it allows us to understand these more profound individuations. “Thought must think
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