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

that relates it to extended space and subordinates it to the qualities that fill space” (Smith 1996
36). Smith frames his point in terms of conscious perception. “A ‘sign’…is an intensity produced
by the asymmetry of the differential relations, whereas a ‘quality’ appears when an intensity
reaches a given order or magnitude and these relations are organized in consciousness” (Smith
1996 36). This way of framing the issue is helpful. When the sensible being such as a sound
comes to consciousness it means that it has been conceptualized. In other words, the passive self
has become the Cogito. “This notion of the differential Idea finds its complement in the concept
of intensity: these elements and relations are necessarily actualized in intensive magnitudes”
(Smith 1996 36). But everything changes when the passive self becomes the Overman, in other
words, when the faculty of sensibility is dislodged from the faculty of the understanding. In this
case the faculty of sensibility really does encounter its own Idea, that is, it really does encounter
intensity. “This element is intensity, understood as pure difference in itself, as that which is at
once both imperceptible for empirical sensibility which grasps intensity only already covered or
mediated by the quality to which it gives rise, and at the same time that which can be perceived
only from the point of view of a transcendental sensibility which apprehends it immediately in
the encounter” (DR 144). Deleuze argues that the Idea of the faculty of sensibility, namely
intensity is what produces the faculty of sensibility such that it can then come under the faculty
of the understanding. “Sensibility, in the present of that which can only be sensed (and is at the
same time imperceptible) finds itself before its own limit, the sign, and raises itself to the level of
a transcendental exercise: to the ‘nth’ power” (DR 140). We can say that it is only when we hear
unconsciously that we can hear consciously. We can say that we consciously hear this or that
noise, precisely because we unconsciously hear the white noise that produces all the other
consciously heard noises (Smith 1996 36).
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