Difference and Repetition Notes : Difference as Such
Difference is the state in which one can speak of determination as such. The difference ‘between’ two things is only empirical, and the corresponding determinations are only extrinsic. However, instead of something distinguished from something else, imagine something which distinguishes itself—and yet that from which it distinguishes itself does not distinguish itself from it. Lightning, for example, distinguishes itself from the black sky but must also trail it behind, as though it were distinguishing itself from that which does not distinguish itself from it. It is as if the ground rose to the surface, without ceasing to be ground.
What is the nature of this ‘trailing behind’? How does the lightning trailing the black sky behind it show us that the black sky does not distinguish itself from the lightning? Deleuze is saying: when lightning strikes we can say, there is the lightning, but this is insufficient for our being able to say, there is the black sky. Why?
Another clue:
Form distinguishes itself from matter or from the ground, but not the converse, since distinction itself is a form.
The ground is never distinguished for to be distinguished as ground it takes the form of something—the form of being distinguished from form, and so it is a derivable ‘ground’, not the true formless.
In truth, all the forms are dissolved when they are reflected in this rising ground. It has ceased to be the pure indeterminate which remains below, but the forms also cease to be the coexisting or complementary determinations.
The asymmetry of the situation seems analogous to the old riddle of nonbeing. Parmenides argued that nonbeing is unthinkable because it is self-defeating to say that a thing does not exist. (Because if that is true then what is it being said of?)
A thing is only distinguished against a ground, but when this ground is itself distinguished as a ground then what is also distinguished is a composite thing formed of the thing and its ground. But what is this composite thing distinguished against? Deleuze seems to be pointing out the infinite regress: if ground is distinguished as well as figure, this can only be so in relation to some deeper ground. If this regress is to end there must be some primordial undistiguished ground against which all figures are distinguished.
Notes:
Gilles Deleuze - Difference and Repetition (p28)
