that exist only insofar as they differ from one another. Thus, the basis of the series, and of the synthesis of both series, is not similarity or analogy, but distance or difference. They are the result of what Deleuze calls a “disjunctive synthesis” (LS, 56). In a disjunctive synthesis, difference does not separate, it unites: “distance, [. . .] as that which relates one to the other [. . .] Incompossibility is now a means of communication” (LS, 198). It is important to note that difference does not unite series arbitrarily. Not every series can be combined. Deleuze (PS, 39) writes that the difference that constitutes the essence is not an exterior difference, but a difference that has been interiorized, that has become immanent. This means that, although it is impossible to determine what allows the artist to connect one series to another, there is something within a particular series that leads the artist to connect it with another. I will come back to this problem in the chapters on Cézanne and Proust.
Because the snark connects series—which are collections of differences—on the basis of their difference, it can be characterized as that which differentiates differences. Thus, the essence of a sign has, in itself, a differentiating or individuating function (DR, 146). This will be developed further in the second chapter. In the meantime, we can conclude that the essence is not the result of a constitution process that starts from a subject, but an origin in the sense that it forms the subject (and objects): “It is not the subject that explains essence, rather it is essence that implicates, envelops, wraps itself up in the subject. Rather, in coiling round itself, it is essence that constitutes subjectivity. It is not the individuals who constitute the world, but the world enveloped, the essences that constitute the individuals. [. . .] Essence is not only individual, it individualizes” (PS, 43).
A number of consequences attach to the differential nature of the sense of a sign. First, its instability and thus nontransparency: because each series consists of terms that owe their “identity” to their difference from other terms, and because this difference is volatile, the terms and thus the series can be said to be in perpetual displacement in relation to other terms and series (LS, 47). Since the sense turns on the communication between two different series, it can be said that sense is displaced in relation to itself. It is not a fixed identity but a becoming. Deleuze (LS, 93) describes this displacement also as a nonplace—or, more specifically, as a place without an occupant or an occupant without a place.13 It is an aleatory point (LS, 92). If we understand the two series as diverging lines made up of numerous points, the sense is the aleatory point that seems to be on both lines simultaneously, but never on one specific point at one precise moment. The aleatory point is like the object from another Carroll book, Alice in Wonderland: in the old sheep shop, Alice is confronted with an object that is never where she looks, but always on a higher or lower shelf (Bogue 2003a, 26).
The differential nature of sense also implies that sense is always new. In Proust and Signs, for example, Deleuze claims that the sense of the famous madeleine cookie in the Search is neither Combray as it was once experienced in the past by the narrator, nor Combray as the narrator knows it in the narrative present. On the contrary, when the narrator dips the cookie into his tea and is thus reminded of the town where he had spent his holidays as a child, the cookie reveals Combray in an absolutely new form, a form that is neither reducible to the present that Combray once was, nor reducible to the present that Combray is. Combray appears in its truth or essence, and not in its reality. The cookie reveals Combray in its eternity (PS, 8).
The idea of sense as difference is the core of Deleuze’s affirmative criticism on representational thought. According to Deleuze, representational thought is not only incapable of thinking the exterior in its exteriority (this was shown in the first postulate), it is also unable to conceive difference in itself. The first inadequacy shows itself in the assumption that thought has a natural affinity with the truth. The second inadequacy has to do with the fact that representational thought can think difference only by starting from identity. In other words, it can understand difference only as the opposite of the same, the similar, or the analogous. These four elements—the Same, the Similar, the Analogous, and the Opposed (DR, 334)—constitute the heart of the straitjacket of representation, which Deleuze describes in the fourth postulate of representation. These four elements refer to the specific way in which the search for identity determines, respectively, conception, perception, judgment, and imagination (DR, 174).
We will start by looking at how the creation of representational concepts is centered around the notion of the Same. According to Deleuze, Plato is the godfather of this identity-fetishism in conception. As is well-known, Plato distinguishes between an ideal and a sensible reality, the former being the level of the Ideas and serving as the ground for the latter. Plato’s Idea refers to that which remains the same throughout change and individual specification. Thus, it is general, unique, and, more importantly, essentially determined by its being constant, its being-what-it-is (auto kath’ auto), in contrast to the variability of the concrete world, its never-being-what-it-is. Plato’s Ideas are the perfect essences by which the changeable, singular, and multiple world can exist. However, the ideal world is not just the origin of, but also the model for, the concrete world. This means that concepts, which represent the Idea, will need to aspire to the same identity. Differently put: Only that which lends itself for conceptual identity qualifies to be thought. That which cannot be subsumed under a conceptual unity simply cannot be thought. Representational thought is Platonic in the sense that it can think only identities.
Plato also helps us to understand how the imagination is built upon the Opposed. The Idea does not only determine that the concept needs to be an identity, it also determines what identity is assigned to a concept. How so? The perfection of the Idea implies that it is determined both absolutely and completely: it is entirely this and absolutely not that. As such, the Idea introduces absolute distinctions or oppositions onto which the concept can be modeled. Concepts are determined on the basis of the oppositions offered by the Ideas.
The ideal world not only functions as a model for the determination of concepts, it is also a model for judging the truth of statements. A statement, or a proposition expressing a specific relation between concepts, is true only if it is analogous to the relations that exist at the ideal level. According to Plato, while true statements are copies that maintain an internal resemblance to the Ideas, simulacra entertain only an external, secondary resemblance to the Idea. Hence, Plato does not argue for leaving the world of copies and representations altogether, but for separating true representations from false ones, the copies from the simulacra (DR, 333–34). As such, every judgment presupposes a subordination of difference to the analogous, to that which is proven to be similar to the Idea.
Finally, the same principle of identity is also active in perception. In order to attribute one concept to what is similar among different objects, these objects need to be perceived as being similar. This similarity, in turn, presupposes a correspondence between the qualities of the different senses. In sum, in representational thought, all the facets of thought—perception, the creation of concepts, the determination of concepts, and the judgment of statements—are fundamentally oriented by the quest of identity, by trying to detect what is the same or what is similar. This implies that everything that cannot be captured in an identity, everything that disrupts the similarity or multiplies the oppositions, cannot be thought and is not considered worth thinking. Representational thought, we might say, cannot think, as Carroll does, by playing differences off against one another. It can think difference only as difference under a higher identity.
I already mentioned that the postulates concern the presuppositions that representational thought makes about itself. It presupposes that it has a natural affinity with the true (first postulate) and a natural disposition to think in identities (fourth postulate). They share the conviction that the affinity and the disposition are natural. This, of course, is already implied in the fact that these are presuppositions, for presuppositions always indicate that something is regarded as natural and evident, and hence not in need of explanation. Still, what is characteristic of representational thought is not so much its specific presuppositions,
