DIFFÉRANCE AND FOLDS

AN ANALYSIS OF DERRIDIAN AND DELEUZ IAN CONCEPTION OF

TEMPORALITY AND BEING

KEVIN O. FUNK
P HI L - 2 0 2 0 – 1 P O S T M O D E R N P H I L O S O P HY
MAILBOX 267
MARCH 30, 2010
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction:.............................................................................................................................................................................. 2

Derrida: ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 3

Aneconomic Overturning ................................................................................................................................................ 3

Difference that transcends history .............................................................................................................................. 4

Trace ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 4

Writing .................................................................................................................................................................................... 5

Interduction:.............................................................................................................................................................................. 6

Deleuze: ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 7

There is no transcendence, only planes of immanence ...................................................................................... 7

Folds of being, and multiplicity without identity .................................................................................................. 8

Rhizome .................................................................................................................................................................................. 8

Where does this leave us? ............................................................................................................................................... 9

Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................................................ 11

Bibliography ............................................................................................................................................................................ 12

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INTRODUCTION:

What exactly does it mean when we talk about time; about death, the future, the past, and
our present existence? Does it make sense to view our constitutive being as an object that floats
through what we consider space and time? Do we confront a future that becomes past in which we
are squished in between the two (what we have come to name “the present”)? Jacques Derrida and
Gilles Deleuze are two philosophers who take up these questions of temporality and difference
from varying perspectives.

For Derrida, philosophy should be a confession of speaking around the absence with the aim
of alluding to it (aneconomically). Derrida’s confession of the violence and hierarchy of binaries1
brings him to conceive “the unity of chance and necessity in calculations without end” (Derrida
1968, 7). His use of the “interval” to describe temporization and spacing is dependent on some form
of transcendence that eludes capture, namely différance. Différance, which lives in between identity
and difference as a trace, is not an impotence or failure; on the contrary, it gives to the experience of
immanence its “quasi-transcendental” source.

Deleuze’s philosophy is one without transcendence; a wandering through new territory,

uncharted, and always becoming. Thought occurring in the present2 for Deleuze comes secondary;
as a future product of the act thereof. It is not external to its production, nor deferred, but always
becoming. When the act becomes virtualized in the past the necessity of future actualization thereof
is what Deleuze likes to call the “unfolding, folding, and refolding” of immanent substance. This is
what is necessary to form the present. Deleuze recognizes this aspect of temporality and sees
philosophy job as embracing whatever unfolds as new territory to be experimented with and in.

This essay will attempt to analyze the positions taken on the concept of temporality and
difference in the works of Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze by exploring their development of
concepts.

1 “either-or” concepts; difference

2 as the future pushing the past onto it

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DERRIDA:

“THE SIMULATED AFFIRMATION OF DIFFÉRANCE… BEARS ON EACH

MEMBER OF THIS SENENCE: “BEING / SPEAKS / ALWAYS AND
EVERYWHERE / THROUGHOUT / LANGUAGE.”” 3

Derrida begins with a difference; not an audible difference but one that only exists in the
form of a trace, of something that attempts to escape the economic will of philosophy to manage,
predict, and control it. This difference presents itself only in the written form, and marks the
possibility of conceptionality. This différance “is no more static than it is genetic, no more structural
than historical” (Derrida 1968, 12). Force itself therefore does not exist in the present, and would
indeed never exist without the difference between forces. Thus the event is not a resolution;
l’avenir4 comes back from the future to haunt the present, and in doing so perpetually defers
resolution. This constant overturning is what Derrida’s work consists of; in this “dissemination”5 an
irreducible and generative multiplicity is made.

“ONE IS BUT THE OTHER DIFFERENT AND DEFERRED, ONE

DIFFERING AND DEFERRING THE OTHER. ONE IS THE OTHER IN
DIFFÉRANCE, ONE IS THE DIFFÉRANCE OF THE OTHER.”6

ANECONOMIC OVERTURNING

Derrida’s work attacks the western philosophical tradition’s will to create an economy of
difference7, recognizing that totalizing structures only work because they are artificial. He is not
attempting to replace the existing structure with an alternative one (whether he accomplishes this
or not is debatable), but to point out that difference is always and everywhere; reality is constantly
shifting, always different, and always exceeds our will to capture it in a neat system. Thus the
hierarchy of binaries is perpetually re-establishing itself. In other words, the work of philosophy is
to remain vigilant, constantly overturning the hierarchies.

3 (Derrida 1968, 27)

4 Future in the “to come”, messianic sense
5 removal of origins
6 (Derrida 1968, 18)
7 Economic in the sense of a predicted value; the will to manage, predict, control difference

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To speak simply of overturning however, is inadequate in that it still works within the
binary. Therefore Derrida introduces the interruption- spacing between difference. The
interruption is a “coming” that upon attempting to inscribe it into an economy defeats its purpose.
Therefore the differentiation between reason and madness for example, for Derrida cannot be
historicized in and epistemic fashion, but is a condition of reason itself; transcendent to any given
historical point.

DIFFERENCE THAT TRANSCENDS HISTORY

The event is not a fixed point in history, but l’avenir comes back from the future to haunt the
present. Derrida names this work a Hauntology; the idea that the present exists only in relation to
the past. The “horizonal future” for Derrida is prior to both present as well as past; “a “non-
originary origin” that comes later in order to constitute the supposed origin” (Baugh 2000, 75).

Death, as a mark of temporality is the event that cannot come from outside without also
coming from within; it is my “innermost possibility” in that it is always anticipated but
unpredictable. Following the path of this logic leads Derrida to the consideration that life always
comes after death in the sense that we are considered to be dying a death that interminably
remains “to come”. Death is always and everywhere personal; no one can die my death, nor can I
escape my ownership of death; it remains always haunting me with its futural assurance. Thus
Derrida wraps up the concept of future as deferral. This non-resolution is what Derrida calls
différance; a resolution that is perpetually deferred.

TRACE

To have an identity is to remain within the violence of a resolution, and is incompatible with
Derrida’s reasoning. The concept of différance produces the image of a trace; not an identity, not a
binary difference, but that which is positioned between identity and difference. The play of trace
does not belong on the horizon of being, but transports and captures the meaning of being in its
play. Différance thus comes to name that play of trace which lacks meaning and is not.

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“LICHTUNG DES UNTERSCHIEDES KANN DESHALB AUCH NICHT

BEDEUTEN, DASS DER UNTERSCHIED ALS DER UNTERSCHIED
ERSCHEINT.” 8

Identity therefore is not an exclusion from difference but internal to it, only as its limit.
Derrida likes to describe the work of the trace as a confession of the absence of identity, and a non-
construction of difference.

WRITING

In attempting to inscribe the trace in time, an interruption occurs between actuality and
virtuality. Writing is an interruption in which the true meaning becomes obscured (Busche 1987).
In spoken communication we have access to the speaker; their identity is not external to its
representation. Writing therefore embodies spacing and temporization, and différance is therefore
not a concept but has productive effects in/on other concepts such as grammatology. Différance is
the act of weaving; a “sheaf” that contains arbitrary groupings whose words have traces of
différance. This negates the common western philosophical tradition of searching for signs that
signal origins. Derrida calls for dissemination; removal of the will to capture origins of meaning, for
this in itself would be a re-entry into the violent binary hierarchy that has commonly dominated
philosophy.

8 (Derrida 1968, 25)

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INTERDUCTION:

Derrida has been critiqued as a structuralist of another nature; a structure that returns to a
territory of différance. There are in Derrida traces of the philosopher as judge, police, discoverer;
philosophy digs down, lays bare, and scrutinizes. For Derrida therefore “work” can be picked out as
a noun. In contrast to Derrida, Deleuze approaches philosophy as a wandering through new
territory; constantly shifting and “folding, unfolding, refolding”. His “work” is always and
everywhere a verb, without the aim of “nounifying it”. For Derrida, in différance and writing “it is a
question of remarking a nerve, a fold, an angle that interrupts totalization.” (Derrida 1968, 46)

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DELEUZE:

“TO BE IS TO EXPRESS ONESELF, TO EXPRESS SOMETHING ELSE, OR TO

BE EXPRESSED.” 9

Deleuze’s argument is difficult to begin, for where it begins is precisely always and
everywhere. This may seem redundant, however to speak of planes of immanence as he does
negates the linear flow of time and rather displaces it onto a map which has no beginning point, and
no end. For Deleuze, there is only one being which only has one voice, but many different things to
say. This move replaces “being” for “becoming”, and “identity” for “difference”. Using the “tools” of
immanence10, duration11 and affirmation12, Deleuze offers an open-ended ontology through which
one can palpate difference. There isn’t “something that becomes”; being is always and everywhere
becoming.

THERE IS NO TRANSCENDENCE, ONLY PLANES OF IMMANENCE

Drawing on Spinoza, Deleuze does not believe in a metaphysical “in-between”13; in between

the transcendent and the subjective; but rather in one immanent substance with different modes
and attributes. There is only “surface”; immanence; nothing beneath or above it, immanence names
the concept of being, a given plateau or plane of being. We are not attempting to connect planes of
immanent substance14, dig beneath them, or search upward for transcendence; they are all separate
and remain non-transcendental, without a hierarchical structure. Planes of immanence are not an
expression of a thing, but pure expression itself. The “Body without Organs”15 therefore,

“IS IN CONSTANT METAMORPHOSIS, OCCUPYING THE IN BETWEEN

SPACE THAT ALLOWS INTENSITIES AND DESIRING FLOWS TO
CIRCULATE BEFORE ACTUALIZING THEMSELVES IN DIFFERENT

9 (Deleuze, Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza 1990, 253)

10 Baruch Spinoza
11 Henri Bergson
12 Friedrich Nietzsche
13 René Descartes
14 What Deleuze calls a “Body without Organs”.
15 Another name Deleuze uses for one substance of being, constantly folding itself.

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SHAPES OF THOUGHT AND IN LIVING ORGANISMS, ON A PHYSICAL OR

A METAPHYSICAL PLANE.” 16

Beings are therefore just placeholders for difference; a difference without anything that
“makes different”, for if there is no “higher or lower” that grounds difference; no hierarchy, then
being cannot be supervised17. Ergo, being has only one voice and many things to say. Deleuze is
happy with one, many, but nothing “in-between”.

FOLDS OF BEING, AND MULTIPLICITY WITHOUT IDENTITY

The self isn’t to be understood as grounded in the subject; it is a play of forces, a fold of
being. That does not go to say that it has no meaning, but that it doesn’t search for this meaning by
digging deeper or looking higher (in a hierarchical ontological manner).

Deleuze gives us the concept of “n-1” (which is not a formula) in which “n” is the symbol of
difference, “-1” is not trying to find an identity; a “minus One”. Difference is a concept which
entirely displaces the concept of identity; there is no difference “between” (no gap), but rather
“plis”; the fold. Derrida’s trace, through this Deleuzian conception still remains too linear, albeit
having a faded beginning and end. Instead, Deleuze gives us the image of a map, which has no set
start point, and no particular direction. And like a map has many roads, the “n-1”; the logic of the
“and” doesn’t order and is messy, spinning off innumerable differences. The assemblage of these
differences does not negate organization, but rather the idea that there is but one singular
organization. Deleuze wants to erase the crutch of the “is” and leave us with only “and’s”;
multiplicities without identities.

RHIZOME

Deleuze thus gives us the metaphor of the rhizome; a weed which escapes and frustrates the
will to control it18; multiplicity which is not transcendently directed and thwarts identity. The
rhizome is affirmative in that it always finds new lines of flight; eternally folding, unfolding,
refolding. There are six principles of the rhizome that Deleuze makes known: Connectivity as the
expression of aggregation which has no specific path, heterogeneity, multiplicity, asignifying

16 (Colombat 1991, 14)

17 As Descartes’
Mind
𝐵𝑜𝑑𝑦
18 As opposed to the common “arbre de connaissance” (van der Klei 2002, 48)

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rupture, cartography19, and decalcomania as a layering of images on top of one another. The
rhizome therefore is meant to be a non-foundation; a source for the system of thought, with many
undirected tangents crawling on the surface of immanence (with no depth or height) in an eternal
multiplicity and simultaneity.

WHERE DOES THIS LEAVE US?

If we conceptualize being and temporality in this way we are left always, and everywhere at
a fold. As mentioned earlier, the process Deleuze leads us through is akin to a wooded forest; new
territory always shifting and without a determined singular direction.

The power which constitutes being is valued more highly than its constituted form, and its
substance is an indivisible One, woven into its’ expressing attributes.

“A MODULATION IS NOT A PRODUCT SEPARATE FROM ITS PRODUCER.

IT IS A SPECIFIC INFLECTION OF THE PRODUCER.” 20

Thus transcendence is fictional, and there is only immanence. Immanence is the trait of
Being in which the “and” is expressed, gathered together, made pure and made one with the One.
This trait also stages the possibility in which the One also explicates itself in the Many.

“ALL THINGS ARE PRESENT TO GOD, WHO COMPLICATES THEM. GOD

IS PRESENT TO ALL THINGS, WHICH EXPLICATE AND IMPLICATE
HIM.” 21

When speaking of temporality, there is no “Now”, except in our virtual psychology, the past
always comes to comprise the present and “now” is reduced to merely a manner of speech. The past
does not simply drop out of existence, but comes to direct and color our future by being swept up
into it. This circular overturning is enough to make one dizzy and disoriented, and that is precisely
where Deleuze suggests philosophy should lead us; wandering through the arboreal.

Past and present imply one another. If there were no present the possibility of passing
would not exist. If the past did not continue to exist, the present wouldn’t pass. Time is thus an

19 Planes of immanence as a map which has no specific enter and exit point
20 (May 2008, 37)
21 (May 2008, 39)

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infinitely extended unfolding, folding and refolding in which things happen, and difference take
place.

-“THERE IS NO PRESENT THAT DOES NOT ACTUALIZE THE PAST. IT IS

ALL OF THE PAST THAT IS ACTUALIZED AT EVERY MOMENT. THE
PAST THAT IS ACTUALIZED EXISTS.” 22

The future (l’avenir) is the past expressed in the present; the future is not merely an
expression or repetition of the past, but that which unfolds it, folds it, or refolds it. The future thus
is unactualized difference, pure multiplicity, and both present as well as “to come”. The present,
therefore actually exists; we directly experience it, whereas the past only virtually exists; only in an
ontological and psychological memory does the past exist.

“WE DO NOT MOVE FROM THE PRESENT TO THE PAST, FROM

PERCEPTION TO RECOLLECTION, BUT FROM THE PAST TO THE
PRESENT, FROM RECOLLECTION TO PERCEPTION.” 23

The concept of duration that Deleuze borrows and adapts from Bergson is of duration
whose act and essence “is that which differs from itself” (Deleuze, La conception de la différence
chez Bergson 1956, 88). The forces that make possible difference express themselves as bound to
one another. “People are confluences of forces, some active24, some reactive25” (May 2008, 65).
Affirmation thus names one’s experimentation of different ways one might live, as the eternal
return is the “being of becoming”; virtual difference; multiplicity. Some find difficulty in moving
beyond their past; their past carrying more weight than the future is able to bear. In asking “how
one might live” with not only our words but with our lives, a multiplicity of responses is formed; a
thousand plateaus emerge.

22 (Deleuze, Bergsonism 1988, 71)

23 (Deleuze, Bergsonism 1988, 63)
24 “Active forces affirm their difference” (May 2008, 67)
25 “Reactive forces are what they are only through their negation of active forces.” (May 2008, 67)

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CONCLUSION

In addressing these two perspectives we are led to pursue the world in its ever-folding
rhizomatic expression. The charge we are left with is how does this change how we treat the
concept of time? Do we continue to live just as we had earlier, realize that we are part of the fold, or
guided by the différance that inscribes us into existence? The future, remaining yet an assured “to
come” is that which refolds the choices I made in the past into what is presently experienced, and
what is to be done next. Can one really dare to live like this? Deleuze seems to hope so whilst
Derrida portrays it as inescapable. For Derrida death as a sign of temporality does not function, for
it remains one’s innermost possibility; ever assuring one of its coming yet concealing any trace of
when that may be. Derrida’s production of quasi-transcendentals through the use of différance
makes possible his view of death and temporality as a Hauntology, whereas with Deleuze we find no
transcendence, but only planes of immanent substance; a “body without organs” ever unfolding,
folding, and refolding.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baugh, Bruce. "Death and Temporality in Deleuze and Derrida." Angelaki (Taylor & Francis Ltd) 5,
no. 2 (August 2000): 73-83.

Busche, Hubertus. "Logozentrismus und différance: Versuch über Jacques Derrida." Zeitschrift für
philosophishe Forschung (Vittorio Klostermann GmbH) 41, no. 2 (April- June 1987): 245-261.

Colombat, André Pierre. "A Thousand Trails to Work with Deleuze." SubStance (University of
Wisconsin Press) 20, no. 66 (1991): 10-23.

Deleuze, Gilles. Bergsonism. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. New York:
Zone Books, 1988.

—. Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza. Translated by Martin Joughin. New York: Zone Press, 1990.

Deleuze, Gilles. "La conception de la différence chez Bergson." Les études bergsoniennes 4 (1956):
88.

Derrida, Jacques. "Differance." Bulletin de la Société française de philosophie LXII, no. 3 (July-
September 1968): 73-101.

May, Todd. Gilles Deleuze: An introductuion. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

van der Klei, Alice. "Repeating the Rhizome." SubStance (University of Wisconsin Press) 31, no. 97
(2002): 48-55.

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