rölli, marc the story of repetition

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The Story of Repetition

Marc Rolli

In order to follow the Deleuzian project more deeply into music and music studies, it is

helpful to comment on resonance by reiterating its theoretical implications. Deleuze

introduces the concept at the end of the second chapter in Difference and Repetition,

demonstrating how differential elements are able to enter reciprocal relations.1 These

relations are not purely abstract (in the sense of ideal syntheses) but refer to processes

in time and space that actualize virtual structures. They always involve bodilythresholds. The displacement and shifting of sense or the virtual that is never

completely absorbed in the actual points to movements of repetition. It is the refrain or

ritournelle that embodies resonance, the conceptually unmediated differentiation of

differences, minima audibilia, nano rumor, that make sound or compose greater entities

that are empirically audible and assignable to certain objects. Following Christopher

Hasty, music is problematic in its resistance to representation and repetition (of the

same?) represents the philosophical problem inherent in resonance captured between

difference and identity.2 This paper examines the history of repetition as a

philosophical concept and in doing so throws light on the type of relations that inhabit

musical ways of listening, experiencing and producing sounds. Deleuzes repeatedrecourse to music tells his readers that a full exploration of his thought requires that

music and philosophy constantly mediate one another through their extremes.3

It is common knowledge in the history of philosophical concepts that Kierkegaards

Repetitionwas the first book to turn this term into a philosophically and conceptually

determined category.4 The establishment of this new category for future philo-

sophical thought signals an escape from the self-contained philosophy of Hegel.5 The

phenomenon of repetition gained philosophical acceptance at the very moment

dialectical synthesis was losing its power and the philosophy of history was

encountering ever greater difficulties. It fell upon the category of repetition to bring

something absolutely new into play. One way to elucidate this paradox could be to

emphasise its eventfulness and thus to think repetition, against Hegel, against an

idealized version of repetition as grounded in recollection:

When the Eleates denied motion, Diogenes, as everyone knows, came

forward as an opponent. He literally did come forward, because he

did not say a word but merely paced back and forth a few times,

thereby assuming that he had sufficiently refuted them. When I was

occupied for some time, at least on occasion, with the question of

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ISSN 1353-4645 print/ISSN 1460-700X online q 2012 Taylor & Francishttp://www.tandfonline.com

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13534645.2012.632981

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repetition whether or not it is possible [ . . . ] I suddenly had the

thought: You can, after all, take a trip to Berlin; you have been there

once before, and now you can prove to yourself whether a repetition is

possible and what importance it has.6

Kierkegaard alludes here, probably ironically, to the evidence of a real and

authentic existence in order to dissociate himself from Hegel and his idea of anEleatic abolition of a finite and variable existence. Repetition this mysterious idea

of experimental psychology inherits frommediation in that it refers to a future it

does not control. History has not come to an end precisely because the processes of

becoming and the temporality of existence could not be accommodated within the

logical construct of intellectual mediation.

The dialectic of repetition is easy, for that which is repeated has been otherwise it

could not be repeated but the very fact that it has been makes the repetition into

something new.7 What is essential is not the past but rather that the past comes into

existence, and this only occurs through repetition. Repetition provides the basis forwhat repetition repeats and not the other way around. Repetition poses a particular

problem, as it cannot be understood by thinking of it as something essential resting

securely in the past. Its only blessed certainty lies in the moment it takes place.

Kierkegaard explicitly stresses that repetition is the interest of metaphysics, and also

the interest upon which metaphysics comes to grief.8 Repetition, in this sense, must

be understood as the modern and post-metaphysical, i.e. post-Hegelian, motto of

philosophy.

In his essay On an image of Proust Benjamin refers to the dialectics of happiness; a

hymnal and an elegiac figure of happiness. The first: the never heard, the incredible,

the height of bliss. The second: the eternal once more, the never ending restoration of agenuine, first happiness.9 Elegiac happiness, which could also be called eleatic

happiness, belongs to the melancholy logic of recollection, while hymnal happiness is

related to the moment of repetition.10 It remains unclear, however, whether it is

possible to combine the two antinomic principles of happiness. I will try to investigate

this question by defining the conceptual relationship between repetition and event. At

first glance it looks as if repetition qua repetition excludes all reference to eventfulness

(Ereignishaftigkeit). Only at second glance do we discover a paradoxical affinity

grounded in the fact that the event only exudes fascination because it refers to

something that has always been close without our ever noticing it. It is for this reason

that the event can make us lose our footing. Maybe the modern event-culture industryaims at exactly this: increasing this effect in such a way that it can be intentionally

provoked and controlled. In that case, individualization would be coupled with a loss

of existence, which out of a desire to increase the feeling of actually being and

existing has to be compensated in wild and unfamiliar zones and states of emergency.

Phenomenology of Repetition

When Kierkegaard, otherwise known as Constantin Constantius, regrets that

his attempt to repeat his previous stay in Berlin failed, it is because, as he says, too

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much possibly including himself has changed. This time the theatre bores him,

the coffee is bad and the landlord has got married. Repetition is impossible simply

because all the things and persons involved are subject to the influence of time. It

might be otherwise in physics, but in the field of psychic systems repetitions are

only possible in a relative way relative to confirmed habits.11 While objective

repetitions require an unchanging and fixed system of reference so that identical

results can be produced, inner and subjective repetitions are always part of astructure that changes with every act.

Conceiving of this contrast in phenomenological terms, one might say that actual

repetition in the life-world precedes an objective and scientifically grounded

understanding of reality. Husserls transcendental reduction defines at least three

different phenomena that are considered constitutive for experience: besides habit

there is association and the inner awareness of time. I am refering here to phenomena

of repetition, provided that it is a matter of a non-subjectively controlled sequence

of defined moments of experience that are permanent enough to create a context. As

Hume has shown, it is possible to state the principles of association that form ourhabits of living and thinking. Thus, many of our everyday experiences are embedded

in a structure of repetition: we believe in the world, we believe that the world will

continue to exist even when we close our eyes. Situations repeat themselves at work,

while driving, on the way to school, under the shower or in bed.

But what exactly is it that repeats itself? If a stone falls to the ground, it might be a

(foreseeable) case presupposing natural law inside a technical frame of experiment.

Is repetition only possible with reference to universal definitions that abstract from

insignificant, empirical deviations? And what happens when the phenomenologist

gives up his natural attitude? A first solution to the problem appears when we hold

on to the fact that only external repetitions are phenomenologically bracketed.What is repeated, then, are not associative or habitual givens that have to be

identified on an abstract level, but time itself as an unchanging form which affects

everything that is changeable. Repetition means that the present permanently falls

into the past, that two moments of experience are unconsciously associated with

each other, or that we expect something to happen because of habit. It becomes

clear that only initially do repetitions in ordinary, everyday life seem incompatible

with the event which is then erroneously regarded as a simple disturbance in this

monotonous force. Repetition seen from this perspective is impossible and just as

deceptive as the hope of being happy over a long period of time. Kierkegaard related

this discovery with the necessity to make a religious movement which would leadfrom the immanence of a worldly existence to the transcendence of an Archimedean

point.12

I do not wish to embrace Kierkegaards solution but would like to discuss instead

his question regarding the justification of the impossibility of repetition within

immanence. This question brings us to the limits of phenomenology. Phenomenol-

ogys unclear position on this matter is expressed in notions like passive synthesis13 or

passive intention.14 We can say that traditional phenomenology does not have a

concept of internal repetition because it thinks experience in terms of a whole that

finds expression in the essential laws of consciousness. It is true that phenomenology

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has discovered a variety of subterranean layers in the concept of experience but these

are related to a thoroughly evolved and subjectively rational form of apperception

and are defined from that perspective. In contrast to the essential laws of

consciousness, repetition must therefore remain a rather external and irrelevant

phenomenon, referring only to variations of time and space that are lost forever.

If we want to raise repetition to a philosophical category, we will nevertheless haveto situate it within immanence, whereby our concept of immanence must be the one

that can do without transcendence. This is only possible if the phenomenon of

repetition is understood in terms of internal repetition. This in turn requires a

positive interpretation of repetition i.e. a philosophical articulation of the

problem of time that does not delegate it to other static concepts. In this way, events

can have an internal relation to repetition and repetition can, indeed, bring about

something new. Support for such an understanding of repetition can be found in the

work of Freud and Nietzsche when read from a Deleuzian point of view.

Freuds Approach

I will begin with a short outline of some of the core aspects of the theory of recidivism

(Wiederholungszwang) as developed by Freud in his essay Beyond the Pleasure

Principle.15 The basic idea is that in certain cases of pathological neurosis some past

and unconsciously repressed events, regardless of whether they are real or imaginary

or whether they were originally accompanied by feelings of reluctance or not, cause

repetitions in the psyche. The urge to repeat, as it happens for example in dreams

about accidents, is obviously original, elementary and more compulsive than the

pleasure principle.16

From a metapsychological understanding of this phenomenon, Freud hopes to gain

insight into the nature of the forces of resistence, which prevent a conscious

recollection of the repressed content. Recollection is contrasted with repetition,

much as health contrasts with illness. But of course the problem of repetition must be

situated on a deeper level in that it refers to a necessity that is presupposed by the

dominance of the pleasure principle.

At this point, Freuds psychoanalytic theory reproduces the ambivalence of

Husserls phenomenology. On the one hand, he points to internal phenomena of

repetition, on the other he remains focused on therapeutic clarification in a way thatis indebted to a philosophy of consciousness.

Why, according to Freud, does it become necessary to repeat? Put negatively, we

could say that repetition is tied to an insufficient and unfinished process of working

through trauma. From a different perspective, we might say that the psyche is

confronted with libidinal content (molecular movements) that simply overflows its

capacities and cannot be contained or responded to. How does this happen? Freud

compares human consciousness to a cortex of the brain that has been fried by

permanent stimulation so that it is in the position to protect the internal, still living

systems. If even this protection breaks down, we are dealing with trauma or as

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Benjamin would say with shock. The reaction to trauma or shock is repetition,

which is beyond the pleasure principle. The psychic apparatus tries to make up for

its lack of preparation and failure in coping with the stimuli by producing, for

example, belated anxiety.

This rather schematic model gets more complicated as soon as we become aware that

consciousness only constitutes one special function within the psychic apparatus.Freud states that all stimuli leave permanent traces in all the systems that together

build the basis of our memory. We are not aware of these shreds of recollection

because they are incompatible with our conscious perception. The fact that

protection against internal stimuli is impossible means that a counter movement will

be aimed against this internal agitation. It seems reasonable to assume that those

traces Freud calls prehistoric are moments of genuine repetition that oppose the

higher levels of the psychic apparatus. These higher ego-levels produce resistance and

repression and are responsible for conscious recollection. Seen from the perspective of

the theory of time, the difference between unconscious and conscious memories

appears to be an essential one, but not one of opposition. Pathological repetition,according to Freud, reveals that the prehistoric traces cannot be contained. These

traces seem to be characterized by the fact that they can be easily condensed and

transferred within the unconscious. At the same time Freud states that precisely those

traces that are the most durable never gain access to consciousness.17 He thus

articulates a positive definition of repetition that follows its own rules, comparable to

the masquerade of dreams and, in a structural dimension, to a total past a` la Bergson.

But like Kierkegaard before him, Freud relates repetition to a regressive tendency

that aims at reconstructing an earlier state (redintegratio in statum pristinum), a

tendency he defines as death drive (Todestrieb). Of course he differentiates between

two different forms of repetition, one which he calls playful and another which heconsiders pathological. This means that repetition can be either liberating or

destructive, whereby the negative model is nevertheless given priority.

Perhaps it is possible to return to the remarkable phenomenon of internal repetition

with Nietzsche. Freud writes: We are very little surprised about the eternal return of

the same when active behaviour is concerned. But we are very impressed by those

cases, where people experience something passively, something they have no influence

on, while it appears as a never ending repetition of the same fate.18 Freud sticks closer

than Nietzsche to an abstract understanding of time that correlates to the structure of

consciousness and its self-perception. Seen from this perspective, Freud is closer toSchopenhauer than to Nietzsche when he describes the unconscious as timeless.

Eternal Recurrence

There can be no doubt that Nietzsche understood the concept of the eternal return

as a pure event. In Sils-Maria, in 1881, he notes about his location: 6000 feet above

the sea and even much higher above all human affairs.19 It is well known that his

Zarathustrarevolves around this idea and that his late conception of the will is closely

related to it.

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I will start with a principle that Nietzsche articulated in the context of his cosmological

interpretation of the phenomenon of an eternal return. If the world could have a

destination at all it should be reached by now [ . . . ] If the world would be able to

remain and become rigid if only one moment of being could have existed during the

course, then no becoming would be possible anymore.20 Following Nietzsches

critiques of thermodynamics, the world, if possible at all, would already have come to

a standstill under the premise of an infinity of time. But the unceasing processesestablishes becoming as a primary non-teleological reality. Becoming is everywhere;

permanence is only an impression of our coarse faculty of perception.21 Everything is

in a state of flow and there are no lasting forms and qualities, no transcendent entities

that function as a central hub that can subordinate changes. Nietzsches criticism of

morality and religion has its roots right here: the fleeting, confused, deceptive,

temporal and affective features of human life are denied and interpreted away in the

name of an eternal God, an absolute truth, moral commandments and a handful of

categories. Only in this metaphysical context can repetion be thought merely in

terms of a transition from a lasting dead state into another.22

The question remains how becoming and repetition can be thought together.

Nietzsche insists on the return of the same, assuming that certain constellations of

forces will keep returning. But that is not my concern here. I am interested instead in

the essential element of Nietzsches critique of reason and its impact: the loss of a

reliable, external point of view from which one would be able to survey the world.

Kierkegaard thinks in terms of an inaccessible power that cannot be made an object

of self-empowerment: where my soul longs to be, there where ideas spume with

elemental fury [ . . . ] there where each moment one is staking ones life, each moment

losing it and finding it again.23 Kierkegaard interprets this idea of repetition in a

religious way. Appealing to a higher law, an immediate relationship with God and atranscendental category of testing, he turns toward negative theology and associates

repetition with a prior, non-alienated state of being. Compared with such a

[spiritual] repetition, what is a repetition of worldly possessions? [ . . . ] Here only

repetition of the spirit is possible, even though it is never so perfect in time as in

eternity, which is the true repetition.24 Nietzsche, on the other hand, situates

repetition within immanence: We should not reach out for unknown salvations and

reprieves, but live in a way that makes us want to live again and the same way for

ever. That is our task in any moment.25 In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the moment

(Augenblick) is the name of a gateway where two alleys meet: the past and the future.

Here Nietzsche on the one hand stresses the selective power of repetition, which isable to free us from the disgust of being like the shepherd who bites off the snakes

head and gives the lie to the crooked truth of the dwarf and on the other hand the

eventful and the temporal determination of the moment. Nietzsches unpublished

notes on the return of the same describe the moment when the individual loses its

coherence and realizes that it is constantly changing: that there is no individual, that

in one moment it is different from the next moment [ . . . ] the tiny little moment is the

higher reality and truth, images like lightning emerging from an eternal flow.26

In contrast to a phenomenological description of a lived present that integrates past

and future into an extended period of time, the Augenblickundermines the concept of

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time upon which the philosophical notion of self-presence rests. The moment, or

Augenblick, is the infinitely small point of a present that cannot last, that is already

gone as soon as we try to grasp it. It is always both not yetandno more.This means

that the redistribution of past and future, continuously occuring in every moment,

cannot be controlled and standardized by a subjective power. But neither does such

a withdrawal (Entzug) lead us into another world. What repeats itself because

becoming can never stand still is time, which cannot be represented as such: it is thepast that accumulates; the past that accompanies and colours every new present as

its implicit background. In this sense what has become obsolete and fallen into the

past inheres in every new moment because it cannot come to a standstill as an object

of conscious reflection.

Nietzsche placed great importance on the transforming power of the eternal

return: If you incorporate the thought of thoughts it will change you.27 The

metamorphosis that places man beyond himself results from the selectivity of

repetition. Repetition weeds out what cannot be repeated; all those supposed truths

ostensibly created in the pure element of the human mind, elevating themselvesabove the process of repetition. Affirmation does not aim at the ugly and revolting

things of life but only at what can return, at what is not lost in repetition and can be

transformed without loosing itself. Nietzsche calls this the will to power.

Gilles Deleuze proposes an interpretation of the the return of the same from the

perspective of the philosophy of time. He claims that the break between before and

after constitutes an unchanging form that can admit change precisely because it is

constantly returning. All that can be said about it is difference: It is not the same

which recurs, [ . . . ] the same is the recurrence of the recurring, that is the different.

The repetition of the eternal return is the same, but in the sense, that it can only be

stated from the difference and the different.28 Only difference returns that is, thetotality of all differential structures of the will to power which are de jureimmanent to

themselves. The negative is eliminated in the sense of a double affirmation, whereby

whatever introduces a negative moment into affirmation is negated. The eternal

return affirms difference; it affirms dissimilarity, dispersion, chance, becoming and

multiplicity.

The play of differences repeats itself incessantly but it disguises itself by becoming

differentiated. What remains is a blind spot that cannot be represented. This is not to

evoke a mystical or esoteric indifference but rather the popular idea of an empiricist

flux of experience that never is consciously given but expresses the virtual depth ofthe condition of the given. Seen from this perspective, the historical past is neither the

sum total of historical incidents nor the object of imaginary constructs. Rather, it is a

structural field that always maintains an internal relation to historical experience. If

this internal relation becomes interrupted, or we lose sight of it, a compulsive

repetition begins in an effort to redeem the past in the present. The constantly

occuring differences do in fact playfully and permanently deform the past. This does

not mean, however, that the event itself is permanent. Habits of thought and action

have always established themselves against the backdrop of repetition, and are

accompanied by numerous convictions, certainties of belief, and assumptions that

are taken for granted, which together make up what Deleuze calls the banality of

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representation. This is a table, that is an apple, this is a piece of wax, good morning

Theaitetos. Who could ever believe that the fate of thought is put at stake here? 29

Perhaps it makes sense to speak of a continuously unconscious process of repetition,

which is hidden from the different forms of consciousness. This suggests an intelligible

difference between an immanent and an empirical order of things, which is capable

of laying hold of the uncommonness we generally associate with events.

Notes

1 Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans.

Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University

Press, 1993), pp.143156.2 Christopher Hasty, The Image of Thought and

Ideas of Music, in Sounding the Virtual: Gilles

Deleuze and the Theory and Philosophy of Music, ed.

Brian Hulse and Nick Nesbitt (Burlington, VT:

Ashgate, 2010), pp.122.3

Brian Hulse and Nick Nesbitt, Introduction, inSounding the Virtual: Gilles Deleuze and the Theory and

Philosophy of Music, ed. Brian Hulse and Nick

Nesbitt (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), p.xvi.4 So ren Kierkegaard, Repetition, inKierkegaards

Writings, vol. 6, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong

and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press 1983), pp.125231.5 So ren Kierkegaard, Repetition, p.226.6 So ren Kierkegaard, Repetition, p.131.7 So ren Kierkegaard, Repetition, p.149.8 So ren Kierkegaard, Repetition, p.149.9

Walter Benjamin, Zum Bilde Prousts, Illumina-tionen. Ausgewahlte Schriften Bd. 1. (Frankfurt:

Suhrkamp 1977), p. 337.10 Walter Benjamin, Zum Bilde Prousts, p.337.11 Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, p.106.12 So ren Kierkegaard, Repetition, p.183.13 Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, p.91.14 Edmund Husserl, Analyses concerning passive and

active synthesis, trans. Anthony Steinbock (Dor-

drecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers).15 Sigmund Freud, Jenseits des Lustprinzips,

Studienausgabe, Bd. 3, Psychologie des Unbewussten, ed.

Alexander Mitscherlich (Frankfurt: Fischer 2000),

pp.213272.16 Sigmund Freud, Jenseits des Lustprinzips,

p.233.17 Sigmund Freud, Jenseits des Lustprinzips,

p.235.18 Sigmund Freud, Jenseits des Lustprinzips,

p.232.19 Friedrich Nietzsche, M III 1. Fru hjahr

Herbst 1881, in Kritische Studienausgabe in 15

Banden, vol. 9: Nachgelassene Fragmente 1880 1882,

ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Berlin:

De Gruyter 1967), p.141.20 Friedrich Nietzsche, M III 1. Fru hjahr

Herbst 1881, p.292.21 Friedrich Nietzsche, M III 1. Fru hjahr


Herbst 1881, p.150.23 So ren Kierkegaard, Repetition, p.221.24 So ren Kierkegaard, Repetition, p.221.25 Friedrich Nietzsche, M III 1. Fru hjahr



Herbst 1881, p.143.28 Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, p.373.29 Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, p.176.

MarcRoli teaches Philosophy at Fatih University, Istanbul, Turkey. He is the authorof Gilles Deleuze. Philosophie des transzendentalen Empirismus (Wien, 2003; English

translation forthcoming: Edinburgh, 2012) and Kritik der anthropologischen Vernunft

(Berlin, 2011). He is currently editing (with Friedrich Balke) a volume on Deleuze,

philosophy and non-philosophy (Bielefeld, 2011). E-mail: [email protected]

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rölli, marc the story of repetition

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