Non-Being: Deleuze Against Affirmation

Topic

Just opening up a thread here on the general topic of affirmation vs negation in Deleuze. Jacob Vangeest shared an article yesterday from Dan Barber which touches on this in the second section Non-Being: Deleuze Against Affirmation. http://www.rhizomes.net/issue29/barber.html

As I understand it, the idea of affirmation is central to the differential ontology Deleuze began developing at least as early as his book on Nietzsche. However, I think this idea of Deleuze as being “optimistic” or as favoring “positivity”, while maybe not entirely wrong, is at least in part attributable to a misunderstanding of the concept of affirmation he talks about in relation to active and reactive forces.

Andrew Culps short book “Dark Deleuze” is really great on this and definitely worth a look.

Any other thoughts out there on affirmation in Deleuze? It’s something I’m not sure I understand completely.

Replies

Re-reading chap 1 prior to our meeting, today:

“In its essence, difference is the object of affirmation or affirmation itself. In its essence, affirmation is itself difference.” (p. 53)

Also, “there are two ways to appeal to ‘necessary destructions’:” [to paraphrase] Poets negate the old and affirm the new… politicians negate the new and affirm the old. (p. 53)

Deleuze makes these points right after stating, “The whole of Phenomenology is an epiphenomenology.” I took that as quite reductive but it was said in the context of the influence of Hegel’s dialectic on the movement. (pp. 52-53)