Three Passive Synthesis
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An intensity e refers to at least two coupled differences, f and g. The difference between differences is distance; the coupling between differences is intensity. f and g each refer to more differences – call these f’, f'‘, g’, and g'‘. The series goes on like this. Importantly, f’ and f'‘, and likewise g’ and g'‘, need not be coupled differences. They can be. If they are, their couplings are intensities and are singular points; if they are not, they are ordinary points. A singular point expresses all other points, but only expresses clearly a set of ordinary points in its vicinity. An intensity has two faces: an ultimate face and an empirical face. The ultimate face is on the side of the distributed (or distributing) series; the empirical face is the contraction-contemplation.
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The first passive synthesis (PS1) and the second passive synthesis (PS2) are legs of the same being; they go together. PS1 is the presentness of things and PS2 is the passedness (pastness) of things. Although a present must be past at the same time that it is present, the past also can only inhere in the present. In this way, neither has total primacy over the other. (In fact, it might turn out to be that the numbering of the three passive syntheses reflects nothing more than the order Deleuze presents them in.)
With the transformation from receptivity to synthesis that marked the establishment of PS1, we have already given a genetic account of representation. With the transformation from represented past to inherent past that marked the establishment of PS2, we have provided a sufficient ground for the conditions of representation. Furthermore, higher orders of PS1 account for active synthetic reproductions. What, then, does the third passive synthesis (PS3) account for?
The truth is, if PS1 and PS2 were all we had, we would never go from Distribution to Time. PS1 is our tool; PS2 is the ontological justification for the tool. But a tool unused is useless – it must be deployed. The problem is that we can only posit a deployment – in fact, we must posit a deployment – but we cannot posit a one who deploys. We can say repetition necessitates deployment, that contractions are a necessary consequence of repetition, but it nonetheless remains the case that repetition is intratemporal. If we instead granted temporality to repetition, we would be forced to ask what it is that is repeated; if we respond that it's the present, or quality, which is repeated, we are led back to our original problem, that the present itself must be constituted on the basis of a repetition. Thus, we may distinguish between orders of repetition (the maximal contraction of each of which is each passing present) and the totality or series of repetition, which represents the move from Time or temporality to Distribution. PS3 accounts for freedom, the release of time from its distributive shackles to its temporal form. It is true that PS1 constitutes the living present, but a present can only be present in relation to a past and future. PS2 grounds the passage of presents in a mobile past, but it by itself is not enough to bring forth the new. The exceptional difficulty in conceptualizing PS3 is that it is built upon the foundation of PS1 and the ground of PS2, thus compelling me to imagine a prenarcissistic world of a free and orgiastic play of contractions and relaxations, while at the same time it is coextensive with them. How can one conceive of both a person without legs and legs without a person? Narcissism is not active synthesis. Narcissism is an inescapable component of the subrepresentative world, whereas active synthesis is optional. Monumentally difficult as it may be to avoid, nigh impossible, even, it is nonetheless optional. Imbued in the pure past is Eros, the great identifier. Mnemosyne is infinitely displaced, it is repetition or calculation itself, but in the contraction of instants it tends to show up as a grand mythology. The larval self, constituted as a subject in its contemplation, points itself not in one, but two directions. The first is inwards, at the immediate set of ordinary or singular points which constitute its contractile range. The second is backwards, at the totality of the past. Seen as mythic, the past is the frontier of conquest. If the present is stimulus or excitation, then the past is the condition of meaning: the order of the past reflected in the present present is the total set of conditions spurring movement or contemplation in a certain way. The child sucking its thumb does not do so in remembrance of the mother's breast, but in reflection of a past that the breast also reflected. The virtual object is of a fundamentally different procedure than the real object – in fact, it is the fact that it is procedure that distinguishes it from the real object. The virtual object is the pursuit of the past, it is repetition as calculation of the series. In pursuing its past pleasure, the child creates a world of new excitations. Sucking its thumb is a sensory feast that continually replenishes the store of excitations. If PS1 was the singularities and PS2 was the totality, then PS3 is the calculation of the series. It mobilizes things; it temporalizes them. Finally, what greater myth is there than the Self? Here and thus we have found the mobile element. Alan Watts says the universe plays a game of hide-and-seek with itself, that hide-and-seek is the originary game. The universe, as Self, renews itself only because it cannot see itself. Try to look through the back of your own head, he says; it is not darkness back there, but pure nothingness. This nothingness, this caesura, constitutes not the split of the Self but the Self itself. The Self is not split, it itself is the split. The split is between future and past, but it is also between action and event and between action and contemplation.
Deleuze's scathing critique of Kant is that he goes so far in dismantling the pregiven active agent of the Cartesian cogito but ultimately does not make the final courageous leap. There is no action, there is no Self. Instead, he resurrects the Self through the active synthetic unity – he fills in the caesura. The courageous claim is that there is no Self, that the caesura is an empty point. What really is, instead, is infinite calculation. PS3, before being the construction of the future, is the construction of movement. PS3 is not active synthesis but rather the mobile totality of lived reality. In a way, it is the only synthesis. In a way, it is the starting point, not PS1. The procedure of mobilization is the Eros inherent in Mnemosyne. There cannot be a calculation without a series, but there cannot be a series without a calculation. Deleuze rightly distinguishes between bottomed and bottomless series; repetition belongs to the latter. Deleuzean thought, then, involves a threefold and bimodal conceptual innovation. The three passive syntheses are the threefold innovation, but PS1 and PS2 share a modal togetherness that at the same time unites them with and separates them from PS3, the body that walks on two legs (albeit with a limp).
PS3 is dynamic genesis, the progressive calculation and continuation of a series. What is active synthesis, then? It is static genesis, static because it is always a has-happened. We should be careful not to confuse it, however, with any notion of PS2, the pure past, or the virtual; they are entirely different notions. Philosophy has already dealt with active synthesis. The frontier, the magic, and the unbelievable richness of philosophy lie in the domain of the passive and the dynamic. The hinge or the cardo on which all this rests is a unique fact: PS3 represents a doubling back of the passive synthesis in two separate ways or in two separate locations. The first was in the middle, as we have already seen. The ego doubled back on itself and in so doing it unknowingly extracted time and movement from distribution. The other location is at the front, at the very front. Progressive calculation is the production of the new, but “progressive calculation is the production of the new” is a tautology. In calculating the series we automatically provide the fuel – the replenishment – for PS1. In other words, that which PS1 contracts and contemplates is what is produced in PS3. This is the closing of the uncloseable loop: “[t]his is how the story of time ends: by undoing its too well centred natural or physical circle and forming a straight line which then, led by its own length, reconstitutes an eternally decentred circle” (DR 115). In his readers’ guide to Difference and Repetition, on page 164, Joe Hughes states “[i]t makes no sense to say that the explication of intensity rests on the first synthesis because the first synthesis doesn’t cancel difference”, and this seems to reflect the larger attitude towards the three passive syntheses as distinct entities all founded upon some base, evanescent materiality – but isn't cancelling difference exactly what the first synthesis does? Deleuze could not make it more explicit: difference tends to cancel itself. The larval subject constitutes itself through contemplation of successive instants the difference drawn from which forms the narcissistic image of the larval subject. We cannot assume PS1 operates on some distinct level of undifferentiated empirical (temporal) flow or flux. It does not contract temporal “instants”. Instead, intensity is itself a contraction of ordinary and singular points within a certain radius in the nomadic distribution.Intensity is produced only by progressive calculation; it is cancelled only by the larval subject of PS1 (or rather, in its cancellation of itself, the larval subject is produced). If this is true, then our understanding of Deleuze must shift a little. Deleuze's thought represents a total lifting up of the Event from any base empirical plane. It is not enough to posit a primary sensibility, no matter how infinitely we distribute its Smallness and Largeness. Doing so keeps us in the Hegelian-Leibnizian quarter. The truth of things is that there is no primary sensibility other than the past which was once the future. This is the true leap into groundlessness; it is the debasement of identity. It is also the point of departure for a direct and forceful leap into Buddhist thought. At the other side of the shore, waiting to welcome us on the dock, is Vasubandhu's Yogacara, our entryway and our meeting point. Behind him sits a warehouse.
