Difference, Differential

Chapter 8 (“Difference and Differential”) examines the seminal notions of “difference” and “differential” through the study of several excerpts from Deleuze’s book Difference and Repetition where difference is defined not as an opposition but as a positivity that determines the double process of “differentiation/differenciation”, the first one taking place in the Virtual and the second one in the Actual. In the course of his argument, Deleuze relies on a linguistic example, the formal reciprocal determination of the phonemes and anticipation by morphemes. After examination in their Deleuzian formulation, these concepts are tested in literary situations: a poem by Emily Dickinson; comments on poetry by philosophers Cornelius Castoriadis and Michel Deguy (also a poet); and Marcel Proust’s prose in A La Recherche du temps perdu through Deleuze’s approach that applies the concepts of “resonance” and “transversality” in the early book Proust and Signs. To conclude, an analysis of Raymond Carver’s short story “Blackbird Pie” exposes the hypothesis that literature plays the part of a differential.