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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter March 16, 2010

On Repetition

  • Alenka Zupančič
From the journal SATS

Abstract

One of the conceptual events that distinguish the contemporary, post-Hegelian philosophy is the emergence of the concept of repetition as an independent and crucial concept. Marx, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Freud and, later on, Lacan and Deleuze – with all these thinkers the conceptual stakes of repetition are very much in the center of their projects. There are important differences between these projects, but what they all share is that repetition is viewed, posited, and elaborated as fundamentally different from the logic of representation. The paper starts with a brief overview of Marx's reflections of the repetition in relationship to revolution (from The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte), and then focuses mainly on Deleuze and Lacan, on similarities and differences of their conceptualizations. For Deleuze, repetition as existing beyond representation constitutes an emancipatory realization of Being qua difference. For Lacan, repetition constitutes the other side of representation and cannot be completely separated form it, in spite of their radical heterogeneity. It is related to the contingency involved in the very constitution of the subject.

Published Online: 2010-03-16
Published in Print: 2007-May

© Philosophia Press 2007

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