The relation of Deleuze to Derrida

Abstract

In this paper I examine the negative phenomenology of Deleuze. Negative phenomenologies repress differance as the transcendental and the empirical are repetitions of the same through iterability.  I argue that a negative phenomenology or a reversal of phenomenology repeats it rather than managing to escape it. This is because it still proceeds within its metaphysical vocabulary and ontological structure. Deleuze  thus, in inverting and reversing phenomenology, only repeat it by borrowing entirely from its metaphysical vocabulary and structure. Derrida’s phenomenology in place, is a meta-phenomenology in discovering the origin of phenomenology as differance, or the difference between philosophy and non-philosophy, transcendental and empirical. Derrida discovers the condition of possibility for phenomenology as the quasi-transcendental, or the interval between the transcendental and empirical which conditions phenomenology in its entirety. The transcendental and empirical are paradoxically identical and non-identical because the difference translates into sameness.