Deleuze's Three Syntheses of Time: A Primer
Merry Christmas! My present is this utterly unmotivated post on Deleuze's three syntheses of time, meant to give the general gist of what's going on, without being too technical about it. This is anything but exhaustive. If I pull this off right, this might be the shortest exposition of the syntheses that have otherwise filled entire monographs! So here we go: The cover illustration on one of the editions of Borges' Labyrinths. The 2nd Synthesis The 3 syntheses (elaborated in chapter 2 of Difference and Repetition ) are easily among the toughest although most important bits of Deleuze's writing. But they can be rendered digestible by starting with a simple example: the example of déjà vu. It's not an original example, and in fact, it was Bergson himself who furnished it in his own essay on the "Memory of the Present and False Recognition". We're more or less going to crib from it to make Deleuze a little clearer (hopefully). Speaking very roughly,