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So it's been a while. But I come bearing news of paper topics. Maybe that's all I use this for, but it helps to just throw out general outlines, and maybe think as I write.

Within the last day or so I've more definitively sketched out an idea for my Deleuze "Difference and Repetition" paper. I think I"m going to take what Deleuze presents in D&R and try to sketch out its political implications. In short, what are the political implications of Deleuze's ontological project? It seems, oddly enough, that Derrida's political writings lend themselves well to just what this would be. It seems that Derrida's democracy-to-come maps well onto Deleuze's ontology. What's interesting, and this just may be my complete lack of knowledge in the area, but it seems as though there is a lack of writing concerning the relationship between Deleuze and Derrida. I'm not saying it's not there, but it's not real prevalent. Whats more interesting than that is the lack of engagement between Deleuze and Derrida themselves. I think Derrida refers to Deleuze in no more than 5 places, and all that's coming to my mind now is a footnote that Derrida refers to Deleuze. On Deleuze's part in relation to Derrida, I'm not sure how often he refers. Nonetheless, this is somewhat striking to me due to their proximity. Both being poststructuralists in France at the same time, one would think there'd be a more extensive communication between the two, but as far as I can tell, there wasn't. Anyhow, it seems to me that Derrida's democracy-to-come fits well with the role of the eternal return in Deleuze. While many are wary of Derrida's political commitments, whether associating deconstruction with a political temperament of inaction and undecidabilty, as well as a distrust of this quasi-messianic l'avenir that comes with Derrida's democracy-to-come, I think that it is best understood as that which is constitutive of the test of Deleuze's eternal return. The relationship between Deleuze's virtual and actual realms links well to democracy, as such, in Derrida, and various political manifestations thereof. We'll see how it goes.

For my Kant "Critique of Judgment" paper, I think I'm going to use Lyotard's "Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime" and Deleuze's "Kant's Critical Philosophy". I'm thinking I can read Deleuze as presenting a picture of Kant in which the first two Critiques result in a severe division between on the one hand reason and the laws of nature, and freedom and morality on the other. While Deleuze finds this fissure fascinating, he ridicules Kant's attempt to ressurect a unified account in and through the Third Critique, namely in the latter half of the book concerning the teleological. This section, as well as the Analytic of the Beautful, establishes an affinity between the faculties and nature, establishing subjective purposiveness, etc. It seems to me that the general thrust of Deleuze's reading sees the division rejected by Kant, with a subsequent attempt to salvage. A covering over this fracture, so to speak. This being the case, however, I feel that Deleuze's reading can be supplemented with Lyotard's. Lyotard's engagement with the sublime results in a field in which the subject, as such, is denied, not accomplished. Whereas the beautiful allows Kant to rejuvenate the subject, the transcendento-critical subject, the sublime, in Lyotard's reading, is symptomatic of the fracture of the first and second critique split. Analytic of the Sublime as suplement to Analytic of the Beautiful in Kant's eyes; Lyotard as supplemental to Deleuze in my paper.

I'll talk about Ancient Greek and the Atomists some other time.

We'll see.