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The self is only a threshold, a door, a becoming between two multiplicities
Gilles Deleuze
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Interpretation

What this quote means

The self serves as a transitional space between different states of being and identities.

Gilles Deleuze suggests that the concept of the self is not a fixed identity, but rather a dynamic threshold that facilitates transformation. It acts as a door to various multiplicities, indicating that our identity is fluid and always in the process of becoming, shaped by various influences and experiences.

Themes

SelfIdentityBecomingMultiplicityPhilosophy

In practice

Example use cases

In a discussion about identity in a philosophy class.

More from Gilles Deleuze

Language is not made to be believed but to be obeyed, and to compel obedience newspapers, news, proceed by redundancy, in that they tell us what we β€˜must’ think, retain, expect, etc. language is neither informational nor communicational. It is not the communication of information but something quite different: the transmission of order-words, either from one statement to another or within each statement, insofar as each statement accomplishes an act and the act is accomplished in the statement
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Something in the world forces us to think. This something is an object not of recognition but of a fundamental encounter.
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Intuition is neither a feeling, an inspiration nor a disorderly sympathy but a fully developed method.
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Let us create extraordinary words, on condition that they be put to the most ordinary use and that the entity they designate be made to exist in the same way as the most common object.
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Forming grammatically correct sentences is for the normal individual the prerequisite for any submission to social laws. No one is supposed to be ignorant of grammaticality; those who are belong in special institutions. The unity of language is fundamentally political.
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Art is not communicative, art is not reflexive. Art, science, philosophy are neither contemplative, neither reflexive, nor communicative. They are creative, that's all.
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