THE INSTANT BEYOND PRESENCE:

THE COUNTER-ACTUALIZATION OF THE EVENT IN GILLES DELEUZE

Abstract

In Logic of Sense, Deleuze approaches the instant as, on the one hand, the most finite and thinner form of the present and, on the other hand, as the split in which a simultaneous and divergent affirmation of the future and the past takes place. This duality makes the instant an enigmatic aspect of time, associated by Deleuze, for example, with the paradoxical and performative utterances of the koan in Zen Buddhism, with the present of the actor or dancer. In this work, we would like to show that, despite Deleuzian criticism of the chronological present, there is, for the same reasons, an appreciation of another form of presence, linked to the instant of the event and to the practice of counter-actualization. To this end, we intend to go through and determine the assumptions and practical implications of this question of the instant through the temporal and linguistic development of the issue, which will lead to a finding of the non-immediacy of the immediate, that is: the impossibility of experiencing or enunciating something absolutely immediate. This result, however, will be at the same time positive, as it will make visible to us another form of presence linked to the instant of the event, which presents the shattering of time. From this relationship with the event, it will be possible to show how the moment gains its intelligibility and ethical relevance.