Using Mise en abyme to Differentiate Deleuze and Derrida

In this paper I shall tackle the problem of differentiating Deleuze and Derrida. Various writers have done so, comparing these philosophers’ conceptions of repetition and difference. I shall attempt to enrich, sharpen and sometimes criticize these writers by exploring the paradigm through which Deleuze and Derrida have (explicitly) reflected upon repetition and difference in the first place: the mise en abyme, a literary concept designating a work that doubles itself within itself. I shall argue that Derrida applied to his theory of difference a degenerated picture of the mise en abyme, which I shall term the “lacunal”, and which would cause him, against himself, to grasp the concept of difference “logocentrically”. On the other hand, Deleuze – attending to the actual emblem and to what literary theorists had to say about it – drew its correct lesson: the Other is less that which challenges Totality than the very coexistence between the Other-than-Totality and the Totality it challenges.