I think if we follow Deleuze’s critique of dialectical opposition, we can see why the Left needs a metaphysical culture to sustain its creative forces. We can see why a Left defined primarily by the dialectic of the one and many—that is, without a metaphysical understanding of difference in itself (multiplicity)—was so likely to become absorbed back into a liberalism itself destined for a technocratic totality.If the Left is to mean anything beyond being the will to become conscious of and negate liberalism’s contradictions, it needs creative forces.
By “creative” I do not mean another transcendent substance or totality, but, following Deleuze’s reading of Spinoza and Nietzsche, active wills or forces that can work on and through the struggles of reactive and reproductive forces, yet are themselves the virtual becoming that defines them. They are the strange attractors working within every reproductive cyclical attractor of opposing differences and generic representations.
