Pure Experience and Nomadism in James and Deleuze

Abstract

Deleuze’s  attention  to  singularity  has  its  roots  in  the  Jamesian  concept of the virtual, according to which pure experience is only virtually objective  or  subjective,  but  currently  unqualified . It  is  now  clear  the  meaning  of  Deleuzian  “preindividual  singularities” ,  of  a  difference which is preserved before individuation, representation, and conceptual generalization. As the philosopher writes in his last work, the “virtual is not something that lacks reality but something that is engaged  in a process of actualization following the plane that gives it its particular  reality”.  This  kind  of  virtuality  coincides  with  nomadism,  with  the  distribution  of  univocal  being,  free  from hierarchies, capable of preserving differences through a process of repetition without a reference model.