What Insects Teach Us About Individuation

Deleuze’s 1961 article on Masoch offers a key entry point into his complex relationship with psychoanalysis and the philosophy of the unconscious. Unlike his earlier explorations of Hume and Bergson, this essay marks a distinct departure from Freud, aligning himself with a Jungian perspective on the unconscious. In the decades before, Deleuze had mostly followed Bergson’s theory of Matter and Memory. The latter posited that the past essentially equates to the unconscious (or ‘the virtual’ in Bergson’s terms). This departs from Freud’s model, where the unconscious serves as a (mere) storehouse for repressed sexual desires. A word of caution for this piece — we’re entering a theoretical space that might feel distant from contemporary thought. My goal here is two-fold. First, to clarify some of the complexities within Deleuze’s concepts. Second, to highlight that using these concepts in broader political conversations requires us to truly grasp them on a fundamental level. For that, we need to revisit how they evolved. <a href="https://medium.com/deterritorialization/what-insects-teach-us-about-individuation-513352ddb2cf">Read More</a>