Boing Boing Time?

Following on from this point, the second way that differential presence presents itself on the level of experience is as that which makes us think, or as Deleuze sometimes puts it, as that which ‘forces thought’. For Deleuze, thought is not the product of language but of what he calls a ‘fundamental encounter’ (Deleuze 1994: 139). Something in the world, he argues

forces us to think. This something is an object not of recognition but of a fundamental encounter. What is encountered may be Socrates, a temple or a demon. It may be grasped in a range of affective tones: wonder, love, hatred, suffering. In whichever tone, its primary characteristic is that it can only be sensed. In this sense it is opposed to recognition (139 – first emphasis original, second emphasis added).

Objects of recognition, Deleuze argues, ‘do not disturb thought’ insofar as they provide thought with ‘an image of itself’; they reaffirm for thought, in other words, what it already thinks it knows. Differential presence, in contrast, names an encounter which ‘defies consciousness, recognition and representation’ (Bogue 1989: 78) but nevertheless presents itself to sensation. In "What is Philosophy?" Deleuze and Guattari suggest that the philosopher then condenses these sensations or intensities in the creation of concepts, whereas the artistis assigned the role of making perceptible ‘the imperceptible forces that populate the world, affect us, and make us become’ (1994: 182). In neither case is this about translating the encounter into a representation which would stabilise the disruptive force of difference into something more palatable for consciousness. Rather, making art or doing philosophy involves a process of capture that repeats the difference of the encounter in a manner that, in turn, forces new thoughts upon an audience. And so the repetition of difference goes on.

Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca, "Deleuze and differential presence in performance"

"Objects of recognition, Deleuze argues, ‘do not disturb thought’ insofar as they provide thought with ‘an image of itself’; they reaffirm for thought, in other words, what it already thinks it knows."- Deleuze must have never watched a naked girl on a trampoline before... ;)