Composing and Decomposing: A Deleuzian Account of Ornamental Repetition

Based on Deleuze’s understanding of creative productivity as an expression of one’s mental desiring-machine, the paper proposes an innovative insight into the ambiguous – constructive and destructive – human need to repeat. To philosophically grasp the aesthetic and material results of such repetitive activity, I propose to complete the Deleuzian concept of assemblage with the concept of ornament, defined as a material result of a repetitive mindset generating arrangements of regularly returning acts and items. I argue that Deleuze’s immanent repetition generates two kinds of ornament: the individual one, such as a personal collection or an artistic style, and the social one, such as an avant-garde movement or subculture fashion. Both ornaments are explained through Deleuze’s concepts of negative and relational deterritorialisation and are further defined by a new reading of Deleuze’s revision of repetition in Freud and Nietzsche. Both kinds of immanent repetition produce ornamental compositions which are threatened by the danger of ornamental decomposition.