First note, my god I read the table of contents and thought, wow these chapters are really. Short but they are really hard and confusing. Oh, its the table of contents lol. Damn, I've never read a table of contents befoer and thought, I have no idea wtf that means hah.

I'm just gonna start with chapter 1.

So I get major yinyang vibes which seems odd. The abyss is like the spirt of a the normal person where they just try to fill said void with rampant consumption in a fruitless effort as the void cannot be filled. The nothinness of negative nihilism. And the nothiness is truely shown after they die and they just become nothing. While the white nothing is the sagely version of this nothing.

Its a feeling that can't be described in a way that isn't inherenlty contradictory. A head without a neck or arms without a shoulder. While this is the nothingness of the tao. A sense of calm and tranquility from being illogical, a empty cup, a uncarved block that can't be described with words. A void that is joy from void and not a problem to be fixed. This is almost certainly me reading into it too much hah.

So in these sections its talking about difference. Hopefully it makes more sense to other people because I have no clue. My guess is that by difference the author is either talking about the difference of those who don't contort themselves to society. So deleuze is questioning if its intrinsically good to crush the will of the "different" ones and if its something that should be done.

Or maybe by difference the author is speaking on inequality. In how jeff bezos is a different as he is a great man far greater in ability and intelligence than the masses. And deleuze is questioning this narrative of who came up with this idea of him being great and how that effects society. And if putting a few great men on a pedestal as intrinsically different like aristotle did is a good idea.

So difference is not diversity or otherness. But it is opposition. So both of my theories so far could be correct as bezos is in opposition to the masses or for a lack of a better term lumpens or other odd balls are different if they are in opposition to normalcy. So a gay man trying to integrate is not different but a queer person wanting to destroy cis hetero society is.

This sentance makes little sense to me

Under what conditions, however, does contrariety impart its perfection to dif- ference?

so contraiety is the opposite opposition so under what coniditons does the opposite opposition impart its perfection onto difference?

So does this mean that it views normal society as perfect and it using its authority molds the opposition into becoming perfect like it? Or is society the difference and the opposition the queers or indigenous impart their perfection onto soceity through their opposition? Now based on deleuzes critique of society I doubt he would claim it to be perfect. Though calling mainstream society the difference makes very little sense.

God I feel way out of my element as I read the words and try to comprehend them but like they make no logical sense. I think I understand something then I read another sentence on and it just completely undermines my previous understanding. So each sentence feels more and more contradictory and I just can't understand anything being said. Jesus is this how it feels for illiterate people who try to learn how to read in adulthood or people with severe learning disabilities trying to read?

So then at the end of page 30 he talks of how difference tends to become just simple otherness. So difference stops being an opposition and just becomes a little weird part of society rather than an attack. So liberal reformism of opposition movements?

Okay so by genus deleuze kinda is referencing the biological concept. So in airistotle it seems an example of genus is somethign like animals. So humans are animals but their difference makes them a seperate class of animals. So in relation to this a indigenous person is of the genus human but their difference to settler colonialism is what makes them different to settlers. Its their opposition to settler colonialism that proves them to be different. While indigenous people who give up opposition often loose their culture as its melted away as their offpring become hard to seperate from said settler mass. So if the opposition by indigenous people goes away then they become unseperable from settlers. Or conversely indigenous people are only different than settlers due to the categorization of indigenous people and otherization. Indigenous peoples classification only exists due to oppression by settlers. Okay feeling a little more confident now that I get the text.

Idk this concept about the book isn't super interesting to me so I don't have much else to comment. Curious if anyone has interesting stuff to say.