Deleuze: In actualization, “the virtual cannot proceed by elimination or limitation, but must create its own lines of actualization in positive acts.”

This is crucial as an aspect of Deleuze’s rejection of dialectical negativity. But it is really possible to avoid “limitation”? The question of limitation is part of what Whitehead is always dealing with; in SMW Whitehead presents God as the necessity of limitation; but in PR he sees God as a force for making potentiality available, thus as acting against limitation and repetition of the same. The ambiguity of God in this respect is a major theme of the “God” chapter in my book. Part of the reason I am drawn to Whitehead’s “eternal objects” is that their circumscribed existence seems to me to be a better way to think about potentiality (or the ability of the future to be different from the present) than Deleuze’s virtual realm does. (Part of what I like here is the atomistic side of Whitehead, which contrasts with both Bergson and Deleuze). But when we try to think about how a concrescence determines everything that can be determined, and turns empty potentiality into concrete actuality, we are faced with something that is both a limitation and a positive act of creation. I need to get clearer on the logic of how this works (it is at stake as well in what I say about Harman’s work — he sees reservoirs of hitherto unexpressed qualities, whereas Whitehead relies on the occasion’s own “decision” or selection.