Writing and Difference and Repetition and Sets and Reps
Derrida, Deleuze, DeLorme and Bodybuilding as Ontology
Writing and Difference and Repetition and Sets and Reps
Paul Bowman
Cardiff University
Abstract
This work brings poststructuralist philosophy into dialogue with bodybuilding, exploring how concepts of difference and repetition articulated by Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida illuminate the embodied practices of resistance training. Beginning with the historical formulation of ‘three sets of ten’ as a transformative training principle, the work situates weightlifting as a paradigmatic site where repetition produces not sameness but difference – physiological, affective, and cultural. Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition is taken to frame training as a creative process in which reiteration continually generates novelty, while Derrida’s Writing and Difference and différance underscore the deferral of fixed meaning in the seemingly routine repetition of physical practice. Taken together, these perspectives reveal bodybuilding not as the pursuit of stable identity but as an open-ended process of becoming, where each set, rep, and workout engenders new variations in bodily capacity, subjectivity, and cultural inscription. In surveying existing scholarship – including Markula’s Deleuze and the Physically Active Body and Derridean engagements with sport and embodiment – the work identifies a significant gap: bodybuilding has rarely been theorised through poststructuralist philosophy, despite its rich potential as a site of critical inquiry. By reconceptualising resistance training as both materially difference-producing and interpretively destabilising, the chapter proposes a poststructuralist cultural theory of bodybuilding that foregrounds transformation, affect, and the instability of identity within physical culture.
Introduction: Three Different Sets
First Set
Repetition as a key process of the generation of difference has long been known. Ancient philosophers knew the productive value of such matters as repetitions called habits, enforced repetitions called discipline, repetitions called practice and skill acquisition, repetitions called training, and so on. However, it was not until the 1940s that the place of repetitions in the quantifiable and palpable material transformation of human bodies was scientifically established. Between 1945 and 1948, Dr. Thomas L. DeLorme studied the effects of clusters of repetitions of weighted movements on medical patients. In 1951 in the book Progressive Resistance Exercise: Technic and Medical Application, co-authored by DeLorme and Watkins, was published, and the world was changed (Delorme and Watkins 1951). ‘Three sets of ten’ was born as a principle of weight-training that could produce bodily transformation. Spinoza’s question ‘what can a body do?’ received its answer: it can change. It can be trained to do what you try to train it to do, and in that process it will change. To recruit and reiterate the mantra of affect studies: training is the ‘capacity to affect’ par excellence. As we will see, it also has the ‘capacity to be affected’. Being is becoming.
Speaking of which, where does poststructuralism come into all of this? Do poststructuralists really never go to the gym? If they did, things might become clearer.
Second Set
In 1967, Jacques Derrida published Writing and Difference (Derrida 2001), a formative text of poststructuralism which argued that meanings are never fixed, that there is always a surplus, that different entities or institutions may want to pin down and limit, but that always nonetheless at work or in play. By 1968, he would coin the neologism ‘différance’, through which he hoped to convey the inevitable spatial and temporal deferral, delay, and constant transformation of meanings and interpretations (Derrida 1982). By 1972, Derrida zoned in on the notion of ‘repetition’, arguing that repetition introduces alterity, difference, otherness – ‘itera’, he notes, is etymologically associated with the introduction of otherness or alterity – and that therefore it is more correct to speak of ‘reiterations’ rather than ‘repetitions’ (Derrida 1982; 2012). Reiterations are never repetitions because they are transformative.
Third Set
This was all part of a wider conversation about structuralism, that came to be called poststructuralism. Another key instalment came in 1968, when Gilles Deleuze published Difference and Repetition (Deleuze 1994). Like Derrida, Deleuze challenged the traditional Western philosophical focus on identity, and, like Derrida, regarded ‘identity’ as something of an effect produced by repetition. Thus, following Nietzsche, Deleuze argues for the primacy of difference over identity: every example of ‘bird’ is different from every other; every ‘leaf’ is different from every other. Yet we reduce difference to identity: ‘that is a bird’, ‘that is a leaf’. It is the human and scientific compulsion to simplify that produces their ‘identity’ by reducing difference to identity (that is a bird, that is a leaf). Of course, the simplification of infinite complexity is a precondition of being able to signify and communicate. We need these categories in order to make sense. But that’s not quite Deleuze’s (Nietzschean) point. No matter how everyday communication works, it is important to realise its processes and the effects of these processes.
Thus, argues Deleuze, rather than a species of bird existing first and then having variations, ‘bird’ as a concept is actually the (unstable) result of a human conceptual stabilization of what is really an ongoing process of differentiation. So, for Deleuze, difference comes first. Identity is an effect of repetition. Repetitions often involve overlooked or ignored variation. So, if we factor difference back in to our concept of repetition, perhaps we might call repetitions reiterations.
Where traditional philosophy thinks repetition as the recurrence of the same thing, for Deleuze there are different kinds of repetition, which are different things. One kind is ‘repetition for itself’. This is not the simple copying of a pattern or object. Instead, it is a creative repetition that produces something new each time. Deleuze gives the example of an echo: it repeats a sound, but it is not the same as the original sound. It is a new event with its own unique qualities. Repetition, in this sense, is tied to singularity – the non-exchangeable, unique qualities of an event or thing. It’s about a repetition of difference.
Then, there are forms of repetition in which things are seen as exchangeable or substitutable: one coin can be replaced by another. This takes us into the terrain of the Marxian ‘real abstraction’, in which we all ‘know’ that the value of a note is not inherent to it (the note itself is ‘really’ worth almost nothing), nor are the numbers that we see on the screen when we check our bank balance reflective of a real referent somewhere. Yet we nonetheless all proceed as if the abstraction is real.
This is not the area of real life that interests either Derrida, Deleuze or us. Deleuze’s theoretical objective is to overthrow the primacy that has been allotted to identity and to create a new understanding of ontology – a ‘metaphysics of difference’. In this, Deleuze wants us to think of reality as a process of continuous creation and variation, driven by forces of pure difference and creative repetition, rather than a world of stable, identical things. His philosophy encourages a focus on the unique, the singular, and the ever-changing, challenging the ways we have traditionally understood and categorized the world.
In this perspective, a human being isn’t just a set of pre-defined characteristics (the actual). We are also a product of the countless, complex interactions and forces (the virtual) that have shaped us throughout our existence.
Compound Movements
The connections not just between Deleuze and Derrida’s arguments but also between poststructuralist ontology and bodybuilding – i.e., progressive resistance weight training with the aim of muscular hypertrophy – should be clear. From a Deleuzean perspective, each repetition in weight training is not merely the recurrence of the same action, but a qualitative change. With each rep, the chemical balances within the area change, initiation muscle adaptation through such events or moments as micro-injury and even (arguably) the simple attainment of a mind-muscle connection. Each repetition initiates complex multiple modifications whose outcome is initially sensuous or sensorial, but that also produce complex admixtures of energy and fatigue, weakening and strengthening. There are different processes ongoing, different intensities, and hence genuine material difference, even within apparent repetition. In this sense, training becomes a process of creative divergence—the ‘difference in itself’ that Deleuze describes – where the body and its capacities continually emerge and transform through the practice (Bearn 2000).
If, schematically speaking, Deleuze’s focus can help us to think about the capacity of weight training repetitions/reiterations to affect, then Derrida’s might help us to focus on the capacity to affect weight training and its repetitions right back. Difference, ‘différance’, and the iterability of ‘repetitions’ – i.e., their inevitable difference from themselves across time and space – allows us to intuit the ways that the languages, routines, and cultural practices of, in and around weight training permanently defer fixed meanings and interpretations. New interpretations or even new subjectivities might be engendered within and across repetitions of each cycle of exercise. Even trying your very hardest, you can never exactly repeat a workout. Something will differ. Often, a great deal will differ. The ‘repetition’ of a workout is never purely identical, since context (including personal history, bodily limits, cultural narratives, how you slept, what you ate, what was said to you, whether you had to wait for the equipment, whether someone had left an empty plastic bottle next to the bench… anything! everything!) always shifts. The different senses, different experiences, different encounters, different energy levels, different intensities, different structures of feelings all mean that fixed ‘meanings’ and ‘identities’ are constantly postponed and renegotiated. As I have mentioned before, I bounce around between training isolation movements with weights and complex compound and ballistic movements with kettlebells all the time. When they become ‘public’ matters of discourse, these decisions inexorably reflect different values and hence different identities – bodybuilder, strength trainer, kettlebeller, etc. Yet, I can change the entire direction of a planned workout in a heartbeat.
There is a lot to say about all of this. But for now, just as a place holder, let’s note: repetition in training is both difference-producing (Deleuze) and meaning-deferred/deferring (Derrida). The cyclical nature of resistance training – sets, reps, progressive overload – is never simply the ‘same again’, but always marked by differences: bodily, performative, interpretative, affective. A cultural theory of weight training drawing on these philosophers could explore how repetition produces new bodies, skills, and even identities, rather than simply reaffirming norms or identities.
This speculation is both conceptually sound and has the potential to generate a nuanced, poststructuralist account of embodiment, practice, and transformation in sports science and cultural theory. It would be valuable for bringing philosophy into dialogue with physical culture—and for showing how “difference and repetition” operate beyond abstract domains.
Affect Theory’s Loss
In my research so far, I have found limited but interesting connections between Deleuze’s philosophy and reflections on bodybuilding or muscle building. There seem to be no easily discoverable academic books or articles that explicitly and extensively combine Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition with bodybuilding. But there are works that apply Deleuzian philosophy to physical training, exercise, and muscular development more broadly.
The most significant academic work in this area seems to be Pirkko Markula’s book Deleuze and the Physically Active Body (Markula 2020). My library doesn’t have it and it looks pretty damn expensive. But it promises to be the most comprehensive academic treatment of Deleuze’s philosophy applied to physical culture, including exercise and muscle development. From what I can see, Markula’s work examines how ‘the physically active body can be examined as a material, social, political, and cultural entity using a Deleuzian perspective’. The book includes chapters on key Deleuzian concepts such as ‘The Body without Organs: A Purely Intensive Body’, ‘The Assemblage: Sport, Exercise and Dance as Cultural Arrangements’, ‘Becoming: Beyond Identity Politics’ and ‘Affect: Understanding Force’.
It’s on my reading list. Just need to get the library to buy it.
Other scholars have applied Deleuzian concepts to fitness culture and muscle development. Some have used Deleuzian theory to analyse things like how women negotiate muscularity in strength sports. Eriksen and Jonasson’s analysis ‘Deleuze and sport: towards a general athleticism of thought’ (Eriksson and Jonasson 2023) examines how Deleuze viewed athletic phenomena as important to creative thinking, though it focuses more on sport generally than bodybuilding specifically.
While explicit connections to Difference and Repetition are limited, several Deleuzian concepts have been applied to understand physical training and muscle development, such as ‘Body without Organs’ (BwO). This concept has been applied to understand how bodies can be transformed through intensive physical practices. The BwO represents ‘the unregulated potential of a body [...] without organizational structures imposed on its constituent parts, operating freely’ (Deleuze 2023). Some scholars have explored how intensive physical training might create conditions for experiencing the body as pure intensity rather than organized functionality.
Similarly, researchers have used assemblage thinking to understand how bodies, training practices, equipment, and social norms come together in fitness cultures. This approach examines issues such as, for instance, ‘how fuzzy racial summaries distributed across a whole host of bodies, objects, and spaces become the basis for rapid practices of perception, judgment, and action’ in athletic contexts (Camiré 2023).
Other fitness research – both academic and practitioner – has explored how the repetitive nature of training creates difference and transformation in bodies. The maxim that ‘repetition is the mother of all learning’ resonates with how muscle memory and adaptation occur through repeated movements.
Despite these connections, there remains a significant gap in academic literature that explicitly combines Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition with bodybuilding culture. Affect studies as an interdisciplinary nexus has not yet explored exercise and hypertrophy practices. Most Deleuzian analyses of physical culture focus on general sport philosophy and athleticism, dance and movement studies, feminist analyses of muscularity, and broader physical activity and exercise. The specific culture of bodybuilding – with its emphasis on hypertrophy, aesthetic muscle development, and competitive display – has received less sustained philosophical analysis through a Deleuzian lens.
I can find no major academic work that has yet extensively combined Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition with bodybuilding. Pirkko Markula’s scholarship on Deleuze and the physically active body seems to be the most substantial foundation for such analysis. Her work, along with emerging research on muscularity, assemblage theory, and physical culture, suggests there is rich potential for future academic exploration of how Deleuzian concepts of difference, repetition, intensity, and becoming might illuminate the philosophical dimensions of bodybuilding practice.
The gap in the literature presents an opportunity for scholars interested in continental philosophy and physical culture to develop new connections between Deleuze’s metaphysics and the embodied practices of muscle development and aesthetic transformation.
Reconstructing Deconstruction
Similarly, in my ongoing research, I have found limited direct academic studies that explicitly use Jacques Derrida to analyse anything like bodybuilding. There are some scholarly works that engage with Derridean concepts in relation to embodiment, masculinity, fitness culture, and body practices. But these aren’t really about repetitions and reiterations with a view to bodily transformation. Nonetheless, worthy of mention is Emanuele Isidori’s ‘Deconstructing Sport: When Philosophy and Education Meet in Derrida’s Thought’ (Isidori 2010). This paper focuses on the fact that Derrida himself had a personal connection to sport – he was a footballer in his youth who played with Italian prisoners in Algiers during World War II. In a 1991 interview, Derrida confided that his childhood dream was becoming a professional footballer and that ‘all of his philosophy and thought had been inspired by sport and the game of football’.
Isidori’s study demonstrates how Derrida’s entire philosophy and technique of deconstruction ‘really has its roots in the concept of sport’. The philosopher understood sport as a cultural structure based on concepts of play, game, body, rules, and oppositional pairs deriving from différance. Sport served as ‘a metaphor of life and its meaning, suspended between being and nothingness; a place and a field in which human beings act, learn and educate themselves, deconstructing, as in a text, the values and prejudices of their lives’ (Isidori 2010).
Some academic works do engage with Derridean themes in relation to physical culture and muscular bodies. For instance, Jörg Scheller’s ‘Trainscendence’ (Scheller 2016). This work examines bodybuilding as ‘post- or meta-sport and post-religion’. Though not directly citing Derrida, this work explores themes consistent with deconstructive analysis – examining how bodybuilding attempts to transcend bodily deficiencies through rigorous training and aestheticization, turning the body into a ‘timeless statue’. The study discusses how bodybuilding challenges traditional sport categories and creates new forms of meaning.
Other studies apply poststructuralist theory to analyse bodybuilding culture. Academic work examining gender performativity in bodybuilding draws on Judith Butler’s theories, which are heavily influenced by Derrida’s deconstruction. These studies analyse how muscular bodies challenge and reinforce gender binaries, embodying the performative nature of gender.
Yet there are at least several ways that Derrida’s work could be applied to bodybuilding analysis. First, bodybuilding culture is rife with binary oppositions to be deconstructed – natural/artificial, masculine/feminine, strength/beauty, mind/body, discipline/vanity. Derridean analysis would examine how these hierarchical binaries structure bodybuilding discourse and practice. Then there is the claim of nothing outside the text, making the body a text. Derrida’s argument that ‘there is no outside-text’ can be applied to bodybuilding bodies as texts to be read and deconstructed. Academic work on embodiment notes how bodies themselves become sites of meaning-making and cultural inscription (Horton 2022; Lyngdoh 2021). Derrida’s challenge to the ‘metaphysics of presence’ could similarly analyse how bodybuilding seeks to create ‘perfect’ bodies that claim to represent authentic masculinity or femininity, when these are actually constructed ideals.
And so on.
Actually, I know I’ve missed a lot of stuff here. I’m thinking of Liz Grosz, Stephen D. Moore, Broderick Chow, and more. But I wanted to make the point. Derrida, Deleuze and affect theory – not to mention Foucault, Sloterdijk, Butler, Bourdieu, Mauss, Spinoza, and so on – can help us to understand bodybuilding. But, equally, or even more straightforwardly, I think that bodybuilding can help us to understand Derrida, Deleuze and affect theory.
References
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Deleuze, Gilles. 1994. Difference and Repetition. Translated by Paul Patton. Athlone.
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