Recovering Difference in the Deleuzian Dichotomy of Masochism-Without-Sadism

This paper reflects many years of ambivalence that this author has experienced in relation to the essay by Gilles Deleuze on Sade and Masoch: ``Coldness and Cruelty from 1967. The ambivalence stems, on the one hand, from a recognition of the profound insights contained in Deleuzes essay, and a sympathy for its recuperation of the specificity of Sacher- Masochs desiring system; and on the other hand, from a critical understanding of the account Deleuze gives of Masochs Platonic idealism compared to Sades Aristotelian demonstrativeness, since this, I will argue, is itself a reductive move that attributes the quality of a dichotomous set to the indeterminate possibilities of desiring systems