Now, with the recurring sense of deja vu, the ghosts of developmental dictatorship, and fascist sentiments resurfacing, we cannot help but question the path to progress.
In his book, “New Conditions of Progress,” philosopher Lee Jeong-woo considers this historical regression not as a simple regression but as a problem of “repetition,” and explores the possibility of subjective practice that creates new differences even within repetition.
To this end, the author, focusing on the philosophical concept of “synthesis of time,” goes beyond how the past repeats itself and asks how progress can be created within that repetition.
This book, which attempts to rethink progress through the issues of repetition and difference, event and memory, and subjectivation, clearly reveals that progress is not automatically guaranteed.

The search for the conditions of progress calls for new ethical and ontological perspectives.
Through the concept of creation called 'becoming,' the author explores how movements such as becoming women, becoming workers, and becoming minorities can become the driving force of progress.
This is a practice of reconfiguring oneself rather than adhering to a given identity.
In the latter part of the book, based on Deleuze's concept of 'multiplicity,' progress is redefined not as the name of a single ideology or unified class, but as a field of creation formed by the connection of heterogeneous flows.
The author's attempt to fundamentally re-examine the meaning of progress, crossing the boundaries of philosophy and reality, ontology and politics, provides a fresh foundation for thought for all those who perceive today's repetition and seek to envision new arrangements.

When a new era arrives in history and everything feels like it's changing, but we also find unwelcome repetitions, we are forced to think anew about the 'synthesis of time.'
Since life, subject, and history cannot be established apart from the synthesis of time, living beings, especially humans, exist as living beings not as abstract identities, but only when they change their own identities by digesting the various differences that come their way.
Life is ultimately a play of difference and repetition.
The same goes for subjectivity.

--- p.12

The management society does not exclude others.
Or at least explore strategies and tactics that can avoid exclusion.
Sometimes, ‘human rights’ become a weapon for powerful countries, and ‘ethics’ become an indulgence for corporations.
In this respect, a management society is not a society that excludes or controls others, but a society that manages them.
Managing the typists means preventing the creation of (absolute, in Bergsonian nuance) differences, of becoming a minority.
Although the managerial society appears to be a very dynamically changing society, it is in fact a society that manages others by appropriately distributing differences, and ultimately, it can be said to be a society dominated by strategies and tactics to “defend society” from becoming a minority.

--- p.80

What is truth? Truth is the return of reality.
The return of reality is the unavoidable return of life, labor, and the subject against the power that controls and manipulates bodies, money, and symbols.
Through this return, history participates in the eternal return of secondary repetition.
‘Historical events’ are possible through this return of reality.
And at this time, time can become not a blind torrent, but a time imbued with truth and meaning, a time of humanity and history, a time imbued with the intensity of life/energy.

--- p.134~135

Every place has its own place-strength.
In places of high intensity, dramas of power and desire, of codification/super-codification and de-codification unfold.
High intensity is always created in places where the desire for power to suppress life/energy and the desire to liberate it collide.
Historical sites are places of battle where the intensity of life seeking to blossom and the intensity of power seeking to enjoy authority clash.
The act of liberation is also, in a way, an act of creating such a high-intensity place, that is, a place of truth.
Creating a place where reality returns, a place of truth, is an important moment in the historical event.

--- p.177

Lines that operate through signification stratify and territorialize our lives.
However, all stratifications are established on the rhizome.
It is always already the creation of post-signifying leaps.
Stratification brings about a certain signification by coagulating the rhizome.
However, no stratification-latticework can absolutely solidify the rhizome.
Islands of identity mutate on the field of difference production.
So in every stratification—in grids, the escape line is always—there is already a working one.
The lines of signification and the lines of escape are created by referencing each other.
The creation of a new life, a post-signifying life, is possible through this rhizomatic movement.

--- p.227

Modern people, living in a world where everything is symbolized, encounter symbols rather than people or things.
(…) symbols are grouped into categories and connected into series.
When such a system is established as an unconscious structure, a system of signs, a signifier system, is established.
However, when we understand the sign system not as something unconscious-a priori but as something historical-political, it is included as a specific form of a 'sign system'.
This implies a perspective that considers signification and subjectification not as abstract concepts, but as concepts that have been formed and transformed historically.

--- p.253

The decisive role of mixed-surface is to deterritorialize realistic arrangements.
The most crucial thing is to identify the peaks of deterritorialization.
(…) In order to transform the arrangement through the mixed surface, it is important to connect the escape lines, change the dotted lines into solid lines, and integrate the processes of deterritorialization.
The escape lines are constantly being cut off, recaptured, and worn out.
It is crucial to continue the escape routes, and the possibility of doing so is based on the principle of mixed-surface = life.

--- p.285~286

‘Becoming-minority’ is established when the problem of becoming takes on a distinct ethical-political context.
In other words, the ethics of becoming-other takes the form of the politics of becoming-minority.
The politics of becoming-minority is neither a politics 'of' minorities nor a politics 'for' minorities.
The politics of minorities is a politics that presupposes the molar identity of minorities.
However, politics based solely on the molar identity of minorities inevitably has fundamental limitations.
In this case, minorities are simply minorities and are not trying to become minorities.
There is no need to talk about politics based on the molten identity of the majority.
They say they are 'for the minority', but in the end, they are just some kind of molar identity and do not act as if they were a minority.

--- p.312

What is the relationship between the fact that all becomings are first molecular becomings and that all becomings are first minority becomings? Connecting these two becomings is connecting the ontology of becoming and the ethics of becoming.
We can say that when 'molecular difference-making' takes an ethical direction, it soon moves towards 'becoming a minority.'
Molecular difference formation is the ontological basis of minority-becoming, and minority-becoming is the value that allows molecular difference formation to take on an ethical character.

--- p.325

In Deleuze, a phenomenon is explained through a process of actualization that proceeds from the dimension of potentiality that is continuous with it, which can be said to be an attempt at an immanent explanation of the world.
This spirit of immanence is the basic spirit that continues through Riemann, Bergson, and Deleuze, although the contexts are different.
(…) The Riemannian manifold, which returns to the flat (curvature = 0) Euclidian space through dimensional descent from an n-dimensional manifold; Bergson’s qualitative manifold, which ultimately returns to matter through dimensional descent from the continuity, heterogeneity, and creativity of life; and Deleuze’s potential manifold, which progresses in layers through the generation of higher qualities through the mutual determination of secondary elements and reaches reality in the final layer, clearly reveal the connection between the three.

--- p.374~375