Deleuze
Page
My commentaries
for what they are worth, drawing on notes below
[still under completion]
My videos (with M Harris) in the series 'Deleuze
for the Desperate'. Basic intros to various 'key
concepts', encouraging initial understandings:
My You Tube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCD3rYa6vJ4KonU2O01liymQ
#2 Rhizome
https://youtu.be/xvI4ezbZbFA -- Transcript
#3 Haecceity https://youtu.be/77CMNYJEb4I -- Transcript
#4 Body-without-Organs https://youtu.be/XFhH3dF7RYw
-- Transcript
#5 Movement-image https://youtu.be/vJuvGpMpOVQ --
Transcript
#6 Time-image https://youtu.be/nK5Cp7u8IVo -- Transcript
#7 Lines of flight https://youtu.be/mM-iXC3fgrk -- Transcript
#8 Becoming-animal https://youtu.be/QjWKoLdVtt0 -- Transcript
#9 Smooth space https://youtu.be/qpZPCNot_78
-- Transcript
#10 War machine https://youtu.be/M7fqHn3ydzM
-- Transcript
#11 Refrain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hItgNVYvlso&t=6s
-- Transcript
#12 Faciality https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzapbrnFIRs
-- Transcript
#13 Language A miniseries of one introductory
video (https://youtu.be/MNOREhe_7Is)
and 4 audio files/podcasts. Each podcast has a
transcript (see menu
page)
My notes on Deleuze himself ( that's
controversial, of course -- Deleuze
says he is many persons)
Bergsonism
(I have also added some notes on
Deleuze's other commentaries on Bergson,
Bergson's Creative
Evolution, and then Matter and Memory)
Cinema 1
Cinema 2
Desert Islands
and Other Texts A mixed collection
of mercifully brief pieces. Includes one very
good essay on Bergson, and one pretty obscure
one, commentaries on assorted writers, and a
defence/clarification of AntiOedipus. One
chapter is, in effect, a very condensed intro.
to Difference and Repetition
Difference and
Repetition
Essays Critical
and Clinical
Foucault (Very
good essays on the main books. Good but dense
bit on 'the fold' at the end with a helpful
[sic] diagram).
Francis Bacon
(Tries out various concepts like
becoming-animal, BwO, 'the haptic'. Develops
'logic of sensations' via colourism in painting)
Logic of Sense (Written
as a set of 'series', unfolding implications of
issues. There is a useful and brief summary of
the main themes for Deleuze in his Two
Regimes...)
Negotiations
(a helpful series of interviews, probably worth
looking at before you tackle the main works,
unless you like the shock of the new, some with
both Deleuze and Guattari)
Nietzsche and
Philosophy
Pure Immanence.
Essays on a Life (essays on
philosophy, Hume and Nietzsche, some mercifully
brief. Quite normally written for a change)
Spinoza Practical
Philosophy (classic problems if you
are not into C17 philosophy, but the original
source [allowing for indirect free discourse] of
many terms sprayed around Thousand Plateaus,
like longitude and latitude etc).
Expressionism in
Philosophy: Spinoza (very dense and
addressing issues in the history of philosophy
mostly. I gave up after about 50 pages. At best
a further development of the remarks in the
shorter book above or the online lectures,
especially on the spiritual automaton -- and see
Bogue,below, on that)
'The Brain is the
Screen'
The Fold Leibniz and
the Baroque (pretty
straightforwardly written on the whole, and
nearly interesting. Still very difficult,
requiring a lot of Googling, and lots of
leisure, but at least a minimum [sic] of silly
stylistic flourishes from Deleuze himself).
Lectures on
Leibniz (much clearer and simpler, starts
at a more basic level. I suspect Deleuze was
quite effective face-to-face)
Proust and Signs
( esoteric and really requires you to know
Proust, but an important try-out for many
subsequent ideas and arguments)
Coldness and Cruelty
(aka Masochism) --brief notes only on
main themes, especially critiques of Freud.
Empiricism and
Subjectivity (On Hume. I have some notes on him
too. Very useful discussion of how the human
subject emerges from 'the given'. Basis for a
lot of later ideas like difference and
empiricism rather than stuff about the relations
between things themselves or between concepts
etc. Style a bit irritating.)
Kant's Critique of
Philosophy. Very dense stuff with
lots of difficult terminology. Seems to be an
exposition rather than a critique. The Preface
helpfully summarizes the main themes for
Deleuze.
Two Regimes of
Madness. A series of short and often
nearly readable essays and talks 1975--95.
Usefully clarifies a lot of terms. Offers some
self-criticism.
Electronic
Read Deleuze on the Society of
Control for yourself here
(it's very short) I also made notes on the
version that appears in Negotiations, here.
See Deleuze rambling lightly about philosophy,
the cinema and art as resistance to the society
of control
here.
Generally, the lectures are much easier going
than the books. They are still difficult and
dense but very effective in getting over the
main ideas. You can also read the lengthy online
lectures on Spinoza here,
or my abridged version (which is a bit shorter)
here. The lectures
on Leibniz are also good. The
homepage for all the lectures is here.
There is also an admirable summary and overview
by C Stivale of the TV interview by Parnet and
Deleuze L'Abécédaire
here -- it's quite informative, easy
to grasp , light even! There is an increasing
number of clips on YouTube, some, luckily, with
English subtitles,some with Spanish subtitles.
Try A/V,
the journal devoted to Deleuze. Rather variable
contributions, usually in the form of rather
dull videos of lectures, but good value from
people like Buchanan and Cole, but with naff
video conventions-- see below.
M Hardt has produced some excellent online
reading notes on AntiOedipus and Thousand
Plateaus here
My notes on
Deleuze and Guattari:
Anti-Oedipus
A Thousand
Plateaus In my view this is
the worst book. It is very self-referential and
written in a dreadfully arty avant-garde
style. I am keen and self-disciplined but
I found it unreadable (although I forced myself)
. Ironically, this is the book most often cited
(with AntiOedipus) by those radicals
keen to apply Deleuze and Guattari to stuff (
like education)
What is
Philosophy
Kafka Written
between AO and ATP. The source of
a lot of terms in ATP and elsewhere,
especially minor literatures, politics of
minorities, and de/reterritotrialization.
Requires a bit of knowledge of Kafka, though,
and much of it must be over the head of
non-German readers.
My notes on
Deleuze and Parnet:
Dialogues/Dialogues
II Ramblings (D) with
useful summaries of themes (P) in AntiOedipus
and Thousand
Plateaus and more implicit references
to other works. Good crit of Freud/Lacan,
weirder stuff on literature, good statement of
May 68 politics. Very good but dense summary of
the ontology in Ch 5 (Dialogues II).
Deleuze and Foucault:
Intellectuals
and power. Source of famous
quotations about concepts as tools or children
as prisoners. Two intellectuals imagine they are
struggling alongside the proletariat.
My notes on Guattari
Chaosmosis A neglected
classic --very important stuff on
subjectivity, electronic communication
and politics, if
you are into Deleuze and all that.
Molecular
Revolution in Brazil (with
Rolnik) -- optimistic hopes for the
Worker Party in Brazil and for Italian
Autonomy, based on the emergence of
grassroots political challenges to
capitalist subjectivity.
The
Machinic Unconscious -- seems
to have been the source for some stuff in
Thousand Plateaus. Slightly
clearer, for example on the ludicrously
talked up notion of 'faciality' (see my
comments here).
There are also some near-repetitions of
some of this material in Thousand
Plateaus -- our heroes seem to have
done some cut'n'paste as well as delirious
or schizo flowing.
Interview with C
Stivale Mostly about politics, but
also the work generally. The politics
comes over as utopian or hopelessly vague.
Stivale asks some good straight questions
and sometimes gets insights back -- or
massive defensive bullshit.
Psychoanalysis
and Transversality The
politicization of psychoanalysis, and
vice-versa. Introduces many famous terms.
Schizoanalytic
Cartographies Written
after ATP. Very dense and
overwhelmingly, obsessively detailed at
times with ferociously complex diagrams--
but worth it if you can give it a few
months,re-read and think a lot, look stuff
up, and maintain both patience and
stamina. I'm not
claiming to have done more than a light
gloss, even so. The best account of
many of the key terms, including
schizoanalysis and subjectivity.
The Three
Ecologies. Much more simply
written re subjectivity, Extends ecology to
include the cultural and personal. Includes
essay by Genosko, focusing usefully on
'transversality'.
My notes on commentaries:
Badiou -- Deleuze as
a philosopher of the One, not the anarchist
people think he is. Being is the key concern of
Deleuze's work, he theorizes it inconsistently,
and you don't need it anyway to explain the
multiple (!) There are excellent YouTube
lectures by Badiou on his own approach.
Baudrillard -- Forget
Foucault (and Deleuze)
Marvellous scathing and scandalous criticism,
mostly of Foucault, for merely talking up 'the
real'. Shows deep connections between Deleuze
and Foucault so power and desire are mirror
images of each other. In my view, both are so
general that they lose specificity anyway so you
can't distinguish between desire for Freedom and
desire for a new bathplug, except by exercising
some innate 'taste' I expect. The real issue for
me, which applies very clearly to Deleuze's work
on cinema, is that 'postmodernism' just
parodies, mocks and reduces to entertainment and
banality all the once politically shocking
things of the cinematic avant-garde: another
element in Zizek's case that capitalism has
overtaken Deleuze and put him in the museum.
Bogue, on Deleuze
on cinema. Priceless! A labour of love. Very
clear and good discussion. Hard going sometimes.
Indispensable as an accompaniment to reading the
actual books on cinema.
Bogue on Deleuze on
literature. Another superb clear commentary
which takes in the work on Masoch, Proust and
Kafka -- but also summarizes particularly
clearly Logic of Sense and AntiOedipus
en route.
Boundas and Olkowski.
Early collection of essays. Generally really
helpful in summarizing the arguments. Some
excellent critical pieces on the inconsistency
of the 'levels' in the work, and how the style
covers it. 'Applications' include feminism.
Buchanan, a nice
early piece on BwO, applied to a philosophy of
eating disorders
Calamari, a
mind-blowing discussion of the influence of
Riemann and Weyl on Deleuze's notions of space
and planes. Maybe better read after Plotnitsky
(below)?
DeLanda -- Intensive
Science and Virtual Philosophy (a
very demanding read but well worth it --
achieves considerable clarity and provides
excellent examples in this [meticulously
referenced] 'reconstruction of Deleuze's
world'. Indispensable in my view. MUCH more
straightforward than the ludicrously obscure Difference
and Repetition on which it is based)
DeLanda -- war and
machines. Develops history of
military using Deleuzian notions of machines and
machinic phylum
DeLanda --Deleuze and the Open-Ended
Becoming of the World
(Deleuze is not a social
constructivist) (nice and short!)
Delanda
social assemblage theory Applied
controversially to sociology -- further
'realist' arguments. Excellent basis for
interdisciplinarity to tackle heterogeneity.
Dosse on the
relationship between D&G --very informative
on the background and restores Guattari to a
prominent place. Massively detailed -- chapter
summaries only.
Dyal.
Interesting and alarming New Right reading of
Deleuze based on his admiration for Nietzsche
and radical critiques of bourgeois thought.
Genosko Brief
notes on a collection of works by Guattari with
lots of background pieces on psychiatry
(including anti-psychiatry) and politics.
Good intro.
Hardt A good but tough
account of the early works. Emphasizes the break
with Hegel and the evolution of the later
thought, which includes an increasing turn from
logic to ethics (and politics). Hardt
also has a nice brief set of notes on the
contents of AntiOedipus and Thousand
Plateaus here
Hulse An
excellent summary of 'the virtual' in Bergson,
illuminatingly applied to musical experience.
Osborne
A short review article on the relations between
Deleuze and Guattari, including the way they
actually wrote together.
Massumi -- a user's
guide (diverges from D&G as he admits).
Much-quoted introduction. Very helpful notes
.Good for wacky politics and a constant sad
oscillation between hope and despair with the
politics (comes with basing politics on absurd
philosophical generalities in my view) .
Odd how Deleuzians abandon
Foucault's notion of power for humanist marxism
-- or equate the two?
Miller A
thorough critical discussion of the issue of
actual evidence and virtuality with reference to
the discussion of nomadism.
Nail Formalizing
the notion of an assemblage.
Plotnitsky on the
importance of the Riemann manifold
('multiplicity') in topological conceptions like
'smooth space'. More Deleuzian connections too
eg on the concept.
Plotnitsky again on
Riemann -- a little bit added to the above,
connections to Derrida (and Einstein) this time.
Schreel A useful
summary of Hjelmslev's linguistics and how
D&G use them
Zizek -- Organs Without
Bodies (only brief notes--
I was in a rush). One of several,
including Baudrillard, to suggest that Deleuze
is closer to modern capitalist notions of 'flow'
than he thinks.
See also this
nice article/lecture by Smith on Deleuze and
Leibniz here.
I just haven't the energy to pursue the link
with Leibniz at the moment but this one is very
good at least in showing what Deleuze is always
banging on about -- the importance of the
discovery of the calculus in helping think out
the notion of a 'pure relation'. There are also
hints about what Deleuze might mean by
'indiscernibility' in a Leibnizian context too.
'Applications'
Negri and Hardt Empire
(see also Negri's interview with Deleuze in Negotiations)
Semetsky's 2006 ebook has a few useful
clarifications of Deleuze, such as the argument
that denying the human subject is intended as a
hopeful and liberating thing, since all the
fixities and reifications are ended too, and
subjectivity becomes a process, an
accomplishment one might say. The learning
paradox is well explained, as in the article
above, and the answer -- the triadic combination
of percept, affect and concept -- is contexted a
bit in general processes like becoming. The
formal links with Peirce and Dewey are explained
(and then rather taken for granted as indicating
no differences with Deleuze). The thing ends
with a paean of praise for good old progressive
education,although it is decorated with
Deleuzian terms (slightly less well used than
the Deweyan ones): children as whole people (
because affects and spirituality are included);
teacher as facilitators ( who de- and
reterritorialize, ethically, of course);
learning from experience (kids become, they are
nomads, they follow rhizomes etc). All the
qualities of Being are translated as qualities
of actual human beings?
Zembylas
has also had a bash, offering good summaries of
the 60s stuff, with some additional stuff on
Spinoza, but labouring to make it all fit
critical pedagogy. It reminded me of the central
problem, as Buber once said about Habermas --
(Kantian) philsosophical critique of the
conditions of knowledge in general gets turned
into (Hegelian) political critique of the dodgy
foundations of one position in particular that
we oppose, ignoring the general and
undermining implications for our own
position.
There is Olsson
on applying D&G to preschool education --
typical of its kind of approach really
(and discussed with the above more in the
section on education in the commentary). Very
thorough though and not just confined to
snippets from the revolutionary stuff. Swedish
practice seems very close to the legendary
Reggio Emilia approach too.
Try Fullagar et
al on doctoral supervision as 'rhizomatic'
-- pretty feeble and metaphoric.
Various
writers on education -- Gale (here
and
here), Hodgson and Smith (here),
Semetsky (here),
St Pierre (here).
Strom and
Martin use 'rhizomatics' and talk
of striated space in schools There
are also some pretty naff examples of
'application' of Deleuze to education. The
whole collection shows the poverty of much
conventional educational video. Try
this one in the online video journal A/V hosted
at Manchester Met Uni:
http://www.hssr.mmu.ac.uk/deleuze-studies/journal/av-14/.
{NOTE:originally I had made this review far too
personal, and this threatened the general points
I wanted to make about readings of Deleuze, and
the dire effects of conventional thinking about
educational video. I have apologized to Dr
Cole}. Everything feeds through the usual
progressive teacher-training framework (Christ,
I nearly said 'lens'). Deleuze is usually simply
quoted, and the reading is justified in the
usual ways -- we are to be interested in
practice and there is a strong set of
progressive values which go unchallenged. These
are tabulated as a matrix or set of headings to
students to guide their critical reflections on
novels, although this risks the development of
processes like 'applying' or 'recognising', both
rebuked by Deleuze himself.
There is Honan,
using Deleuze and the rhizome sledgehammer
to deconstruct the authoritarian
tendencies of educational policy, citing
St Pierre's pragmatism as justification.
Or Le
Grange , flirting with rhizomes to
push new expanded forms of sustainability
education.
Another A/V article is Buchanan
on Deleuze and the Net, and the more general
issues of developing 'practical Deleuzianism'.
It is sceptical about the rhizomatic nature of
the Net, but has to depart quite a lot from
Deleuze to get anywhere. Again, it
offers a classic pedagogical stance -- the sage
on the stage. What would poor old
Deleuze, fan of the avant-garde and the
autonomous image, of semioclasm and the
power of the false, have made of this sad
reversion to pedagogic realism and the
constraining of thought to fit the
'professional eye' of the teacher trainer?
Try my own deleuzian commentaries on
rhizomatic education (especially the MOOC)
here
Fuglsang has a nice
collection of pieces 'applying' Deleuze to
organizations, politics and other social
practices. Very revealing on the
relation between Deleuze and sociology
especially.
Notes on some books D&G
cite as, like, good
Hölderlin Hyperion
Proust In
Search of Times Past
Woolf Mrs
Dalloway, The Waves
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