Deleuze's ABC Primer (A)
Available online is Gilles Deleuze's ABC Primer, with Claire Parnet -- for the next number of days I will be sharing excerpts with my highlighting from this site -- hoping to deepen my appreciation of this text.
"A as in Animal"
In philosophy, he says, the invention of a barbaric word is sometimes necessary to take account of a new notion: so there would be no territorialization without a vector of leaving the territory, deterritorialization, and there's no leaving the territory, no deterritorialization, without a vector of reterritorialization elsewhere.
In animals, these territories are expressed and delimited by an endless emission of signs, reacting to signs (e.g. a spider and its web) and producing signs (e.g. a wolf track or something else), recognized by hunters and trackers in a kind of animal relationship.
Here Parnet wonders if there is a connection between this emission of signs, territory, and writing. Deleuze says that they are connected by living an existence "aux aguets", "être aux aguets," always being on the lookout, like an animal, like a writer, a philosopher, never tranquil, always looking back over one's shoulder. One writes for readers, "for" meaning "à l'attention de," toward them, to their attention. But also, one writes for non-readers, that is, "for" meaning "in the place of," as did Artaud in saying he wrote for the illiterate, for idiots, in their place.
Deleuze argues that thinking that writing is some tiny little private affair is shameful; rather, writing means throwing oneself into a universal affair, be it a novel or philosophy. Parnet refers parenthetically to Deleuze and Guattari's discussion of Lord Chandos by Hoffmanstahl in A Thousand Plateaus. Deleuze says that writing means pushing the language, the syntax, all the way to a particular limit, a limit that can be a language of silence, or a language of music, or a language that's, for example, a painful wailing (cf. Kafka's Metamorphosis).
Deleuze argues that it's not men, but animals, who know how to die, and he returns to cats, how a cat seeks a corner to die in, a territory for death. Thus, the writer pushes language to the limit of the cry, of the chant, and a writer is responsible for writing "for", in the place of, animals who die, even by doing philosophy. Here, he says, one is on the border that separates thought from the non-thought.
"A as in Animal"
In philosophy, he says, the invention of a barbaric word is sometimes necessary to take account of a new notion: so there would be no territorialization without a vector of leaving the territory, deterritorialization, and there's no leaving the territory, no deterritorialization, without a vector of reterritorialization elsewhere.
In animals, these territories are expressed and delimited by an endless emission of signs, reacting to signs (e.g. a spider and its web) and producing signs (e.g. a wolf track or something else), recognized by hunters and trackers in a kind of animal relationship.
Here Parnet wonders if there is a connection between this emission of signs, territory, and writing. Deleuze says that they are connected by living an existence "aux aguets", "être aux aguets," always being on the lookout, like an animal, like a writer, a philosopher, never tranquil, always looking back over one's shoulder. One writes for readers, "for" meaning "à l'attention de," toward them, to their attention. But also, one writes for non-readers, that is, "for" meaning "in the place of," as did Artaud in saying he wrote for the illiterate, for idiots, in their place.
Deleuze argues that thinking that writing is some tiny little private affair is shameful; rather, writing means throwing oneself into a universal affair, be it a novel or philosophy. Parnet refers parenthetically to Deleuze and Guattari's discussion of Lord Chandos by Hoffmanstahl in A Thousand Plateaus. Deleuze says that writing means pushing the language, the syntax, all the way to a particular limit, a limit that can be a language of silence, or a language of music, or a language that's, for example, a painful wailing (cf. Kafka's Metamorphosis).
Deleuze argues that it's not men, but animals, who know how to die, and he returns to cats, how a cat seeks a corner to die in, a territory for death. Thus, the writer pushes language to the limit of the cry, of the chant, and a writer is responsible for writing "for", in the place of, animals who die, even by doing philosophy. Here, he says, one is on the border that separates thought from the non-thought.
posted by Jeff Wild at 6:11 PM
1 Comments:
nice post. thanks.
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