New Edition of Deleuze Journal

AV - the MMU ERI Journal for Deleuzian Studies featuring papers by leading academics in the field of Deleuzian Studies and artwork inspired by Deleuze's writing -- Volume 2

In this issue it features:

• a key note paper from the ‘Re–Mapping Deleuze' conference held at Cornerhouse, Manchester, in September 2005: “The Secret of Theory" by Professor Claire Colebrook (University of Edinburgh)
  
• and a from the current Series of Human Sciences Seminars, which was advertised in this series with the working title "Subject and Self in Deleuze and Heidegger" but can be seen here with the reworked title "The Pure and Empty Form of Death: Deleuze and Heidegger" by Ray Brassier (Middlesex University).

Deleuze's ABC Primer (E)

"E as in 'Enfance' (Childhood)"

Parnet says that it seems that, for Deleuze, his childhood really has little importance. Deleuze responds, yes, necessarily so. He considers the writing activity to have nothing to do with an individual affair, not something personal or a small private affair. Writing is becoming, he says, becoming-animal, becoming child, and one writes for life, to become something, whatever one wants except becoming a writer and except an archive.

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Note that these are my excerpts. The entire text of the discussinon is available online at Gilles Deleuze's ABC Primer, with Claire Parnet.

Deleuze's ABC Primer (D)

"D as in Desire"
Since Deleuze is considered to be, says Parnet, a philosopher of desire, so what is it?

Deleuze starts by saying that "it's not what people thought it was, even then. It was a big ambiguity and a big misunderstanding, or rather a little one." . . . So as philosophers, Deleuze with Guattari saw their task as that of proposing a new concept of desire. And concepts, despite what some people think, refer to things that are extremely simple and concrete.

What they meant to express was the simplest thing in the word [sic]: until now, you speak abstractly about desire because you extract an object supposed to be the object of desire. Deleuze emphasizes that one never desires something or someone, but rather always desires an aggregate (ensemble). So they asked what was the nature of relations between elements in order for there to be desire, for these elements to become desirable. Deleuze refers to Proust when he says that desire for a woman is not so much desire for the woman as for a paysage, a landscape, that is enveloped in this woman. Or in desiring an object, a dress for example, the desire is not for the object, but for the whole context, the aggregate, "I desire in an aggregate." Deleuze refers back to the letter "B", on drinking, alcohol, and the desire not just for drink, but for whatever aggregate into which one situates the desire for drinking (with people, in a café, etc.).

So, there is no desire, says Deleuze, that does not flow into an assemblage, and for him, desire has always been a constructivism, constructing an assemblage (agencement), an aggregate: the aggregate of the skirt, of a sun ray, of a street, of a woman, of a vista, of a color... constructing an assemblage, constructing a region, assembling. . . . So every time someone says, I desire this or that, that person is in the process of constructing an assemblage, nothing else, desire is nothing else.

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Note that these are my excerpts. The entire text of the discussinon is available online at Gilles Deleuze's ABC Primer, with Claire Parnet.

Omnibenevolence and Deleuze

In a recent post on my other blog, Talmudic Questionings, I discussed the idea of "omnibenevolence" as a potential for each of us.

I believe that if Deleuze understood this idea as coming from traditional religion, he would either be very suspicious or simply reject it. However, I wonder if "omnibenevolence" could be one of the possible "lines of flight," one of the experiments we are encouraged to live by Deleuze. One of the ways we can be challenged to be more and discover more about ourselves.

At the end of Todd May's wonderful book Gilles Deleuze: An Introduction, he writes:

Deleuze's ontology is not a resting place; it is not a zone of comfort; it is not an answer that allows us to abandon our seeking. It is the opposite. An ontology of difference is a challenge. To recognize that there is more than we have been taught, that what is presented to us is only the beginning of what there is, puts before us the greater task of our living. We have not finished with living; we are never finished with living. However we live, there is always more. We do not know of what a body is capable, nor how it can live. The alternatives of contentment (I have arrived) and hopelessness (There is nowhere to go) are two sides of the same misguided thought: that what is presented to us is what there is.

There is more, always more.

Perhaps this notion of "omnibenevolence" is part of the challenge to "recognize that there is more" and that "we are never finished with living" and along that same line of flight -- we are never finished with loving . . .

Deleuze's ABC Primer (C)

"C as in Culture"
Parnet asks what it means for Deleuze to "être cultivé" (be cultivated, cultured). She reminds him that he has said that he is not "cultivé", that he usually reads, sees movies, observes things only as a function of a particular ongoing project.

He says that he sees this as part of his investment in being "on the lookout" (être aux aguets; cf. "A comme Animal"). He adds that he doesn't believe in culture, rather he believes in encounters (rencontres), but these encounters don't occur with people. People think that it's with other people that encounters take place, like among intellectuals at colloquia. Encounters occur, rather, with things, with a painting, a piece of music.

When one does philosophy, for instance, remaining "in" philosophy is also to get out of philosophy. This doesn't mean to do something else, but to get out while remaining within, not necessarily by writing a novel. Deleuze says he'd be unable to, in any event, but even if he could, it would be completely useless. Deleuze says that he gets out of or beyond philosophy by means of philosophy.

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Note that these are my excerpts. The entire text of the discussinon is available online at Gilles Deleuze's ABC Primer, with Claire Parnet.