Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995)

An acid trip that has you straddling thought through its junctions of philosophy, art, and science. Even though I read the English translation, Deleuze's prose shines through and profoundly carries you through the chaos of being and existence.

One small pointer: this is not an intro to philosophy. I definitely recommend reading widely on philosophy, preferably even wider than philosophy as Deleuze constantly refers to significant figures from the above three disciplines.

Easily one of the show more most thought-provoking and creative pieces of philosophy I've ever read. I particularly enjoyed Deleuze's vivid use of artists', philosophers', and scientists' works to drive home his points. One minute you're looking at the deeply theoretical through Hume and Einstein, the next you're looking at the art of sensation through Kafka and Joyce. I'll certainly be returning to this work throughout my life. show less

How does one read this book, and why? Hopefully not from beginning to end, and hopefully not expecting to find many easily digestible passages, let alone meaty, neatly wrapped takeaways.

This book is very much post 1968 (for Deleuze, the great Paris student revolt). It's politics are anti-authoritarian, acting itself out with irony, irreverence, and a heightened continental-styled intellectual obfuscation. Straight language and discourse were to be tossed out with a corrupt old guard that show more deliciously, for Deleuze, included many of his own professors. The style combines the exuberance of revolt and the vindictiveness of rebellion, exuberance in the energy of the language and vindictiveness in its opacity. It's rare to find a sentence that makes immediate sense or a pair of sentences with easy logical continuity between them.

Guattari, the team's other half, was a psychoanalyst, and you see that vector in the quirky obscure images and symbols that appear to have popped out of dreams to ride the monotonous rhythm of these sentences, one after the other for what feels like forever, soothed in the cozy confidence that the analyst in the corner, one of the good guys, never censures or censors. There will be a solidarity and classless parity in the parading of these repeating words, images, and ideas, each little one a citoyen of a new in-world that has pushed the old one decisively out.

So why give five stars to something whose language I mostly couldn't understand? Probably to honor its uniqueness; there's nothing quite like it. But more likely, for its musicality. It offers music of a kind I'll come back to; in small doses, one little plateau at a time. It will be a kind of music I can get nowhere else. It will refresh me. My fellow-traveling psychiatrist in the corner will look on avuncularly as I declaim (or Deleuze does for me) anything that suddenly and urgently demands to break free. It will be spring. I will be young. Masses will cheer as budding trees fall to the buzz of buzz saws to become our barricades. I will let my world die, knowing that it has already been reborn.

Then I'll wake up, smile, and say what a good little nap that was -- and be so, so glad the trees weren't really sawn down. show less

D&G say, hey you creeps, HERE is what kafka is good for. chuck out your hack interpretations of the man and get beyond the psycho-babble. From out of the laughter of the abyss Kafka's work is a rejection of complacency and failure; he was making way for a new way to see the world...

i like these guys


A LOT.

This volume reprints the masochistic literary paradigm Venus in Furs, but prefaced to Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's novel is a theoretical essay by Gilles Deleuze, Coldness and Cruelty, of about the same length as the Masoch text. I read the volume cover-to-cover following the page numbers, but I think I would advise other readers to take on the Masoch first, and then the Deleuze.

The unnamed narrator of Venus in Furs (Masoch himself?) begins by relating a dream to his friend Severin, who show more responds by presenting him with an autobiographical manuscript, so that the story of Severin's amorous enslavement forms the body of the novel. The novel is vivid and fast-moving, and I would count it a pleasure to read regardless of one's sympathy or antipathy for the characters and their behavior. To the extent that there is sex, it is not at all explicit. What is described is the intimate context of the relationship, along with the participants' emotional reactions. Those should fire the reader's imagination to the extent that one takes away the impression of a highly salacious account. At the end, Severin, now an abusive tyrant over his wife, claims to have been "cured" of his desire for subjugation, but the narrator expresses some ambivalence on the judgment.

As for Masoch's own views, these are somewhat clarified and confirmed by a set of appendices: an autobiographical essay on a formative childhood experience that parallels one described by Severin in the novel, a pair of contracts in which Masoch subjugated himself to his partners, and a fragment of memoir by his wife detailing their curious encounters with someone who may have been Ludwig II.

The Deleuze text is decidedly less entertaining, but certainly has some value. He is at pains to criticize what he calls the "sadomasochistic entity," i.e. he disputes the functional overlap and identity of sadism with masochism, insisting instead that the two phenomena transpire on different planes and concern themselves with different objects. As I digest his thesis, masochism is the carnal application of dialectical imagination, while sadism is that of critical inquiry. "In trying to fill in the gaps between masochism and sadism, we are liable to fall into all kinds of misapprehensions, both theoretical and practical or therapeutic" (109). Deleuze discusses and argues with the relevant theories of Freud, Reik, and Lacan. I am reasonably persuaded by the essay, although I think it may overstate its case with a measure of polemical absoluteness. show less