Book Description
This digital document is an article from The Review of Metaphysics, published by Philosophy Education Society, Inc. on June 1, 2003. The length of the article is 1097 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Deleuze, Gilles. Pure Immanence: Essays on a Life.(Book Review)
Author: Giovanna Borradori
Publication: The Review of Metaphysics (Refereed)
Date: June 1, 2003
Publisher: Philosophy Education Society, Inc.
Volume: 56Issue: 4Page: 869(2)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Book Description

Deleuze and Philosophy is an enticing exploration of the continuing philosophical relevance of Gilles Deleuze. New essays from acclaimed international contributors place Deleuze within a broad philosophical context that includes Plato, Aristotle, Husserl, Hume, Locke, Kant, Foucault, Badiou, and Agamden.

Customer Reviews (1)

A Truly New Philosophical Theology
This is an extraorindarily important book, written by a master scholar who is a pure thinker, who here gives us a reenactment of the transformation of post-Classical Western metaphysical and theological thinking culminating inthe purely abstract time of our own world.Primary here are Aristotle,Marx, Plotinus, Augustine, and Scotus, but so, too, are drawn forth themetaphysical and theological ground of modern science, modern philosophy,and modern society, with an apocalyptic culmination in the dark night ofour nihilism.This is truly new philosophical and theological thinking,and one with deep consequences for all of us. ... Read more

Book Description
Continuum's Guides for the Perplexed are clear, concise and accessible introductions to thinkers, writers and subjects that students and readers can find especially challenging. Concentrating specifically on what it is that makes the subject difficult to fathom, these books explain and explore key themes and ideas, guiding the reader towards a thorough understanding of demanding material. Gilles Deleuze is undoubtedly one of the seminal figures in modern Continental thought. However, his philosophy makes considerable demands on the student; his major works make for challenging reading and require engagement with some difficult concepts and complex systems of thought. Deleuze: A Guide for the Perplexed is the ideal text for anyone who needs to get to grips with Deleuzian thought, offering a thorough, yet approachable account of the central themes in his work: sense; univocity; intuition; singularity; difference. His ideas related to language, politics, ethics and consciousness are explored in detail and - most importantly - clarified. The book also locates Deleuze in the context of his philosophical influences and antecedents and highlights the implications of his ideas for a range of disciplines from politics to film theory. Throughout, close attention is paid to Deleuze's most influential publications, including the landmark texts The Logic of Sense and Difference and Repetition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

More about cinema than ATP or A-O
Warning: this book is almost exclusively about Deleuze's works on film.Well written and definitely covering an oft-neglected area of his thought and work.Sometimes the text is steered a little bit more towards his roots with Bergson and sort of disconnected from ATP and A-O but overall a very good read and change of pace from the other critical readers. ... Read more

Book Description
This book provides both a historical analysis of the philosophical problem of individuation, and a new trajectory in its treatment. Drawing on the work of Gilles Deleuze, as well as C.S. Peirce and the lesser-known Gilbert Simondon, Alberto Toscano takes the problem of individuation, as reconfigured by Kant and Nietzsche, into the realm of modernity, providing a unique and vibrant contribution to contemporary debates in European philosophy. ... Read more

Book Description
This book is a map of the work of Gilles Deleuze--the man Michel Foucault would call the "only real philosophical intelligence in France." It is not only for professional philosophers, but for those engaged in what Deleuze called the "nonphilosophical understanding of philosophy" in other domains, such as the arts, architecture, design, urbanism, new technologies, and politics. For Deleuze's philosophy is meant to go off in many directions at once, opening up zones of unforeseen connections between disciplines.

Rajchman isolates the logic at the heart of Deleuze's philosophy and the "image of thought" that it supposes. He then works out its implications for social and cultural thought, as well as for art and design--for how to do critical theory today. In this way he clarifies the aims and assumptions of a philosophy that looks constantly to invent new ways to affirm the "free differences" and the "complex repetitions" in the histories and spaces in which we find ourselves. He looks at the particular realism and empiricism that this affirmation implies and how they might be used to diagnose new forces confronting us today. In the process, he explores the many connections that Deleuze himself constructs in working out his philosophy, with the arts, political movements, even the neurosciences and artificial intelligence. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Hishyhash and hellfire stew
I found this "introduction" to be incredibly unhelpful, for many of the reasons stated previously, but particularly the fact that as one scans just about any page in the book, you find each literally packed with references to other difficult works, literary, cinematic, mathematical, philisophical. One nearly needs an encylopedic understanding of every trend in western thought for the last 500 years to grasp what the author is putting across.For example, I've just randomly opened the book to page 64 and there is reference to Frege, Foucault, Lewis Carroll, and Saussure, and this page contains a SINGLE PARAGRAPH!

I am not a philosophy student, but rather an autodidact trying to study poststructuralist trends in relation to certain strains of libertarian Marxist thought. I'm pretty well read and yet I wasn't really able to parse out much that was helpful from this little book, it was like listening to some narcissistic professor bludgeoning undergrads with the breadth of his knowledge. Ugh, can I have my $20 back?

another piece of the puzzle
It's true that this book is missing the kind of rich examples that make Deleuze such a pleasure to read, but Rajchman is doing something else here.Unlike those who carefully police "what deleuze means," and pounce on "mis-interpretations" of his work, Rajchman opens up Deleuze rather than closing him off.This is a little book--to be read over a week on the subway--that expands our idea of what Deleuze can mean, rather than attempting to nail down what he DOES mean. I would respectfully disagree with the reader who suggests Massumi's book as an intro instead.BM's best work--and it's truly lovely--is his brief intro to "1000 Plateaus."His "Users Guide" is, alas, a mess.It falls into the same trap that the (formerly light-hearted) Delanda seems to have ensnared himself in.Why can't we take Deleuze as lightly as Deleuze took himself?Delanda used to drive the getaway car for Joe Coleman; what happened?

A Superficial [mis]Reading
Screw this chump, read Brian Massumi's book instead (Capitalism & Scizophrenia: Deviations from Deleuze and Guattari). Massumi translated 1000plateaus and is so much more than a preeminent French translator: He is a righteous theorist himself and seems to be just about the only person who understands Deleuze's thought well enough to treat it in this capacity.

I cannot overemphasize what a despicable, disappointing, and reductive book this is. It was a waste of my money and time.

The Superficial Deleuze
There will always be a need for good readings of Deleuze, but not for one that glosses his philosophy with as many commonplaces, cliches, and indifferent remarks as this text. The key to explaining Deleuze, like the key to Deleuze's philosophy itself, remains in the examples, which are utterly lacking here. Readers can, and should, do better than this.

Awkward Introduction
When writing a critical introduction to a philosopher's work--especially work that advances a system of thought that avoids systemization and courts confusion--one is faced with a choice: either one attempts to court the admiration of one's colleagues by being anti- or non-reductive in her account, pitching the introduction to the initiated and actively avoiding what is looked upon as unfaithful simplification, or one shuffs-off the "reductionist" charge and writes an introduction that is meant for the truly uninitiated.Rajchman's book attempts to avoid this choice, and consequently, the book is a muddled: At times clear "connections" are made between Deleuze's thought and common standards of clarity, but more often than not the book presumes a knowledge of philosophical ideas that even a philosophy student (such as myself) finds difficult.Rajchman assumes the reader is familar with Frege, Turing, and Russell.He assumes a passing knowledge of Quine (in particular *The Ways of Paradox*, although this is never expressed), and more than a passing knowledge of cinema studies.While elegantly organized, Rajchman's book too often courts the admiration of philosophers at the expense of the non-philosopher; flights of clarity are enjoyed only to come to a screeching halt with some obscure reference to the art of Man Ray.Finally, although Deleuze's "experimentalism" and "pragmatism" has much in common with the views of Richard Rorty, Rajchman too easily dismisses Rorty as "mired" in rhetoric.Had he a better grasp of the history of rhetoric, sentences like the following would not be necessary: "One might then say there is a sense in which the image of thought, and of what thought is called on to combat, is prior to "argument" in a philosophy, such that one might analyze styles of argument in relation to the orientations they receive trhough such images" (guess what Rorty does?!). Overall, a quick read of how Rachman makes sense of Deleuze, but not necessarily one that will make sense to you. ... Read more

Book Description
A rhizome may be broken, shattered at a given spot, but it will start up again on one of its old lines, or on new lines. You can never get rid of ants because they form an animal rhizome that can rebound time and again after most of it has been destroyed... There is a rupture in the rhizome whenever segmentary lines explode into a line of flight, but the line of flight is part of the rhizome. That is why one can never posit a dualism or a dichotomy, even in the rudimentary form of the good and the bad. You may make a rupture, draw a line of flight, yet there still is a danger that you will stratify again everything, from Oedipal resurgences to fascist concretions. Groups and individuals contain microfascisms just waiting to crystallize. Yes, couch grass is also a rhizome.

Edited by Sylvere Lotringer, On the Line was the first book published in the new "Foreign Agents" series in 1983. It gathers together two seminal texts that Deleuze and Guattari would later elaborate on in A Thousand Plateaus. First delivered in French by Deleuze (drawing graphs on the blackboard) at the "Schizo-Culture" conference organized by Semiotext(e) at Columbia University in 1975, "Rhizome" introduced a new kind of thinking in philosophy, both non-dialectical and non-hierarchical. The two didn't expect this neo-anarchical blue-print would eventually offer an early template for the understanding of the internet. "Rhizome" substitutes pragmatic, "couch grass," free-floating logic to the binary, oppositional, and exclusive model of the tree.

In "Politics," superceding the Marxist concept of class, Deleuze envisages the social macrocosm as a series of lines, and reinvent politics as a process of flux whose outcome will always be unpredictable. It is, he emphasizes, the end of the idea of revolution, but not of the "becoming revolutionary." Throughout, he keeps dispelling the notion of capitalism as a repressive machine only meant to extract surplus value from exploited workers and suggest that it could be opposed from within by redirecting the creativity and multiplicity of its flows.

The multiple must be made, not always by adding another dimension, rather in the simplest way, by dint of sobriety... A rhizome as subterranean stem is absolutely different from roots and radices. Bulbs and tubers are rhizomes... Even some animals are, in their pack forms. Rats are rhizomes. Burrows are too, in all their function of shelter, supply, movement, evasion and breakout... The rhizome includes the best and the worst: potato and couch grass. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

On The Rhizome
You may be like I once was, wanting to read some Deleuze & Guattari, and for cheaper than the price of Anti-Oedipus or A Thousand Plateaus. Then you happen to notice that On The Line is both 1) out of print & 2) for the cheap.

Take note though that On The Line consists of two portions that are reprinted elsewhere. The first, Rhizome, is the introductory chapter in A Thousand Plateaus. The version appearing in ATP is a bit of a re-working of it, and I find the translation preferable. The same goes with the translation of the second article in On The Line, Politics. Politics is printed as 'Many Politics' in the Claire Parnet & Gilles Deleuze book, Dialogues.

Oh, and if you're thinking of purchasing Nomadology: The War Machine, that's in ATP, too. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description

Customer Reviews (1)

Essential Reading
This is a terrific book, probably the first to try to apply schizoanalysis to visual culture. While many books have been written exploring Deleuze's two books on cinema and examining their implications for film studies, surprising little has been said about the application of Deleuze and Guattari's two volume work Capitalism and Schizophrenia. The result is that writing on Deleuze and cinema tends to be a continuation of a familiar set of patterns for writing on cinema and not the radical breakthrough it could be. What Pisters does is show how by mixing the film studies elements of Deleuze's cinema books with the schizoanalytic elements of his collaborative books with Guattari you can really begin to do something quite new in thinking and writing about cinema. Ultimately what this means is she shows how to think about cinema in terms of desire and not pleasure. ... Read more

Book Description

With twelve new essays, this volume applies the pragmatic philosophy of Deleuze to current affairs involving military activity in the Middle East, refugees, terrorism, information and communication, and the state. Topics include political theory and philosophy, cultural studies, sociology, international studies, and Middle Eastern studies.

Book Description
Bogue provides a systematic overview and introduction to Deleuze's writings on music and painting, and an assessment of their position within his aesthetics as a whole. Deleuze on Music, Painting and the Arts breaks new ground in the scholarship on Deleuze's aesthetics, while providing a clear and accessible guide to his often overlooked writings in the fields of music and painting. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Sexy Intelligentsia
Deleuze's work is complex and often difficult, especially for the reader who comes with an interest in art, music, and literature but little familiarity with (or perhaps tolerance for) late-twentieth century philosophy.

In this study of Deleuze's writing on music and painting, Ronald Bogue distills the essence of the philosopher's decades-long interest in these disciplines. This is no "Deleuze for Dummies"--some familiarity with Deleuzian concepts is assumed and expected. As with similar texts (Harari's _How James Joyce Made His Name: A Reading of the Final Lacan_, for example, or Rochlitz's _The Disenchantment of Art: The Philosophy of Walter Benjamin_), _Deleuze on Music, Painting, and the Arts_ tells us probably as much about Bogue as it does about Deleuze.

This is useful, however, because Bogue has read widely and with comprehension not only in Deleuze but in the whole network of related subject matter touching on his concerns--Jacob von Uexkull, Susan Oyama, Paul Griffiths and Alois Riegl among others. Additionally, Bogue's consideration of Modern music is exemplary for its clear-sighted and vivid engagement with difficult (what Adorno might even call radical) music. Take as an example this brief segment from the discussion of Messiaen's spectacular _Catalogue d'oiseaux_: "...Messiaen never approaches an individual bird's song in isolation, but instead juxtaposes it with the songs of other species and situates it within an evocative sonic landscape....Such pictorialism might suggest that Messiaen's aesthetic is purely mimetic, but the actual results of his practice belie this suspicion." He goes on to discuss the piece's motivic development and the composer's modal style.

Deleuze is at his most brilliant in the writings on Messiaen and Francis Bacon, and Bogue's book allows easier access for readers without the necessary time or desire to wade through thousands of pages to find what they're looking for. Of course, the ideas about music and painting are inextricable from the other ideas in those pages (there are, after all, 'a thousand plateaus', and it is not impossible that the reader may feel the need to explore further to obtain a more complete understanding--which is, after all, not such a bad thing....)

At the beginning of the twenty-first century we could do worse than immerse ourselves in a study of Deleuze. For the student of music and art, as well as for those interested in expanding their knowledge of one of the great thinkers of that long, dark, and now late century, this is a valuable book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

The single best book on the subject
Postmodernism. What are we supposed to make of the stuff? It's all written in a stream of consciousness style by obsessive compulsives. And most of their arguments are circular and utterly unconcerned with facts. Well, here's the best start. Badiou explains everything Deleuze wrote on his own simply and coherently, which many of Deleuze's disciples do not. And best of all, he doesn't do it in a superior, combative tone. He even explains why Deleuze's disciples are all so combative and superior. (Something to do with cynicism on Deleuze's part.)

Though I will say, if you're a science studies type and you're rigorous in your thought, you'd best do to steer clear of this book. Because your rigor usually comes from willfull blindess.

Caveat to any scientific types: Badiou is an unabashed vitalist. I don't know what his defense here is. The way they usually defend themselves sounds a lot like that line "If I have a choice between the state and my friend, I hope I have the good sense to choose my friend." That is, he appeals to raw uninterpretable first-person experience over third person points of view. With the fact that the Flynn effect remains unexplained and preformationism has turned out right (all life is, literally, is just the result of folds in DNA), this may not be such a bad thing.

Now for fun, once you've read this book, you can read Derrida's Postcard and see why it's one of the most compulsively amusing books ever written. (The difference between Deleuze and Derrida? Derrida is flat-out hilarious and provides the raw uninterpretable experience that he describes.)

reccomended for anybody interested in Deleuze
To begin, i should note that prior to reading Badiou's book, much of Deleuze's earlier work had remained mysterious to myself. Thus, i am not in much of a position to offer any real challenge to Badiou's interpretation of "Difference and Repetition" and "The Logic of Sense." Regardless, if nothing else, the interpretation that Badiou gives is clearly presented. Although this sounds trivial, the clarity in this book is appreciated in a genre where clarity if usually disregarded, and unfortunately, often for mere stylistic (and not philosophical) reasons. Thus, because of this "Deleuze: The Clamor of Being," although dealing with difficult topics, can be understood by anybody with some knowledge of Deleuze, even if this knowledge is not extensive.

The clarity of the presentation, however, almost seems too obvious. That is, the way in which Badiou describes Deleuze's "philosophy of the One," and the quotes that he extracts to demonstrate this claim, make this thesis to be obvious to anybody who has read Deleuze. However, clearly this is not the case, as Badiou himself recognizes that this book should shock those who take pride in Deleuze's "schizophrenic" aspect. Thus, merely taking Badiou's interpretation of Deleuze, and the fact that so many thinkers have overlooked what he presents as information that should be clear to any reader, this gives me the uneasy feeling that he, and not these other thinkers, has missed something fundamental in Deleuze's thought. This, of course, necessitates a re-reading of Deleuze's own work, something that "Deleuze: The Clamor of Being" necessitates, i believe, for anybody who overlooked the first time around what Badiou reveals as self-evident to any acute reader.

As a previous reviewer pointed out, Badiou gives little interest to Deleuze's work with Guattari. However, although there definitely is a schizophrenic aspect to this work (especially in "A Thousand Plateaus"), it seems as if the fundamental concept of the Body Without Organs corresponds in most, if not all, ways to the concept of the virtual/ the One. Badiou does occasionally use ideas expressed in Deleuze's work with Guattari, especially "What is Philosophy" concerning the status of philosophy, however, he fails to cite these sources.

Additionally, it seems to me as if the interpretation that Badiou gives to Deleuze's work indicates more of a pantheistic vision that one that indicates transcendence. Of course, there is a bit of irony to write that Deleuze has "transposed transcendence beneath the simulacra of the world, in some sort of symmetrical relation to the `beyond' of classical transcendence," but regardless of the irony, the very idea of Being as univocal and as One chimes much more with eastern worldviews than western Platonic and Christian ideas of transcendence. This especially seems to be the case when we consider Deleuze's work with Guattari in which all strata (that is, all different properties of the world that surrounds us) are merely "coagulations, slowing-downs on the Body without Organs."

Finally, even if Deleuze's ontology indicates "heirarchical thought," this doesn't mean that Deleuze's task, therefore, is to "submit thought to a renewed concept of the One." In fact, it seems to me as if there is a crucial distinction in his work with Guattari between "methodological" claims and ontological claims. Rather than encouraging us to employ reductionist schemas in our analyses of any given system, the very title "a thousand plateas" indicates that we need to take into account as many different aspects at work as possible-- biological, economical, polotical, geological, etc. (this distinction between a methodology of multiple aspects of reality and an ontological expressing only One fundamental reality is continued in Manual Delanda's appropriation of Deleuze and Guattari's thought in "A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History.")

Despite these further considerations that would have been made necessicary had Badiou taken into account Deleuze's work with Guattari, "Deleuze: The Clamor of Being" provides a tremendously useful, and strikingly clear, interpretation of Deleuze's independent work to the point that it necessitates a re-reading of this work.

Monstrous offspring
I urge anyone interested in Deleuze to read this book, which is a interesting critical assessment of G.D.'s thought.Deleuze would be flattered and irritated to see his work read as he has read other thinkers.Badiou transforms Deleuze's work into that which it was not, while ever maintaining the singularity of Badiou's own project.Suggestive but polemical Alain Badiou struggles to step from out of the shadow of his only true precusor -- he admits as much in the introduction.In a move that should make Harold Bloom proud, Badiou produces a "strong misprison" of Deleuze's work, casting him in the ranks of a crypto-theo-philosopher.Taking a great many cues from Phenomenology and the "Theological Turn" by Dominique Janicaud, who compared Badiou's L'etre et l'evenement to Being and Time, Badiou is more interested in reducing Deleuze and his work to a form ascesis. A reduction that shifts the points of engagement between Badiou and his most formidable precusor away from mathematics and the idea of the multiple to nothing more -- and little else -- than a kindly father confessor is a strategic move that may render "his" Anti-Oedipus blind and pious, but defies the logic of sense.

Excellent, but...
I wish to concur with the first reviewer on the intelligence and importance of this volume.

I also wish to suggest that there is a downside to it, namely that Badiou vastly underestimates the work Deleuze did with Guattari, and seems to underestimate the importance of this work for Deleuze himself.Insofar as there is a classical philosophical side to Gilles, there is also a thoroughly anarchistic, antiphilosophical, schitzophrenic side, which must not be underestimated, and which often leads him to talk about things he does not totally grasp.This side to Deleuze is underplayed by Badiou who largely attempts to sanitize Deleuze, to rehabilitate him into the core of continental philosophy and disregard, to a certain extent, that Deleuze himself would

Badiou's attempt is not misguided; on the contrary, it is largely correct. Deleuze occasionally becomes the most analytical French thinker of his generation (see his Nietzsche and Philosophy, for example), writing only too clearly and consistently. Badiou reads this way of thinking correctly, understanding it as indicative of Deleuze's relationship to his intellectual genealogy and environment.

Nonetheless, Badiou's attempt is insufficient and incomplete. So, unless you are trying to fit Deleuze into the straightjacket of the more classical philosophical tradition (as opposed to, perhaps, a more postmodern one), you should be advised against considering it your only guide to his work. On the other hand, if you are trying to erase any connections between Deleuze and his "predecessors," and insist on his "wacky" side as "cool," be advised to return to this book again and again, as well as to return to the traditions he emerged from, an emergence to which this is a fairly good guide.

In any case, read this book. You'll learn a lot. And you'll fight with it a lot, only to come out much improved, and not only insofar as reading Deleuze is concerned.

read this book immediately
Amazingly enough, I was unaware of this book until Slavoj Zizek recommended it during a public lecture several days ago. Zizek was right to recommend it, but there's actually far more to the book than he leton.

Many of us in Continental philosophy have been deeply fascinated byDeleuze for years, but have never quite been able to define just what it ishe's doing. It has been extremely difficult to integrate Deleuze with thestream of thinkers running from Husserl through Heidegger and beyond. MostDeleuzians have not been especially helpful in clarifying things, sincethey tend to be satisfied with a series of negative remarks about Plato,Hegel, et al., and hardly further the work of their hero except topropagate lame simulacra of his wonderful style.

With respect to thisproblem, Badiou's book is a bolt from the blue. He begins the book byfrankly stating that 20th century philosophy was far more important for itsfocus on being than for its supposed linguistic turn. This would be apredictable statement from a dogmatic Heideggerian, but Badiou doesn't seemto be a champion of Heidegger at all, which makes the reader's earsrefreshingly alert for the argument that follows.

What we receive fromBadiou is: a) a very judicious account of what Heidegger's uniquecontribution to philosophy really is; b) a shocking but believable claimthat Deleuze is Heidegger's most direct heir; and c) a masterful statementof those points on which in Badiou's opinion Deleuze goes far beyondHeidegger. This is not only the clearest statement I have ever heard ofDeleuze's basic ideas, but one of the best such treatments of Heidegger aswell. And all of it in just a handful of pages! Suddenly, Deleuze emergesas not just a lovable and hard-to-place flamethrower, but as the forebodingCrown Prince of a post-Heideggerian century. Wonderful and believable! Inow want to go back and re-read all of Deleuze.

Badiou also hits upon anexcellent idea in including as an appendix all of the key passages fromDeleuze on which his interpretation is based. We all ought to do this inour commentaries from now on.

Finally, I would like to congratulate theUniv. of Minnesota Press on developing a striking new format for the TheoryOut of Bounds series in which Badiou's book is published. With its floppyfront cover and huge overhead margins, the book looks and feels more likean elementary school workbook than a dry academic tome. As a result, thereader cannot resist making Medieval-style commentaries along the top andside of every page.Talk about "the end of the book" all youlike, but whoever designed this series has done far more to alter the genreof philosophical books than most would-be revolutionaries in academia.

Insum, this is an invigorating work that puts to shame the tedious wordplayof so much American Continental thought. I now look forward to orderingBadiou's major work, L'Etre et L'Evenement. ... Read more

Book Description

Derrida, Deleuze, Psychoanalysis explores the critical relationship between psychoanalysis and the work of Derrida ( Speech and Phenomena,Of Grammatology, and his later writing on autoimmunity, cruelty, war, and human rights) and Deleuze ( A Thousand Plateaus,Anti-Oedipus, and more). Each essay illuminates a specific aspect of Derrida's and Deleuze's perspectives on psychoanalysis: the human-animal boundary; the child's polymorphism; the face or mouth as constitutive of ethical responsibility toward others; the connections between pain and suffering and political resistance; the role of masochism in psychoanalytic thinking; the use of psychoanalytic secondary revision in theorizing film; and the political dimension of the unconscious. Placing a particular emphasis on liminal figurations of the human and challenges to discourses on free will, the essays explore shared concerns in Derrida and Deleuze with regard to history, politics, the political unconscious, and resistance. By addressing the need to overcome the split between the psychological and the political,Derrida, Deleuze, Psychoanalysis illuminates the ongoing relevance of psychoanalysis to critical interrogations of culture and politics.

Book Description
Deleuze and Guattari's first collaborative effort, Anti-Oedipus, radicalized postmodernism and poststructuralist philosophy. Eugene W. Holland provides the first accessible and comprehensive introduction to this vastly complicated work..

Holland explores how Deleuze and Guattari negotiate the interactions between the three main materialist thinkers of modernity, Freud, Marx and Nietzsche, and examines the role of schizoanalysis, Deleuze and Guattari's radical materialist psychiatry.An indispensable guide to Anti-Oedipus, this book celebrates not only the importance and rigor of the philosophers' work, but also highlights its lasting implications in the continuous debates on marxism, environmentalism and feminism. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

There are only one way to understend Anti Oedipus
Hi friends, may you think: I can't read the Anti Oedipos!!! Am I right??? I tell you: not are wrong. The book of Deluze and Guattari almost made me crazy. But searching in Amazon I found this wonder: the book of E. Holland. So, when I read this book the things fastly, but very fastly, were clear.
Holland trough his help book gave me the insight necessary to understend Anti Oedipus. If you are in trouble with Deluze and Guattari's work I have to you a little advice: take this Introduction to Schizoanalysis and you can tell me what happened after. If you still can't read the Anti Oedipus call me a lier!!!

This book saved my life...
...well not really, but it did help make the hours and hours and hours I spent reading Anti-Oedipus a much more fullfilling, meaningful experience, and for that, I am extremely grateful.



Listen, swallow your pride, even if you do make it all the way through Anti-Oedipus without any help, you are in all likelyhood doing yourself a disservice; there are so many elements at work, that unless you are a genius, and read multitudes of books, you are a not going to get everything you could out of the book.



For instance, have you read Difference and Repeition by Guattari? How about Masochism: An Interpretation of Coldness and Cruelty also by Guattari? Because the themes and points made in those books are used in Anti-Oedipus, and, as the author Eugene W. Holland says, it is taken for granted you already know that stuff.



I read a lot to prepare for Anti-Oedipus, but it is practically impossible to have read and comprehended everything that is used by Deleuze and Guattari. For instance you must know Freud cold (especially Oedipus, the death instinct, and stuff on the drives), Lacan, the anti psychiatrists likeR.D. Laing, you must know Bataille, you must have read Schreber "Memoirs of my Nervous Illness", Willhelm Reich (such books as The Function of the Orgasm, and The Mass Psychology of Fascism), Herbert Marcuse (such as One Dimensional Man, and Eros and Civilization), you should have read Levi Strauss, I would recommend reading Gad Horowitz's Repression: Basic and Surplus Repression in Psychoanalytic Theory: Freud, Reich, Marcuse, you should also be very aware of the themes of post structuralism, such as the de-centered subject, and you must know Marx, I mean really know Marx (if you consider yourself a Marxist, this book is a treat), plus innumerable other books and texts and poets and philosophers.



I just had to admit, although I have read all of what I listed about, I was still not prepared for Anti-Oedipus (though I certainly knew enough to make Anti-Oedipus a real thrill once I got it), which occured somewhere around page 160.



This book brings it all together, in clear exposition, and it is like a breath of fresh air, my friends. It is no replacement for reading the actual book, but it is a necessary supplement. If you finish the chapters in Anti-Oedipus on the Connective Synthesis of Production, the Disjunctive Synthesis of Recording, and the Conjunctive Synthesis of Cunsumption-consummation and still are not so dure what the **** they are talking about, stop right there, cause you need to read this book. It will all be so much clearer afterwards.



I would recommend that you read as much of Anti-Oedipus as you can get through, if you get through the whole thing right off the bat, Bravo! But then get this book and consume it. Then, finish up the book, or just reflect, and you efforts will be greatly rewarded.



I am very thankful to Mr. Holland, and if I weren't an atheist, I'd say, GOD BLESS YOU SIR! I salute you and thank you for making my journey that much more of a victory...



...cause Anti-Oedipus is a real trip, but like the Tibetans after death, you need your guide and guide book (Like the Book of the Dead), and you now have it, to help make sure you don't get lost in the light (because it is so very bright).



Anti-Oedipus is a guide book to non fascist living. In these times, it is greatly needed. Get help, NOW! And then get some Schizoanalysis...

This guy is good
Back in the early 90s when I wrote an MA thesis and wanted to use concepts like "deterritorialization" there were absolutely NO good commentaries on D&G in English (Massumi's "users guide" is great, but it is no users guide).Things have changed, and Holland's book is one of the best commentaries around.And it is specifically on their least accessible of the "Capitalism and Schizophrenia" series.

Oh yeah, and great cover too!

delivers what it promises
I tried unsuccessfully to read Anti-Oedipus last year.I was baffled and felt completley out of my depth.About a month ago I decided to start reading "towards" this text again, based on the unfamiliar references from my last attempt.So, I have read some secondary liturature on Freud, reread Neitzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, brushed up on Marx and Foucault, and am about to start Dor's introduction to Lacan.Also, I am simultaineously reading this book, and Massumi's users guide.This process is working well for me, and I am begining to understand? whats going on in Anti-Oedipus.Hollands book is challenging, but it does provide a strong foundation to walk across while approaching the primary text.One of the best introductions I have come across.

consider it a gift
anti-oedipus is one bear of a book.i have wrestled with it numerous times, only to repeatedly concede defeat somewhere around page one fifty.it was about then that i would realize i was in over my head, my knowledge of lacan and klein (and even freud to some extent) too narrow to be able to grasp its deeper significance.for one must have a sound knowledge of psychoanalysis to understand why the oedipus is something that merits a good fight.nevertheless, this book continued to fascinate, with its staggering range of knowledge and peculiar prose style calling me back time and again over the past few years.i could not leave a bookstore without passing a few moments away in the philosophy section, in hopes of finding something to assist in my study.i made an attempt with brian massumi's "a user's guide," but was left a little disappointed, finding it to be almost as difficult as anti-oedipus itself.thankfully, eugene holland's "an introduction" has proved a perfect fit.he has performed a great service to readers such as myself (i know that you're out there, somewhere) by walking one through step by step, with brief interludes explicating those thinkers who influenced the writing of anti-oedipus (such as spinoza and bataille), and illustrating each of it key concepts in relation to the revolutionary praxis it demands.he is the consumate teacher here, demanding but patient.for these are difficult ideas for the uninitiated, but with persistance this book should open up the thinking of deleuze and guatarri for any thoughtful reader.now that i have read it, i am looking forward to giving massumi's book another try, as well as another go around with the bear itself.

thank you mr. holland for this great gift. ... Read more

Book Description

In recent years, the recognition of Gilles Deleuze as one of the major philosophers of the twentieth century has heightened attention to his brilliant and complex writings on film. What is the place of Cinema 1 and Cinema 2 in the corpus of his philosophy? How and why does Deleuze consider cinema as a singular object of philosophical attention, a specific mode of thought? How does his philosophy of film combine and further his approaches to time, movement, and perception, and how does it produce an escape from subjectivity and a plunge into the immanence of images? How does it recode and utilize Henri Bergson's thought and André Bazin's film theory? What does it tell us about perceiving a world in images -- indeed about our relation to the world?

These are the central questions addressed in Paola Marrati's powerful and clear elucidation of Deleuze's philosophy of film. Humanities, film studies, and social science scholars will find this book a valuable contribution to the philosophical literature on cinema and its pertinence in contemporary life.

Book Description
People tend to confuse winning freedom with conversion to capitalism. It is doubtful that the joys of capitalism are enough to free peoples.... The American "revolution" failed long ago, long before the Soviet one. Revolutionary situations and attempts are born of capitalism itself and will not soon disappear, alas. Philosophy remains tied to a revolutionary becoming that is not to be confused with the history of revolutions.
--from Two Regimes of Madness

Covering the last twenty years of Gilles Deleuze's life (1975-1995), the texts and interviews gathered in this volume complete those collected in Desert Islands and Other Texts (1953-1974) . This period saw the publication of his major works: A Thousand Plateaus (1980), Cinema I: Image-Movement (1983), Cinema II: Image-Time (1985), all leading through language, concept and art to What is Philosophy? (1991). Two Regimes of Madness also documents Deleuze's increasing involvement with politics (with Toni Negri, for example, the Italian philosopher and professor accused of associating with the Red Brigades). Both volumes were conceived by the author himself and will be his last. Michel Foucault famously wrote: "One day, perhaps, this century will be Deleuzian." This book provides a prodigious entry into the work of the most important philosopher of our time. Unlike Foucault, Deleuze never stopped digging further into the same furrow. Concepts for him came from life. He was a vitalist and remained one to the last. ... Read more

Book Description
In a remarkable instance of literary and philosophical interpretation, the incomparable Gilles Deleuze reads Marcel Proust's work as a narrative of an apprenticeship-more precisely, the apprenticeship of a man of letters. Considering the search to be one directed by an experience of signs, in which the protagonist learns to interpret and decode the kinds and types of symbols that surround him, Deleuze conducts us on a corollary search-one that leads to a new understanding of the signs that constitute A la recherche du temps perdu.

In Richard Howard's graceful translation, augmented with an essay that Deleuze added to a later French edition, Proust and Signs is the complete English version of this work. Admired as an imaginative and innovative study of Proust and as one of Deleuze's more accessible works, Proust and Signs stands as the writer's most sustained attempt to understand and explain the work of art.

Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) was professor of philosophy at the University of Paris, Vincennes-St. Denis. With Félix Guattari, he coauthored Anti-Oedipus (1983) and A Thousand Plateaus (1987). Among his other works are Cinema 1 (1986), Cinema 2 (1989), Foucault (1988), The Fold (1992), Essays Critical and Clinical (1997), and Francis Bacon (2003), all published by the University of Minnesota Press.

Richard Howard has received the American Book Award and the PEN Translation Medal. He teaches in the School of the Arts at Columbia University. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Gilles Way
A short and rewarding study, more remarkable as a defense of Art than an analysis of Proust, per se. While Deleuze has many knowing admirers,I have generally found his work difficult and conceptually self-indulgent, despite having some background in post-modernist Fr. thought. This book I found very "approachable" since the Proustian theme grounds Deleuze's discourse. There were still things I didn't understand but for all that, a fascinating commentary on aspects of Proust that is, moreover, perhaps , an excellent introduction to Deleuze. Now I must go back and again try his -- you name it. Not to mention a return to Proust.

An excellent semiotic reading of Proust
I am doing a research on Proust which is very difficult but at the same time satisfactory to read. Deleuze makes an excellent reading of Proust and the meaning behind his text by referring to the certain linguistic signs. It says a lot about the reasons or the motives of the author behind the text; in other words, the truth behind the masks of words. You must read it definitely if you really like Proust or are working on his worldview. It says a lot about the age too, the Belle Epoque.

An original approach to Proust and a valuable intro to G.D
Proust is usually examined in terms of the themes of time and memory. He is, indeed, one of the few writers who has genuinely interesting philosphical insights into these phenomenon. Deleuze, however, prefers to concentrate on the circulation of signs within Proust's work. The apprenticeship of Marcel as a writer is conceived of as an exploration of different kinds of sign: the signs of love, the signs of bourgious life, the signs of art. Marcel is a decoder and producer of these different signs. He passes through the signs given in experience to arrive at the (superior) signs of art.
As someone interested in both Deleuze and Proust, I found this book consistently stimulating. What i think is especially refreshing (and philosophically valuable) in Deleuze is his ability to generate concepts from the literary text he is reading - rather then imposing prefashioned categories onto the work. His book on Kafka is particularly rewarding in this respect. ... Read more