Forwarded message:
>From MCURRENT@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Wed Mar 2 08:22:42 1994
Date: Wed, 2 Mar 1994 8:23:54 -0600 (CST)
From: "Michael J. Current" <MCURRENT@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: MP - On Approaching the Text, Part III
In 1973, Michel Cressole of the University of Paris VII published the
first book-length study of Deleuze. [1] He wrote a letter to Deleuze,
which appeared, with Deleuze's response (in slightly abbreviated form),
in the "Polemique" section of _La Quinzaine litteraire_ [2]. Deleuze'
entire letter was reprinted as an appendix to Cressole's book [3]. The
(abbreviated) letter was translated under the title "I have nothing to
admit," and published in the special "Anti-Oedipus" issue of
_Semiotext(e)_ in 1977. [4] At first glance a strange, rambling text,
it in fact constitutes one of the most accessible introductions to
Deleuze's project.
Since I know many of you have difficulty getting your hands on this
text, I have quoted it here at length - passages dealing with
"philosophy," with "reading" and with a look forward from _Anti-Oedpius_
to _Mille Plateaux_. So many key themes are represented here, however,
that I think the excerpts are worth reading in their entirety.
Again, if you have thoughts or questions, please jump right in and post
them.
Enjoy!
Michael
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Since our topic is a book about me - and you are the only one to blame
for this - I would like to explain how I view what I have written. I
belong to a generation, one of the last generations, that was more or
less assassinated with the history of philosophy. History of philosophy
has an obvious, repressive function in philosophy; it is philosophy's
very own Oedipus. "All the same you won't dare to speak your own name
as long as you have not read this and that, and that on this, and this
on that." In my generation, many did not pull through; some did by
inventing their own procedures and new rules, a new tone. For a long
time I myself have worked through the history of philosophy, read such
and such a book on such and such an author. But I managed to compensate
for this in several ways: first by loving authors who were opposed to
the rationalist tradition of that history. I find among Lucretius,
Hume, Spinoza and Nietzsche a secret link that resides in the critique
of negation, the cultivation of joy, the hatred of interiority, the
exteriority of forces and relations, the denunciation of power, etc.)
What I detested more than anything else was Hegelianism and the
Dialectic. [. . . .]
.........................................................................
Nietzsche whom I read late was the one who pulled me out of all
this. [. . . .] He's the one who screws you behind your back. He gives
you a perverse taste that neither Marx nor Freud have ever given you:
the desire for everyone to say simple things in his own name, to speak
through affects, intensities, experiences, experiments. To say
something in one's own name is very strange, for it is not at all when
we consider ourselves as selves, persons, or subjects that we speak in
our own name. On the contrary, an individual acquires a true proper
name as the result of the most severe operations of depersonalization,
when he opens himself to multiplicities that pervade him and to
intensities which run right through his whole being. The name as the
immediate apprehension of such an intensive multiplicity is the opposite
of the depersonalization brought about by the history of philosophy, a
depersonalization of love and not of submission. The depth of what we
don't know, the deepness of our own underdevelopment is where we talk
from. We've become a bundle of loosened singularities, names, first
names, nails, things, animals, minute events [. . . .] So I began to
work on two books in this immediate direction: _Difference et
Repetition_ and _Logique de sens_. I don't have any illusions: they are
still full of an academic apparatus - they are laborious - but there is
something I try to shake, to stir up within myself. I try to deal with
writing as with a flux, not a code. And there are pages I like in
_Difference et Repetition_, those on fatigue and contemplation, for
example, because they reflect live experience despite appearances. That
didn't go very far, but it was a beginning.
And then, there was my meeting Felix Guattari, the way we got along
and completed, depersonalized, singularized each other - in short how we
loved. That resulted in _Anti-Oedipus_ which marked a new progression.
I wonder whether one of the formal reasons for the hostile reception the
book occassionally encounters isn't precisely that we worked it out
together, depriving the public of the quarrels and ascriptions it loves.
So they try to untangle what is undiscernable or to determine what
belongs to each of us. But since everyone, like everyone else, is
multiple to begin with, that makes for quite a few people. And
doubtlessly _Anti-Oedipus_ cannot be said to be rid of all the fomal
apparatus of knowledge: surely it still belongs to the university, for
it is well-mannered enough, and does not yet represent the "pop"
philosophy or "pop" analysis that we dream of. But I am struck by the
this: most of the people who find this book difficult are the better
educated, notibly in the psychoanalytic field. They say: What is this,
the body without organs? What do you really mean by desiring machines?
In contrast, those who know just a little bit, those who are not spoiled
by psychoanalysis, have fewer problems and do not mind, leaving aside
what they don't understand. Such is the reason for our saying that those
who should be concerned with this book, theoretically at least, are
fellows between fifteen and twenty. There are in fact two ways of
reading a book: either we consider it a box which refers us to an
inside, and in that case we look for the signified; if we are still more
perverse or corrupted, we search for the signifier. And then we
consider the following book as a box contained in the first one or
containing it in turn. And we can comment, and interpret, and ask for
explainations, we can write about the book and so on endlessly. Or the
other way: we consider the book a small a-signifying machine; the only
problem is "Does it work and how does it work? How does it work for
you?" If it doesn't function, if nothing happens, take another book.
This other way of reading is based on intensities: something happens or
doesn't happen. There is nothing to explain, nothing to understand,
nothing to interpret. It can be compared to an electrical connection.
A body without organs: I know uneducated people who understood this
immediately, thanks to their own "habits." This other way of reading
goes against the preceeding insofar as it immediately refers a book to
Exteriority. A book is a small cog in a much more complex, external
machinery. Writing is a flow among others; it enjoys no special
privilege and enters into relationships of current and countercurrent,
of back-wash with other flows - the flows of shit, sperm, speech,
action, eroticism, money, politics, etc. Like Bloom, writing on the
sand with one hand and masturbating with the other - two flows in what
relationship? [. . . .]
.........................................................................
This way of reading intensively, in relation to the outside - flow
against flow, machine with machines, experimentations, events for
everyone (which have nothing to do with a book, but with its shreds and
are a new mode of operating with other things, no matter what. . . etc.)
- is a manifestation of love. Such is exactly the way you approached
the book. And the section of your letter I find beautiful, rather
marvelous even, is that where you explain the manner in which you read
it, what use you made of it on your own account. Alas! alas! Why do
you have to rush right back to a reproachful attitude? "You are not
going to get away with it. We are waiting for the second volume; you
will still be on the same track. . ." No, that isn't true at all. We
do have plans. We will follow up because we love to work together. But
it won't be a sequel at all. With the help of the outside, we'll do
something so different in both language and thought that those who are
anticipating our work will have to say to themselves: they've gone
completely crazy, or they're a couple of bastards, or they've obviously
been unable to continue. Deception is a pleasure. Not that we want to
make believe that we are madmen; we will go mad, though, in our own time
and in our own way. Why are people in such a hurry? We certainly know
that _Anti-Oedipus,_ volume 1, is still full of compromises - too full
of scholarly things that still look like concepts. So, we'll change; we
have already changed; we're doing all right. Some people think we're
bound to stay on the same old path. There has even been some relief we'd
form a fifth psychoanalytic group. Woe unto us. We dream of other
things, more secret and more joyful. Compromise we shall no longer,
because that won't be necessary. And we'll always find allies we want
or who want us. . . .
[1] Michel Cressole, _Deleuze_, Paris: Editions universitaires, 1973.
[2] The exchange appears under the general title, "Gilles Deleuze: se
defend, et attaque," in _La Quinzaine litteraire 161 (April 1, 1973),
16-19. Cressole's letter, titled "Deleuze,tu es bloque, coince,"
appears on pp. 16-17; Deleuze's (slightly abbreviated) response, titled
"Cher Michel: je n'ai rien a avouer," appears on pp. 17-19.
[3] Op. cit., pp. 107-118. The text has also been reprinted, under the
title "Lettre a un critique severe," in Deleuze's _Pourparles
1972-1990_, Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1990, pp. 11-23.
[4] Gilles Deleuze, "`I have nothing to admit,'" trans. Janice Forman,
_Semiotext(e) 2.3 (1977), 111-116.
---------------------------Michael J. Current----------------------------
mcurrent@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx -or- @picard.infonet.net -or- @nyx.cs.de.edu
Specializing in Philosophy, Queer Studies, Depression, & Unemployment :)
737 - 18th Street, Des Moines, IA 50314-1031 (515) 283-2142
"AN IMAGE OF THOUGHT CALLED PHILOSOPHY HAS BEEN FORMED HISTORICALLY
AND IT EFFECTIVELY STOPS PEOPLE FROM THINKING." - GILLES DELEUZE
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------
>From MCURRENT@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Wed Mar 2 08:22:42 1994
Date: Wed, 2 Mar 1994 8:23:54 -0600 (CST)
From: "Michael J. Current" <MCURRENT@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: MP - On Approaching the Text, Part III
In 1973, Michel Cressole of the University of Paris VII published the
first book-length study of Deleuze. [1] He wrote a letter to Deleuze,
which appeared, with Deleuze's response (in slightly abbreviated form),
in the "Polemique" section of _La Quinzaine litteraire_ [2]. Deleuze'
entire letter was reprinted as an appendix to Cressole's book [3]. The
(abbreviated) letter was translated under the title "I have nothing to
admit," and published in the special "Anti-Oedipus" issue of
_Semiotext(e)_ in 1977. [4] At first glance a strange, rambling text,
it in fact constitutes one of the most accessible introductions to
Deleuze's project.
Since I know many of you have difficulty getting your hands on this
text, I have quoted it here at length - passages dealing with
"philosophy," with "reading" and with a look forward from _Anti-Oedpius_
to _Mille Plateaux_. So many key themes are represented here, however,
that I think the excerpts are worth reading in their entirety.
Again, if you have thoughts or questions, please jump right in and post
them.
Enjoy!
Michael
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Since our topic is a book about me - and you are the only one to blame
for this - I would like to explain how I view what I have written. I
belong to a generation, one of the last generations, that was more or
less assassinated with the history of philosophy. History of philosophy
has an obvious, repressive function in philosophy; it is philosophy's
very own Oedipus. "All the same you won't dare to speak your own name
as long as you have not read this and that, and that on this, and this
on that." In my generation, many did not pull through; some did by
inventing their own procedures and new rules, a new tone. For a long
time I myself have worked through the history of philosophy, read such
and such a book on such and such an author. But I managed to compensate
for this in several ways: first by loving authors who were opposed to
the rationalist tradition of that history. I find among Lucretius,
Hume, Spinoza and Nietzsche a secret link that resides in the critique
of negation, the cultivation of joy, the hatred of interiority, the
exteriority of forces and relations, the denunciation of power, etc.)
What I detested more than anything else was Hegelianism and the
Dialectic. [. . . .]
.........................................................................
Nietzsche whom I read late was the one who pulled me out of all
this. [. . . .] He's the one who screws you behind your back. He gives
you a perverse taste that neither Marx nor Freud have ever given you:
the desire for everyone to say simple things in his own name, to speak
through affects, intensities, experiences, experiments. To say
something in one's own name is very strange, for it is not at all when
we consider ourselves as selves, persons, or subjects that we speak in
our own name. On the contrary, an individual acquires a true proper
name as the result of the most severe operations of depersonalization,
when he opens himself to multiplicities that pervade him and to
intensities which run right through his whole being. The name as the
immediate apprehension of such an intensive multiplicity is the opposite
of the depersonalization brought about by the history of philosophy, a
depersonalization of love and not of submission. The depth of what we
don't know, the deepness of our own underdevelopment is where we talk
from. We've become a bundle of loosened singularities, names, first
names, nails, things, animals, minute events [. . . .] So I began to
work on two books in this immediate direction: _Difference et
Repetition_ and _Logique de sens_. I don't have any illusions: they are
still full of an academic apparatus - they are laborious - but there is
something I try to shake, to stir up within myself. I try to deal with
writing as with a flux, not a code. And there are pages I like in
_Difference et Repetition_, those on fatigue and contemplation, for
example, because they reflect live experience despite appearances. That
didn't go very far, but it was a beginning.
And then, there was my meeting Felix Guattari, the way we got along
and completed, depersonalized, singularized each other - in short how we
loved. That resulted in _Anti-Oedipus_ which marked a new progression.
I wonder whether one of the formal reasons for the hostile reception the
book occassionally encounters isn't precisely that we worked it out
together, depriving the public of the quarrels and ascriptions it loves.
So they try to untangle what is undiscernable or to determine what
belongs to each of us. But since everyone, like everyone else, is
multiple to begin with, that makes for quite a few people. And
doubtlessly _Anti-Oedipus_ cannot be said to be rid of all the fomal
apparatus of knowledge: surely it still belongs to the university, for
it is well-mannered enough, and does not yet represent the "pop"
philosophy or "pop" analysis that we dream of. But I am struck by the
this: most of the people who find this book difficult are the better
educated, notibly in the psychoanalytic field. They say: What is this,
the body without organs? What do you really mean by desiring machines?
In contrast, those who know just a little bit, those who are not spoiled
by psychoanalysis, have fewer problems and do not mind, leaving aside
what they don't understand. Such is the reason for our saying that those
who should be concerned with this book, theoretically at least, are
fellows between fifteen and twenty. There are in fact two ways of
reading a book: either we consider it a box which refers us to an
inside, and in that case we look for the signified; if we are still more
perverse or corrupted, we search for the signifier. And then we
consider the following book as a box contained in the first one or
containing it in turn. And we can comment, and interpret, and ask for
explainations, we can write about the book and so on endlessly. Or the
other way: we consider the book a small a-signifying machine; the only
problem is "Does it work and how does it work? How does it work for
you?" If it doesn't function, if nothing happens, take another book.
This other way of reading is based on intensities: something happens or
doesn't happen. There is nothing to explain, nothing to understand,
nothing to interpret. It can be compared to an electrical connection.
A body without organs: I know uneducated people who understood this
immediately, thanks to their own "habits." This other way of reading
goes against the preceeding insofar as it immediately refers a book to
Exteriority. A book is a small cog in a much more complex, external
machinery. Writing is a flow among others; it enjoys no special
privilege and enters into relationships of current and countercurrent,
of back-wash with other flows - the flows of shit, sperm, speech,
action, eroticism, money, politics, etc. Like Bloom, writing on the
sand with one hand and masturbating with the other - two flows in what
relationship? [. . . .]
.........................................................................
This way of reading intensively, in relation to the outside - flow
against flow, machine with machines, experimentations, events for
everyone (which have nothing to do with a book, but with its shreds and
are a new mode of operating with other things, no matter what. . . etc.)
- is a manifestation of love. Such is exactly the way you approached
the book. And the section of your letter I find beautiful, rather
marvelous even, is that where you explain the manner in which you read
it, what use you made of it on your own account. Alas! alas! Why do
you have to rush right back to a reproachful attitude? "You are not
going to get away with it. We are waiting for the second volume; you
will still be on the same track. . ." No, that isn't true at all. We
do have plans. We will follow up because we love to work together. But
it won't be a sequel at all. With the help of the outside, we'll do
something so different in both language and thought that those who are
anticipating our work will have to say to themselves: they've gone
completely crazy, or they're a couple of bastards, or they've obviously
been unable to continue. Deception is a pleasure. Not that we want to
make believe that we are madmen; we will go mad, though, in our own time
and in our own way. Why are people in such a hurry? We certainly know
that _Anti-Oedipus,_ volume 1, is still full of compromises - too full
of scholarly things that still look like concepts. So, we'll change; we
have already changed; we're doing all right. Some people think we're
bound to stay on the same old path. There has even been some relief we'd
form a fifth psychoanalytic group. Woe unto us. We dream of other
things, more secret and more joyful. Compromise we shall no longer,
because that won't be necessary. And we'll always find allies we want
or who want us. . . .
[1] Michel Cressole, _Deleuze_, Paris: Editions universitaires, 1973.
[2] The exchange appears under the general title, "Gilles Deleuze: se
defend, et attaque," in _La Quinzaine litteraire 161 (April 1, 1973),
16-19. Cressole's letter, titled "Deleuze,tu es bloque, coince,"
appears on pp. 16-17; Deleuze's (slightly abbreviated) response, titled
"Cher Michel: je n'ai rien a avouer," appears on pp. 17-19.
[3] Op. cit., pp. 107-118. The text has also been reprinted, under the
title "Lettre a un critique severe," in Deleuze's _Pourparles
1972-1990_, Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1990, pp. 11-23.
[4] Gilles Deleuze, "`I have nothing to admit,'" trans. Janice Forman,
_Semiotext(e) 2.3 (1977), 111-116.
---------------------------Michael J. Current----------------------------
mcurrent@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx -or- @picard.infonet.net -or- @nyx.cs.de.edu
Specializing in Philosophy, Queer Studies, Depression, & Unemployment :)
737 - 18th Street, Des Moines, IA 50314-1031 (515) 283-2142
"AN IMAGE OF THOUGHT CALLED PHILOSOPHY HAS BEEN FORMED HISTORICALLY
AND IT EFFECTIVELY STOPS PEOPLE FROM THINKING." - GILLES DELEUZE
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------