Deleuze

Key Contemporary Thinkers (Polity)

by Reidar Andreas Due

This book provides a clear and concise introduction to the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. It analyses his key theoretical concepts, such as difference and the body without organs, and covers all the different areas of his thought, including metaphysics, the history of philosophy, psychoanalysis, political theory, the philosophy of the social sciences and aesthetics. As the first book to offer a comprehensive analysis of Deleuze's writings, it reveals both the internal coherence of his philosophy and its development through a series of distinct phases.
Reidar Due offers an entirely new interpretation of Deleuze's philosophy, centred around the notion of thought as a capacity to form relations. These relations are embodied in nature, in language and in the unconscious; in art, science and social practice. With this concept of embodied thought, Deleuze challenges our most entrenched beliefs about the self and about signs whether linguistic or social. He develops an original theory of power and social systems and presents a method for understanding any signifying practice, from language and ritual to the unconscious, including cinema, literature and painting.
Due analyses the different strands in this theoretical edifice and shows its implications for a wide range of human sciences, from history and psychology to political theory and cultural studies.

Genres: Philosophy

200 pages, Paperback

First published December 21, 2006

Reviews

[Kamakana · Rating 5 out of 5]

010220: another earlier introduction Gilles Deleuze: An Introduction

080814: this. this. just this... excellent intro to deleuze, indirectly capturing the experience of what little read of his work- that is, this is, fluctuating wildly on 'lines of force' from opaque to fascinating, then back again, sometimes sentence by sentence. if you thought phenomenology was inaccessible, that hegel, husserl, heidegger, were on occasion wilfully imprecise or obfuscatory, you have not read deleuze. so this is why it is only a four- some great ideas, some difficult ideas, always this is on rather than by deleuze. (ah, heck, make it a five) i have myself read a few books by him, last one with guattari (what is philosophy?), best one on a philosopher i already virtually liked (bergsonism), this book certainly makes me want to revisit those texts and read anew...

so, i like this intro, but do not really know if this is where to start reading deleuze or on deleuze. very brave, very contrary, to the general focus on those '3 h's' mentioned above, in the postwar french academia, this shows a different possibility for 'continental' thinking, deleuze wrote his first book on that other, famed h, of the analytic heritage- though he goes somewhere else with radical empiricism- on hume. deleuze insists that it is hume and his philosophy of 'immanence' which generates more 'concepts' of philosophy, that kant had been in error trying to conceive how the world of experience could be given to the subject, rather than how the subject could be created by experience...

deleuze is a writer of biographical thoughts: starting here with hume, going onto spinoza, to my favorite of his core of thought- bergson...

deleuze is here first described as the core of subjectivity, not in any 'phenomenological' way, but as essentially in its own being, not rather than as a cartesian, singular, self-identical subject that persists through varied senses or thoughts- but as his concept of 'modern subject', rather something that is 'produced' rather 'effect' than 'cause', of our proud human 'i', and this is what the author due names in his longest chapter 'a history of the modern subject', and asserts our being and ethics and thus politics are created by the interference of 'molar' (which is exclusive of the other eg. man or woman, believer or nonbeliever etc.) and the 'molecular' (of which 'multiplicity' is defining quality, of which there are indefinite terms not exclusive of others)... how all forms of social organization is reconciliation of that fact, or complete subsumption of one by the other eg. fascism, which tends to the molar overwhelming the molecular, as in the entire 'lines' of society are directed to war, to violence, to denying any value to the other, to multiplicity...

due is a brief book, doubtless i have yet to fully integrate deleuze's thought, but in its organization it seems that he- no more than foucault- is not deserving of all the caricatures i have heard. just because his thought is too often misapplied, too often mischaracterized, this should not be the final, pre-emptive, rejection of his thought. i am enthused by his work- now having a much better sense of what he means by 'planes of immanence' or 'lines of force' in that previous book with guattari, his thought is radically fascinating. if previously convinced i cannot go beyond 'phenomenology', cannot imagine a better argumentation than 'dialectic', there is here deleuze, there is this picture of our world and being that is not 'phenomenological' but no less engaging, that seems to generously incorporate everyone from spinoza to nietzsche, there is now so much to read, so much to think...

there is deleuze on the arts, not as 'critique' but as how art is philosophy, this is the valorization of art i could always have, especially where in contrast to heidegger, there is not a mystical but practical aspect in the work of art, where 'truth' is not primary intent but accompanying effect... and how deleuze understands and argues against and with that whole heritage of signs- signifiers, signified- with instead the metaphysical concepts of 'excess', of the 'simulacra' which is beyond this, beyond being anything other than itself...

if you, like i did, decide to read deleuze 'cold'- better by far to read this book first. this, this book...

more
Nietzsche and Philosophy
What Is Philosophy?
Gilles Deleuze: Key Concepts
Bergsonism
Bergson-Deleuze Encounters: Transcendental Experience and the Thought of the Virtual
Deleuze, Bergson, Merleau-Ponty: The Logic and Pragmatics of Creation, Affective Life, and Perception
Gilles Deleuze: Cinema and Philosophy
Deleuze on Cinema

[Mark Broadhead · Rating 3 out of 5]

Starts well (even though the first half has occasional uninformed commentary on Derrida), but the last third of the book disintegrates into a vague representation of the arguments of Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus, rather than insightful explication.

[Shakiba Shamloo · Rating 3 out of 5]

تو مقدمه‌ای که برای این کتاب نوشته‌ شده - نمیدونم مترجم کتاب یعنی آقای فریبرز مجیدی نوشتن یا خود نویسنده - به‌صورت کاملا قابل فهمی مطالب کل کتاب رو شرح داده شده. من از خوندن مقدمه چیزای بیشتری دستگیرم شد تا از خوندن خود کتاب.

[Alain · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my first real introduction to Deleuze's thought and I found it a great overview – somewhat difficult (which I guess is to be expected) but really interesting and well-structured. Definitely keen to delve deeper from here.

[James K · Rating 5 out of 5]

To those brave folks initially confronting Delezue's works and those well versed in his project, I cannot recommend this book enough. Reidar Due provides a substantive arc of Deleuzeian thought from Difference and Repetition to What is Philosophy?