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Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari: Intersecting Lives
In May 1968, Gilles Deleuze was an established philosopher teaching at the innovative Vincennes University, just outside of Paris. Félix Guattari was a political militant and the director of an unusual psychiatric clinic at La Borde. Their meeting was quite unlikely, yet the two were introduced in an arranged encounter of epic consequence. From that moment on, Deleuze and Guattari engaged in a surprising, productive partnership, collaborating on several groundbreaking works, including "Anti-Oedipus," "What Is Philosophy?" and "A Thousand Plateaus."
Fran?ois Dosse, a prominent French intellectual known for his work on the Annales School, structuralism, and biographies of the pivotal intellectuals Paul Ricoeur, Pierre Chaunu, and Michel de Certeau, examines the prolific if improbable relationship between two men of distinct and differing sensibilities. Drawing on unpublished archives and hundreds of personal interviews, Dosse elucidates a collaboration that lasted more than two decades, underscoring the role that family and history--particularly the turbulent time of May 1968--play in their monumental work. He also takes the measure of Deleuze and Guattari's posthumous fortunes and the impact of their thought on intellectual, academic, and professional circles.
Fran?ois Dosse, a prominent French intellectual known for his work on the Annales School, structuralism, and biographies of the pivotal intellectuals Paul Ricoeur, Pierre Chaunu, and Michel de Certeau, examines the prolific if improbable relationship between two men of distinct and differing sensibilities. Drawing on unpublished archives and hundreds of personal interviews, Dosse elucidates a collaboration that lasted more than two decades, underscoring the role that family and history--particularly the turbulent time of May 1968--play in their monumental work. He also takes the measure of Deleuze and Guattari's posthumous fortunes and the impact of their thought on intellectual, academic, and professional circles.
672 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2007
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936 people want to read
About the author
François Dosse
88 books21 followersFrançois Dosse is a French historian and philosopher who specializes in intellectual history. After devoting his doctoral thesis (1983) to the Annales School, Dosse turned his research interests to structuralism, the philosopher Paul Ricœur (his biography,Paul Ricœur. Les sens d'une vie (published in 1997), has become the standard authority) and the historian Michel de Certeau. François Dosse is one of the founders of the journal EspacesTemps. In 2007, he published Gilles Deleuze et Félix Guattari, biographie croisée (English trans. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari: Intersecting Lives [2010]), where he advocated the rehabilitation of Guattari in an intellectual history that had made place only for Deleuze.
François Dosse is currently Professor of Contemporary History at the Institut Universitaire de Formation des Maîtres at Créteil.
François Dosse is currently Professor of Contemporary History at the Institut Universitaire de Formation des Maîtres at Créteil.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
November 26, 2023
It was an improbable marriage of the orchid and the wasp.
Dosse doesn’t proclaim which of the two figures was the wasp in this fecund collaboration but poor Felix appears the worse with his sordid personal life. This perhaps is balanced with his political bravery but still.
This is a biography badly in need of an editor. Belabored with unnecessary lists and bloated with analysis the relationship on an interpersonal plane is preserved but only barely.
The author concludes with a very lengthy explication of the legacy of D&G as if that was in doubt, though perhaps it was a possibility during the composition. I’m curious if further materials have become available, most notably the correspondence between Deleuze and Badiou, serving as a reconciliation after the infamous Fascism of the Potato episode.
The account of Deleuze and Guattari’s trip to the US was quite the treat and would easily be the focus of a study in itself.
Dosse doesn’t proclaim which of the two figures was the wasp in this fecund collaboration but poor Felix appears the worse with his sordid personal life. This perhaps is balanced with his political bravery but still.
This is a biography badly in need of an editor. Belabored with unnecessary lists and bloated with analysis the relationship on an interpersonal plane is preserved but only barely.
The author concludes with a very lengthy explication of the legacy of D&G as if that was in doubt, though perhaps it was a possibility during the composition. I’m curious if further materials have become available, most notably the correspondence between Deleuze and Badiou, serving as a reconciliation after the infamous Fascism of the Potato episode.
The account of Deleuze and Guattari’s trip to the US was quite the treat and would easily be the focus of a study in itself.
September 21, 2018
Deleuze was resistant to biographical accounts of his life, saying “academics’ lives are seldom interesting”--well I disagree with Deleuze on several à la mode problematics, including this one. Dosse's biography is interesting.
You get to know Deleuze and Guattari very well over the 500+ pages of Intersecting Lives. Deleuze comes across especially well. He is patient, courteous, hard working--a loyal friend & an assiduous teacher--erudite, creative and brilliant. There may be a slight bias here, on my part or the author’s, but I admired Deleuze immensely when I put this biography down. Guattari is more uneven; a disputatious womanizer who’s personal life didn’t always live up to his lofty revolutionary ideals, but none the less impressive, dynamic & indefatigable. We get to know Guattari as a flawed man but a tireless political militant and energetic & original thinker, finally illuminated from the pitch-black expanses of Deleuze's intellectual shadow--Dosse portrays Guattari as his co-author's equal. The bricolage of their influence too-often overlooks Guattari and is tabulated merely as 'Deleuzianism'.
More to the point there are long bibliographies of Deleuze & Guattari’s influences--itineraries of the books they read and how they read them. The itemizations of intertextual encounters are the most interesting parts of the book. Further, this is a good companion not only to the Deleuze & Guattari ouvre, but the entire 20th century French political / philosophical milieu. There are extended treatments of Lacan, Foucault, Badiou, the New Philosophers and many others. The last few chapters investigating the global legacy & influence of D&G provide many lines of flight for readers to follow.
But the biography itself has limitations. Dosse’s long readings of Deleuze and Guattari’s texts will not be for everyone--I was at odds with several of his interpretations. And I got impatient with the surplus of detail on the harlequin retinues of French communist cells surrounding Guattari; the back-and-forth of their snide in-fighting can become at times violently boring. I was also hoping for more information on the co-authorship of the Capitalism & Schizophrenia books and was disappointed by the scarcity of detail on their writing process.
But it’s well researched and fun to read, if perhaps a little too long. Probably not essential but recommended to any reader of Deleuze & Guattari.
You get to know Deleuze and Guattari very well over the 500+ pages of Intersecting Lives. Deleuze comes across especially well. He is patient, courteous, hard working--a loyal friend & an assiduous teacher--erudite, creative and brilliant. There may be a slight bias here, on my part or the author’s, but I admired Deleuze immensely when I put this biography down. Guattari is more uneven; a disputatious womanizer who’s personal life didn’t always live up to his lofty revolutionary ideals, but none the less impressive, dynamic & indefatigable. We get to know Guattari as a flawed man but a tireless political militant and energetic & original thinker, finally illuminated from the pitch-black expanses of Deleuze's intellectual shadow--Dosse portrays Guattari as his co-author's equal. The bricolage of their influence too-often overlooks Guattari and is tabulated merely as 'Deleuzianism'.
More to the point there are long bibliographies of Deleuze & Guattari’s influences--itineraries of the books they read and how they read them. The itemizations of intertextual encounters are the most interesting parts of the book. Further, this is a good companion not only to the Deleuze & Guattari ouvre, but the entire 20th century French political / philosophical milieu. There are extended treatments of Lacan, Foucault, Badiou, the New Philosophers and many others. The last few chapters investigating the global legacy & influence of D&G provide many lines of flight for readers to follow.
But the biography itself has limitations. Dosse’s long readings of Deleuze and Guattari’s texts will not be for everyone--I was at odds with several of his interpretations. And I got impatient with the surplus of detail on the harlequin retinues of French communist cells surrounding Guattari; the back-and-forth of their snide in-fighting can become at times violently boring. I was also hoping for more information on the co-authorship of the Capitalism & Schizophrenia books and was disappointed by the scarcity of detail on their writing process.
But it’s well researched and fun to read, if perhaps a little too long. Probably not essential but recommended to any reader of Deleuze & Guattari.
September 3, 2016
How does one write a book when one is more than one, when one is a multiplicity? This is one of the questions that the assembled partnership of Deleuze and Guattari brings to the fore.
The answer, it would seem, is thrpugh letters.
Dosse's work sketches out the lives of these two thinkers, as well as providing general overviews of their works (both together and individually). What earns this work its encomiums is how it drags Guattari out from the oblivion that many thinkers and writers have lost him in by mentioning only Deleuze. Dosse does a wonderful job of unearthing how many of the conceptual whirlwinds that rage throughout Capitalism and Schizophrenia were brought forth by Félix and not Gilles. Guattari and his thinking profoundly affected Deleuze and set his already creative philosophy down a multiplicity of lines of flight.
The answer, it would seem, is thrpugh letters.
Dosse's work sketches out the lives of these two thinkers, as well as providing general overviews of their works (both together and individually). What earns this work its encomiums is how it drags Guattari out from the oblivion that many thinkers and writers have lost him in by mentioning only Deleuze. Dosse does a wonderful job of unearthing how many of the conceptual whirlwinds that rage throughout Capitalism and Schizophrenia were brought forth by Félix and not Gilles. Guattari and his thinking profoundly affected Deleuze and set his already creative philosophy down a multiplicity of lines of flight.
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March 18, 2025Fun and interesting. Other reviewers here dont seem to get that incessant leftist militarist infighting is beautiful. Disagree with a lot of Dosse's readings of D&G but still impressive for a book which is essentially two biographies and an intellectual history.
Found it deeply funny, also, that Derrida is essentially a spectral character here. Mentioned few times and used briefly in AO, but as the flip-side of Foucault's intellectual dominance in "postmodernity" etc. Deleuze/Derrida seem to be like ships in the night.
Edit: from Beckman's Gilles Deleuze: "The folds of friendship between Deleuze and Derrida, it has been noted, were characterized by a perception of charm, a sense of opening something in each other, of learning from each other in a deeper philosophical sense. As Derrida puts it, Deleuze gave him and many of their generation ‘the chance to think, thanks to him, by thinking about him’."
So! that answers that I suppose; knew each other through brief encounters in the same spaces but not much more - a "long conversation" that should have happened, now only remembered fleetingly.
Found it deeply funny, also, that Derrida is essentially a spectral character here. Mentioned few times and used briefly in AO, but as the flip-side of Foucault's intellectual dominance in "postmodernity" etc. Deleuze/Derrida seem to be like ships in the night.
Edit: from Beckman's Gilles Deleuze: "The folds of friendship between Deleuze and Derrida, it has been noted, were characterized by a perception of charm, a sense of opening something in each other, of learning from each other in a deeper philosophical sense. As Derrida puts it, Deleuze gave him and many of their generation ‘the chance to think, thanks to him, by thinking about him’."
So! that answers that I suppose; knew each other through brief encounters in the same spaces but not much more - a "long conversation" that should have happened, now only remembered fleetingly.
July 4, 2015
I've never been able to get much from reading Deleuze and/or Guattari. Nonetheless, I enjoyed this biography a great deal.
May 20, 2024
This is a disappointing book. Ostensibly a biography of Anti-Oedipus authors Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, François Dosse spends interminable chapters summarizing both authors individual and collaborative works at the expense of examining their lives, the conditions of their work, the relationship between intellectual activity and the institutions which it takes place in, for, and against. The summaries of their works that I have read did not give me any new or interesting insights. The summaries of the books that I have not read left me confused and perplexed. In both cases, I got nothing out of these chapters.
The biographical material, when it appears, is fascinating and frustrating. The sections covering Guattari's psychoanalytic work at the radical La Borde Clinic is based on interviews and research conducted by Virgine Linhart, not Dosse's own work. I wanted to know more about how this psychotherapy institute worked and didn't work, where patients took part in the day-to-day operations and assignments rotated among patients and staff among other unconventional structures. Unfortunately, Dosse is unable or unwilling to take a critical lens to his subjects, and biography veers toward hagiography.
In one episode, the clinic's manager - smeared as a crazy cat lady - is fired and Guattari takes command, "discovering" a 30 million franc debt that only his exceptional managerial skills can resolve. This is, obviously for anyone who has ever administered any organization, a horseshit telling of what should be a revealing story. Tasks and functions at La Borde rotate regularly so that everyone is doing everything - but somehow only one person ever had looked at the finances? Dosse writes that the manager, whose office smelled of cat piss, bought retail instead of wholesale, as if a debt of that size comes from buying single rolls of toilet paper instead of a carton of them. When La Borde later receives a government grant, Guattari's tendency to piss the money away on whatever leftist project comes hat in hand is painted as a sign of his generosity. The possibility of a fascinating Deleuzeo-Guattarian (say that ten times fast) analysis of flows of money and flows of madness and flows of analysis is discarded so a faint halo can be drawn around Guattari while any breakdowns in the financial-machine at La Borde can be blamed on the nameless technicians.
Questions of money are generally overlooked. Multiple properties are mentioned - where did the money come from? Were radical anti-academics really well paid by the State? Why would the State pay people like that? Guattari's friendship with Mitterand culture minister Jack Lang appears in several chapters, but the duo's enthusiasm for the Mitterand administration is analyzed only as personal optimism or within the context of their intellectual work; never as a question of labor, finance, employment, etc. A little materialism in the biography would have been nice.
This dual-biography is superlative in one sense at least: Dosse's habit of overstating the personal and interpersonal affects of his subjects. Guattari, near the end of his life, is "catatonic" - but also up for 4 hour editing sessions and international travel. For Deleuze, Foucault was "more than a friend." A conference at Columbia University isn't a conference, it is a "war machine" - a stupid use of jargon that is doubly frustrating given that Columbia, like most American universities, are defense contractors.
The actual material of Deleuze and Guattari's lives is interesting enough that it shines through Dosse's incurious and uncritical analysis. I don't know if there is a better biography of either or both thinkers, so despite everything I'm still glad I read the book. And maybe I'm expecting too much critical reflection on academia and knowledge-production from François Dosse, who after all is merely an academic specializing in intellectual history.
The biographical material, when it appears, is fascinating and frustrating. The sections covering Guattari's psychoanalytic work at the radical La Borde Clinic is based on interviews and research conducted by Virgine Linhart, not Dosse's own work. I wanted to know more about how this psychotherapy institute worked and didn't work, where patients took part in the day-to-day operations and assignments rotated among patients and staff among other unconventional structures. Unfortunately, Dosse is unable or unwilling to take a critical lens to his subjects, and biography veers toward hagiography.
In one episode, the clinic's manager - smeared as a crazy cat lady - is fired and Guattari takes command, "discovering" a 30 million franc debt that only his exceptional managerial skills can resolve. This is, obviously for anyone who has ever administered any organization, a horseshit telling of what should be a revealing story. Tasks and functions at La Borde rotate regularly so that everyone is doing everything - but somehow only one person ever had looked at the finances? Dosse writes that the manager, whose office smelled of cat piss, bought retail instead of wholesale, as if a debt of that size comes from buying single rolls of toilet paper instead of a carton of them. When La Borde later receives a government grant, Guattari's tendency to piss the money away on whatever leftist project comes hat in hand is painted as a sign of his generosity. The possibility of a fascinating Deleuzeo-Guattarian (say that ten times fast) analysis of flows of money and flows of madness and flows of analysis is discarded so a faint halo can be drawn around Guattari while any breakdowns in the financial-machine at La Borde can be blamed on the nameless technicians.
Questions of money are generally overlooked. Multiple properties are mentioned - where did the money come from? Were radical anti-academics really well paid by the State? Why would the State pay people like that? Guattari's friendship with Mitterand culture minister Jack Lang appears in several chapters, but the duo's enthusiasm for the Mitterand administration is analyzed only as personal optimism or within the context of their intellectual work; never as a question of labor, finance, employment, etc. A little materialism in the biography would have been nice.
This dual-biography is superlative in one sense at least: Dosse's habit of overstating the personal and interpersonal affects of his subjects. Guattari, near the end of his life, is "catatonic" - but also up for 4 hour editing sessions and international travel. For Deleuze, Foucault was "more than a friend." A conference at Columbia University isn't a conference, it is a "war machine" - a stupid use of jargon that is doubly frustrating given that Columbia, like most American universities, are defense contractors.
The actual material of Deleuze and Guattari's lives is interesting enough that it shines through Dosse's incurious and uncritical analysis. I don't know if there is a better biography of either or both thinkers, so despite everything I'm still glad I read the book. And maybe I'm expecting too much critical reflection on academia and knowledge-production from François Dosse, who after all is merely an academic specializing in intellectual history.
September 3, 2018
I persisted with this one for a while but it's hamstrung by a translation that doesn't match with existing anglophone scholarship (e.g. 'arrangement' is used instead of 'assemblage'), Dosse's inability to give a clear account of some of the more complex works, and the fact that D&G aren't really interesting enough to sustain a biography of this length. There were enough little tidbits to keep me going for a while, especially in Dosse's account of their early years, but it falls far short of something like Roudinesco's excellent biography of Lacan in both intellectual and entertainment value.
January 9, 2024
Una bella biografía intelectual sobre Deleuze, Guattari y, usando su vocabulario, el agenciamiento Deleuze-Guattari. Narra la vida de ambos hasta su encuentro y la posterior producción en conjunto de una obra sumamente actual. Los debates que ésta última sostuvo y el posterior camino de ambos una vez terminada. Me parece un excelente libro para introducirse en su obra y conocer las referencias y discursos a los que se enfrenta la obra de ambos. Una excelente radiografía de Dosse de quien definitivamente buscaré leer otros libros.
September 28, 2020
A fascinating and exhaustive dual biography of post-structuralism's great writing duo. A great introduction for new readers of Deleuze and Guattari, as well as an excellent chronicle of minor works and amusing anecdotes, sure to delight the D&G veteran. Eschewing the melancholia of many of their contemporaries, their fundamental joy, energy, and dynamism radiate throughout.
September 4, 2024
Esclarece y cautiva. Una excelente reivindicación del aporte de Félix Guattari. Aun con algunos pasajes innecesariamente enrevesados e interpretaciones dudosas, esta es una genial forma de obtener una mirada amplia acerca de la vida y desarrollo del proyecto colaborativo de Deleuze y Guattari. Con sus mas y sus menos, es un muy buen libro y un registro bastante completo.
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October 25, 2025The bibliography really did the heavy lifting.
I don’t have the equipment to do that kind of sociological work on philosophy myself, but the method — that way of treating philosophy as a social practice — has already persuaded me, just through reading.
I don’t have the equipment to do that kind of sociological work on philosophy myself, but the method — that way of treating philosophy as a social practice — has already persuaded me, just through reading.
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January 27, 2017In May 1968, Gilles Deleuze was an established philosopher teaching at the innovative Vincennes University, just outside of Paris. Félix Guattari was a political militant and the director of an unusual psychiatric clinic at La Borde. Their meeting was quite unlikely, yet the two were introduced in an arranged encounter of epic consequence. From that moment on, Deleuze and Guattari engaged in a surprising, productive partnership, collaborating on several groundbreaking works, including "Anti-Oedipus," "What Is Philosophy?" and "A Thousand Plateaus."
Fran?ois Dosse, a prominent French intellectual known for his work on the Annales School, structuralism, and biographies of the pivotal intellectuals Paul Ricoeur, Pierre Chaunu, and Michel de Certeau, examines the prolific if improbable relationship between two men of distinct and differing sensibilities. Drawing on unpublished archives and hundreds of personal interviews, Dosse elucidates a collaboration that lasted more than two decades, underscoring the role that family and history--particularly the turbulent time of May 1968--play in their monumental work. He also takes the measure of Deleuze and Guattari's posthumous fortunes and the impact of their thought on intellectual, academic, and professional circles
Fran?ois Dosse, a prominent French intellectual known for his work on the Annales School, structuralism, and biographies of the pivotal intellectuals Paul Ricoeur, Pierre Chaunu, and Michel de Certeau, examines the prolific if improbable relationship between two men of distinct and differing sensibilities. Drawing on unpublished archives and hundreds of personal interviews, Dosse elucidates a collaboration that lasted more than two decades, underscoring the role that family and history--particularly the turbulent time of May 1968--play in their monumental work. He also takes the measure of Deleuze and Guattari's posthumous fortunes and the impact of their thought on intellectual, academic, and professional circles
September 18, 2012
Intersecting Lives is a double biography of a rhizomic friendship, so it emerges in startling colors from all the cracks in the edifice. Only double that. Dosse does a great job organizing the central ideas of Cap and Schiz and tracing them through their permutations at LeBorde Clinic or in Deleuze's most arcane searches and stunning arguments. It's a nice reading of the role of Guattari in May '68 and the stunning role of G's anti-psychiatry, his development of Micropolitics. It helps me to understand the way they think. I also have drafts of four poems in the endpapers.
August 2, 2015
Dosse's book on Deleuze and Guattari is both a biography and a primer, as he moves through the men's lives he takes time to explain their theoretical output and devotes plenty of effort to making some concepts clear for those not familiar with them.
The biggest gripe I have is with the translator, not Dosse. It makes absolutely no sense to use terms like arrangement or faceness when the Anglophone readership of DG's work will be familiar with these concepts as assemblage and faciality from having read the Capitalism and Schizophrenia volumes.
The biggest gripe I have is with the translator, not Dosse. It makes absolutely no sense to use terms like arrangement or faceness when the Anglophone readership of DG's work will be familiar with these concepts as assemblage and faciality from having read the Capitalism and Schizophrenia volumes.
April 10, 2016
I was hoping for an exiting contextualization of the philosophical encounter between Deleuze and Guattari, but after 200 pages, I had to stop: the English is horrible because it stays too close to the French syntax, and either the author or the translator (or both) are clearly struggling to even make sense of the philosophy. The translation, at times, is simply weird, for instance: why call Marcel Prousts great novel 'In Search of Things Past' when 1) there is no such title in English and 2) it doesn't even translate precisely the French title? Don't waste your money on this book.
June 13, 2015
The cruel truth is that both Deleuze and Guattari led pretty boring lives. And you can hardly hold it against them, since they both acknowledged that. Interesting to see though how they took-off in Italy. The discussion of Deleuze's cinema-books is alright, but Logique and D&R were either too much for Dosse, or, for some odd reason, he found them moot and thus discussed only the more superficial tidbits.
August 10, 2016
full of interesting personal tidbits (lacan the charlatan, classroom wars of badiou and deleuze, foucault's competitive streak, institutional psychiatry at la borde).
otherwise, not a very clear introduction to D+G's thought, not very well written, and full of lots of uninteresting anecdotes. better to read a review that extracts the tidbits from the the tedium.
otherwise, not a very clear introduction to D+G's thought, not very well written, and full of lots of uninteresting anecdotes. better to read a review that extracts the tidbits from the the tedium.
April 3, 2013
this book is hard for me to read, stuff I haven't ever encountered. I'm maybe three quarters of the way through and taking a haitus. Definitely worth reading, though. When I manage to fall under its spell, it amazes me. I'll go back!
October 5, 2012
I love Deleuze and Guattari! Love! So a biography is something I treasure. I don't think Dosse's discussion of their philosophy is the greatest I've ever read, but the opportunity to learn some of the details of their lives and loves was a sheer delight.
April 17, 2015
A very well done bio with an informed author. As much a biography of their lives as their ideas, and I learned a fair amount, including why D&G took off so much in Italy and their influence on Italian Marxism.
February 8, 2017
Fantastic behind the scenes look at the left in Europe in the 60s-70s. Chapter on the crackdown in italy, in 1977...a revelation. Americans can see the ancestors of Homeland Security.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews