/lit/ - Literature

[Deleuzefag No.5121945]

Haven't done this for a while and thought we could have some reasonable discussion after the recent debacle. Ask me anything about Deleuze's philosophy and/or reading recommendations. I haven't been reading much Deleuze lately so I'll get a chance to brush up. I'm also not as sympathetic to Deleuze as I have been but I'd still really appreciate it if the orthodox Marxist who always tries to derail these threads would refrain from doing so.

[Anonymous No.5121950]

Explain logical positivism to me.

[Deleuzefag No.5121959]

>>5121950

Not sure how you see this as directly related to Deleuze and I can't say I'm an expert on that topic but my understanding is that logical positivism deals with analysis of meaning, particularly with regard to empirical evidence and logic. You'll probably get a better explanation elsewhere.

[Anonymous No.5121964]

>>5121959
Explain game theory to me.

[Anonymous No.5121982]

>>5121950
>>5121964

lol u troll him xD

[Anonymous No.5121983]

1. What's the deal with pure immanence and why does he call it "A life"?

2. What is Logic of Sense about? Or what sort of logic was Deleuze into?

3. What's the difference between a virtual and a (possibly scholastic) potential?

4. Why does he like Spinoza so much?

[Anonymous No.5122032]

Why does he like artaud so much?

Why doesn't he acknowledge Lacan's influence on him in Capitalism & Schizophrenia?

Does he ever credit Merleau-Ponty's influence on him? (wild being)

Which of his books is personally your favourite?

[Anonymous No.5122038]

Regarding Difference and Repetition and the year it was published (1967-68).

Did Deleuze rip off Derrida or did Derrida rip off Deleuze?

[Anonymous No.5122044]

>>5121983

>Pure Immanence

The book is about Hume and Nietzsche as well as the idea of pure immanence. I take the idea in two steps. First, there's the idea that everything consists of micro and molar elements. You're made of a bunch of different systems and organs which are, in turn, made of cells, etc. You're also a part of a community of others who are like you in this respect but, in forming the community, create new properties. So, extend this idea to the theoretically largest extent you can and you end up with something pretty similar to Spinoza's monism. I take this to be, basically, what Deleuze means. A kind of oneness but which contains powers of transformation internal to itself via affects. This is also pretty much synonymous with life, for Deleuze. Life is all of the instances of becoming, so this includes geographical formations and so on.

>Logic of Sense

It's about the logic of becoming, as opposed to being. This is a pretty good intro book in terms of primary sources.

>virtuality and possiblity

I think of virtuality as a subset of possibility. So, each time you fall asleep is an instance of actualizing the possibility that you change your state of consciousness in this way. What interests Deleuze is that there's a capacity to do this in general. In other words, there are countless possible ways and instances in which the capacity can become actualized but the capacity itself is what's virtual.

>Spinoza

I think he identifies very much with Spinoza. He takes and sometimes alters a lot of his important ideas directly from Spinoza like affects.

[Anonymous No.5122060]

What does Deleuze find problematic in Lacan?

How do you feel about reports that Deleuze detested actual schizophrenics despite seeming praise of them in his books?

Why do you think Deleuze is important historically and should be remembered rather than shoehorned into the greater post-modern / post-structural movement?

Where do you think philosophy should go after Deleuze?

[Deleuzefag No.5122067]

>>5122032

>Artaud

I think it was Artaud who he got the idea of the Body without Organs from. Other than that, I haven't looked into the relationship much.

>Lacan

He and Guattari are trying to do something other than psychoanalysis and I know Lacan ended his friendship with Guattari when Anti-Oedipus was published. Their thought was definitely shaped by the fact that psychoanalysis was the hot thing at the time but they were consciously trying to move beyond it.

>Merleau-Ponty

As far as I'm aware, he only really refers to Merleau-Ponty a few times in his writing. I think the main difference is that Merleau-Ponty is still focused on the subject and phenomenological experience whereas Deleuze views both these things as products of underlying forces.

>my favorite

Probably Thousand Plateaus just because that's what I looked at most intensely when trying to formulate D&G's ethics (which is what I'm primarily interested in).

>>5122038

>Did Deleuze rip off Derrida or did Derrida rip off Deleuze?

I can't say I've understood much of Derrida that doesn't seem trivial but from what I do understand, I don't really see them as similar. How do see them as similar? I might be able to give a better answer if you explain.

[Anonymous No.5122083]

>>5122038

They were ripping each other off, if you know what I mean.

[Anonymous No.5122109]

>>5122067
Derrida's "deconstruction" of metaphysics implicitly suggests a new "theory" of metaphysics or at least a metaphysical problematic, in that the event which precipicates the ontico-ontological difference ("differance" if you're like that) cannot be determined (phenomenologically) as either already (having happened) or not yet (projected, to happen)--in other words, cannot be determined as being a singularity or a repetition--and as such all subsequent suppositions (from regional to fundamental ontologies etc) that are based off of it can be ontologically sound only if they take place in one of these two possibilities. But it is, because of the way this trace is inscribed in/as the discourse ("text") and thus in all our reflections on it, always impossible to determine which.

[Anonymous No.5122113]

Why did Deleuze go to such great lengths to discredit the notion of class consciousness? Did he really have internalized bourgeois values?

[Deleuzefag No.5122121]

>>5122060

>Lacan

Procrustean insistence on the Oedipal triangle and obsession with the subject.

>schizophrenics

He used the word to denote a concept and wasn't talking about people with schizophrenia when he refers to something as schizophrenic. How I feel about him not liking actual schizophrenics? Understandable. Weirdly enough though, the entire reason I started reading him was because I've been in and out of institutions my whole life and was intrigued by the back of AO when I saw it at a bookstore and the suggestion that people who are mentally unstable are in some way superior. Not what I was expecting but that's life, I guess.

>Historical significance

I think he'll always be though of in the context of Foucault and Derrida, probably being the least popular of the three, although most Continental figures express his influence on their thought. I think his significance will largely be along the lines of being influential to some philosophers after him and, potentially, allowing them a unique perspective on problems that could be valuable. That's how I view his impact on me as well. I think most will continue to ignore him and shoehorn him like you say, largely because his writing is so opaque.

>Where should philosophy go?

I think Deleuze has positively impacted me insofar as I don't see as much value in formal analysis, trying to come up with new theories and forcing everything to fit as opposed to valuing natural variance. I see it as a way to keep me more intellectually honest I suppose and I'd like if more philosophy was like that. I'm not sure where philosophy should go though.

[Anonymous No.5122138]

Ah, continentals. The greatest bullshitters. The bullshitters that give philosophy a bad rap. Thanks continentals.

[Deleuzefag No.5122151]

>>5122109

Sorry, I don't understand most of Derrida's terminology. When I reread parts of what you've written, I feel like I have a slight grasp but then I'm not sure once I continue reading.

>>5122138

People who insist on making blanket assertions about things they don't know about are what makes philosophy worse. There's good and bad philosophy all over America and Europe, most philosophers recognize this nowadays and have stopped crusading.

[Deleuzefag No.5122165]

I'll check back in a few hours.

[Anonymous No.5122205]

How does Deleuze feel about freedom and self-realization?

How does Deleuze feel about dialectical idealism and progress in history?

How does Deleuze feel about a possible post-capitalist future (or does he see global capitalism and our current geopolitical situation as an "end of history")?

How would you formulate Deleuze's ethics and can you give any examples of why it would be advantageous to adopt some of his views in our current era?

[Anonymous No.5122207]

What was Deleuze's position with respect to Wilhelm Reich?

Why, when I read Deleuze, does it sound like intellectual concepts are agents? It's like a fairytale with the main characters named 'desire', 'ground', and 'stratum'. Like a narration of things these agents do, but it exists outside of time and space.

[Anonymous No.5122288]

why is deleuze important and/or relevant, why should i read his work, what should i read, and how will it impact my thought?

[Anonymous No.5122321]

Is Capitalism and Schizophrenia a shitwork? I just bought the two volumes and I've heard they're shit. ;_;

[Anonymous No.5122411]

>>5121945
>but I'd still really appreciate it if the orthodox Marxist who always tries to derail these threads would refrain from doing so.
I'm not orthodox.

His ideology provided explicit explanatory power for advanced states, such is the Israeli state, to repress spontaneous proletarian autogestation.

[Anonymous No.5122422]

>>5122113
>Why did Deleuze go to such great lengths to discredit the notion of class consciousness?

The intellectual in moments when they are divorced from proletarian behaviour (ie: the points of production and reproduction) becomes the image of the free agent. Contrast Gramsci's organic intellectual with the non-organic nature of Deleuze. Delueze can't help but be reactionary, but his decision to mask his detestation of the greatest achievement of the proletariat (while it still exists) its own self-comprehension and thus its capacity to comprehend the social totality as a subject to itself, merely indicates that Deleuze had limits to his capacity to publish academically while aping class conduct.

>Did he really have internalized bourgeois values?

Does anyone in any contemporary society not?

[Anonymous No.5122437]

>>5122411
You can use lots of things to do things the inventors didn't think of. Doesn't really mean a lot. Marx has been used for all kinds of disgusting bullshit, for example.

[Anonymous No.5122458]

>>5122437
Marx was a bourgeois intellectual whose ideas, on the whole, were designed in a C19th fantasy of total repression of the proletariat's spontaneity. The fact that he got it right on a few occasions due to chartists is neither here nor there. The best we can say about Marx is that he was epistemologically aware of the radical deficiency of trying to think problems through instead of joining as fellow workers to hang the rich with their children's entrails.

[Anonymous No.5122470]

>>5121945
You could try to name a book of him and make it as interesting to me to make it part of my summer reading. I hated a selection of Derridas writing and loved Nietzsche and Heidegger, if that helps.

[Anonymous No.5122476]

>>5122470
Not OP but read Deleuze's On Nietzsche. His other works are filled with psychobabble and technojargon but his reinterpretation of Nietzsche is fun.

[Anonymous No.5122477]

>>5122458
I'm not a huge fan of Marx, I just used him as an example because I assumed the other anon is one. I'm more or less 'Stirnerian' (anti-classical Cognitive Sciene, sympathies for EM though I believe it to be incorrect when read as a social-development-forecast, interests in Gestalt Therapy, Korzybski, etc.).

[Anonymous No.5122496]

>>5122477
Just because I read Marx and use his thoughts to unite with fellow workers to murder the bosses, doesn't mean that I believe his "ideas" have "validity."

This argument about epistemology is in Marx himself when Marx discusses ideology, by the way.

[Anonymous No.5122508]

>>5122496
>when Marx discusses ideology

is that in The German Ideology?

[Anonymous No.5122533]

>>5122508
Fragments in Manifesto, Capital and Grundriesse about the negative epistemology of the class, German Ideology. Socialism Utopian and Scientific is fairly useful here too.

[Anonymous No.5122663]

>>5122476
Nietzsche and Philosophy goes into much more detail as On Nietzsche. It is a few hundred pages longer obviously, but certainly a fun (if rather difficult) read.

[Anonymous No.5122716]

I bet you studied Literature in Uni

[Anonymous No.5123537]

>>5122470
The Fold.

Outside of his "original" works, Deleuze's more scholarly or historical writing is the paradigm of concision and lucidity.

For whatever reason he just went full retard as soon as he met Guattari.

[Anonymous No.5123557]

>>5122288
answer me

[Anonymous No.5123757]

[Anonymous No.5123768]

>>5123757

[Anonymous No.5123773]

>>5123768

[Anonymous No.5123776]

Damn, I'm bored. Google it yourself, kids.

[Anonymous No.5123783]

>>5121983
as to 4., you should pick up deleuze's book on spinoza ("Spinoza: Practical Philosophy"). it is a very short read

[Anonymous No.5123791]

>>5122032
>Why doesn't he acknowledge Lacan's influence on him in Capitalism & Schizophrenia?
i suppose this is a good question, if you haven't read the two volumes of c&s. lacan's influence is mentioned throughout.

[Anonymous No.5123800]

>>5123768
>And a specialist reader will find their statements often meaningless, or sometimes acceptable but banal and confused.

In other words,

>I get to decide how people, even specialists, will interpret these words.

Utter narcissism.

[Anonymous No.5123802]

>>5122044
>implying my computer screen textual interactions with this virtual community are not virtual

starting to wonder if you even got deleuze, OP. this is a bit shameful.

>>5122067
>I think it was Artaud who he got the idea of the BwO from.
if you don't even understand the importance of Artaud's language to the whole c&s project, you probably shouldn't be making these sorts of threads, dumbass.

[Anonymous No.5123811]

>>5123757
>not understanding language-games
>not understanding the philosophical focus on conceptuality
>thinks a NEET's ressentiment is an argument against their whole philosophical projects

[Anonymous No.5123817]

>>5123776
>Google it yourself, kids

Most of use are aware of "Fashionable Nonsense." Do you think it's a very good critique, though? For a scientific perspective it seems to lack both rigor and intellectual honesty. "Here's a paragraph that will look ridiculous because it uses terms that the author sometimes uses an entire book or chapter to explain, but it also uses scientific terms and we will tell you that they don't mean anything and you will just have to accept that." Like, how many times can you quote something and say "nonsense" and expect the reader to think you've given an honest assessment and done your research?

[Anonymous No.5123873]

>>5123817
>how many times can you quote something and say "nonsense" and expect the reader to think you've given an honest assessment and done your research?

This. The interpreter still needs to account for the rhetorical effect of the passage, the simulation of sense. You do this via close reading, showing the smallest parts that are sensical, and how the connectives between those parts and the other sensical parts are weak, or non-extant, or whatever, in very, very fine detail, or how they refer to nothing here and there, or botch their reference. You should also be able to build up potential systems out of the ambiguities that come out of this, which is actually what most continental secondary literature, a lot of philosophical literature, does - juiced ambiguity using the method that gets the commentor's prefered amount of pulp, juice, sweetness, etc, by adding a methodological machine to the fruit of others labors. Then you demonstrate that the possible systems don't work, or you show suppressed premises unmade by the author. That sort of thing.

Scientists love to just point at this stuff and say, I'm a scientist, this is wrong because it's nonsense. It's not nonsense. It means things to people. It meant something to the person writing it. It means something to the people reading it. The problem is that the thing is inadequate for its meanings, or the meanings generated themselves are inadequate. If it was actual nonsense, it would be glyphs on a page.

[Anonymous No.5125142]

>>5123791
what. Idk about mille plateaux but the only times Lacan's name gets dropped in Anti-Oedipus is when Deleuze mentions him as an outlier in the psychoanalytic field or professes some vague sentiment about how lacan might prove one of the few viable ways for psychoanalysis to continue as a discipline.

I'd be delighted if you could prove me wrong though

[Anonymous No.5125223]

>>5123757
>>5123768
>>5123773
>>5123776
This paper seems pretty dishonest in purposefully not understanding the point of the abstract they quote. For instance, making as if the two examples that D&G use are not merely examples but that you have to mingle them to get a definition of chaos according to D&G. Also, calling a rather simple non-obvious statement "nonsense" without justification and an obvious statement "platitude". That's a cheap strategy and a cop out of addressing the core point. 3/10 would call a jerk.

Same for >>5123802 by the way.

[Anonymous No.5125637]

>>5123557

[Anonymous No.5125923]

>>5125637
op is a faggot

[Anonymous No.5125929]

>>5125637
>>5125923
No amount of mental gymnastics on OP's part can vindicate Deleuze of chalarantry

[Anonymous No.5126036]

>>5125929
thats a damn shame because he has such a cool name and all i needed was a little push to go ahead and read him!!

[Anonymous No.5127794]

Is Deleuze worth reading?

He looks like my uncle. I'd like to play golf with him.