Deleuze Page

My commentaries for what they are worth, drawing on notes below [still under completion]

My videos (with M Harris) in the series 'Deleuze for the Desperate'. Basic intros to various 'key concepts', encouraging initial understandings:

My You Tube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCD3rYa6vJ4KonU2O01liymQ

#2 Rhizome https://youtu.be/xvI4ezbZbFA -- Transcript
#3 Haecceity
https://youtu.be/77CMNYJEb4I -- Transcript
#4 Body-without-Organs
https://youtu.be/XFhH3dF7RYw -- Transcript
#5 Movement-image
https://youtu.be/vJuvGpMpOVQ  -- Transcript
#6 Time-image
https://youtu.be/nK5Cp7u8IVo -- Transcript
#7 Lines of flight
https://youtu.be/mM-iXC3fgrk -- Transcript 
#8 Becoming-animal
https://youtu.be/QjWKoLdVtt0  -- Transcript
#9 Smooth space
https://youtu.be/qpZPCNot_78  --  Transcript
#10 War machine
https://youtu.be/M7fqHn3ydzM -- Transcript
#11 Refrain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hItgNVYvlso&t=6s -- Transcript
#12 Faciality https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzapbrnFIRs -- Transcript
#13 Language A miniseries of one introductory video (
https://youtu.be/MNOREhe_7Is) and 4 audio files/podcasts. Each podcast has a transcript (see menu page)

 
My notes on  Deleuze himself ( that's controversial, of course -- Deleuze says he is many persons)
Bergsonism
(I have also added some notes on Deleuze's other commentaries on Bergson,  Bergson's Creative Evolution, and then  Matter and Memory)
Cinema 1
Cinema 2
Desert Islands and Other Texts
A mixed collection of mercifully brief pieces. Includes one very good essay on Bergson, and one pretty obscure one, commentaries on assorted writers, and a defence/clarification of AntiOedipus. One chapter is, in effect, a very condensed intro. to Difference and Repetition
Difference and Repetition
Essays Critical and Clinical
Foucault
(Very good essays on the main books. Good but dense bit on 'the fold' at the end with a helpful [sic] diagram).
Francis Bacon (Tries out various concepts like becoming-animal, BwO, 'the haptic'. Develops 'logic of sensations' via colourism in painting)
Logic of Sense (Written as a set of 'series', unfolding implications of issues. There is a useful and brief summary of the main themes for Deleuze in his Two Regimes...)
Negotiations (a helpful series of interviews, probably worth looking at before you tackle the main works, unless you like the shock of the new, some with both Deleuze and Guattari)
Nietzsche and Philosophy
Pure Immanence. Essays on a Life (essays on philosophy, Hume and Nietzsche, some mercifully brief. Quite normally written for a change)
Spinoza Practical Philosophy (classic problems if you are not into C17 philosophy, but the original source [allowing for indirect free discourse] of many terms sprayed around Thousand Plateaus, like longitude and latitude etc).
Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza (very dense and addressing issues in the history of philosophy mostly. I gave up after about 50 pages. At best a further development of the remarks in the shorter book above or the online lectures, especially on the spiritual automaton -- and see Bogue,below, on that)
'The Brain is the Screen'
The Fold Leibniz and the Baroque (pretty straightforwardly written on the whole, and nearly interesting. Still very difficult, requiring a lot of Googling, and lots of leisure, but at least a minimum [sic] of silly stylistic flourishes from Deleuze himself).
Lectures on Leibniz (much clearer and simpler, starts at a more basic level. I suspect Deleuze was quite effective face-to-face) 
Proust and Signs ( esoteric and really requires you to know Proust, but an important try-out for many subsequent ideas and arguments)
Coldness and Cruelty (aka Masochism) --brief notes only on main themes, especially critiques of Freud.
Empiricism and Subjectivity (On Hume. I have some notes on him too. Very useful discussion of how the human subject emerges from 'the given'. Basis for a lot of later ideas like difference and empiricism rather than stuff about the relations between things themselves or between concepts etc. Style a bit irritating.)
Kant's Critique of Philosophy. Very dense stuff with lots of difficult terminology. Seems to be an exposition rather than a critique. The Preface helpfully summarizes the main themes for Deleuze.
Two Regimes of Madness. A series of short and often nearly readable essays and talks 1975--95. Usefully clarifies a lot of terms. Offers some self-criticism.

Electronic

Read Deleuze on the Society of Control for yourself here (it's very short) I also made notes on the version that appears in Negotiations, here.
See Deleuze rambling lightly about philosophy, the cinema and art as resistance to the society of control here.
Generally, the lectures are much easier going than the books. They are still difficult and dense but very effective in getting over the main ideas. You can also read the lengthy online lectures on Spinoza here, or my abridged version (which is a bit shorter) here. The lectures on Leibniz are also good.  The homepage for all the lectures is here.
There is also an admirable summary and overview by C Stivale of the TV interview by Parnet and Deleuze L'Abécédaire here -- it's quite informative, easy to grasp , light even! There is an increasing number of clips on YouTube, some, luckily, with English subtitles,some with Spanish subtitles.
Try A/V, the journal devoted to Deleuze. Rather variable contributions, usually in the form of rather dull videos of lectures, but good value from people like Buchanan and Cole, but with naff video conventions-- see below.
M Hardt has produced some excellent online reading notes on AntiOedipus and Thousand Plateaus here

My notes on Deleuze and Guattari:
Anti-Oedipus
A Thousand Plateaus  In my view this is the worst book. It is very self-referential and written in a dreadfully arty avant-garde style.  I am keen and self-disciplined but I found it unreadable (although I forced myself) . Ironically, this is the book most often cited (with AntiOedipus) by those radicals keen to apply Deleuze and Guattari to stuff ( like education)
What is Philosophy
Kafka
Written between AO and ATP. The source of a lot of terms in ATP and elsewhere, especially minor literatures, politics of minorities, and de/reterritotrialization. Requires a bit of knowledge of Kafka, though, and much of it must be over the head of non-German readers.

My notes on Deleuze and Parnet:
Dialogues/Dialogues II
Ramblings (D) with useful summaries of themes (P) in AntiOedipus and Thousand Plateaus and more implicit references to other works. Good crit of Freud/Lacan, weirder stuff on literature, good statement of May 68 politics. Very good but dense summary of the ontology in Ch 5 (Dialogues II).

Deleuze and Foucault:
Intellectuals and power. Source of famous quotations about concepts as tools or children as prisoners. Two intellectuals imagine they are struggling alongside the proletariat.

My notes on Guattari
Chaosmosis
A neglected classic --very important stuff on subjectivity, electronic communication and politics, if you are into Deleuze and all that.
Molecular Revolution in Brazil (with Rolnik)  -- optimistic hopes for the Worker Party in Brazil and for Italian Autonomy, based on the emergence of grassroots political challenges to capitalist subjectivity.
The Machinic Unconscious -- seems to have been the source for some stuff in Thousand Plateaus. Slightly clearer, for example on the ludicrously talked up notion of 'faciality' (see my comments here). There are also some near-repetitions of some of this material in Thousand Plateaus -- our heroes seem to have done some cut'n'paste as well as delirious or schizo flowing.
Interview with C Stivale Mostly about politics, but also the work generally. The politics comes over as utopian or hopelessly vague. Stivale asks some good straight questions and sometimes gets insights back -- or massive defensive bullshit.
Psychoanalysis and Transversality  The politicization of psychoanalysis, and vice-versa. Introduces many famous terms.
Schizoanalytic Cartographies  Written after ATP.  Very dense and overwhelmingly, obsessively detailed at times with ferociously complex diagrams-- but worth it if you can give it a few months,re-read and think a lot, look stuff up,  and maintain both patience and stamina.
I'm not claiming to have done more than a light gloss, even so. The best account of  many of the key terms, including schizoanalysis and subjectivity. 
The Three Ecologies. Much more simply written re subjectivity, Extends ecology to include the cultural and personal. Includes essay by Genosko, focusing usefully on 'transversality'.

My notes on commentaries
:
Badiou -- Deleuze as a philosopher of the One, not the anarchist people think he is. Being is the key concern of Deleuze's work, he theorizes it inconsistently, and you don't need it anyway to explain the multiple (!) There are excellent YouTube lectures by Badiou on his own approach.
Baudrillard -- Forget Foucault (and Deleuze) Marvellous scathing and scandalous criticism, mostly of Foucault, for merely talking up 'the real'. Shows deep connections between Deleuze and Foucault so power and desire are mirror images of each other. In my view, both are so general that they lose specificity anyway so you can't distinguish between desire for Freedom and desire for a new bathplug, except by exercising some innate 'taste' I expect. The real issue for me, which applies very clearly to Deleuze's work on cinema, is that 'postmodernism' just parodies, mocks and reduces to entertainment and banality all the once politically shocking things of the cinematic avant-garde: another element in Zizek's case that capitalism has overtaken Deleuze and put him in the museum.
Bogue, on Deleuze on cinema. Priceless! A labour of love. Very clear and good discussion. Hard going sometimes. Indispensable as an accompaniment to reading the actual books on cinema.
Bogue on Deleuze on literature. Another superb clear commentary which takes in the work on Masoch, Proust and Kafka -- but also summarizes particularly clearly Logic of Sense and AntiOedipus en route.
Boundas and Olkowski. Early collection of essays. Generally really helpful in summarizing the arguments. Some excellent critical pieces on the inconsistency of the 'levels' in the work, and how the style covers it. 'Applications' include feminism.
Buchanan, a nice early piece on BwO, applied to a philosophy of eating disorders
Calamari, a mind-blowing discussion of the influence of Riemann and Weyl on Deleuze's notions of space and planes. Maybe better read after Plotnitsky (below)?
DeLanda -- Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy (a very demanding read but well worth it -- achieves considerable clarity and provides excellent examples in this [meticulously referenced]  'reconstruction of Deleuze's world'. Indispensable in my view. MUCH more straightforward than the ludicrously obscure Difference and Repetition on which it is based)
DeLanda -- war and machines
. Develops history of military using Deleuzian notions of machines and machinic phylum
DeLanda --Deleuze and the Open-Ended Becoming of the World  (Deleuze is not a social constructivist) (nice and short!)
Delanda social assemblage theory Applied controversially to sociology -- further 'realist' arguments. Excellent basis for interdisciplinarity to tackle heterogeneity.
Dosse on the relationship between D&G --very informative on the background and restores Guattari to a prominent place. Massively detailed -- chapter summaries only.
Dyal. Interesting and alarming New Right reading of Deleuze based on his admiration for Nietzsche and radical critiques of bourgeois thought.
Genosko Brief notes on a collection of works by Guattari with lots of background pieces on psychiatry (including anti-psychiatry)  and politics. Good intro.
Hardt A good but tough account of the early works. Emphasizes the break with Hegel and the evolution of the later thought, which includes an increasing turn from logic to ethics (and politics). Hardt also has a nice brief set of notes on the contents of AntiOedipus and Thousand Plateaus here
Hulse  An excellent summary of 'the virtual' in Bergson, illuminatingly applied to musical experience.
Osborne A short review article on the relations between Deleuze and Guattari, including the way they actually wrote together.
Massumi -- a user's guide (diverges from D&G as he admits). Much-quoted introduction. Very helpful notes .Good for wacky politics and a constant sad oscillation between hope and despair with the politics (comes with basing politics on absurd philosophical  generalities in my view) . Odd how Deleuzians abandon Foucault's notion of power for humanist marxism -- or equate the two?
Miller A thorough critical discussion of the issue of actual evidence and virtuality with reference to the discussion of nomadism.
Nail Formalizing the notion of an assemblage.
Plotnitsky on the importance of the Riemann manifold ('multiplicity') in topological conceptions like 'smooth space'. More Deleuzian connections too eg on the concept.
Plotnitsky again on Riemann -- a little bit added to the above, connections to Derrida (and Einstein) this time.
Schreel A useful summary of Hjelmslev's linguistics and how D&G use them
Zizek -- Organs Without Bodies (only brief notes-- I was in a rush). One of several, including Baudrillard, to suggest that Deleuze is closer to modern capitalist notions of 'flow' than he thinks.


See also this nice article/lecture by Smith on Deleuze and Leibniz here. I just haven't the energy to pursue the link with Leibniz at the moment but this one is very good at least in showing what Deleuze is always banging on about -- the importance of the discovery of the calculus in helping think out the notion of a 'pure relation'. There are also hints about what Deleuze might mean by 'indiscernibility' in a Leibnizian context too.

'Applications'
Negri and Hardt Empire (see also Negri's interview with Deleuze in Negotiations)

Semetsky's 2006 ebook has a few useful clarifications of Deleuze, such as the argument that denying the human subject is intended as a hopeful and liberating thing, since all the fixities and reifications are ended too, and subjectivity becomes a process, an accomplishment one might say. The learning paradox is well explained, as in the article above, and the answer -- the triadic combination of percept, affect and concept -- is contexted a bit in general processes like becoming. The formal links with Peirce and Dewey are explained (and then rather taken for granted as indicating no differences with Deleuze). The thing ends with a paean of praise for good old progressive education,although it is decorated with Deleuzian terms (slightly less well used than the Deweyan ones): children as whole people ( because affects and spirituality are included); teacher as facilitators ( who de- and reterritorialize, ethically, of course); learning from experience (kids become, they are nomads, they follow rhizomes etc). All the qualities of Being are translated as qualities of actual human beings?

Zembylas has also had a bash, offering good summaries of the 60s stuff, with some additional stuff on Spinoza, but labouring to make it all fit critical pedagogy. It reminded me of the central problem, as Buber once said about Habermas -- (Kantian) philsosophical critique of the conditions of knowledge in general gets turned into (Hegelian) political critique of the dodgy foundations of one position in particular that we oppose, ignoring the general and undermining  implications for our own position.

There is Olsson on applying D&G to preschool education -- typical of its kind of approach  really (and discussed with the above more in the section on education in the commentary). Very thorough though and not just confined to snippets from the revolutionary stuff. Swedish practice seems very close to the legendary Reggio Emilia approach too.

Try Fullagar et al on doctoral supervision as 'rhizomatic' -- pretty feeble and metaphoric.


Various writers on education -- Gale (here and here), Hodgson and Smith (here), Semetsky (here), St Pierre (here). Strom and Martin use 'rhizomatics' and talk of striated space in schools There are also some pretty naff examples of 'application' of Deleuze to education. The whole collection shows the poverty of much conventional educational video. Try this one in the online video journal A/V hosted at Manchester Met Uni: http://www.hssr.mmu.ac.uk/deleuze-studies/journal/av-14/. {NOTE:originally I had made this review far too personal, and this threatened the general points I wanted to make about readings of Deleuze, and the dire effects of conventional thinking about educational video. I have apologized to Dr Cole}. Everything  feeds through the usual progressive teacher-training framework (Christ, I nearly said 'lens'). Deleuze is usually simply quoted, and the reading is justified in the usual ways -- we are to be interested in practice and there is a strong set of progressive values which go unchallenged. These are tabulated as a matrix or set of headings to students to guide their critical reflections on novels, although this risks the development of processes like 'applying' or 'recognising', both rebuked by Deleuze himself.

There is Honan, using Deleuze and the rhizome sledgehammer to deconstruct the authoritarian tendencies of educational policy, citing St Pierre's pragmatism as justification. Or  Le Grange , flirting with rhizomes to push new expanded forms of sustainability education.
 
Another A/V article is Buchanan on Deleuze and the Net, and the more general issues of developing 'practical Deleuzianism'
. It is sceptical about the rhizomatic nature of the Net, but has to depart quite a lot from Deleuze to get anywhere. Again, it offers a classic pedagogical stance -- the sage on the stage.
What would poor old Deleuze, fan of the avant-garde and the autonomous image, of semioclasm and the power of the false, have made of this sad reversion to pedagogic realism and the constraining of thought to fit the 'professional eye' of the teacher trainer?

Try my own deleuzian commentaries on rhizomatic education (especially the MOOC) here
 

Fuglsang has a nice collection of pieces 'applying' Deleuze to organizations, politics and other social practices
. Very revealing on the relation between Deleuze and sociology especially.

Notes on some books D&G cite as, like,  good

Hölderlin Hyperion
Proust In Search of Times Past
Woolf Mrs Dalloway, The Waves

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