Gilles Deleuze

See also: Deleuze

Gilles Deleuze is a Philosophe French born with Paris the January 18th 1925 and died with Paris the November 4th 1995.

Biography

Between 1944 and 1948, it makes its studies of philosophy to the Sorbonne, where it meets Michel Butor, François Chatelet, Claude Lanzmann, Olivier Revault d' Allonnes, Michel Tournier. Its professors are Ferdinand Alquié, Georges Canguilhem, Maurice de Gandillac, Jean Hyppolite.

After aggregation in 1948, it is devoted to the Histoire of philosophy.

In 1969, it presents like principal thesis, Différence and repetition (directing, Maurice de Gandillac); and like secondary thesis, Spinoza and the problem of the expression (directing, Ferdinand Alquié).

The same year, it is the meeting with Felix Guattari; will follow between them long and profitable collaboration. It is one of its decisive influences, with Spinoza, Nietzsche and Henri Bergson.

At the University of Vincennes, where he taught until his university retirement in 1987, Gilles Deleuze was, of the opinion of much, an extraordinary professor; as in its works of history of philosophy, he arrived, according to his partisans, to combine the rigor and the scholarship of the academic to greatest conceptual imagination, the whole in simple terms. Its courses were a great success, attracting a public many, international and diversified. Thanks to his wife, Fanny Deleuze, an important part of this teaching available, is transcribed to the letter, on the site of Richard Pinhas.

“ One day, perhaps, the century will be deleuzien. ” Such was the feeling of Michel Foucault with regard to a philosopher who deeply marked the thought of the end of the 20th century. One asked Deleuze how he interpreted this sentence; he answered that Foucault undoubtedly thought that he represented the purest expression of the thought of the difference, because he was the purely conceptual expression, i.e. neither history (like Michel Foucault), nor critical (like Roland Barthes, for example), etc: “ it wanted to undoubtedly say that I was most innocent, more the philosopher ”.

Reached of a serious respiratory disease, Gilles Deleuze is committed suicide the November 4th 1995. “ They are '' organizations which dies, not the life ”.

He is the father of Emilie Deleuze, French director, and of Julien Deleuze (translator of English).

Philosophy

History and to become philosophy

For is Deleuze, “ philosophy art to form, invent, manufacture concepts ” ( What philosophy? ), thing of which it was never deprived. It ensures that philosophy is not addressed that with the specialists, and one can say of him what it said of Spinoza: everyone is able to read it, and to draw some from great emotions, or to renew its perception completely, even if it includes/understands badly of them the Concept S. Inversement, a historian of the philosophy which does not understand of it that the concepts does not have a sufficient comprehension.

“One needs the two wings, as said Jaspers, this would be only to carry us philosophical and not-philosophers towards a common limit. ” ( Talks , p. 225)

In the Abécédaire, he tells that what pleased the most to him, in the mail that he received after the publication of the Pli , they were not the letters of academics, but those of a club of Origami co.s and of a club of Surf eurs.

For the reader, that the reading is very recent or extremely old, Deleuze, it is always a labyrinth. The too fresh reading takes it for a “machine to be diverted”, one then rather conceives it like “machine to be directed”. It is in the condition of having the segments necessary to rebuild oneself the principle of this labyrinth, in order to be directed there and of directing the reader there.

Private clinic and policy

The first concept suggested by Gilles Deleuze is that of the plane of consistency , which it will then reject with the profit of that of Plan of immanence.

The philosophy of Deleuze is that of an absolute Immanence. Not the transcendent one, not of negation, not of lack, but a culture of the joy, a radical denunciation of the capacities. A philosophy of the life and pure assertion, immanence, therefore, like exit of the borders of the prone :

“Of each one of us, there is like an asceticism, a part directed against ourselves. We are deserts, but populated tribes, faunas and flora. (...) And all these tribes, all this crowd, do not prevent the desert, which is our asceticism even, on the contrary they live it, they pass by him, on him. (...) The desert, the experimentation on oneself, is our only identity, our chance single for all the combinations which live us. ” ( Dialogs , p. 18)

The philosophy of Deleuze crosses here first once the interests of Foucault, those for the Folie. Both thought indeed seriously of the madness and a possible dialog with it. If Foucault did it by taking it as a historical object complexes of which it lute the genesis like the back and the not-necessary condition of our thought (“the thought of the madness is not an experiment of the madness, but of the thought: it becomes madness only in collapse”), Deleuze, in its turn, in its bringing together with Guattari, yielded to temptation these trimmings in the creation of its own concepts. Perhaps the “ rhizome ” is the extreme expression of that. In fact one can think of it as of a x-ray thought of the outside , in his most intimate logic, i.e. when it is turned towards the outside. One finds in it the opening of a desert, forgotten mobility, wandering connectivity, the multidirectional proliferation, the absence of center, subject, object - a topology and a chronology which are rather hallucinatory. In short, one does not find the chart of another world but rather the other possible cartography of all the worlds - what makes this world precisely be about it another, us delivering chains of the everyday life.

“To make of an event, if small is it, the most delicate thing of the world, the opposite to make a drama, or to make a history. ” ( Dialogs , p.81)

Deleuze on the end of its life outlined - second crossing - the prolongation of an idea of Foucault which considered the end of the disciplinary companies. According to him, those are leaving room to the holding companies:

“control is short-term and rotating rapid, but also continuous and unlimited, while the discipline was of long life, infinite and discontinuous… The man is not any more the man locked up, but the involved in debt man. ” ( Talks , p.246)

Cinema

Action, reaction

Analysis that made Deleuze of the Cinema is largely based on the work of Henri Bergson: Matter and memory . From a physiological point of view and a way very simplified (but sufficient within the framework present), the human Perception follows the sensorimotor Schème according to:

  • of the Sensor S (eye, Ear…) receive information in our environment. They collect the action of the Environnement on us.
  • this information is sent, via sensory Nerf S towards the Cerveau.
  • this brain is able to make a decision of reaction to the environment.
  • the signal of reaction is transmitted via motor nerves worms of the Muscle S.
  • these muscles carry out indeed the reaction.
The human brain is thus basically with the interface between received actions and emitted reactions. It always functions according to the Principe of action-reaction.

Contrary to a spread idea, our perceptions are not simple mental copies of our environment. I.e. they are not summarized with the signal sent by the sensors to the brain. It is this sensory signal treated by the brain in order to consider the possible reactions which constitutes our perception. Perception is not the received action, but the whole of the possible answers to this action.

Practice and pure reflection

Between the action and the reaction, it can run out a lapse of more or less long Temps.

In the extreme case of the practice, the reaction is connected in an quasi-instantaneous way with the action. It is not a question of Réflexe, but when a sequence of action is often carried out, the sequence is well-known, and can be carried out quickly and without requiring Concentration. What makes it possible to gain in effectiveness, speed and releases the brain. A typical example is the training of the Conduite: initially testing, it becomes less and less painful as the sequences of movements become usual. Another example, left Effect edge , is the listening of a well-known disc, when the end of a piece points out the beginning of the following to us. The sequence is known here by heart and we anticipate the following action by practice.

But what does it occur if we activate the reading Aléatoire? The awaited piece is not played, not replaced by another. We are disturbed. And it is the limit of the practice there: it is absolutely not adaptable. Since one is in a not very current situation, the practice is completely ineffective. It is then necessary to call upon its Mémoire, to seek in our past of the experiments not too distant, able to inform us on the choice to be made in the situation present. It is necessary to reflect, and that takes time. Necessarily, time between the received action and the reaction brought stretches itself. In extreme cases extreme, this time becomes Infini lies long: it is the pure reflection. The action does not give any more place to a reaction, the sensorimotor design is broken.

They are two extremes and the real operation of the brain oscillates between the two permanently. The choice depends on the needs for the moment and the serviceable time. If I have a decision very important to take, I will take time to reflect, to take various time to study the Argument S. It is the time necessary with the reflection which decides moment of the reaction: to make a supposed decision. But if I am in my Transat' and that a balloon Arc-en-ciel moves towards me, I will deviate quickly and reverse the Cocktail which I held with the hand: the reaction is fast but not optimal. If I had had time, I would have thought of the cocktail and would be moved differently to me. But here, I did not have time, the Danger was too imminent. The serviceable time for the reflection is constrained by the urgency of the action/reaction.

Image Movement, image-time

Gilles Deleuze illustrates the preceding reflection through the cinema.

Same manner that the brain functions between two extreme types, one finds with the cinema two great corresponding images. Of with dimensions image-movement, which rests on the sensorimotor design (the action gives place to a reaction.) Other image-time, resting on the pure reflection. In the first image, the action decides time. A Personnage leaves the part - cut - the same character is seen in outgoing outside of at his place and borrowing the street. The plan was cut because the character did not have anything any more to make there. It is the action (the exit of the character) which stops the plan and decides its duration. The following plan constitutes the reaction. Time depends on the action. : “the image-movement introduces a character in a given situation to us, which reacts to this situation and modifies it… Sensorimotor situation. ” the image-movement constitutes a large majority of the images which we see, and not only action films. A simple device of interview with a Journalist and a Personality, field on the journalist who puts his question, Contrechamp on the person interviewed which answers it, concerns the image-movement pure and simple.

But now let us take the plan according to: A Father share to fish with his son whom he did not see for a long time. They are installed on the Berge S. the contact is difficult, they do not say anything, they look with the Horizon. That lasts a certain time, definitely longer than the time necessary with the spectator to include/understand simply than they fish. Cut. The following plan does not have anything to see. For example, the mother takes along the son in Voiture to the Ville. There is no cause and effect link between the two plans. One could not say if that occurs before or two hours later or the next month. The fact of going to fish gave place to no reaction, and if the plan had lasted a long time it would have occurred anything again. The duration of the plan is not decided any more by the action, time is independent of the action. One does not know the result of fishing and that does not have any importance. This plan belongs to what Gilles Deleuze calls: “an Optical and sound situation pure. ” what one finds in the “film ballade. ” One can think of Minuit in the garden of the good and the evil of Clint Eastwood, Dead Man of Jim Jarmush for example.

Historically, the cinema started by using this image-movement primarily. It is associated with the Logique, with the rationality. At the time of a Field-reverse shot between two characters who speak each other, there are not the choice of the moment of the cuts: they follow the interventions of the characters. Any question, one awaits a coherent answer. One awaits , i.e. one finds oneself within the framework of the practice, one not inevitably anticipates the contents of the answer, but at least that an answer will be given and one knows by advance that it will occur at the end of the question.

Gilles Deleuze locates the arrival of image-time after the Second world war: one does not grow any more with this principle of action-reaction. The war is a complex action which exceeds us, it is not possible to react, to modify the situation, to make it clear. From where appearance of image-time with the Italian Neo-realism, then the French New wave, and questioning of the Hollywood Cinema with the the United States. The Heroes of Federico Fellini (the Dolce vita) or of Luchino Visconti (Died in Venice) are disillusioned, they refuse to act, choose. And it is already much to say that they refuse to act. The sensorimotor design breaks because the character saw something of too large for him. Deleuze constantly reconsiders an image of Europe 51 of Rossellini: the Femme passes in front of a Usine, stops. " I believed to see condamnés". The Souffrance is too strong so that it carries on its road as usual . Image-time comes to break with the Practice and inserts the character in the dimension of time: " a piece of time to the state pur". And it is that which interests Deleuze for its own account in the cinema, namely the way in which the cinematographic image can express a time which is first compared to the movement. This concept of time is built compared to the Bergsonien concept of time and develops according to two methods. Time, it is initially time present, here and now. But, according to one second method, time does not cease being spread in two directions, Passé be and Futur be. This is why Deleuze insists in its analysis of Visconti on the " too much tard". In Mort in Venice, the artist includes/understands too late what missed with its work. Whereas it is here and maintaining rotting, to break up at the present, the character understands at the same time, but as in another Dimension, the Lumière plugging Sun on Tadzio, that the sensuality always escaped to him, that the Chair and the ground missed with its work.

This design of image-time leads Deleuze to pose the following assertion: " the image of cinema is not with the présent". Indeed, if time does not cease insisting, to return on itself, and to constitute a memory at the same time as it passes, then what the films show us, they are storage areas, " tablecloths of passé" , which occasionally concentrates and converges in " points of présent". In this respect, Orson Welles is well one of the largest modern realizers as it seized this mnemic dimension of the image. Citizen Kane is a film built in memory, where each section, each zone appears as a laminated layer which comes to converge or diverge with other zones. Each " tablecloth of mémoire" appears thanks to the use of the depth of field made by Welles: this one, the image of time itself, makes it possible to arrange, in the same image various movements, various events which form like a world with oneself, with the image of the memory Proust IEN, from which Deleuze draws the clean expression from image-time: " a small piece of time to the state pur."

Just like the brain oscillates between practice and reflection, it is of course possible to mix the two images. Let us take again our man who leaves at his place: the image movement would like that the cut occurs when it passes the door. Now, the Caméra is delayed one, perhaps two seconds in the empty part, then cut, and Plan outside. The image-movement is perverted: there are action and reaction well, but time does not correspond, creating a gene feeling: why the camera delay-T-such in this part is emptied or it does not occur anything any more? Or then there are action and reaction but the reaction is not logical. Think of Lost Highway of David Lynch for example. One does not count there any more the plans “too long”, dark and empty spaces, the improbable answers, the absences of answers…

The vocabulary of Deleuze

  • Body-without-body (CsO)

  • plane of Immanence
  • Déterritorialisation and Reterritorialisation
  • the fold
  • Rhizome
  • conceptual Character
  • Old story

Works

  • Empiricism and subjectivity. Test on the human nature according to Hume , University Presses of France, Paris, 1953,152 p.

  • Nietzsche and philosophy , Presses University of France, Paris, 1962.
  • philosophy criticizes of Kant , University Presses of France, Paris, 1963.
  • Proust and the signs , Presses University of France, Paris, 1964.
  • Nietzsche , Presses University of France, Paris, 1965.
  • the bergsonism , Presses University of France, Paris, 1966,119 p.
  • Présentation of Sacher-Masoch: Venus with the fur . Paris, ED. midnight, 1967,276 p.
  • Spinoza and the problem of the expression , editions of Midnight (coll “Arguments”), Paris, 1968,332 p.
  • Difference and repetition , University Presses of France, Paris, 1968,409 Logical p.
  • of the direction , editions of Midnight (coll “Criticizes”), Paris, 1969,392 p.
  • the Anti-Oedipus - Capitalism and schizophrenia , in collaboration with Felix Guattari, editions of Midnight (coll “Criticizes”), Paris, 1972,494 p.
  • Kafka. For a minor literature , in collaboration with Felix Guattari, editions of Midnight (coll “Criticizes”), Paris, 1975,159 p.
  • Rhizome , in collaboration with Felix Guattari. Paris, ED. midnight, 1976. (Included in Thousand-Plates .)
  • Dialogs with Claire Parnet. Paris, Flammarion, 1977,184 p.; 2nd ED. 1996, coll “Fields”, 187 p. (contains an appendix on the current one and virtual the )
  • Superpositions , in collaboration with Carmelo Bene. Paris, ED. midnight, 1979,131 p.
  • Thousand Plates - Capitalism and schizophrenia 2 , in collaboration with Felix Guattari, editions of Midnight (coll “Criticizes”), Paris, 1980,645 p.
  • Spinoza - Philosophy practices , the editions of Midnight, Paris, 1981,177 p.
  • Francis Bacon: logic of the feeling (2 vol.). Paris, Editions of Threshold (coll “the philosophical order”), 1981,158 p.
  • the image-movement. Cinema 1 , editions of Midnight (coll “Criticizes”), Paris, 1983,298 p.
  • image-time. Cinema 2 , editions of Midnight (coll “Criticizes”), Paris, 1985,378 p.
  • Foucault , editions of Midnight (coll “Criticizes”), Paris, 1986.
  • the Fold - Leibniz and the baroque , editions of Midnight (coll “Criticizes”), Paris, 1988,191 p. (extracted)
  • Périclès and Verdi. The philosophy of François Châtelet , editions of Midnight, Paris, 1988,27 p.
  • Talks 1972 - 1990 , editions of Midnight, Paris, 1990 (extracted: “Intercessors”).
  • What philosophy? , in collaboration with Felix Guattari, editions of Midnight (coll “Criticizes”), Paris, 1991,206 p. (extracted)
  • “exhausted”, postface with Quad , of Samuel Beckett. Paris, ED. midnight, 1992.
  • Critical and clinical , editions of Midnight (coll “paradox”), Paris, 1993.
  • the deserted island and other texts. Texts and talks 1953-1974 , editions of Midnight (coll “paradox”), Paris, 2002.
  • Two modes the insane ones. Texts and talks 1975-1995 , editions of Midnight (coll “paradox”), Paris, 2003.

Video

  • the Alphabetical one of Gilles Deleuze, fragments video

  • the Alphabetical one of Gilles Deleuze, of Pierre-Andre Boutang, discussions with Claire Parnet, Editions Montparnasse, 1996.
  • In May 2006 the Rai Tre diffused several hours of video recordings of the courses of Deleuze with Vincennes (1975-1976-1980)
  • " The " Point of view of; course on Leibniz - November 1987 - 140 mn - realization Mr. Burkhalter - Public libraries (service of the book)

Film

1973: George which? of Michele Rose tree. Deleuze, actor, interpret there the role of Lamennais, the friendly priest-philosopher of George Sand.

Audio

See too

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