Délire is the disorderly side of language, a no man’s land between reason and gibberish. In this study, originally published in 1985, the author provides a history of _délire_, tracing its influence on philosophy, linguistics, literature and psychoanalysis. The author argues that _délire _provides a new approach to the classic philosophical problem of sense and nonsense.

Qu'est-ce que le langage? Un système de signes fixé, par exemple, dans les traités de grammaire. Mais, ne l'oublions pas, son existence est aussi conditionnée par les manières toujours variées, souvent fautives, dont les sujets parlants se l'approprient : c'est la dialectique du système et du style. Jean-Jacques Lecercle la place au cœur de sa linguistique alternative, dont il livre ici un exposé aussi succinct que lumineux. La langue, jamais totalement systématique, consiste en un ensemble de normes (...) plus ou moins stabilisées, soumises aux changements que leur impose le 'hors-norme' stylistique. Dès lors, elle n'est pas essentiellement un système idéal abstrait qui s'impose à nous de l'extérieur, mais une partie de la praxis, un phénomène à la fois historique, social, matériel et politique. Les signes et la grammaire sont d'abord des produits de l'activité humaine, faits et défaits en permanence par les locuteurs individuels. Si le sujet est effectivement 'interpellé' par des règles qui lui préexistent, il a aussi la possibilité de 'contre-interpeller' la langue et, ainsi, d'y introduire une dose irréductible de singularité et de variation."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

In the field of philosophy of language, is there life beyond Chomsky? Deleuze's deep distrust for, and fascination with language provide a positive answer - nothing less than a brand new philosophy of language, where pragmatics replaces structural linguistics, and where the literary text and the concept of style have pride of place. This should be good news not only for philosophers, but for linguistics and literary critics as well.

_'Jean-Jacques Lecercle's remarkable _Philosophy of Nonsense___ offers a sustained and important account of an area that is usually hastily dismissed. Using the resources of contemporary philosophy - notably Deleuze and Lyotard - he manages to bring out the importance of nonsense'_ - _Andrew Benjamin, University of Warwick_ Why are we, and in particular why are philosophers and linguists, so fascinated with nonsense? Why do Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear appear in so many otherwise dull and dry academic (...) books? This amusing, yet rigorous new book by Jean-Jacques Lecercle shows how the genre of nonsense was constructed and why it has proved so enduring and enlightening for linguistics and philosophy. (shrink)

The book is a critique of dominant views of language (Chomsky s research programme in linguistics, Habermas s philosophy of ). It rehearses the fragmentary Marxist tradition about language and proposes a series of concepts for a coherent philosophy of language within Marxism.".

It is generally accepted that language is primarily a means of communication. But do we always mean what we say – must we mean something when we talk? This book explores the other side of language, where words are incoherent and meaning fails us. it argues that this shadey side of language is more important in our everyday speech than linguists and philosophers recognize. Historically this other side of language known as has attracted more attention in France than elsewhere. It (...) is particularly interesting because it brings together texts from a wide range of fields, including fiction, poetry and linguistics. The author also discusses the kind of linguistics that must be developed to deal with such texts, a linguistics which makes use of psychoanalytic knowledge. This tradition of writing has produced a major philosopher, Gilles Deleuze. This book provides an introduction to his work, an account of his original theory of meaning and an analysis of the celebrated _Anti-Oedipus_, which takes _délire _as one of its main themes. (shrink)

Why do philosophers read literature? How do they read it? And to what extent does their philosophy derive from their reading of literature? Anyone who has read contemporary European philosophers has had to ask such questions. This book is an attempt to answer them, by considering the ‘strong readings’ Alain Badiou and Gilles Deleuze impose on the texts they read. The author demonstrates that philosophers need literature as much as literary critics need philosophy: it is an exercise not in the (...) philosophy of literature, but in philosophy and literature, a heady and unusual mix. (shrink)

The first section of the essay assesses the similitude and differences between the Althusserian concept of ideology and Barthes's concept of ‘ideosphere’, as developed in the seminar on the Neutral. The second section rehearses the different stages of Barthes's complex relation to Marxism and suggests that, in spite of the explicit rejection of the doctrine, there remains a Marxist substratum to Barthes's thought. The third section compares the two theories of ideology and shows that Barthes's insistence on the centrality of (...) language allows him to offer a more comprehensive account of ideology: what begins in a form of allusion to Marxism ends up at a certain distance. The last section wonders what contribution Barthes's theory of ideosphere can make to a Marxist philosophy of language: one unexpected aspect of the answer makes use of the concept of style. (shrink)

In the field of philosophy of language, is there life beyond Chomsky? Deleuze's deep distrust for, and fascination with language provide a positive answer - nothing less than a brand new philosophy of language, where pragmatics replaces structural linguistics, and where the literary text and the concept of style have pride of place. This should be good news not only for philosophers, but for linguistics and literary critics as well.

Drawing on a forthcoming book by Rok Benčin on the concept of world, the article proposes a reading of _Between the Acts_ by Virginia Woolf that focuses on the dialectic of dispersion and unity. The novel presents a multiplicity of dispersed and fragmented transcendental frameworks that tend towards – an attempt that is always doomed to fail, but always begins anew – unification within the ideological apparatuses. In this endless dialectic, literature occupies a singular place, for the fictional structure of (...) these frameworks makes of it a transcendental-abyss, which enables passage from the novel of worlds to the world of the novel. (shrink)

This essay starts from the theory of disputes and progresses towards a theory of ‘interpellation’, which it aims to outline. The starting point is given by Lyotard's differend, which provides a first contrast between dispute and quarrel. Dispute can be seen as the more irenic pole of a system where quarrel would be identified as clearly agonistic. The essay first revisits the differend in the light of Habermas's theory, which posits that discussions take place against the background of a lifeworld. (...) This enables ways of conceptualizing both dispute, as emerging from the possibilities offered by language games, and quarrel, which belongs to the world of incomprehension. This first model is subjected to the test of Lewis Carroll's ‘Alice in Wonderland’ books, where dissensus is transformed into consensus, where a quarrel may end up in a dispute which respects conventions. But the crucial point of the essay is to provide a philosophy of language which enables the conceptualization of quarrels. The essay revisits the conceptions put forward in The Violence of Language and A Marxist Philosophy of Language but then carries the analysis into new territory. Finding inspiration in Althusser's theory of interpellation and in Judith Butler's reading of Althusser, the essay shows that quarrels enact both interpellation and counter-interpellation, and views further quarrels as one of the characteristics of human language. (shrink)

The essay revisits Deleuze and Guattari’s complex relation to Marxism, which it seeks to capture under the name para-Marxism, by way of a close reading of plateau n? 4 of A Thousand Plateaus, which criticizes the mainstream conception of language and draws on Lenin’s pamphlet on slogans. This close reading leads to an account of the articulation of the Deleuze and Guattari machine with the Marxist analysis of language, to be found, for purposes of comparison in Lukacs’s Ontology. The conclusion (...) is that Deleuze and Guattari’s conception of language is an intervention within Marxism: they take to its limit the anti-humanist position defended by Althusser – not so much a flight away from Marxism as a line of flight within Marxism. (shrink)

First published in 1990, this book argues that any theory of language constructs its ‘object’ by separating ‘relevant’ from ‘irrelevant’ phenomena — excluding the latter. This leaves a ‘remainder’ which consists of the untidy, creative part of how language is used — the essence of poetry and metaphor. Although this remainder can never be completely formalised, it must be fully recognised by any true account of language and thus this book attempts the first ‘theory of the remainder’. As such, whether (...) it is language or the speaker who speaks is dealt with, leading to an analysis of how all speakers are ‘violently’ constrained in their use of language by social and psychological realties. (shrink)

First published in 1990, this book argues that any theory of language constructs its ‘object’ by separating ‘relevant’ from ‘irrelevant’ phenomena — excluding the latter. This leaves a ‘remainder’ which consists of the untidy, creative part of how language is used — the essence of poetry and metaphor. Although this remainder can never be completely formalised, it must be fully recognised by any true account of language and thus this book attempts the first ‘theory of the remainder’. As such, whether (...) it is language or the speaker who speaks is dealt with, leading to an analysis of how all speakers are ‘violently’ constrained in their use of language by social and psychological realties. (shrink)

This text illustrates how the philosophy of Language, if differently conceived, can directly incorporate questions of political thought and of emotionality, and offers the practical case of defensive strategies against abusive speech. This follows a broad consideration of the inner voice or inner speech as a test case for a new approach to language, in particular as a way of radically rethinking the usual contrast between inner and outer through furnishing an account of how we internalize speech. The book's core (...) offers a substantial critique of orthodox approaches to the philosophy of language from Chomsky and others; drawing on European political thought from Marx to Deleuze, it will move beyond this inheritance to explain and demonstrate its fresh conception of language at work. (shrink)

The aim of the essay is to revive the philosophy of language of the Soviet linguist Valentin Volochinov, by revisiting his concept of the utterance as enthymeme: the meaning of an utterance is not fully determined by the linguistic system, but is dependent on its insertion in a social situation, which it refracts rather than reflects, thus giving rise to evaluations. The essay proceeds by analysing a number of such enthymemes, moving towards literature and a definition of a realism of (...) form rather than content, of refraction rather than reflection, examples of which are to be found in the works of Thackeray. (shrink)

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A review of Jean-Jacques Lecercle, Badiou and Deleuze Read Literature (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), 224 pp.

Discourse on the sciences and the arts -- Discourse on the origin and foundations of inequality among men -- Discourse on political economy -- On the social contract -- The state of war.

Jean Jack (1915) The Political Writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau, Translated: Charles Edwyn Vaughan, M.A., Litt.D., Cambrige at the Unıversıty Press, , in two volumce, volume one,.

Le prologue du livre de Ben Sira est le seul texte biblique qui nous livre une réflexion sur l’acte de traduire. Cet article vise deux objectifs : 1) mieux comprendre ce que le petit-fils de Ben Sira dit au sujet de la traduction du livre de son grand-père ; 2) comparer sa conception de la traduction avec celles que l’on trouve dans d’autres textes judéens et alexandrins relatifs à la traduction de la Bible hébraïque en grec, afin de mettre en (...) évidence le caractère singulier des propos du petit-fils de Ben Sira. (shrink)

The dawn of music semiology showcases the work of ten leading musicologists inspired by the work of Jean-Jacques Nattiez. Reflecting the energy and diversity of the young field of music semiology, chapters in this volume discuss music and gesture, the psychology of music, and the role of ethnotheory, and offer new research on topics as diverse as modeling folk polyphony, spatialization in the Darmstadt repertoire, Schenker's theory of musical content, and modernism from Wagner to Boulez.

L'oeuvre de Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962) explore les deux versants de la culture moderne : la connaissance scientifique dans ses formes les plus innovantes et l'expérience poétique, de la rêverie spontanée aux grandes créations de la littérature dans ses expressions les plus immémoriales. Au-delà de ces rapports entre science et poésie, entre théorème et poème, ne pourrait-on pas trouver aussi, en filigrane, les lignes profondes d'une philosophie pratique, d'un humanisme et d'une sagesse? Les ouvrages de Bachelard livrent une mine de positions (...) et propositions, sous forme d'innombrables éclairs et éclairages sur l'être humain, toujours en devenir entre l'être et le devoir-être, entre l'être et le néant. Mais en dégageant une éthique de la connaissance et une autre de la création poétique, Bachelard dévoile une double dimension éthique, l'une plutôt marquée par la tradition chrétienne et kantienne, l'autre plutôt par un eudémonisme aristotélicien. Faut-il voir dans ce double discours éthique une contradiction, une incohérence, une négligence? Ou ne pourrait-on pas, de manière inattendue, conclure que pour Bachelard l'homme est double jusque dans sa vie morale? Contre l'éthique unidimensionnelle classique, Bachelard plaiderait donc pour une éthique plurielle. Jamais un philosophe n'avait osé s'aventurer dans pareille direction, et nous n'avons pas fini de méditer cette double racine morale de l'homme, et les conséquences théoriques et pratiques de cette proposition singulière. (shrink)

Discorso sulle scienze e le arti.--Discorso sull'origine e i fondamenti dell'ineguaglianza tra gli uomini di un cittadino di Ginevra.--Sull'economia politica.--Lettera a d'Alembert sugli spettacoli.--Del contratto sociale o principî del diritto politico.--Progetto di costituzione per la Corsica.--Considerazioni sul governo di Polonia e sul progetto di riformarlo.

"Vous êtes perdus si vous oubliez que les fruits sont à tous et que la terre n'est à personne." Le Discours est une critique virulente et toujours actuelle d'une société où l'homme est dépossédé dès sa naissance de sa qualité d'homme. Il faut relire J.-J. Rousseau. Ses attaques contre le travail, la propriété et, en général, la vie sociale telle que nous la trouvons constituée dans un monde où nous sommes jetés sans l'avoir voulu ont, pour nos oreilles, des échos (...) à la fois très modernes et inattendus. La Reine fantasque est un conte "gai et fou". (shrink)