These essays provide important interpretations and analyze critical developments of the political philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. They situate his thought in the contemporary intellectual landscape by comparing him with contemporaries such as Derrida, Rorty, and Rawls and show how elements of his philosophy may be usefully applied to key contemporary issues including colonization and decolonization, the nature of liberal democracy, and the concepts and critical utopian aspirations of political philosophy. Patton discusses Deleuze's notion of philosophy as the creation of concepts (...) and shows how this may be helpful in understanding the nature of political concepts such as rights, justice, and democracy. Rather than merely commenting on or explaining Deleuze's thought, Patton offers a series of attempts to think with Deleuzian concepts in relation to other philosophers and other problems. His book represents a significant contribution to debates in contemporary political theory, continental philosophy, and Deleuzian studies. (shrink)

Deleuze and Guattari differentiate between philosophy, science, and the arts - seeing each as a means of confronting chaos - and challenge the common view that philosophy is an extension of logic. The authors also discuss the similarities and distinctions between creative and philosophical writing. Fresh anecdotes from the history of philosophy illuminate this book, along with engaging discussions of composers, painters, writers, and architects.

The conviction that Gilles Deleuze is doing something radical in his work has been accompanied by a corresponding anxiety as to how to read it. In this rigorous and lucid work, Ian Buchanan takes up the challenge by answering the following questions: How should we read Deleuze? How should we read _with_ Deleuze? To show us how Deleuze’s philosophy works, Buchanan begins with Melville’s notion that “a great book is always the inverse of another book that could only be written (...) in the soul, with silence and blood.” Buchanan demonstrates that the figure of two books—one written in ink and the other written in blood—lies at the center of Deleuze’s hermeneutics and that a special relation must be established in order to read the second book from the first. This relation is Deleuzism. By explicating elemental concepts in Deleuze—desire, flow, the nomad—Buchanan finds that, despite Deleuze’s self-declared moratorium on dialectics, he was in several important respects a dialectician. In essays that address the “prehistory” of Deleuze’s philosophy, his methodology, and the utopic dimensions of his thought, Buchanan extracts an apparatus of social critique that arises from the philosopher’s utopian impulse. _Deleuzism_ is a work that will engage all those with an interest in the twentieth-century’s most original philosopher. (shrink)

French journalist Claire Parnet's famous dialogues with Gilles Deleuze offer an intimate portrait of the philosopher's life and thought. Conversational in tone, their engaging discussions delve deeply into Deleuze's philosophical background and development, the major concepts that shaped his work, and the essence of some of his famous relationships, especially his long collaboration with the philosopher Félix Guattari. Deleuze reconsiders Spinoza, empiricism, and the stoics alongside literature, psychoanalysis, and politics. He returns to the notions of minor literature, deterritorialization, the critical (...) and clinical, and begins a nascent study of cinema. New to this edition is Deleuze's essay "Pericles and Verdi," which reflects on politics and historical materialism in the work of the influential French philosopher François Châtelet. An enduring record of Deleuze's unique personality and profound contributions to culture and philosophy, _Dialogues II_ is a highly personable account of the evolution of one of the greatest critics and theorists of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Of fundamental importance to literary critics and philosophers, Difference and Repetition develops two central concepts -- pure difference and complex ...

Pour qui veut comprendre la cassure qui traverse et travaille en profondeur le champ de la pensée contemporaine, il convient de revenir et de s'interroger sur la philosophie politique de Gilles Deleuze, l'une des plus importantes de la modernité récente. Son œuvre mérite mieux qu'une fidélité respectueuse : elle exige qu'on la questionne et problématise, surtout dans son rapport difficile et paradoxal à la démocratie. Comment une pensée du multiple, nomade et expérimentatrice, pensée du et, du entre, récusant toute la (...) problématique classique du fondement, peut-elle être si hostile au pluralisme inhérent des démocraties occidentales? Penser et comprendre dans ses difficultés et avancées ce paradoxe constitue une ouverture pour mieux saisir les affects fondamentaux nouveaux qui soutiennent l'époque qui prend visage sous nos yeux, ainsi que les remaniements conceptuels qui donnent au postmoderne ses traits décisifs. (shrink)

The final work of the late philosopher Gilles Deleuze includes essays on such diverse literary figures as Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, D.H. Lawrence, Lewis Carroll, and others, along with philosophers Plato, Spinoza, Kant, and others. Taken together, these 18 essays--all newly revised or published here for the first time--present a profoundly new approach to literature.

New to this edition is Deleuze's essay "Pericles and Verdi," which reflects on politics and historical materialism in the work of the influential French ...