<color><param>0000,0000,FFFF</param>The rather remarkable piece pasted
in below was forwarded to the Deleuze list in 1994 either by Jonathan
Beasley Murray or by "Orpheus", dunno for sure, the header is too
strenous to puzzle out for me but I just stumbled across it again while
reformatting my old computer. I posted the first part of it here some
time ago but didn't include Deleuze's following on comments concerning
his associative efforts with Felix Guatari which, on reread just now,
struck me as very worthwhile of your interest and so I include them now
- I chuckled rather audibly for example over my own experience when I
read how easily the un-educated were able to grasp the deeper more
intensive meaning of "The Body Without Organs" - of and for which the
educated were at total loss over. (and where of course the x experience
is the most radical enlightener of this phenomenon)
n[patent by bob scheetz]so i'd bet that, just as the christian "knows"
he has a "soul" inside him, so too do most of you "know" you have
"organs" (and internal ones at that) inside your outside, alas -
neither of these are routes "Away From Here", a way to the outside - -
- to X.
uneducut.ively yers,
Kenneth
ps to good king henry, this is still and yet another interluding,
another "on the way", post, toward the primacy of the unconscious body
- -
"and soul is only a word for something <italic>about</italic> the body"
(Nietzsche) -
[and just what is that 'something' really?]
-------------------------
Michael - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - Since our topic is a book about me - and you are the only one
to blame for this - I would like to explain how I view what I have
written. I belong to a generation, one of the last generations, that
was more or less assassinated with the history of philosophy. History
of philosophy has an obvious, repressive function in philosophy; it is
philosophy's very own Oedipus. "All the same you won't dare to speak
your own name as long as you have not read this and that, and that on
this, and this on that." In my generation, many did not pull through;
some did by inventing their own procedures and new rules, a new tone.
For a long time I myself have worked through the history of philosophy,
read such and such a book on such and such an author. But I managed to
compensate for this in several ways: first by loving authors who were
opposed to the rationalist tradition of that history. I find among
Lucretius, Hume, Spinoza and Nietzsche a secret link that resides in
the critique of negation, the cultivation of joy, the hatred of
interiority, the exteriority of forces and relations, the denunciation
of power, etc.) What I detested more than anything else was Hegelianism
and the Dialectic. [. . . .]
.........................................................................
Nietzsche whom I read late was the one who pulled me out of all this.
[. . . .] He's the one who screws you behind your back. He gives you a
perverse taste that neither Marx nor Freud have ever given you: the
desire for everyone to say simple things in his own name, to speak
through affects, intensities, experiences, experiments. To say
something in one's own name is very strange, for it is not at all when
we consider ourselves as selves, persons, or subjects that we speak in
our own name. On the contrary, an individual acquires a true proper
name as the result of the most severe operations of depersonalization,
when he opens himself to multiplicities that pervade him and to
intensities which run right through his whole being. The name as the
immediate apprehension of such an intensive multiplicity is the
opposite of the depersonalization brought about by the history of
philosophy, a depersonalization of love and not of submission. The
depth of what we don't know, the deepness of our own underdevelopment
is where we talk from. We've become a bundle of loosened singularities,
names, first names, nails, things, animals, minute events [. . . .] So
I began to work on two books in this immediate direction: _Difference
et Repetition_ and _Logique de sens_. I don't have any illusions: they
are still full of an academic apparatus - they are laborious - but
there is something I try to shake, to stir up within myself. I try to
deal with writing as with a flux, not a code. And there are pages I
like in _Difference et Repetition_, those on fatigue and contemplation,
for example, because they reflect live experience despite appearances.
That didn't go very far, but it was a beginning.
And then, there was my meeting Felix Guattari, the way we got along
and completed, depersonalized, singularized each other - in short how
we loved. That resulted in _Anti-Oedipus_ which marked a new
progression. I wonder whether one of the formal reasons for the hostile
reception the book occassionally encounters isn't precisely that we
worked it out together, depriving the public of the quarrels and
ascriptions it loves. So they try to untangle what is undiscernable or
to determine what belongs to each of us. But since everyone, like
everyone else, is multiple to begin with, that makes for quite a few
people. And doubtlessly _Anti-Oedipus_ cannot be said to be rid of all
the fomal apparatus of knowledge: surely it still belongs to the
university, for it is well-mannered enough, and does not yet represent
the "pop" philosophy or "pop" analysis that we dream of. But I am
struck by the this: most of the people who find this book difficult are
the better educated, notibly in the psychoanalytic field. They say:
What is this, the body without organs? What do you really mean by
desiring machines? In contrast, those who know just a little bit, those
who are not spoiled by psychoanalysis, have fewer problems and do not
mind, leaving aside what they don't understand. Such is the reason for
our saying that those who should be concerned with this book,
theoretically at least, are fellows between fifteen and twenty. There
are in fact two ways of reading a book: either we consider it a box
which refers us to an inside, and in that case we look for the
signified; if we are still more perverse or corrupted, we search for
the signifier. And then we consider the following book as a box
contained in the first one or containing it in turn. And we can
comment, and interpret, and ask for explainations, we can write about
the book and so on endlessly. Or the other way: we consider the book a
small a-signifying machine; the only problem is "Does it work and how
does it work? How does it work for you?" If it doesn't function, if
nothing happens, take another book. This other way of reading is based
on intensities: something happens or doesn't happen. There is nothing
to explain, nothing to understand, nothing to interpret. It can be
compared to an electrical connection. A body without organs: I know
uneducated people who understood this immediately, thanks to their own
"habits." This other way of reading goes against the preceeding insofar
as it immediately refers a book to Exteriority. A book is a small cog
in a much more complex, external machinery. Writing is a flow among
others; it enjoys no special privilege and enters into relationships of
current and countercurrent, of back-wash with other flows - the flows
of shit, sperm, speech, action, eroticism, money, politics, etc. Like
Bloom, writing on the sand with one hand and masturbating with the
other - two flows in what relationship? [. . . .]
.........................................................................
This way of reading intensively, in relation to the outside - flow
against flow, machine with machines, experimentations, events for
everyone (which have nothing to do with a book, but with its shreds and
are a new mode of operating with other things, no matter what. . .
etc.) - is a manifestation of love. Such is exactly the way you
approached the book. And the section of your letter I find beautiful,
rather marvelous even, is that where you explain the manner in which
you read it, what use you made of it on your own account. Alas! alas!
Why do you have to rush right back to a reproachful attitude? "You are
not going to get away with it. We are waiting for the second volume;
you will still be on the same track. . ." No, that isn't true at all.
We do have plans. We will follow up because we love to work together.
But it won't be a sequel at all. With the help of the outside, we'll do
something so different in both language and thought that those who are
anticipating our work will have to say to themselves: they've gone
completely crazy, or they're a couple of bastards, or they've obviously
been unable to continue. Deception is a pleasure. Not that we want to
make believe that we are madmen; we will go mad, though, in our own
time and in our own way. Why are people in such a hurry? We certainly
know that _Anti-Oedipus,_ volume 1, is still full of compromises - too
full of scholarly things that still look like concepts. So, we'll
change; we have already changed; we're doing all right. Some people
think we're bound to stay on the same old path. There has even been
some belief we'd form a fifth psychoanalytic group. Woe unto us. We
dream of other things, more secret and more joyful. Compromise we shall
no longer, because that won't be necessary. And we'll always find
allies we want or who want us. . . .
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