This seminar series will consider all of Gilles Deleuze’s major works. Each week will treat one book (or a significant part of one book, for the larger texts), with the goal of explicating its structure and the key claims that Deleuze advances in it. At the end of each half of the series, a session will be devoted to lengthier discussion and synoptic questions. For the rest of the series, synopsis will be eschewed in favour of understanding the book at hand.
Lecture Schedule
Week 1: Empiricism and Subjectivity
Week 2: Nietzsche and Philosophy
Week 3: Kant’s Critical Philosophy
Week 4: Bergsonism
Week 5: Proust and Signs
Week 6: Masochism
Week 7: Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza
Week 8: Difference and Repetition I: objective and subjective misrecognitions of difference
Week 9: Difference and Repetition II: the virtual, intensity and temporality
Week 10: Logic of Sense I: the structural account
Week 11: Logic of Sense II: the genetic account
Week 12: Questions and answers
Readings: Extracts from the key works, along with relevant interviews and occasional secondary work, will be provided.
Level: Intermediary. While no particular knowledge will be presupposed, a broad familiarity with the history of modern Western philosophy and psychoanalysis would be distinctly helpful.