Michel Foucault once quipped that "one day, perhaps, the century will be known as Deleuzean." Often taken to be an unrestrained endorsement of the philosophy of his friend and colleague Gilles Deleuze, le siècle can mean both "the century" and "the in-crowd". As it has turned out, both meanings appear to have come to pass. Deleuze's work is as popular now as it has ever been, throughout the humanities and social sciences. At the same time, a lot of this popularity is based around a kind of mash-up of his various books, in which all attention to detail is lost, and from which emerges a thinker with little to recommend him beyond certain clichéd utterances.
The aim of this set of lectures will be to examine in outline each of Deleuze's books, one at a time. In doing so, the aim will be to uncover not a synoptic overview of "the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze," but rather to grasp each moment of this philosophy on its own terms. In this way, we will come closer to this philosophy (if there is one such philosophy) as he presents it.
The course is recommended to anyone with an interest in engaging with Deleuze beyond the dogmatic image of his thought that circulates in many quarters today.
Course Schedule
Semester 1
1. Monday 17 March: Empiricism and Subjectivity
2. Monday 24 March: Nietzsche and Philosophy
3. Monday 31 March: Kant's Critical Philosophy
4. Monday 7 April: Bergsonism
5. Monday 14 April: "Masochism"
[Easter Break]
6. Monday 28 April: Proust and Signs
7. Monday 5 May: Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza
8. Monday 12 May: Difference and Repetition part 1
9. Monday 19 May: Difference and Repetition part 2
10. Monday 26 May: Logic of Sense part 1
11. Monday 2 June: Logic of Sense part 2
12. Monday 16 June: Questions and discussion
Semester 2 (dates to be confirmed)
13. Anti-Oedipus
14. Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature
15. A Thousand Plateaus part 1
16. A Thousand Plateaus part 2
17. Francis Bacon
[Break]
18. Cinema 1: The Movement-Image
19. Cinema 2: The Time-Image
20. Foucault
21. The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque
22. What is Philosophy?
23. Questions and discussion
Level of Difficulty: Intermediate. While no particular knowledge will be presupposed, Deleuze's work is often more difficult than it might first appear to be.