Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 10:03:57 -0700 (PDT) From: Alexander Glage <glage-AT-yahoo.com> Subject: RE: academia ---Richard Scott <richard.scott-AT-umist.ac.uk> wrote: > > > Deleuze comments about AntiOedipus: > > "I'm struck by the way its the people who've read lots of other books, and > psychoanalytic books in particular, who find our book really difficult... > those on the other hand who don't know much, who haven't been addled by > psychoanalysis, have less of a problem and happily pass over what they don't > understand... there are you see two ways of reading a book; you either see > it as a box with something inside and start looking for what it signifies... > And you annotate and interpret and question, and write a book about the > book, and so on and so on. Or there's the other way: you see the book as a > little non-signifying machine and the only question is "Does it work, and > how does it work?" How does it work for you... There's nothing to explain, > nothing to understand, nothing to interpret... This second way of reading's > quite different from the first because it relates a book directly to what's > Outside. (Negotiations pp. 7-8) > > This is it in a nutshell I think. Well, I can buy this concerning AO, even perhaps ATP, but what about the books that I actually referred to (if you look back, you'll see I made a point of *not* talking about any of the works Deleuze did with Guattari)? Do you really think that people with no philosophical training are going to be able to do much with a book like *Difference and Repetition* or *Logic of Sense" or the books on Leibniz and Kant and Foucault? I know I personally did not understand such works (even though I found them exciting in their style) when I tried to read them as a young and inexperienced student--there were too many references, too many allusions, too much vocabulary that I just couldn't figure out. But what about you: you mean to tell me that you had no problem with those texts? that you just joyfully skimmed over anything you weren't sure about? I personally could never be satisfied with that kind of reading--at least, *not for very long*. That kind of reading can indeed be exhilarating and even liberating (and in fact, the experience/idea of the *obscure* as something imbued with its own radical positivity is something I've been working on for a very long time now--I hope to publish my essay on "the obscure" sometime in the next year or so)--but it could never be the *only* kind of reading I would want to do. Eventually, I would start asking myself questions that I could not answer on my own. I would want to find out, say, what all this tallk about "propositions" referred to, where terms like "transcendental" get used and in what ways, who are these "Stoics" anyway... I would always want to learn more about where Deleuze was coming from. This is a point I tried to make in my last post: I can't imagine myself ever reading Deleuze and just ignoring everything that I wasn't sure about. And I don't think that this is some evil, tyrannical need to master or dominate the Deleuzean text: rather, chalk it up to plain old curiosity--and love for wisdom. > I am amazed at your obedient linearity - and the narrowness of the tradition > which you see Deleuze as existing in. All I can say to this is that, if you think the tradition is "narrow," then you're not working with the same tradition I am. Alexander _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free -AT-yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
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