From: "michelle phil lewis-king" <king.lewis-AT-easynet.co.uk>
Subject: RE: dialectic(can philosophers read deleuze?)
Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 15:03:47 -0000


Nathan wrote concerning Derrida's view of Deleuze's inadequate reading of
Heiddeger:
(a
> point Derrida makes in one of his most wonderfully understated
> criticisms of
> both Foucault and Deleuze, in his Introduction to Lacou-Labarthe's
> Typography book).
>
Yes, I suppose this would be a Derridian view, that one can only go beyond a
writer or philosopher through an incredibly in depth reading. His praise of
Bataille's approach to Hegel shows this..Derrida demonstrates how Bataille
works against Hegel from within.

""To laugh at philosophy (at Hegelianism)- such, in effect is the form of
the awakening- henceforth calls for an entire "discipline," an entire "metod
of meditation" that acknowledges the philosopher's byways, understands his
techniques, makes use of his ruses, manipulates his cards, lets him deploy
his strategy, appropriates his texts."
Derrida 'Writing and Difference' pp252

But then Deleuze isn't Derrida, rather he seems to enact the 'sovereign'
writing that Derrida heralds. In fact Deleuze takes place 'beyond' Derrida.
He is a Bataille.
( an event).

"This writing (and without concern for instruction, this is the example it
provides for us, what we are interested in here, today) folds itself in
order to link up with classical concepts- in so far as they are inevitable
("I could not avoid expressing my thought in a philosophical mode. But I do
not address myself to philosophers" Bataille: Methode)-in such a way that
these concepts, through a certain twist, apparently obey their habitual
laws; but they do so while relating themselves, at a certain point, to the
moment of sovereignty, to the absolute loss of their meaning, to expenditure
without reserve, to what can no longer even be called negativity or loss of
meaning except on its philosophical side; thus, they relate themselves to a
nonmeaning which is beyond absolute meaning, beyond the closure or the
horizon of absolute knowledge."
Derrida. Writing and Difference pp267-8.

I would agree with Beth that your project seems to be to read and judge
Deleuze's 'philosophy' from a Hegelian perspective while poor Deleuze is
only concerned with getting out of his knowledge of Hegel. As with Bataille
surely we are faced with a writing which dvelops "untenable concepts". From
a philosophical (hegelian) point of view surely, as Derrida writes of
Bataille, Deleuze's texts are 'scandals'.

The question I would like to ask (provocatively no doubt) is; can
philosophers read Deleuze?