Date: Sat, 16 Jan 1999 10:48:16 -0800 (PST)
From: Michael Rooney <rooney-AT-tiger.cc.oxy.edu>
Subject: RE: dialectic(can philosophers read deleuze?)




On Sat, 16 Jan 1999, michelle phil lewis-king wrote:

> > > Fine if for you it is an unproblematic activity where the sense
> > > prexists. No doubt,that's one kind of reading.
> >
> > No doubt it's better than a reading which imports
> > a variety of straw men.
> 
> toss a coin.

I'll add false dilemma to your fallacy tab.
Anything else?


> > >  I think it fair enough to read Derrida's reading of Bataille's reading
> > > of Hegel..
> >
> > That's not the issue.  Is it fair to read Deleuze
> > through Derrida's reading of Bataille on Hegel?
> 
> It's an approach.

Avoiding the question.  At this rate, you 
should look into politics.


> > As Deleuze makes very little reference to either
> > Bataille or Derrida (and indeed what few references
> > he does make are critical, or at least emphasize
> > the difference between his enterprise and theirs),
> > the answer appears to be no.
> >
> Its an impression. I think Deleuze writes like Bataille.. the problem is
> Nietzsche and Hegel.. I haven't got to a result I can judge .

"The signifier is always the little secret which has
 never stopped hanging around mummy and daddy. [...]
 The little secret is generally reducible to a sad
 narcissistic and pious masturbation: the phantasm!
 'Trangression', a concept too good for seminarists
 under the law of a Pope or a priest, the tricksters.
 Georges Bataille is a very French author.  He made
 the little secret the essence of literature, with
 a mother within, a priest beneath, an eye above.  
 It is impossible to overemphasize the harm that the
 phantasm has done to writing (it has even invaded
 the cinema) in sustaining the signifier, and the
 interpretation of one by the other, of one with the
 other.  'The world of phantasms is a world of the
 past', a theatre of resentment and guilt."

			Dialogues [English], p. 47


"As for the method of deconstruction of texts, I
 see clearly what it is, I admire it a lot, but it
 has nothing to do with my own method."

			Deleuze, at the 1972 Cerisy
			conference on Nietzsche

So: is it fair to read Deleuze through Bataille or
Derrida's reading of Bataille?  Probably not -- if
Deleuze's intent has any weight.


> > > Bataille's 'going beyond' is drawn by Derrida as a kind of
> > writing and a
> > > kind of laughter.. I don't think I'm alone in considering that
> > d+g wrote
> > > beyond the pale of conventional philosophy and its sense.. that they
> > > were writers in an extra sense... whose writings are full of humour.
> >
> > Hey, I'm full of humor too.  Does this mean I can
> > write whatever I like about Hegel and have people
> > on this list accept it because my laugh-a-minute
> > ecriture is beyond the pale of conventional philosophy?
> >
> 
> probably. They have the power to produce it.

You mean "probably, they are ignorant enough to
buy it".


> > > >I'd prefer to let Deleuze speak for
> > > >himself
> > >
> > > he can't, he's dead.
> >
> > You underestimate the power of the written word.
> >
> You fetishise it.

Couldn't leave the bar without one for the road, 
eh?


Cordially,

M.