From: "michelle phil lewis-king" <king.lewis-AT-easynet.co.uk>
Subject: RE: dialectic (can Philosophers read Deleuze?)
Date: Tue, 19 Jan 1999 03:49:55 -0000


 M.

Firstly lets share Bataille's extremes discomfort with the description
"sovereign operation ", he tries "comic operation" out, and rejects
"meditation" for it's pious appearance. He initially named it "interior
experience" ( is it this interiority that Deleuze recoils from in Bataille?)
and "extremity of the possible".

The change of words indicates the bothersomeness to B. of using any words at
all.

"The greatest force is the force of a writing which in the most audacious
transgression, continues to maintain and to acknowledge the necessity of the
systems of prohibitions (knowledge, science, philosophy, work, history,
etc). Writing is always traced between these two sides of the limit.
 Among the weak moments of Bataille's discourse, certain ones are signaled
by the determined unknowledge which is a certain philosophical ignorance.
And Satre justly notes that"..(as Widder initially proposed of Deleuze)..
 " he has visibly not understood Heiddeger, of which he often and clumsily
speaks" and then philosophy avenges itself."
J.Derrida W+Dpp338. (a footnote worth reading in full as Derrida points out
that Satre hasn't understood Heiddeger either.).

I digress...and then rip out of context this;

"Immediacy and mediacy, such as they are presented in elements of
philosophy, in Hegel's logic, or in phenomenology, are equally
''subordinated. ".....

and find these questions:

"How can "subordination," in the sense of the (philosophical) logos be
exceeded in its totality?"

"How can mediacy and immediacy be transgressed simultaneously?"

"For this writing must assure us of nothing, must give us no certitude, no
result, no profit. It is absolutely adventurous, it is a chance and not a
technique."
Derrida W+D pp 272

'Beyond' maintains the prohibitions of your system of Philosophy. Farther
onwards in comparrison with Derrida because  as well as  writing about
writing it is (in my view) the writing that Derrida continually indicates.
It is 'beyond ' in  the sense (direction) that it includes the unknown, in
the sense that it is 'experimental'and can loose its direction.

"A writing with pneumatic, electronic, or gaseous indifferent supports, and
that appears all the more difficult and intellectual to intellectuals as it
is acessible to the infirm, the illiterate, and the schizo's, embracing all
that flows and counterflows, the gushings of mercy and pity knowing nothing
of meanings and aims."A.O pp370-1

Deleuze (and Guattari!)'s 'writing' is a trace drawn between two sides of
the limit, as they continually stress (M.P)..I really don't want to use the
rhizome example..."writing has nothing to do with signifying. It has to do
with surveying, mapping, even realms that are yet to come".pp5


>
> However, if Deleuze is doing something like that --
> going beyond conventional philosophy by relating
> concepts to a non-meaning beyond absolute meaning
> (as Derrida attributes to Bataille) -- then we would
> expect Deleuze to make some indication of that, no?

I didn't say he was going beyond conventional Philosophy by "relating
concepts" but that he was going (beyond)further than philosophy by an
experimental writing whose  activity endlessly created (creates) endless
unknown concepts. He is beyond philosophy because he existed in 'addition'
to philosophy.. a 'Brut' (Pourparler p122)'supplement' to philosophy that
replaced it (derrida again!).Writing as philosophy. philosophy as writing.
Philosophy beyond Philosophy. (Le plus denue de culpabilite de "faire de la
philosophie").



> But he doesn't.  One would expect, if this was part
> of his project, it would surely be quite important
> to him, and that he would mention it, say, in his
> criticisms of the Hegelian dialectic (which is the
> only place where Derrida's remark has any relevance
> at all).  But he doesn't; Deleuze's critique of
> Hegel is very different from Derrida's (or Bataille's).

The critique is in the activity of a thought without an image: In the
question "what is such a thought, and how does it operate in the world?"

You fetishize what he said  and ignore what he does. I think his thought
operates as writing in Derrida's sense (about Bataille for example) .. and
Derrida says a lot about writing..as a dangerous supplement..   derrida
indicates  writing is a  critique of Hegel in itself.. as an activity.. as
production.. as movement.. as trace.. as operation.

> One would expect Deleuze to mention it in reference
> to Bataille or Derrida.  Yet, again, he doesn't; in
> fact what little he does say about them is critical
> or distancing.

 That's why I pulled out those quotes.
> If Deleuze was doing that, there'd be evidence.
> There is not, ergo, that's not what he's doing.
>

 There's quite a lot of evidence that Deleuze wrote!!!(understatement)

> If you have some evidence from Deleuze to the contrary,
> that'd be a start to supporting your claim.

 Yet so
> far, you've only cited Derrida on Bataille -- nothing
> from Deleuze.  (In addition, if Deleuze really were
> "beyond" Derrida in the sovereign manner, the essay
> you cite would immediately turn on Deleuze, as it does
> on Bataille by insisting that there is no "beyond" to
> philosophy -- but that's another issue.)

see above. also " beyond: on the farther side of:
                          farther onward in:
>           and " farther:same as further, sometimes
                  prefered when the notion of distance
                  is more prominent
            and " further: at or to a greater distance
                  or degree: in addition: additional,
                  more, other
            so: beyond: on the other side of

    Chambers English Dictionary
So:

Deleuze Philosophy Writing on the additional side of Hegel Philosophy
Philosophy.

"We have been critisised for overquoting literary authors. But when one
writes, the only question is which other machine the literary machine can be
plugged into, must be plugged into in order to work. Kleist and a mad war
machine."T.P pp4

"All of Kleist' work is traversed by a war machine invoked against the
State,"....."It is odd how Goethe and Hegel hated this new kind of
writing."T.P pp268

See the rest of this passage in t.p.(also note "Nietszche does the same
thing by different means")

 "The anti-Goetheism anti-Hegelianism of Kleist" ...
"Goethe gets to the heart of the matter when he reproaches Kleist for
simultaneously setting up a pure "stationary process" that is like the fixed
plane, introducing voids and jumps that prevent any development of a central
character, and mobilizing a violence of affects that causes an extreme
confusion of feelings."
t.p pp269

swap "concept" by "character" between these two quotes (for fun)

"Within this writing- the one sought by Bataille- the same concepts,
apparently unchanged in themselves will be subject to a mutation of meaning,
or rather will be struck by (even though they are apparently indifferent),
the loss of sense (direction) towards which they slide, thereby ruining
themselves immeasurably. To blind oneself to this rigorous precipitation,
this pitiless sacrifice of philosophical concepts, and to continue to read,
interrogate, and judge Bataille's text from within "signicative discourse"
is, perhaps, to hear something within it but it is assuredly not to read
it."


"Bataille's writing does not tolerate the distinction of form and content."
Derrida W+Dpp267

"Hjemslev was able to weave a net out of the notions of matter, content, and
expression, form and substance."..."Now this net had the advantage of
breaking with the form-content duality,"...T.Ppp43

If Deleuze was doing that, there'd be evidence.
> There is not, ergo, that's not what he's doing.

Why would Deleuze (of all people ) want to represent his own writing? A
writing taken in turn "beyond" writing as it intertwines with his voice
in the theatre of his lectures. "The Space of Literature" an open system.

phil.

p.s