Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1999 13:51:18 -0500 (EST)
From: yaya <cw_duff-AT-alcor.concordia.ca>
Subject: h's question




	Precisely. H's question is not D's question. And deleuze does
remark:"If you aren't allowed to invent your own questions, with elements
from all over the place, never mind from where, if people 'pose' them to
you, you haven't much to say...." and "Even reflection, whether it's
alone, or between two or more, is not enough. Above all, not relfection."
and lastly "Objectons are even worse. Every time someone puts an objection
to me, I want to say: Ok, let's go on to something else. Objections have
never contributed to anything. It's the same when I am asked a general
question. THe aim is to get out, to get out of it. Many people think that
it is only by going back over the question (in this case the Question of
Hegel's difference and Deleuze's difference) that it's possible to get out
of it. 'What is the position with philosophy Is it dead  (Read Hegel here)
Are we going beyond it?' It's very trying. They won't stop returning to
the question in order to get out of it. But  getting out neer happens liek
that. Movement always happens behind the thinker's back (Hegel's dead back
totality, his famous synthesis; his "unhappy consciousness" etc.), or in a
moment  when he blinks (and Kierkegaard leaps up; or Nietzsche on his
horse). Getting out is already achieved, or else it never will."
"(Dialogues 2  trans. etc) What is interesting here is how Deleuze
suggests we can sidestep a battle as to get on with things, on own's own
path one's own line of flight and one's own interests. IF all readings of
philosophy are misreadings then it is inevitable that Deleuze will misread
Hegel and this is as it should be. There is no right reading as this would
be itself an idealist error or rather an idealist assumption ie.
discoveringthe real Hegel on whatever subject before one reads Deleuze, or
before one reads Deleuze and Guattari. In fact we are already read by
Hegel and Hegel is re-reading Plato. Deleuze is not climbing the ladder of
consciousness to read the eyes of either thinker. He works around the
sides and makes something  happen elsewhere. The same thing applies to
Guattari. G. makes some pretty silly statements about Lacan and Freud for
instane, but really it is polemical. G has a purpose. So does D. He wants
to get out  and not to stay in the question. So both of them must misread
Hegel however accurately they read Hegel. I remember a conversation with
Foucault in the book Knowledge and Power. F. is asked something
about sexuality and Freud in the conversation, and he laughs as he admits
he has not read all of Freud or even half of Freud. The point is that
Foucault is already elsewhere. He did his homework and started his moves
long before then. He was already reading Freud even when he was not
reading him. Same thing in my view applies with the Hegel Deleuze thing.
Deleuze is already elsewhere. HE is not interested really in what the
Hegel mahine argues beyond a certain point; he takes the emissions of that
thinker I mean the particles  where he wants to go. Knowing in this case
makes  knowingmove to another place completely. He is of course misreading
and that is unavoidable. But is it unscholarly? Is it the point to be a
mirror or is it to move. OF course it is the latter, and that is what
Deleuze does,, he moves it elswhere. Pierce's comments say as much as
one can say about Hegel being a castle with no foundation in reality, I
mean reality as an Outside. People like to criticize Sartre for his
misreading of the Hegelian synthesis however they miss the boat.
Sartre takes one element and combines it with Marx and moves it elsewhere
while debunking the silly idea of a scientific dialectic. Deleuze performs
a parallel operation both with and without Guattari and for different
reasons and as he says at a different speed from Guattari. Some readers
might say it is a question of pedagogy however if one understands that
all readings are misprisions of the earlier thinkers then one operates
from another premise completely. For Deleuze and Guattari the very nature
of being is political. Is this a Hegelian notion? Perhaps but what of it?
What not of it? Of course it is because it has become so in the hands of
Sartre and his critique of the dialectic, and the explicit and implicit
attack on Hobbes which inhabits that Critique. One cannot help but misread
Hegel says Sartre and further hestates one cannot but misread Marx. Marx
is the air we breath he stated as well. Can one do better than the air one
breaths? yes, say Deleuze and Guattari one takes a particle a piece and
moves it elsewhere onthe line of flight and while doing so you collapse
what you are fleeing from.
	In Deleuze and Philosophy- Deleuze the Difference Engineer - Keith
Ansell Pearson discusses briefly the misreading Deleuze makes of Hegel.
However again, the misreading is not a misreading but a movement away to
something altogether different. elsewhere. THe term misreading and the
term misprision which I useed are from Harold Bloom, the literary critic.