From: "W.F. Wong" <wf-AT-camelot.de>
Subject: Deleuze and deconstruction
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1999 18:01:59 +-100


"In recent times the term 'deconstruction' has become highly problematic. It is often used to indicate attempt to break down or critically examine a belief or a 'construct' such  as 'masculinity'. It would be somewhat pedantic to reject such uses of the word completely, but 'deconstruction' does have a more specific, philosophical sense, which generally refers to  a way of reading texts 'against themselves'. In simple terms, then, 'deconstructing' means looking for a contraditions, gaps, ellisions, revealing metaphors. Although Deleuze has never used the word 'deconstruction', he is, in the most general sense of the term, a deconstructive author, as Paul Patton argues:
           '(...) he detailed the perverse procedure by which he fabricated monstrous versions of Bergson, Nietzsche, Spinoza or Kant: the crucial rule was to say nothing that the author in question had not in fact said, but to do so in a manner which produced unrecognizable fascimiles. Deleuze was a pioneer of the deconstructive technique of reading philosophical texts against themselves. He employed it to produce among others a systematic Nietzsche, an anti-Platonist Platon and Kantian foundations for a transcendental empiricism.'

Deleuze's 'deconstructive' method is best considered as a project of 'free indirect discourse'. Deleuze seeks to work with other thinkers and artists so that his own voice and the voice of the author become indistinct. In this way, he institutes a zone of indiscernibility between himself and the authors with whom he works. According to Michel Tournier, Deleuze demonstrated this power of 'translation', the ability to transform another's work, at a young age. It is a matter of picking up another's arrows and relaunching them. This technique provides much of the charge of Deleuze's work. Alain Badiou argues that this 'indirect' approach is a method which conveys a commitment to perpectivism: we can never be sure who is speaking. The form of enuciation, the 'discourse', that results from his mixing of voices is - although it bears Deleuze's proper name as the author - indirect, impersonal. In fact, Deleuze argues that langauge exists in its 'natural' state in this impersonal form: 'Langauge is a huge "there is", in the third person (...)'. (...)"

John Marks: "Gilles Deleuze - Vitalism and Multiplicity" (1998)