The Deleuze Connections

This book is a map of the work of Gilles Deleuze—the man Michel Foucault would call the "only real philosophical intelligence in France." It is not only for professional philosophers,but for those engaged in what Deleuze called the "nonphilosophical understanding of philosophy" in other domains, such as the arts, architecture, design, urbanism, new technologies, and politics. For Deleuze's philosophy is meant to go off in many directions at once, opening up zones of unforeseen connections between disciplines.Rajchman isolates the logic at the heart of Deleuze's philosophy and the "image of thought" that it supposes. He then works out its implications for social and cultural thought, as well as for art and design—for how to do critical theory today. In this way he clarifies the aims and assumptions of a philosophy that looks constantly to invent new ways to affirm the "free differences" and the "complex repetitions" in the histories and spaces in which we find ourselves. He looks at the particular realism and empiricism that this affirmation implies and how they might be used to diagnose new forces confronting us today. In the process, he explores the many connections that Deleuze himself constructs in working out his philosophy, with the arts,political movements, even the neurosciences and artificial intelligence.

The first book to present Gilles Deleuze's philosophy in language the nonphilosopher can understand.

Library Journal

Celebrated French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925-94) worked in three areas of philosophy during a period of diverse hegemonic activity. Rajchman (art history, MIT and Columbia Univ.) presents these activities as expressing connections mapping regions within philosophy and between philosophy and nonphilosophical activities. Ranging from Deleuze's work in the history of philosophy, through his reconceptualizations of logic, and on to his work in aesthetics, the author presents his own thesis according to the tenets laid out by his subject, both explaining and exercising the connections that hold between intellect and expression. While identifying canonical Western philosophers with specific and rigorous conceptualizations, Deleuze promotes philosophy not as theorizing but as the art of connecting. Rajchman's presentation is itself rigorous and insightful, making this text appropriate both as an introduction to Deleuze and as commentary on 20th-century philosophical structures.--Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley P.L., CA Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.