Friendship, in its nature, purpose, and effects, has been an important concern of philosophy since antiquity. It was of particular significance in the life of Gilles Deleuze, one of the most original and influential philosophers of the late twentieth century. Taking L'Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze -- an eight-hour video interview that was intended to be aired only after Deleuze's death -- as a key source, Charles J. Stivale examines the role of friendship as it appears in Deleuze's work and life. (...) Stivale develops a zigzag methodology practiced by Deleuze himself to explore several concepts as they relate to friendship and to discern how friendship shifts, slips, and creates movement between Deleuze and specific friends. The first section of this study discusses the elements of creativity, pedagogy, and literature that appear implicitly and explicitly in his work. The second section focuses on Deleuze's friendships with Foucault, Derrida, Claire Parnet, and Félix Guattari and reveals his conception of friendship as an ultimately impersonal form of intensity that goes beyond personal relationships. Stivale's analysis offers an intimate view into the thought of one of the greatest thinkers of our time. (shrink)

A new, expanded, and reorganized edition of a collection of texts that present a fuller scope to Guattari's thinking from 1977 to 1985. This new edition of Soft Subversions expands, reorganizes, and develops the original 1996 publication, offering a carefully organized arrangement of essays, interviews, and short texts that present a fuller scope to Guattari's thinking from 1977 to 1985. This period encompasses what Guattari himself called the “Winter Years” of the early 1980s—the ascent of the Right, the spread of (...) environmental catastrophe, the rise of a disillusioned youth with diminished prospects for career and future, and the establishment of a postmodernist ideology that offered solutions toward adaptation rather than change—a period with discernible echoes twenty years later. Following Semiotext's release last season of the new, expanded edition of Chaosophy: Texts and Interviews 1972–1977, this book makes Guattari's central ideas and concepts fully available in the format that had been best suited to Guattari's temperament: the guerrilla-styled intervention of the short essay and interactive dialogue. This edition includes such previously unpublished, substantive texts as “Institutional Intervention” and “About Schools,” along with new translations of “War, Crisis, or Life” and “The Nuclear State,” interviews and essays on a range of topics including adolescence and Italy, dream analysis and schizo-analysis, Marcel Proust and Jimmy Carter, as well as invaluable autobiographical documents such as “I Am an Idea-Thief” and “So What.”. (shrink)

Gilles Deleuze is now regarded as one of the most radical philosophers of the twentieth century. His work is hugely influential across a range of subjects, from philosophy to literature, to art, architecture and cultural studies. _Gilles Deleuze: Key Concepts_ provides a guide to Deleuzian thought for any reader coming to his writings for the first time. This new edition is fully revised and updated and includes three new chapters on the event, psychoanalysis and philosophy.

Gilles Deleuze is now regarded as one of the most radical philosophers of the twentieth century. His work is hugely influential across a range of subjects, from philosophy to literature, to art, architecture and cultural studies. _Gilles Deleuze: Key Concepts_ provides a guide to Deleuzian thought for any reader coming to his writings for the first time. This new edition is fully revised and updated and includes three new chapters on the event, psychoanalysis and philosophy.

Gilles Deleuze: Image and Text focuses on the intersection between Deleuzian philosophy and the arts.

Although Gilles Deleuze never wanted a film to be made about him, he agreed to Claire Parnet's proposal to film a series of conversations in which each letter of the alphabet would evoke a word: From A to Z. These DVDs, elegantly transtlated and subtitled in English, make these conversations available for English-speaking audiences? for the first time.In dialogue with Parnet, the philosopher exhibited the modest and thrilling transparency that his seminal works reveal. The sessions were taped when Deleuze was (...) already terminally ill; he and Parnet agreed that the film would not be shown publicly until after his death. The awareness of mortality floats through the dialogues, making them not just intellectually stimulating but also emotionally engaging. Because Parnet knew Deleuze so well, she was able to draw him out--as no one else had--to what might be the 1001st plateau: a place of brilliance, rigor, and charm.In "A as in Animal," for example, Deleuze vents his hatred of pets: "A bark," he declares, "really seems to me the stupidest cry." Instead, he praises the tick: "... in a nature teeming with life, [the tick] extracts three things": light, smell, and touch. This, he claims, in a sense is philosophy. "And that is your life's dream?" Parnet wryly asks. "That's what constitutes a world," he replies. For Deleuze, doing philosophy meant not just creating concepts but living a life in philosophy. Gilles Deleuze from A to Z presents the mind of a great philosopher at work. (shrink)

Deleuze's concepts - such as assemblage, the fold, difference and repetition, cinema and desire - are key to understanding his philosophical approach: they work to unsettle particular bodies of knowledge, to open them up and link them to other concepts within and outside that body of knowledge. The short and accessible chapters in this book each focus on a single concept, offering a definition and showing what the concept does. The contributors also consider how the concepts are engaged, intersect, and (...) link, and how they may deviate from other areas of postmodern thought. Gilles Deleuze: Key Concepts is aimed at a readership new to Deleuze both from within philosophy and outside the discipline. Contributors include Christa Albrecht-Crane, Ronald Bogue, Felicity J. Colman, Tom Conley, Gregory Flaxman, Eugene W. Holland, Karen Houle, Gregg Lambert, Melissa McMahon, Judith L. Poxon, Gregory Seigworth, Jennifer Daryl Slack, Daniel W. Smith, Patty Sotirin, Charles J. Stivale, Kenneth Surin, James Williams, and J. Macgregor Wise. (shrink)

Gilles Deleuze is now regarded as one of the most radical philosophers of the twentieth century. His work has become hugely influential across a range of subjects, from philosophy and literature to art, architecture and cultural studies. Gilles Deleuze: Key Concepts brings together leading specialists from a variety of disciplines to introduce the central concepts in the work of Deleuze. The short and accessible chapters in this book each focus on a single concept and show not only what the concept (...) is but what it does. The contributors consider how the concepts are engaged, intersect, link and how they may deviate from other areas of postmodern thought. The concepts Deleuze employs in his writings are key to understanding his philosophical approach: they work to unsettle particular bodies of knowledge, to open them up and to link them to other concepts within and outside that body of knowledge. Aimed at a readership new to Deleuze and from disciplines outside philosophy, Gilles Deleuze: Key Concepts offers an easy to access primer to reading Deleuze. (shrink)