DOCSLIB.ORG

Lawrence for Deleuze and Guattari D.H. Lawrence Does Not Necessarily Enjoy a Privileged Position in the Works of Deleuze Or Deleuze and Guattari

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Lawrence for Deleuze and Guattari D.H. Lawrence Does Not Necessarily Enjoy a Privileged Position in the Works of Deleuze Or Deleuze and Guattari CHAPTER 3 DETERRITORIALIZATION AND RETERRITORIALIZATION: AARON’S ROD AND A THOUSAND PLATEAUS Lawrence for Deleuze and Guattari D.H. Lawrence does not necessarily enjoy a privileged position in the works of Deleuze or Deleuze and Guattari. While Gilles Deleuze had discussed literature in some of his books that dealt with figures such as Marcel Proust and Lewis Carroll, he had never explored Lawrence systematically. The sole exception to this may be found in the shape of Deleuze’s essay entitled “Nietzsche and Saint Paul, Lawrence and John of Patmos”.1 However, there is no denying that Lawrence is often men- tioned in the works of Deleuze and Guattari and that even if their references are fragmentary they are in fact quite positive. 2 In this respect, Deleuze and Guattari make an interesting contrast with Michel Foucault, who maintained a negative stance towards D.H. Lawrence. Deleuze or Deleuze and Guattari’s engagement with Lawrence could be summarized as follows: firstly, there is the Lawrence who is against Freudianism as in Fantasia of the Unconscious (1922); secondly, Lawrence as one of the writers who draw the lines of flight continually to escape from capitalist societies that give money enormous value and power: Aaron’s Rod (1922), Kangaroo (1923), Studies in Classic American Literature (1923); and thirdly, the Lawrence who closely resembles Friedrich Nietzsche: The Man Who Died (1931), Apocalypse (1931). We can consider these three areas of interest in a little more detail as follows. To take the first: in order to decompose the myth of Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari adopt Lawrence’s anti-Freudianist viewpoint, 1 Gilles Deleuze, “Nietzsche and Saint Paul, Lawrence and John of Patmos”, in Essays Critical and Clinical (1993), trans. Daniel W. Smith and Michael A. Greco, Minneapolis, MN: U of Minnesota P, 1997, 36-52. 2 For a recent study, which thoroughly traces and examines Deleuze’s or Deleuze and Guattari’s citations of Lawrence, see Mary Bryden, Gilles Deleuze: Travels in Literature, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, 50-83. 44 Literature along the Lines of Flight evaluating highly his early and astute critique of the “Oedipus complex” with its social implications. Actually, Fantasia of the Unconscious can be a very effective introduction to Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus, particularly in the light of its discussions on desire.3 As for the second: one of Lawrence’s novels that Deleuze and Guattari refer to favourably is Aaron’s Rod, a novel that has traditionally been accorded a rather low standing within Lawrence’s body of work. This does not mean, however, that Deleuze and Guattari discuss Aaron’s Rod in its entirety: what they focus on is Lawrence’s notion of love,4 the function of Aaron’s flute,5 and the point at which Aaron arrives.6 But there is nevertheless a connection between this novel where the protagonist leaves his family and Deleuze and Guattari’s book which exhorts the reader to escape from Oedipal familialism. In the third instance: in “Nietzsche and Saint Paul, Lawrence and John of Patmos”, Deleuze regards Lawrence as a follower of Nietzsche who, placing himself in the flow of life, developed the thought of affection. Since the influence of Nietzsche on Lawrence has often been investigated, Deleuze’s claim is not very surprising; the characters of Rupert Birkin in Women in Love and Rawdon Lilly in Aaron’s Rod, both, make a mention of Nietzsche’s “the will to power”. It must be said, however, that what Deleuze calls “the point of Aaron” is opposed to the stance of Lilly. As discussed in Chapter 2, Lilly’s Nietzschean thoughts can be regarded as Nazistic or Fascist. It is unthinkable that the authors of Anti-Oedipus, “the major enemy” of which, according to Foucault, is Fascism, value that aspect of Lawrence’s thought.7 Actually, Deleuze and Guattari do not overlook the latent Fascism in writers like Lawrence who are sensitive to the flow of desire. The relation between 3 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972), trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane, London: Athlone, 1984. 4 Ibid., 5. 5 Ibid., 357: “Will Aaron leave with his flute, which is not a phallus, but a desiring-machine and a process of deterritorialization?” 6 Deleuze, “Nietzsche and Saint Paul, Lawrence and John of Patmos”, 51: “Stop loving. Oppose to the judgment of love ‘a decision that love can never vanquish.’ Arrive at the point where you can no longer give any more than you can take, where you know you will no longer ‘give’ anything, the point of Aaron or The Man Who Died, for the problem has passed elsewhere: to construct banks between which a flow can run, break apart or come together” (emphasis in original). 7 Michel Foucault, “Preface”, in Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, xiii. .
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Foucault and Deleuze, April 2014 Nicolae Morar, Penn State University, Thomas Nail, University of Denver, and Daniel W
    Nicolae Morar, Thomas Nail, and Daniel W. Smith 2014 ISSN: 1832‐5203 Foucault Studies, No. 17, pp. 4‐10, April 2014 INTRODUCTION Foucault Studies Special Issue: Foucault and Deleuze, April 2014 Nicolae Morar, Penn State University, Thomas Nail, University of Denver, and Daniel W. Smith, Purdue University Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault are widely accepted to be central figures of post‐war French philosophy. Philosophers, cultural theorists, and others have devoted considerable effort to the critical examination of the work of each of these thinkers, but despite the strong biographical and philosophical connection between Foucault and Deleuze, very little has been done to explore the relationship between them. This special issue of Foucault Studies is the first collection of essays to address this critical deficit with a rigorous comparative discussion of the work of these two philosophers. Deleuze’s Course Lectures on Foucault In particular, this special issue is motivated by the recent (2011) online publication of Gilles Deleuze’s course lectures on Michel Foucault (1985‐86) at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (French National Library) in Paris. The BNF collected the available recordings of Deleuze’s seminar lectures at the University of Paris 8 and converted them into digital files. Needless to say, the task was a painstaking one, but the mp3 files have now been made accessible online through the Gallica search engine at the library.1 When Foucault died in 1984, Deleuze was so affected by the death of his friend, that he began lecturing and writing a book about Foucault’s philosophical corpus immediately. When asked why he wanted to write such a book, Deleuze was quite clear, “it marks an inner need of mine, my admiration for him, how I was moved by his death, and his unfinished work.”2 Deleuze’s desire for some kind of reconciliation with Foucault seems to have been a mutual one.
    [Show full text]
  • Hume's Objects After Deleuze
    Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Master's Theses Graduate School March 2021 Hume's Objects After Deleuze Michael P. Harter Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses Part of the Continental Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Harter, Michael P., "Hume's Objects After Deleuze" (2021). LSU Master's Theses. 5305. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses/5305 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Master's Theses by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. HUME’S OBJECTS AFTER DELEUZE A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in The Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies by Michael Patrick Harter B.A., California State University, Fresno, 2018 May 2021 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Human beings are wholly dependent creatures. In our becoming, we are affected by an incredible number of beings who aid and foster our growth. It would be impossible to devise a list of all such individuals. However, those who played imperative roles in the creation of this work deserve their due recognition. First, I would like to thank my partner, Leena, and our pets Merleau and the late Kiki. Throughout the ebbs and flows of my academic career, you have remained sources of love, joy, encouragement, and calm.
    [Show full text]
  • Becoming-Other: Foucault, Deleuze, and the Political Nature of Thought Vernon W
    Philosophy Faculty Publications Philosophy 4-2014 Becoming-Other: Foucault, Deleuze, and the Political Nature of Thought Vernon W. Cisney Gettysburg College Follow this and additional works at: https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/philfac Part of the Philosophy of Mind Commons Share feedback about the accessibility of this item. Cisney, Vernon W. "Becoming-Other: Foucault, Deleuze, and the Nature of Thought." Foucault Studies 17 Special Issue: Foucault and Deleuze (April 2014). This is the publisher's version of the work. This publication appears in Gettysburg College's institutional repository by permission of the copyright owner for personal use, not for redistribution. Cupola permanent link: https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/philfac/37 This open access article is brought to you by The uC pola: Scholarship at Gettysburg College. It has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of The uC pola. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Becoming-Other: Foucault, Deleuze, and the Political Nature of Thought Abstract In this paper I employ the notion of the ‘thought of the outside’ as developed by Michel Foucault, in order to defend the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze against the criticisms of ‘elitism,’ ‘aristocratism,’ and ‘political indifference’—famously leveled by Alain Badiou and Peter Hallward. First, I argue that their charges of a theophanic conception of Being, which ground the broader political claims, derive from a misunderstanding of Deleuze’s notion of univocity, as well as a failure to recognize the significance of the concept of multiplicity in Deleuze’s thinking. From here, I go on to discuss Deleuze’s articulation of the ‘dogmatic image of thought,’ which, insofar as it takes ‘recognition’ as its model, can only ever think what is already solidified and sedimented as true, in light of existing structures and institutions of power.
    [Show full text]
  • Rhizomatic Cities in Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities Sambit Panigrahi
    Rhizomatic Cities in Italo Calvino’s INVISIBLE CITIES Sambit Panigrahi Abstract: Italo Calvino’s highly successful novel Invisible Cities thoroughly explains Deleuze and Guattari’s famous postmodern concept of rhizome. The cities in the novel do not possess a fixed and coherent structure; rather they exude a structurality that is immensely fleeting and continually evolving. Calvino’s novelInvisible Cities which ironically precedes Deleuze and Guattari’s book A Thousand Plateaus clearly demonstrates the defining characteristic features of rhizome through the unusual and seemingly incomprehensible structure of the individual cities. There have been scanty critical responses in the past regarding the rhizomatic behavior of Calvino’s cities, despite an extraordinary abundance of critical works existing on Calvino’s writing. The rhizomatic patterns of Calvino’s cities, it is believed by the author, need further critical attention. Rhizome, through its perpetually unstable structural modeling, perhaps most effectively demonstrates our utterly disarrayed postmodern condition of existence where any desired structural stability and coherence is a virtual impossibility, and of this trait, Calvino’s cities in the said novel are the principal demonstrators. Based on these precepts, this article intends to analyze how Calvino’s cities in the novel, with their perpetual and immense structural variabilities, exude before the readers a typical postmodern world that wholesomely discards the very idea of structural coherence and stability. Deleuze and Guattari’s collaboratively introduced concept of ‘rhizome’ in their classic philosophical treatise A Thousand Plateaus is a suitable demonstrator of our disarrayed condition of postmodernity. As is well known, rhizome is their devised model that explains the relentlessly fluctuating nature of a postmodern structure.
    [Show full text]
  • Psychiatry and Anti-Psychiatry: History, Rhetoric and Reality
    2 (4) 2018 DOI: 10.26319/4717 Daniel Burston, Psychology Department, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh PA [email protected] Psychiatry and Anti-psychiatry: History, Rhetoric and Reality Abstract: The term “anti-psychiatry” was coined in 1912 by Dr. Bernhard Beyer, but only popularized by Dr. David Cooper (and his critics) in the midst of a widespread cultural revolt against involuntary hospitalization and in-patient psychiatry during the 1960s and 1970s. However, with the demise of the old-fashioned mental hospital, and the rise of Big Pharma (with all its attendant evils), the term “anti-psychiatry” has outlived its usefulness. It survives merely as a term of abuse or a badge of honor, depending on the user and what rhetorical work this label is expected to perform. Those who use the term nowadays generally have a polemical axe to grind, and seldom understand the term’s origins or implications. It is time that serious scholars retire this term, or to restrict its use to R.D.Laing’s followers in the Philadelphia Associates and kindred groups that sprang up in the late 1960s and 1970s. Keywords: psychiatry, anti-psychiatry, psychoanalysis, DSM V, Big Pharma, normalization, psychopolitics On November 16, 2016, Dr. Bonnie Burstow, Associate Professor of Adult Education and Community Development at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, which is affiliated with the University of Toronto, launched the first (and thus far, only) scholarship in North America to support doctoral theses on the subject of “anti-psychiatry.” Predictably, this bold gesture garnered praise in some quarters, but provoked a barrage of criticism from both in and outside the university.
    [Show full text]
  • Deleuze and the Simulacrum Between the Phantasm and Fantasy (A Genealogical Reading)
    Tijdschrift voor Filosofie, 81/2019, p. 131-149 DELEUZE AND THE SIMULACRUM BETWEEN THE PHANTASM AND FANTASY (A GENEALOGICAL READING) by Daniel Villegas Vélez (Leuven) What is the difference between the phantasm and the simulacrum in Deleuze’s famous reversal of Platonism? At the end of “Plato and the Simulacrum,” Deleuze argues that philosophy must extract from moder- nity “something that Nietzsche designated as the untimely.”1 The his- toricity of the untimely, Deleuze specifies, obtains differently with respect to the past, present, and future: the untimely is attained with respect to the past by the reversal of Platonism and with respect to the present, “by the simulacrum conceived as the edge of critical moder- nity.” In relation to the future, however, it is attained “by the phantasm of the eternal return as belief in the future.” At stake, is a certain dis- tinction between the simulacrum, whose power, as Deleuze tells us in this crucial paragraph, defines modernity, and the phantasm, which is Daniel Villegas Vélez (1984) holds a PhD from the Univ. of Pennsylvania and is postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven, where he forms part of the erc Research Pro- ject Homo Mimeticus (hom). Recent publications include “The Matter of Timbre: Listening, Genea- logy, Sound,” in The Oxford Handbook of Timbre, ed. Emily Dolan and Alexander Rehding (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2018), doi: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190637224.013.20 and “Allegory, Noise, and History: TheArcades Project Looks Back at the Trauerspielbuch,” New Writing Special Issue: Convo- luting the Dialectical Image (2019), doi: 10.1080/14790726.2019.1567795.
    [Show full text]
  • REVIEW Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault, Human Nature: Justice Vs
    Asger Sørensen 2013 ISSN: 1832-5203 Foucault Studies, No. 16, pp. 201-207, September 2013 REVIEW Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault, Human Nature: Justice vs Power. The Chomsky- Foucault Debate, edited by Fons Elders (London: Souvenir Press, 2011), ISBN: 978-1-595- 58134-1 This small booklet is a transcript (and in the case of Foucault, a translation) of what was said in a Dutch television program recorded in 1971, today allegedly accessible at You Tube. The edi- tor Fons Elders is the original organizer of the program. He was thus part of the conversation just as the audience was allowed to pose a few questions. Elders first published these tran- scripts in 1974 under the title Reflexive Waters: The Basic Concerns of Mankind, and first one could thus ask: Is it worth publishing them again? Yes, definitely. Does it reveal anything fundamentally new and surprising about Foucault or Chomsky? No, not really, but the con- frontation between them brings forth certain traits of their respective ways of thinking that may be worth a little extra scrutiny. The text consists of Elders’ introduction (iii-ix) and the transcript, which has two main parts. The first part of the conversation is about the question of human nature, knowledge, and science (1-42), the second is on politics (42-82), and it is es- pecially the second part I find interesting, both in relation to Foucault and in more general philosophical terms. I will thus focus on two points, namely how they relate to politics, and which implication this has for their relation to anarchism.
    [Show full text]
  • A Thousand Plateaus and Philosophy
    Chapter 13 7000 BC: Apparatus of Capture Daniel W. Smith I Te ‘Apparatus of Capture’ plateau expands and alters the theory of the state presented in the third chapter of Anti-Oedipus, while at the same time providing a fnal overview of the sociopolitical philosophy developed throughout Capitalism and Schizophrenia. It develops a series of challeng- ing theses about the state, the frst and most general of which is a thesis against social evolution: the state did not and could not have evolved out of ‘primitive’ hunter-gatherer societies. Te idea that human societies progressively evolve took on perhaps its best-known form in Lewis Henry Morgan’s 1877 book, Ancient Society; Or: Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization (Morgan 1877; Carneiro 2003), which had a profound infuence on nineteenth-century thinkers, especially Marx and Engels. Although the title of the third chap- ter of Anti-Oedipus – ‘Savages, Barbarians, Civilized Men’ – is derived from Morgan’s book, the universal history developed in Capitalism and Schizophrenia is directed against conceptions of linear (or even multilinear) social evolution. Deleuze and Guattari are not denying social change, but they are arguing that we cannot understand social change unless we see it as taking place within a feld of coexistence. Deleuze and Guattari’s second thesis is a correlate of the frst: if the state does not evolve from other social formations, it is because it creates its own conditions (ATP 446). Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of the state begins with a consideration of the nature of ancient despotic states, such as Egypt or Babylon.
    [Show full text]
  • Chomsky and Foucault on Human Nature and Politics: an Essential Difference?
    Chomsky and Foucault on Human Nature and Politics: An Essential Difference? Foucault: "On the other hand, when we discussed the problem of human nature and political problems, then differences arose between us. And contrary to what you think you can't prevent me from believing that these notions of human nature, of justice, of the realization of the essence of human beings, are all notions and concepts which have been formed within our civilization, within our type of knowledge and our form of philosophy, and that as a result form part of our class system; and that one can't, however regrettable it may be, put forward these notions to describe or justify a fight which should—and shall in principle—overthrow the very fundaments of our society. This is an extrapolation for which I can't find the historical justification. That's the point." Chomsky: "It's clear."' "Any serious social science or theory of social change must be founded on some concept of human nature." — Noam Chomsky 1. Introduction In 1971, Dutch television held a series of interviews and discussions with noted intellectuals of the day to discuss a wide range of issues regarding contemporary social and philosophical affairs. Perhaps the most significant of these encounters was the meeting between Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault. It brought together arguably the two most prominent Western intellectual-activists of the day in a debate that illustrates clearly the lineage of thought within which each writer is situated. Nominally the discussion was in two parts: the first an examination of the origins or production of knowledge, with particular concern for the natural sciences, the second explicitly focused on the role and practice of oppositional politics within Western capitalist democracies—in part a response to the unfolding Vietnam War.
    [Show full text]
  • Nick Land -- Machinic Desire
    This article was downloaded by: [Ohio State University Libraries] On: 29 May 2012, At: 06:03 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Textual Practice Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rtpr20 Machinic desire Nick Land a a University of Warwick Available online: 30 Jun 2008 To cite this article: Nick Land (1993): Machinic desire, Textual Practice, 7:3, 471-482 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09502369308582177 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/ terms-and-conditions This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. NICK LAND Macbinic desire The opening of Bladerunner. They are trying to screen out replicants at the Tyrell Corporation. Seated amongst a battery of medico-military surveillance equipment, a doctor scans the eye of a suspected 'skin job' located at the other side of the room, searching for the index of inhu- manity, for the absence of pupil dilation response to affect: 'Tell me about your mother.' 'I'll tell you about my mother...' a volley of shots kicks 70 kilos of securicrat shit through the wall.
    [Show full text]
  • Overturning the Paradigm of Identity with Gilles Deleuze's Differential
    A Thesis entitled Difference Over Identity: Overturning the Paradigm of Identity With Gilles Deleuze’s Differential Ontology by Matthew G. Eckel Submitted to the Graduate Faculty as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts Degree in Philosophy Dr. Ammon Allred, Committee Chair Dr. Benjamin Grazzini, Committee Member Dr. Benjamin Pryor, Committee Member Dr. Patricia R. Komuniecki, Dean College of Graduate Studies The University of Toledo May 2014 An Abstract of Difference Over Identity: Overturning the Paradigm of Identity With Gilles Deleuze’s Differential Ontology by Matthew G. Eckel Submitted to the Graduate Faculty as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts Degree in Philosophy The University of Toledo May 2014 Taking Gilles Deleuze to be a philosopher who is most concerned with articulating a ‘philosophy of difference’, Deleuze’s thought represents a fundamental shift in the history of philosophy, a shift which asserts ontological difference as independent of any prior ontological identity, even going as far as suggesting that identity is only possible when grounded by difference. Deleuze reconstructs a ‘minor’ history of philosophy, mobilizing thinkers from Spinoza and Nietzsche to Duns Scotus and Bergson, in his attempt to assert that philosophy has always been, underneath its canonical manifestations, a project concerned with ontology, and that ontological difference deserves the kind of philosophical attention, and privilege, which ontological identity has been given since Aristotle.
    [Show full text]
  • Gilles Deleuze's
    Gilles Deleuze’s Empiricism and Subjectivity 55194_Roffe194_Roffe andand Deleuze.inddDeleuze.indd i 115/10/165/10/16 4:574:57 PPMM Leopards break into the temple and drink all the sacrifi cial vessels dry; it keeps happening; in the end, it can be calculated in advance and is incorporated into the ritual. Franz Kafka 55194_Roffe194_Roffe andand Deleuze.inddDeleuze.indd iiii 115/10/165/10/16 4:574:57 PPMM Gilles Deleuze’s Empiricism and Subjectivity A Critical Introduction and Guide JON ROFFE 55194_Roffe194_Roffe andand Deleuze.inddDeleuze.indd iiiiii 115/10/165/10/16 4:574:57 PPMM Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: www.edinburghuniversitypress.com © Jon Roffe, 2016 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun – Holyrood Road, 12(2f) Jackson’s Entry, Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in 11.5/15 Adobe Sabon by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd, and printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 4744 0582 9 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 4744 0584 3 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 0583 6 (paperback) ISBN 978 1 4744 0585 0 (epub) The right of Jon Roffe to be identifi ed as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No.
    [Show full text]