“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Sunday, November 1, 2009

Deleuzian

Despite my best attempts to hide it I've been told I'm Deleuzian almost every other day since about 2006. So I guess the other thinks I'm Deleuzian. If you can't beat em join em! Take this blog, for instance, “Violent Signs” by Tim Matts. What's not to like? Sometimes I kind of worry that Deleuze is better at advertising new versions of the same old thing than actually going there—I know this sounds counter-intuitive to those who like me have enjoyed his prose. (I used to do a lot more Deleuze, but like the guy in the UK anti-heroin ad from the 80s, “I can control it.”) But I must say The Fold is a pretty wonderful book and as I'm thinking a lot about fractals for my new book at the moment, essential reading.

(I also worry that the Deleuzo-mania that seems to have swept the UK since the mid-90s is a little bit of Brit-Art-like catch-up with contemporary theory, viz. deconstruction, which never really took root there, with the notable exception of Oxford Literary Review. The sad old Derridean depressive in me has a little reaction to the burial of Derrida under mountains of Deleuzian prose...)

“Violent Signs” is also a place where you can see Slavoj's bit in Examined Life—a very succinct encapsulation of ecology without nature.

4 comments:

Tim said...

Cheers, Tim. Looking forward to the new book. Tim @ Violent Signs

Anonymous said...

So can you tell me what the fuss is over Organs Without Bodies?

Tim said...

You're referring to Zizek's book 'on' Deleuze? Well of course it isn't so much a book on Deleuze as a typical Zizekian text. I think perhaps the best review of the work remains Prof. Dan Smith's 'The Inverse Side of The Structure' and which can be found at Project Muse, if not elsewhere without subscription. Best, Tim Matts

Gustav said...

So what do you think about Badiou's book on Deleuze? I couldn't stand Zizek's but, Badiou halted my teenage Deluzian wave...just a little.