What would Deleuze Say? What would Jesus Do?
Just returned to the office from a bruising fight with myself to control my impulse to fight with a famous feminist Deleuzian on campus giving a series of lectures.
She kept saying, "Well I don't know what Deleuze would say if he were here, but..." followed by explanations of why Deleuzian philosophy offers the best account of singularity, the event, the unpredictable...and surpasses Marxism and feminism..and structuralism because they are basically predictive processes...but listening to this mode of philosophizing makes me wonder...Uh...is that like asking, "What would Jesus do?" when we encounter moral dilemmas -- when we encounter philosophical problems, we say, "What would Deleuze say?"
It seems that Deleuze would say that he is for radical openness, being for art and against a plan. The most political question is, "What can a body do?" Hate on liberalism. Laugh at it actually...That's what a body can do...
What can Jesus' body do? That is the question!
Maybe the power of Deleuzian philosophy is that it produces such negative responses in me! Instead of a quiet afternoon in the office, I encounter this allegedly immanent mode of philosophizing whose pure positivity and refusal of critique leave me holding the ugly bag of negation, channeling the crotchety spirit of some old fashioned dialectician with bad knees, an assemblage of populist tics, laughable reservations, untimely, angry, debased, vengeful, confused, outraged by its contempt for "translatability" or even communicability, its arcana, its smug sense of overcoming critique AND science, its "pretend" erudition. Every single encounter with Deleuzians has evoked some of these emotions in me...passions actually, a passionate desire to fight what I have to admit, I feel is a kind of charlatanism and therein, I must in some way concede lies its power, which for me is entirely negative.
This Deleuzian relied on Deleuze's erudition to found his authority. He has allegedy read everything.
She kept saying, "Well I don't know what Deleuze would say if he were here, but..." followed by explanations of why Deleuzian philosophy offers the best account of singularity, the event, the unpredictable...and surpasses Marxism and feminism..and structuralism because they are basically predictive processes...but listening to this mode of philosophizing makes me wonder...Uh...is that like asking, "What would Jesus do?" when we encounter moral dilemmas -- when we encounter philosophical problems, we say, "What would Deleuze say?"
It seems that Deleuze would say that he is for radical openness, being for art and against a plan. The most political question is, "What can a body do?" Hate on liberalism. Laugh at it actually...That's what a body can do...
What can Jesus' body do? That is the question!
Maybe the power of Deleuzian philosophy is that it produces such negative responses in me! Instead of a quiet afternoon in the office, I encounter this allegedly immanent mode of philosophizing whose pure positivity and refusal of critique leave me holding the ugly bag of negation, channeling the crotchety spirit of some old fashioned dialectician with bad knees, an assemblage of populist tics, laughable reservations, untimely, angry, debased, vengeful, confused, outraged by its contempt for "translatability" or even communicability, its arcana, its smug sense of overcoming critique AND science, its "pretend" erudition. Every single encounter with Deleuzians has evoked some of these emotions in me...passions actually, a passionate desire to fight what I have to admit, I feel is a kind of charlatanism and therein, I must in some way concede lies its power, which for me is entirely negative.
This Deleuzian relied on Deleuze's erudition to found his authority. He has allegedy read everything.
Labels: theory
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