“ a) They [Deleuze and Guattarri] did word by word… as I said, there isn’t a single word in their texts that" has not a rigorous place in the system… and when I say, a rigorous place, I really mean, a f#%$ing rigorous place… it is insane… it is a “conceptual cathedral” that Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Cassirer could only dream about… And Spinoza… but well… Spinoza was not able to be a pluralist…
… Do you know Gueroult? Vuillemin?.. But also… do you know anything about Alquie, Hyppolite…well… believe me… you have a quite naif image of french academy lol (and clearly you don’t grasp what a “philosophical system” is… but, let me tell you, it can be more systematic than physics…
(as I suggested in another comment… I believe reading him in English is a catastrophe… the translators were not prepared to grasp the conceptual matrix and so… it is not there…it is a catastrophe…” -Rui
“Okay, you get to win, Rui. Out of the around 20 books I have bought by and about Deluze (w/ and w/out Guattarri (you are the only one that can claim to have any real authority on Deleuze.I mean it makes sense: you’ve read him in French and I had always suspected that one of the main barriers between me and Deleuze is I’m not as comfortable with the French culture that he constantly refers to. So now what happens? Either everyone turns to your authority which won’t do them a lot of good since you speak in the same etherspeak that Deleuze does. I mean I can hardly understand a thing you are saying to me.” –me
First of all, this discourse started with my focus on Deleuze’s sense of Play and Rui’s complaint that I was working from a bad translation. Secondly, I still concede to Rui his right to claim some authority on the matter given that he apparently has read it in its original language and can assume that he has a little more knowledge about the French culture that Deleuze frequently refers to than I do. But as I began to think about it last night at work, it began to make less sense to me.
For one, it seems a little arrogant to more or less imply that all the translations of Deleuze (w/ and w/out Guattarri (and the anglo-American attempts at understanding him (those I have been working from (are somehow all lacking in validity, that is given what they have suggested to me is that Deleuze may have never meant himself to be fully understood. As one writer of secondary text pointed out (I believe it was Joe Hughes: thus far, all texts written on Deleuze have been too focused on trying to explain him to actually offer any real criticism. And we are talking about scholars here. Yet what Rui is suggesting here is that such a clear and rigorous understanding of a clear and rigorous system is available to those who read it in French. In other words, our best bet would be to leave Deleuze to the French since all attempts to understand him outside of French culture have basically been failures.
But the bigger problem for me has to do with Deleuze’s etherspeak or what has been referred to as free indirect discourse –which may be 2 different things but similar in spirit. Deleuze’s use of obscure language makes sense as framed by one writer: as the attempt to not control the readers process (that is through a direct impartation of knowledge (but guide it, through what Barthes referred to as the writerly process, in such a way that the reader arrives at an instinctive understanding that falls in the ballpark. And this seems to compliment Deleuze’s emphasis on the creative act and production.
However, if we concede to the notion of D & G working from a clear and rigorous system, all I, personally, can see is Deleuze’s use of etherspeak as something a little more authoritarian and likely to shut down the flows of energy that D&G talked about. In this case, etherspeak becomes little more than the self indulgence of a wannabe guru. Now Rui could take the route of Heidegger and argue that the reason this obscurity was needed was because such a system requires a new language in order to be understood -that is because it is so subtle and profound. But I don’t buy that. It seems to me that such a clear and rigorous system could be described by starting off with the simple and immediate (that is with the understanding that it is starting with the simplified version for the sake of process (and move on through the different degrees of complexity and subtlety. And that is clearly not what Deleuze (w/ and w/out Guattarri (did. Let me illustrate:
“Yes,D&G says that Philosophy is the creation of Concepts (variation), Science the creation of Functions (variables) and Art the Creation of Sensation (varieties). But, “as you know!”, the proprieties of the Concept is to be endo-consistent/exo-consistent and self-referent (and not endo.referent and exo-referent, “extension”/“intension” as science and logic). Do you know what it means in Maths to be “consistent”? “non-contraditory”?” –Rui
Now focusing on one of the few things I did manage to decode here:
“But, “as you know!”, the proprieties of the Concept is to be endo-consistent/exo-consistent and self-referent (and not endo -referent and exo-referent, “extension”/“intension” as science and logic). Do you know what it means in Maths to be “consistent”? “non-contradictory”?”
Now to blue-collarize (maybe even vulgarize (the point Rui is making here: the conceptual play and creation mentioned in What is Philosophy is a matter of conceptual systems in which the sub concepts are consistent and non-contradictory. Whether that system is consistent with external systems (ie Reality (is of secondary import. In that sense, it is a lot like math which is basically about playing with numbers to see what they can do. And it seems to me that even if the system were more complex and subtle than this, one could easily start from such a simple point and work their way up to it: work part by simple part to the whole.
But let’s say I were not only to concede to Rui his claim to authority, but set my ego aside and make him my guru. Then what would follow in terms of the etherspeak (similar to that of Deleuze’s (he tends to work in? Most likely, his ego would kick in and express itself through an endless powerplay of him making some obscure statement, me trying to decode it, and him saying:
“No!! You don’t quite understand.”
All of which would continue under the understanding that he had some kind of understanding of the rigorous and clear system (the reterritorialization ( that Deleuze and Guattarri presented that I could only gain access to through him –that is since he is the only one reading it in the original language. In other words, while he was shutting down (blocking (my flows of energy, he would be opening up a lot of them for himself.
And this is how he wants us to see Deleuze (w/ and w/out Guattarri.