The text is the transcription of a filmed lecture given at the FEMIS film school on 17 March 1987. The text draws from material developed in 1984-85 during the fourth seminar on cinema but also includes elements of Deleuze’s burgeoning and long discussed project, “what is philosophy?”.
Archives: Seminars
Information about an entire seminar (series of lectures)
A Thousand Plateaus IV: The State Apparatus & War-Machines I
October 24, 1978 to February 27, 1979
Only one session from this academic year has been preserved (and only as a fragment), but from subsequent references by Deleuze to the seminar during 1979-80 sessions, we can see what topics were emphasized corresponding to sections in A Thousand Plateaus: from plateau 13, “7000 B.C. – Apparatus of Capture”, the status of man under the State apparatus, the nomads’ role in inventing the war machine, and linkage of war machines’ development in tension with the State apparatus; from plateau 14, “1440 – The Smooth and the Striated”, links between labour and bureaucracy; and from plateau 12, “1227 – Treatise on Nomadology – The War Machine”, issues of labour, justice, signs and tools linked to the State apparatus as well as the importance of metallurgy, and also the phenomena of gangs and packs.
Hence, the seminar summarized below allows us to situate many of the important foci of the previous years within the framework metallurgy, specifically, and the nomadic war machine more generally.
A Thousand Plateaus II: Two Forms of Segmentarities
October 1, 1976 to May 3, 1977
Following publication of Anti-Oedipus in 1972, Deleuze continues to develop the proliferation of concepts that his collaboration with Guattari had yielded. Throughout the 1970s, Deleuze and Guattari’s interest in expanding these concepts continues, eventually producing the sequel, A Thousand Plateaus. In this group of lectures, Deleuze offers the multi-faceted focus of the semester’s work, mainly to distinguish two forms of segmentarity or two types of multiplicities, in seven different directions: 1) biographical, 2) organization, 3) centralization, 4) signification (signifiance), 5) sociability, 6) subjectivation, and 7) planification.
Anti-Oedipus III
October 1, 1973 to January 21, 1974
With Anti-Oedipus published the previous year, this seminar clearly develops more consistently toward concepts in the different plateaus in A Thousand Plateaus, and corresponding to this academic year are several publications linked to this development: in late 1973, Deleuze and Guattari present another chapter, plateau 2 in A Thousand Plateaus, on Freud’s case of ‘The Wolf Man’, and several months later, they publish an essay on Kafka’s novel The Castle, developing a separate project that will result in Kafka. Towards a Minor Literature.
Finally, with no available transcripts for academic year 1974-75, two more texts will be published during that missing year: material from another chapter which will become plateau 6 in A Thousand Plateaus, on the Body without Organs, and publication of Kafka. Towards a Minor Literature (1975).
Anti-Oedipus II
October 1, 1972 to June 4, 1973
With only five sessions available in this seminar, Deleuze continues to expand the concepts developed for Anti-Oedipus with the long view of the second volume, A Thousand Plateaus. Moreover, alongside these sessions, Deleuze alone and with Guattari develop texts for publication that correspond directly to the seminar: Deleuze’s conference presentation, ‘Nomadic Thought’ for the July 1972 conference ‘Nietzsche aujourd’hui?’ at Cerisy-la-Salle appears in 1973; second, Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘Bilan-Programme pour machines désirantes’ appears in Minuit 2 (January 1973), and then is included as an appendix to a revised edition of Anti-Oedipus (1975).
Anti-Oedipus I, Logic of Flows
October 1, 1971 to April 18, 1972
The opening seminars at Vincennes (1970-71 & 1971-72) not only provided a site for the ground work from which Anti-Oedipus emerged, but also the transitional discussions with which the long sequence of ‘plateaus’ would be developed. As Deleuze indicates in the opening seminar, he had already spent the 1970-71 academic year outlining the ongoing collaboration with Félix Guattari. Thus, with the book’s publication quite imminent (appearing in early 1972), these sessions allow Deleuze to refine the ongoing developments with Guattari, most notably concerning the tasks of schizoanalysis and the intersection of the fields of political economy and psychoanalysis, as well as the continuing dominant and oppressive impact of this intersection both on society and subjectivity. Note that Deleuze and Guattari had only published one essay derived from this ongoing collaboration, titled ‘La synthèse disjonctive’, in L’Arc 43 (on Klossowski), 1970, 54-62, but with the publication of Anti-Oedipus, numerous interviews will appear in 1972, notably in L’Arc 49 (on Deleuze) and in La Quinzaine littéraire 143 (16-30 June 1972).
In his “Letter to a Harsh Critic” published in 1972 and that later appears at the start of Negotiations, Deleuze describes his collaboration: “And then there was my meeting with Felix Guattari, the way we understood and complemented, depersonalized and singularized – – in short, loved — one another. Out of that came Anti-Oedipus, and it takes things a step further.” What more can be said?
Lectures in this Seminar
Gilles Deleuze, From A to Z
December 15, 1988 to June 3, 1989
Prior to starting to discuss the first “letter” of his ABC primer from A to Z, “A as in Animal,” with Claire Parnet, Deleuze discusses his understanding of the working premises of this series of interviews:
“You have selected a format as an ABC primer, you have indicated to me some themes, and in this, I do not know exactly what the questions will be, so that I have only been able to think a bit beforehand about the themes. For me, answering a question without having thought about it a bit is something inconceivable. What saves me in this is the particular condition (la clause): should any of this be at all useful, all of it will be used only after my death. So, you understand, I feel myself being reduced to the state of a pure archive for Pierre-André Boutang, to a sheet of paper [Parnet laughs in the mirror reflection], so that lifts my spirits and comforts me immensely, and nearly in the state of pure spirit (pur esprit), I speak after my death, and we know well that a pure spirit finally can make tables turn. But we know as well that a pure spirit is not someone who gives answers that are either very profound or very intelligent. So anything goes in this, let’s begin, A-B-C, whatever you want.”
“Gilles Deleuze, From A to Z” is a DVD containing Claire Parnet’s complete Abecedaire interview with Deleuze, directed and produced by Pierre-André Boutang, with English subtitles by Charles J. Stivale, is available from MIT Press and Amazon.
Rousseau and Bergson
October 1, 1959 to May 1, 1960
Deleuze taught philosophy at the Lycée Orleans from 1953-1955 and at the Lycee Louis-le-Grand in Paris from 1955-1957. He then became an assistant professor at the Sorbonne, where he taught from 1957-1960, replacing Jean Hyppolite, who had been appointed to a position at the École normale supérieure on rue d’Ulm.
At the Sorbonne, Deleuze taught a course on Wednesdays in Cavailles Hall from 2:00-3:00pm. In his 1957-1958 course, he lectured on Jean Wahl’s concepts of diversity, pluralism, the irreducibility of the many, and a philosophy of the “and.” In his 1959-1960 course, Deleuze focused on Rousseau and chapter three of Bergson’s Creative Evolution. It is these latter two courses from 1959-1960 that are available here.
The manuscripts of these courses have been preserved in the archives of the École normale supérieure at Fontenay Saint-Cloud in the ENS-LSH library in Lyon. The archive contains manuscripts of Deleuze’s lectures on Bergson (19 pp.), Rousseau (27 pp.), Kant (24 pp.), and Hume (38 pp.).
The English translation of Deleuze’s 1960 course on Rousseau (Lecture 01) is by Arjen Kleinherenbrink and is entitled “A Politics of Things.”
The English translation of Deleuze’s 1960 course on Bergson (Lecture 02) is by Brian Loban. It appeared in the journal SubStance 114 (2007), Vol. 36, No. 3, special issue on “Henri Bergson’s Creative Evolution: 100 Years Later,” pp. 72-90, under the title “Lecture Course on Chapter Three of Bergson’s Creative Evolution.”
Deleuze, in an undated 15 minute tape, recorded a summary of his 1953 book on Hume which unfortunately is no longer available online.
Multiplicities
October 1, 1969 to November 30, 1969
“The Theory of Multiplicities in Bergson” is the text of a lecture given by Deleuze in a meeting of “the Philosophical Society” on 30 November 1969. The xeroxed notes of excerpts of this session are printed in the volume Deleuze épars, ed. André Bernold and Richard Pinhas (Paris: Hermann, 2005), 227-237. We should note that these excerpts do not bear the date attributed by Pinhas at WebDeleuze, where the transcription is furnished.
The translation is by Timothy S. Murphy and was first published at WebDeleuze.
What is Grounding?
November 11, 1955 to May 10, 1956
Qu’est-ce que fonder? was the title of a “cours hypokhâgne” that Deleuze gave at the Lycée Louis le Grand in Paris during the 1955-1956 academic year. The hypokhâgne is the first year course, followed by khâgne, of the two-year academic cycle in France (Classe préparatoire aux grandes écoles) whose aim is to prepare high school students for the entrance competition of the École normale supérieure in Paris. The text is based on the notes of one of the students in the course, Pierre Lefebvre.
An English translation of the course, entitled What is Grounding?, translated by Arjen Kleinherenbrink and edited by Tony Yanick, Jason Adams, and Mohammad Salemy, is available online at the webpage for The New Centre for Research and Practice, tripleampersand.org/books.
