Foucault

October 22, 1985 to June 3, 1986

After Michel Foucault’s death from AIDS on June 25, 1984, Deleuze decided to devote an entire year of his seminar to a study of Foucault’s writings. Deleuze analyses in detail what he took to be the three “axes” of Foucault’s thought: knowledge, power, and subjectivation. Parts of the seminar contributed to the publication of Deleuze’s book Foucault (Paris: Minuit, 1986), which subsequently appeared in an English translation by Seán Hand (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988).

For archival purposes, the English translations are based on the original transcripts from Paris 8, all of which have been revised with reference to the BNF recordings available thanks to Hidenobu Suzuki, and with the generous assistance of Marc Haas.

This seminar consists of 26 sessions held from October 1985 to June 1986, with session 26 unavailable both on WebDeleuze and Paris 8 sites.

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Lectures in this Seminar

	Foucault / 01 Lecture Date: October 22, 1985
	Foucault / 02 Lecture Date: October 29, 1985
	Foucault / 03 Lecture Date: November 5, 1985
	Foucault / 04 Lecture Date: November 12, 1985
	Foucault / 05 Lecture Date: November 19, 1985
	Foucault / 06 Lecture Date: November 26, 1985
	Foucault / 07 Lecture Date: December 10, 1985
	Foucault / 08 Lecture Date: December 17, 1985
	Foucault / 09 Lecture Date: January 7, 1986
	Foucault / 10 Lecture Date: January 14, 1986
	Foucault / 11 Lecture Date: January 21, 1986
	Foucault / 12 Lecture Date: January 28, 1986
	Foucault / 13 Lecture Date: February 25, 1986
	Foucault / 14 Lecture Date: March 4, 1986
	Foucault / 15 Lecture Date: March 11, 1986
	Foucault / 16 Lecture Date: March 18, 1986
	Foucault / 17 Lecture Date: March 25, 1986
	Foucault / 18 Lecture Date: April 8, 1986
	Foucault / 19 Lecture Date: April 15, 1986
	Foucault / 20 Lecture Date: April 22, 1986
	Foucault / 21 Lecture Date: April 29, 1986
	Foucault / 22 Lecture Date: May 6, 1986
	Foucault / 23 Lecture Date: May 13, 1986
	Foucault / 24 Lecture Date: May 20, 1986
	Foucault / 25 Lecture Date: May 27, 1986
	Foucault / 26 Lecture Date: June 3, 1986

Painting and the Question of Concepts

March 31, 1981 to June 2, 1981

Following nearly a decade teaching material included in his and Félix Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus, and also in his first year at St. Denis, Deleuze turned his attention, first, to Spinoza, and then to eight sessions on painting and its intersections with philosophy. These newly transcribed, annotated and now translated sessions are devoted to diverse questions: What relation does painting establish with catastrophe and with chaos? How does a painter ward off greyness and attain color? What is a line without contour? What is a plane, an optical space, a regime of color? Why paint today? Through works by Cézanne, Van Gogh, Michelangelo, Turner, Klee, Pollock, Mondrian, Bacon, Delacroix, Gauguin and Caravaggio, Deleuze entertains important philosophical concepts, such as the diagram, code, modulation, the digital and the analogical, renovating these concepts in dialogue with his students.

For archival purposes, the English translations are based on the original transcripts from Paris 8, many of which have been revised with reference to the BNF recordings available thanks to Hidenobu Suzuki. Individual sessions have been updated significantly, with revised descriptions completed in October 2023 and updated transcripts and sessions in Feb-May 2024. These sessions have also benefited from corrections provided (for session 1) in the last session of the Spinoza seminar , published in Sur Spinoza, ed. David Lapoujade (Paris: Minuit, 2024), and of course in Sur la peinture, ed. David Lapoujade (Paris: Minuit, 2023).

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Lectures in this Seminar

	Painting and the Question of Concepts / 01 Lecture Date: March 31, 1981
	Painting and the Question of Concepts / 02 Lecture Date: April 7, 1981
	Painting and the Question of Concepts / 03 Lecture Date: April 28, 1981
	Painting and the Question of Concepts / 04 Lecture Date: May 5, 1981
	Painting and the Question of Concepts / 05 Lecture Date: May 12, 1981
	Painting and the Question of Concepts / 06 Lecture Date: May 19, 1981
	Painting and the Question of Concepts / 07 Lecture Date: May 26, 1981
	Painting and the Question of Concepts / 08 Lecture Date: June 2, 1981

Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought

November 25, 1980 to March 31, 1981

“Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought” was a 15-lecture seminar given from November 1980 to March 1981. In the first semester teaching at the new location in St. Denis, after the destruction (by the Ministry of Education) of the Vincennes University campus, In this seminar, Deleuze revisits his examination of Baruch Spinoza’s philosophy. Deleuze previously published two books on Spinoza: Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza (Spinoza et le problème de l’expression, 1968), and a brief manual, Spinoza. Textes choisis (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1970), subsequently revised and republished as Spinoza: Practical Philosophy (Spinoza – Philosophie pratique, Paris: Minuit, 1981). The majority of these lectures were given the same year as the publication of the latter title, and hence these sessions were clearly informed by the new editorial preparation. The Seminar included here provides a sixteenth session, from 1978, on the themes of affect and idea as well as “continuous variation” in which Deleuze addresses Spinoza.

Please note that these transcriptions and hence the translations have benefited immensely from the work undertaken by David Lapoujade in editing these sessions for publication as Sur Spinoza (Paris: Minuit, 2024).

The initial transcripts for this seminar were partially available initially on the WebDeleuze site, with the following sessions omitted entirely: in 1981, 6 January, 27 January, 3 February, 10 February, and 31 March, hence the translations here are entirely new for the Deleuze Seminars. An extra session is included on WebDeleuze, on the impossible date (in terms of Deleuze’s and the University’s schedule) of 21 December 1980, and its content actually consists of a segment of the 9 December session’s first part.

As for the ten other sessions, each has its own story of incompletion and hybrid development: some of the transcripts were developed for the Paris 8 “La Voix de Deleuze” site, and a number of them (partially available on WebDeleuze) are completed and then translated for the Deleuze Seminars siites. See each session’s notes for comments on the transcript and translation developments.

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Lectures in this Seminar

	Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought / 00 Lecture Date: January 24, 1978
	Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought / 01 Lecture Date: November 25, 1980
	Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought / 02 Lecture Date: December 2, 1980
	Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought / 03 Lecture Date: December 9, 1980
	Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought / 04 Lecture Date: December 16, 1980
	Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought / 05 Lecture Date: January 6, 1981
	Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought / 06 Lecture Date: January 13, 1981
	Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought / 07 Lecture Date: January 20, 1981
	Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought / 08 Lecture Date: January 27, 1981
	Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought / 09 Lecture Date: February 3, 1981
	Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought / 10 Lecture Date: February 10, 1981
	Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought / 11 Lecture Date: February 17, 1981
	Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought / 12 Lecture Date: March 10, 1981
	Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought / 13 Lecture Date: March 17, 1981
	Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought / 14 Lecture Date: March 24, 1981
	Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought / 15 Lecture Date: March 31, 1981

Anti-Oedipus and other Reflections

May 6, 1980 to June 3, 1980

At the request of students in the seminar, Deleuze agrees to close the year, as well as his years at Vincennes, with reflections not only on Anti-Oedipus (as A Thousand Plateaus is about to appear in print), but also on more general topics in his writings. While Deleuze’s remarks in the first session are generated from specific questions and comments from participants, the second session consists almost solely of Deleuze speaking, continuing where he left off the previous week and presenting material developed over a decade earlier, in Logic of Sense.

Please note that the session recording available on YouTube contains fifteen minutes at the end heretofore not transcribed and untranslated which is presented for the first time on the Deleuze Seminars site.

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Lectures in this Seminar

	Anti-Oedipus and other Reflections / 1 Lecture Date: May 27, 1980
	Anti-Oedipus and other Reflections / 2 Lecture Date: June 3, 1980